akacinno's A/N: Again, a little late...HOWEVER! It is a good chapter and I think you'll enjoy the epilogue, if I do say so myself. (And I DO say so myself, since I wrote most of it. ; )) Also, if you didn't know, we have a YouTube channel now, dedicated to our Criminal Minds Spoof Series. Here's the link if you wanna check it out! youtube.
com/user/thefuzzyoranges?ob=0&feature=results_main
dieselwriter's A/N: Bah, it's a good chapter. I wrote all of it and akacinno hasn't read ANY of it...Still, though, it is the last chapter before the epilogue, so for those of you keeping up with the road trip analogy, this chapter would be the equivalent of pulling off the highway and getting those excitabillies because you're finally almost there! (Yes, excitabillies is a word...especially at 2:30 AM.)
Chapter Seven
"Derek, I think there are some things we need to discuss."
Morgan glared at Hotch from the passenger's seat before turning his attention back out the window.
"I'm listening."
"I don't think you are," Hotch kept his eyes straight ahead on the road, knuckles forming a firm grip on the steering wheel. "And that's part of the problem. You're seeing and hearing, but you are not listening."
"What do you want from me, Hotch?" Morgan sat up and watched his boss' unblinking eyes. "You want me to apologize?"
"That would be a good start."
"Then I'm sorry I'm taking this personally," he spat, sounding anything but repentant. "I'm sorry I can't distance myself from a case where you and Reid and Prentiss got blown up."
"You don't see Reid or myself being unreasonable-"
Morgan's snort interrupted Hotch's argument.
"I'm sorry too, then, that you and Reid have let Clarke in and already forgotten about who Emily was and what she did for this team."
"Do you resent her that much?"
Hotch glanced over to find a suspicious glower hidden in Morgan's aggressive posture.
"Clarke was meant to make contributions to this team, not serve as Emily's replacement. She has been doing a fine job thus far and has done nothing to merit your hostility."
"She shouldn't have to be here!" Morgan slammed a fist into his seat. "And she knows nothing, Hotch; she's a liability! How can you not see that?"
Hotch parked the car in front of Andrew Lee's apartment but didn't make a move to exit the vehicle. He turned dangerous eyes to the impatient Morgan.
"I need your head in this case, Derek. If you can't keep your cool, I can't have you here."
"Fine," was the only response he received before the younger agent hastily opened his door and slammed it shut behind him.
Reid and Clarke watched the ongoing interrogation between Rossi and Andrew Lee with little hope. Lee had one of the worst narcissistic personality disorders either had ever encountered, and paired with a tight-lipped resistance in providing information on the 'Master' meant Rossi was getting nowhere fast.
"So I heard you and Morgan got into another fight?" Reid asked, almost casually.
"I'm starting to miss our old fights about my hair," she answered with a small smile.
"He has a hard time trusting people," Reid responded, hoping that whatever was said in that argument wasn't irreconcilable. "I wouldn't take it personally."
"I'm trying not to," she said, meeting his eyes. "He said some hurtful things to you too, and you've been partners for how long now?"
"Nine years, eight months, twelve days, and three hours, I believe."
"See? If you two can be working together that long and still get into fights, then we should be fine."
"He only gets like this a handful of times, but he usually doesn't lash at his own team members like this. Hopefully we can just get through this case and things will get back to normal."
"I'm not going to pretend like I expected things to go perfectly when I found out I'd be replacing someone you lost," Clarke rubbed a spot on her shoulder. "It might be optimistic, but I…I know this is something we can overcome."
She looked over at Reid with a streak of resolve in her eyes.
"There is something special about this team, for it to have been around for this long. And Derek Morgan won't get rid of me that easily. I want to know how things turn out."
"No, no, I assure you. I'm fine, I'm fine!"
Both team members jumped as a familiar, loud voice echoed down the hall. They shared a confused glance before walking toward the commotion.
"I just, I need to see—move, please! I tell you I'm all right!"
Reid and Clarke turned to head down another hallway and nearly barreled into Thomas Paige.
"Thank goodness!" the Chief of Police exclaimed, left arm strapped up in a sling but otherwise ignoring the injury as he used his free hand to grab Reid by the elbow to guide him further down the hall. "You need to see this."
Reid looked confused but remained silent and Clarke followed behind them, avoiding the glances cast on them by other worried officers.
"Please, come in," Paige ushered the pair of agents into his office, closing the door behind them and shutting the blinds to block out the prying eyes of his staff.
"What's happened?" Clarke asked for both herself and Reid.
"It's gone."
Clarke and Reid looked in confusion at the clearly distraught Paige for a moment before an unsettling flash of comprehension made Reid realize what had happened.
"What did he take?"
It took the pained hesitation from Paige to make Clarke understand what had happened.
