Commencement

Chapter 17

Morgan was sorry he'd volunteered to drive, because it limited his ability to keep an eye on his erstwhile little brother. He hadn't exactly been sworn to secrecy, but the exchange he'd had with Reid, the one where he'd acknowledged the solemn bonds of friendship, both between himself and Reid, and between Reid and JJ, made it feel that way. He comforted himself with the fact that Reid's being injured was already known to both of their other companions.

They just don't know how badly.

So he had to satisfy himself with an occasional glance in the rear view mirror, and an attempt to differentiate the frown of worry on his friend's face from the frown of pain. Failing in that attempt.

Their GPS would take them only so far in reaching the hunting cabin. Garcia would have to direct them once they went off road, pinging their cell phones to lead them to the remote location. Using satellite images, she'd spotted what looked like a dirt road leading part way into the woods, but it disappeared into a copse of trees, still some distance from the coordinates of the cabin. It was possible they would have to navigate between trees and across ravines.

The occupants of the vehicle were largely silent, each mind divided between its focus on their mission, and trying to process the absurdity of possibly losing one of their own on the last day of the unit's existence. One occupant was also focused on staying conscious, alternating a quiet Valsalva maneuver to keep blood flowing to his brain, with a deep breathing exercise to promote oxygenation and to keep him calm enough to function. It wasn't lost on him that they were acting on a hunch. What if they were wrong?

Morgan decided an inquiry wouldn't exactly break confidentiality.

"How you doing back there, Pretty Boy?"

"Fine."

Something about the quality of Reid's voice, or maybe just the dismissive rapidity with which he'd answered, struck Rossi, who gave a sideways look at the young man next to him in the back seat.

"That didn't sound so fine."

Reid was too exhausted to express the frustration and annoyance he felt.

"I'm injured. You already know that. I just…I'll be fine, once we get JJ."

Morgan tried to assure him. "We're just turning off the highway now. We'll be at the dirt road in a few. Can somebody get Garcia up?"

Emily did so. That Garcia responded without her usual banter told all of them that their tech analyst was a bit unnerved by the situation, too.

"I'm here! And you're …..there! Okay, I've got you on Emily's phone. Here's one thing, though….I think the cabin might be just out of cell range, so we may lose each other."

"Just do your best to keep us posted on the general direction, PG," directed Emily. "We didn't have time to wait for the locals to find us a sat phone."

The communication dilemma struck Reid. Not for the first time during this ordeal, he was brought back to the case in Georgia, the one that had left him and JJ alone, on their own, because of a lack of cell service. The one that had taken him deep into the woods, to another hunting cabin. The images that flashed into his mind virtually brought him to his knees.

Don't do that to her. I don't even believe in You. But she does. So, if I'm wrong and You're out there, and if You care about her, do not abandon her! Do not put her through what I went through!

Trying desperately not to visualize what might be happening to her, as he'd done even back then, when he'd not known her fate. Trying to replace the intrusive images with an image of her being saved, whole, intact, still JJ.

But the sensory similarities were too strong, and he flashed once again back to Georgia, to the smell of the woods, and the dappled light of the moon shining through the leaves. To the sound of the voices of his would-be rescuers shouting his name, to seeing the brilliance of a flashlight slicing through the darkness.

He'd been saved, that day. Physically.

But not emotionally. Not at my core. I didn't come out of those woods as the same person who entered them. I was changed.

In so many ways. His innocence. His self-image. His integrity. So much of what had been Spencer Reid had been left on the floor of a forest, and in the reeking innards of a hunting cabin. He would never again recapture that innocence, and his self-image had become irrevocably changed. But he had managed to shed the skin of addiction, and find his core of integrity once again.

Not everything was like Georgia. It was midday, today. It was sunlight, not moonlight, that was filtered by the canopy of trees above. There would be little need for flashlights, as they looked for her. As they listened...

Maybe it was his impaired state of consciousness, or his anxiety. Or maybe it was memory, and instinct. Whatever brought it about, Reid was suddenly flooded with a certainty.

"She's not in the cabin."

Emily half turned from the front seat, reluctant to move her eyes away from the tree-studded landscape in front of them.

"What did you say?"

"She's not in the cabin. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. She's not in the cabin."

Just like I wasn't in the cabin, when they came for me. She's somewhere in the woods.

Morgan was too intent on not driving into something to respond to him. But he began to rethink his decision to bring Reid along. He's not thinking straight.

Emily probed, concerned for her agent's lack of logic. He's got to be in worse shape than he's been letting on.

"Reid, if she's not in the cabin, she could be anywhere. We have to look, it's the only lead we have!"

He acknowledged the truth of it with a nod. They had to look. If she wasn't there, she could be anywhere. She could even be at either of the two properties they'd left other teams to explore.

She could be anywhere. But she could also be somewhere. Out there. Alone. Digging….

The SUV passed through a deep ravine and jarred all of them. It was enough to bring Reid back from his flashback….and enough for him to feel another surge of wetness into the material covering his thigh. But he couldn't afford to distract the others from their mission. He couldn't even afford to distract himself.

