A/N: It's me again! I'm here with the next installment so all you have to do is lean back, relax and enjoy.
Hide & Seek
A Criminal Minds Fan Fiction
by Sweda
Her phone rang twenty minutes after they had finished listening to the tape.
Emily, who had had her eyes glued to the photo this whole time, jerked as her ringtone sounded through the constant murmur at the station. She had been lost in her own thoughts about how it had to be a coincidence that the missing boy looked so much like Declan, nobody except the team and a few of her contacts knew about him.
Before answering, she called for Hotch who was still working with Detective Moore outside the conference room.
Upon hearing Emily's voice and seeing her gesture towards her phone, Hotch realised their expected call had come though. He hurried over to the conference room and made it just in time to see Emily press the answer button.
She had put the call on speaker so that everyone could listen in.
"Hello?"
That didn't sound like the voice of their UnSub, it sounded more like the voice of their victim. Eyes met in the room. They had all been expecting the UnSub to call, not his victim.
"Hi, Sweetie," Emily said once the initial shock had subsided.
"The bad man said I should ask you to come an' get me," the boy told her. "I don't like it here. Can you please come an' get me?"
Emily's heart began to ache for him. "I know you don't like it there, Honey. We're going to do our best to find you and then we're gonna bring you home to your daddy. But for us to do that, you're gonna have to help us out a little. Okay?"
"'Kay."
"Good," Emily encouraged the boy they suspected was Danny. "Could you please tell me your name?"
"Danny Gilbert Bentley," the boy said with a hint of proudness from being able to tell Emily his full name.
An approvable nod came from Hotch as Emily manage to establish that it was indeed the boy from the photo they were talking to.
"Well okay then, Danny Gilbert Bentley, I'm going to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer them the best you can. It's okay if you don't know the answer, just think of it like a little quiz," Emily said. "Can you do that for me?"
"I can do that," Danny stated. "But I don't know your name, it's only fair that I get to know yours if you got to know mine."
Emily had a small smile tugging at her lips as she told Danny her name. "My name is Emily Prentiss and I'm a cop. I work with the FBI. Do you know what that means?"
"Mhmm, you make the bad guys go away," Danny summoned up.
"That's right."
"I like your name," the boy let her know. "It's pretty."
All of the Agents smiled at the innocent child on the other end of the line. A child who didn't deserve what life had thrown at him.
"Thank you, Sweetie! I'm going to let you in on a little secret, I like yours too. Though, I think I'm might gonna start calling you Danny-Boy," Emily tried to make the boy feel better during the circumstances by lighting up the mood.
A small giggle filled the room as the boy found her nickname amusing.
"That's funny."
"It is, huh?" Emily smiled. "Well, Danny-Boy, are you ready to answer my questions?"
"Yes, Em'ly," Danny said, failing to pronounce her name correctly. Emily was used to it, small kids often ditched the i in it since it sounded pretty much the same with or without it.
"Okay, so the first question is; Is the bad man that took you with you right now?"
"Nope."
"Good," Emily replied and felt the tension in the room drop a notch.
She tried to decide which questions she should ask Danny in which order. After a few seconds she made up her mind about the next question.
"Are you hurt?"
"The bad man made my cheek bleed and my hand-ankles are hurting."
Emily felt bad for the hurting boy but she still had a smile tugging at the lips from his adorable made-up word for wrists.
"That's not very nice," she said. "Why are your wrists hurting?"
"My what? I don't know that word..."
"Oh, sorry! I meant your hand-ankles, why are your hand-ankles hurting?" Emily said, realising that it would be easier to use the boy's own word instead of trying to explain it.
"They are tied to my chair," Danny told her. "I want to go home Em'ly!"
He sounded like he was of the verge of crying and Emily couldn't help but to feel for the boy.
Hotch had stepped away from the table where her phone lay and he was now talking to Garcia, trying to establish how the trace of the phone call was going.
"I know and I'll make sure you'll be back home soon," Emily assured the boy. "I just need you to answer a few more questions for me."
"You promise?"
Emily had never been a big fan of promises, but now she couldn't help but to promise the boy that she would bring him back to his daddy. No matter what it took, she would make sure that sweet, innocent, little boy would be home safe by the end of the day.
"I promise," Emily vowed and prayed to whatever God that would listen that she would be able to keep her promise.
"'Kay, you can ask me your next question now."
Emily decided to try to get to boy to give her as much information about his surroundings. "What do you see when you look around?"
