The Lake House Chapter 11, a criminal minds fanfic

Criminal Minds characters and universe are not mine, but the original characters, storyline and wording are mine.

I can honestly say that that last chapter was the most emotionally draining piece of writing I've ever done, and one of the most satisfying. It felt amazing to get it finished, and I'm really happy with it, but I wasn't surprised when I ended up having nightmares. I hope it's well received and carries on the story in a way that you all enjoyed, and that you liked the twist at the end :D The length of Lily's captivity may have caused a tiny break in continuity but I think that is easily fixed by just adding to the first or second chapter that she seems too thin. I did originally start this as just a piece of fluff where Hotch gets snowed in with her and they fall in love and it's all sweet and lovely yada yada yada. But I totally fell in love with the darker side of it, partly because there's more room for drama and partly because it brings out Hotch's protective side even more, which I also love.

Many thanks to guest reviewer Tara; I hope you continue to enjoy the story :)

The Lake House

Chapter 11

The team wasted no time when they arrived at the deserted airport, heading down the stairs the moment the hatch was open. A black SUV waited for them on the tarmac, a silent, tight lipped driver inside ready to take them to their destination. The team turned to Reid once they were all inside and the vehicle was moving.

"So how are we getting to Hotch's cabin, Reid?" asked Prentiss. Like the others she felt subdued.

"With the help of a friend. Although I'd like to wait until we get there for you all to see what I've arranged. Alistair will be waiting for us." Reid rechecked his cell to make sure the travel arrangements were still solid.

"How long until we get there?" asked Rossi.

"About fifteen minutes. You know, this might actually be a blessing in disguise. I didn't realise when I called him, but we may need some extra bodies at our disposal."

"Extra bodies? Who?" asked Morgan, who was fairly certain he was liking the surprise element of this less and less.

"They're ex British SAS and ex US Navy SEALS, running an operation in conjunction with both search and rescue and law enforcement for a certain kind of infiltration and extraction. Namely, very quiet. Are any of you allergic to animals? I didn't think to ask when I came up with contingencies for everyone." Reid rambled.

"Reid." Morgan's voice held an only half serious warning. "What kind of contingencies for everyone?"

"I had some free time, so I decided to draw up a list of contingencies for accessing all of our personal residences in times of emergency, accounting for difficult weather conditions in particular." Reid looked up from his tablet and saw the wheels turning in Morgan's mind.

"Rossi's is a hot air balloon isn't it?" he said with a smirk.

"It almost was. That big drive of his would be perfect for landing, but the power lines around it aren't." Morgan nodded his head in agreement. "Anyway, this is the first time I've been able to put one into effect. I have confidence that Alistair will come through for us. He's very, very good at what he does. Just…try not to feel too emasculated when you meet him." He finished with feigned indifference.

"Me? Really?" Morgan managed the ghost of a laugh.

"Really." Reid's small smile shut Morgan up just as Rossi was about to step in. Instead he shook his head at the two younger agents and turned back to his conversation with JJ and Prentiss, who were going over the members of the LaGrange-Foyet family, looking for links, ages, occupations, personal histories.

"Anything of particular interest we should know about?" He asked.

"Quite a lot. The family numbers twenty-seven adult individuals, two of who have military backgrounds. The head of the family seems to be this man." Prentiss handed Rossi her tablet, which showed a photograph of a man of about seventy. "Emmett Luther Foyet. It was his wife, born Anna Marie LaGrange in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1946, who gave the family the double barrelled name. She had a total of eight children, that we know of, but no-one has seen her since 1984. There is no death certificate for her on record, however."

"Is there any way to tell how much the family knows about George and Alexander's activities?" asked JJ.

"I don't think it's that simple." answered Prentiss. "Garcia really came through on this one. If we collate all the information on each member of the family, we get a wide range of profiles. So far we have one angel of death, four rapists who use combinations of torture and mutilation, at least three non-sexual sadists, a pair of fraternal twins who seem to perform as synchronised serial arsonists. Neither of them have ever been married, or lived with anyone other than each other, yet the female has a set of twins of her own, two years old. They may well be living in an incestuous relationship."

"What about the grandfather?" asked Rossi, disturbed by what he had heard.

"All indicators point to him being a highly organised, narcissistic sociopath. The crimes attributable to this family go back over fifty-five years to when he was a teenager and are too numerous to imagine." Prentiss didn't know whether to be horrified or frustrated. "He's not compelled to do any of the things he's done, he's chosen to do them."

"There must be something genetic, though, to account for the profiles on the younger family members, though." said Rossi.

"I don't think so. Looking at the family, especially the two ex military men who seem to have acquired training in weapons with the sole purpose of becoming LDSKs, I think the grandfather is the sole determining factor." Prentiss looked sick with the knowledge.

