One again, I am very sorry for the wait. I was in Wisconsin last week, and Denver the week before, and didn't have access to a computer. Please review!
How many of you guys watch Castle? Just wondering.
I recoiled in surprise and pain. Jackie had taken off running, one of our handcuffs still around her wrist. It took me a moment to orient myself and run after her. She had blasted through the door at the back of the set, and I heard her clamoring down a set of stairs. "Freeze!" I yelled, following her at full speed. She was already almost on the ground when I reached the stairs, and I knew that if I didn't hustle, I could lose her. When she hit the ground, instead of turning down an alley, she ran down the nearest major street where I still had full view of her. I was charging after her and my best guess was that she either wasn't trying to dodge me, but rather just outrun me, or that she wasn't very smart, because she had multiple opportunities where she could have turned down a side street and lost me, but she didn't.
She hit a major intersection, and there were a lot of people walking down the street. "FBI! Out of the way!" I shouted, after nearly running into several people that Jackie had pushed in her mad escape. For a moment, it felt like I was back in college playing soccer, complete with blood that was streaming down my face.
She finally had the common sense to turn down a less crowded street. I was catching up to her, and I could tell that she was getting winded. I was no more than three feet behind her when she stopped abruptly. Maybe she thought that it would cause me to run past her. That was not how it worked. I tried to stop, or at least slow down but I didn't have enough warning. I slammed into her, completing a tackle that would have made Morgan proud. We flew several feet before hitting the ground, her smaller figure catching almost all of my weight. In the nearby intersection, I heard a car honk loudly. I rolled off of her, and heard her sob in pain.
"JJ!" Someone yelled from behind us, and I looked up to see Prentiss jumping out of the car and running down the street towards us. The first thing she did was finish handcuffing a still sobbing Jackie, and helped me to my feet. "Are you alright?" She asked looking me over.
I gestured to Jackie. "She got it a lot worse than I did. I landed on her."
"I think you broke my ribs!" She screamed.
"You'll live."
We loaded her into the car, and Prentiss handed me a box of Kleenex when we started driving. My nose was bleeding pretty badly and my hands were scraped up from our fall.
The car ride didn't take long, since I had chased her in the relative direction of the station. Jackie had stopped crying for the drive, but as soon as we arrived, she promptly started sobbing again. Since our chase had taken place at a news station, there were already lots of reporters waiting for us. Hotch managed to distract most of them, and I kept my face turned away from the other cameras. Prentiss took Jackie to an interrogation room while I headed for the bathroom.
"Hey, JJ wait!" Called Reid trotting to catch up with me. I had been hoping to avoid the team until I was cleaned up, but I wasn't going to be that lucky. When he saw my face, I thought he might have a cow. "Oh my God! What happened to you? We need to get you to the hospital!"
"Spence, I'm fine. It's just a bloody nose."
"That looks way more serious than just a bloody nose!" Again he asked, "What happened?"
"I bet that you could call 9news, and that they would have footage of it." I grumbled, and turned towards the kitchen.
Morgan was coming out with a cup of coffee. "Hey pretty boy what's-" When he saw my face he stopped. "Oh."
I pushed past him to the sink and started cleaning up my face. It was tender to the touch, but I was fairly certain that it wasn't broken. Even if it was, I wasn't going to admit it to the team. I would have a good bruise for the next few days though.
"What happened to you?" Asked Morgan, leaning up against the counter next to me.
"The reporter that stole the note decided that she might have been able to outrun me and elbowed me in the face."
"What about your hands?"
"I completed a beautiful tackle that I didn't know that I was going to make."
"I wish I could have seen it!" He laughed
"Morgan!" Cried Reid. "It's not funny!"
I ignored Reid. "I bet if you asked Garcia real nicely that she would be able to find some traffic cam footage."
"I don't even think that you would have to call her." Said Detective Newman who had appeared in the doorway. Seeing the questions on our faces, he lead us into the bull pen. Several officers were gathered around a TV watching a breaking news story that was showing some low tech footage. It was me, chasing Jackie through the streets and completing the tackle.
Prentiss came out of the interrogation room, handed something in an evidence bag to Reid and joined us. "Ugh." I rubbed my hair through my hair in exasperation.
"JJ, Emily, come here." Hotch said from behind us." We glanced at each other and followed him into the office that we had set up our base in. "Good job catching her."
"You aren't mad about the whole news thing?"
He shook his head. "I'm not happy about it, but it was out of our control. Are you ok?"
"I'm fine Hotch." I assured him. "It's just a bloody nose."
He nodded. "I'm glad. If you're up to it, would you and Prentiss interview her? I think she took it as a publicity stunt, but we have to make sure that she doesn't know the Unsub."
"We did get the note back right?" I asked Prentiss.
"It was sitting on the table. She didn't even run with it."
Hotch went to talk to a couple of officer that had questions and Prentiss and I went to interview Jackie.
She was rubbing her side and hands, trying to look as in pain as she could. Before we could say anything, she said, "I'm not saying a word until my lawyer arrives." She rubbed her side again for effect, and then added, "And I'm suing for excessive force."
We went a few rounds with her, to no avail. She held true on her statement of not talking, and we had to try a different approach.
"Do you know the man who did this?" I asked. She didn't answer. "Because only someone who knew the man that was doing this would have known where the note was."
Prentiss picked up where I had left off. "Since you're so interested in the story, I'll tell you what he did to them." Jackie looked excited. Prentiss pulled out a picture of Kate Jackson from the morning's crime scene. "She fought, and he beat her, then raped her." She added venom into her next words. "And she didn't even do anything to him."
"He left that note at the crimes scene so that the police would find it. If he wanted you to have it, he would have sent it to you. If he did this to Kate, for fighting back, imagine what he would do to you for ruining his plans." She thought about this for a moment. "Maybe we'll let you out of here and tell the media that you took the note from the scene. See what happens." Now she looked scared.
She was about to say something, but her lawyer stopped her. "Do not say another word."
Prentiss and I shrugged, and slowly packed up the case file, making sure to show her the pictures of the injuries that Kate had suffered. We walked out and into the viewing room where Morgan and Rossi were watching.
"What do you think?" I asked them.
"She looked too scared to have known the Unsub." Said Rossi.
Morgan's phone rang, and he answered it and put it on speaker phone.
"Talk to me Baby Girl."
"All hail the mistress of technology because I have cracked the code."
