Author: Ren Kayashima
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I really hate that I have to do this. I do not own Criminal Minds. The title and its characters belong to CBS and its original creator.
Shout Out: This chapter's shout outs go to mangofishy Thank you for your review.
0o0o0o0
Chapter Six:
"What do you mean you can't go?" Neil asked.
Brooke came out of her kitchen and set a large salad bowl on the dining room table and looked at her brothers. They had decided that weekly they would have dinner together. Neil sat at the end of the table while her older brothers had taken the sides. Brandon sat by himself. Brooke took her seat next to him.
"I told you, I have to be at the school for registration. I also have to get my syllabus finalized."
"Oh come on, this was the first time the five of us were going on a trip together," Blair said.
"I'm sorry," Brooke said. "But I really don't want to be fired before I even start."
"So you can't come," Brian smiled. "That's okay, we'll take pictures for you."
"Thanks, I really wish I could go with," Brooke said serving herself some mash potatoes and steak. "It's been a long time since I've gone camping."
"Next time," Brandon said as he cut into his meat. "We'll also go earlier in the year so registration doesn't get in the way."
Brooke nodded. "Eat up you guys. I don't want left overs."
"Where's Dexter?" Brian asked.
"He's with Agent Hotchner, they're talking with a serial killer. Hopefully this one doesn't try to kill them."
"hey, do you think he can give Agent Prentiss's phone number to Brandon?" Blair asked.
Brandon began to choke on his food from shock while the rest of the siblings began to laugh.
"Maybe Brandon should as her himself," Brooke stated. "I'm not some sort of middle man."
0o0o0o0
Brooke was sitting in her favorite reading chair quietly scanning the pages of old English prose. Classical music flowed from the speakers of her surround sound system providing simple background noise.
Her iPhone began to ring on the arm and Brooke attention was broken. She looked at the phone to see a picture of mismatched socks. She picked it up and answered it with a small smile. "Speak."
"Hello?" Reid's voice came through the phone.
"Hey, how's the serial rapist case coming?"
"We got the guy. We're about to get dinner, but when we get back to Virginia, it's going to be four in the morning."
"Sounds ugly and unpleasant."
"So what did you do today?" Reid asked.
"I went to the book store. Some new books came out that I needed to get."
"What did you do with Neil?"
"He's off with the older brothers camping."
"That's this week?"
"You're a bad listener," Brooke smiled. "Remember I was going to go as well, but I had to stay to sort out some stuff with the University."
"It's the yearly trip you always go on with your brothers right?" Reid asked. "Last year it was Miami."
"Yeah, camping was decided last year. We always plan a year ahead."
"Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?"
"Only if your buying," Brooke stated as she stood up and slipped a bookmark into the thin pages of her book. She looked over at a wall clock in the office and sighed. "I'm going to get ready for bed. Call me at eleven okay."
"Okay."
Brooke hung up and headed downstairs.
0o0o0o0
Brooke stood in her new office as a feeling of accomplishment overcame her. One of the walls was dedicated to her degrees. Surrounding the framed accomplishments were photos of close family and friends. Her favorite was of a younger David Rossi holding a two-year-old Brooke awkwardly. Another was a photo of Brooke and Spencer after he had defended his dissertation to a committee of scholars. A similar photo hung next to it for when Brooke defended hers. In the background you could barely pick out her godfather talking to her aunt.
She walked over to her desl and sat down. She looked around and smiled. The office had bookshelves filled with scientific journals and textbooks. Next to them shelves was a table that sat four people.
She picked up the two transcripts that sat in front of her. "Why do I need a teaching assistant," she asked herself.
She had to pick one of two equally qualified students. Both of them a year younger than herself.
"I'll ask Uncle Dave and Spencer."
She turned to look at her computer. She scanned her typed up syllabus and made corrections as she read through. She began typing up a simple closing when ther was a knock on her door.
Brooke looked up and smiled, "Just the two I needed to talk to. I need a little help picking a TA, both are well qualified-"
"Brooklyn, this isn't a social visit."Rossi stated.
