*Warning: this chapter includes some more violence than usual and perhaps some non-graphic triggering material, not exceeding a T rating. Discretion advised.

CHAPTER 29: A FINAL TORTURE (HOTCH)

I had just finished speaking to Strauss and was walking out of her office when Prentiss practically ran into me.

"Hotch!" she exclaimed, and her eyes were shiny with tears. "Hotch, you need to come, now."

"What is it?" I asked, following after her back into Garcia's cave.

"Renwick," she practically gasped, and I could tell something was different. "He's wailing on Hale right now, he asked her…well, you need to just watch."

"Wailing on her?" I questioned, but let it go when I looked at the screen.

Renwick was holding her by her shirt, pressing her body against the stone wall of her prison. "Tell me where he is!" he yelled. When she didn't answer, he jammed his knee into her stomach, and I flinched as she let out a long cry of pain.

"I don't know," she panted. She was so bruised and bloodied she couldn't even begin to fight back. "Why the hell do you want to know where he is?"

"Because hurting you isn't enough anymore!" he yelled. "He's the easiest to get to. You think I don't know each and every member of your team inside and out? What do you think David Rossi is doing right now, huh? Writing another one of his books, maybe. Or Jennifer Jareau, perhaps she's at home with her loving husband, William, and her son, Henry. Maybe I'll go for him next." He took the time to throw his fist into her face once again, watching as she slid to the ground, barely moving. "Derek Morgan, he's probably chatting it up with that quirky analyst girl, Penelope Garcia. From what I know, they're quite the team themselves. And I couldn't forget that genius, Spencer Reid. God knows what he's doing, probably memorizing someone's dissertation. And then there's Emily Prentiss. My God, she was gorgeous, though she doesn't quite have that raw appeal that you seem to hold for the men." He toed her hip and she weakly tried to get up off the ground, but a swift kick to her ribs rendered her otherwise useless. "Which brings us to Aaron Hotchner. Team leader, very serious, still burdened by the brutal murder of his ex-wife. All he really has left now is little Jack—"

"Leave...leave all of them out of this!" I heard Hale scream. She sat up off the ground, her mouth and nose bleeding, her body shaking spasmodically.

"Tell me where Jack Hotchner is!" he demanded, brutally yanking her off the floor only to punch her to the ground again.

I looked to Prentiss, who stared at me, wide eyed. "My son? He wants to know where my son is?"

"He wants to use him as torture to Hale. Just like Jason," Prentiss whispered.

"He's at his aunt's," I thought aloud quickly. "They're too far away to get to. Hale knows where he is, she's watched him before, when his aunt and I both were out of town for a weekend for meetings. I need to call—"

"I don't know where he is!" Hale yelled at that moment. "I don't know, I work with his father. I've never even met the kid!"

"Liar!" Renwick spat, and he picked Hale off the floor and with incredible force he threw her into the wall. She hit the dusted, ancient mirror, and she screamed as the glass shattered around her, some larger pieces cutting her skin. I saw Prentiss cover her mouth in shock, and even I had cringed at the contact.

"Get the others in here," I said sternly. When she didn't move, I yelled, "Now!"

When she scurried away, I continued to watch the screen. He was brutally attacking her, demanding to know where my son was. She took every blow, and with each new injury she sustained my heart ached ten times worse, knowing she was enduring it to save Jack.

Right as the rest of the team came in, Renwick said, "It's a shame I promised you that I wouldn't kill you for twenty-four hours. I'll be back to convince you to reveal the location. And then the last torture can begin."

He slammed the door, and Hale remained crumpled on the floor, motionless and bleeding. She didn't so much as twitch.

"Oh my God!" JJ exclaimed. "What happened?"

"We can rewind the video on another screen to show them," Prentiss said quietly. I nodded, keeping an eye on the live feed as the rest of the team caught up.

"My God, Hotch," Morgan exclaimed. "Do you need one of us to drive to Jessica's to make sure everything's alright."

"No," I said. "I'm going to call her and tell her to lie low. Renwick is smart, he'll be keeping an eye on the local police and the FBI. We send someone over to her house and she'll light up like a beacon." I thought about Jack, and I desperately hoped I was making the right call. "Does anyone have anything to find out where this bastard is?"

Garcia, who had been mysteriously missing, chose that moment to run in, waving papers around wildly in her hand. "Yes! Thank God for cigarettes, oh thank God!"

"Excuse me?" Rossi asked, speaking for all of us.

"I was thinking, and there's one thing you guys never profiled about this guy that I did. And that's not even my job," she said proudly. "This guy is absolutely addicted to cigarettes. You saw him smoking that horrible day when he burned Hale with his cigarettes, and he looks the part, too. He's not all that old, but he's kind of all older-looking and has wrinkles and from what I could see when I zoomed in, his teeth need a good scrubbing."

"What does this have to do with anything?" Morgan asked, frustrated.

"This guy is probably a pack or two a day smoker," Garcia explained. "And he didn't bring enough with him to his hide out. So he had to call in for a delivery."

Everyone was attentive now.

"I was able to conquer the many, many obstacles he put up in the hopes that someone like me wouldn't be able to see through them. But, as I am full of wondrous abilities, I was able to get the address they were delivered to. And it happens to be the address of one of the warehouses."

"Which one?" I asked sternly.

