Chpt 21.
Same as always, don't own a thing…damn shame it is.
Hey! Hey! Hey!
I don't like walking around this old and empty house.
So hold my hand, I'll walk with you my dear
The stairs creak as I sleep,
it's keeping me awake
It's the house telling you to close your eyes
Some days I can't even dress myself.
It's killing me to see you this way.
'Cause though the truth may vary
this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.
Hey! Hey! Hey!
There's an old voice in my head
that's holding me back
Well tell her that I miss our little talks.
Soon it will all be over, buried with our past
We used to play outside when we were young
and full of life and full of love.
Some days I feel like I'm wrong when I am right.
Your mind is playing tricks on you my dear.
'Cause though the truth may vary
This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore
Hey!
Don't listen to a word I say
Hey!
The screams all sound the same.
Hey!
Though the truth may vary
this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore
You're gone, gone, gone away,
I watched you disappear.
All that's left is a ghost of you.
Now we're torn, torn, torn apart,
there's nothing we can do,
Just let me go, we'll meet again soon.
Now wait, wait, wait for me, please hang around
I'll see you when I fall asleep.
Hey!
Don't listen to a word I say
Hey!
The screams all sound the same.
Hey!
Though the truth may vary
this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore
Hey!
Don't listen to a word I say
Hey!
The screams all sound the same.
Hey!
Though the truth may vary
this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore
(Of Monsters and Men 'Little Talks')
After Garcia got off of the phone with Hotch, Morgan was about to pester the shit out of her to tell him what was going on.
"Pen…"
"Derek."
"Aw, c'mon, what is Hotch calling you at 3am for?"
"Alecta had taken off. Now she's been kidnapped."
Morgan jumped out of bed pulling on his jeans and a Henley shirt….it was a burgundy one today.
"What are you talking about kidnapped?" Morgan was sliding a belt through the loops on his jeans; Pen lost track of thought…..what had he asked?
"Baby Girl?"
"Sorry, got distracted…' shaking the cobwebs out of her head, 'You know what kidnapped means."
Seeing the look he gave her, 'You remember Mark Goodnight?"
"Yeah, the case back in LA…..the one where we sort of met Fletcher for a hot second…..the abused women that were running from their spouses and winding up dead…"
"He took her."
"When?"
"Just within the last few minutes. Hotch said that she was having a bad night,' seeing Derek's look, 'ask him about it later. But long story short she walked out of the apartment. He went after her, but by the time he could get to the door and get it opened, she had disappeared.
Now I know Lex is good, she can hide anywhere, but she can't move quite that fast."
"I guess he wants everyone at the office then?"
"It can't hurt. Can you call the others while I jump on some searches?"
"Yeah, I'll double check and see if he's already contacted them yet. Don't be too long, we'll want to leave soon."
"You got it doll."
Garcia set her laptop to work and got up to get a quick shower. She couldn't go into work like this….
Within the hour everyone had gathered back at headquarters; Mrs. King had even demanded to come with Rossi….and Rossi wasn't about to argue with the kind of woman that had anything to do with raising the hellion Alecta.
Hotch was running behind, which was unusual for him. He was always the first in the office, if he ever left. His hair had a slightly unkempt appearance….like he'd brushed it, but barely. He wasn't even in a suit, just wearing a pair of jeans and a green t-shirt…looked like whatever was the fastest thing he could throw on. And you could tell by the look on his face how upset he was.
"Garcia what do you have?"
"Well sir, the last ping I got from the tracking device that she has implanted let me know that they are just on the outskirts of town. It's a rural area. The few houses out that way are spread out. There are not a lot of office buildings or warehouses….but that's where it ends; the closest thing that I can get to an actual location are these coordinates. But there's nothing there."
Reid was looking at the topographical map, 'It seems as though it's merely wide open spaces, open fields, no houses…not even a barn to speak of."
"Based on the fact that this is the last transmission that I've gotten from this device….it's like he's removed it."
