Essential Listening: Battle for the Sun, by Placebo

0o0

"How did you get hurt?" Dave asked, walking back into the front room of the farmhouse.

In the bed, a flash of anger passed over Mason Turner's face – quickly hidden, but Dave had seen it, all the same.

"What difference does it make?"

"None, I guess," he said and started towards the kitchen, where Garcia was diligently pulling the digital innards out of Turner's laptop.

"My brother pushed me out of the loft," Turner said, abruptly. Dave let him talk. It was one thing narcissists were consistently qualified for. "I wanted to sell the farm. I had just finished medical school. It would have given me a nice down payment on a practice in the city."

"But the farm was all he knew," Dave surmised.

Mason quirked an eyebrow. "Lucas doesn't handle angry well," he said, and of all the things he had said, this sounded the truest. Mason laughed.

"Is that why you hate him?"

Mason looked momentarily confused. "Hate him? He's done nothing but take care of me every day since then."

Dave considered this. "You said not to even try talking to him, if we find him," he pointed out. "That sounds like you want us to kill him."

"But… that's not hate," said Turner, with a small smile. "That's a favour. My brother couldn't survive without me."

Dave turned away. He was wrong, but there was no point telling him that.

0o0

Penelope rubbed her temple. She had retreated from Turner's laptop with its damning research. Everything that could be extracted from it had been, and sifting through and analysing that crap would be a task for different minds than hers. Now, she was focused on tracking and tracing every aspect of the Turners' lives – though there wasn't much on Lucas, since his brother had handled most of the paperwork until his injury, and still seemed to be controlling it via Lucas now.

She looked up when Rossi stuck his head through the door. "Anything else?"

"Nothing that'll help find his brother," she told him. "There's that cell phone he calls dozens of times a day, but that appears to be off. And I tried to activate the GPS tracker on it, but I think it's an old phone, so that's not gonna work either."

"Will you know if it comes on?" Rossi asked.

"I hope so."

"Let me know."

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Keep at it."

She nodded, cricking her neck and preparing to deep dive into the minutae of the asshole of the month's life. She resurfaced some time later, when JJ came in with two cups of takeout coffee.

"Hey, how's it going?" she asked, handing the second cup over.

Penelope sniffed it, decided that field station coffee was worse than random Police Department coffee and put it to one side. "Just waiting for –" she began, but just then an alert shot up on the screen. She gasped. "Oh, my God! The phone just turned back on!"

Thirty seconds of frantic attempts at geolocation later, another, bigger alert flashed up on the screen. "Oh, my God!" she exclaimed again. "Agent Rossi! The phone is calling in!"

He hurried in and she answered it.

"Hello? Hello? My name is Kelly."

Pushing down the very real possibility that she was about to have a heart attack, Penelope found her voice. "Kelly, this is Penelope Garcia. I'm with the FBI."

"Oh, My God, you have to help me," she cried, bordering on hysteria. "I'm somewhere in the woods being held by a man named Lucas…"

Somehow, the bat signal had gone up because Reid and Grace ran in, closely followed by Hotch and Detective Bedwell.

"Kelly?" Penelope asked.

"And he's – oh, my God!"

A second voice joined the first; a man's voice. Lucas.

"That's mine!"

"Help me!"

The call cut off abruptly.

"The phone's disconnected."

"Garcia, can you find the signal?" Hotch asked urgently.

"No, I… wait!" she replied, thinking fast. "Yes! I'm hooked into the system. I should be able to – got it! It's just west of here, less than half a mile."

Hotch stared at her. "That's all you can tell?"

Penelope shook her head, exasperated. "It's in the woods. There aren't any reference points."

"Get the coordinates to my GPS and let Morgan and Prentiss know in the field," Hotch instructed. "Dave, Reid, Pearce – let's go."

0o0

The unrelenting sounds of horror levelled off and faded as the SUV thundered along the track, for which Grace was grateful. It was a lot easier to focus on a chase and takedown without the noise howling in the back of her brain.