Suddenly, there was a noise from the live feed. Hale had just managed to sit up when Renwick came in, looking considerably calmer than when he had left a few minutes before.

"Would it kill you to let me catch my breath?" Hale snapped, still strong somehow in her damaged form.

Renwick said nothing as he slowly approached her. Even on the camera I could see a gleam in his dark eyes. Something was different this time. Something worse.

"Tell me where Jack Hotchner is, and I will spare you from a torture that you cannot endure," he said softly as he bent down to look at her in the eye.

She looked at him, silently for a moment. She opened her mouth hesitantly, and my heart jumped as I thought she might just give in and tell that bastard where my son was. I wouldn't have blamed her, if I was honest with myself. The pain she had endured was unimaginable.

Then she spat on him.

He stood calmly as the team sat on edge. Slowly, he wiped the spit, which was tinted red with Hale's blood, off of his face. "You just sealed your fate, Natalie," he breathed.

Renwick pulled her up by the arm, dragging her over to the mattress she had slept on numerous times. He pulled something out of his pockets, and I was surprised to see duct tape. After slamming her down onto the mattress, he quickly taped her wrists together above her head.

"What are you doing?" she breathed.

"I know all about what happened to you ten years ago, with that foster parent of yours. I wish I could've congratulated him in person. He made your life hell when I couldn't."

"Oh no," Garcia cried, tears forming in her eyes as she came to the sickening realization that was dawning on all of us. "Oh no, no, no! Not Nat, not again!"

Renwick took out a knife and slowly started slicing open Hale's shirt. She struggled, her face full of panic. "Stop," she said, her voice rising. "Why are you doing this? Stop!"

"You forced my hand," he said. "I'm just fulfilling my promise." He straddled her knees and roughly unbuttoned her jeans.

"Son of a bitch," Morgan hissed, the anger in his voice palpable.

Renwick slid Hale's pants off of her feebly kicking legs, leaving her malnourished body to be adorned only by her undergarments. I was stuck between staring in horror at the screen and wanting to tear my gaze away out of some twisted sense of propriety. He moved up on her, straddling her waist. A sound of agonized disgust came out of Prentiss' mouth.

"Wait," Hale said suddenly. her chest rising up and down quickly, her face full of panic and anguish. "What would it take for you to let me have a last favor?"

"Nothing," Renwick said after a moment of consideration. "Your screams will be payment enough." He leaned down until his face was right by her ear. "And I'm sure you will scream."

"Then turn off the video cameras," she said so quietly I almost missed it.

"Why's that?" Renwick asked, a wicked grin on his face. He knew that she knew.

"You know why," she snapped. "Turn them off. That's all I ask of you. Just turn them off."

Renwick considered. "I hope your screams are worth it," he finally said, and then he got off of Hale, who was too wounded to do anything but lie there helplessly. Renwick approached the camera until his face filled the whole screen. He reached up to touch the camera, and the screen shook for a moment. He moved his hand quickly away, and suddenly the screen was black.

"Damn it!" I yelled, thinking about Hale, helpless and alone. One of my own, forced to relive such deep pain.

"No, Hotch," Garcia said, her face full of confusion, tears streaming down her cheeks. "The line's not disconnected. The video is still streaming."

Morgan walked closer, eyeing the computer. "But it went black."

"He just put the lens cap on," Reid realized out loud. "He…he made it so that we can still hear her."

We quieted down, and sure enough, a minute or two later, we heard the springs of the mattress give. Besides the occasional indication of movement, such as the mattress groaning or the light sound of the two breathing, it was dead silent. We listened closely, trying to catch anything. If so much as a pin had dropped, if anyone had been inclined to do so, we would have heard it as if it were a bomb blast.

And then there came the sound of Hale's pleading, tormented whisper. "Please," she begged. I could tell she was crying, a pure sob of fear and pain, and as her voice cracked my heart broke for the first time since Haley had been torn away from me. She thought we couldn't hear her, and she didn't want us to hear her finally break down. It had been her one request, that we not be able to see her like this. A part of me desperately wanted to turn off the video. "Please, don't do this to m—"

Her words were cut off by a bloodcurdling, terrifying, tortured scream unlike anything I had ever heard before. There was the sound of hands roughly pushing and hitting, and then an identical scream, cut off abruptly by a sharp, gasping cry of pure agony. I knew it was her, and I knew what he was doing to her.

Garcia started bawling, and before I knew it JJ and Prentiss had tears sliding down their faces as well. Morgan, who had probably been trying to fight his urge to punch something for two weeks, finally did so, leaving a dent in the wall and blood on his knuckles. Reid had his head in his hands, his face invisible to me. Rossi looked scarily calm, as if murder was only one of the horrifying things he wished he could do to Renwick.

Me? I did what I always did. I played leader. "Garcia, we need that address now."

She nodded, unable to speak through her sobs, and then handed me the paper. I glanced at it, relieved to find that it was the warehouse nearest to us. I looked at my team.

"We can save her," I said. "That's all we can do now. We need to get her out of there alive. Can you guys keep it together until our agent is back in our hands?"

Morgan came up to me, a hard glint in his eyes. "What do you think, Hotch?"

I nodded. "Garcia, watch this feed, no matter what happens. The rest of us…let's go."

As always, thanks for reading. The end of part one is very soon! ~ Lacey :)