Brooke looked at the two and found serious looks on their face. She looked at the papers on her desk. "I'm sorry," she said. "What was it that you needed."
"We don't need anything either," Rossi said.
Brooke looked to her friend scanning his face for any hint of what they were doing in her office. "Spencer, what's going on?"
"Your brothers are missing," Reid answered.
"No they aren't. They're camping in the woods. I told you guys this already."
"A forest ranger found their campsite empty. There were signs of a struggle."
Brooke shook her head, "That's impossible. Brandon, Blair, and Brian have all had combat training. They're special forces."
"We think they were taken by a group," Reid said.
"And I'm telling you that my brothers wouldn't let that happen," Brooke stated. "Spencer, you're talking about three ex- military men and a fifteen-year-old who has a black belt in Tai Kwon Do. They know how to protect themselves"
Rossi looked at her. He knew she wouldn't easily believe that somebody was capable of overpowering all four of her brothers. In fact, he hadn't believed it at first. "I called your dad. Hotch called your mom. They're on their way to D.C," he said.
Brooke looked at him as it sunk in. "The BAU is in charge?" she asked.
"We were given the lead because Neil is fifteen and your older brothers aren't easy to take down," Rossi explained.
0o0o0o0
Morgan, Prentiss, and Garcia looked up at Rossi's office. Brooke had locked herself inside the moment she arrived at the academy. Rossi had even given up trying to get inside and was now in Hotch's office talking with him. It had been three hours since they had arrived.
The team didn't know much. Garcia was running names and cross referencing, but that took time and her searches had yet to yield anything of value.
"Is Dr. Taylor okay?" Prentiss asked.
"I heard Hotch and Rossi talking earlier. She's pretty much stopped talking, like she's catatonic." Morgan answered.
Reid dropped his pen and looked at his teammates. He couldn't even make a geographic profile and it bothered him. No data meant no new information.
"Who takes four people?" Prentiss asked.
Brooke suddenly came out of the office and walked over to Reids desk quickly. "You have pictures of the camp site right?"
Reid looked at her in shock. This was a complete turn around for her. After a minute he pulled a stack of photos from a folder and handed them to her. She started to flip through them as she headed up to the conference room. She stopped as she walked up the stairs and looked at the group.
"Are you coming?" she asked.
Reid stood up and he followed the rest of the team to the conference room. Brooke pulled over a couple of white boards and grabbed magnets. She started posting the photos on the boards and looked at them. She pulled a white board marker from her bag.
"What are you doing?" Ried asked.
"Thinking."
"You carry white board markers in your bag?" Prentiss asked.
"I just stuffed it in their while I was at the university. I was working on organizing my syllabus on a white board," Brooke answered.
She looked at the photos and started arranging them in an order that made sense to her. She stood back and looked at them. "They took Brandon out first."
"Why?' Rossi asked while standing by the door. Hotch stood next to him they had seen Brooke rush by and were curious.
"He's the oldest. If they were going to check something out, he would have been the first to leave," she pointed to a photo. "Notice this plate of food pretty much untouched."
The photo was of a table and the plates were in varying degrees of consumption.
"What if Brandon didn't come back?" Hotch asked.
"Brian would be the next to go. He's younger than Blair, but he was aNavy Seal. He would have gone because of his expertise in hand to hand combat," Brooke explained. "Blair and Neil were taken at the campsite."
She pulled off another photo of two sets of prints next to each other but pointing in opposite directions.
"Blair had them stand back to back."
"Never leave your back open to an enemy," Morgan stated.
"Exactly," Brooke said. "Brain probably tried to warn them and that's when they left their food behind and moved to the middle of the camp so they could see in almost a complete circle."
Rossi looked into the bullpen and nodded to someone. "Hurry up Brooke."
Brooke looked at him and automatically understood that they were here. "I think you're looking for two males between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-five. Most likely ex-military special forces, because regular tactics wouldn't work on my brothers," she explained. She looked at her godfather. "Have they started fighting yet?"