"Almost there?" Rossi asked, from the driving seat.

"A couple hundred yards," Hotch replied, from the front.

Grace shared a glance with Spencer as they helped each other into their vests and clipped on their earpieces.

"I still have a bad feeling about this," he whispered, as the SUV bounced along.

"Me too," she admitted.

They pulled up when the dog team crossed onto the road in front of them. Morgan and Prentiss paused, waiting for them to catch up, before they all plunged into the woods, following the map on Hotch's phone.

"Should be right here!" he said, as they reached a clearing. "This is where the signal came from."

They looked around.

"There's nothing here!" Morgan shook his head.

Prentiss yelled, "Kelly!"

They fanned out, shouting the girl's name, but there was no response.

"We're in exactly the right spot!" Hotch said, sounding unusually desperate. "Alright, everybody split up."

Grace was checking a particularly dense section of undergrowth in case she was unconscious inside it when Spencer shouted, "Guys!"

She turned to find him leaning over what looked like a trapdoor, half covered with leaves. They gathered around it, guns ready, then Reid opened it. The opening was clear, so Hotch took a step forward.

"Kelly Shane?"

"Down here!"

Grace heard her say something else, but it was muffled, as if she had turned away.

"She's not alone down there," she said.

"Lucas doesn't manage his emotions well," Spencer reminded them as one by one, the team dropped down the ladder.

It wasn't an unpleasant space, Grace thought, straightening up – a bit sparse and illuminated by fairy lights. Like a kid's hidden den.

"Lucas Turner, this is the FBI!" Hotch announced, prowling down the tunnel.

Grace spotted them, over his shoulder: a slight, filthy girl, sobbing and trying to protect the enormous man behind her. He was sobbing, too.

Her heart clenched. This wasn't going to go well.

Prentiss and Hotch got to Kelly and pulled her back.

"Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him! Lucas, just put your hands up, okay!" she cried.

They funnelled Kelly back along the tunnel, past the tactical team that had come in behind them. Grace looked around: Spencer had stayed outside, but Rossi and Morgan were in front of her.

"Lucas, just keep your hands up and stay where you are," she said, trying to be heard amongst the shouting. "You're okay. It'll be okay."

Tactical weren't helping – they were shouting for him to get on the ground, the red dots of their laser sights flashing in his eyes. He was getting to his feet, face constricted with fear and anger.

Lucas doesn't manage his emotions well, she thought, in Spencer's voice.

Just for a moment, she had the closest thing to a premonition she had ever known: the world focused down to a pinpoint of screaming and blood. Morgan yelling for the tactical team to stop. The tactical team opening fire. Lucas lying dead on the floor.

Whatever he had done, Mason Turner had clearly been the instigator here – and the way Kelly had tried to protect him…

"No," she said aloud and closed her eyes.

Morgan started yelling, "Stop! Stop!"

The tactical team opened fire – or tried to. Every single gun in the bunker jammed at once. They gave shouts of alarm.

Grace opened her eyes and twisted the fingers of her hand – still keeping them on the gun, as far as was possible – and Lucas, who was one step into a bullish charge, tripped over a tree root that hadn't been there a moment earlier.

She, Morgan and Rossi threw themselves forward. Even on the ground, Lucas was capable of a lot of force.

The added weight of the tactical team helped, though Grace had to 'accidentally' kick one of them very hard in the shin when he started using more force than necessary.

They got him to his knees. "Lucas. Lucas, look at me," Grace said, as the others did their best to keep him in place. "My name is Grace. You're going to be okay. You're fine. We need to keep these cuffs on you for a little while, okay?"

Behind her, the sound of someone half falling off the ladder suggested Spencer had come down into the bunker.

"Lucas," he said breathlessly, "Kelly told us you're her friend. That's right, isn't it?"

Lucas' eyes focused on his.

"Kelly… my friend?"

"Yes, she wants you to come up with us, quietly. Can you do that?"

