(Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or its characters)

Just had this idea pop into my head the other day and I had to get it down before I forgot about it.

Please review. I'd love to know what you think :-) Go on... You know you want to. Don't be shy!

Chapter 1

"Morgan and Prentiss, take the front" said Hotch, as they prepared to enter the property, "Rossi, you're with me… We'll take the back…"

They all checked their vests and weapons before approaching. Hotch had already called it in to the local police, requesting backup, but they couldn't afford to wait. Adrianna Hernandez had been missing for over 14 hours and Garcia had only just narrowed the search to this address, one of three. Teams were heading to the other two locations, but the BAU team happened to be close to this one. If the girl was being held here then they probably only had a short window to save her.

As soon as Hotch and the other two began to make their way round the back of the property, Morgan motioned to Prentiss that he would take the lead and began to move forwards.

The property was a small wooden house in one of the rougher suburban neighbourhoods of Las Vegas; somewhere that people might label as 'white trash', but even in an area as poor as this one, the house stood out as being uncared for. The front yard was full of shoulder height weeds, making it difficult to find any kind of path, and blocking the view of the house inside. To make matters worse, people seemed to be using it as a dumping ground for old furniture and bags of garbage. There was a burnt-out couch and an old TV set, and even a mattress and what looked like a smashed up child's bed frame. Getting to the house was an obstacle course in itself, and given the warnings to 'KEEP OUT' that were spray painted on the once-white picket fence, Morgan wondered if there might even be booby traps hidden among the long grass.

"Watch where you put your feet" he whispered to Prentiss as he picked his way through the weeds, "Follow my lead…"

"Got it" she replied, carefully matching each of his steps, putting her foot exactly where his had been. They couldn't be too careful. The Jacobs brothers were known for placing explosive devices and even using animal traps.

Morgan got to the bottom of the steps and looked up at the house. It wasn't a welcoming sight. The windows looked like they hadn't been washed in years and to make matters worse, someone had taped brown paper bags all over the inside of them using duct tape. It was impossible to see in or out. The front door had wooden slats haphazardly nailed across the glass panels, with the words 'Go Away!' scribbled in faded black sharpie. On the wall between the door and the only front-facing window, someone had spray-painted the words 'I HAVE EYES TOO!'

'This is creepy as hell!' thought Morgan, 'Like some kind of freaky-ass zombie movie...'

He glanced at Prentiss, when she caught up with him. She gave him a little nod to say that she'd have his back and they both checked their weapons before continuing. If the Jacobs brothers really were holing up in here, then there was a good chance this could turn into a shootout pretty quickly. They needed to be prepared.

Morgan moved first. He placed his foot gingerly on the left side of the second step up and sighed in relief when nothing happened. The steps looked downright dangerous even without any booby traps. Some of them looked like they'd been smashed deliberately, as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to them, and intentionally left big gaping holes. Damage like that did not happen through wear and tear. The purpose was obviously to keep people away.

When they made it to the porch outside, they could see how dirty and unkempt the whole place was. The paint was peeling off the walls, and where it wasn't peeling it was cracked and bubbling. There was writing everywhere, warning people to 'go away' and warning what would happen to 'government spies' if they set foot inside.

As they readied themselves at the door, Morgan noticed an unmistakable smell emanating from the house. He grimaced at Prentiss when he saw that she'd caught it too. Something was dead inside this house! He just hoped it wasn't the little girl they were looking for! They'd all hoped so much that they'd got to this one in time. This poor girl brought the death count to 11.

"Hotch?" asked Morgan, speaking into his microphone, "Everyone in position?"

"In position" confirmed Hotch, and each of the others checked in too.

"Okay, go!" said Morgan, as he pulled back and gave the door one hard kick. It flew open with a loud bang and the back door banged open too with the sound of smashing glass. "FBI!" they shouted, "FBI, we're comin' in!"

"Clear!" shouted Prentiss, as she checked the back bedroom.

"Bathroom's clear!" shouted Rossi, "I'm gonna take a walk and look around outside..." He went back out through the kitchen frowning at Morgan as he went. He was clearly disappointed. They'd all hoped to find the girl. Time was running out.

Morgan pulled his phone out and stepped outside to call Garcia and give her the bad news. This wasn't the property they'd been looking for. They still didn't know where the kidnapped girl was. He also wanted her to inform local law enforcement that they'd be needing a CSI team to recover the body.

"There's no-one here" said Prentiss, returning to the living-room and grimacing at the sight of the decomposing corpse on the floor. She covered her mouth as she knelt down beside it to have a closer look. The body had obviously been there for some time, although the Las Vegas heat had probably sped up the decomposition somewhat. The smell was overpowering.

"No sign of a fight" said Hotch, scanning the area around the dead woman, "I can't see any wounds…" He used a pen to move the neck of her filthy blouse. She was very dirty. It looked like she hadn't changed her clothes for months before her death, perhaps even years. "No strangulation…" he commented, "No sign of any bruising…"

"There's no blood" agreed Prentiss, as she stared at the body, scanning it for possible stab marks. There were none. "This could be natural causes?" she suggested.

