Though Sandy Jareau came from family money and then some, she preferred things quiet now. Had she gone down the road of elitism, like it had been expected of her, she would have never met her husband, married him, or given him three beautiful babies. Dashiell had been her best friend, and they'd had such adventures together.

Certainly the most memorable times were when they'd lived as nomads, traveling with different charity groups to Third World countries, helping to distribute food and build schools and clean-water wells. They'd loved every minute of it, but stopped and finally settled permanently when they realized that Archer was on the way.

Some of their crazier accounts, though, included Sandy and her husband, as well as their colleagues, getting kidnapped by local opposing forces that weren't too pleased to see them. As a result, Sandy learned quickly about survival instinct, and she was always able to think of an escape route and get everyone out without losing a single person.

She was a confident that she could escape form Oscar Lee because he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed and also because she was in a city that she knew like the back of her hand. Things were different this time around because she had a family and a whole host of people who had to be looking for her now, and she also had bad asthma now. It had developed just after Archer was born and gotten worse with age, but she always carried her inhaler and a refill cartridge in her purse… which she had been forced to abandon in the mall parking lot.


"The old fish cannery, Oscar?" Sandy questioned when she realized where they had gone to. "Really?"

"Shut up!" Oscar snarled as he gave her a jab in the back with his gun. "And you're my hostage, so you're in absolutely no position to protest!"

Sandy had already decided back in the parking lot that she was going to go down the route of 'show no fear,' but Oscar Lee had already made a flub: the factory, now abandoned for years and years, was now frequently used by squatters wanting to sleep and local kids looking for a place to have drinking parties. They were bound to get discovered even faster now.

Oscar Lee had led Sandy to one of the rooms on the second floor, and the large conveyer belt in the middle of the room told her that this was where the actual packaging of the fish had taken place. Another surveillance of the room told Sandy that Oscar Lee had been sleeping here, now that people were looking for him.

A sudden fall brought Sandy back to her senses—Oscar Lee had pushed her down, and now she had to act quickly to catch herself. Luckily, she didn't break anything when she landed.

"What do you want?" Sandy demanded. "You know I have my family and the FBI looking for me by now! Are you going to shoot me?"

Oscar Lee spoke in a mocking tone. "Shoot you? I'll only do that if you don't cooperate with me because I don't need you forever."

"Then what's your plan?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

His plan was to cross the border into Florida because he had a friend who could help him escape to Cuba.

"Okay, fine. Then at least tell me why you've been doing all this killing? I've known you since you were in your mama's belly, Oscar Lee, and I remember you as a bully, but never once did I believe that you go so far as to kill people, especially innocent ones like my nephew Tinsley! You knew for his entire life, so why?"

"I killed him and all the others because they got too close!" he yelled, perilously close to screaming.

"To what?" Sandy demanded, unfazed.

Oscar Lee didn't answer because he had suddenly become aware of someone, probably a squatter, entering another part of the warehouse. On instinct, because his territory was being invaded, Oscar Lee prepped his gun, ready to shoot it as he figured out his next plan of attack.

"Oh, please don't shoot whoever it is that's down there!" Sandy begged. "No more innocent people have to die!"

"Shut up!"

For Sandy's begging, she earned herself a whack on the head and she passed out.


Back at the station house, Penelope and Rossi had been joined by Captain Ryder to help make sense of all the chaos, namely the security camera footage of what had happened at the mall.

They were able to not only see the abduction, but also Emily collapsing and even which way the car had gone. Spotting the car also proved a stroke of luck because Penelope was able to get a clean snapshot of the license plate, and she gave the information to Ryder, who immediately left to her office to issue a notice about it.

While that was happening, Rossi was next to Penelope, poring over a paper map and marking certain areas of it.

"Hmm…"

Next to him, Penelope looked up from her laptop and said, "Okay, I'll bite. What is it?"

"Oscar Lee drove the car due northeast, according to the footage," he said, tracing a certain route so Penelope could see it. "But from reports, I see that that that direction leads to sort of 'No Man's Land' area."

"Oh?"

Rossi did a quick double-check between his map and a summarized version of the reports he had laying next to it. "The thing is, all of the properties out in this direction are all abandoned."

"Just how much constitutes as 'all'?"

"Six."

"Six?"

"A shoe factory, two different food processing plants, a tractor manufacturing plant, a fish cannery, and a slaughterhouse."

Penelope shuddered. "The vegetarian in me is hoping that we don't have to go to the slaughterhouse, but you're thinking that Oscar Lee took JJ's mom to one of these places?"

"Uh-huh, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that he killed of his victims at whichever place he's picked as his. The question is, which one?"

Penelope nodded in understanding and fired up her laptop. "I'll do a more thorough background check on him, and—oh…"

Rossi raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Garcia?"

The flamboyant woman had paused in her keyboard typing and was now leaning back in her chair, gliding her hands over her baby bump.

"I'm fine, sir. Just hungry." she told him. "I don't remember the last time I ate, and the baby is unhappy with me about it."

Rossi got to his feet immediately. "I'm actually hungry, too, now that I think about it, and I saw a food vending machine out in the hallway that looks like it dispenses meals. It isn't the healthiest thing for an expectant mother, but I'll go get what seems the least greasy."

"David Rossi," Penelope grinned at him. "You are a godsend."

"I aim to please, kiddo. Is there anything else you would l—"

BOOM! WOOSH!

The rest of the inquiry was drowned out by a very sudden thunderclap, followed by a very brief power outage that coincided with a sudden downpour of rain. In a different part of the building, a back up generator kicked in and light was returned.

The captain came hurrying in just after that.

"I issued the BOLO you asked for just before the power went out," she said. "But it looks like we're all going to be staying here until the rain lets up. The generator will keep things running, and it's a powerful one, so it won't shut out until everything is back to normal."

Reassurred, Rossi turned to Penelope. "You fill the good captain in on our breakthrough, and I'll go get food."

Penelope agreed and began explaining things to Ryder as she sat down beside her. The technical analyst threw herself into explaining things because she was very worried for JJ's mother.

All she wanted was for this case to end well.

As for Sandy, she came back to consciousness not long after Oscar Lee left the room, and just in time because she'd been woken by gunshots. Oscar Lee was in a gunfight with the intruder.

Sandy covered her ears and hid.

When it was over, she waited to see if Oscar Lee would come back up. He didn't, because as it turned out, he'd been shot to death by a squatter who had also been armed. And like Oscar Lee, he was dead, too. They'd kill each other in a territory dispute.

It wasn't like Sandy had never seen a dead body before, but she forced herself to clear her thoughts as she rifled through Oscar Lee's pockets for the keys to DeLilah's car.

Finding them, she hurried out into the pouring rain and got into the car because it was in the main yard where Oscar Lee had parked it. Sandy started the car and drove off, wanting to get back to her side of town in one piece.

Sure, that had been one of her easier escapes, but she still had to drive through the rain while concussed.

Her biggest hope was that she didn't accidentally drive off the road before she made it safety.