Much later, Garcia would tell them that they'd traveled a mere three miles through the rough terrain, but in the moment, to all of them, it seemed more like twenty. Her voice began to break up as they traveled deeper into the woods, and they thought they'd lost her altogether a time or two, only to hear her increasingly frantic tone come once again over the phone. Penelope Garcia was frightened for her best female friend, and this threatened loss of contact with the rest of her team was bringing her back to her own tragic memory, of the devastating Scratch-manufactured accident that had cost the life of one of their number.

As they neared the cabin, Morgan cut the lights of the SUV, not wanting to give their adversaries advance warning. But that made the going much slower, as even the daylight was brought to near darkness by the overhanging foliage of the trees. The last stretch of distance was crossed in agonizingly slow fashion.

"Let me out!"

Morgan threw a look over his shoulder to Reid. "What?"

"Let me out. I can't exactly storm the cabin with you. Let me out, and I can surveil the area while you go in."

It was the best argument he could give them. And it seemed so much more logical….and sane…than the one going on inside his head. He'd convinced himself that JJ wasn't in the cabin, but he had no idea why he felt so adamantly about it. His logical self knew it made no sense to base his conviction on what had happened to him, when he'd been taken. But his emotional self simply couldn't let it go. Was his intelligence succumbing to his injured state? Or was he responding to something deeper? Something happening on another plane entirely?

Regardless, his argument resonated with his colleagues...or maybe they'd all just become too wary of his mental state to want him anywhere near a potential firefight. At a word from Emily, Morgan stopped the SUV to discharge its insistent passenger. Fortunately, the EMTs had outfitted Reid with a legitimate pair of crutches, so he could hope to accomplish some amount of equilibrium on the uneven forest floor.

Emily hissed instructions at him, as she passed him her phone. "Find some cover and stay there! Tell Garcia to conference you in with us." Having realized, too late, that Reid hadn't been outfitted with a field communications set.

"I will! Good luck!"

"Luck's got nothing to do with it, Kid."

Reid gave a small grin, in spite of everything. "Okay, go break down a door. Just remember who might be on the other side of it."

"We'll take care of her, my young friend," assured Rossi. "You make sure you take care of you."

With that, the SUV moved on, and Reid hobbled over to where it seemed three trees had coalesced to form one very wide trunk. He rested his crutches against one of them, keeping them upright in case he should need them in a hurry. Then he fitted himself between the other two trunks, leaning forward into the indentation. He dutifully called Garcia, who answered him anxiously.

"Reid? Is that you? What happened to Emily?"

"She gave me her phone. Emily's still in the SUV."

"Wait….are you saying you're not with her? You separated from them?"

Sounding frightened by the idea, until he explained what he was doing.

"Okay, okay, I get it. But I can't conference you in, because I've lost them! What happened to them?!"

In the relative darkness, Reid could only barely make out the shape of the SUV. But it was there, and it was still moving.

"They're okay. The cell service was getting spotty. They must have gone out of range."

Which meant he was the only one who could communicate with Garcia. But he couldn't communicate with his teammates.

"That's what I was afraid of! OMG, I wish I had ordered those sat phones! That's what I'm going to do, I'm going to order all of you sat phones for next time!"

Reid heard the tone of guilt in Garcia's voice, and tried to alleviate it. "Sat phones might not work in a heavily treed area either, Garcia. I don't think you need to order them."

Not mentioning that there would be no 'next time'.

The BAU's computer maven was still bemoaning her lack of communication with the others when Reid heard a 'ping' sound on the far end of the call.

"Is that them, Garcia? Maybe they're not completely out of range."

"Oh, thank God! I …..wait, did you say they were still headed toward the cabin?"

"Yes. I can barely see them now, though."

"But…I don't…OMG!"

"What? Garcia, what?"

"It's you! I mean, it's your phone! That's what's pinging! It's your phone!"

"My…..JJ has my phone!" Grabbing his crutches, even before forming an idea. "Where is she?"

"It looks like she's about eighty yards southeast of where you are."

"Back toward the highway?"

"Not straight out, but yes, back toward the highway! That's probably the only reason I can hear her."

"Is she trying to talk to you?" Praying for an affirmative answer, evidence that his best friend was still alive.

"It's not a call….I just had the GPS tracker on it. I know we thought it was dead, but I couldn't give up on my girl! She must have just turned it on!"

Reid was overwhelmed with emotion. He might not be able to hear her voice, but she was alive, and she'd had the presence of mind to make herself known. She was reaching out, in the only way available to her.

And I'm damn well going to reach back.

He couldn't contact the others with the phone, nor did he have breath enough to shout across the distance to them. He also couldn't be sure that none of the felons were present in the cabin, and he didn't want to endanger his friends. So he had to hope that they would be able to quickly clear the site, and then move back into cell range, where Garcia could brief them.

He thought about all of these things as he made his way through the woods, heading in the direction he'd been pointed by Garcia. Heading to a possible confrontation with their unsubs.

Heading, the God-he-didn't-believe-in willing, to save the life of his best friend.