Hotch furrowed his brow. "Looks about forty years old… Heart attack maybe?"

"Don't speak too soon" said Prentiss, using gloved hands to move the sleeve on one of the woman's wrists. "I think… I think these are ligature marks?" she said, revealing dark black rings marking the flesh, "She's been tied up…"

"I'd say that rules out natural causes" said Hotch, as he peered around the gloomy living-room. If you could call it that.

There was no furniture, other than a single stained canvas deck chair, and an overturned cardboard box with dirty plates and cups on it. The room was full of congealing and rotting food, crumpled food containers, flies, and a huge line of 2 litre bottles full of a suspicious yellowy brown liquid. There was a mountain of garbage bags piled up in one corner of the room too, reaching almost to the ceiling. Everything had an air of decay about it. Everything felt dusty and grimy.

'This house gives me the willies' thought Rossi, as he exited the bathroom. No matter how long he'd been doing this job, he was still surprised at the depravity of some of the people they dealt with. 'How could someone live like this?! He stopped at a selection of photo frames on the wall and shuddered a little. There were photos of what had once been a seemingly happy family, but it obviously wasn't so happy anymore. He couldn't see the faces.

"All the eyes have been scratched out" he noted loudly enough for the rest of the team to hear, "Looks like someone took a knife to these photos... Someone has an anger issue..."

"Or a score to settle" said Hotch, "Maybe jealous of someone having a family... something they don't have?"

"I think it's more about the eyes following them... watching..." said Rossi, returning to the living-room, and looking down at the body, "There's a TV in the bedroom but the screen's covered in cardboard. Whoever lived here, they had a real problem with people looking at them…"

"Or looking at themselves?" Prentiss put in. "All the mirrors are taped over too... or smashed."

"It would explain all the windows" agreed Hotch, "Any reflective surface… Paranoid delusions…"

"Local PD are 10 minutes out" interrupted Morgan, as he walked back in and slipped his phone into his pocket, "There's been an RTC on Franklin Avenue… and Garcia says JJ's dealing with the family. Someone leaked it to the media that we were searching this house."

"Great" grumbled Hotch, "That's just what we need... A media circus..." He climbed back to his feet and started going through a pile of mail over by the door. There were hundreds of unopened unpaid bills.

Morgan ventured into the kitchen and glanced curiously at an old and discoloured child's drawing taped to the refrigerator. It showed a child holding hands with a man and a woman. The typical child's depiction of a family with a happy smiling sun overhead. It seemed thoroughly out of place in a house as sad and run down as this. He glanced back at the body of the woman on the floor and wondered dully if she might have had her child taken from her by social services. Wherever the kid was, they weren't here.

As he manoeuvred past mountains of rotting garbage he noticed a toaster that had been taped over and written on. 'You think I can't see you watching?!' it said in red ink. He shook his head as he lifted it with gloved hands and carried it to the doorway. "Hey guys, have you seen this?" he asked, "Do you think they might have cameras on us?"

"We'll get tech to do a sweep" said Hotch, "But I think it's more likely whoever lived here thought they were being watched…"

"Yeah, there's all the stuff about 'Government spies'?" said Prentiss, eyeing the torn out light switches and exposed wires in all the walls. She looked down at the body on the floor again. "They must have thought they were under surveillance…"

"Who's to say they weren't?" mumbled Rossi, as he began to walk around the living-room, trailing his fingers over the piles of well-worn books stacked in one corner. They covered subjects as diverse as texts on biochemistry and string theory, to Proust and Chaucer, to ancient looking books on French Renaissance paintings. Whoever lived here was obviously a scholar. It was also the only vaguely liveable area of the room, with a pile of blankets forming a cosy little nest for someone to sit on.

'There's a fine line between genius and madness' he thought to himself sadly. Was it this woman who had lived here in all this squalor? Was she the genius? Or had someone else brought her here and then killed her? That was the question.

Morgan walked over to a trunk that was sitting on the floor. It looked a little out of place given the filth and lack of furniture in the room. It was an old leather bound trunk. The type you get with metal rivets all around the edges. Old style, like something Harry Potter would have his things shipped to Hogwarts in. 'Oh man, I am spending way too much time around Garcia!' thought Morgan, when he found himself making the comparison.

He glanced at Hotch, for the go ahead, before tentatively flicking the latch open and then cautiously opening the lid. Part of him expected a bomb to go off but he breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened. What he hadn't expected was to see the chest filled with bricks.

He stared at it for a moment, wondering why on earth someone would fill a chest with bricks, when it suddenly dawned on him. It was so it couldn't be moved! He looked at the floor and saw that it was sitting on a raggedy old rug. He crouched down and moved the rug away, as much as he could, revealing the edges of what looked like a hinged trapdoor.

"Hey Rossi!" he shouted as he tried to move the chest, "Gimme a hand here! I think there's a trapdoor!"