Yelling was heard from down in the bullpen. Brooke left the room and leaned against the railing looking into the bullpen. She found three adults in their forties to fifties arguing with each other. The BAU came out and looked at the argument.
"This has got to be your son's fault." A black haired woman stated.
She was looking at a woman in her late fifties with auburn hair and green eyes. "Which one? I have three." She asked snidely.
"Brandon obviously, he has enemies," a man said. He had dark brown hair with shocks of grey and blue eyes.
Brooke gripped the rail and looked at the three. "Mom, dad, Callie," she called, but her words didn't reach them.
"So do Brian and Blair, I don't see you blaiming them," the auburn woman said.
Brooke looked around and spotted an older woman in her sixties standing a couple feet away from the arguing parents. She looked mad enough to tear the three bickering adults apart. Brooke let out a relieved sigh and quickly walked over to the woman.
The older woman had silver hair and piercing blue eyes. She was of medium height and had a portly build.
"Serena, you came too?" Brooke asked.
"David called me. I had a feeling that this would happen so I came to provide support," the woman said while she glared at her companions.
"Thank you," Brooke said. She leaned over and hugged the woman tightly.
The dark haired woman turned towards Brooke when she realized that someone had entered the war zone. She stomped over as Brooke backed up into a filing cabinet. The woman took one of her long manicured fingernails and dug it into Brooke's left shoulder.
"What happened?" the woman asked darkly.
"Callie, that hurts," Brooke grunted clamly.
Morgan tried to help her only to be brushed off by Brooke. He backed off and looked at the two women.
"Where is my son?"
Serena looked at Callie. "She doesn't know Callie."
"Stay out of this," Callie barked.
"Get your hands off my daughter," the auburn woman yelled.
"Mom, I can handle this," Brooke said. "Callie, kindly remove your finger from my shoulder."
"I'll remove my finger when you explain yourself little girl," Callie practically groweled.
"What do I need to explain? How I let your son go off with his brother and my oldest brother on a camping trip without me? It was a camping trip Callie, just a simple trip," Brooke stated. "Call it male bonding or something, the point is I didn't know this was going to happen. Now please remove your finger from my shoulder, it hurts."
"You should have gone with," Callie said digging her nail in farther.
"I'm sorry, okay. I should have gone with, but I had to do something for my job. An actuall job Callie, one that pays me good money and one that required me to stay in the D.C area," Brooke explained. "Now get your finger out of my shoulder!" she yelled pushing the woman away.
Callie looked at the younger woman in shock. Brooke looked at the ground as she rubbed her shoulder.
"I was going to go. However I don't see how that would have helped the situation," Brooke said, "Then all of us would be missing."
The man looked at her and Serena. "How can you two be calm about this?" he asked.
"You think I'm calm?" Brooke asked. "I'm anything but calm. Right now I would love to be calm, but I not. Calm means that everything's okay and it's not."
Rossi walked over and looked at the parents. "Nathan, Callie, Bridget, your sons were taken for a reason. In order to find them we have to figure out why they were taken," he explained. "That can't happen if you guys are blaiming each other."
Serena walked over to her great neice and place a comforting hand on her right shoulder. "Dave, I'm going to borrow your office for a moment," she said as she began leading the younger woman towards the office.
Brooke looked back at her parents. "Please stop fighting. It's been eighteen years, why can't you just get over it?"
Rossi looked at the parents who were looking away in shame. "She's right. At least for right now work together to help find out who took your sons. Afterwards you can go back to hating each other."
"What do you know?" Nathan asked.
"Brooke told us a basic order of events. Your sons were probably taken by someone they know," Hotch answered.
0o0o0o0
Serena had Brooke sit on top of Rossi's desk. She pulled back the neck of her shirt and examined the forming bruise. "It's going to be a bad bruise," she said.
"I figured as much," Brooke winced as her aunt pushed around the injury.
"Everything's going to be okay. They'll find them. Why don't you go home."