"I see hay and walls. And it smells bad," Danny added. "It looks like the place where you keep horses."
"That's great, Danny-Boy!" Emily encouraged the boy and turned to Reid who was still struggling with the map.
"He's in a stable or something similar," Emily told Reid and watched as he ran his slim finger over the most recent map, trying to locate a possible building.
"Who are you talkin' to?" Danny questioned.
"I'm talking to my colleague Dr. Reid," Emily answered his question.
"What's a col-aeg-ue?" Danny asked, struggling with the word.
"Colleague," Emily voiced it for him. "It's a person you work with."
"But I thought you were a cop?"
"I am," Emily replied.
"Then how can you work with a Doctor?" Danny asked, confusion evident in his voice.
Emily smiled at the boy's logic. "He is another kind of Doctor, not the one that takes care of you when you've been hurt," she tried to explain.
"Then what kind of Doctor is he?" the questions never stopped popping out of the small one.
"He's very, very smart and knows a lot of things. Maybe you can meet him after we've helped you out of that scary place and then you can ask him for yourself. Does that sound like a plan?"
"Mhmm," the boy eagerly answered and Emily could almost see his head bobbing up and down.
"But I want to meet you too."
"I'm sure we can make that happen," Emily said to the boy, happy that he wanted to meet her. To be honest, she also felt a desire to meet this boy full of questions she had been talking to for a while now.
"Okay, so I have a few more questions. Do you think you can handle a few more?" Emily asked.
"Yeah, your questions are easy."
Emily chuckled lightly and asked him her next question.
The hours went by as they continued the search for the missing boy. JJ and Rossi had returned from interviewing the families and were now sitting in the conference room. Moments after they had returned, Morgan and Hotch had emerged through the door.
After his arrival, Hotch had been briefed about what Emily had gotten from the kid so far and then he had ordered her to stay on the phone with Danny and to keep trying to get as much information as possible of where he might be. In order to do so, without getting disturbed by the rest of the team in their search for the missing boy, Hotch had suggested that Emily should move to an unoccupied interrogation room.
The information Emily had gathered so far wasn't much. Danny had told her that he thought he was in a stable. He hadn't been able to hear anything, no cars, no water, no nothing which told Emily and the other profilers that he was being kept in a remote place, just like the other victims had been. Danny described it as being scary quiet.
The man first approached Danny when he went to fetch a plastic shovel and a bucket so that he could build a sand castle with his friend. The man had handed Danny a bucket and as the boy was about to reach for the shovel in the man's hand, he had found himself getting snatched up and a cloth had been held over his nose and mouth. After that, Danny had told Emily that everything got dark and then when he woke up, the bad man was strapping him to a chair using tape.
Danny had then moved on to telling Emily about how the man had hit him on his cheek and then pressed a knife to it, drawing blood. He then told her how the man had left him alone and said that he would get to talk to someone soon as he placed a phone on the floor next to the chair. He told her how surprise he had gotten when the phone started a call without him touching it.
When Danny told her about this horrible experience, he had been scared and at the verge of crying. Emily had done her best to comfort him and after a few calming words and a promise that she would bring him home to his daddy, the boy had calmed down and moved on to telling her about the weird looking thing placed next to the chair.
After asking him a few questions about the weird looking thing's appearance, Emily had concluded that it was a bomb. Fortunately for them, Danny had been able to read the numbers on the timer connected to the bomb. It gave them a precise deadline to work with.
Minutes passed. Emily could hear the boy was getting restless from sitting in the same position for so long.
"Can we play another game now?" Danny begged.
Emily doubted she would come up with any more questions regarding his location and settled on letting him decide what to do next. When Hotch had told her stay on the phone he had also added that she should do her best in trying to keep the boy on the line, even if it meant not asking questions. Ever since the call had gotten throught to Emily's phone, Garcia had worked on trying to trace the origin of it. She had hit a lot of walls while doing that but as long as the caller was active, she got a step closer to locating it.
"Sure, Buddy. What do you want to play?" Emily asked. She kept the call on the line as she quickly sent a text to Hotch writing down what she had come up with. Also stating that she doubted she would be getting much more out of him.
"I want to sing!" the boy exclaimed. "Do you know how to sing?"
She got a message back saying that she should keep the boy on the line, even if he wouldn't be of much more help.
"Yeah, I do," Emily replied. She didn't think of herself as a very good singer but neither was she tone deaf. One little children's song wouldn't hurt.
