I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it
Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in.
Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.
Anish Kapoor
Chapter 14
The route to the hotel was hazardous and too overgrown to take the cars right up to the building. A plan had rapidly been sketched out on how to enter the place without risking the lives of Garcia and the young woman who the unsubs already had, if they were both still alive, and the team couldn't consider the idea that Penelope Garcia was gone. Moran's jaw was clenched so tight that everyone else in the car he was riding in could hear his teeth grinding. If Garcia was dead, then Morgan knew he would kill both unsubs, no matter what the consequences. Looking over to Hotch in the drivers seat, his face pale and set, he knew the other agent might as well be reading his mind and was already trying to figure out how to stop him. Morgan hoped Hotch realised there was no way.
They reached the hotel on foot, guns drawn, taking point silently at the spots they'd decided on in the cars. It seemed odd without Reid there, but it had made sense that he stayed with Eve, just in case they showed up there.
Morgan moved through the hotel, silently flanked by Prentiss and Hotch, eyes and ears open. It was quiet, punctuated by the sounds of the forest the half finished hotel had been swallowed up by. Then another sound drifted through the air, soft...the sound of begging, the voice familiar. Garcia! Morgan bit his lip to keep from calling her name, from blowing the whole thing apart, but as he heard his baby girl cry out, he couldn't take any more. Morgan covered the rest of the dark ruined corridor in what felt like a single, angry stride and kicked open the door.
Morgan saw Garcia, strung up and naked. There was still blood on the meat hook she was hanging from, and her arm was still bleeding where the IV had gone in, but her body hung limp, her cries silenced by the ketamine flowing into her system, only her dark eyes awake.
In one corner of the room, Chase Anderson appeared to be pawing the body of the other girl, who was obviously dying, her breath coming in slow rattling breaths, but at least she was still alive, the older man Jones, was looking over a tray of scalpels, like and artist looking over his brushes, a look of almost affection on his face as he chose a surgical blade and raised it, ready to cut into Garcia's pale skin. As Morgan entered the room, roaring his disgust, both men jerked to look at him, the blade tumbling from Jones' hand.
Hotch and Prentiss arrived a few seconds later, amazed by the level of brute force that Morgan had thrown at the door to get through. Morgan levelled his gun at Jones.
"Morgan no!" Hotch called. "You do this, you can't be around for her."
Morgan's firing hand wavered as Prentiss and Hotch moved to detain the unsubs, rendered cowardly by agents with guns and no chance of subduing them.
Morgan moved to Garcia as JJ arrived, calling an ambulance and watching as Morgan cut Garcia down, gathering her to him and desperately looking around for something to wrap her up in, his stomach turning as he saw only a length of blue tarpaulin, there was no way these girls were going to get out alive.
"Ambulances have been called, we're taking them in now. Morgan, Prentiss, stay with them until they arrive?" Hotch's tone brooked no argument, plus there was no way Morgan was going anywhere without Garcia. In fact as he held her, his fingers warming her ice cold skin, he knew he was never going anywhere without her again.
"It's OK Baby Girl, I got you."
N-Not me…" Garcia's voice forced through the drug haze. "Her…Needs you…both…dying…" Morgan looked down at Garcia for a long moment before moving to the other girl, not moving until the EMT's turned up.