Chapter 53

Sheriff's substation

Cave Junction, OR

Morgan

"Well, I called in the SAR crews from the surrounding counties. That gives you bodies to work with at least." The sheriff said, coming through the door. "I've set aside the teams made up of my former men as they have the most training. You're also getting every officer that can be spared from the surrounding counties, but to be honest, that's not a lot."

"Thank you." Morgan said with feeling.

"The problem is they need a place to start. They're are miles and miles out there, and I seriously doubt that the back lot of Taylor's is the best place to start the search."

"That's what we're looking for right now." Morgan told him. They were back in the substation, going through the files, now at a frantic pace. The one we really need here, he thought, was Reid. Damn it all to…

Everyone jumped about ceiling high as Hotch closed his phone, looked around calmly and then slammed it down on the table. "What?" Emily asked him.

"Eight hours," Hotch told her. "The fog has come in; every airport from Portland to Los Angeles is shut down, including San Francisco. It's going to take eight hours for field agents from both cities to get down here and help us out."

…to hell, Morgan thought. Sometimes the Unsubs catch all the breaks, don't they?

"Think about it." Rossi told Hotch, "This Unsub likes to keep his victims alive, he held the Greige family for a month, we have time. Reid and Seaver are healthy and strong, we'll get them back; we just have to keep working the profile."

While Rossi had been talking Morgan had been taking a few steps backward. Now he was almost at the other end of the room. Emily frowned and headed over to him. "What are you thinking?"

"Horror movie crap." When Emily looked at him confused he continued in a low voice. "Remember what that Julio said, the one from Miami, good versus evil, right?"

"You think they were taken by Satan?" Emily's voice naturally dripped skepticism.

"No, but you tell me, why is this Unsub catching all the breaks? Why did they have to go missing in one of the most remote parts of the lower 48, in an area with no law enforcement, and with backup eight hours away? And now the weather has turned against us."

Emily just shook her head. "Rossi's right, they're strong and this Unsub doesn't kill right away. We'll get them back."

"Yeah, but if Julio is right the goal of the other side isn't to kill him, it's to get him out of the game. How many injuries like the ones Jeff Greige took would it take before he was too injured or too messed in the head to be a profiler anymore?" He took another step toward the back door and punched in lucky number 7.

"What are you doing?" Emily asked.

"I know it's all superstition, but I'm covering all my bases here. I'm calling in another set of troops."

Abandoned mine

Oregon

Spencer

Well they were right about the medical background, Spencer thought.

Once he had been well sloshed with vinegar to stop the reaction the Unsub had carefully cleaned the wound he had created. Spencer now had a long, open burn from an inch or so behind his wrist to an inch or so short of his elbow. Having it cleaned of the remaining chemicals and bits of dead skin had caused him to black out for some unknown amount of time. Now he was back in his cell and he realized that the wound had been carefully, tidily dressed. It's clean, he thought, and it didn't go through to the underlying tissues and if the Unsub keeps looking after it, it might even heal without infection. Granted that's going to leave one nasty scar. At the moment it just hurt, rather brightly. He sat there next to the bars with his arm cradled in his lap and tried to breathe the pain away. It worked for being shot, he thought, I did it then, I can do this now.

"Dr. Reid?" He heard Ashley's tentative voice calling to him from what sounded like very far away.

He opened his mouth to tell her he was awake and all right, but that took his concentration off building a wall around that pain, which allowed it to come roaring back. "Wait." He managed to gasp out before going back to breathing the pain away.

After a long moment he got control of it again. He could feel his breathing becoming easier, deeper, as the pain went over there somewhere and slowly began to stay there. Now if he just didn't move much…

"Dr. Reid?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"I'm just…I'm so sorry about all this. I keep thinking this must be my fault somehow. The others were talking about the victim's car in the parking lot and it just didn't seem that important. Maybe if I would have paid attention…"

"Ashley," he broke in because his arm was still throbbing and it was going to make him less than polite if she kept going. "Don't take this the wrong way, but when we get back you might talk to Hotch about rotating back into the rest of the FBI for a while. We deal with extreme cases in the BAU; you might be better able to process at this level with a few more years experience."

She was quiet for a moment. "I think you might be right." There was another pause. "Are you all right?" He saw her shake her head out of the corner of his eye. "That's kind of a silly question, I know, but…"

"My hand still works, if that's what you mean." He prepared himself, then flexed each finger and rotated his wrist. Rotating his wrist made the pain flair as the skin shifted, but he could still function. "It's just the skin. I'll heal. What did he do after I passed out?"

"Um, he bandaged you up and then he went away. He stopped to look at me though, and he was muttering."

"What did he say?"

"I don't know, I couldn't hear."

Damn it, that might have been helpful. "Keep trying, if he comes back."

"All right." There was a long pause. "Are you really getting married?" she asked.

What the hell did that have to do with anything? "Eventually, why?"

"Do you think…do you think she'll still want to? I mean, if he…"

"If I take an injury worse than this?" Spencer managed to move enough to look over at her. "Yes. I know she will." He frowned a little in confusion. Ashley was a beautiful woman, no doubt about that, and surely had dated in college. "I'm sorry."

"Why?" She asked

"You would only ask that if most of the men you've dated were so shallow they only cared about looks."

"Oh. No, it's not that. You know about my dad, right?"

"The Redmond Ripper," yes, he knew about her father. "What about him?"

"When most guys find out who I'm related to they take off running."

"Oh." He considered this as the pain tried to burble back to the front of his consciousness. He beat it back again before turning back to her. "You know, it's not in my primary file, but my Mom suffers from paranoid schizophrenia."

"Oh, I'm sorry." He could see the confusion on her face. "Isn't that genetic?"

He nodded. "It is. I have a six to ten percent chance of developing it myself in the next ten years." Not forty, he thought, I've never been so glad to be so wrong.

"Does your fiancée know?"

"Yes, she does. And she agreed to marry me anyway." The thought still amazed him, even now. He could still feel her yes against his lips, her body in his arms. "I know it's a horrible cliché but the right person won't care who your father is or what scars you take from here, internal or external."

"Internal or external?"

Spencer nodded. "This is, uh, the third time I've been held by an Unsub. The last time was the Benjamin Cyrus case."

"I heard of that one. I didn't realize you were one of the agents."

"It wasn't so bad for me, it was much worse for Prentiss. Well, except for the last part where Morgan and I nearly got blown up. But the time before that was the Tobias Hankel case." He slumped back against the wall. "That one didn't work out as well."

"What happened?"

"Kind of a lot." Spencer looked down at his arm and realized that this new burn had erased the track marks Tobias had left. That means something, he thought. "But Elizabeth loves me anyway."

"I guess that's good to know." He watched her pull over a bottle of water and drink. I should really do that, he thought, but at the moment I would just toss it back up. "Is it true, about your memory?" She asked.

"That I can't forget anything?" He watched her nod. "Yes, it is."

"If he does anything to me, please don't watch." She looked down at the bottle. "You shouldn't have to remember that too."

Spencer was about to say something when they heard the door open and footsteps come pounding down the hallway. The Unsub came into view, clearly agitated, angry, pacing back and forth and muttering. "Pretty," he said to Ashley. "You think he's pretty. You said he was so pretty, how could you do that? How could you do that!"

"I didn't say…" Ashley managed to stammer out.

But this Unsub was in too much of a break to even notice. "I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!" He howled as he ripped open the door to Spencer's cell and grabbed him, throwing him into the chair before the agent could react. "I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!" He howled as he did up the restraints. "I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!" He howled as he ripped Spencer's shirt away. "

I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!

I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!

I'LL SHOW YOU PRETTY!"