Chapter 51

Hedrick Medical Center
Chillicothe, MO
01/15/06

Hotch

Of course they didn't go home the next day. They found the bodies of seventeen young women in the woods. And the living ones might not be as far from joining them as hoped.

Hotch ended up not spending the night at the hospital. Linda Yamamoto had shown up with two of her agents in tow even before they left the ER. "She's engaged to someone in your unit, right?" She'd asked.

"Yes."

"Well if what we saw out there is any indication she may be losing what little is left of her dignity tonight. I don't think she'd like that to happen in front of her husband's boss. Let me loan you a couple of people to sit with her overnight."

Good point. "All right, I'll go back to the hotel as soon as she's settled in for the night." By the time he got back to the room she was sitting up, more or less, and was slowly braiding her hair into pigtails. "Darlene brought those by?" He asked, nodding at the items on the table in front of her.

"Yes. Mmm, I'm almost too loopy to do this." She rested her head back against the bed a moment. "But I'd like to recognize myself in the mirror again."

"I assume they did that." Hotch could still remember when one of his aunts had cancer, how she had cried and cried over the loss of her hair, how deeply it had affected her self-esteem. He hadn't remembered that until Sheri brought it up, there was so much else going on. Not that Milly had lost her hair, but such a radical change, if unwanted, would have a similar effect, especially given results that were unattractive at best.

"No, they made me do it." She replied, looking at herself in the small mirror Shari had brought. "They said if I didn't they would send me back to The Cages and I just…I couldn't…" She crumpled up in remembered fear and distress.

Damn. "Shhh, it's all right. You don't have to talk about it if you're not ready." The Cages. Mental note to ask Linda.

After a moment she shuddered and came out of it. "He said I was the most beautiful thing, and I always would be to him." She sighed a little and looked so hopeless his heart ached. "I hope he was right about that."

Somehow Hotch knew exactly which 'he' Milly was referring to. "He was." He said, trying to give her some kind of hope. "One of the women who works with us, Penelope Garcia…" She nodded in recognition. "…does pretty wild things with her own hair. I'm sure if there's a way to help she'll find it."

Milly sighed, but also almost smiled. "I've been hoping I could find a way to make it look decent while it grows out. Dad never wanted me to cut my hair." After a moment she managed to rouse herself long enough to get the bandanna over her head and look in the small mirror. The braids and bandanna hid most of the color and you couldn't tell if it was curly or not. "There. I look like I'm going to Krav class. God knows if I'll ever do that again." She settled back and sighed. "I think I really want to do that again."

"Then you will." He replied. "It will just take time and effort to get there. You should rest now."

"Please don't go." She implored as he got up. "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"I don't want to go back there. I can't do that anymore."

"You're not going back there." He tried to sound as reassuring as he could; it was an understandable if irrational fear. "No one here is going to let them take you."

"How do you know you can trust them?" She asked, earnestly. "How do you know this place is safe?"

Hotch sighed. The problem was he didn't think he could lie. If she was anything like Reid she'd spot it in a heartbeat. "I don't. That's why there will always be at least one FBI agent here until you're well enough to go back to DC. And that's why I'm not going anywhere, I'm just going to step outside and see when we're going upstairs, and you should rest."

Milly sighed. "All right, I just hope we can go home tomorrow."

"That's what they're telling me. I'll be right outside." He stepped out and sent a quick text to Reid.

Surplus store in Quantico. Bandannas. Lots.


That was yesterday.

Once Milly was settled into a room in the hospital, once she's had her supper of broth and jell-o, which she found far too tasty for his liking, and once she was clearly nodding off Hotch left her in the care of the nursing staff and two of Linda's agents and headed back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. In the morning there was a shower, a breakfast during which he got an update from Morgan that he wished he didn't have to hear and then he headed back to hospital just in time to encounter well organized chaos. It all seemed to be centered on three rooms, one of which was Milly's. "What's going on?" He asked the agents from the night shift.

"Don't know yet, sir." The agent replied. "She had a relatively quiet night…."

"Relatively?"

"About 4 am she said her stomach was hurting and a couple of the staff took her to the restroom down the hall. I honestly didn't ask. She seemed to be feeling a lot better when they put her back to bed though. Then this morning, near as I can tell some of the other girls started having some kind of attacks and then she had one about twenty minutes ago. She got pretty agitated and then she started turning bright red right in front of us. We called in the nurse and got out of the way."

Great. No point in asking why they didn't call, it just happened. "All right, you two are relieved. I'll put in a good word with Agent Yamamoto. Go get some rest." Almost as soon as they left the doctor was coming up to him. "I'm Milly Bennett's guardian. What happened?"

"Thank god." She shook her head and led him out of the line of traffic. "Early this morning some of the girls started having these high fever episodes. They're fine one minute, then they get agitated, say something's happening, next thing you know they're temperature is going up as high as 104, they're getting flushed, breaking out in a sweat, elevated pulse, saying they're getting light headed and dizzy. And roughly five to ten minutes later their temp suddenly drops back to normal. I have no clue what it is or what's causing it."

"Could it be drug withdrawal?"

"Possibly. Not from the Loperamide. But I saw the list of what they had out there, who knows what they were on."

Hotch sighed. "Unfortunately the one person who could get through those notes quickly enough is the one person I can't bring out. So what do we do now?"

"We don't have the resources to tackle this; we're sending all the girls to Children's Hospital in Kansas City, which means I have to get a judge in here to start signing transfer orders."

"Why not their parents?'

"You're the only parent here. I have four girls caught up in custody battles and the rest of the parents aren't speaking to us. They sent their daughters away to be trained to follow the Lord and that's what Pastor Carl was doing. We should never have taken them out of the school. Now if we're going to lead them into sin again we can just keep them." She sounded utterly disgusted with the whole sorry affair.

Hotch couldn't blame her for that. "It's been an ongoing problem with this investigation."

"Yeah, well what do I tell these girls?"

"Tell them…that sometimes God works in very mysterious ways and He'll help them find safe homes. At least it might give them some comfort."

"And that's about all I can do. Thank you for being a reasonable parent."

"Guardian, not parent."

"Close enough in this case." She passed him a clipboard full of forms a nurse had handed to her, "Any kids of your own?"

"One, he's just over three months. What is all this?"

"Well he's got a good father. Transfer orders. By virtue of having a reasonable guardian your girl gets the first bus."


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Note: This chapter has a previously posted cut scene over at the LiveJournal account associated with this story.