A/N: Hello! I put a universal disclaimer up on my profile about how I don't own Criminal Minds blah blah blah. So check there if you're finicky. If you aren't, then please review because I do love those things.

Five

Stop, she thought. Her newly gagged mouth was so dry. So thirsty; so hungry. Her tongue seemed foreign to her own body. She was choking on her own spit half the time.

With each beat of her heart came a yelp from her brother as she watched the woman beat him with the pipe. Haley had already had her turn and was angry. Rage filled her vision as her nails clawed up dirt from the floor beneath her. How could she just watch? How could she sit idly by? She began to grind her teeth as her eyes welled up with the hot, stinging tears that she seemed to have been waiting on for years. Finally, that release of emotion. It needed to be done, but she was still consumed by a blinding frenzy of desperation.

Something shiny caught her eye and she glanced up quickly to see an old, possibly broken, iron on the shelf above even Spencer's line of vision. It was probably put down there with the owner's never realizing something like this would happen. She took a silent, deep breath and looked again at her brother, to help her draw strength for this incredibly stupid act, and crawled to the shelf on the wall adjacent to the one she had been leaning against.

Praying profusely that the woman would be too occupied to notice her, and at the same time Spencer wasn't hurting too badly, she reached the shelf and began to try to stand up by using the shelf itself as a hand-hold.

Don't look up, Spence.

With a feeble, shaking, and terrified arm, she boldly reached for the iron on the top shelf, grabbed the handle, and toppled to the floor with the exertion. Her body had been abused to the point where if she tried to move it was all she could to not to pass out.

There was a terrible, horrifying silence. Spencer wasn't yelping anymore. There were no sounds of the rod whipping through the air and biting the flesh.

Haley laid perfectly still in the fetal position, back to the scenario behind her; the iron was hidden in the curve of her stomach. She exhaled, hearing the footsteps of the woman coming behind her, possibly with the rod.

"What were you trying to do, stand?" the woman spat. "Trying to get out? Leave him?" The woman crouched down with the rod to Haley's level. "Have you finally broken? Are you done studying and have you begun to live it? The pain?"

Haley's nostrils flared as she whipped around with the iron, beating the woman in the forehead with its edge and screaming. "STOP HURTING HIM! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!" underneath the gag, she sounded like she was an animal.

Every time she screamed the word, Haley brought the iron down on the woman's head. The words through the gag becoming unintelligible screams of agony. Tears flew with the blood that had started to sprout from the woman's head. And Haley was losing her resolve, her control; she was completely losing herself to her instinct. Her instinct told her to kill that woman.

She suddenly felt hands around her waist pulling her off of the non-moving kidnapper. The hands wrapped around her and held her close as she began to sob, dropping the iron she turned to see her brother untying the gag. "They're going to kill us now, aren't they?" she asked, weakly looking at the crushed skull of her brother's assailant.

--

It was 3:00AM.

JJ looked anxiously out the windows of the Police Department's window in blind hope of seeing Spencer step out of one of those SUV's. She fingered her ring nervously. She smiled every time she looked at the beautiful square-cut diamond on a white gold band. Spencer had purchased it for her the day they both were released from the hospital. Isabelle had picked it out.

Her beautiful Isabelle. What was JJ going to tell her if Uncle Spencer didn't come home this time? Aunt Haley? She snapped to the present as the rest of the team sans Spence walked into the office, fervently debating something that was more than likely a carry-over conversation from the cars.

She looked almost jealously as Morgan walked over to Penelope and wrapped his reassuring arm around her. Pen had been wilting in the past two hours, claiming she was up past her bed time but willing to do it for her Jayj. It was sweet, but her and Morgan, even sweeter.

Why couldn't it have been me?

She could barely imagine the pain they were going through. Sure, she had been abducted some two weeks earlier, but that had been scarcely a six hour stint. This… this had been two days with minimal sleep. At ten the next morning, it would be three. She felt nothing but guilty as she gazed at the nearly empty parking lot.

JJ tore herself away to try to listen to the plan. It had something to do with vests, Morgan going in, yadda, yadda. Same old. Well, that wasn't good enough to save her Spencer.

"I-" JJ started but the phone rang.

The room fell silent as the phone rang. An officer answered it in a bored manner, sighing his yes's and his okay's. "Well?" Hotch asked expectantly.

"Noise pollution," the man rolled his eyes. "Probably the third call about it tonight."

JJ's eyes flashed. "We've been here this entire time and you haven't told us that there were three calls about noise pollution?!" she snapped. "Well, what was the noise?"

"Shouting, from some guy's basement…"

"What the hell kind of police department do you run here?" Morgan burst. "We have a missing agent and civilian and you don't heed to a noise pollution call? Three? It doesn't take the village idiot to put it together!"

"Agent Morgan," Rossi said sternly. "I think he understands the point."

Hotch sighed, looking at the officer in a straight-forward manner. "Well, did you at least get an address?"