Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.
As it turned out, a snowstorm was brewing in the particular area and phone service was down so neither Jamie nor the local police could be reached. The two hours the jet took to get there seemed like an eternity to every single member of the team. Only Reid managed to concentrate on some documents Garcia had handed him in the last minute. He was deep in thought.
"Do you really think she's in danger?", JJ asked anxiously.
"I'm not sure", Rossi replied. "He has never physically threatened her. But nevertheless I'd like to be sure she's safe."
"What kind of a motive could he have for something weird like that?", she continued. Reid looked as if he wanted to say something but hesitated.
"Well, he'll have all the time in the world to explain", Morgan said grimly as the jet slowly descended through thick clouds of snow.
The woman who opened the door was utterly surprised as the FBI agents identified themselves. "Where's Jamie?", Hotchner demanded to know.
"She's upstairs", the woman stuttered. "She was tired after dinner and wanted to nap. What's the matter?" Rossi rushed upstairs, everyone filing in behind him except Reid. He stayed at the foot of the stair and asked the woman a few questions related to the documents he had read in the jet which left her even more puzzled than before.
Jamie was lying on her bed, terribly still. Rossi took her wrist. "Her pulse is hardly detectable – call an ambulance! He must have given her something!" Luckily, the main streets were already drivable again after the snow storm so that help arrived within minutes. "They'll have to pump her stomach!", the senior agent told the paramedics. "I think she was fed an overdose of sleeping pills."
"What in the world is going on here?", an elderly man with gray hair and prominent features, much older than the woman downstairs, asked. He had apparently just come home from taking the family dog for a walk.
"You tried to fake your daughter's suicide by feeding her an overdose of sleeping pills during dinner", Rossi stated flatly and beckoned Morgan to handcuff Jeremy Talbot. "What I don't know yet is why."
"I might have an answer to that", Reid said, standing on the threshold of Jamie's room. "The idea sounded so weird, I dismissed it at first. But the ground plan speaks for itself and according to Mrs. Talbot's statement…"
"What is it, Reid?", Morgan demanded to know.
Reid looked very sick, which unnerved everyone else in the team since they all knew what terrible things he had already seen. If this was worse…
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", the young doctor finally said. "We always look for deeper meanings – that's our job. But what if this time we mistook a very real picture for a symbol?"
"Reid, come to the point!", Rossi urged.
"What if Jamie – in a very young age – had actually seen a blue door and heard voices coming from behind it? Josef Fritzl, the monster of Amstetten, had his own daughter and three of the children that he had with her imprisoned in his own cellar for 24 years." Reid hesitated. "According to the Talbot's house's ground plan the cellar should be bigger than it is right now…"