A/N: So, it's pretty short, but you all deserved an update. I promise to update again soon. As I always say, I DON'T OWN THE RIGHTS TO CRIMINAL MINDS. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTFUL OWNERS. JUST A BORED AUTHOR USING THE CHARACTERS FOR PURE LOVE OF THE SHOW. Please read and review. Enjoy!
Dark. It's dark. That's the first thing that Emily Prentiss saw when she opened her eyes sometime later that morning...or evening...she wasn't really sure what time it was. Slowly, the brunette's head became less foggy and she took in her surroundings. She...she was in a dark room. It was big. Bigger than her living room. The room...it was cold and it smelled really bad. Like blood, and dirt, and rotting flesh. The smell made her stomach churn. It reminded her of somewhere she had been recently...someone's basement, she thought.
God. What had this person given her? She felt weak and helpless, and Emily didn't like that feeling. She attempted to move her right arm, but sighed exasperatedly when she found it to be chained to the floor. The brunette, her head still foggy, pulled at the chains that were locked tightly around her wrists and ankles for what seemed like forever; she eventually gave up when she felt the chains rub against raw, bleeding flesh. The pain seared through her wrists and ankles and up her arms and legs, and mixed with the drugs still in her system, Emily's world once again faded to black, her head leaning against, the cold, stone wall.
"J.J? Why are you calling me at...two in the morning?" SSA Aaron Hotchner asked groggily, pausing to check the time on his cellphone. He immediately got out of the hotel bed and began to get dressed, preparing to go to the police station or wherever they needed him.
"I'm sorry I called you...I just didn't know who else to call. I know I'm probably ruining the case here, but I just didn't know what to do." J.J rambled on the other end.
"J.J...J.J. Calm down. What's wrong?" Hotch asked, attempting to calm the hysteric woman down.
"It's Emily. Hotch...I fell asleep and when I woke up...she was gone. I've looked everywhere and she doesn't have her phone and I...I think Will has her. Or Robert. I don't know. Just please, we have to find her. Either way they'll kill her!" J.J cried, her voice teetering on the edge of hysterics.
"Okay, J.J. Calm down. I need you to get in the car and drive to the police station. I'll meet you there. Are you okay to drive?" Hotch asked, already striding towards Rossi and Reid's hotel rooms that were across the hall. Holding the phone between his ear and shoulder, he knocked on both doors. "Reid. Rossi. We need to go. Now. It's Prentiss." Hotch told the two men. Much scuffling was heard from behind the doors as J.J answered.
"Yeah...I'll be fine. Please, just hurry Hotch. If anything happens to her...I'll never forgive myself." J.J cried, hanging up the phone and running to the car parked in the driveway, throwing her purse on the passenger seat and backing out of the driveway, driving as quickly as she could to the police station.
Back at the hotel, Reid opened his door just as Hotch put his phone in his pocket. As soon as Hotch had mentioned Emily, Reid scrambled to get dressed. He wasn't about to let Emily get hurt again like she did with Doyle. He had just gotten Emily back. He wasn't going to let her die.
Rossi's door flew open shortly after, the older man stepping out and almost colliding with Hotch. He too had flown out of bed when he heard Emily's name. The woman was like a daughter to him, and it made him sick to think that something had happened to her.
"J.J just called. She said Emily's gone, and she doesn't have her phone. She thinks Robert or Will may have taken her. We need to get down to the station." Hotch explained as the men walked down the hall towards the elevator. As they stepped into the elevator, all 3 of the men sent up a silent prayer that they would find Emily in time.
The next time Emily woke up, she felt much colder than before. Looking down, she saw someone had removed her of her clothes, leaving her in nothing but her bra and underwear. She could tell she was still in that cold, dark, putrid smelling basement, but she was…colder now. Her head throbbed from the drugs that had been given to her, and her body ached from the hard floor she lay on. Emily's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and she almost screamed out when she realized where she was. She was in Robert Hastings' basement. And she wasn't alone.
Jennifer Jareau whipped into the Raleigh Police Department parking lot, pulling into a spot and throwing the car in park. She ran into the building and collided with Morgan, who was standing just inside the front door, waiting for the blonde.
J.J staggered back and held her head in her hand, having hit it extremely hard off of Morgan's shoulder.
"Whoa there sunshine. Hotch called Garcia and I. How you holding up?" he asked the woman, pulling her into a hug as tears began to fall down her cheeks.
"Oh Derek. We have to find her. I can't lose her…I can't." she cried into the tall man's chest. Morgan nodded sadly, pulling her away from him and inspecting her head. A large red spot was forming on her forehead, right where it had collided with his shoulder.
"I know Jayje. And we will. Right after we get some ice for that head of yours." Morgan reassured the woman, wrapping an arm around the blonde FBI agent and leading her to the small kitchen that sat in the back of the station. He placed several ice cubes inside a Ziploc bag he found and passed to the upset woman, who gratefully held it to her throbbing head.
Together, the two agents walked into the conference room that the team had taken over, and were greeted with the grim faces of four other agents. Emily was like a sister (or daughter, in Rossi's case) to the team, and they refused to let her die because of them.
"Oh J.J" Garcia exclaimed as the other blonde walked into the room, rushing over and pulling her into a tight hug. "What happened to your head?"she asked as she pulled away and noticed the ice pack being held to J.J's forehead.
"Morgan's shoulder happened." J.J said bitterly. Garcia shot Morgan a glare that made the tall man back away from his friend. He wasn't about to mess with Penelope Garcia at two in the morning with their best friend in the presence of a possible serial killer. J.J noticed this and held up a hand, calming down the colourful woman. "No, it was completely my fault. Wasn't looking where I was going." She explained as Morgan let out a sigh.
