Commencement
Chapter 18
The crutches evoked a muscle memory in Reid's upper arms, which had managed to get him where he needed to go for far too many months, once upon a time…but that had been ten years ago. He might have been in better shape overall these days, but he was still vulnerable to pain, and sleeplessness, and volume depletion. The eighty yards that a healthy Spencer Reid might have covered in a minute or two might as well have been eighty miles, for the impaired version.
Each time the supports could find level ground, he thrust himself forward, praying for the next level ground, sometimes having to settle for the precariousness of the uneven, occasionally finding a ravine, and pitching forward onto his chest. Each time it happened, it was harder to pull himself up, and harder to ignore the increasing wetness on his thigh.
I am NOT going to leave her there, do You hear me? This is NOT going to happen!
He wasn't about to lose the best friend he'd ever had, one of the two most important people in his life. And he wasn't about to let her suffer what he had.
She's suffered enough.
Images of what she'd been through in Afghanistan, and then in DC, intermingling with those of the things he'd been through. If he'd had breath enough to realize, he would have noted that his own ordeal was being mentally represented by his memories of Georgia, and his memories of Milburn, and his memories of the echoing sound of a gunshot, in a loft somewhere in DC. Remembering it later, he would not be surprised at the intermingling of the three episodes of trauma. They had, after all, been the three most defining moments of his life. And JJ had been there at the end, for each of them. He was determined that he would be there, at the end, for her.
"She's not here!"
At Morgan's words, Emily flashed back to a cabin in the Georgia woods, to another time when the object of their search hadn't been where they'd expected. She hadn't known Reid all that well, back then, but she'd felt the urgency of finding a team member, and she'd felt the pain of each non-captive member of her team. This time, she shared that latter pain. And, to her surprise, she suddenly shared an insight.
"Reid was right! She's got to be in the woods!"
Somehow not realizing that he'd never actually verbalized that part of his belief. Not realizing that she had been pointed in a direction, nor how.
Rossi felt himself being carried along on the same wave of emotion, but either because he hadn't been in Georgia, or because he was too practiced in their enterprise to be carried away, he held the practical ground.
"We don't know that! We don't know where she is!"
He'd shouted the words as all three profilers ran back to their SUV. Once inside, Morgan turned the vehicle to head back to the spot where they'd dropped Reid, while Emily tried to raise their colleague, using Morgan's phone.
"Reid? Reid!" Yelling into the phone, despite the visible fact that the call hadn't gone through. She tried Penelope Garcia next.
"Garcia? She's not there! JJ's not in the cabin! Tell Reid we're on our way back to pick him up!"
There was a few seconds' delay, followed by, "Emily? I mean, Unit Chief Prentiss? Are you there?"
"We're here, Penelope! We need you to direct us back to Reid. Are you on with him?"
"Um….yes. Yes, I'm on with him….but he's not where he was. He went after JJ!"
"He went….what do you mean?!"
Emily exchanged looks of astonishment and frustration with her colleagues in the SUV, as Morgan rolled the vehicle to a stop. All three listened in, as Emily put Garcia on speaker.
"He went to save JJ! He told me to fill you guys in, as soon as you were in range!"
Demonstrating why she'd been made unit chief, Emily Prentiss plowed right through all of the astonishment and frustration, and got to the point.
"Where, Garcia? Which way did he go?"
Their tech analyst quickly sent the coordinates to the cell phones of the three in the SUV, and followed Morgan's directing of the vehicle.
"No, just….about twenty degrees southwest, and ….yes, you're on his path!"
Following the pinging of Emily's cell phone, carried by Reid, and Morgan's, in the SUV.
"He's about fifty yards….maybe a little less…. ahead of you. You should be able to catch up with him."
Except that they couldn't, on wheels. The forest had considerably thickened before them, and would no longer permit the use of the SUV. The three remaining would have to hoof it, as had their colleague preceding them.
"Point us, Garcia!' commanded her unit chief.
"I need whoever Is holding the phone to move, so I can see. Derek, is that you?"
"You know it, Baby Girl. This is my best guess at twenty degrees southwest. Am I good?"
Studying the image on her GPS screen, the tech analyst assessed the direction of her own best friend in the world and watched it alter its direction, just a little bit.
"Just…Yes! How did you know? I didn't even get a chance to say it! I was just thinking, really loudly, turn, Derek, five degrees….and you did it!"
The former profiler humored his long time best friend.
"Old habits die hard, Miss PG."
Rossi interjected, "Let's make sure it's only old habits that are dying today. We need a plan here."
