"Hello Agent Hotchner. May I call you Aaron? Drop the formalities?" Foyet's voice was calm and confident with just a hint of malice. He stared at the camera and cocked his head like he was patiently waiting for a reply.
Reid watched as Hotch was staring down Foyet on the screen, caught in an imperceptible fight of will that Reid would never understand.
"I wish I could see the look on your face right now! Have you missed me?" Foyet inched
closer to the camera, a sickly smile spreading on his lips. Reid, almost by instinct, moved further back into the sofa, distancing himself from the manic eyes piercing through the tv screen. He wondered how Hotch could have outfaced this man without as much as blinking.
"You are probably wondering why I would waste my precious time recording this for you? First things first-I am dead. I promise."
A quiet sigh of relief was shared between them. Not that they could take his words for it, but it provided a mental confirmation of what they deep inside already knew. If Hotch hadn't
taken the matter into his own hands and killed Foyet with his bare fists, even Reid would have been suspicious. But he had seen the crime photos. There was no coming back from that.
"But did you really think it would end there? Come on, you know me better than that." The confidence in Foyet's voice put Reid on edge. He shifted in his seat nervously, his eyes looking anywhere but at the 40-inch flat screen in front of him.
Hotch was trying his best to keep himself calm. His body was seething with rage and he wanted to turn the video off. There was no need to sit through Foyet's taunts longer than necessary. He reached for the remote when he noticed something on the video. His heart skipped a beat. It couldn't be?
"Hotch, what do you see?"
Hotch was staring at a certain part of the tv screen with close attention. He could not take his eyes off it. It seemed oddly familiar, like a detail you wouldn't normally notice because it was part of your daily interior.
"I - I think that's me and Haley's bedroom."
Reid only had time to partly process the information before a woman's voice could be heard on the video. Reid watched as Hotch's whole body tensed, his eyes unconsciously searching for the woman who used to hold his shattered heart together.
"I will be right down ma'am."
Foyet looked at the camera with a mischievous smile that sent chills down Hotch's spine. He knew what would happen next. George Foyet would walk down his newly carpeted stairs, past old photos hanging on the wall of a once happy family, and cross through into his living room. He would walk up to his little son, ruffle his hair and tell him that everything would be alright before telling Haley a sweet lie and giving her the phone. The phone that was calling Hotch.
Foyet glanced towards the bedroom door before returning his full attention to the camera.
"I hear funerals are nice at this time of year. I would have attended but…." He moved his finger across his throat with added sound effects and stuck his tongue out in a mocking imitation of being dead.
The hint was subtle but the look on Foyet's face showed that he wasn't just having a casual conversation. He somehow knew the pain and loss that Hotch was going through and took great pleasure in reminding him.
Reid could not help but wonder how Foyet had known. Was the man really so confident in his plan that he knew he would end up killing at least one family member before being stopped? According to the casefile, nothing seemed to have gone the way Foyet wanted, but here he was, talking about a future outcome he knew nothing about.
A spark of anger ignited inside Hotch and he squeezed his hand into a fist. The fist that had ended Foyet's life that day on his dining room carpet. Reid was staring at the hand with concern. It twitched in Hotch's lap, fingers clenching and unclenching in time with his rapid breathing. Reid wanted to reach out, to signal Hotch that he wasn't alone in all this, but all he could do was sit paralyzed, watching.
"I wanted to send flowers but thought this would be much more personal." Foyet's voice pulled Hotch back to reality. He blinked a few times and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus on what Foyet was saying. His eyes were hurting and he felt a migraine coming on.
Next to him, Reid was stuck in his own little world, his mind working overtime trying to analyze every little word and punctuation in the video. If he knew Foyet right, nothing was coincidental. He had a plan.
"I offer you my condolences, my final gift. You're going to be reunited with your family very soon"
The last sentence made Reid's blood run cold. The message was delivered with such serenity and good will that, to a normal person, it would sound completely harmless.
"Hotch…I don't like this! he is up to something."
Reid glanced at Hotch, hoping to find him as concerned and alarmed by the message as he was but his boss's focus was somewhere else entirely.
Hotch could still hear Haley's voice softly in the background. She sounded happy. He closed his eyes and could picture her dimples as her mouth curved into a smile and the spark in her eyes she only got when she talked to Jack. He almost believed it for a moment before he realized the information she had been giving not long before. She would have been trying to ease the situation, still figuring out how to tell Jack his dad was gone. The reality of what was happening hadn't even hit her yet.
He felt his eyes water and moved his hand up discreetly to rub the tears away. What he wouldn't do to see that warm, caring smile again. To feel her soft hands caress his cheek and move up to run them playfully through his hair.
