Hey guys, sorry it's taken me so long to update. My life has been kind of hectic lately, and to be fully honest, I just haven't been motivated to write. I will try to do better and post WAY more often, but I can't make any promises. Feed back is MUCH appreciated!
On a completely unrelated note, how do you guys like Jennifer Love Hewitt in the new season?
Emily and I rode to the new crime scene in an awkward silence. We were both taking in what the note had said, and trying to figure out a way to keep ourselves and the team safe. She fought to save them. So we were right. She had fought to protect her friends, and they had killed her for it. But I didn't think that it was a coincidence that they had taken someone who they knew could fight. I just had to find something to back up the feeling in my gut.
When we arrived at the scene, we had to park at the very edge of the lot there were so many news vans and onlookers. Prentiss and I moved our jackets so that they hid our guns, and tried to look as un-agent like as possible. If at all possible, we didn't want to have to deal with people we didn't have to. We pushed through the crowd muttering things about imaginary sisters we were worried about and casually dropping hints about how much we hated the media. Apparently we did a good job because when we reached the crime scene tape and tried to duck under, the officer on duty stopped us.
"Sorry ladies, no one's allowed to come in here." We pulled out our badges, and he looked embarrassed, muttering, "Sorry ladies," again.
Behind us, I heard a very angry news reporter yelling at her camera crews about how they had missed two agents who might have given them information. I smiled in spite of myself.
Hotch was waiting for us at the only evidence marker in the area.
"Doesn't look like much of a crime scene." Said Prentiss, gesturing to the marker. "What's even here?"
"Tread marks from a boot. I'm not thinking we'll have much luck with it though."
"How did we find out so fast?" I asked him. "Was there a witness?"
He nodded and gestured to a young woman who was talking to Rossi. "And there was a camera that caught it all. He wore the mask again."
"Which Unsub was it?" I asked.
"I haven't seen the footage yet. I was waiting for you to get here."
Prentiss and I followed him into the empty mall and turned into a small room that was plastered with screens. There was a security guard sitting in the chair, and he appeared to be waiting for us. When we were ready, he pressed a button and the footage popped up on a large screen.
The woman who had been abducted was talking on her phone when she walked out. She looked flustered, and hung up, just as the same car from the night before pulled up, she looked surprised for a moment, and that was when he grabbed her. There was only one man and he seemed to have a small problem keeping the rag on her mouth and controlling her thrashing. After several moments, she stopped struggling, and he hauled her into the car. He looked dead into the camera just like they had the night before, the word Aaron across his forhead, the face still featureless. Then he pulled something out of his pocket. In the blurry, low quality video, all we could see was that it was white and that he leaned down and put it in the large flower pot that most malls had out front.
"Did we recover that?" Prentiss asked.
"No." Answered Hotch, turning and leaving, almost running outside.
"Fast forward." I ordered the guard leaning in.
We watched our witness calling the police and the first responders showing up and closing off the area. It wasn't until the first news van arrived that I told him to play in in live time. From behind the mall came a reporter, sneaky enough to avoid being seen by the officer guarding the scene. She managed to slip under the tape, and grab the note and was almost out before the officer saw her. It looked like he was chastising her for entering the crime scene and then gave her a warning. He didn't even realize she had the note.
"Send that to our analyst in Quantico." Snapped Prentiss, taking her anger out on the guard.
"Already done." He said, and had the good sense not to say anything about how badly we had screwed up.
I whipped out my phone and walked out of the small room dialing Garcia.
"You have reached the office of supreme genius. What unknowable information can I provide you with today?"
"Garcia, do you have the video of the new abduction?"
I heard a click. "Yes, but I haven't watched it yet. Trying to put off the icky for as long as possible. What do you need me to do with it?"
"Skip over the abduction. I want the face of the reporter who got under the tape and I want to know who they are ASAP."
She started typing furiously. "Her face will be sent to your tablets momentarily, but the facial recognition will take a little longer."
"Thanks Garcia." I hung up before she could say anything else.
Hotch stormed in, looking angry enough to be an Unsub. "It's not there. Damned reporters, so interested in getting their story that they don't care if it might cost a girl her life." He took a deep breath and continued in a more controlled voice said, "Let's go back to the station. We'll have more luck repairing this from a place that we have control in."
The three of us walked out signaling to the rest of the team that it was time to head out. When we started cutting through the crowd again, I thought Prentiss was going to punch the first reporter who started asking questions. We made it to our cars without saying anything, and drove to the station in an infuriated silence. We hadn't been in the car very long when the picture of the reporter appeared on my tablet. Not long after, Garcia called.
"Hey, so you know how I said that the facial recognition was going to take a while? Well, it turns out that if you're on TV all the time, it makes the wait much shorter. Her name is Jackie Findley. She's on the major local channel that everyone in this town watches."
I nodded at Prentiss to tell her we had the reporter. "Work address Garcia?"
"Aww, Jajye, I thought you knew me better that that. Hit your GPS before we started talking."
"Thanks Garcia. Will you call the rest of the team and tell them that's where we're heading."
"No problem. Garcia out."
When we arrived at the news station, Prentiss and I hashed out a quick plan. We didn't want them blowing a gasket or closing us out when they figured out that we were FBI, so we just weren't going to tell them. We were going to say that we wanted to talk to Ms. Findley because we had news on the kidnapping. We figured that there was no way that she would be able to turn the offer down.
The man at the front desk hadn't batted an eye when we asked where Ms. Findley was. He just grumbled "Third floor." And went back to the game he was playing on his phone. It was when we reached the third floor that we reached resistance. The woman sitting at the desk looked at us like we were the biggest idiots in the world when we asked to see the reporter.
"She's on the air right now."
I leaned against the desk and tried to look as enthusiastic as possible. "We have news about the kidnapping that happened this afternoon."
This gave the woman at the desk pause. After a moment's thought, she signaled for a guard to come over. "Take them into the newsroom and let them sit in there until the next commercial break." The guard nodded and led us through a door into the large newsroom. He was very careful to make sure that the door didn't make any noise when it closed. Jackie Findley was sitting at the large desk in the front of the room with another man, and they were finishing up a story about the rising rate of stray animals in the area.
"Now," She said, "we have some breaking news about a kidnapping that happened this afternoon." Prentiss and I tensed. This was a live newscast, and if she started talking about things that she shouldn't be, then we were going to have to stop her. "An unidentified woman was kidnapped from a mall in downtown Denver no more than two hours ago. An inside source has provided us with a document that the kidnapper left at the scene. It is encrypted, and we do not know yet what it says. We are issuing a two thousand dollar reward to anyone who can crack the following message." She moved to hold up a piece of paper, and we knew that that was our signal.
Prentiss and I moved in unison, pulling out badges out and showing them to the guard as we basically ran forward. "Stop!" I yelled, stepping in front of the camera. "Stop filming!" The camera man turned the camera towards me. "Now!" I ordered, reaching for my gun. That made him stop. He pressed a button and put his hands in the air. The television that allowed the anchormen to see themselves stopped showing anything.
"No one move!" Ordered Prentiss. She tossed me the pair of handcuffs that she carried and turned the camera towards the door in case it was still filming. Several security guards were running in, and Prentiss was yelling, "FBI! Stay back!"
Jackie had stood up, and had her hands in the air like any normal person. "Jackie Findley, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice and Federal theft." I grabbed her arm and yanked it behind her back, expecting a little bit of resistance. What I had not expected was an elbow to the face.