"I'm bad, I'm bad!" he mumbled, and burst into noisy tears.

Most of the resistance went out of him, which made two tactical agents topple over from the lack of it.

"Can you come up into the woods with us, Lucas?" Grace asked.

He was crying too hard.

Rossi broke away from the group and murmured to the nearest tactical officer that they would probably need to sedate him, so the EMTs that came for Kelly would need to be prepared. The tactical team were calmer, now. It wasn't that Lucas was no longer a risk – he was a very large man – but they seemed to understand that there would be another way to get him out of here than in a body bag.

0o0

JJ and Garcia were waiting in the farmhouse kitchen for an update from the rest of the team when they heard the gunshot. It shook the house, it was so loud. Garcia jumped out of her skin – JJ wasn't much better. She motioned for Garcia to stay put, pulled out her gun and moved into the front room, where William Hightower was lowering the shotgun.

One look at Mason Turner told her that he was very much beyond help.

Calmly, Hightower put down the gun and lay down on the floor, putting his hands on the back of his head. By the time the first of the scattered officers outside skidded through the door, JJ was cuffing him, feeling somewhat numb.

"What the hell did you do that for?" she asked, walking him out the front door.

"All those people," said William mournfully. "And you couldn't have proved he was the one. He never even touched them. He said it himself – I heard him. He was unprosecutable. He'd have got away."

"We'd have found a way," she said, piloting him towards the few members of the Canadian Police Force who hadn't been called away to the woods.

"I couldn't take that risk. I owed it to Lee," said William, looking over at that tarp full of shoes. "And the others."

JJ tutted, handing him over, but couldn't find a thing to say aloud. He had become the Turners' final victim – but she couldn't actually find it in herself to think of the shooting as a bad thing.

She wondered what that said about her.

0o0

It wasn't a long drive home from Quantico, but Grace was already asleep when they pulled in, and when he shook her shoulder to wake her she didn't seem at all surprised to find herself in the parking garage behind his apartment. Instead, she stretched like a cat and massaged her shoulder.

"Want me to walk you home?" Spencer asked, as she gathered herself.

"No, you're good," she said sleepily. "I mean, if you don't want the company, feel free to kick me out, but –"

Spencer chuckled, leaned over and kissed her neck.

"I'll take that as a no," she remarked, with a laugh.

At some point in the days they had been in Canada the weather had broken, so the evening air was almost chilly, though not unpleasantly so. A fine, delicate rain had set in soon after they had landed, and it was still filling the air with moisture as they rounded the front of his apartment building. By the time they opened his front door they were both uncomfortably soggy.

They dumped their bags in the hall, pushing damp hair out of their faces. Spencer's eyes fell on the couch, which was still in disarray. Sunday afternoon felt like a lifetime ago.

"Ever feel like you just aged ten years in one week?" Grace asked, and he realised she was following his gaze.

"After this one?" He shook his head.

"That case was brutal. Glad that bad feeling we had was limited to Turner." She yawned, stretching again, and he tried not to think about the way her damp clothes clung to her body.

A trickle of cold water ran down the back of his neck from his hair, dispelling the image.

"Yeah… I'm gonna jump in the shower. You want one after?"

"Sure," she said, and shot him a smile halfway between affection and smirking.

He decided he could get used to that.

Thirty minutes later, feeling far more comfortable, he was midway through making grilled cheese sandwiches when Grace emerged from the bathroom.

He glanced in her direction and couldn't help his eyes roving over her long legs, her shorts, the loose, slouchy grey sweater that partially obscured them and the straps of her pyjama top, just visible beneath it.

Oh good lord…

As she went to sort out the couch, he had a sudden flash of the way she had ducked under his arm at the border post to get a better look at the map. For a second he could feel her there still, body pressed between him and the bonnet of the SUV.

"Ouch," he exclaimed, and dropped the knife.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just cut my finger. It's nothing."

Grace came over and checked it out. "You must be really sleepy," she remarked.