"Okay. Now that we're all here, we need to map out the possibilities. J.J, you said Robert Hastings is a possibility, correct?" Hotch asked, gaining the attention of his team. The blonde woman nodded her head.
"And William LaMontagne." She said quietly, causing Garcia to gasp. She hadn't been told about that possibility.
"Oh my goodness, J.J" Garcia said sadly. J.J felt like bursting into tears on the spot. Her husband could have possibly taken her best friend, and god knows what he would do to her. Will hated Emily, and for what? Because he thought she liked her more than him? Well, now she certainly liked Emily better than her fucker of a husband. But she couldn't let anymore tears fall. She had to be strong. For herself. For the team. And especially for Emily. So the former media liaison steeled her nerves, like she often did when in front of the media, and ignored Garcia's comment.
"Look, guys I appreciate the sympathy, but right now all I care about is finding Emily. Reid, how long would you say we have...before...before she's dead? If Robert took her, I mean." J.J asked, pushing the question out with difficulty.
"Well the other victims died of dehydration, so if he continues to follow his MO, I'd give us anywhere from 48 to 72 hours to find Emily, 72 being extremely high risk. If she were to go that long without water, she would most likely be on the verge of unconsciousness, and experiencing extreme dizzy spells, low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and breathing, not know where she is or how she got there, and possibly even delirious." Reid explained, effectively stunning the team into a brief moment of silence.
"Well I'm not about to let that happen. We need to treat this like any other abduction case. Garcia, I need you to get online. Dig up everything you can on William LaMontagne and Robert Hastings. Any houses in the area, any dirt on their record. I mean anything. Even if it was for stealing a pack of gum when they were seven years old. Morgan and Rossi, I need you two to get inside their heads. Profile them. Reid, I need you to work on a geographical profile. Figure out where our unsub could have taken her. J.J, the media is going to go crazy with this. I know you are no longer our liaison, but would it be too much trouble for you to whip something up for a conference later this morning? No one knows how to handle the media as well as you do." Hotch ordered, breaking the silence. J.J nodded her head.
"And I'm going to call Strauss in D.C. See if she can't pull some strings and get us a search warrant for Robert Hastings' basement. If what Emily said was true, she might be there. Now, let's find Emily before this son of a bitch kills her." Hotch ordered, striding out of the room to go make his calls. The team hurried about after him, all praying to god that they were going to find Emily in time.
Emily Prentiss backed up against the stone wall when she saw who was standing in front of her. It was that bastard, Robert Hastings.
"What do you want with me Robert?" Emily asked, her voice unwavering, even though she was currently chained to the wall of a serial killer's basement. If Robert was going to kill her, and she prayed her team would find her before that, she wasn't going down without a fight. She wasn't going to let him win that easily, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let the bastard kill her just because she was gay.
"Oh, I believe you know exactly what I want, Emily." He said, walking closer to the woman chained to the floor. Emily fought against the arm restraints, but it was no use. All it did was make her raw wrists hurt even more.
"No. No, I don't know what you want."Emily told him, knowing full well what he wanted with her.
"You're a dyke, aren't you?" he asked harshly, bending down in front of Emily and running a slow hand up her bare stomach, stopping just short of her bra. She tried to fight him, but it was no use. She couldn't move from her spot where she was chained to the floor.
"If you're asking if I'm a lesbian, then, the answer is yes. Yes, I am a lesbian. What's it to you?" Emily said calmly, taking slow deep breaths as Robert began to trail his hand from her waist up to her chest. It made her want to vomit, but she held it back. As his hand made it up to collar bone, it shot up and back handed her across the face incredibly hard. The dark haired woman saw stars for a brief moment.
"You won't talk to me that way, you fucking faggot. You're all the same, all of you. And I'm sick of it." Robert yelled at Emily. He punctuated his sentences with a blow to Emily's abdomen, the third and final punch causing Emily to think he may have just broken a rib.
"Wh...what do you have against lesbians?" Emily asked, egging him on. The pain in her ribs caused her to have to take short and shallow breathes.
"You're all disgusting, worthless pieces of trash who have no consideration for anyone else. I've seen you walking around town, holding hands with your beloved Jennifer. You don't care what anyone else feels about the situation, so long as you're happy. You're just disgusting. They all deserved to die. And so do you." Richard threatened, going over to the cabinet in the corner and pulling out a small, kitchen knife. He walked over to where Emily lay and touched the tip of the sharp knife to the skin her pale, untouched stomach. He slowly dragged it across, effectively leaving a thin, crimson line about 4 inches long. He did it again, this time making a smaller line across the skin of her left breast. The cutting went on for what felt to Emily as an eternity. Her head throbbed, her body ached, her face hurt from where she had been slapped, and the cuts stung in the cold, damp basement air.
He stopped when he heard police sirens outside. "God damn it." He thought to himself. They had found him. Quickly, he threw the knife into the dark corner and unchained Emily from the floor.
"Get up, you worthless piece of shit. The cops are here. We need to move." He ordered, kicking Emily in the ribs. She cried out in pain as she shakily stood to her feet. He grabbed hold of her hair and held her head back. Quickly, he held another sweet smelling cloth to her face and the world slowly faded to black once more.
A/N: I know it was short, but I felt bad I hadn't updated in a while. Please review! I start school again tomorrow, so updates may be slow. I hope you liked the chapter. Next chapter I promise will be longer.