*Thanks to Livion and IwKa for reviewing :) I really appreciate it! Trying to write towards the end of your senior year is pretty tough...only 10 more school days to go though, then I'm done for good! Well...until college in the fall of course haha...*
JJ woke to someone moving around in the room she was sleeping in. Panicking, she pushed herself off the couch quickly before wincing at the pain in her left arm. "Hey JJ, relax, it's just me!" Emily said as she rushed over to her friend's side. JJ breathed out a sigh and fell back into the couch, holding her arm. "Here," Emily handed her a bottle of water and some pain medication.
She quickly downed the pills before asking, "Did we find Reid?"
Emily shook her head, "Hotch just left to wait for Garcia to land at the airport and in the meantime, everyone else is downstairs going through some journals we found. I picked up your bag from the station." She pointed to a duffel bag sitting by the door, "Why don't you freshen up and come down?"
JJ nodded, "Thanks, Em." She watched as Emily walked out the door. She put her head down in her hands and felt the strongest urge to be sick. Reid was gone and they had no idea where he was. She should have stayed with him. He's so young…Why did she ever let him out of her sight? JJ remembered the jokes they had shared on the way to this place and started to tear up. What if she never heard that laughter again? JJ tried to push that thought out of her head, but it was too late. The tears rolled down her face. Reid was one of her best friends and she knew he felt the same. Well, at least he used to, who knows what he'll think of her after this stunt?
Shoving those thoughts to the back of her mind JJ stood up and tried to pull herself together. Grabbing her bag by the door, she walked into the adjoining bathroom and started to get ready. She didn't feel like taking a shower, so she just brushed through her hair some and let it fall around her shoulders. Looking at herself in the mirror, she sighed. There were dark circles under her red and puffy eyes that gave away the fact that she didn't sleep well. She had woken up throughout the night at the slightest noise, which was frequent considering there was a team of FBI agents working below her.
JJ quickly applied some make-up to make her look presentable. Then she brushed her teeth before shoving all of her things back in her bag and heading downstairs. Gideon and Prentiss were standing around the small table in the main room and she went over and sat down at the table. The room was a mess. There were spare computer parts everywhere and papers strewn about. Tobias had stuffed every nook and cranny of this house full of random junk. Figuring out anything usable from this mess was going to be extremely difficult.
JJ sighed, "What's going on right now?"
Gideon lifted up a box at his feet and placed it on the table, "We just found some journals that look like they are Tobias' or Charles'. Prentiss and I were just starting to go through them."
She then realized the boxes upon boxes that were piled up behind them, "All of them?"
Gideon pushed the box over to her, "It might tell us where he's taken Reid."
JJ felt a stab of guilt and started working on going through the journals at a fast pace. She had a pad and pencil at the ready to write down anything she thought was important and began to categorize the journals into different phases of the unsub's life. The journals were mostly in order but there were a few that seemed to stick out. She set those aside, ready to be analyzed later in the day.
She was so engrossed in her work that she jumped when she heard the front door open. Looking over, she saw Hotch holding the door for Garcia who had a worried look on her face. JJ hoped that Garcia wouldn't blame her for this.
Hotch set down his briefcase by the door and Garcia looked around the room. "Welcome to our nightmare," JJ said to her before looking back down at the journals.
Garcia looked like she was about to cry before Gideon drew her attention back to the task at hand, "The computer is an extension of his brain. I need you to dissect it."
Penelope nodded as Morgan pulled her to the other room, "I'll get you set up, come on."
"So, nothing new since I left?" Hotch asked.
Emily picked up a journal and started filling Hotch in, "Well, the good news is, the guy practically documented every second of his life. The bad news is that we're still unpiling."
JJ pitched in, "From the looks of it, he hasn't left this place in years." It was creepy how much you could write about the ins and outs of one little house.
"He knew he could be pretending to be looking for a motel and throw us off his trail," Emily concluded.
"No, no, no, it's more than that," Gideon interrupted, "Sheriff's office, 911 calls, every time he engages the police he gets away with it, reassures himself. God's on his side, not ours."
JJ was leaning with her hand on the table, listening. Hotch settled in to help go through the piles. JJ's arm was starting to ache and she realized that she hadn't changed the bandages since the medic put them on. She had seen Emily put some in the room she had slept in and got up to go change.
Once alone in the room again, JJ relaxed. It was hard trying to put up a front with everyone, even though they probably saw right through her. She was so worried about Reid. She needed to throw herself into her work; otherwise her thoughts would get away from her and dwell on Reid. That just made her want to throw up.
Gingerly, she started unwrapping the tightly-wound bandage that encased her upper left arm. Once she got all the way done, she examined the wound with the help of a mirror. There was definite teeth marks, that's for sure. She was just glad the dog hadn't gotten her really badly. Her arm was tender and there was a lot of bruising still, but the medic had told her that would go down within a couple of days. JJ unholstered her gun to put it on a little stand near the sink so it wouldn't get wet. After cleaning and re-wrapping her arm, she rolled up the arm on her blouse so it wouldn't be so tight around her arm. She was wearing a white shirt and the blood leftover from yesterday was still on it. It had splattered all the way up by her neck as well, which made her look even worse for wear. JJ grabbed a towel and tried to get some of it off but it was no use.
The blood on her shirt made her think back to the events of yesterday. She was stupid to go in that huge, dark barn all by herself. Something worse could have snuck up behind her and she would've been out of luck. She'd had some nightmares last night, all involving dogs of some sort. She always saw the eyes just like she'd seen them last night. Eyes of a predator hunting their prey: her.
JJ had always loved dogs. Her family had had several growing up, ranging from an adorable golden retriever to a cuddly pit-bull mix. She'd been scared around a dog once before in her life, when one of her dogs, a mutt they'd gotten for free, got in a fight with a Chow after it had growled at her sister. That dog had not hesitated to protect them, yet JJ just shot three of the same species yesterday.
