Essential Listening: Emergency Exit, by Beck

0o0

Grace had grabbed a towel and a bottle of water from the paramedics as they'd left Barton's house, getting the worst of Spencer's blood off her hands before they'd clamboured into the Yuke and Morgan had driven hell for leather to St Sebastian's.

She could still feel it, in the cracks in her skin and lodged in her nails and cuticles.

"You okay?" JJ asked, as the four agents hurried up the steps to the ICU, where Emily had told them she had found their boss.

Grace nodded, pushing the panic she had felt when she'd heard the gunshot, and the concern for Spencer's injury and what she presumed would be a short surgery down as far as she could. There were too many things to worry about today.

Emily got to her feet when she saw them coming. Grace's steps faltered.

Hotch didn't look right, tightly tucked into the hospital bed. At some point, she realised, she had started to think of him as indestructible. The evidence that he wasn't was a little jarring.

"He still isn't conscious yet," said Emily.

"Anyone called Haley and Jack?" she asked, and Emily shook her head.

Grace nodded, understanding. There had been too much to do. She pulled out her phone.

"I don't have her number," Emily told her.

"I do. I babysit Jack for her sometimes," she admitted, ignoring Morgan and Rossi's looks of surprise. "It's a favour for Hotch."

"You sure it was Foyet?" Rossi asked, as Grace dialled Haley's number.

Emily gave that combination nod-and-shrug the whole team had perfected. It meant 'I mean, who else could it be?' "He had Morgan's credentials," she explained.

Morgan scowled. "Did they catch him on the security cam'?"

Grace frowned as Haley's phone went to voicemail. She tried her again.

"You could see him dropping Hotch off, but the camera's only on the entrance, so I have no idea what direction he went once he left the hospital," Emily reported.

"It doesn't make sense for him to have brought Hotch to the ER," JJ reasoned, frowning.

"We now Foyet gets off on power and control," Rossi reminded them. "Maybe what he wants is for Hotch to know his life was in his hands."

"Can't get much more powerful than that," Grace put in, listening to Haley's phone go to voicemail again. She waited for the beep. "Hi Haley, it's Grace Pearce. I need you to give me a call as soon as you get this, okay?"

She hung up, unwilling to let Haley overhear any more of the conversation.

"He could do that without risking the hospital," said Morgan.

"Agents." They turned to find the doctor who had been checking up on Hotch beckoning them towards them. "He's waking up. Remember, he's weak. Don't push him."

As one, the five agents moved into the little ICU room, where Hotch was blinking up at the ceiling, looking like he felt very sorry for himself.

"Hey," said Emily, as they surrounded the bed.

He fixed them with a blurry sort of look. "Where am I?"

"In the hospital," Rossi told him gently.

"How did I get here?" he croaked.

"Foyet drove you," Morgan replied, looking as deeply shaken at their friend's condition as Grace felt.

"Can you remember what happened?" Prentiss asked.

Hotch closed his eyes. Grace supposed he was running through the situation in his mind. When he opened them again, he asked, "What did he take?"

"What do you mean?" Rossi asked.

"The Reaper always takes something from his victims," Hotch said weakly.

Grace shook her head, a fleeting smile on her lips. Profiler to the bone, this one, she thought.

"Do we know what he took?"

"There was a page missing from your day planner," Emily told him. "In the address section. The Bs."

Hotch's eyes flickered closed, as if he was trying to figure out its significance. He let it go. "What did he leave?"

Emily shot them all a look. Grace surmised there hadn't been anything else out of place.

"I don't know," Emily said.

"He also leaves something with his victims," Hotch said.

His breathing was becoming laboured. He wouldn't be awake much longer, Grace guessed.

"I looked over your whole apartment," Emily assured him. "Nothing felt out of place."

"Where are my clothes?" he asked, sounding exhausted.

"Uh…" Emily said and grabbed the plastic bag the OR staff had shoved everything into when he went into surgery.

Between them, they each pulled out an item – either bloodied clothing, or personal things – and started to examine it.

It felt very invasive, except that Hotch was doing this right along with them, and he was clearly in no condition to do it all himself. And with the Boston Reaper, time was always of the essence.

Grace found herself with Hotch's tie, which was a strange feeling, given that he barely took the things off. You always knew when something was off the record if he appeared without it. Now, it felt like his control had been stripped away as easily as this talisman. She put it back in the bag, his blood mingling with the traces of Spencer's that was still ingrained in the beds of her nails.

She tried not to think about it, other than making a mental note to inform forensics that they had all handled these things without gloves, and had just come from another, similarly bloody scene.

Beside her, Morgan was searching his jacket. Rossi had Hotch's suit trousers, presumably because everyone else had avoided them. JJ had his wallet. Emily was examining his shirt. Hotch, who had his credentials, gave a gasp and sank back into his pillows in horror.

