A/N: So, I sort of felt slightly guilty... But... HERE IT IS! Thanks for the reviews and stuff and I do not own CM and their characters! (not as long as the previous chapter. More of a turning point for the story!)
Spencer panicked. His legs felt weak. Henry continued to cry and Reid slowly lowered himself to the ground, ignoring the fact that he was sitting in his own blood. He had to check Henry, make sure the baby wasn't stabbed as well. Reid would never be able to forget this feeling. This was too surreal. It reminded him to much of those dreams. He knew it was intuition, just in a screwed up twisted sort of way.
Quickly, Spencer started examining Henry. The baby seemed fine. Until he checked the boy's leg. Henry was in fact wounded, but Reid couldn't tell how severe the laceration was. Spencer knew he took most of the knife, but the adrenaline to take care of Henry overrode his worries.
Spencer felt his heart pound as he scooped up the baby, rushing him to the bathroom where he could clean the baby's wound. His breathing hitched as he thought of all the possibilities that could happen because he acted out. Henry could bleed to death, get an infection, or both! Henry could even get an infection and end up loosing his leg! Spencer couldn't live with himself if that happened. Henry cried pitifully as Spencer washed the wound thoroughly. Spencer refused to let Henry get any worse.
When Spencer was absolutely sure, he cleaned Henry's wound to his perfection, he bandaged the wound and Henry finally stopped crying.
"Does that feel better buddy?" Spencer questioned with a sad smile. The adrenalin was finally waning and Spencer started feeling light-headed. "I'll tell you a little story. Let's get back to the chair," Spencer whispered. He held Henry tight and walked to the chair where he sat in pain. He made sure to hold Henry on his good side, so not to hurt himself or Henry any farther.
He sat down an applied pressure to his own stab wound. Wincing slightly, he began his story for Henry.
"Betty Botter bought some butter, but, she said, the butter's bitter..."
JJ was pacing. She couldn't sit there and cry. She heard someone walk past the door and automatically started banging again.
"Hey! Open up! I want my son you children of the corn!" JJ screamed. Much to her surprise, the door opened.
"Children of the corn? Is that the best you can do?" The woman asked placing a hand on her hip. JJ pushed passed her and ran through the hallway to the room she knew Reid would be.
The woman chuckled as JJ tried to enter the room. "OPEN!" JJ screamed.
"Honey, you could've just asked me," The woman taunted.
"Please open the door my son's in there!" JJ begged crying in the torment.
"Okay," The woman shrugged. She walked over and unlocked the door. JJ ran in and gasped in shock.
There was a pool of blood in the center of the room. Automatically her stomach dropped when she saw Henry tucked into Reid's side, looking slightly pale. "Oh my God! Henry!" JJ shrieked.
"JJ, he's sleeping," Spencer said quietly. JJ's heart was beating rapidly. She felt like she was going to have a heart attack.
"Th-there's blood everywhere!" JJ almost screamed. She went to pick up Henry and Spencer let her. "He got a laceration on his leg. Dale got upset and I guess in attempt to get at me he tried to stab Henry," Spencer breathed.
"What did you do to make him mad! You know he put Henry in your hands as a life or death situation! You continued to upset him?" JJ asked feeling angry.
Spencer looked over to the door. JJ noticed his breathing was slightly labored despite the fact that it was labored for a while, it seemed worse.
"The...Um, door. It's open.. JJ listen to me... Go towards the door and call for help..." Spencer breathed painfully.
"What? Why? We don't want them in here! They can hurt Henry and us!" JJ said not quite understanding the situation.
"JJ... I-I need help," Spencer said allowing her to see the stab wound. JJ gasped as she suddenly understood the whole situation. She ran towards the door and screamed for help.
Suddenly Dale emerged and JJ took another involuntary step back.
Reid braced himself for what he was about to do. It was reckless and stupid, but he calculated the whole situation. It could work.
Spencer stood up as tall as he could. Clearly showing his dominance. Reid knew Dale wouldn't like it and Dale would be distracted. "What you didn't have enough!" Dale shouted definitely angry with Reid. Spencer showed his defiance. JJ stared in freight. She couldn't protect Reid with Henry in her arms. She watched as Dale barely contained his anger while Reid had that slight arrogant calmness. When Reid smirked, it was enough to send Dale over the edge.
His body slammed against the ground and he felt the air leave his lungs. Dale on top of him as his vision began to darken. With one small push, Reid was able to break free.
