Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
"No Man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the seas, Europe is the less, as well as if a manor thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." – John Donne
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15 September, 2010
"I would know if Henry had a son other than Orlando or Demi," Ben protested weakly, leaning heavily against he back of the chair. Sarah's mouth still hung open, unable to believe her brother would have fathered a child and not tell anyone, not taken care of him.
"My brother never would have done that."
"Henry and Hannah were together since their sophomore year in college," Breelyn spoke up. "Henry didn't have time to have another kid."
Prentiss bit her bottom lip against the obvious answer, the answer that had happened to her, the one no one wanted to voice until Rossi did it for them. "He could have had a child before he met Hannah. He might not have even known."
"What kind of girl would get pregnant by Henry Sellers and not demand child support?" Sarah laughed. "That's just ridiculous."
"You gave up this life," J.J. pointed out. "She might not have wanted it. If that's what happened! I'm not saying it is, just trying to think about all the possible explanations. It is possible that, if a girl was ashamed she got pregnant, she might not tell anyone who the father is, especially if it would wind her up on the front page like getting pregnant by Henry would have."
Ben ran a hand over his face and looked exhausted. "Why now? If he really is Henry's child, why now? Why not before? And why kidnap Callie? They've been gone twenty-eight years and no one's said anything, this has never…"
Spencer picked the picture up off the table and clenched his jaw. It was a picture of Calliope and Emeline that he had framed in both his office at the BAU and his home office. It was his absolute favourite. They were snuggled down on the couch watching a movie.
"I need a minute guys," he said, putting the picture down and pushing himself up from the table. Running a hand through his hair, he walked out of the room towards the patio. Penelope watched after him, her eyes watering, and was about to stand up when Hotch muttered an 'excuse me' to the team and police officers in the room, laid a reassuring hand on Ben Sellers shoulder, and followed the young man outside.
"Reid?" Hotch stopped a few feet behind his friend.
"I'm alright, Hotch. I just need to collect myself."
"Spencer, it's alright if you can't do this. No one's going to think any less of you if you take yourself off the case."
"No. I swore to her and to myself that I would protect her and keep her safe. If I can't do that, if I can't be in that room trying to find her, than I… I don't deserve her, I don't deserve to ask her to marry me."
"Marry you…" Hotch walked forward, stopping next to the worried man. Reid reached into his pocket and pulled out a small jewelry box, opening it up to look at the glittering ring he had gotten back from García that morning. "How long have you had the ring?"
"April. I found it when I was in Colorado with Gideon, but I asked Dr. Sellers for permission in February. I had everything planned out, I knew exactly how I was going to ask her, and now she's gone."
"You have everything planned out. Reid, we're going to get Callie back and take down this unsub and you will get to ask her to marry you. But you can't loose faith in that. Callie trusts in our ability to catch unsubs and you need to as well. How many times did Callie reassure us when we started to doubt our ability to catch Foyet? More than I can remember. She never doubted us. It's our turn to return that favour. We can't doubt."
"She would ask me 'What are you missing?' or 'Is there another way you can look at this?' It always… Wait a minute… another way to look…" Reid's eyes widened in realization and he turned and ran back into the room. "Dr. Sellers, do you still have Henry's things?"
"Well, yes... I couldn't bring myself to throw any of their belongings away."
"Where are his things?"
"What does it matter?"
"We've been looking at this from the unsub's perspective. How you and Henry and Calliope fit into his life. We need to look at it the other way around. We don't know how he fits into your life or Calliope's. So we need to focus on how the unsub fit into Henry's life. Henry might have kept some sort of diary or day planner that might help us figure this out. Finding out you had a son you never knew about, or even someone claiming to be your son, would leave an impression. If he kept a journal or something, he's probably mentioned the unsub or the unsubs' mother in it. We're not getting anything productive from the unsub. We have to find another way to look at it."
