Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or the characters. Some "guest stars" are based on or named after people in my life while others are totally made up, as are some places and events.

Heads up: This chapter is a bit sweary.

Chapter 14

"I can smell the gears of your brain grinding, Reid," Rossi watched the genius who was subconsciously staring out the window at the meadow next to the sheriff's office. It was not quite 10:00pm and everyone was miserable. The rest of the team was having a conference call with the Indianapolis field office and Kevin.

"Huh? What?" Reid looked at the room.

"What are you thinking about, Spencer?" Rossi asked slowly.

"The Metro." Reid frowned as he paced back and forth.

"Ah," the older man nodded.

"Nothing makes sense. She's here, she told us as much. The UNSUBS are here. But where are they? Why would Garcia say we rode the Metro together? It's obvious she was telling me something."

"There isn't underground transportation anywhere near here," Rossi added.

"I know." Reid walked back over to the window. Reid pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window and tried not to think of his friend in pain and afraid. Where could one hide in the middle of nowhere, untraceable, he thought. They have technology but no means of powering it. Unless...

Reid looked up at Rossi with a thoughtful look.

"What...?" Rossi asked as he followed Reid to the conference room. The team was wrapping up the call.

"Kevin, hang on!" Reid ignored everyone and walked up to the laptop. "Is it possible to hack a windmill?"

"Excuse me? 'Hack a windmill?'" Kevin was confused.

"Yes. Can you take the energy from a windmill in a wind farm for personal use?"

"Yeah. I mean, people have windmills for personal use. If it's run by a computer, it's hackable."

"That's how they're able to send the videos! They've hacked into the closest windmill and are siphoning power from it!" Reid exclaimed. "We have to go back there." He looked up at the team, who nodded.

"There's nothing there," the sheriff said.

"Yes, there is. It's underground." Reid explained, excited. "That's what Garcia meant! I'm the only one of the team that uses the Metro regularly. She'd know I'd be the one to make the underground connection!"

"That's ten acres!" the sheriff sighed. "They could have built under any part of it!"

"We know, and we're going to find it," Morgan announced.

The team walked around the perimeter of the old house's foundation. "I don't see anything," Rossi called.

"There has to to be an entrance here," Morgan argued.

Hotch started walking farther away. He got about fifty feet away when his cell rang. The team whipped around, aiming their guns at the noise. Hotch have them all a dirty look and took out his phone. "Hotchner."

"Sir? Are you at the location?" Kevin asked.

"Yes, we are," Hotch replied. Kevin didn't respond. "Hello... Kevin?"

"Sir, don't move."

"Excuse me?" Hotch asked.

"Don't. Move. Trust me, sir. Tell everyone to stop where they are."

"Everyone, freeze!" Hotch called out. "OK. I'm going to put you on speakerphone."

"Good. I need everyone to listen. Does anyone else besides Hotch have a signal?"

"I don't," Morgan said. The others confirmed they didn't have reception, either.

"Who is closest to Hotch?" Kevin asked.

"I am," Kate said.

"Kate, keep your phone out and walk slowly, pause after each step, until I say stop."

Kate looked at Hotch, who shrugged. "OK..." She walked slowly towards Hotch.

"Stop. Do you have a signal?" Kevin asked.

"Yeah, barely," Kate replied.

"How far away are you from Agent Hotchner?"

"About thirty feet."

"Stay there. Who is the next closest?"

"Me," Rossi answered.

"Agent Rossi, can you walk in a wide arc around Agent Hotchner and Kate? Then stand opposite Kate about thirty feet from Agent Hotchner."

"All right, I'm here!" Rossi called out.

"Walk slowly towards Agent Hotchner just like Kate did." Rossi walked until Kevin told him to stop. He was surprised to see his phone picked up a signal. "How far from Agent Hotchner are you?"

"About twenty feet," Rossi answered.

"Agent Hotchner, please walk towards Kate until you're halfway between her and Agent Rossi."

"OK, I'm there," Hotch said

"Who is next closest?"

"Me," JJ called.

"JJ, I need you to arc around to the spot in between Agent Rossi and Kate, then walk slowly towards Agent Hotchner." JJ complied. "Stop."

"Who's next?"

"Me," Morgan called.

"Morgan, stand opposite JJ and walk slowly towards Agent Hotchner."

"Kevin, what are you doing?" Morgan was getting irritated.

"Trust me, you're almost done," Kevin sounded excited. "Stop. OK, Agent Hotchner, walk halfway between Morgan and JJ."

"All right, I'm here. Are you going to tell us why we're doing this? Hotch was getting impatient fast.

"Yes, I swear, just one more thing: Morgan, JJ, Agent Rossi, and Kate, each of you take two big steps backward." They took the steps. "All right. Take one big step forward."

"Kevin.." Hotch warned.

"Sir, you guys found a signal in the middle of a dead zone. I just used the GPS in your phones to find out where the UNSUBS are getting their Internet connection and its range."

"Are you saying...?"

"Yes, Agent Hotchner, you are standing directly above the UNSUBS' means of online communication. You found the hideout."

"We are to the west of the foundation," Rossi said. "The entrance has to be on the west wall."

"Agent Hotchner, the plans for the original house had a cellar."

"I thought you said the house didn't have one," Hotch argued.

"It didn't. I'm talking the house before that house. There was another home built before the one that caught fire. It was destroyed by a tornado and it had a cellar. It supposedly was sealed after the new house was built with a full basement."