"How?" Rossi demanded.
"C-Cutting it out."
"What?! Where was the device located?" Hotch's face showed both worry and anger in equal measure.
"Her right shoulder. We were going to implant it in the left, but….there was a little scar tissue build up from the time she got the brand that we weren't sure how well it would perform."
"Is there no other way to track her?"
"No. She didn't have any credit cards with her, or her cell phone. And this Goodnight fellow is smart enough to not use anything but cash, so he leaves no paper trail…..there was only ever the one tracking device. We never needed more than that."
"Wait a minute where has Rachel gone?" Rossi asked in reference to Alecta's mother. He spun around looking all over the conference room and out into the bull-pen for her.
"What the hell?" Morgan was exasperated. 'The women in this family are enough to drive you to drinking."
"Ain't that the truth." Rossi agreed whole heartedly.
"Says the man currently trying to tame mama bear." JJ said with a slight chuckle in her voice.
"Luckily for us, mama bear isn't as quick on the uptake as baby bear. She stole Rossi's cell, and since it has GPS we can track her,' Garcia chimed in as her fingers began typing furiously on the key board. "We will be able to track at least one of those maddening women."
"And we all know that Mrs. King is at least equally as stubborn as Alecta, she made lead us to her or at least close…."
"And get her fool self killed in the process." Rossi finished Emily's sentence with a huff.
"Agent Rossi, Sir." Garcia called to him.
"What is it Pen?"
"Mrs. King…the GPS….look."
Hotch was about to take off out of the door to the conference room, when Anderson came to the door.
"Sir, this package just arrived for you. It's been through security."
"Thank you Anderson." Hotch nodded to the young agent.
"Yes sir."
Hotch opened the manila envelope carefully; he knew what was likely in there but he was in no rush to find out for sure. The hand holding the envelope itself shook. He had to try a couple of times to tear at the flap; it kept slipping through his fingers. Upon finally getting it open, Hotch lost his grip on the package again; as it fell on the table the contents began to topple out. In a baggy there was the tracking device that had been cut out of Alecta's arm; some of her blood was still on it. Dropping down on top of the baggy…a DVD fell out onto the table.
Hotch grabbed the DVD, he was holding it in both hands, half afraid to play it; he just kept staring at it like it was an alien life form.
"Anderson, get this device down to the techs." Prentiss handed the baggy off to Agent Anderson.
"Yes ma'am. If it will help, I can describe the delivery boy that dropped this off."
After Anderson gave the description of the delivery person to JJ and Prentiss, he left. Everyone turned back around to Hotch; he hadn't even bothered to acknowledge what Anderson had told them…it hadn't registered, he was still looking at the DVD.
"Aaron, do you want Garcia to upload this on the big screen and dig around and see what she can pull off of it?" Rossi asked quietly.
"Y-yes. That would be best." Carefully he handed the disk over to Garcia who inserted it into her laptop.
Garcia popped the disk into her laptop, after tapping a few keys, the images were being played up on the large screen of the conference room. Simultaneously, Garcia was running different programs to see if there was anything recognizable in the background, and she was also keeping an eye on the tracking program that was keeping up with the cell phone that Mrs. King had swiped off of Rossi.
Hotch was looking closely at the video. There was an iron collar around Alecta's neck, which was then shackled to a hook in the floor by a long, heavy chain. She was sitting in the corner of the room on a filthy old mattress; bits of her clothes were torn….the strap on the tank top she'd been wearing to sleep in was torn on one shoulder as was part of the hem near the waistline of the top…her shorts were missing completely, leaving her in only her underwear from the waist down. There was a bruise forming on her cheek. And there was a hand shape bruise on her left bicep and another on her right thigh….you could clearly make out what looked like finger shaped bruises. It had been only going on two hours, and already this pig was rising in the ranks of the BAU shit list.
Hotch began seeing red, and consequently, turning red. Rossi could tell he was on the verge of completely blowing his stack.