"Their… their rooms are still exactly like the day they died," Brenda told him. "We just changed the locks and left everything. No one's been in there in decades. We said it was in case Callie later decided she wanted to know about her family, but really it was just Ben and I not wanting to deal with losing them."
"If we got rid of their things," Ben whispered, looking at a photograph of his son, "it made everything real. The longer we waited, the harder it got. We kept putting it off and we never actually went through anything."
"That's really, really good," Reid told her. "Can you show me the rooms?"
"Of course," Brenda said, putting her coffee down and leading him out of the ballroom.
"Can I steal Morgan, Prentiss and a few officers?" Reid called over his shoulder and the scatter of movement told him he could. Brenda opened the door to the third floor with her palm print and led them down the opposite end of the hallway from where Reid usually turned. He had never come down this side of the floor. Brenda stopped in front of a door at the end of the hall and pulled a set of keys from her pocket.
"My key's missing…" Brenda said in confusion as she sifted through each key. "Why is my key missing?"
"We don't have time for this," Morgan muttered, and got ready to kick the door open.
"That door's two hundred years old!" Brenda protested.
"The door or your daughter?"
Kicking the door open dislodged three decades of dust in a violent fashion, forcing Morgan to tuck his face into the crook of his elbow and cough. Reid stepped through the dust as it settled, keeping a hand over the bottom of his face. Fumbling for a light switch, he blinked when the light came on and blinded them all for a moment.
It was like stepping back in time. The only thing out of place to Reid was the pair of heels he knew belonged to Calliope, the ones she'd lost a few months ago. She had been in here recently.
"Uh, Reid…" Prentiss called his name from behind a desk with books littering the surface. "They're hand written. Uh… these look like scholarly books – They were both college professors, right? This one, though… I think it's a journal. Handwriting looks male."
"There's a bunch more over here," Morgan said from where he crouched at the bottom shelf of an ornately carved bookcase a little to the side of the desk. "Years worth."
"Male or female?" Reid asked, taking the journal from Prentiss.
"Definitely male," Morgan flipped open the cover of one. "I mean, they're exactly signed, but this page is talking about New Years resolutions for nineteen eighty and Hannah wanting another daughter. Safe bet says these belong to Henry."
Rose's recital is tomorrow. She's so excited to be the lead snowflake. Karen keeps trying to fix the tear in her costume, but Rose won't take it off or stand still long enough to Karen to get a needle in. She'll have to do it once Rose finally conks out. Hannah's a mess. I'm not much better. Callie won't sleep through the night. We're trying to make it through the purple crying as best we can, but Callie's more exhausting than any of the other three. We'll get through it.
Orlando decided he wants to try out for basketball in junior high. Here's to hoping he sticks with this one. I've lost track of how many activities he's gone through. Thank goodness baseball didn't last long. Demi's still having trouble with his multiplication tables, but we're working threw them. He's almost gotten the three's down so we'll start the four's soon.
Reid started with the last entry in the book on the desk, dated the morning of December first of nineteen eight two – the morning before they died. The last day he was ever sat at this desk writing his thoughts. The day before he died, he'd been journaling about his children with no idea that none of them would make it past the next forty-eight hours. Reid felt eerie as he moved a day back and continued reading. It was one thing to delve into the personal thoughts of the bad guys; it was another entirely to read the last thoughts of the man who would have been his father-in-law.
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"What the hell are you doing here?" Morgan snarled at the man walking into the room with the two officers who had gone to answer the door.
"I asked him, Derek," Reid said from across table, looking up from the wall of leather bound journals he was reading backwards, latest entries to earliest. He was still wading through July of eight-two.
"Without telling us?"
"I told Hotch."
"You authorized this, Hotch?" Morgan asked in angry disbelief.
"We need fresh eyes," he said, looking up from the multitude of papers. "We've looked over and over at all of this and we're getting nothing. We need new perspective. Maybe having a seasoned profiler who doesn't know Callie will help."