"My Medal of Valor."
Clarke raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed, as Reid processed the information.
"When was the last time you saw it?"
"Yesterday afternoon, after my little heat spell," Paige answered quickly. "It sits right on my desk; I'd notice immediately if it were missing."
"Is this hallway under surveillance?"
"Yes, I've already asked our tech guy to pull it up for us."
Clarke looked between the two men, a bit overwhelmed.
"How could this guy just…get through an entire police department and steal something from the Chief of Police without being noticed?"
The silence that followed felt like an indicator of exactly how smart and dangerous this UnSub actually was.
Reid, Clarke, and Paige collected Rossi from the interrogation room and before clustering behind Penelope Garcia to watch as she rifled through yesterday's surveillance tapes of the hallway outside Paige's office.
"Haven't felt this claustrophobic since that rave I went to last month," Garcia couldn't help huffing in spite of the tension in the room, looking over her shoulder momentarily to glare over the rim of her glasses at the lot of them.
The group apologized and took a minute step back, still eager to find the source of all their current problems.
"Oh, I like her," Paige mumbled under his breath with a smile. "She's got spunk."
Garcia smirked as she leaned forward, concentrating on the video as she fast-forwarded through it.
Everyone jumped when Rossi's cell phone went off.
"It's Hotch," was all he said before he stepped away from the group to answer the phone.
"Did you and Grumps find anything?" Rossi cut straight to the point, unable to hide a small smile at the momentary pause Hotch took to register the new nickname for Morgan.
"Ashes in the fireplace indicate he burned any communications he received," Hotch provided. "There are pictures of victims and we found the murder weapon, though, so we should have more than enough to put him away."
"But nothing on our 'Master'."
"No," Hotch responded heavily. "Has Garcia found anything yet?"
"We're looking through the video, and nothing so far."
"Rossi?" Clarke called over to him.
"We might have something, Hotch. Let me call you back."
Rossi barely heard the affirmative before he hung up the phone and returned immediately to Garcia's side.
"What did you find?"
"The back of a head," Garcia's brows were furrowed in concentration as she zoomed in on a figure onscreen. "He knows the security system well; every time he's in frame his back is to the camera."
"Then let's get the videos for the entire station," Rossi said, getting ready to head out of the room to track down Paige's technical analyst.
"Wait just…" Paige was absorbed with the computer monitor, as if trying to figure out how to continue a jigsaw puzzle after assembling all the edge pieces. "I…I think I may know who that is."
The present members of the BAU team held their breaths, afraid a disturbance might make him lose his train of thought.
"Just…give me a moment, let me ask the receptionist a question."
"I'll go with you," Clarke said, and Paige nodded distractedly, clearly lost in thoughts of the identity of their UnSub as they left the room together.
Rossi and Reid watched them leave as Garcia continued working on the video to try to find a better shot of the thief.
"I'm going to get those tapes," Rossi said eventually, unable to wait for their return without doing something.
"We'll wait here," Reid nodded, resuming his spot behind Garcia's right shoulder as she continued manipulating the feed.
"We got him."
Rossi and Reid stared at the UnSub on the computer monitor as Garcia leaned back in her seat in triumph. It had taken Rossi five minutes to acquire the tapes and Garcia another fifteen minutes to go through them before finding him, and yet they had still beaten Paige and Clarke to the punch.
"It looks just like the man Megan and I ran into," Reid said, taking in the short, stocky build of the man with cropped, jet black hair.
"The question that remains is who is he," Rossi said, leaning forward to examine the broad shouldered man on screen.
"Simon Estridge."
All eyes turned to the door, where an exhausted Thomas Paige stood, giving a tired smile.
"Excuse my absence," he continued, walking towards the group and avoiding the man on the computer monitor. "I needed to confirm my suspicions."
"We need his address," Rossi said, nearly ready to sprint the distance to the location should the need arise.
"I've got it," Clarke appeared at the door, looking a bit out of breath and holding onto a thick folder.
"Paige…" Rossi turned to the Chief, who waved a hand in the air at the team.
"Go."
"This is your case too," Rossi tried, but Paige shook his head.
"I don't want this one. Please."
Rossi nodded before running out the door, Reid and Clarke at his heels. Paige took a seat beside Garcia, letting out a pained sigh.
"Is there anything I can get you, sir?" Garcia asked the broken man.
"Some better friends," was all he said as he finally glanced at the image of Simon Estridge on her computer.
Andrew Lee Residence
April 24th
"There's nothing here, Hotch."
Morgan and Hotch had spent the better part of two hours combing through the house with a few of Paige's men, making sure every possible nook and cranny was investigated so as to not miss any vital piece of evidence linking the hit man to a beneficiary of his crimes.