The credentials fell open to display a photograph of Haley and Jack.

"Haley's maiden name is Brooks," he said, making the connection between this and the missing page in his day planner. "I always listed her in the Bs in my personal information in case it fell into the wrong hands."

And now it has, Grace thought.

JJ put a hand to her mouth.

"He knows where they live."

The five agents around the bed shared a look of horror, then Rossi sent a frown in Grace's direction. "You called her," he said, leaving the statement open.

She shook her head. "I left a message. She didn't pick up."

"Alright," said Rossi. "JJ, call again – and keep calling until you get through. Prentiss, get some security up here. The rest of us, let's go."

The others nodded, already halfway out the door.

"Pearce," said Hotch, weakly, so she turned back, motioning at the others to keep going.

"I'll catch up." She walked to his bedside. "What's up?"

He glanced out the door at their colleagues' retreating backs and Grace realised he was making sure they were out of earshot. Hotch's fingers closed around her wrist with a strength belied by his pallor.

Grace winced. The grip was hard enough to leave bruises. He was panting with the effort.

"Anything in your power," he said, urgently. "Anything. Get them out of there. Please."

Grace swallowed. She nodded. "Yes, boss."

Hotch fell back against the pillows, sweating hard, and let go of her arm.

0o0

She caught up with them in the parking lot.

"Any luck?" she asked JJ.

JJ shook her head. "Haley's still not answering.

"Well, let's hope she's just cooking and covered in chilli powder or something," said Grace.

On their other side, Morgan was on his phone, too. "Garcia? I need FBI SWAT deployed to Hotch's old address. Do it now."

Grace heard the panic in Garcia's voice as she figured out what was going on. "Oh, God, do you think he's going after Haley and Jack?"

"I don't know," Morgan replied. "Just send a SWAT team. Tell them to wait for instructions. We're on our way."

"Consider them there."

"We need to be prepared for what we might find," Rossi warned them, as Morgan hung up and they slid into the SUV. "Foyet kept Hotch alive. He wouldn't do that without a reason."

Grace shared a look with Morgan, unsettled. The possibility that Hotch's family might be… It was unthinkable. She hadn't sat for Haley many times – only when there was an emergency when the team was in-state and neither Hotch, nor Haley, nor Haley's sister Jessica could be there. Every time, Jack had been an adventurous, darling child. Haley, no matter how her relationship with Grace's boss had deteriorated, had always been friendly, and from what Grace could tell she was a kind, intelligent person who had simply reached the end of her tolerance for the hours and constant state of worry that came with being married to a member of law enforcement.

It isn't fair, she thought, pulling on a stab vest Morgan had grabbed out of the trunk.

"What did Hotch want?" JJ asked.

"Oh, uh… he wanted to know where Reid was," she lied, thinking fast.

"Right."

"After this is all done," said Rossi, from the front passenger seat, "I'm gonna recommend we're all given a week."

Grace made a noise of assent, her mind firmly on the house they were racing to. They needed it.

If Foyet was there – and by some miracle, Haley and Jack were still alive – how in the hell was she going to get them out of there without anyone seeing her using magic? Hotch had basically ordered her to use it, no matter what, but she wouldn't have needed the instruction.

This was family, and that came with different rules.

Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't be careful. Or that she should jettison either set of training she had received about situations like the one they were probably walking into.

JJ hung up the phone for the fifth time, tutting. "Still nothing."

0o0

Emily sat in the uncomfortable chair in Hotch's room, worrying hard and trying not to broadcast that.

She'd got a text from Reid, who had been deposited at the OR, but given that his wound wasn't life-threatening he had been asked to wait before they took him in for surgery. He wouldn't even need a general anaesthetic.

It was one less thing to feel so jarringly helpless about, though she had spent the last ten minutes updating him via text about what was going on with Hotch.

He had lapsed into unconsciousness a few minutes before, clutching the photograph of Haley and Jack, Foyet's blurry, bloody fingerprints staining the edges.

This was her least favourite part of the job: waiting to find out whether the worst had already happened; waiting beside the bedside of a friend; waiting to hear whether a team member's family was hurt or dead.

She wished she had thought to call Haley earlier in the day. She wished they had put him in a higher security facility the first time around. She wished Hotch had stayed at work all night, the way he sometimes did. She wished…

The monitor connected to Hotch started beeping, and then beeping like crazy.

Emily shot out of her chair. "Doctor!" she called, and the woman hurried in from the next room.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," Emily told her. "His heart rate just shot up."

"Agent Hotchner?" the doctor asked, gently lifting his eyelids and checking his light response. "Aaron? Can you hear me?"

He didn't respond, but Emily clocked the rapid eye movement that suggested he was dreaming.

"Maybe he's reliving the attack," she suggested, and the doctor nodded.