"But why him? What right does he have to be here? Now of all times? There are other profilers we could have called. We don't need him."
"Look," Gideon said, "I know you aren't thrilled with me, Morgan, and you have every right to feel that way. But this isn't about me. This is about Reid and the Sellers and the woman you're all in here worrying about. I'm just here to help. I'm just here because Reid called asking me to come."
"It's good to see you again, sir," García said smiling tentatively from where she sat behind several computer screens. "It's really good to see you again.
"Thank you, García. It's good to see you too."
"Jason."
"Dave."
"I guess we better fill you in on the case," Rossi nodded, shaking his old friends hand. "J.J., do we have another case file?"
"Printing right now."
"Can you – can you help them find my daughter?" Ben asked as he stood up, hope flooding his face.
"Yes, sir. I can. I'm Jason Gideon," Gideon assured him with his hand outstretched. "These agents can do anything. They will find your daughter. I'm just here to help."
"Gideon's one of the best with kidnappings," Reid told Ben as he handed Gideon the file J.J. had just given him. A slip of paper fell from the journal into his lap as Reid turned the page. Brow furrowed, he put the book down and picked up the paper, unfolding it and reading. As he read, his jaw became more and more slack until it was partially open. "García, Kaden Kaytis."
"Kaden Kaytis?" Brittnee's head jerked up. "I know Kaden. He volunteers at This Century."
"He contacted Henry saying he was his son," Reid reread the paper to himself as Ben turned to stare at him. "This is his last journal entry. It's on a piece of loose leaf and just shoved in the book. I didn't see it at first." Looking up at Ben for a moment, Reid began reading aloud.
"Evening, December first, Eighty-two. I might have a third son. He just called me. Got my office number from the school. How am I going to tell Hannah? Kaden Kaytis. That's his name. Says he's fourteen years old. I know that last name and I remember her, but I can't remember her first name. Oh my God, how am I going to tell Hannah? We set up lunch for Friday – he has a half-day from school. How am I going to tell Hannah?"
"He sounds stunned," Morgan commented when Reid stopped.
"Kaden Kaytis, DOB June twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-eight, Williamsburg. Mother, Elissa Kaytis, nineteen. Father, unknown," García read off the screen of her computer.
"Henry's freshman year of college," Sarah's face was ashen and she sat down.
"Kaden wouldn't do this," Brittnee protested. "I've known Kad for years. He's a good person. He wouldn't let me kill a spider than came into the gallery. He caught it and took it outside. I mean… two hours later, Calliope showed up, saw it, screamed and stepped on it, but that's not the point."
"Has Calliope ever met Kaden?" Gideon asked, looking over the pages he was reading as he tried to catch up on the case.
"I don't think so."
"But he has seen her, correct?"
"Well, yeah. He helps me with the galleries. He used to help my mom when she ran This Century. In return, he gets free admission to gallery openings and stuff. It's been that way forever."
"When did Kaden first start volunteering at the gallery?" Gideon stood.
"I don't know. I think I was… thirteen? So, like, ninety-five?"
"Callie had her first gallery showing in ninety-five," Ben thinned his lips and held Brenda's hand. "At This Century."
"He showed up because of Callie?" Brittnee asked, twisting to look at as many faces as she could. "No! Kaden helps with all the showings, not just hers. He didn't do this! Kaden wouldn't do this."
"Part of his cover," Gideon crossed his arms and glanced at Rossi, who nodded like it made sense. "It would be too obvious if he only helped or came to Calliope's shows. García, what else do you have on this?"
"Well, he graduated top of his class from Lafayette High School in Williamsburg. Went to Washington and Lee, graduated with honours in ninety-one with a degree in math. Got his masters. Teaches calculus over at Jamestown High School."
"If he knew us and came to Callie's shows and everything, why didn't he say anything?" Brenda asked.
"I don't know," Rossi raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips. "He might have thought Henry had told you and that you were ignoring him, pretending he didn't exist."
