Chapter 28
BAU Headquarters
Quantico, VA
"So how was your date last night?" Garcia asked.
"Painful." Emily replied. "I should have stayed home with my cat."
They were slowly gathering around the coffee pot. Spencer was filling his third tankard of the day. He looked around the office, JJ was dropping her bags, Emily and Garcia were here, Hotch was in his office on the phone, and Rossi was looking over some paperwork... "Where's Morgan?"
Emily looked around as well. "He's not in yet?"
Just then Hotch hung up and strode out of his office, more angry than they had seen him since the Reaper. "Everyone. Conference room. Now."
Moments later they were in the round table room, with Hotch already calling something up on the screen. "Morgan's been attacked." Everyone froze in shock. "He's missing."
"Oh my God!" Garcia was the first to start to lose it, but JJ reached over a comforting hand and kept her from falling apart.
"DC Metro identified his car in the parking lot of a club over on Columbia Road. The staff reported it this morning. They found his badge and weapon on the driver's seat."
"Yeah, he loves that place." Garcia fluttered.
A picture came up on the screen. It was Morgan's car all right. But there was something scrawled on the windshield in…. Spencer swallowed something sour in the back of his throat.
"Oh my God, that's not blood, that's not…"
"Garcia," Hotch said quietly. "They believe it's some kind of marker. Prentiss, translation?"
"Return to me, my angel. Remember our rules." Emily translated, and then shook her head as they all looked at her. "Don't look at me; I never had anything to do with the Russians."
From a distance Spencer heard himself talking. "Garcia, call Las Vegas PD, Captain Jim Brass, he was the original officer on the case. Tell him we need the Lebedev file, including the disallowed evidence and Gideon's profile. We should have ViCAP on him as well. Stanislav Ilyich Lebedev, aka Stas. I'll be right back." He turned and was leaving the conference room as quickly as he came in. He hit the bullpen at a dead run, but still just barely made it to the restroom before he was returning breakfast, coffee and perhaps everything he'd eaten that week to the world.
When he came out of the stall Rossi was standing there, calm, solid Rossi looking as unruffled as ever. And there was a bottle of mouthwash on the counter, which he accepted with a grateful nod. While he went to the counter Rossi spoke. "Morgan told me what happened, after the Nichols' case."
Spencer froze. He looked at Rossi in the mirror as the last of his world fell down around him.
"I'm good at what I do, you know, so I have a pretty good idea of what's going to be in that file. By now Garcia is crying on top of being worried and JJ and Emily aren't far behind. I can keep them focused, but I'm going to need some help with Aaron. He's going to want to know why you never said anything."
"Stas was supposed to have ten more years in Ely State Prison." Spencer said at last, and quietly. "I hoped by then I'd look too old." He looked down at nothing a moment. "That's not true." He admitted. "I was going to tell you both, back when we were closing the Gary Michaels case. But it never seemed like the right time."
"Well, it is now." Rossi sighed. "All right, go wait in my office."
"No." What. The. Hell. "Rossi, I need…"
"No. What we need to do right now is focus on stopping this guy and saving Morgan. You are a victim and a witness in this one Dr. Reid, not a profiler. You're all right now, we don't need everyone up there fretting over what happened to you fifteen years ago and we don't need your feelings on the matter getting into the profile. Go to my office and go back over what you know about this Stas. If we have gaps in the file we'll come to you. The best thing you can do right now is let us focus."
Spencer sighed. Rossi was right. "You know, it was only supposed to be one night. One night." Something he had told himself for years, decades now.
"I know. Kids make mistakes. Now go put that brain to work. Don't worry, we'll get him home."
They didn't have to come to him to ask him anything. He knew they wouldn't, Jim was good at his job, LVPD was very thorough and good with the details, and Gideon had done the profile. Everything they needed was right there. However at one point Emily did stick her head in. "Hey, Rossi told me to tell you that this Stas guy walked away from a work-detail ten days ago. It looks like the notification got stuck on someone's desk somewhere. Captain Brass also said that he was calling Doctor Norman and had sent a unit out to Bennington and to the Ranch? Does that mean anything to you?"
"It does. He's protecting potential targets, Mom and an old friend." Spencer was afraid to even look at her now. But this was Emily, who perhaps more than anyone knew what it meant to have your past come back to haunt you."
"Well, that's good. Garcia is tearing that file up as we speak, there's a ton there to work with." She was quiet a moment. "Look, I know you probably don't want to talk about it…."
"Not until we get Morgan back. I'll…I'll explain everything once he's safe."
"All right," she sighed. "Can I hug you? This is going to sound strange but I need to make sure you're here."
"It doesn't sound strange." A moment later he was holding her very tight.
It helped them both.
Sometime later he looked up from the file he was not reading and realized that the team was gone. There was one person, he knew, who would tell him what was going on. He headed down to a particular lair and knocked. "Yes?" Said the fragile voice from within.
He let himself in, carefully closed the door behind him and approached the altar of the Oracle of Quantico. "Garcia, I am so sorry…"
"Oh God, don't! No, don't be sorry! You were just a baby! No, come here." Next thing he knew he was being hugged again, something softer and wilder. "They're going to go get him. They know where he is and they're going to go get him and they're going to lock that monster up and put him away and he's not going to hurt you or Morgan or anyone else ever again."
"Good." Wait… "Wait, they know where he is?"
"Mmm-hmmm, and it's all thanks to you. I was able to trace one of the aliases you gave Captain Brass to a credit card that was used at this club in Baltimore, of all places. Local PD says that it's very popular with the Russian mob."
Spencer was frowning. "But that doesn't make any sense."
"It doesn't? The file said he…did a lot of stuff at his club in Vegas."
"Yes, I know." A million memories he didn't want to look at stormed through his head. "But he owned that place, he had private rooms there. No, Stas was a gun runner, a business man; he wasn't actually a member of the Russian mob."
"But he does business with them."
"That's not the same thing. But it is why he wouldn't go to the mob with this, he's trying to call me out and if they saw him with a petukh he'd lose all credibility." No, that didn't make sense at all.
She just blinked at him, suddenly angry. "Okay, I don't care what your juvie record said you were not a...a..."
"Prostitute? I know, Garcia. After five years of therapy while I was in college I'm know. I'm okay. But the Russian mob would disagree." Which was why going to a club didn't make any sense. "Rules, remember our rules." It was all coming back, every word, every nuance. "How hard is it to find out is someone owns property?"
"Not that hard, do a title search online. That information isn't usually all that secure. Why?"
"Remember our rules. You come play at my house or I go play at yours." But he was living at his parent's house then, so… Spencer headed out at a dead run. "Call everyone and send back up, including medical."
"Where?"
"Gideon's cabin!"