"Could be," she said. "I'd like to get that heart rate down, though, so I'm gonna give him a sedative."

"No…"

Emily grabbed Hotch's hand – he gripped hers tightly and she realised for the first time exactly how frightened he was.

"I'm okay," he said, sounding gone out.

"I'm gonna need you to step out of the room," said the doctor.

Emily nodded. "I'll be outside," she said, and disentangled her hand from his.

She watched through the glass as they ran their tests, trying very hard indeed not to start biting her fingernails again.

0o0

The SWAT team moved swiftly and stealthily across Haley's front lawn.

Further down the street, other agents were quietly escorting the neighbours to a safe distance.

Grace, Morgan, Rossi and JJ kept pace with the swarm, letting them go first but controlling the flow of officers. They had debriefed them at some speed, shown them Foyet's picture and told them he was likely armed and extremely dangerous, but also that there was probably an innocent woman and a three-year-old in the house, too.

They strafed past Haley's yellow car and the trike in the back yard, crouching beside the back door and waiting for the 'Go' order.

The radio gave a quiet crackle, then the voice of the lead agent on the SWAT team, Tucker, came over the airwaves, "Ready in back?"

"Ready," Morgan replied in an undertone.

He glanced at the members of their team, reading their body language as a confirmation of their readiness, then kicked the door in on Tucker's command.

The team cleared the rooms methodically, Morgan and JJ's part of the team splitting up as they reached the staircase. Grace, Rossi and three SWAT agents continued down the hall towards the play room. The door was ajar, but not by much, and Grace spotted Jack playing with blocks on the rug in there. She motioned for the SWAT team to hang back, since the kid seemed pretty calm, and put her gun away.

She looked at Rossi, who nodded. He had her covered.

Grace pushed the door back against the wall and walked calmly inside, giving Jack the biggest smile she could.

"Hey kiddo!"

He dropped the block he was holding in surprise, but then he recognised her and gave a squeal of joy that made them all nervous.

"Auntie Gace!" His face split into a grin and he threw himself across the room to give her a hug.

She intercepted him before he could hurt himself on the hard surface of her stab vest and scooped him up into a carry-hug.

"We're gonna go outside, okay, Champ?"

"Okay," he said, and she could tell from his voice that he had spotted the SWAT team. His small fists twisted in the sleeves of the sweater she had thrown on top of her blouse to cover up Spencer's bloody handprints.

"Hey there, Jack," said Rossi, following her out the way they had come. "Your mom in the house?"

"Yah, upstairs," he replied, bolstered by the sight of another familiar face.

"Upstairs?"

"Doin' cho-ores."

Rossi nodded to their SWAT contingent, and detached to join them in taking up defensive positions around the stairs as Grace carried Jack out of the back door.

"Hey, you wanna sit in a cop car?" she asked, keeping her voice light as she moved through the garden.

"Really?" he asked, excited. "Can I sit in the front?"

"Sure, champ," she said. "But we can't turn on the siren or the lights, because your neighbours are sleeping, okay?"

"Okay. Will you take a picture for my daddy?"

Grace felt her heart squeeze inside her chest. "Uh huh, of course I will."

They reached the line of cars around the corner, beyond which the local cops were manning a tap line. It was pretty secluded, so there weren't many people around, which was good, Grace felt. She turned her radio off. One of the other cops would let her know if they found something, and Jack didn't need to hear it if they did.

Less chance for Foyet to slip amongst a group of onlookers and watch – or worse, though that wasn't really his style.

She was sitting in the front of a patrol car with Jack in her lap, making car noises and pretending to drive when Morgan escorted Haley over, some minutes later.

"Look, Mom! I'm driving!" Jack shouted gleefully.

"I see that, baby! That's so good!" she said.

She had obviously been crying, which suggested that Foyet had not been in the house, and that she had been told about her ex-husband's trip to the hospital. It was possible, given she had an overnight bag over her shoulder, that Rossi had explained the level of danger she and her son were now in. She met Grace's eyes over her little boy's head and nodded her thanks.

"I gotta go talk to Uncle Morgan, Uncle Rossi and Auntie JJ, little dude," said Grace, and helped him to get out of the car.

She ruffled his hair and let him run to Haley, who enveloped him in a tight hug. Grace joined the others beside the tactical van.

"No sign?"

"None," said Morgan.

"What do we do?" JJ asked.

"We can't do anything," said Rossi. "Haley and Jack will have to go into Wit-Sec. There's no other way to protect them."

They watched their friend's ex-wife break the news to their little boy that his daddy was in the ICU, feeling wretched.

"There is something we can do," said Grace, after a few moments of sad, tense silence.

"Catch the bastard," JJ growled.

Grace nodded. "Yeah, that… and we can be there for our friend. Because he's going to need it."