Rossi wasted no time in helping, but even with two of them heaving, they couldn't move the trunk out of the way. Morgan dropped to his knees and began to lift the bricks out of the chest as fast as he could, and Rossi joined him.

"How did we miss that there's a basement?!" growled Hotch, as he dropped down beside them to help.

"There was nothing on the plans" said Morgan.

"And there aren't any windows on the outside" answered Rossi, as he continued to move bricks, "You'd never know there was anything down there…"

Suddenly JJ was helping too. Within moments they'd managed to empty the chest and slide the heavy wooden chest off the small wooden door. It was bolted, but luckily there was no lock. Morgan slid it back quietly.

Hotch pulled his gun out and nodded for everyone else to follow suit. Once everyone was ready, Rossi and Morgan hauled the wooden door up, revealing a set of wooden stairs that led down into a cramped basement. Although, it wasn't really a basement. It was more like someone had dug a hole in the ground under the house. Like a massive over-sized grave.

"FBI!" shouted Morgan, as he led the way down the stairs.

All was silent. There was no sign of the Jacob brothers. No crying kidnapped child. Nothing. Just the blue light of their flashlights sweeping across the room. It was basically empty, with only cardboard boxes piled in one corner, and a filthy single mattress in the other. On the mattress was a large pile of filthy rags, all greys and browns, like someone had torn a couple of sacks into shreds and balled it up. Maybe it was bedding of some sort? Maybe the woman upstairs had slept here?

'Someone obviously has been sleeping here…' thought Hotch, 'and going to the toilet too!' There was a very strong smell of human waste. So strong in fact that they began to cough.

"I don't get it" said Morgan, covering his mouth with his sleeve as he slowly moved towards the far side of the room, "If there's nothing here, why go to so much effort to stop someone coming down here? Why hide it?!" He trailed the light from his torch along the wall and frowned at the chain there that was attached to a thick metal pipe. It was looped around it and padlocked. He began to follow the chain across the floor towards the mattress…

"Maybe we're just too late" said Hotch, as he shook his head and opened the largest cardboard box in sight. It was empty. He kicked the other two boxes sending them flying across the room. "Dammit!" he snarled, "Where is she?!"

Morgan jumped when he heard a whimper by his feet. The sound was like a scared puppy. He found himself staring at the heap of rags on top of the mattress; it was larger than he'd first thought and he was nearly sure it had moved. Was it shaking?! He'd dropped his flashlight and was a little too nervous to bend down and pick it up. He glanced at the others before gently nudging the bundle of rags with his toe.

"Fuck!" cried Morgan, when it jumped up and scuttled back against the wall. There was a clank of heavy chain too. What the hell was it?!

"Oh, my God!" gasped Rossi, as he squinted into the gloom, "Is it… is it a dog?!"

Morgan cocked his head to one side and after a moment he knelt down beside the bundle of rags. It was shaking violently in front of him. "Hey… shh… shh… easy…" he coaxed, reaching out to it slowly like he would with Clooney, "Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm not gonna hurt you…" When it flinched back from him, he got a closer look, and saw a pale white hand swiping frantically back and forth in a protective motion. This was not a dog!

"Oh Jesus!" he groaned, as he turned to look at the other two, his eyes wide in shock, "It's a little kid!"

Hotch began to approach, a look of concern on his face. His eyes darted to a pile of excrement in the corner near the pipe. There was months and months' worth of filth gathered there. This child had been kept here long term and forced to live in their own waste. This obviously wasn't the child they were looking for. This wasn't Adrianna Hernandez. But who would do such a terrible thing?! Who would keep a child in conditions like this?!

Morgan gazed back at the small form in front of him. All he could really see was long tangled hair, skinny legs, and a slender feminine neck. "It's… I… I think it's a little girl?!" he said.

"Oh God!" groaned Hotch. The thought of any child being kept down here made his chest constrict painfully. What if someone did this to Jack?!

"Hey sweetheart" cooed Morgan, as he reached out a hand to try to see the child's face, "I just want to have a look at you…" He kept his voice as soft and soothing as he could. "I'm not gonna hurt you, baby…"

The child screamed and pulled away as soon as Morgan's hand made contact. It was more like the cry of a wounded animal than a human being. She was beyond terrified!

"Hey, hey, hey… shhh shhh shhh, easy, easy!" he soothed, holding his hands up in a conciliatory way, "I'm a policeman… I'm a policeman, sweetie, I'm here to help you… We're all here to help you…"

His words didn't seem to help. A curtain of greasy brown hair hid the child's face and a man's tattered brown cardigan hid the small body that was curled up tight against the wall. Even so, Morgan could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to breathe. When Morgan reached out again, shushing and murmuring comforting words of encouragement, all the child did was whimper pitifully. He managed to get hold of her chin and gently tipped her face up towards his.

"Oh sweetheart!" he said, with a sharp intake of breath. She was deathly pale, like a little ghost, and she had a dirty bandage wrapped around her eyes that was secured with duct tape. It was clearly soaked in old dried blood. The child was blind!

AN: So? Yes? No? Should I continue?