Prentiss agreed. "Reid can't be that far ahead of us, and he's smart enough not to just plow in there alone unless he absolutely has to." Exchanging a grave look with her comrades. If Reid 'absolutely had to', it would mean that he thought JJ was in mortal danger "Garcia, he's still got my phone. Can you get us near him?"
"Can't you see him? He's only like fifty feet away from you!"
All three profilers on the far end of the call made a visual search of their surroundings, but were unable to see any sign of either of their injured colleagues.
"Kid's so skinny he can hide behind any one of these trees," observed Morgan.
"Text him, Garcia," ordered her unit chief.
"I've been texting him! He's not answering!"
Emily trusted Penelope Garcia completely. Still, it was worth stating the obvious.
"Are you texting to my phone, or his?"
"Both! Neither of them are answering! JJ's phone…..I mean, Reid's phone….is still only pinging GPS. And your phone…..by which I mean my Sweet Genius….isn't responding, either!"
The profilers conferred on what that might mean.
"He could have fallen again, or dropped the phone," offered Rossi.
"Or he could have passed out," added Morgan, before he could stop himself.
Emily caught it immediately. "Why would he pass out? Was his head injury that bad?"
Derek Morgan issued a silent apology to one long time friend as he fessed up to another.
"His leg injury. The wound is deep, and he's bleeding. He said he thinks he'll need surgery."
"Derek! Why didn't you tell me?"
Morgan stared into the familiar brown eyes. "Would you have let him come?"
"No! I would have sent him..… oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'."
Rossi understood both positions, better than either of them would ever know. He hadn't, after all, shared all of his stories in his books.
"Yes, he was wrong, and yes, he was right. No point in arguing the case now. Let's find him, and JJ, and get the hell out of here."
Fifty feet away, the cell phone in his vest pocket as he used his hands to lean on his crutches, Spencer Reid could neither see nor hear his approaching colleagues. But he could see the one he was most frightened for.
JJ lay on her side, immobile on the ground, her face largely covered by the blonde hair that had fallen across it. Her eyes were hidden from him, and that, more than anything else, had his pulse racing. He'd fallen into those eyes more times than even his keen intellect could count, finding solace, and encouragement, and sorrow, and love. But all he really wanted to see in them, this minute, was life.
Reid's pulse had already been racing, from both blood loss and the effort of making his way here. Now it skyrocketed with worry over the condition of his best friend. She hadn't moved at all in the two minutes he'd been watching her.
But she had to have triggered the phone, right? It didn't just turn itself on. That had to have been JJ!
Or maybe it hadn't been. Maybe the phone had been found by their unsubs. Maybe they'd triggered the signal to draw the other agents in. Reid tried to run the scenarios, but his brain wouldn't quite cooperate.
There are only three of them. They couldn't hope to take on the FBI. Or maybe they only wanted to take me on. Or Emily…yes, Emily! An FBI Unit Chief! That would be even more attractive to Linda than an SSA!
Had that been the plan all along? Had their victim-come-felon been using JJ as bait?
She's not that bright, is she? No, she's not, she couldn't be. This was a crime of opportunity. She had no way to know we would end the case by running an errand for her. She took JJ because she could, that's all.
Which meant, please God, that it had to have been JJ who had turned on the phone.
Please God.
Because the JJ he was looking at now didn't seem capable of turning on anything. Didn't seem capable of moving. Didn't seem….
He didn't realize how distracted he'd allowed himself to become until the hand was already over his mouth. Reid dropped his crutches and flailed, trying to break away from his assailant.
"Kid!" came the coarse whisper, "It's me!"
Morgan held his hand over the mouth of his friend until he could be assured that there wouldn't be a sound issuing from it. His other arm, wrapped around Reid's chest, felt the unsteadiness of his younger friend and tried to right it, even as his body felt the weakness in the younger man's own, leaning so heavily against him.
"Morgan!" Also whispered, though his widened eyes spoke an amplified message. Reid gathered himself quickly enough to inform the others. "JJ's there! But she's not moving!"
Coming up to Reid's position, each of them could see what he'd seen. JJ, lying still, and bound. Her captors just out of sight, but audible, presumably at the far end of the clearing.
"What are they saying?" Rossi couldn't quite make it out.
Emily put her finger in front of her lips, making the universal call for silence. All of them did their best to listen.
"She's FBI! They called the feds out for the others, and they were nobodys! Can you imagine what they would do for an agent?" From a male voice.
Responded to by the voice they all knew as Linda's. "You think we can let her go and they'll just forgive and forget? You fool! No, we've come this far, we're going to finish the job. Unless you'd like to be finished yourself?"
Morgan couldn't restrain a comment. "She's thinking she's got the other one under her control, if she's threatening the third."
