"Hey baby girl!"
"Hey Morgan, I..."
"Hold up, no witty response?" Morgan interrupted.
"Look," Garcia said, her voice shaking "Have you seen Reid? He was supposed to meet me for coffee this morning, but he never showed and JJ hasn't seen him since last night and with the way he has been since Prentiss I..."
"Woah woah, slow down, have you talked to Hotch?"
"Well no..." But she was interrupted Morgan's ringtone.
"Speak of the devil," Morgan grinned, showing Garcia the caller ID, "I bet he and Reid were just up late getting a head start on the next case.
Hey Hotch, I..." his face froze as the voice on the other end of the line interrupted him. "yes sir...Garcia's here with me...yes sir...were on our way."
"What? What is it?"
"Hotch needs us in the briefing room. It's about the kid."
-
"Hey! Wake up!"
The voice hit Reid like a spotlight through a dark fog. He struggled to sit up and open his eyes, but his limbs refused to obey and he was rewarded with nothing but darkness.
"Oh good," the voice spoke again, "I thought you might have been dead. hang on."
'definitely female,' Reid thought, 'probably late teens to early 20's.' Her voice sounded vaguely familiar, like a snippet of conversation caught from the room over.
The fog slowly receded from his mind, leaving him with a splitting headache. He could hear labored breathing and what sounded like the squeak of bed springs somewhere in front of him. Reid's wrists were tied behind him and there was some sort of dark cloth obscuring his vision. He was lying on something soft, possibly a mattress? Unable to see, his other senses were on high alert, trying to understand what had happened. The pounding of his own heartbeat rose to an almost deafening level as he forced his panic back down.
"Hello?" He called out
Some one grabbed Reid's upper arm, startling him and he lurched back.
"Hey, hey," the voice comforted, right next to him now, "It's ok, I'm not going to hurt you." Calloused hands pulled him upright and then removed his blindfold.
"There, see. Nothing to be afraid of."
Reid squinted against the sudden harsh light. Before him, a young woman with short brown hair dressed in blue jeans and a black tank top looked at him with concern. They were alone in a small grey room with no windows and only one door. Across the room was a small cot, like you would see at a summer camp, with a rope and bandana lying in a disheveled heap.
With a start, he realized where he recognized her from. She had been in the third row from the back at guest lecture he gave at a nearby collage a few months back. He remembered her staying afterward to discuss profiling sadism in an unsub and the role it played in hostage negotiation. A coincidence perhaps? Morgan wouldn't believe that. He would tell Reid not to be an idiot.
"Are you ok?" the young woman asked, interrupting his train of thought.
"I...I think so." Reid answered hesitantly
"My name's Alex." She said, reaching around to untie him.
"Spencer Reid." He cautiously replied, rubbing the circulation back into his wrists.
Reid watched her march over to the door and rattle the handle. She seemed innocent enough, but something was bothering him. After working with the BAU for six years, he had seen his fair share of kidnapping victims. Most victims later recounted extreme fear or panic during the first few hours of their abduction. He had even experienced it first hand when he was held hostage by Tobias Hankel. But Alex seemed almost calm, like how Hotchner or Morgan would react in his given situation. She must have had training. Perhaps an undercover agent? But why wouldn't she have said something? Surely she would have recognized him as a BAU agent from the lecture?
Giving the door a last frustrated kick, Alex sat down opposite Reid.
"So what now?" she asked
"I'm not sure."
"Thank you all for coming in on such short notice." Agent Hotchner began, "This is SSA Andi Swann, head of the Domestic Trafficking Task Force. I'll let her explain the situation."
"Thank you." She stood up and started passing out files to the other members of the team. "For the past three years I have been tracking a human trafficking ring targeting low risk college students across the continental U.S. As far as we can tell, they have anywhere from fifteen to twenty captives held in various locations. Part of their operation is on the ground, allowing high paying customers to torture the victims, however, the majority of their work is online with live streams of their captives available 24 hours a day to anyone willing to pay a fee."
"Ok, so it's a trafficking ring for sadists. What does any of this have to do with Reid?" Morgan interrupted.
"Six hours ago, a new stream was started." Swann continued, picking up the remote and starting a video on the projector. It showed a small room with two cots on each lay a figure, bound and blindfolded. One a well built young woman, her brown hair obscuring her face, the other an tall and lanky young man with dark wavy hair.
"Oh my god." Garcia gasped, instinctively reaching for JJ.
"As soon as our technical analyst identified him as one of yours, I contacted SSA Hotchner. We have yet to identify the female victim."
"Due to concerns about objectivity, we are not technically allowed to work the case, but Agent Swann has graciously allowed us to unofficially consult." Hotchner said, with a concerned glance towards his team.
'Dammit, kid,' Morgan thought, 'what have you gotten yourself into.'