"Picture?" Morgan stood and walked towards García, who brought up Katyis' drivers' license. "Woah."
"'Woah' doesn't even begin to cover it," García nodded, pulling up Henry's photo and putting them side-by-side. "They're like clones."
"How could we never have noticed him?" Ben asked, staring at the photos. "I would have noticed someone who looked so much like my son."
"Not if he didn't want to be noticed," Gideon shook his head. "He spent his entire life watching your family, blending into the background of your lives."
"Callie said the redhead was friendly," Hotch raised the legal pad full of Reid's illegible writing. "I can't see the picture, but if he looks like Henry, he has red hair. If we understood Callie correctly, Kaden wasn't part of the plan."
"He couldn't be part of the plan!" Brittnee protested adamantly. "Kaden wouldn't do this."
"Do we have an address?" Morgan kissed the top of García's red head in a silent 'thank you.'
"In your GPS. It's an apartment though. No basement. Be safe, my loves."
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No one answered when Hotch called for Kaytis to open the door and come out of the apartment. Giving a nod, Hotch stepped back and let Morgan in front of him. Shouting one last chance, Morgan waited a second before kicking right below the doorknob. The door burst open; the frame by the lock cracked and broke. Morgan went in first with his gun raised.
"Clear!" A SWAT agent called from the bedroom.
"Clear!" from the kitchen.
"Clear!" came the shout from the bathroom.
"Morgan? Clear?" Hotch shouted from the living room where he'd stopped.
"Uh… sort of."
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"I'm sorry," Kaden sat in the corner of the empty basement, empty besides Calliope. His hands and feet had been tied together with rope. "This is all my fault."
"How is this your fault?" Calliope wished she could see him, but her eyes were still covered with duct tape. "Who are you?"
"Your brother," he mumbled.
Calliope didn't say anything. She was stunned into complete silence. "My brothers are both dead. They died in a car crash."
"I know. I'm your half-brother."
"I don't have a half-brother! I don't know what you're talking about." Calliope felt like her heart would beat right out of her chest.
"I didn't want you to find out this way. I didn't… I'm sorry."
"I don't… I don't believe you. My dad wouldn't have cheated on my mom. You're lying."
"It was in college," Kaden shook his head. "My mom got pregnant and dropped out."
"That doesn't mean it was my dad!"
Neither one of them spoke for a long while. Calliope couldn't get her heart to leave her throat or beat regularly. This couldn't be happening. She welcomed the bizarre in her life. It kept her entertained, but this? This was…
"You're my brother? Half-brother? You're sure?"
"My mom confessed when I was eight. I saw a picture of them tucked in an old box and I asked."
"Why… why didn't you ever say anything?"
"I told your dad. When I was fourteen. You'd just been born. But, then, they all…" Kaden trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid. "And I almost introduced myself to you and your grandpa when you were ten, but I lost my nerve and didn't."
"You're fourteen years older than me?"
"Yes."
"So you were born three years before Orlando, right?"
"Yes. The summer after their freshman year at Washington and Lee."
"Oh my God."
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"And I thought the bomber chick's room was scary…" Morgan commented to Hotch as he snapped pictures of the room to send to García. "It's like a Sellers shrine in here."
"Bomber chick?" Hotch raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, uh… I don't remember her name. The one at the university who set off a bomb every time three threes showed up."
Hotch nodded. "He's been watching them for years. Morgan, Hannah's pregnant in this picture. Callie wasn't even born yet."
"This level of obsession and he never said anything? And he's 'helping' her?"
"Afraid of rejection," Gideon said, pulling on the pair of latex gloves Rossi handed him. "He can't say anything, because, if he does, he risks them rejecting him and shattering his delusion that he's part of their lives."
"This entire room is pristine. Everything has a place. There isn't a spec of dust in here," Rossi ran a hand over the top shelf above his head and held up the clean glove for everyone to see. "This room is like a sanctuary, a shrine of what his life could have been like."