"But that means…" JJ's mind was catching up with where Prentiss was going with this.

"That he has, over the course of the last fifty years, raised an entire clan of career serial killers. Deliberately." Prentiss rested the back of her head against the car seat.

"How in hell did anyone miss this?" asked Morgan from the backseat.

"No-one was looking for it." Said Reid. "This is absolutely unprecedented. Not even the Manson family comes close. To have this level of organisation, he knew exactly what he was doing. And I think we can assume that the next generation of children are being initiated and educated in exactly the same way. Everyone is encouraged to find their own, unique slant on killing, dependent on their personality type. But they are all expected and encouraged to follow this path. If we don't stop it here and now, there will be too many of them to deal with once the children have children."

"Does anyone else think it's weird that, with the exception of some of the youngest children, and the one set of twins, there are no females in this family?" asked Prentiss, thinking that she didn't really want to know the answer.

"Oh god." JJ's face went pale. "What was it Lily said she heard LaGrange say on his cell? 'Set her on fire and feed her to the pack'? I assumed he meant a pack of dogs. But he kept calling her a bitch, and he was basically trying to turn her into an animal, a dog in particular. If all women are bitches to him, how many bitches make up a pack?"

"You're saying they have multiple female victims and they were going to feed Lily to them?" Morgan followed the obvious logic.

"He, not they. I think they're all free to follow their own career in killing. But I think he might be responsible for providing the family with new members. He keeps a group of women in that place, and the family raises the pick of the…litter." JJ closed her eyes against the images her brain conjured up.

"So if he's threatened, the rest of the family will be behind him?" asked Rossi.

"It's not just that. Remember the proximity of their properties to Hotch's and the old asylum. I think he is their end game. And he's about to make it a lot easier." said Morgan with a frown.

"We're almost there." Said Reid. "What do we know about how they'll act as a group?"

"There'll be two aspects to it." Morgan looked thoughtful. "Hotch is their target, yes, and Lily probably because she got away, but she'd mostly only be important to LaGrange. Protecting the old man will be paramount, even while on the offence."

"If we take him out, they lose cohesion." Prentiss put her tablet and phone away as she spoke. "Maybe not completely, but they look to him for direction. Without it, their various personalities would have difficulty following each other."

"OK guys, this is it. Look sharp." Reid and Morgan got out of the SUV, followed by JJ, Rossi and Prentiss. The driver moved the SUV silently across what looked like the yard of a group of aircraft hangars.

"Reid if we're hang gliding there the rest of your life will be short and involve a swift decrease in altitude." Morgan ground through his teeth.

"Why does it feel like we're being watched?" asked Rossi, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

"Because ye're no alone." A deep voice rumbled in the darkness. This is what a mountain would sound like if it could talk.

Their eyes searched the gloom and settled on a large shadow, but not the man that cast it. Before any of them could speak, the shadow moved forward and became the sharp outline of a man, his face shrouded in darkness.

"Um…Reid…did you order a giant?" asked Morgan.

"Alistair." Reid said in relief.

"Aye, laddie. Who do we have here?" He stepped forward again and the team saw long, dark brown hair, a handsome face marred by a large scar on one cheek. He wore no finery, but a plain Scots plaid and shirt, seemingly oblivious to the lethal winter cold. Prentiss found a thread of appreciation running through her at the sight of him. He towered to almost seven feet tall in perfect proportion, a long limbed, powerfully muscled leviathan with no natural predators.

"Alistair Mackenzie, meet the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit, or BAU. Supervisory Special Agents David Rossi, Derek Morgan, Jennifer Jareau and Emily Prentiss." Reid introduced the team to his friend. "Guys, this is Alistair Mackenzie. He's a Scottish national, ex SAS with the British armed forces."

"Agents." The giant nodded briefly in their direction, his hard stare lingering just a little longer on Prentiss than on the others.

"Why the ex?" asked Prentiss, feeling brave. She felt a little less so when his eyes zeroed back in on her with interest.

"They said I was too big tae be sneaky. Black ops, ye ken." He winked at her, his stern mouth crinkling at the edges. "They were wrong. I can be verra sneaky when I need tae be." Prentiss smothered a smile; they were working and this was a serious situation. But still…Alistair the sneaky giant. It had a certain ring to it. She shook her head in amusement instead, realising the others were following Reid across the tarmac, and hurried to catch up with them.

"How bad is this?" he asked her softly, keeping perfect time with her footsteps.

"We have two friends walking into an ambush of two dozen career serial killers who happen to all be related, who are holding an unknown number of women captive." Prentiss laid it out for him bluntly, yet was unprepared for his reaction.

"Sounds like we'll have a grand time." He grinned widely and hurried ahead to the group of men in combat gear toward whom Reid and the rest were headed. Prentiss stood open-mouthed until Reid prodded her.