Leaning over to speak quietly to Hotch, 'Would you like to step out into the bu…"
"Don't have your dares,' Hotch jerked his arm out of Rossi's grasp. He went back to watching the video.
Mark Goodnight had not initially been in the shot, just Alecta sitting there alone, not looking in the direction of the camera. Soon enough the sound of a door opening and being slammed shut could be heard, Alecta flinched a bit. Everyone could hear Mark Goodnight laughing at the fact that the sound of the slamming door had scared her.
Garcia knew how that sound affected her. She knew what that sound did to Alecta. It took her back to being a scared 4 year old girl, no bigger than Sofie or Emma…she had just watched her mom get beaten, she thought she was dead….and her father had just walked out of the house, Mrs. King's blood all over him, slamming the door shut behind him, leaving little Alecta alone with her dying mother. Garcia could see it in Alecta's eyes as she watched the video; she could tell where Alecta was at in her mind, at least to a point.
The team watched as Alecta moved off of the mattress and went to stand up and get as far away from Mark as the chain she was attached to would allow her. Mark stepped forward and grabbed a length of the chain and tugged, causing her to fall forward, putting her hands and arms out in front of her to break her fall a bit.
"There's nowhere to go. I can understand why Agent Hotchner likes you. You wore me out you little minx." Turning to face the camera, 'See Hotchner, I told you she was nothing but a whore like the rest of them. She was begging for it…."
Hotch wasn't listening to a word Mark Goodnight said after that, he looked beyond that dead man and straight at Alecta. He could tell by the look in her eyes that that wasn't true, that Mark was merely trying to goad him.
By the time that Hotch's attention turned back to the video, he saw Mark walking closer to Alecta….that was the wrong thing to do…
"Oh yeah, come closer. I'll be the best you ever had." Alecta laid it on thick.
"My dear, your reputation precedes you. I'm not that stupid." The next thing everyone notices is that Mark has pulled a stun gun and shot her with it, rendering her unable to fend for herself; her body instantly crumpled to the floor.
After stunning Alecta, Mark took her back to the mattress, removing the chain from her collar, changing it out for a shorter one and connecting this new shorter chain to another hook in the floor.
Sparing the camera a quick glance, Mark smiled evilly knowing that the agents were watching, 'Wouldn't want her making a break for it would we? I wonder if she screamed like this for you."
The remainder of the video was mostly of Mark Goodnight's sexual assault against Alecta, part of which she was still knocked out for since he had shot her with the stun gun.
None of the team wanted to watch, but they had no choice; they had to try to inspect the environment in the video to see if there was any way to form a hypothesis as to the location. They had to pay attention to the sounds, beyond the sounds caused by the assault being filmed….Was there a highway nearby? A railroad track? Were they in a subdivision? These were things they had to narrow down as quickly as possible.
"Well, you were right." Mark commented dryly as he picked himself off of the mattress as he finished his assault on Alecta. As he got up to leave the room, leaving her still on that shorter chain, Alecta merely pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them…curling up into a ball, and turned her back to the camera. Nobody could mistake the sound of a sniffle as she did so.
Mark couldn't resist taking one last parting shot at Hotch as he made his way to turn off the camera
"Just so you know, I had initially come for you. None of this would have happened if she had just stayed out of the way. But this has been even more rewarding than I could ever have hoped for. I look forward to seeing you soon." The last image that the team had of the video was of Alecta in the back ground, still curled up, back to the room, and Mark Goodnight leering at the camera and winking.
With that the screen went black, the camera having been switched off. Hotch propelled himself out of his seat and began running for the door.
Post AN: So, that's chapter 21. That's not exactly how I expected it to go, but it is what it is. Sometimes that's what happens when you let the chapter write itself. And by all means, if any of my readers have any ideas or suggestions, drop them by me and I'll see if I can get some of them in. Let me know what you think I'm doing wrong or right, whatever. It's all good.