A/N 1: Cowritten with my bashful but brilliant beta, Esperanta, she who keeps my prose typo-free and boasts an imagination more twisted than my own. The only things we created were this creepy little world and a few OCs.
A/N 2: Trying to strike meaningful balance between team screen time and main story. Always grateful for reader input! Your comments are like dark chocolate and the smell of lilacs on a soft spring evening!
Solitary 5.0
Chapter Seven
Darkness to Light
It was just a matter of outwaiting Warden. He dismissed out of hand the notion that his captor would deprive him of all of his so-called "resources" for days at a time. Even less likely was the notion that Warden could tear himself away from this physical location. He had to be somewhere he could see—or at least hear—his prisoner's misery.
And even if Warden did leave him there alone, the Team would find him. Even now—whenever "now" was—they would be collecting trace evidence from his garage. Garcia would be all over the Metro DC traffic cam system in search of an old blue pickup with a gray camper cap. His own security cameras had been engaged, for that matter. The Team should be looking at Warden's bland, geeky face this very moment. Of course, he would still be sporting his bangs and fake sidewhiskers, but it was only a matter of time before Garcia's facial recognition software cracked through that.
He kept his breathing slow and silent. It was possible that Warden's surveillance system was equipped with night vision capability. No, not night vision. He would have to use infrared lighting. That, or thermal imaging. There simply was no ambient light for passive night vision to enhance. And IR and thermal were pricey, really pricey. Warden's little private prison had a low tech, do-it-yourself kind of feel to it. The only window he had into Hotch's confinement right now would be an audio pickup.
Be vewy, vewy quiet, he thought, and he grinned faintly in the dark. He's eavesdwopping on wabbits.
He tried to relax, but a surge of anger overwhelmed him. He was too cold and too stoked to settle down. Although he recognized that his wild swings in mental state were probably due in part to his efforts to stay professional while being bitten in the butt by primal fears, the knowledge really didn't help. It also didn't help that he had no way to gauge the passage of time. He could count off a minute by monitoring his pulse rate, but that was the extent of it.
He wondered whether Warden's threat to leave him alone for days had been an idle one. He certainly hoped so. It had to be, didn't it? Regardless, he wouldn't sleep. Eventually that door would open. He intended to be ready for Warden, ready to spring, ready to fight for his freedom. His Team would come, yes, but he'd do his own part.
He stood up, the cold, wet floor stinging the soles of his feet, and made a slow circuit of his cell, searching it blindly with stiff fingers. Suck it up, Hotch; they aren't broken. There was that weird window-like square, maybe fifteen by fifteen, with a narrow rod running up and down its center. Aaron explored its interior. He thought possibly the back of it moved, but he wasn't able to shift it himself. The rod was thin, not much wider in diameter than a finger, but solid.
The door had no interior handles, and he couldn't even get his nails under the edges. Even if it were unlocked he wasn't yet sure how he could open it.
How did Warden open it? Why wasn't I watching him?
And the fucking signs, those preposterous confessions that Warden wanted him to read. He had a few words of the text memorized, and he hated them more with every passing minute, even though he knew they were a clue, a tool, an insight into the UNSUB's fantasy world.
It wounded his pride. He was a good lawyer, damn it, and he had been a fine prosecutor, an upstanding prosecutor. You didn't surge as far, as fast as Aaron Hotchner had soared without being both damn good and damn careful. He'd worked hard, prepped harder, and played by the rules.
Leave it, leave it. Come on, now, don't let it get to you!
He sighed and climbed back onto his bunk, where he rubbed his feet with aching fingers and wondered how long it had been. Maybe an hour, maybe two, he decided.
"Warden?" he said, keeping his voice low, calm. He listened for the space of several slow, even breaths for anything, any indication that he was being monitored.
He has to be monitoring me! OK, time to try something. I know this kind of offender. He wants validation. If a bit of acting will get me food and water, then it's worth it. Then I can keep working on him.