"If he'd been part of this life, he would have died in the car wreck too," Prentiss walked into the room with Reid, having just arrived from Dahlia. Reid didn't say anything, simply stared, mouth parted in amazement, at the walls lined in photographs and framed newspaper articles like a museum.
"That's from Ms. Sellers' birth," one of the policemen pointed a framed article. "My mom kept it too. Here's Rosalind's. He doesn't have the boys' announcements, though. Why not?"
"He didn't know then," Gideon took an article off the wall across the room.
"Know what?"
"That his last name should have been Sellers," his tone was absentminded as he began reading.
"He's been to Dahlia," Reid picked up a stack of pamphlets sitting neatly in a basket on an end table. "A lot. This one's the one they hand out to visitors now. I've never seen the rest. They must be from before I met Calliope."
"Do they have to stay there to get one or does every visitor get one?" Prentiss asked.
"Every visitor. He didn't have to stay overnight. Just for the tour."
"I can understand most of this stuff," Morgan said from where he stood in the corner. "Most of this is public stuff. Anybody living in Williamsburg can get their hands on this stuff. Some items might take more work than others, but they are accessible. But how'd he get this?"
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"Elissa Kaytis? My name's Agent Aaron Hotchner with the FBI. Agents Prentiss and Jareau."
"I-I saw you on the news," the gray haired woman kept the door close to her, not opening it any further.
"We're investigating the abduction of Calliope Sellers."
"I don't know anything about that. I'm sorry," she started the close the door on them, but Hotch simply raised his voice.
"Your son, Kaden. When did you tell him who his father was?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"We know you got pregnant when you were nineteen," Prentiss spoke. "Was Henry Sellers the father, Elissa?"
Elissa's lengthy pause was all the answer they needed.
"May we come in, Ms. Kaytis?" JJ asked.
The inside of the Kaytis house was warm and friendly, overly plush furniture in welcoming colours and bookcases stuffed to overflowing. Photographs hung on the walls and sat on tables.
"Kaden doesn't have anything to do with that woman's disappearance."
"Have you heard from him since you saw us on the news?" Hotch asked.
"No," the answer came in a whisper. "He didn't show up for church tonight. He leads the teenager's bible studies and he didn't show."
"Excuse me, who is in this picture with Kaden?" Prentiss interrupted, handing a picture to Elissa.
"That's Marty Draper and Tim Hossa," Elissa identified each boy. "They've been friends since high school."
"Hotch, look at their hair," Prentiss said meaningfully.
"Would Kaden have confided in them about his father?"
"I don't, maybe, I don't know. I don't like them. They were good kids in high school, but, somewhere since then, they changed."
"García," J.J. walked away from the woman and two agents and spoke quietly. "I've got two more names for you. Marty Draper and Tim Hossa. So, that's probably Martin or Timothy."
"Who are they?"
"Friends of Kaytis."
"Do they have the–"
"One with black hair, one with brown."
"Eeep. On it. Hold please. Hey, at the apartment, did they really find a picture of–"
"Callie and Emeline? Yup."
"Okay, stop reading my mind, Jean Grey, it's freaking me out."
"Sorry," JJ smiled. "So, anything?"
"You know how Kaytis was beyond clean. Like, total model citizen? These boys are as much like that as I am like… like Chief Strauss. What's the opposite of squeaky-clean? Grimy? Because these boys are all up in the grim."
"How grimy?"
"Well, they robbed three houses, obviously not very well, because they got caught and sentenced to ten in the pen for armed robbery. Served six each and got out. Went back in for robbing a handful of convenience stores. Served eight years, deemed rehabilitated robbers and are currently on parole. Which I'm assuming they've broken. Did these grimy gunmen steal the Lucy to my Ethel?"
"Seems likely. We just don't know Kaytis' role in it."