Now, she thought she would be content with never seeing a dog again. All those nights spent cuddled up next to her favorite dog, a yellow-lab named Callie, were ruined. Those three dogs had attacked her without a second thought. She hadn't even realized that they were there, yet they felt threatened enough to kill. JJ shivered at the thought. They would have ripped her apart just like they had the other woman. The image of the soaked bloody mattress came to her mind and she closed her eyes to try and get rid of it. Beady eyes stared back at her from the darkness and she opened her eyes slowly, trying to tell herself they weren't real.
But were they? One set of dark eyes was looking at her through the mirror right now! Her heart started racing as images of the dogs attacking her sent her body into a frenzy. She knew she only had one shot, so she groped around next to her for her gun before she spun around to shoot…
"Hey, hey, JJ, it's me!" Emily yelled out before any shots fired. JJ hurriedly tried to make it look like she was just putting her gun back in her holster but knew she had failed, "Are you alright?" Prentiss had her hands up, wary of what she was going to do next. Great. Now they'd think she's crazy.
"Um, yeah, I'm alright. I'm sorry, you just scared me," JJ said nervously as she fidgeted with her holster.
"I'm sorry," Emily apologized. JJ looked at her once, then stared down at the floor, worried with what her friend would say. "I'm talking tomorrow morning to some guy who knew Hankel from Narcotics Anonymous, why don't you come with me? Get out of the house?"
JJ nodded weakly, "Yeah."
Emily still looked suspicious, "Ok, great." She turned to leave.
"Emily," JJ stopped her, "How come none of this gets to you?"
She looked confused, "What do you mean?"
Hotch came up behind Prentiss as JJ continued, "You came off a desk job, now suddenly, you're in the field surrounded by mutilated bodies…you don't even flinch."
"She's right, you've never blinked," Hotch added.
Emily looked from Hotch back to JJ several times, "I guess…maybe…I just…compartmentalize better than most people."
They didn't have a chance to answer her before they heard Morgan yelling from outside. The three of them ran to where his voice was coming from, which was the side of the house near a storm door leading down to the basement. It had been covered with hay, which was why no one had noticed it before.
JJ watched as Morgan and Hotch walked down into the cement chamber. They both resurfaced moments later with disgusted looks on their faces. "We think his father is down there," Hotch said.
JJ was confused as to why they were leaving this door wide open with a suspect's father on the loose until she peeked around Hotch to see blocks upon blocks of thick ice leading down the stairs. She felt like she was going to be sick again, so she turned to go back into the house. She was about to brush past Penelope, who had come away from the computers to see what the commotion was, but Garcia reached out for her, "Jayje? You ok?"
She tried to turn out of Garcia's grasp before she saw the tears welled up in her eyes, but she was too slow. "Jay, honey, what's wrong?"
Shaking her head, she moved to go upstairs. Surprisingly, Garcia let her, but then JJ realized she was following her up the stairs. Walking to the room she had slept the night before, JJ sat down on the couch and put her head in her hands, trying to maintain her composure.
Garcia sat down beside her with her arm around her, "JJ, come on, talk to me."
JJ leaned into the hug, "I'm just scared…for Reid. God, where is he?"
Hugging her closer, Garcia tried to calm soothe her worries, "We'll find him, Jay. No worries. We're the best of the best, you know."
She turned to look at the curly-haired blonde sitting next to her, "The best of the best? Do the best of the best split up in the middle of the night with a crazy unsub? Do they? Do they go into a dark barn, unprotected, with no cover, and try to clear it? Do they, Garcia? Because I don't think they do."
Garcia's eyes widened as she figured out what was going on, "Oh, honey, this is in no way your fault. All of this rests on Tobias Hankel's shoulders. You couldn't have done anything."
JJ scoffed, "I could've, if I had been there! He wanted to split up, but he wasn't thinking straight. I should've argued with him! I should've had his back!" The tears were sliding down her face now, "He's like my brother, Pen, and I let down…"
Rubbing her shoulder's Penelope continued her reassuring words, "Hotch told me you said that it was Reid's idea to split up. We both know that boy and you couldn't have said anything to make him think that he was in the wrong. Who knows? If you were with him, Tobias might have taken both of you!"
JJ sniffed, "If that happened, at least he wouldn't be alone right now."
Garcia sighed, "We'll find him. Don't worry. Get some rest right now, OK? You'll need to be fresh and ready to do work tomorrow. Try to relax, please." She stood and picked up the blanket that JJ had thrown earlier this morning, "I'll be back up in a while, OK? I think I can work a couple more hours still, since I slept on the plane over." Garcia draped the blanket around JJ's shoulders, "I love you, my little blossom."
JJ had to crack a smile at that, "Love you too, Pen." After Garcia left, JJ sprawled out on the sofa. All these nights with no sleep were catching up with her because she was completely exhausted. They would find Reid. They had to. She let that thought be the last thing she heard before drifting off to sleep.
JJ was curled up in a ball on the end of the sofa when she finally heard Garcia come in the room. It must have been about 3 in the morning, JJ guessed. Penelope heard JJ move and said, "Just me Jay, go back to sleep." Great. Word must have gotten around about her over-reactions.
"Mmhmm," JJ mumbled as she adjusted herself on the couch. She felt something on the other end and moved her blanket so she could see. Emily sat curled up on the opposite end, hugging a blanket and fast asleep. JJ hadn't even heard her come in. She smiled. Hotch probably told everyone to get some rest tonight and start fresh in the morning. JJ was glad for the company because it made her feel less vulnerable. To what, she couldn't say but she was relaxed for the first time all week.
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