"You've made your point," he announced to the empty cell, hoping he wasn't just wasting his breath. Continuing, he pulled out all the stops as a profiler, went into his spiel, acknowledged that Warden was in charge, calling the shots and writing the ending to this story. He complimented the guy's intelligence, his preparation, and his sense of fair play, then did all he could to humanize himself, talking about his life, his son, about Haley, about his own experiences with injustice.
Later—a long time later—as he huddled on the cot, still trying to warm his arms and feet by rubbing them briskly, he tried yet another tack. Warden wanted begging? Fine, he'd give him begging. "I understand," he told what he fervently hoped was Warden, listening in. "Please, I was wrong. I'm prepared to read the statements. Please give me another chance."
A long time after that—his sense of time was completely hosed, but he could feel the bristles on his jaw, so it had been at least twenty-four hours since he last shaved, so, 6:30 Saturday morning, more or less—he reviewed all that he knew about the physiological changes, actual alterations in brain chemistry that could occur in captives in solitary confinement. Sometimes they were irreversible.
Over all else was facing up to the fact that he had far more buttons than he'd realized involving enclosed spaces and darkness and being far underground—and that door, almost flush against the wall. He was cold and thirsty and exhausted but he didn't dare drink water from the sink and he certainly didn't dare doze off. When Warden returned, he had to be ready for him. His best chance was to launch himself at the little prick, Enforcer or not, the minute he entered the cell.
Doing math in his head was a good way to distract himself and stay awake. Although it was hard to visualize the calculations sometimes, it was a valuable mental exercise. So he concentrated on what little he'd learned so far from Warden about his situation. The cell was roughly eight by eight feet, or 64 square feet, and he was supposedly 74 feet underground. Those two numbers multiplied together equaled...equaled—he was tired and he was getting confused easily and it had been years since he had done anything arithmetical without a freaking calculator—4440 plus 296. He moved a finger in the darkness to represent the carried one in the hundreds place: 4736.
So: 4,736 cubic feet of soil and rock, probably mostly rock, hanging directly over his head.
If each cubic foot weighed 100 pounds, then, oh, crap: 236-point-something tons of dirt and rock that could come crashing down on him with some random shift of the earth's crust.
Not sure I needed to know that.
"OK, Warden," he said, no longer even trying to mask his desperation. "I give up, just listen: Warden, I wish to acknowledge my part in your wrongful incarceration. I betrayed my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States—I, I'm sorry, Warden, but I don't remember the rest of it…."
In a way he was relieved that he had forgotten the paragraphs. To speak those words was to admit to a lie.
But I don't know how long I can take this...
~ o ~
The man who earlier in his life had been known as Norton W. Charpentier rolled upright and sat on the edge of the bed. Midday sun and fragrant spring aromas poured in through the two south-facing windows of the modest room over the stables. So did the smell of fresh-brewed coffee wafting down from the main house. He might have dismissed the previous day as a dream, except for some minor discomfort in muscles rarely used so vigorously for anything more complicated than loading a Civil War cannon in a reenactment.
I did it, he reminded himself with a sense of satisfaction. I have him.
As he sat there, popping his blood pressure meds with a bottle of V-8 Fusion, he reviewed the high—and, OK, the low—points of the previous day's abduction. He wondered how Prisoner was managing his time alone in the cold and dark. How was he managing the utter isolation? Was he praying? Weeping? Was he talking to the visions that solitude and sensory deprivation inflicted on the vulnerable psyche?
Norton Charpentier knew the ways of solitary from personal experience. Because of a bureaucratic snafu, there'd been no room at the medium-security prison he'd been assigned to, so he'd ended up in maximum-security instead. Oh, it was just to be for a few days, yeah, right. Due to the interminable bungling, it'd turned into three months instead. And he'd spent five days in a cell with a certified psycho, a huge brute of a man named Damien who claimed the Lord had told him to strangle his wife with his bare hands—and the two kids, well, they weren't his, but bastards from his wife's lovers—so he'd disposed of them the same way.