"Your friend. Is he, uh, sane?" she asked him.

"Yes. He's just kind of…indestructible." Prentiss just stared at him without speaking. "Come on, we can get going soon. Let's meet the others."

"Gentlemen, may I introduce the FBI's Behavioural Analysis Unit, Rossi, Jareau, Morgan, Reid you know, and Prentiss. Agents, this is Duncan, Angel, Marco and Nils."

"Boss is this still just a transport mission?" asked the one called Nils.

"No, I think we'll be going in live, aye?" Alistair cocked a brow at Rossi.

"Did Agent Prentiss update you on the situation?" Alistair nodded. "We'd certainly appreciate help, and I know that you and your men have the authority to work officially or unofficially with any government agency, but this is an incredibly dangerous situation. We have no idea how the dynamics of such a large and diverse group of serial killers would or could play out."

"Well it wouldnae be any fun if we kent what was going tae happen now would it?" Alistair's face remained stern, letting Rossi know that he was not making fun of the situation but accepting responsibility for their involvement. Rossi felt a small touch of relief. He'd been starting to feel a little outgunned simply by the number of unsubs they might be facing.

"Get the gear, lads. I'll introduce the agents tae the teams." Alistair beckoned them inside one of the aircraft hangars via a side door while his men went to another at a fast trot. Inside, instead of airplanes, they found large planning and tactical areas that resembled their own, fronting a long line of empty kennels. He led them past that to the back of the hangar. More than one jaw dropped open.

Sitting patiently were five teams of sled dogs, already harnessed to large, black sleds, carbon fibre and titanium by the looks of them. The dogs looked slightly bigger than normal sled dogs, as were the sleds, which were sleeker and semi roofed, more like large motorbike sidecars.

"We've been breeding these for five years now, part husky, part Belgian Malamute. We'd found a niche that needed filling; none of the government agencies had anything like a good contingency for extreme winter conditions other than search and rescue helicopters and climbers, nothing tactical at all. Their job is sometimes search and rescue, but more often infiltration and/or extraction. Today seems like it's tae be a bit of both, aye?"

Morgan nodded thoughtfully. He could see the benefit of being able to move swiftly across the snow without the noise of an engine. Alistair followed his train of thought.

"They're completely silent, no barking. We've trained them for stealth as well as speed. Plus, they're all trained attack dogs, the Malamute part is particularly useful for that. You all need to greet every single one of them in my presence. They need to know who is friend from foe in the event of a conflict." He motioned them to go to the dogs.

One by one they greeted every animal as Alistair kept up a constant murmur under his breath. It meant something to the dogs, because they constantly flicked their ears to him and then to the agents making their acquaintance. When they were done, Alistair nodded, satisfied.

"They'll be uncoupled as soon as we reach our destination. Where is that, by the way? You said your friends had taken off after the bad guys. Do we go to the cabin Reid gave me coordinates for, or do we head straight tae where your friends have gone?" He looked between the agents.

"The latter, I think." JJ answered. He made a good point. "Hotch and Lily will be long gone before we get to the cabin. If we can't beat them there, we need to at least bring up the rear with as small a margin as possible."

"Agreed. Reid, give the new coordinates tae Nils when he gets back. For now, just get stay with the hounds. I have tae fetch something." He stalked away, out of the hangar.

It was only minutes before his men filed in, carrying a variety of weapons to stow in the compartments of the five sleds. Morgan and Prentiss both took the extra magazines offered, and JJ gratefully accepted the offer of a hunting knife in a leg harness to slip under her pants where it couldn't be seen.

Reid passed Nils the new coordinates and he programmed it into the displays inside the windshields of the sleds. They all looked up as Alistair re-entered the building. They saw immediately what he'd gone to fetch; an enormous sword was grasped in one hand. Not a sleek, modern blade, but a huge and ancient Claymore.

"Are you goddamn kidding me?" exclaimed Morgan, remembering Reid's earlier jibe.

"Dinna fash, laddie. An officer who goes into battle without his sword is improperly dressed." Alistair grinned and stowed the blade in what they assumed would be his sled. "Everyone pick a sled and get in." He motioned to Prentiss. "Ye're with me, bonny lass."

The other agents kept their expressions even and for once Prentiss didn't argue, and climbed into the sled, watching as Alistair's huge frame climbed into the seat in front of her, his hands picking up the reins that fed through holes under the windshield. A remote control blacked out the lights of the hangar and closed the doors after them, the sleds picking up speed as they slid over the winter landscape under the bright moon.

Please excuse any errors. I usually try to edit and correct pretty meticulously before I post, but I've been fighting just to keep my eyes open the last five hours it's taken me to write this chapter since I got home from work. If any of my Fuil 'o mo chuislean readers have chanced a look at this story, I hope you enjoy Alistair's guest appearance. ;)

~Sin~