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A/n a couple of you got the movie reference in the previous chapter. It was "The Silence of the Lambs."
"The good news is that I found a life insurance policy on him for 5 million dollars. It was taken out one week ago."
"I'll bet I know who it was that took out the policy."
"You would think that, but you'd be wrong."
Hotch raised his eyebrows and the rest of the team waited with bated breath. "Tell me!"
"It was the mother-in-law!"
"Are you sure?"
"When have I ever let you down?"
Hotch smiled, but it was the same smile you might see on a shark getting ready to attack its prey.
"You rock baby girl." Morgan said gleefully.
"You better remember that, hot stuff. Now, from what I was able to find out, her mother, Mrs. Cash, had a thriving business on Fifth Avenue. One of those upscale boutiques called "Modern Woman. It catered to the rich and middle-aged."
"What's that got to do with Scott Simeon's undercover work?"
"I'm getting there handsome. Apparently, Mrs. Cash, who's real name is Nancy Casto, was implicated in money laundering when her son-in-law's task force busted the Giordano family just before the family went into the witness protection. She was given protection in exchange for her testimony. Word has it that she wasn't very happy when she had to leave her shop behind. Perhaps she's looking for financial compensation, especially since the MS has gotten bad so fast, so soon."
"Do I want to know how you got information like this?"
"No sir… Did I help?"
"Yeah…"
The phone call ended with Hotch asking Garcia to run down any associates of the Giordano's that might have stayed in touch with Mrs. Cash.
"Morgan, we've got enough for a warrant. Make sure you fill in Sheriff White. Let's give the locals the chance to bring her in. It's likely that she won't make a scene if they bring her in."
"I agree Hotch."
Hotch raised his eyebrows, "I thought you'd be chomping at the bit to bring her in."
Morgan pressed his hands to his temples. "I'm sorry I flew off the handle about Reid
"It's okay. Let's just find this little boy and bring him back to his mother."
---
Garcia tapped her pencil on the desk as she waited for more info on Nancy Casto and the Giordano family. Her eyes kept going back to the monitor that refused to yield its secrets about Reid. Something wasn't right!
Of course something's not right, that's why you're trying to find him."
She let her fingers fly over the keyboard without really thinking about where they were going. They tapped in a familiar code, and something didn't ring true about the response she was getting from her baby. It just wasn't right.
Just because the command took a few seconds longer to execute, doesn't mean there's a problem.
She typed in another command and the screen flickered. She frowned down at the keyboard and her hands. Had she made a keying error?
The Goddess of the Information Super Highway doesn't make typing mistakes.
When she looked up, the sight she'd picked at random was on her monitor looking exactly as it had the last time she'd logged in. The only thing that was wrong was that her systems seemed to be slowing down.
Not possible, you just defragged this hard drive yesterday and freed up a truck load of memory. No self respecting virus would dare to invade. I'm hack-proof since Garner.
Don't think about that freak!
Fine, if someone was trying to hack her again, she'd find them and put them down like the dog they were. No one was going to hurt her family again.
Unfortunately, her second baby began beeping indignantly to her right. "Damn."
She rolled her chair over to the second monitor, and promptlyforgot what might be wrong with the other computer when she saw what her babies had come up with on Mrs. Cash and the Giordano family.
"Hotch is going to love this."
--
Hotch sat down opposite Mrs. Cash in the interrogation room at the police station. "Do you understand your rights, Mrs. Cash?"
"I understand."
"Do you want to exercise your right to council at this time?"
"No, I don't need a lawyer."
"Mrs. Cash… I'll get right to it. We know your name is Nancy Casto. We know you had ties to the Giordano family in Manhattan."
"I'm not at liberty to discuss the case."
"I'll get right to it. Who did you hire to kidnap your grandson, and kill your ex-son-in-law?"
"You don't know what you're talking about. I've seen the error of my ways"
"It must have really burned you when your son-in-law put you out of business. I'll bet you tried to talk him out of it. When that didn't work, I'm sure you tried to bribe him with a piece of the take. He was a good man and a good cop. He wouldn't have taken your bribe easily."
"I'm not answering your questions without my lawyer present."
Hotch went around and around with Mrs. Cash for an hour. She refused to break for him although her grey streaked hair was beginning to come down out of the elaborate knot on her head. Her white blouse was beginning to wilt, and her hands were shaking.
The door opened and Emily entered the room with a file folder in her hand. "Mrs. Cash would you like a drink of water."
Hotch left the room without as much as a backward look at Emily. He slammed the door, making the woman in the wheelchair jump.
"I'm sorry about him. He tends to get riled when kids are missing. Did you know Mrs. Cash, that when a child is kidnapped by a stranger, they have less than twenty-four hours to be found alive. We've been here for almost that long."
