Chapter 34

BAU Headquarters
FBI building
Quantico, VA

October 2011

"So Ashley is going to raise the baby?" Emily asked around the break table. "That's going to be tough."

"Actually, she's not." JJ said. She'd come home for a few days, Dave had gone out to spell her. "It's um..."

"What's wrong?" Penelope asked, turning to face her friend.

"Nothing. It's just that...while I was reassigned I...um...I had a miscarriage."

"Oh JJ!"

"No, I'm all right. But they don't know if I can...um...I mean Will and I have been trying, but..."

"Is there anything they can do?" Emily asked.

"Maybe, but...Ashley said she wanted to put her baby up for adoption. She said she didn't think she was ready to be a mother, and with this behind her she really wants to see if she can get into Human Trafficking, and, you know Will and I talked about it, and..."

Penelope gasped. "Oh my god! You're adopting Ashley's baby!"

JJ blushed and grinned and nodded. "Yeah."

FBI Building
Federal Plaza
New York, NY

It took time but the eventually sorted out what it would take to interview one Donald Parsons. They finally worked out an arrangement with his legal team that allowed him to travel to New York and back to Grindstone Island without fear of arrest. "We're trying to sort out the Talitha Jenkins kidnapping." Hotch said. "As part of it we need to do a DNA test."

"Of course," Parsons said with a smile.

"You don't object to giving us a DNA sample?" Hotch asked again.

"No, not at all. What do we have to do?" Parsons obligingly opened his mouth for the swab. "I can already tell you what your results will be."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I'm Talitha's biological father."

"So you admit to raping Dr. Aoife Murphy?"

"No. She had been drinking, and came on to me. Later she came to me and tried to blackmail me with the pregnancy. I told her I would fight for custody, and she gave Talitha away in an illegal adoption, depriving me of my rights as a father."

"We are well past the statute of limitations for a custodial kidnapping." One of Parsons' lawyers pointed out.

"Why did you keep your daughter with your slaves?" Dave asked.

"Contract workers," Parsons corrected. "She loved teaching the children; I couldn't stop her if I tried."

"Why did you force her to mate with Dr. Reid?"

"I introduced them. What happened after that was their affair. Whatever stories they're telling are lies. How long will it take that test to come back?"

"About a week," Dave replied. "You'll have to return here for the results."

Parsons smiled, "Of course."

A week later Parsons returned. He seemed ebullient, happy to be back, almost excited to hear the official results. "Well?" He asked when Hotch and Dave joined him.

"You were correct." Hotch said. "You are Talitha Jenkins' biological father."

"Excellent." Parsons grinned.

But that grin was wiped off his face a moment later. "Donald Parsons, you're under arrest for the assault, rape and illegal imprisonment of SSA Ashley Seaver." Dave said. "You have the right to remain silent..."

Parsons sat there in shock as Dave recited the Miranda warning and put him in cuffs. "Wh...what are you talking about?"

"She wasn't pregnant when Wilcox invited her to the party." Dave told him. "Congratulations, you're going to be a father again."

"You said that you were going to match my client's DNA to Talitha Jenkins." One of the lawyers protested.

"Agent Seaver already consented to a Chorionic Villus Sampling test in order to identify her rapist. Her baby's DNA was already in the system. Once a DNA result is in the system the computer automatically matches it to any unknowns. " Dave looked at Parsons with disgust. "Given that you're a flight risk with an established home in a non-extradition disputed territory I think you're going to be a guest on a different island for a while. Riker's Island."

Parsons looked shocked as he was led away.

Dave wasn't done yet.

"You arrested my husband?" Mary Parsons asked. "Why?"

"He raped an FBI agent." Dave replied. "We were able to prove it by matching his DNA to the baby she's carrying. Yes, he got her pregnant." He nodded. "You don't have any children, do you?"

Mary Parsons' face had gone from shock to one of deep thought. "No, we were never blessed with children."