"JJ, get Henry out of here!" Reid demanded, before Dale was able to gain the upper hand once more.
JJ couldn't find the will to leave Reid behind. He was dying, but she needed to protect Henry. Without another thought, JJ ran out of the room.
She ran as fast as she could down the hallway. She bumped into the woman with the blue eyes. JJ swore she was familiar, but quickly discarded the thought when she saw Alex right behind her.
Alex looked back at her in shock.
JJ quickly slammed the woman into the wall and grabbed Alex's hand. JJ knew she would have to kill the girl later.
"Where's Spencer!" Alex screamed, not bothering to run any further. JJ could tell she was worried.
"He's handling Dale. He told me to run! We have to go so we can get help!" JJ panicked. She didn't know how much time she had left before Reid would lose the battle.
"You go, I'm going to try and help him. You need more time, I'm a second distraction," Alex said as she began to head the opposite direction. JJ knew she was right, and was surprised she cared enough to at least try to help Henry as well. 'Maybe she's not so bad after all,' JJ thought as she searched for her way out.
Soon she found her way. She quickly ran up the stairs and pushed the latch open revealing a small quaint house. It was rather strange that the basement was rather large compared to the house. JJ quickly ran in a random direction straight into the tree lines. She was afraid of the woods, but she would have to embrace it as her savior in order to save Henry. She continued to run. hoping that Reid and Alex could make it out alive.
The team was working diligently. They were unable to get a hold of William Reid, and they believed he made a run for it. Garcia was keeping tabs on William and will alert them if she gets a hit.
They only had about two hours left. They were panicking in their own way. Hotch kept his eye on the files, Derek paced at he suggested idea after idea. Emily tapped her pen consistently trying to decode the first letter. Rossi was still trying to find the answer in the micro details of the file.
The one person they didn't need to distract them right now was Strauss. That's why they decided to work on a whole different floor. It was under construction, but it was the last place Strauss would look and if she asked Garcia, Garcia could lie and say they went to a potential dump site or whatever else her clever mind could create.
They were still missing one thing. Something wasn't adding up.
"It's the second day, and we are still where we were yesterday. Hotch, we aren't going to figure out this missing piece. Why can't we just ask people is they've seen that man?" Morgan growled angrily. "Morgan, I know you want to find Reid, but we can't afford any mistakes. If we get too close and get it wrong, they might kill them all faster," Hotch explained.
"They have Henry!" Morgan yelled.
"They do, but rushing isn't going to get us nowhere. We already have Dale's profile, we somewhat profiled the woman as an intelligent, organized, murderer. She has black hair and blue eyes. She was able to hide from the data base for a long time now," Rossi said calmly.
"She really is smart. I'm still confused about this letter," Emily stated with a huff.
"I feel like we are failing Reid and JJ right now!" Morgan shouted flopping into a chair.
"Don't forget Alex," Emily pointed.
"Who cares about Alex. She's not JJ or Reid! She's going to be the exact reason this case will officially be given to Swanson. Think about it. What person finds out their boyfriend and his best friend got kidnapped, and then walks outside in the dark!" Morgan huffed angrily.
"She's still a victim, Morgan," Rossi said pointedly.
"I know, I just want to find them and kill Dale and that evil woman. If William Reid is involved, then I'll kill him too," Morgan said.
"You and me both," Emily said as she wrote something down.
Alex ran down the hallway where she could hear the commotion. She stopped at where the woman was laying against the wall. She took the gun that was in her waistband and quickly ran to the room.
Her eyes widened as she saw Spencer on top of Dale trying his best to keep Dale occupied. Alex couldn't help the smirk that crossed her features as she walked into the room. Spencer looked up for a brief second and froze, giving Dale the advantage he needed. Dale chuckled as Reid was once again slammed into the cold floor.
With a click. Dale froze, and the tables were turned once more.
Dale gasped for breath as Reid cut off his air supply. A part of him was laughing at the irony of that situation.
Dale suddenly went limp and Reid automatically let go. No matter what Dale did, he wouldn't kill the man. Well, he would've if Dale tried to get back up to hunt down JJ and Henry, but at the moment that wasn't possible. Spencer looked up as Alex still had the gun pointed at them.
He assumed she would be scared, but quickly let the thought go as he saw the smirk on her face.
"This was too much fun. However, I got bored," She chuckled... His eyes widened...
And a shot was fired.
JJ froze when she heard the gunshot far off in the distance.