He wiped his nose and realized that he had been doing it ever since he sat down to watch the video. Discarded, used tissues were spread around him in growing piles. To his great annoyance, the last remaining piece was tightly secured in his hand, stiff and folded too many times to count.
"I instructed a loyal friend to bring this parcel to you on the off chance that you would kill me. You know me, always prepared. His name is Jason Wilkinson. You might have heard of him? He is ever so good with chemicals."
Reid froze. He recognized the name from one of his many late- night case readings he did before bed. It had been his fifth that night and even though his eyes were heavy with sleep and his brain threatened to shut down, something about this case had kept him up.
Jason Wilkinson was a former biochemist with a fascination for nerve agents and their effect on the human body. He started experimenting on single victims before releasing a canister in a small downtown cafeteria. Twenty people had died.
"Didn't they arrest him ten years ago before releasing nerve gas into a shopping mall?"
Hotch slowly nodded, too deep in his own thoughts.
"Unless he -" Reid continued eagerly before the image of Wilkinson appeared in front of his eyes and his heart stopped. The delivery man!
Reid was just about to turn to Hotch and share his realization when he was distracted by Foyet's voice on the video.
"Another talent of his was tiny inventions, specifically release mechanisms. Very handy when you want to release a small amount of vaporized poison in a specific direction. Are your gears turning, Aaron?
A sudden scary realization hit Reid like a speeding bullet and he looked back at the dining table in horror.
"You didn't open anything in the package, did you Hotch?"
Hotch stared straight ahead but his eyes weren't focused on the tv screen anymore. His mind felt fuzzy, and he struggled to concentrate. Something wasn't right. He had a bad feeling in his gut - but the feeling was more than just instinctive. It was a slow increasing pain. He squinted his eyes shut as another wave hit him out of nowhere, taking his breath away. All he wanted to do was to clutch his stomach and soothe the area, but he didn't want to alarm Reid.
"This gift was made specially for you. Can you feel it yet? The poison running through your body, corrupting everything in its path? Doing what I have always wanted to do: tear you up from the inside." Foyet's voice was gleefully manic and overexcited. This was a victory speech and they had lost the battle.
"Hotch?!" Reid's high-pitched voice made him look up. Reid was studying him with a face full of concern and fear.
Reid hadn't noticed till now just how ill Hotch looked. His eyes were pinpoint and unfocused, sweat was pouring off his forehead and his skin was sticky and pale. Eyes and nose were running like rivulets down his face, joining the shiny droplets on his skin before soaking his already damp shirt. He looked like a mess.
"Hotch, are you okay?" the fear was evident in his voice.
A deep nagging pain radiated through Hotch's abdomen. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on things around him, anything but the pain. He could hear Reid's panicked breathing next to him, the ruffle of his fingers through long thick curls as he was trying to think. Hotch turned his face away, not wanting to increase Reid's concern when he suddenly felt his whole world spin behind his eyelids. Slender fingers wrapped themselves around his arms and only then did he realize just how close he had been to introducing his forehead to the hard surface of the coffee table in front of him.
"I'm…okay" Hotch rasped through numb lips as he leaned back to regain his balance.
"Don't worry, your death will be slow, I have made sure of it."
The reality of the situation was crashing down on Reid. He had no idea what the toxin was or how it had been released but Hotch was clearly suffering from something that was in that package. He needed to think fast. Nerve agents usually took effect within seconds and death could occur within minutes to hours depending on the toxin. Hotch was already showing mild symptoms and it was impossible to tell how long he would have. If Foyet was telling the truth, this was a whole new concoction, something completely experimental and unknown. Reid dreaded what would be in store for Hotch in the next few hours – if he had that long.
Reid placed a hand on Hotch's back to get his attention and felt the soaked fabric of his shirt clinging to his skin. "Hotch, what symptoms are you experiencing?"
Hotch groaned and moved his head up slowly, every inch draining the energy out of him. He turned to look at Reid, his eyes drowsy and pained. Before he could open his mouth to talk, he saw Reid's face change from concern to horror, his eyes wide and scared and intensely staring at his upper lip. Hotch instinctively wiped his left hand across the area, already numb to the fluid dripping from his nose, and saw blood on the back of his hand. He looked back up at Reid, his face no longer hiding the fear and panic that was threatening to overwhelm him. This wasn't just his usual hay fever or the casual stomach bug he would sometimes get from Jack. This was terminal. He was dying.
Silence filled the small living room as both men were forced to come to terms with their new reality. The only thing that could be heard was the manic laugh on the video and Foyet's final words:
"See ya soon, Aaron."