Brooke looked at the artwork on Rossi's walls. "Why?"
"Because I said so," Serena said smiling lightly.
Brooke laughed a bit. "You mean, because this is all chaos and you shouldn't be around such childish behavior."
"Yes."
"But you're going to stay."
"I'm not like you Brooke. I know that you want to scream right now. I know that your brothers are going to be okay so I'm not worried," Serena explained. "Besides someone has to help Dave with this mess out there."
There was a knock on the door. Brooke looked at it. "Come in."
Brooke's mother opened the door.
"What do you want mom?" Brooke asked.
"Are you okay."
"It's just a bruise. I'm fine," Brooke said. "What do you need?"
"Brooklyn, I understand how you feel."
Brooke shook her head. "I don't think you do, but I can't argue right now, so can you just leave."
"I'm not leaving you."
"Get out," Brooke said. Tears began to well up in her eyes.
Her mother placed her hands on her hips. "No."
"I said get out!" Brooke yelled. "Just. Leave. Me. Alone."
0o0o0o0
Everyone looked up at the office when Brooke yelled. Callie rolled her eyes. "Of course Bridget doesn't know how to listen, once again."
Both Bridget and Serena came out of the office. Bridgett turned quickly on Serena.
"Why do you do that?" Bridget yelled.
"Do what?" Serena asked calmly.
"You are not her mother, I am."
Rossi sighed and the rest of the team looked at him. "Here we go again."
"This is normal?" Morgan asked.
Rossi and Reid nodded. Rossi pinched the bridge of his nose and looked up at his friend.
"Maybe if you hadn't pushed Brooke away she would want to talk to you," Serena said. "But you played favorites." She looked down at Callie and Nathan. "All of you did. You all though Brooke was okay because she was smart. Hey she's a genius, she can take care of herself. She was a kid and you still turned your backs on her. Do you have any idea how isolated she felt. You all moved away. I was the only person she had left in the Bay Area. Do you think that was easy.
"So help me god if I'm going to let you three hurt her again like you did. You do realize that when you came here you didn't even ask about her. You automatically started blaiming each other and Callie you even turned on Brooke. This isn't her fault and I'm not going to let you say it is."
Rossi looked at his friend. Finally what needed to be said had been said. "Nathan, why don't you and Callie check into a hotel," he suggested. "It does you no good to stay here. We'll call you when we get something."
Serena walked over to Reid and pulled him to the side and looked at him. "Hello Spencer. Would you mind taking Brooke home? I'd ask Dave, but he knows the kids better than anyone else here. You're Brooke's friend not Brain and Blairs."
Hotch walked over, "That's a good idea Reid. Brooke was supposed to go on the trip so it's safe to assume that whoever took her brothers was probably after her as well."
"Doesn't that mean we should keep her here?" Morgan asked
"Try keeping her here. If she wants to leave she will and she'll leave you on the ground struggling for air." Rossi said.
Reid nodded and headed for the office. He found Brooke sitting on the ground as she leaned against Rossi's desk. She had her eyes closed and she was sniffling, he cheeks tear stained.
"Brooke?"
She opened her eyes and reached up and rubbed her cheeks. "Spencer, hey," she sniffed. "What's up?"
"I'm taking you home," Reid explained. "Are you okay with that?"
"Do I have a choice?" Brooke asked. She held out her hand and Reid took and pulled her up. "Can we get some cream puffs?"
Reid smiled happy to see a part of the normal Brooke. "Only if you only eat one."
"Spencer, you can't eat just one cream puff," Brooke stated seriously.
0o0o0o0
Author's Note: So here is Chapter six. So the next chapter is going to be pretty big. So I hope you look forward to it. I'll be trying to work on it tomorrow so that it will be done and ready to post. It takes mea day to write something out by hand and then another day to get it typed up and ready to post.
I'm also working on chapters for my other story the Death Card so from now on I'm probably going to post on Fridays after this chapter. So you get a week to review. Yay!
