"I know this is hard to believe," Rossi said to Matt and Luke specifically. "Tony is likely prepared to demonstrate the same way he did for us."
"At the risk of sounding skeptical," Luke said, "If you wouldn't mind…"
"Not at all," Tony replied as he pulled the knife from his belt buckle. "I've learned to love slicing into my arm."
"Really?" Matt asked.
"No, not really," Tony replied. "It hurts like hell." He rolled up his sleeve.
"Maybe you shouldn't…" Luke said, but Tony was already dragging the blade up his forearm, causing everyone in the room to cringe, even though most of them had seen this before.
"Uhh…" Matt began to panic at the sight of the blood spilling out over the man's skin and onto the floor and he looked around the room for anything he could get to help stem the flow.
"Oh my god…" Luke's exclamation pulled Matt's attention back to Tony's arm in time to watch it begin to close up like it had an invisible zipper.
"Holy shit," Matt said with wide eyes. "Okay so uh… Now I need someone to prove to me that I'm awake…"
*~.~*
Three days later…
"I hate this," Ellie said as she slowly spun around in one of the office chairs McGee had acquired in his storage unit.
"If you don't like the ones I picked out, you're free to bring your own," Tim replied.
"What? No not the chair. All of this nothing we have to go on," she told him. "I hate not having any pieces to go over."
"I still can't believe we have the guy's face and there's zero sightings over all these years," Tony chimed in. "He must be one of those survivalists; not having to go out for supplies or anything like that."
"He could just as well be ordering everything he needs online," Tim said.
"Maybe he's got a partner," Nick added.
"Doesn't seem very likely," Tony replied. "There's no one seen with him on any surveillance footage. Not even a driver. Not to mention I'm sure he tortures and murders everyone he meets."
"Do you think he did that to his own family too?" Nick asked. "It's not just that there's never been any sightings, but no one has ever called in to say they know who he is, either."
"Well his family might not want to turn him in," Tim said. "Wouldn't be the first time we've seen that."
"After knowing what he's done?" Nick asked with a raised brow. "They'd have to be pretty sick to let him keep doing this."
"BAU says he likely has no living family," Gibbs said. "Probably was in foster care his whole childhood."
"It really doesn't matter where the hell he grew up," Tony said with frustration. "What matters is that something changed for him when he picked up Rhoda. He found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and now he doesn't have to leave his cave ever again. He's got endless free refills on his cup of sadistic needs. Reality is we may never find him."
"You don't know that, Tony," Ellie said, leaning forward now, having stopped spinning the chair. "She could've gotten away."
"If she had, she'd have come back here."
"Not necessarily," she argued. "She could be lost, and she doesn't have her phone to contact us."
"It's been almost a month now, Bish. She'd have figured it out."
"She's got super-human strength," Gibbs thought aloud. "If he's still got her, it's someplace she couldn't get out of easily."
Tony looked to Gibbs with narrowed eyes. "You think he might've known something about her, boss?"
Gibbs shrugged. "Wouldn't make much sense. He takes victims of opportunity. Like you said, he found the gold at the end of the rainbow when he found her. If he's a survivalist, he might've considered making an impenetrable cell of some kind. I wouldn't put it past him."
"No one ever escaped him before," Tim said. "It's a possibility…"
Gibbs' cell rang in that moment of silent thought. He checked the caller ID and upon seeing that it was Abby, decided to answer on speaker. "Hey, Abs. You've got all of us."
"Good! Because I've got Penelope and she's got news from the BAU!"
"I'll skip the pleasantries and get right to the point because we've all been waiting way too long for a break in this horrifying case," Garcia said. "The FBI received an old-school VHS tape addressed to our very own Emily Prentiss of the BAU. It came in this morning and I watched with her. Right now, the team is in the air on the way to Duchesne, Colorado to pick up this sorry excuse for a human being."
"What was on the tape, Penelope?" McGee asked before anyone else could.
"Special Agent McGee, I've sent it to your email. Long story short, someone beat Death Texter at his own game. They recorded his confession to all of the murders he committed, including some we didn't even know about."
"Wait…what does that mean?" Tony asked. "What about Rhoda?"
"She's not on the tape, so we can only make guesses at this point," she replied regretfully. "There's no sign of who actually mailed it out, but whoever did that was probably the same person that beat the living hell out of him, tied him up with barbed-wire and left him in a cage. Local PD are on the scene. He was the only person found in the building. They've found a lot of blood, but no sign of who or where his latest victim ended up, or that it was even the woman we were looking for. Sorry I don't have better news…"
"What about satellite feed of the area?" Gibbs asked. "If I remember correctly there's a ton of woods out there. She could still be out there."
"I've been searching since they told us she wasn't there. So far, I've got nothing. But the moment I do, you'll be the second to know. Over and out!" She ended the call.
"Should we go?" Tony asked, looking to Gibbs.
Gibbs shook his head slightly. "The killer's still alive. That means the longest she's been gone is three days. She could be anywhere, but my guess would be far away as she could get from there."
"She could be on foot," McGee said. "But it's more likely she found a vehicle or hopped a bus."
"Question is," Nick said, "Would she be heading here?"