"A sign of disfavor from God, if I'm not mistaken. Usually as the result of some great sin committed by one partner in the marriage. He's done it before you know, your schoolteacher? The little one? She's also his, he raped a woman at a conference twenty some odd years ago."

Now her eyes went flat with growing anger. "He said he was going to breed her to that Doctor he found. Said the Lord told him her offspring would be the perfect ones to adopt as our own."

"They would. Your religion forbids adoption, doesn't it? Because the sins of the father are passed down for seven generations. Of course since he fathered her that eliminates any generational sin from the adoption, no? Even though she was born of sin. You know, likely those aren't the only two times he's done that." He settled back and considered. "Serial rape is a form of adultery, isn't it? All that sleeping around, giving in to temptation..."

By now Mary Parsons' eyes had narrowed. She turned to her lawyer. "Make me a deal." She said. "And you can handle the divorce as well."

The lawyer nodded and turned to Dave and Hotch. "What do you want to know?"

"Every wife?" Andi asked a couple of days later.

"Yep," Dave nodded. "Once they heard Ashley's statement and went home to compare notes they realized that their husbands had been using the housemaids as their own, private collection of sex workers. Adultery is the one grounds for divorce in their belief system. And they were all ashamed and angry enough to go for it. In exchange for not being charged with accessory they gave up everything, records of kidnapping, financial data, even some details on the missing survey reports. By the end of next week we should know which country has jurisdiction and we will go in and free everyone, this time for good."

"You used their own beliefs against them." Andi nodded. "That is some masterful profiling."

"That's three divorces." Dave replied.

Central Booking
The Tombs
New York, NY

"I want to meet him." Tally said. "I want to speak to him, just once."

Spencer had tried to talk her out of it, to discern the reason behind her demand, but she was resolute. She insisted on speaking with him. And for some reason Hotch and Dave allowed it. So they caught a shuttle flight up to DC.

Thirty hours in a cell with nineteen of the denizens of New York City, all sharing one open toilet, had already begun the work of shattering Don Parsons self esteem. His expensive suit was rumpled, his tie had been taken along with his belt, and he was starting to smell a bit. But he still had the proud bearing of a patriarch as he sat at the table and allowed the guard to handcuff his wrists to the bolt in the floor.

Tally did not shirk from her former captor. "They say you are my father." She said.

"I am your father, darling..."

"No." She snapped. "Foreman is my father, for he is the one who took vows with Housekeeper, my mother. She gave me to him the day she took me into her family. You are my sire." She refused to look away from his eyes. "Isn't that the term you taught us to use."

"Talitha..."

"Teacher." She snapped again. "You do not have the right to my name." She looked at him a long moment. "I was right, you know. I told you my magician would come for me."

"No..."

"He did. You let him through the front door. And I am right about this as well, I know what you want."

"You don't..."

"I do. I came here to tell you that I'm not your slave any longer. My body is no longer yours to control."

"Wait..."

"And even if it means I will never lay with my husband again I will never give you grandchildren. And I will teach my little brother or sister to do the same." She was terrible and enormous and entirely fierce. "Your precious bloodline ends with me." With that she got up and walked out the door.

Spencer turned once, and watched Don Parsons, supposed Master, lower his head to his hands, a broken man.

Riker's Island Prison
New York, NY

The day after Tally met with her biological father for the last time Dave Rossi waited in an interrogation room at the prison, while his old buddy from Vietnam, now the warden, made sure no one saw any video tapes. He waited while they led the leader from the biggest gang in the prison in and signaled the guards to remove his cuffs and step out. He tossed a business card on the table. "That's not a get-out-of-jail free card." He said. "But it's good for a favor or two."

The man looked at him, studied him. "What do I have to do to earn this favor?"

"You pay attention to the news in here?"

"Sometimes."

"That slavery case up north?"

"That one. Yeah. Bunch of rich white men taking it out on the colored folk again. You think they would have learned the first time."

Dave opened the file he was carrying, showed him the picture. "He's one of them. He's being put in gen pop today."

The man looked at the picture, then at the card on the table, then at Dave, then picked up the card. "Always willing to protect and serve."