"I'm going to lose the signal when I go over there," Hotch warned.

"I know. Good luck, team."

"I'm going in there," Morgan announced. He jumped into the basement.

"Be careful, it might be booby trapped." JJ warned as she followed him down. He looked around, feeling the stone walls, until he found a slight discoloration in the stone. It was painted like stone but made of wood.

"I found a door!" Morgan yelled. He braced himself to kick down the door as the team gathered behind him.

The team entered through the shattered remains of the door, followed by the sheriff and deputy. The room was dark and damp. Morgan walked around and found another door. It was steel and locked with a padlock. "Clear!" Hotch yelled.

Morgan gestured to the lock. "I got some bolt cutters in the cruiser," the sheriff's said. He returned a minute later and gave them to Hotch, who snapped the lock. Morgan stood next to Hotch as JJ opened the door. Morgan entered and found himself in a hallway. He walked past two doors, one on either side of the hallway. Hotch opened the left and Kate opened the right.

"Morgan!" Kate hissed. He backed up and into the room. He followed Kate in, followed by Reid, as the rest of the team went on down the hallway.

The room was dark and Morgan's flashlight illuminated a broken tripod and two stand lights. He swept the area and saw a bundle in the middle of the room. He approached and slowly knelt down and moved the blanket. He sucked in a deep breath when he saw an eye bolt drilled into the stone floor and a small pool of blood.

Morgan turned when he heard plastic rattling. Reid had on gloves and was bagging something. "Cigarette butt," he clarified.

"There's blood here. This is where they kept her," Morgan said.

"Morgan, you need to see this," JJ walked in. He and Reid followed her and Kate to another door at the end of the hall. She pushed open a door and Morgan froze.

The room was cozy and warm. A large-screen TV sat upon an electric fireplace and two leather recliners stood in front of it, with a table between them. There were bookshelves everywhere. A couple were lined with gaming systems but most were full of books. Several deer heads were mounted on the walls. There was a system of computers in one corner, along with two office chairs.

"The kitchen is down the way and it has a fully stocked pantry and a chest freezer full of meat," Rossi announced.

"There's also four bedrooms and a bathroom," Hotch added. "One has a gun cabinet with a couple empty spaces."

"They're preppers," the sheriff said.

"'Preppers?'" Kate repeated.

"Survival preppers," Reid explained. "They stockpile food and supplies for a possible crisis. They've actually been around since the Cold War with bomb shelters stocked with food and water. They gained momentum during Y2K and are gaining popularity again with the zombie apocalypse fad."

Hotch's phone rang. "Kevin," he greeted. "You're on speakerphone."

"You found the hideout?" Kevin asked.

"Yeah, we did, and it's as decked out as any house," Morgan said. "How are they powering all this?"

"Wind power," Kevin answered.

"They hacked the windmill?" Reid asked.

"Nope. That windmill is privately owned," Kevin said, "by a Scot Tripp."

"I thought you said he had nothing in his name," Hotch argued.

"I know," Kevin sighed. "I looked up Scot with every last name his family had, including Tripp. Then it hit me: Scot with one 't' is an odd spelling, so I searched the more traditional spelling with two 't's. The windmill popped right up."

"Hiding in plain sight," the JJ said. "They were trying to be completely self-sufficient. What better way to hide their windmill than among a wind farm?"

"Add a simple typo and no one would know it was theirs unless they knew what to look for," Rossi added.

"Any luck finding anything else with the misspelled name?" Hotch asked.

"No, sir, but I'm still looking," Kevin hung up.

"Whoa." Kate breathed as one by one the monitors turned on. "They were watching us." The team gathered around the monitors and watched the night-vision pictures. They could see the entrance of the driveway, the front of the foundation where the cars were parked, the garden, trees, and each compass point from the foundation.

"Kate, can you rewind those and see when they left?" Reid asked.

"I'm no Garcia but I can try," Kate started typing and the videos changed and started running backwards.

"There!" Reid said. The video stopped and then ran normally. They watched as a small RV pulled up in front of the foundation. There was movement and they saw two figures carry a blanket-wrapped bundle inside the RV. A few minutes later the RV sped off.

"What time was that?" Morgan asked.

"It was 10:45pm." Kate looked at him sadly.

"We were a half-hour late?" Morgan asked rhetorically.

"Keep going back," Hotch told Kate. "Reid, help her."

"Hotch, we're running out of time," Morgan told the Unit Chief.

"I know," Hotch said gravely.

"The freezer is full of beef and chicken and a lot of deer," Rossi said. "Judging by that and those," he nodded to the deer heads on the walls, "I'd say they were avid hunters."

"They were watching when we were here earlier," Reid explained. "The RV arrived and left, then a motorized scooter arrived a little while later. There was no movement between that and when we got here."

"They don't have cable, " Morgan added. Just streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu."

"There's nothing in the books to suggest where athey went next," Hotch said. His phone rang again.

'Sir, I found more land," Kevin blurted out. "It was under the name Lola Hister."

"Where?" Hotch all but shouted.

"Eastern Duck County. I sent the coordinates to your phones."

"Sheriff, do you know where this is?" Morgan asked as he showed the coordinates to the cop.

"Yeah, it's on the other side of the county. Mostly wooded area over there."

"We'll follow you," Hotch said.

A/N: Thanks for your continued support. I'm going to try and get as much out as I can this next week since I have the wedding and my surgery the week after.- PC