Chapter 05

Parson Plantation
Grindstone Island
St. Lawrence River
New York state

October 2011

The first thing Morgan noticed when they drove up into the island center was that it was still early. The sun was glowing over the treetops in the east. There was just enough light to see the rich farmland around him. The fields looked heavy with the harvest, the trees an autumn rainbow, the cattle and sheep and horses calling to each other in the early morning as they moved out into their paddocks and to wagons loaded with hay. It was just cool enough for a mist to be rising off the land, the delicate blues and grays rising to meet the rose and gold of the clouds in the sky. It was all so peaceful, so serene. They were right, this place really was beautiful.

Too bad it was hell.

He had been too close to this case from the moment that kid showed him the collar around his neck. His father's family was descended from slavery, from the Jim Crow laws and the battle for civil rights. One of his uncles had walked the Edmund Pettis Bridge and still proudly showed the scars. He'd heard all the stories growing up, passed down from his grandparents, from their grandparents. When he was a kid they had given him nightmares.

Now part of him hoped whoever this guy was he was full of bullshit.

They drove past trucks full of people, all heading for the docks. This was turning into a cross between a no-knock warrant and a disaster drill, hundreds of people were being evacuated to Fr. Drum, while at the same time they had to winnow out the ones who were armed and protect the victims from any form of retributive attack. And preserve the evidence, all ready a couple of small fires had been knocked down. Morgan rather suspected they'd find a pattern in those, but he hadn't had time to delve into it yet. Any way you looked at it it was a giant mess, it was only luck that it wasn't a clusterfuck yet.

They went through one of those arched gates onto one of the plantations, and then off that a way. At the bottom of a small, steep hill they had set up a parking area. That was where Morgan met the agent-in-charge of this particular unit. He got out and looked around. Something was missing. "Where are the kids?" At the first one he'd been on the ground, there had been a flock of them running around, getting underfoot, trying to see what was going on.

"This one believes in educating his people." The agent-in-charge said as they started up the hill. "They were in school when we got here. The schoolmaster is the one saying he's an FBI agent. He's walking the kids down to the trucks, we can't get over the hills to them."

"He's helping?"

"Yeah. I don't know if he's an agent but so far he's the only one making any sense around here."

They topped the hill and Morgan saw it. It was an honest-to-god little red schoolhouse, complete with white trim and a bell in a little cupola, tucked into a little hollow next to a creek. Not that little, it was an L-shaped building, with a door in each wing, and in the corner a small yard with play equipment. A double line of children, aged maybe seven to thirteen, was walking toward them, quiet and not overly squirmy, about what you would expect from any elementary school. They were wearing queer, old-fashioned clothes, the boys in little vests, the girls in loose dresses and aprons and these bag like things on their head to hide their hair. But they seemed happy as they went, curious and not at all afraid.

Then Morgan spotted the teacher, and his heart managed to soar and break at the same time. "Son of a bitch."

The agent-in-charge looked at him. "He is an agent?"

He was thinner than he had been, a scarecrow walking the field. He had on the blazer he had been wearing when he went missing over his slave clothes, battered now, and some kind of vest. His hair was ragged and too long, and his beard was thick and full and he leaned on a walking stick as they went. But he was walking, no obvious injuries, and he was still mentally present enough to get those kids organized and moving and keep them from being afraid. "He's been missing from our unit for ten months."

The agent-in-charge got it. "He's the one? Yes!"

Morgan started walking toward what had to be and had better not be a mirage. "Reid!"

The bearded scarecrow looked at him.

A moment later he had hands on his little brother again and to hell with anyone who thought two guys couldn't hug. It was all going to be all right now. It was all going to be all right.

When they pulled back Morgan looked in the eyes of his friend. He found, of all things, guilt there, and shame, and fear, all battling with a lot of relief and no little joy. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Spencer replied, and how good was it to hear him again. "Maybe. I don't know. I'm not injured." There was the sound of an engine, different from the others going out there. The anger in Spencer's eyes flared and went cold, never a good sign with the genius. "I need a badge and a gun and a pair of bolt cutters, in that order."

"Here." Spencer's badge was in Hotch's pocket. Morgan had on his FBI vest, so he pulled his off and handed it to Spencer, who looked at it like it was the Holy Grail. "You sure a gun is a good idea?" He looked like he might not quite have the control he needed for it.

"That's not the point." Spencer was keeping an eye on the base of the hill, where a modern utility truck had pulled up. The agents down there had surrounded it with weapons up, were getting the kids out of the way, were disarming the occupants.

All of a sudden Morgan intuited the point of the matter. He stepped around to shield what they were doing, pulled out his backup, and emptied it before handing it to Spencer. Spencer put the badge on his belt, open and bright, and stuck the gun there as well before heading down the hill. Morgan followed, calling over the radio for someone down there to bring him a pair of bolt cutters.

At the bottom of the hill the three men in the truck were on the ground and in cuffs. Morgan accepted the cutters and passed them off to Spencer, who stood before those men and cut the chain off his own neck. As Morgan put the chain in an evidence bag Spencer went down so the leader of the trio could see and hear him. "My name is Doctor Spencer Reid." He said with that snap in his voice that betrayed his bone deep anger. "I'm a FBI Agent. Yeah. We told you that." He said as the memory came into the eyes of the leader. "My memory is accepted as fact by the US court system. When they try you for your list of crimes starting with assaulting a Federal Officer I will be there to testify. And when they lead you off to prison I will personally put the shackles on your wrists. Get them out of here." He snapped to the agents there, who got the men up and into the cars.

"Feel better?" Morgan asked. If he was right that was the overseer here. If it had been him he would have beat the shit out of him. But he wasn't Spencer.

"Yeah."