"Or was she hurt enough to have her memory messed with?" Bishop added. "She may not even remember who or what she is…"
*~.~*
"The lead investigator with the local PD that found him said he was laughing like this before they even caught sight of him," Spencer Reid told Gibbs and Tony where they all stood in the hallway outside of the killer's hospital room. The FBI had guards at the door if by some chance the man were to be able to escape his restraints. "They haven't been able to get anything out of him."
"Are they sure he's not brain-damaged?" Gibbs asked with a raised brow.
"Right now, doctors think it's some form of hysteria or shock. He's scheduled for a CT, but they don't believe any of his wounds caused damage to his head."
"You mean besides his face?" Tony said.
"I would hypothesize that, at most, he would've suffered a concussion from the inevitable jarring resulting from the blows."
"Has anyone tried punching him again?" Tony asked. Reid simply grinned as they looked back through the window to the room.
"I think Agent Rossi and you, Agent Gibbs, should be the ones to go in there and see if you can get any kind of reaction out of him other than…this," Reid said. "You two are the most intimidating."
"That may be true," Rossi said as he joined them. "But he seems to have a taste for pretty girls. We have a few of those."
"Yeah, but his latest victim beat the hell out of him, and they didn't find him cowering or catatonic," Tony reminded him. "If he'd been terrified, I think he'd be in a paranoid state…post traumatic stress symptoms or something of that nature."
"Agent DiNozzo may be right," Reid said. "If anything, he hates females, or thinks very little of them. We should start with Gibbs and Rossi."
"I agree," Prentiss said as she approached them. "We'll notify the guards to go in with you, but to stay at the door. I'd like to be able to listen in discreetly. Agent Gibbs," she said, facing him now. "Would you consent to wearing a mic and earpiece?" He nodded. "JJ and I will be listening in. Tony, you're free to join us."
"Please," he replied, his hand out to take an earpiece.
*~.~*
"Good afternoon, Terrance," Rossi said as they approached the bed, each of them showing their badges. Terrance didn't stop laughing altogether, but it slowed a bit as he met the older man's eyes. "That's right. We know who you are. You can't wash off your own DNA." Terrance's laughter reignited. "Does that make you nervous, Terrance?" Reid continued. "Is that why you can't stop laughing? Are you scared about being in prison?" The smile began to drop from Terrance's face.
"That's good," Emily's voice sounded over their earpieces. "He's responding to having his manhood in question."
"He's probably afraid of the fact that the only women he'll see in there will be armed," Gibbs added. Terrance's laughter stopped. "Is that what happens when you get scared? You laugh?"
"I'm not scared," Terrance replied in a low voice. "I'm thrilled."
"Thrilled to be going to prison? Possibly executed?" Rossi asked.
"Don't you people see?" Terrance raised his voice in frustration. "None of that matters. You can't hold me forever, and she can't hide forever either."
"Who can't hide, Terrance?"
"The girl who can't die," he replied, a wide smile adorning his face again.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes. "There's no such thing."
"Oh, but there is. She's absolutely thrilling. She got the jump on me eventually. I underestimated her strength at the end, but I will find her, and we will play again. This time, she won't get away…"
"So, she was the one who did this to you," Rossi confirmed, then looked to Gibbs. "No wonder he sticks to girls, Gibbs. He can barely handle them."
"I can handle them just fine," Terrance sneered. "She has powers. She was stronger than any of them."
"I think I know what's going on here," Gibbs said with a smirk as he took a slow walk to the other side of the bed. "Terrance is gonna try for a plea of insanity."
"Is that what this is?" Rossi asked with an amused look on his face before looking back down at the killer. "Because that's the only way this makes any sense."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Terrance asked.
"This obviously fabricated story about a woman with magical powers. It's clear you made it all up to cover for the fact that you weren't strong enough to keep her in her place."
"It's not made up!" Terrance yelled.
"See, I think it is," Rossi replied. "You know you've been caught and there's no way out of going to prison unless it's to a psychiatric facility. There's no way you could survive the hell your fellow prisoners would give you if they knew you were outfoxed and outclassed by a little girl." Gibbs laughed with Rossi.
"Keep it up. It's working."
"She wasn't a little girl!" Terrance yelled, face becoming red. "She wasn't human! She was some kind of freak! I'm telling you the truth!"
"Sure you are," Gibbs said as he began to walk away, Rossi following toward the door.
"I am!" he yelled. "I tortured her in ways you couldn't even imagine!" he confessed. They paused in their steps, slowly turning back toward him. "I did everything I ever did, and way more than I have with any of the others, and this girl…this girl would heal up good as new." His voice lowered some. "Like a clean canvas every day. For weeks… I didn't have to take anyone else. I must've killed her a dozen times. She kept coming back. She was meant for me, don't you see?" He met their eyes again. "It was never about the killing. Not really. It was about finding her. My soulmate."
"How many others, Terrance."
"Don't you know?" he asked the FBI man. "I left them all for you to find."
"Maybe we didn't find them all."
"You did. I made sure of it. I always follow up on my girls," he said with a smirk.
"What's the matter, Terrance?" Gibbs asked. "You lose count?"
"There were eighty-six girls," he stated. "Wonder-girl was going to be my eighty-seven. Instead, she was my eighty-seventh, eighty-eighth, eighty-ninth…" He began laughing again as he continued to count. Gibbs and Rossi shared a glance before looking out to the observers on the other side of the window.
*~.~*
tbc