"Well, he sounds creepy. And how the heck did he get a picture of Luce and Eme? I mean, Callie puts, like, no pictures online. She's always telling me to untag her on Facebook. She's super carful about who can see her online and stuff and I just don't see her giving this Freakazoid access."
"I have no idea. But it is a picture she put on Facebook. I printed it out."
"Didn't they change the privacy settings on Facebook again this summer? He might have nabbed it before she reset them."
"It's possible, but that would mean he would have had to be stalking her Facebook almost daily."
"Yeah, 'cause that room doesn't already scream 'psycho stalker' a loud as possible."
"Okay, García, do you have anything about them? Anything that can help us? Do they have jobs, what have they been doing since they got out of jail?"
"Hossa is unemployed, but Draper is currently working construction for Shaw De-Struction. It's a family owned construction company that specializes in the decommission of old buildings, like, getting them ready to be torn down. Gordon Shaw owns the company."
"Are they working on any projects right now?"
"Um… They're working on an old textile factory that caught on fire. 'Structurally unsound, demolition necessary.' That's in Jamestown. An abandoned fire station in Ewell. And an office building in Gloucester Point."
"Do any of those have basements?"
"The office building and the factory."
"Is Hossa working on one of them?"
"Draper."
"Him too."
"It doesn't say, not that that will stop me, the ultimate super sleuth. Mr. Gordon Shaw has a rather unpleasant phone call in his future. I'll call you back."
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They were getting closer. Inch by inch, they clawed their way closer to getting Calliope back. Running a hand over Perses' head, Reid tried to even out his breathing. Closing his eyes, he ran a hand over his face. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Ashanti and Breelyn talking quietly to Morgan and García. Both sisters nodded and walked away. Reid wondered briefly what had been said or where they were going, but the thought left him as Hotch came back into the room.
"Police found the van in Jamestown. They left Callie's purse in it."
"Rookie mistake," Rossi commented.
"So they have her in the textile factory," Gideon pulled the blueprints of the factory Gordon Shaw had given them out of their tube and spread them out over the table.
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"They fucking found us," Marty groused as he and Tim stampeded down the stairs to the basement, listening to the sirens blaring from all around the factory.
"How'd they find us? You said this was a sure win," Tim blamed Marty as he followed after him.
"Get him up," Marty didn't answer as he pointed to Kaden still in the corner. Tim sawed at the rope binding Kaden's legs before moving onto his hands. Marty stopped behind Calliope and cut the wires around her wrists. Bending down, Marty cut the wires holding Calliope's ankles to the legs of the chairs and started to get up. Before he could move, Calliope brought her foot up between his legs. Marty doubled over and Calliope stood, planting her boots steadily on the floor beneath her for the first time in what she was sure had been at least ten hours. Fumbling her hands behind her, she grabbed the flimsy chair that had held her hostage just moments ago and brought it down over Marty's back. She had wanted to bash his head, but, with the duct tape obscuring her eyes, she would settle for any part of his body.
Something horribly solid tackled her from behind and she and the chair fell forward. She screamed in agony as she fell forward over Marty's prone figure. The chair hit the cement first and then she hit the chair, breaking it beneath her as Tim crushed her to the ground. Calliope's face rebounded off the concrete floor and she heard ribs snap on the legs of the chair as they broke under the weight of Calliope and Tim.
A gun cocked, but Calliope couldn't do anything trapped beneath two hundred pounds of muscle. "Kaden, don't do anything stupid. Don't try and be the hero now, stupid, or you'll both be dead."
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"That's Calliope!" Reid shouted to Hotch as a scream came from within the building. Or, at least, he thought he shouted. In reality, the words had come out a hoarse, terrified whisper only audible to J.J. standing right next to him. Hotch lifted the megaphone to his face.
"Kaden Kaytis, Marty Draper, Tim Hossa. This is Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner with the FBI. Come out with Calliope Sellers unharmed or we will come in. We'll give you two minutes before we break down the door."