Then there was another one.
And another one.
Finally there was total silence.
Her stomach filled with dread and fear as she knew there were only four people in the house. Three shots, meant only one survived. She trusted Reid, but she remembered seeing a gun on the black-haired woman.
JJ couldn't stop the tears. Henry began to cry. She hushed Henry gently, and forced a fake smile on her face to soothe the distressed baby, but she was too distressed herself. She quickly began to run again despite the pain in her feet and legs. Reid would want her to keep moving. If not for him, then for Henry. Henry must be safe before she worried about herself or anyone else. She knew that when she got back to civilization, she would bring the team here. She had to know what happened after she left.
She didn't know where she was heading, and she hoped that it didn't lead to a deeper part of the forest. She wasn't sure if they fed Henry, but she doubted it. They didn't even bother to feed her or Spencer while they were held captive.
She looked down at Henry, who was randomly playing with a lock of her hair. She was happy that it wasn't bloodstained like some of her other locks, but she couldn't believe that Spencer sacrificed himself for her. She owed him her life. She would make sure of it. She smiled down at Henry and laughed when he smiled back at her. "You know your godfather told me that you were a special boy a couple of months back when he baby-sat you," JJ told him. She wasn't too sure if Henry understood her completely, but he knew Godfather, Spence, and Pepe when he heard it. "He said you are very bright, and that you'll have an even brighter future ahead of you. He never told me what you did to make him believe that, but I believe him. Your Godfather is never wrong. Except with things that involve technology. He's still learning," JJ chuckled. Henry gurgled a bit and made some funny noise. "He sacrificed himself to save us, you know? I can't believed I yelled at him for making Dale mad. I mean, yes you've gotten slightly hurt, but he got stabbed in effort to get us away. His plan was intelligent and I can now see why he didn't tell me. I would've stopped him. I bet he wasn't planning for you to be there though. That must've shaken some things up," JJ smiled. She felt better that she was talking to Henry. Maybe he couldn't exactly respond, but it eased her fear of the woods as she still ran.
After what felt like hours, she finally found her small glimmer of hope.
She found a road, but it was deserted.
Erin Strauss looked pissed for a lack of proper term. She walked into the conference room angrily and stared down each member before she spoke.
"The case is moved to Swanson's Unit. You all had a deadline and you all went passed it anyways and then tried to hide! Give me one reason why I shouldn't fire all of you at this moment!" Strauss demanded. She didn't expect Rossi to answer.
"Because you will have to hire six new members and in the process you'll have more cases than teams. That's going to attract some attention from the hire ups. Also, this means more rookies get to be reported to you for every mistake they make outside of the field," He answered.
Strauss stared at him coldly before placing out her hand. "Give me the files. You are all off this case. Finish the rest of you vacation and I'll have more case files for you all to look through when you get back. Agent Hotchner, start looking at possible candidates to replace Agent Jereau and Dr. Reid. I will not have any teams slowing down in my section," Strauss said in a clipped voice.
"Ma'am, we are so close," Prentiss said calmly as she handed in her file.
"No. You're not. After I left another girl went missing as well as a six month old baby. I also heard that you both received letters from your missing agents explaining all of this. If Swanson believes that this case was of misconduct, they will both be fired and the case is closed. I don't care if I have to tell the media myself," Strauss snapped and left before anyone could argue.
"Did she totally forget that fact that Alex went missing? That alone right there tells you that they didn't leave to play hooky. This is a real case and-" Morgan stopped himself before he made himself angrier and punched a hole into this wall. He was sure the construction workers wouldn't appreciate him added work to their load.
"Okay guys, Rossi and I already knew this was happening, so we made a copies of our files. We can't work while we are here, so we will have to work outside the bureau," Hotch said and automatically, the frowns turned into sly grins.
"We just have to make sure that we keep up with any additional details," Rossi added and they nodded. "I think Garcia could do that, right?" Prentiss questioned. "Most likely. We should get to her. She's probably been waiting for us for a while now," Morgan answered with a smile. The team walked out of the conference room and went to getting Garcia before they settle down elsewhere and continued to work the case.
A/N: What... Just... Happened... So I let the dramatic effect be more of in the middle than the end. Sort of end the chapter with a sort of light tone with the team, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut something did happen...
Something seems fishy!
Can't be sure until the next chapter or soooo...
I'll try to get another done tonight!
Feel free to leave your thoughts and stuff!