"What songs do you know?"
"Well, I know a lot of songs. If you say one you want to sing, I'll tell you if I know it," Emily suggested.
"I want to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," Danny informed her.
"Then Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star it is," Emily agreed.
"Okay, I start then you sing along," Danny decided.
"Okay."
"Twinkle, Twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are," Danny began singing.
"Up above the worlds so high, like a diamond in the sky," Emily sang along in a soft voice as Danny kept going.
The melody kept filling the room and when the song was finished, Danny complimented her singing.
"You sing nice," he said.
"Well, thank you," Emily smiled. "You sing nice too. And better, I didn't know all the words."
In the middle of the song, Emily had tried to remember the rest of the words but had failed miserably. Danny had kept singing and once he had gotten to a part where she knew the lyrics, she had jumped right in.
"It's okay. At first I didn't know them either, but my daddy helped me practice. You just have to practice and then you'll know," Danny coached.
Danny was clearly very smart for a boy his age, Emily concluded. "I'll just have to do that."
The line went quiet for a few seconds before the boy voiced his thoughts once again.
"My friend knows how to sing it in Spanish. Can you sing it in some other language?"
"I can sing it in Spanish too," Emily told him. "And in Arabic, Italian, French and Russian."
Even though she didn't remember the whole song in English, she did remember it in Spanish and French. As for the Italian, Russian and Arabic version, she only remembered the first verse.
"Oh, I want to hear!" the boy spoke loudly in excitement.
"Okay, okay," Emily chuckled. "Which one do you want to hear? I don't know the whole song in Italian, Russian or Arabic but I do know it in French and Spanish."
The boy was silent for a few seconds as he contemplated the question. "I want to hear it in French," he finally decided.
"Okey Dokey," Emily cheered.
On the other end of the line, Danny laughed. "You're funny."
As Emily began singing, she was oblivious to the fact that JJ was standing outside the one-sided mirror, watching her friend interact with the missing boy.
JJ's eyes never left her relaxed friend as Emily sang to the boy in French. For the umpteenth time, JJ found herself thinking that Emily would be a great mother if she ever decided to have children.
The moment was interrupted when Reid flung the door to the room open in a hurry.
"I know where he's at!" he called out and ran back the same way as he had come.
As soon as Reid had figured out where the boy was being held, the team had rushed to the cars and driven off. Emily had refused to hang up on the boy and when he had started asking questions about the noise, Emily had told him that they were coming to get him so that they could bring him home to his daddy.
The ride to the crime scene had been in high speed and fifteen minutes in, Emily had lost contact with the boy much to her despair. Because of the crappy service, the line had died and Emily was left with an unsettling silence on the other end of the line.
Thankfully, it didn't take long before the cars stopped in front of the barn with screaming tires and blaring sirens. Everyone jumped out of the cars, geared up in bulletproof vests, and started to move. Hotch had made them do a weapons check on their way to the scene and now they had all holstered the weapons to their hips, Reid of course had his unique place where he liked to put it.
"I want group D to search the perimeter!" Hotch ordered as soon as the rescue team had assembled at a safe distant from the barn about to explode.
"Last time we were at one of his crime scenes, our UnSub was enjoying the show. If he's here right now, I want him cuffed and brought in," he said, looking around, making sure everybody understood the seriousness of the situation. "And remember, if you find him, don't execute the takedown on your own. This UnSub is very dangerous and I don't want any unnecessary casualties."
Group D, consisting of men and women from the local police station, began teaming up and spreading out to follow his orders. Hotch waved for his own team to follow him.
They moved over to a spot where they wouldn't be in the bomb techs' way, those who were currently creating a barrier between the police force and the barn.
"Prentiss, how long ago did you lose contact with the boy?" Hotch questioned.
"No more than five minutes," Emily answered.
"And what time did he say the timer was on then?"
"Twenty two minutes," she replied quickly.
Hotch nodded at her answer. "You guys, stay here and I'll go talk to the man in charge of the bomb squad," Hotch told them and walked off.
The remaining agents gazed at the barn in which they knew the boy was in.
"I can't believe they let two four-year-olds go to the park all by themselves, even if it was a park close by their house!" JJ commented as she looked at the barn.
"Well, some people are just not meant to be parents," Morgan sighed and ran a frustrated palm over his face. He hated cases involving children.
"I just wish that parents would keep an better eye on their children. If they did, stuff like this wouldn't happen as often as it does," JJ said and rubbed her forehead.
