xvii. Wheat
The video appears on all of Garcia's screens and she shrieks before she can even process that her system has been hacked. Reid has the wherewithal to call the team into the room.
It's Emily. Emily, who has been missing for three days because of this huge disaster of a case. Emily, who looks like she's been missing for three days. Bruises and cuts mar lily white skin, all of the skin that they can see from her shredded tank top hanging off her shoulder. Her hair is a greasy, tangled mess and her left eye is swollen shut.
But she's alive. She's alive and the ragged, wheezing breaths she's desperate to take in are proof enough of that.
Morgan and JJ are the first to sprint into the room, nearly tripping over each other to see the video feed. Gideon is right on their heels, and he follows immediately after Gideon, phone already in hand to type an order to Tech to trace the source of the video and an alert to Strauss.
"Hotch?" It's JJ's small voice, something terrified that he's never heard from her in all their years together, that gets him to snap out of his tunnel vision locked on Emily's unnaturally slumped head. The team takes a collective breath when a masked figure enters the shaky, dark frames and yanks back Emily's hair to expose her bloody neck for the blade in his hand.
"Say it," the disembodied voice orders and forces Emily's face toward the camera.
"I am FBI Special Agent Emily Prentiss, and I am going to be sold to the highest bidder at exactly midnight tonight." She takes a deep breath and uses what seems like all her energy to keep her one eye locked on the camera. "Aaron Hotchner, this is all your fault."
It's as if all of the oxygen in his lungs, in this room, in the world, disappears. He would have crumbled into a ball of guilt and self-loathing if the team hadn't been there to watch his disintegration. Kevin calls at that moment and he doesn't even greet the other man before he reports, "The video can't be traced, Agent Hotchner. It's bouncing all over the world and the second that I can get a read on one location it's already at another and–"
He mindlessly passes the phone to Morgan when he notices her hands. Rapid, calculated actions of her fingers.
"Her hands," he murmurs aloud. Her fingers are bloodied and missing nails, but they don't stop moving.
"Sign language!" The first to catch on, Reid exhales angrily. "I don't know it."
She had taught it to him in St. Lucia, just spelling the alphabet with their fingers. It was their convenient way of communicating from across the room when they were at the bar together. He still remembers the movements.
"Wheat thresher?"