The man's body odor had been so foul it had literally made Norton sick. After being unable to eat for two days straight, he'd dared to offer the man his deodorant, and had nearly paid for it with his life. Damien had slammed him up against the bars, staring at him as though he was some annoying insect, then hissed into his ear, "One more word outta you, little fucker, and you're dead."He could still remember the burning shame he'd felt afterward when he realized he'd literally crapped his pants in terror.
The guards' answer to his complaint had been a transfer to solitary—not for his attacker, but for him. At first it'd seemed like paradise, but then the utter lack of human contact had begun to take its toll. After he'd made numerous attempts to communicate with the guards, they'd finally responded by turning off the lights in his cell.
Before long he'd found himself screaming, praying, babbling to the forms that appeared in red on the periphery of his vision. He'd whacked his head against the wall a few times, too, thrown himself against the concrete block in fury and desperation. It hadn't killed him back then, and it was unlikely to kill Prisoner now.
He shook his head, mentally freeing himself from further consideration of his time in hell or the faithless lawyer who'd put him there. He could not afford to think about the lawyer. The surest way to give away that you had a secret was to think about it. People could read it on your face; he was sure of it. He turned his thoughts to more prosaic things: the weather, the media, the new horse in the stables below.
He snagged some fresh underwear from the bedside table and a pair of jeans and a pullover from the dresser. He studied himself in the mirror, ran a hand through his hair to tame it, and set off down the rickety wooden stairs and along the narrow gravel path to the Hawthornes' place, the source of coffee and—he sniffed delicately—huevos rancheros.
Bren Hawthorne looked up from the center island in her kitchen, a big woman, a substantial woman with flyaway gray hair—all deep wrinkles, deep tan, and broad smiles. All year round she lived in jeans and flannel shirts, except for those occasions that called for crinolines and parasols. "Sarge!" she boomed as she shut off the food processor. "Didn't hear you come in last night! When I woke up and saw your car, I said to Teddy, I said, 'My goodness, Ted, isn't he becoming just the featherfoot? Maybe he should change out and be a scout!'"
Norton—the man the Hawthornes called Sarge—gave her a quick peck on her leathery cheek. "I love artillery," he told her. "Nobody separates me from my trusty 'fifty-seven. My God, is that chorizo from Mama Luz's place? I've died and gone to paradise." He helped himself to a corn muffin and a cup of coffee. "Who's the new gelding?"
"Name is Dickens," Ted Hawthorne told him from his old recliner in the corner of the kitchen. Ted was losing his hearing, so he always sat right beside the aging sound system. Today he was listening to something operatic. "Bought him from the same folks you got your Burley from. Whitmans? Whitfords? Something like that. Up on the ridge, near the Bauman place. Sweet-tempered boy."
"Speaking of Burley, how was your middle of the night ride?" Bren asked him.
He waved a vague hand. "What can I say? There's no tranquilizer like a good horse and a wooded path. You folks keep me sane. You know that, don't you?"
"Welllll," Ted drawled from his recliner, "we might say the same. Welcome breath of fresh air and intellectual stimulation when you show up, as well as the kind of gossip that reminds us of why we fled from academia in the first place."
Norton nodded toward the source of the music. "Luisa Miller?" he hazarded.
Ted Hawthorne shook his shaggy gray head. "Boccanegra," he said.
Of course. The divine duet, father and daughter discovering each other, Figlia, a tal nome io palpito. For an instant the former Norton Charpentier literally staggered as if punched in the heart. He deliberately turned his attention away from the bliss portrayed in Verdi's music. No. Don't think about precious little daughters all grown up and reunited with their daddies.
But don't think about Prisoner, either.
Venus was transiting his Ascendant, and Moon would be there soon. He would need their heat and their confidence.
Brunch. A quick run into town for building supplies and for the dance recital of the daughter of one of their local acquaintances. This would be a good day. It would keep his mind off the man in the dark. "Can I help with anything?" he asked Bren. "I can shred the cheese, or if you're thinking of making some of that Mexican cocoa..."