"We can't break down the door, Hotch," Derek said. "If we go in, they'll feel threatened and cornered and might kill her while they tries to escape."
"I know that, but I don't want him to know that," Hotch nodded.
"Movement! Movement inside the house!" A SWAT officer called and the officers all drew their guns, pointing directly at the front door.
"You have forty-five seconds, Kaytis, everything all right?" Hotch called through the megaphone.
"Put you're guns down and I'll bring her out!" A deep voice yelled from inside the house.
"We can't do that. You know that. Come out into the open and bring Calliope. When you're out here, we can talk this out peacefully."
Reid watched, his gun extended, as the front door opened and Kaden Kaytis came into view, his arm wrapped around Calliope's neck and the muzzle of a gun pressed against her temple. Duct tape had been wrapped around her head, layered repeatedly over her eyes, and a dirty scrap of cloth gagged her. Kaden's grip kept Calliope's feet from fully reaching the ground and she kept stumbling as he dragged her forward.
When he stopped forty feet from where the police barricade had been set up, Reid knew he wasn't the only one more than a bit unnerved by how much Kaden looked like Calliope.
"Kaytis, you know this isn't going to end well. You have FBI, police and SWAT all with their guns trained on you, ready to shoot," Hotch said with a calm air he didn't feel. "Where are Hossa and Draper?"
"Give me my share of the Sellers money and you can have my sister back!"
"You know you're not getting out of this driveway a free man, Kaytis, much less with a two hundred million. Make this easy on yourself and give us Calliope," Prentiss called from where she stood next to J.J.
"I-I-I'll – I'll kill her."
"Kaden, you know this is crazy," Morgan tried to reason with the wild-eyed man as he edged closer. "Give us Cal and you'll get to the police station unharmed. If you don't, these men have the order to take the shot. If you don't give us Cal, you don't stand a chance of making it out of this alive."
"Hey! Back up! Back up or I'll shoot her."
"You shoot her, we'll shoot you. She dies, you die. You let her go and you'll live," Hotch told him.
"There are six FBI agents out here who love that girl very, very much, Kaytis," Rossi took a turn trying to talk the man down. "You kill Calliope and I can guarantee you the six of us will shot you. Do you know what being shot six times at once feels like? It's no picnic."
"Kaden, I'm Dr. Spencer Reid. We talked on the phone, remember?" Reid said, putting his hands up in a motion of surrender and taking a few slow steps forward.
"Yeah, I remember," Kaden said, jerking Calliope slightly behind him so that his body was mostly in front of hers. "You're the guy who's screwing my slut sister."
"She's not a slut, Kaden. She's your sister; she's the daughter of your father. She's my girlfriend. We've been together for two years. We have a little girl, your niece. Her name's Emeline. I, uh, I call her my Princess Eme. She's three years old. But you know that. You have a picture of Eme in your apartment. That dog you left in the car – his name's Perses. I gave him to Calliope for her twenty-seventh birthday last November. She's going to be twenty-eight in a few months, but you knew that, didn't you? Because twenty-eight years ago you were fifteen and had just worked up the nerve to contact Henry Sellers and tell him you were his son.
"How do I know this? I read it in his journal, Kaden. You were supposed to meet him for lunch on December third, but you couldn't because he died in a car crash the night before. How long did you wait for him at the restaurant, Kaden? An hour? Two? I bet you were really angry that he stood you up and, then, when you got home you saw the news. That the Sellers family had been killed the night before, they all died in a tragic accident, except for the grandfather and Henry's newborn daughter – the daughter that you've got a gun to.
"You've spent the past twenty-eight years getting angrier and angrier because you believed you lost your chance at being an acknowledged member of the Sellers family. Why didn't you contact Dr. Sellers? He's your grandfather. You could have spoken to him. You could have gone to Calliope once she was old enough. Instead over two and a half decades, you just kept getting more and more angry and now you don't even care about being a Sellers. You just want the Sellers fortune. You don't care about Henry Sellers or Ben Sellers or any of your dead siblings. You don't care about the woman you're threatening to shoot, your sister."