The others nodded in agreement, even as they all watched their companion, begging for a sign of life.
Emily spoke the obvious. "If they're debating letting her go, they can't have hurt her too badly. Maybe she's playing possum."
Reid so hoped Emily was right. But he couldn't live with assumptions. He had to know. Thankful to his 187 IQ points, he split his attention between listening to the conversation among the unsubs, and the direction of a concentrated gaze toward the still form of his best friend.
I'm here. Can you feel me? I'm here. And I'm not leaving without you. None of us are.
He'd told her that they would have time. He'd virtually promised her that there would be time to unravel their past, and who they'd become to one another, and their present, and what had transpired between them, and their future, whatever it might hold, both together and apart. He wasn't about to abandon that promise.
Reid kept his gaze fixated on the blonde hair, and his image of the face that lay beneath it. His eyes presented him the form lying on the ground, but his mind presented him a thousand smiles, and frowns, and grimaces, and tears. Only for him. He'd been the only one she'd shown her tears.
JJ! Please, JJ! Look at me!
They all heard the unsubs continue to argue among themselves, Linda insisting upon 'finishing the job', and her unseen subordinate pleading to let the FBI agent go.
"Just leave her here! If they find her, it's just kidnapping. And, if they don't…..well, at least it's not murder!"
"You fool! You think if we just leave her here to die, they'll be forgiving?! Once we took her, we were committed. And, once committed, we may as well enjoy ourselves."
Both Reid and Emily shivered at the words, even knowing that they would never allow the trio to hurt someone they cared about so deeply. But they couldn't know what might already have been done to her.
Reid swallowed down bile that wanted to rise at the very thought of JJ having been violated. She was fully clothed right now, which gave him some hope that there had not been purposeful torture or sexual assault. But that didn't mean they hadn't hurt her at all. Why else would she be lying there?
His gaze hadn't wavered for many minutes. Looking back, he would wonder if he had even blinked. But he could still hear the unsubs talking. And then he saw movement, and heard the sound of a woman's voice.
"I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or ever. But I know that I'm going to have some fun today."
The amplitude of the sound indicated that Linda was moving as she was speaking, and soon enough, she was in view. Holding a branding iron, moving ever closer to JJ.
"You're mine now, Bitch!"
Reid kept his eyes locked on the head of his best friend, but Prentiss and Rossi exchanged a glance. They'd thought the branded 'B' found on the other victims had stood for Barry, their apprehended unsub.
"The 'B' was for 'Bitch'," observed Rossi, who had long since learned to state the obvious, in case it was only obvious to him.
Reid grabbed for his crutches, intent on making sure Linda never got close to JJ. But Morgan pulled them away.
"We'll take care of it, Kid. I don't want you getting caught in the cross fire."
Which was precisely the problem. When they hadn't been able to see the unsubs, they'd had no idea whether one might have a weapon trained on their captured colleague. Now, Linda had moved into view, followed by her husband, who carried a gun in his hand. If the BAU went in with guns blazing, there was no guarantee JJ wouldn't pay the unintended price.
Reid sent forth yet another silent summons. JJ! Don't give up! We're here! I'm here! Show me that you know!
Later, he would wonder if it had happened as he remembered, or if his mind had conjured a fantastical memory for him. But, just as he was about to involve the heavens in his plea once again, there was a movement. Just the slightest movement, but it was enough to make the hair fall away from her eyes, and he could see her! Could see her eyes, which were blessedly open, and blue, and intelligent, and loving, and..
Without consulting with his colleagues….without even consulting with his own mind, if he was honest….Reid pulled away from Morgan, and moved just a few feet closer, to a space between the branches of a bush.
And it was enough. As though she'd noticed the movement, JJ's eyes blinked in a rhythmic pattern, and Reid was sure that she'd seen him.
While the others concocted a plan to storm the clearing, Reid kept his eyes riveted on JJ's, inexplicably convinced that he could communicate with her. Not so inexplicably, when their gazes caught, and held, and reassured, and instructed.
Roll! Now!
Which she did, just as the three mobile profilers ran into the clearing, guns at the ready, shouted voices issuing commands. Gunfire flew in both directions, a stray bullet winging Rossi's left arm. Reid swung in behind his comrades, passing right through the clearing, and into the underbrush where JJ had obediently sought cover. Finding her, he threw off his crutches, and laid himself over her, her shield in a twisted crusade.
They exchanged no words until the brief firefight was over, and they could hear the sound of their colleagues calling for them.
"Here!" shouted Reid. "We're okay!"
Then, more softly, to JJ, as he rolled off her, and removed the duct tape from her mouth.
"We are, aren't we?"