~ o ~
"One more time," Morgan said early on Saturday afternoon, with a sigh. He was exhausted—they all were. Nobody had slept a wink. If Aaron Hotchner'd been there, he probably would've ordered them to go home and let the Staties and the local FBI offices handle it for a few hours; to get some sleep and take a fresh look at it in the morning. But he wasn't there. He was somewhere else, and in danger, and it was up to them to bring him home. "Do we have anything new on the truck?"
Garcia touched her screen listlessly. "Lots of blue F-150 trucks, some with camper caps, some without, but none of them is our guy. It's possible he's deliberately avoiding roads that have traffic cams. On the plus side, that slows him down, wherever he's headed."
"Presuming he hasn't already gone to ground," Reid added. There was way too much energy in his voice.
Morgan wished that Reid didn't always sound so excited when he pointed something out. He knew that the kid—well, not much of a kid anymore—was just wired to lunge toward accurate data, but in that moment, it sounded way too enthusiastic for Morgan's weary ears.
The walls of the conference room were festooned with images of the furry-faced man and his battered old truck. Garcia abruptly sucked in her breath and gave a little fist-pump. "Yes! My facial analysis program's finally finished."
"All right, Baby Girl!" Morgan said, fired up again. "Let's see this bastard without all the fur."
It was admittedly a computer-generated image, blurry and cartoonish, and there was no way they could know if the man really did have facial hair, but unless the sidewhiskers were intended to camouflage an enormous scar or a birthmark, at least it gave them a better idea of what he actually looked like.
"Get that composite out to all law-enforcement agencies up and down the Eastern Seaboard," Derek told her. "And let's see that the press gets it too. Somebody out there's bound to have seen this guy."
"Whoa," said Rossi, his hands raised in protest. "Not the public. Not yet."
"We don't want to scare Furface into hurting Hotch if he—if he hasn't yet," Prentiss said.
Rossi grimaced. "I'm thinking more about what happens when we ask the public at large for help when we have this little information to go on. I don't know about you, but I'd rather we use our resources to sort through solid facts, not cranks and attention-seekers."
"Yeah, you're right," Morgan conceded. "Just the LEOs for now, Garcia."
Rossi glared at the image of the furless face. "What do you want with Aaron?" he asked it, then he turned toward his teammates. "If the UNSUB wanted to, he could have killed Aaron right there in the garage. Instead he went to a lot of trouble to get him into his truck. Even if his intention was to kill Aaron somewhere else, somewhere that's more significant, there was engagement. There was conversation. That's a lot of effort just to off somebody. So I say, alive. That leads us to, alive for what?"
Emily Prentiss consulted her own notes. "For what and By whom tend to interrelate," she said as she rubbed her right temple with a frustrated thumb. "But if the goal was to take him alive to some other location, then the motives we're looking at include interrogation, retaliation, sexual gratification, and ransom. There's no way this guy didn't know that Hotch is FBI. It was right there on his hat even before the UNSUB went through his pockets and checked his ID." She looked around the table. "We need to take a hard look at all four of those motives."
There was a light tapping and they all turned. Erin Strauss stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her sweater set, her fingers toying fretfully with her pendant necklace. "Have you reached any useful conclusions yet?" she asked.
Morgan and Rossi exchanged glances. "No, ma'am," Morgan replied. "We're still looking for the truck."
Strauss looked at them one by one. "You need to go home," she said. "All of you. You've been here almost twenty-four hours. Go home, get some rest, and come back tomorrow refreshed and ready to go. There's nothing you can do here right now that the other team and the other tech staff can't accomplish in your absence. If anything—anything at all—comes up that's new, I promise we'll call everyone."
All six team members chorused, "But—"
"No," Strauss replied. "Go home. You know if Agent Hotchner were here, he'd be telling you the same thing. Go. Shoo!"