Emily only listened with half an ear to JJ and Morgan's conversation as she watched Hotch walk over to a man standing behind the now built up barrier talking to some other men next to him. From the looks of it, Hotch was about to interrupt a rather serious discussion. Emily had hoped to be able to read Hotch face when he was talking to the man in charge but her hopes were crushed when he stopped with his back to her. Realising she had no chance of doing so with him standing like that, Emily turned her gaze to the barn.
Inside that rectangle of wood and metal was the boy who she had kept a conversation with for the last five hours. The sweet little boy who had happily sung Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with her when she had tried to keep him entertained. The innocent boy full of questions, many of them who would be left unanswered if they didn't save him. The boy who deserves to experience so much more than he has. The boy deserves to explore the world and maybe then a few of his million questions will be answered.
This can't be his last minutes on earth, Emily thought. No, I won't let it be!
Right then and there, Emily decided to do everything in her power to save that sweet, innocent little boy.
After what felt like a small eternity for Emily, Hotch returned to the gathering. His face was looking grim and Emily suspected she wasn't about to like what he had to tell them.
"They're not going inside," Hotch informed as he reached them.
"Why the hell not?!" Emily couldn't believe it. How could they not go inside?
From the looks on the other Agents' faces, Emily wasn't alone with her confusion.
"They don't think they have enough time to first sweep the place, looking for any more bombs, and then move on to the task of defusing the bomb that we know of," Hotch explained.
"How long time do they think it will take? I've defused a bomb in less than three minutes and I don't even have the training for it!" Emily pressed on.
For a few seconds, she flashed back to that specific day.
She was running inside the building and that was when she spotted him. Against a metal fence was Will, sitting with a bomb strapped to his chest. Emily remembered how she had only thought of JJ and Henry. She hadn't been able to get the image of JJ's desperate attempt to stop Will from walking inside the bank to accommodate the robbers' wishes out of her head. That had been when she realised the chance of saving Will's life was more important than getting herself out of the building and to safety. Thankfully, she had managed to defuse the bomb without causing neither hers or Will's death and they had all made it home in one piece to attend his and JJ's wedding.
"I don't know what to say, Emily. They told me there is no way they're going in since there's so little time left until the bomb goes off," Hotch sighed.
"So we're just gonna stand here and wait for him to get blown to pieces?!" Emily ranted off.
"We don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice," Emily muttered as she eyes sought out the barn.
After her argument with Hotch, Emily discreetly backed away form the group. Once she understood that Hotch wasn't about to give in, a plan had started to form in her head.
When she had distanced herself enough for her to be out of their sight, she spurred into action.
The first thing she did was to check the time by using her phone. 3:47 pm it read. According to what Danny had told her before the line died, that left her with twelve minutes before the bomb would explode. Twelve minutes to get inside the barn, free the boy of his restrains, pick him up and run back out.
She could do it, Emily convinced herself. She had to do it.
Danny had told her his arms and legs were tied to the chair with tape which meant that she needed something to cut him free.
Emily scanned the area and spotted one of their black SUVs. Form what she remembered, there was a first aid kit laying in the trunk of each of those cars containing a pair of scissors.
She raced over to the car and jerked open the trunk. Just as she remembered, a small kit of first aid equipment was laying there. She rapidly roamed through it and found the scissors after her hand had collided with various things, things that had probably left some marks.
Scissors in hand, she ran over to the barrier the bomb squad and police had sat up. It was made of fences easy to move. Nobody suspected that any one of the people at the scene would be crazy enough to cross the barrier and therefor they hadn't made it any more complicated than it had to be.
Before making a run for it, she picked up her phone, wrote a short message, pressed send and left her phone by the barrier. She didn't want it to distract her while she was carrying out her plan.
She stepped in front of the barrier and allowed herself to take one last glance back before she began to run.
Her feet pounded the sandy ground and behind her she could hear her actions had been acknowledged.
Upset voices and confused hollering was her background noise as her breathing became heavier. She found herself hoping that the name FBI printed in block letters on her vest would keep them from shooting at her.
She felt the muscles in her legs protesting but she kept going. She had one goal and that was to reach the barn without a bullet going through her.
Emily threw herself against the door using her unharmed shoulder as she reached it and thanked her lucky star as it flew open.
Dust filled the room and she coughed. She only stopped to locate the blond boy tied to the chair and once she had, she sprinted towards him.