The last half hour had been particularly brutal, knowing that the remainder of their team was far closer to figuring out the Master's identity than they were.
"We need to make sure he didn't have any safety deposit boxes under his name. Give Garcia a call—"
Morgan slammed his fist against the wall, looking defiant.
"What we need to do is go back to the station and figure out who this son of a bitch is."
Hotch turned a cold eye onto his colleague.
"Figuring out who it is won't do us any good if we can't connect these murders to him. Lee's clammed up and Faison's dead; we need a link."
"That's their job!" Morgan hissed, pointing a finger at an officer carefully picking through the contents of Lee's trashcan. Realizing Morgan referred to him, he cast a glare in his direction before continuing on with his work. "We're supposed to be catching the guy."
"This is our job," Hotch said, starting to feel fed up himself. "Catching him won't do us much good if we can't prove he had a hand in any of this!" he gestured towards the desk that was littered with photos of previous victims and potential targets.
The officer at the trashcan nodded his approval of the Unit Chief's words.
Morgan looked ready to say something else but Hotch's phone rang before he could. Hotch looked at him meaningfully before answering.
"Hotchner."
Morgan waited, the anticipation reaching his fingertips, which were aching to finally do something constructive. Hotch remained silent for about a minute, absorbing whatever information was being fed to him.
"Understood. We're on our way."
Hotch hung up the phone, looking at Morgan meaningfully.
"They've got him."
"How far out are Hotch and Morgan?" Rossi asked Clarke as he poured over Eldridge's folder.
"Two minutes," she replied, hanging up the phone.
"What's our ETA looking like, Reid?" Rossi turned his attention to the driver, suppressing a grimace as Reid leaned on the horn to avoid side-swiping a moped.
"Less than a minute, as long as you don't mind me potentially running over a pedestrian."
"Doesn't bother me if it's Estridge."
Clarke gave a short laugh, feeling butterflies swarming around her stomach.
"Hotch say anything else?" Rossi asked Clarke.
"I gave him a bit of Estridge's history. He wants us to wait for him and Morgan, and to be on full alert. Given the previous encounters you've had with him and his henchmen, and knowing what he's capable of, well…he'd rather everyone be here and be vigilant."
"We're here," Reid said quietly, parking at the curb of the neighbor's house.
"Then let's be vigilant. If you see any sudden movements, we go in," Rossi ordered the two young agents. "Clear?"
"Clear," they echoed.
Their attention never left the single-storied house; they took in every curtained window, every detail of the front door, every aspect of the front lawn and what was visible of the back. Not a shadow crossed their sight, and they only exited the vehicle when Hotch and Morgan pulled up a minute later.
"Clarke and I will cover the back," Hotch whispered, drawing his weapon. "Rossi, Reid, Morgan, you take the front."
"On it," Morgan took the lead, not exactly subtle as he moved across the front lawn with Reid and Rossi right behind.
"Let's go," Hotch said, moving toward the back of the house. Clarke swallowed down her nervous energy as she pursued him.
Clarke was surprised at the few things she was able to pick out of the backyard before all her attention fell onto the backdoor and what was hidden behind it: a clearly used basketball hoop with a basketball a few yards away, an old sandbox with a shovel and pale half-buried, a set of severely dented soda cans by the fence.
Simon Estridge may not have a family, but it was clear he'd had children over before.
Clarke placed herself against the wall of the house as Hotch tried the doorknob. Finding it locked, he kicked it in, entering the home gun first.
"Clear!" Clarke heard Morgan shout from the front of the house as she entered the kitchen. She tried to ignore the fact that the refrigerator was cracked open as Hotch cleared the room to enter the dining room.
As each room was investigated and given the all-clear, her excitement was replaced with dread, identifying the signs that Estridge had packed up and left.
The most damning evidence of all presented itself in the form of the bedroom, which appeared completely ransacked. The dressers had empty shelves pulled out, and what little clothes remained were scattered on the floor in disarray. An empty pack of cigarettes was all that remained on the bedside table, and the only thing still on the bed was a pile of blankets.
"He took his pillow," Clarke noted half-heartedly.
"He craves home comforts," Hotch responded, sitting on the bed to massage his aching knee.
"Dammit!"
Clarke winced as she heard a loud thump, able to picture Morgan punching a wall somewhere in the house.
"What do we do now?" she asked her boss.
Hotch took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Estridge has been in law enforcement his entire career. He knows how we operate, knows how to disappear off the map."
"So…we wait," Clarke answered her own question.
Hotch nodded.
"We wait."
akacinno's A/N: Thanks for reading! : D
dieselwriter's A/N: Do not distress (yet)! Epilogue will be up tomorrow! You'll get more info on Simon Estridge...and a brief idea of what to expect in our next story. ;)