"Shut up!" He screamed at Reid, spit flying in real rage. "You don't know anything about me!"
With a deafening crack, two gunshots exploded simultaneously and Kaden jerked, the bullets ripping through his shoulder and his abdomen. He started to fall, but his arm was still locked around Calliope's neck and he pulled her with him as he fell.
A/N:
... TO BE CONTINUED...
I feel like Hotch at the end of 4x26 "... And Back" when he walks into his apartment and pours whiskey and he's doing the voiceover about how the ending at the pig farm was shit despite the fact that they did everything right. That sometimes are "no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day." And The Reaper is all super creepy and monotone and goes "youshouldhavemadeadeal" and Hotch's voiceover starts again "Sometimes... the day just..." GUNSHOT "ends..."
"TO BE CONTINUED"
And you sit there on your couch going "WTF JUST HAPPENED? I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL EFFING SEPTEMBER TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS? IT'S FREAKING JUNE! ARE YOU INSANE? YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME!" And then you throw something at your TV and go on a homicidal rampage, oh wait... that last part's just me. [:
Happy stuff? I can do that!
I was expecting, like, 10 entries into the contest. Maybe. Instead, I got twenty-eight. I love you guys so much!
Winners The Liz Monster, thompbrl, griffindoranime, RWL, and Melpomene Lee. Congrats! I've already sent yall PMs, so just send me one back with your request and I shall set to work.
WARNING::: Hockey rant ahead.
BAHHHHH So, yall know how much and how hardcore I love my Cancucks and, if you don't, where the heck have you been? My babies, my beautiful boys in blue, they haven't won a game in a week. Which is not the problem. I accept every team has their slumps just the same as they have their win streaks. We've had our amazing month and a half streak without an in-regulation lose. We've been number 1 in the league since the first week of Jan. We only just dropped to number 2 yesterday. We're due for a schlump. It's cool. What's NOT cool, are all the freaking trolls that show up on our Facebook page just to be jackasses and say "OMG CANUCKS SUCK" or "WORST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE!" or "CANUCKS DON'T HAVE A CUP!" I'm so over it. I mean... they never post anything original! They just repeat the same lame insults over and over and over again. And most of them are completely irrelevant and/or incorrect! And their grammar! OH MY GOD, it's enough to make a teacher commit suicide! The Flames beat us in a shoot-out on Saturday (it was a completely ridiculous overturned call that I'm still not quite ready to talk about) and it was like we'd put out spiked candy or something! Trolls crawled out of the woodwork like termites. I don't mind that we're getting beaten right now. Don't get me wrong, I want them to win and I'm kind of tired of losing to teams that we should be beating, but I understand. We're getting beaten because every team we play brings their playoff game because they know we're one of the teams to beat. Our boys are exhausted, we know it, they know it, everyone know follows hockey knows it. They have to play May/June hockey every time they step on the ice. The other teams have to play it once every few weeks when they play one of the top teams. And four of our defensemen are out on injury - my Baby Bieksa went out in a fight on Saturday. Eye injury. Poor Baby Bieksa. - anyways! And then, when they beat us, their fans come troll. BAHHHH! So over this bull****. So, stupid trolling Flames fans, you can have the win. Consider it charity. We're still top of the West, second in the league. You're 17 points behind us, without a playoff spot, 2nd to last in the West and 23 in the league. You have oh so much to brag about. You beat us on a technicality that I'm still not convinced was correct. We're so proud of you. [[[[If you are a Flames fan who does not troll, I apologize.]]]]
I'm tired. And I have crap to do. THANKS FOR READING! I love you guys SOOOOOOO MUCH! I hope you like it and I hope there's no one out there with pitchforks and torches over the "TBC" bit... Please, tell me what you think - good or bad!
Love, Thalia