"Hey, Buddy," Emily managed to get out between laboured breaths. "You're gonna be okay."
The boy recognised her voice and his faith in her was restored. When the line had died, Danny thought she had hung up on him and that she had left him to whatever was awaiting him. Now, he couldn't help but smile at her as she spoke to him.
"Em'ly!" Danny squealed in delight.
"That's right, Danny-Boy," Emily smiled as she cut the tape off his arms and legs.
"You came!"
"Of course I did. I promised, didn't I?" Emily said.
Seconds later, she had cut through the tape and began reaching out for the boy.
"Time to go!" she stated as she wrapped her arms around his small body.
She gave the timer one last look before running off. Three minutes! Would she be able to get out of the barn and put enough distance between it and them for them to survive? She certainly hoped so.
"You're hair smells nice," Danny informed her in a unsteady voice, snuggling closer, as he bumped up and down in her arms while she ran.
Emily felt bad for not thanking him for the compliment but she reasoned she would make it up to him by getting them out if this mess alive.
She doubted she had ever ran as fast as she did right now. When she had cut the tape off the boy, she had noticed a backdoor hanging ajar. She had then estimated the distance between the chair and the two doors before decided that the backdoor was closer.
Once she reached the door, she turned slightly, hoping she would protect Danny from the impact by doing so. What she didn't think of was that she turned her banged up shoulder towards the door.
When she crashed through it she got hit by a shock of pain but Danny didn't complain about any pain so she took it as a win.
They were now out of the barn and her mission was to put as much distance between it and them. Not caring about her burning muscles, she accelerated her pace.
She had made it about six more yards before she felt herself getting thrown to the ground by a massive force.
A few minutes after Morgan had listened to his parter arguing with their boss, Morgan heard the familiar sound of his phone informing him that he had received a new message.
He looked at the screen and saw it was a message from Emily. Why would she be sending him a message?
A frown was put on his face as he unlocked the phone and read it. 'I'm sorry.' it simply read.
What did she mean by that? What was she sorry for?
Looking up from his phone, he found the others were just as confused as he was.
"Why is Emily telling me she's sorry?" Reid questioned.
"I got the exact same text," JJ informed them.
"We all did," Rossi concluded.
Everyone looked from one profiler to another, trying to come up with an explanation to why Emily would be sending them a message telling them she was sorry.
Screaming and shouting could be heard from the crowd of men and women standing behind the barrier and the thought of what was going on crossed the profilers' minds.
"We got movement on the scene," one of the men radioed in.
The teams heads snapped sideways towards the barn. There they could see a person running towards the barn and could vaguely make out the familiar block letters FBI printed in white on the front of the vest.
"Damn!" Morgan swore as he realised who it was. He made a move to run after her but was stopped by four pair of hands.
As Morgan swore, the puzzle piece fell into place for the others. The apologising message immediately made sense. The running figure was Emily.
"Morgan, don't!" Hotch ordered.
Morgan tried to break free but didn't succeed.
"But she's going to get herself killed!" Morgan screamed in defeat.
"I won't have two Agents running towards a ticking bomb," Hotch said in a firm voice and locked eyes with Morgan.
Reluctant to do so, Morgan stopped struggling. After some time the team let go of him.
"What the hell is she thinking?!" Morgan ran his hands over his head in frustration.
"Declan," Reid mumbled.
Morgan shook his head. "What the heck are you talking about?!" Morgan asked in a frustrated tone.
"I think she sees Declan in Danny and we all know she would do anything to protect that boy," Reid explained.
"But he's not Declan," Morgan argued.
"I know but I don't think it matters. When she saw the image of Danny, he most likely reminded her of Declan and then add the fact that she has been talking to him non-stop for almost five hours and it's not that hard to understand that she has created a bond with him. When Hotch told her the bomb techs wouldn't be going in, she probably decided to take it upon her own to get the boy out."
"She's reached the barn," JJ informed them, having kept an watchful eye on her dark haired friend.
The rest of the team turned to the barn and looked at it with apprehension.
For a few minutes, nothing happened. Then everything happened at once.
The barn lit up in a flash and a penetrating noise erupted. The roof of the barn flew to the sky and the walls caught on fire. Screaming and orders erupted.
The people surrounding them started to move but the team stood rooted. No one had seen Emily leave the barn before it exploded. No one knew if she had made it out alive or if she had been caught up in the explosion and ended up in the hands of Death.
A/N: Wonder what will happen next? Tune in next time to find out ;)