She hopped up onto the counter beside him, stealing a slice of cheese from the chopping board.

"I'm so glad Hotch doesn't want us in tomorrow," he said, no longer paying a great deal of attention to throwing the sandwiches together.

"Mmm. I mean a whole week would be nicer, but I'll take the opportunity for a lie-in…"

They shared a wry smile.

Spencer had to reach behind Grace to put the bread away, so he took the opportunity to place himself between her thighs and kiss her soundly. He could feel her laughter against his mouth even as she returned the kiss and wound her arms around his neck. Her legs hooked around his, pulling him flush against her, and he kissed her lazily, trailing his fingers over her sides and hips.

There was a sense that they both knew that this wasn't going anywhere – at least for that night. They were too tired, the case too horrifying and too fresh in their minds. Even so, Spencer reflected, it was nice, for once, to just be playful. There was no agenda, no urgency, no outside distractions – just the two of them, with nothing particular to do for a few hours.

"God, you smell good," he mumbled, into her hair.

"Mmm," she murmured. And then, because she was still Grace and she probably couldn't resist, "We both taste of cheese, you know."

Spencer snorted. "Great."

"What?" she asked, laughing as he pulled away to finish cooking. "I speak the truth."

"You're the worst," he commented, automatically.

"Maybe," she replied, with a shrug. "But you're the one who kissed me."

Smiling, Spencer acknowledged this to be true.

Grace yawned again and stretched, slipping off the countertop to retrieve a couple of glasses and some lemonade. It was strange, Spencer thought, how it wasn't weird at all for her to be wandering around his kitchen in a state of some undress.

"I could definitely get used to this," he said.

He only realised he'd spoke aloud when Grace's arm made its way around his waist. He glanced at her, pleased to see that she was wearing that easy smile that he adored. "Me too."

0o0

The jet had been subdued and silent on the way back from Canada. They had saved Kelly – and Lucas, who despite his crimes was in many ways just as much of a victim as the people his brother had convinced him to abduct and murder – but at the expense of William Hightower.

Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day.

No one could bring themselves to condemn him aloud (though presumably some of Bedwell's team would have to) and it would be very unlikely for him to receive a heavy sentence, given the circumstances, but killing Mason Turner had been a bad way for this all to end.

Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right, and still you feel like you've failed.

Aaron didn't blame him, and he was sure the rest of the team didn't, either.

Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place? Eighty-nine murders at the pig farm. The death of Mason Turner made ninety lives snuffed out.

He rubbed his temple, parked up the car and started heading up the steps to his apartment, mentally collating the supplemental summary for Strauss – which he wasn't going to touch until at least midday tomorrow.

Kelly Shane will go home and try to recover, to reconnect with her family. But she'll never be a child again. William Hightower, who gave his leg for his country, gave the rest of himself to avenge his sister's murder.

He pulled out his keys, giving his neighbour a tired grimace of greeting as they passed.

That makes ninety-two lives forever altered, not counting family and friends, in a small town in Sarnia, Ontario, who thought monsters didn't exist until they learned that they spent their lives with one.

Aaron let himself into his apartment, switched the light on then dumped his briefcase, phone and keys on the table.

And what about my team? How many more times will they be able to look into the abyss? How many more times before they won't ever recover the pieces of themselves that this job takes?

He went to pour himself a drink – one of the few parts of the kitchen he had bothered to unpack when he'd moved in, months before. As he always did, he glanced at the stack of boxes he still hadn't done anything with.

Relieved to be home and quiet, he took a sip of the scotch Dave had given him for his birthday.

And then every instinct he had ever had shot adrenaline through him. There was someone behind him.

There was someone behind him.

He heard the floorboard creak, saw the slow blur of movement reflected in the glass of the painting his father had left him.

There was a click, as someone took the safety off their gun.

He reviewed his options, then turned to face the soulless mask of the Boston Reaper.

"You should have made a deal."

0o0

Like I said. Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day. Sometimes the day just…

Aaron Hotchner