Mrs. Cash's eyes flickered to the case file and the picture of Glen that was on the top of it. The little boy's big blue eyes were smiling up at her from his class picture. He wore a red tee shirt and a pair of blue jeans. One tear traveled down her cheek, unnoticed by her as she stared at the image of her grandchild
"I don't have anything to say. I don't know where he is."
"I know it was hard to move up here from New York. You were born and raised there. You had a successful business. Then your son-in-law took it all away from you. I don't blame you for getting in the middle and convincing her to divorce him. But, she went against you again, didn't she? She never stopped loving him. In fact, they were secretly seeing each other again.
"That's not true."
"It is true! Your daughter betrayed you. You wanted your old life back. You have a debilitating disease and you're stuck here in Podunk Vermont. You want your old life back and your friends back. If you can't have that then you want enough money to start over elsewhere. What was your plan?"
Hotch slammed back into the room at that point. "Stop babying her Emily… She knows where the kid is."
"I don't know!"
"Yes you do! Did you think that we wouldn't find out about the life insurance policy that you took out on your ex-son-in-law? Your grandson is the beneficiary of that policy!"
He slammed another manila file down on the table in front of the woman. "Is the boy already dead?"
"No, I'd never hurt him. I love him."
"Where is he?"
"I can't tell you. They'll kill him. They promised me he wouldn't be hurt if I got the money for them."
"Who told you that?"
"It was Vincent Martinelli. He was Giordano's right hand man. He found us despite the US Marshals giving us new identities."
"So you sold your son-in-law to them."
"It was his fault we had to come live here in the first place!"
Hotch rounded on the woman. His eyes were blazing and he gave Emily a warning look. "It was your involvement with the Giordano family that got you in trouble in the first place. How dare you blame a good cop for doing his job? What was next on your list? Are you going to kill your daughter too?"
"No, I love my daughter. She's better off without Scott." Her hands were twisting around in her lap and tears were creeping down her cheeks.
"Where is Glen? If you tell us now, you might get a break with the judge."
Hotch's phone beeped. He took the call and then returned to the room where Emily was trying to get the location of Glen from his grandmother.
"Don't bother Emily. Garcia already found him. He's in Manhattan. The police are already on their way."
"No! You can't go there. They'll kill him!"
"Why… I'm sure you have it all under control."
"I'm supposed to meet them with the money at Grand Central in four hours. If I'm not there, they will kill him."
"Where did you get the money? Your life insurance hasn't paid yet."
Mrs. Cash wouldn't look at Hotch. "Just like I thought, you still have money out there from your dealing with the family that you didn't disclose to the Marshals."
"How did you know?"
"We have a smart technical analyst."
"I have to go." She pleaded.
"You should have told your Marshals instead of getting greedy. And by the way, just because the Giordano's are in jail doesn't me you're safe. It was a dumb move to refuse further protection from them."
"That was my son-in-law's idea. I tried to tell him not to send them away, but he wouldn't listen. He thought he could protect us."
"Yeah… He didn't know that you were the biggest threat to his family. You disgust me!"
Hotch and Emily left the room. Sheriff White passed them in the hall looking as though someone had punched him in the stomach. "I trusted her."
"She couldn't resist the opportunity to get some of her life back." Rossi said as he came up behind the Sheriff.
"Will the police get Glen back?"
"The FBI and SWAT will find someone to go undercover as Mrs. Cash. The boy will be fine."
"What do we do now Hotch?'
"We leave it to the New York field office and the US Marshal's office. They'll call us when they have Martinelli and the boy."
"It feels like something is missing."
"Yeah, this one was a bit anticlimactic."
"No, it's not that, something else was missing."
"It's Reid, we solved it without him rambling on and on about some weird tangent. It doesn't feel right."
Hotch was looking at Emily as she spoke. "Wheels up in one hour. Let's go find Reid, Strauss or no Strauss!"
---
Austin threw another sweater into the bag she'd packed. It had been two days since she'd called Garcia. Her patience was wearing thin. Why hadn't the perky tech that she talked to called her back with anything?
She closed the suitcase and grabbed her bag. The ride down on the elevator to the outside door of her apartment building was quick. She had a flight out in four hours.
What's his boss going to think when you show up at a military base?
It didn't matter. She was going to go help them find Reid. Nothing else mattered till she knew what happened to him.
The night was cold so she pulled her jacket closer around her slight frame. The wind had picked up and it whined around her like some animal on the hunt. She hurried to where her car was parked. It felt like someone was watching her.
Her car was parked in her reserved parking space under a carport. The light was flickering and she cursed the maintenance guys. They should be on top of fixing the so-called safety measures.
You're freaking out because your panicking. She picked up the pace and was about to open the car door when a man said:
"Don't move and I won't have to hurt you?"