Greetings! I did out Garcia in this chapter (although I almost forgot). I really hope I did a good job portraying her character here, she really is difficult to put on paper, I don't know how Chris Mundy does it! And don't even get me started on how Kirsten Vangsness pulls it off! She's incredible and I aspire to be her and Matthew Gray Gubler but as one person.. is that weird? Yes, yes it is. sorry, I'm rambling here... let's just get to the chapter.
(I do not own criminal minds or any of its characters."
Enjoy!
"Choose." The word echoed around the room, slithering into Reid's head and coiling around his brain, making him shiver as he remembered being in the shed with Raphael.
"Tell me who you serve." Raphael said, calmly.
"I serve you" Reid decided to play into Raphael's fantasy.
"Then choose one to die." The sentence rolled off of his tongue as of it he was asking Reid to choose a TV show to watch.
"What?" Reid was incredulous.
"Your team members; choose one to die." The voice of Raphael was still calm and collected.
"Kill me." There was no way somebody was dying for Reid, he just had to think of a way to save himself and his team members.
"You said you weren't one of them."
"I lied." So much for playing into his fantasy.
"Your team has 6 other members." Raphael was becoming impatient. "Tell me who dies."
"No." The agent's voice was barely a whisper.
Raphael pulled out his revolver, spun the cylinder until the location of the single round was unknown and leveled the gun with Reid's head. The barrel was placed directly between his eyebrows. "Choose, and prove you'll do god's will."
"No." Reid's mind was racing, trying to think of a way out of this.
The gun made a hollow clicking noise as the trigger was pulled and the chamber was empty. "Choose." He said again.
"I won't do it." The gun clicked again.
"Life is a choice."
"No." Click.
"Choose."
Reid knew he had a maximum of two empty chambers before the bullet came around. Suddenly, he remembered something. Something that Hotch would remember. "I… I choose… Aaron Hotchner." He only prayed the Hotch would recognize his signal and someone would realize his 'mistake'.
"What?" Makaia's incredulous voice pulled Reid from his flashback.
"I'll be back in ten minutes." The unsub sneered. "Choose one to die."
Before anyone could say anything else, the unsub turned on his heel and left. Everyone remained in shocked silence for a moment before Liam spoke again.
"Makaia." Everyone turned to him. "Choose me."
"What?" Addison and Makaia exclaimed in unison.
"If he's killing one of us, it me. No questions." He said firmly.
"He's not just killing one of us, though." Adam's voice was so quiet, Reid barely caught the words as they floated past his ears.
"What?" Liam was angry, confused and scared. Reid could tell that those feelings were making him impatient and irrational, unable to think. "He said choose ONE to die."
"Adam's right." Makaia said. "He's a sadist on a mission; a mission to kill."
"What does that mean?" Addison was timid and terrified.
Makaia turned to Reid, willing him to explain for her. "A mission oriented sadist is one of the most dangerous typed of criminals." Reid explained. "Sadists get off on seeing their victims suffer, and mission oriented killers don't stop killing until their mission is complete or-more often-they are apprehended. Putting the two together creates an unsub who will carry out their goals no matter how long or difficult the process is. They will do anything to complete their task, no matter how many people they have to kill." Reid's voice got quiet at the end of his rant, and he was unable to look at anyone as he basically signed their death orders.
"And how exactly do you know this?" Liam spat, clearly enraged by Reid's logic. "Who the hell are you anyway?!"
"My name is Dr. Spencer Reid." He said calmly. "I am a profiler in the behaviour analysis unit of the FBI. My team was sent here to assist with a case… this case."
"You're with the FBI," Liam's voice had dropped a few decibels, not a god sign, "and you let yourself and my daughter get-!"
"WHOA!" Makaia said, holding a hand up. "Liam. Dr. Reid did not LET this happen. He didn't stand idly by as the unsub abducted me and then just decide to crash into a tree and have the same guy throw him in the car! I'm sorry, but he is not to blame for this."
"I'm not saying that's what happened. However, it is his job to ensure things like this don't happen and look where we are!"
"The dictionary definition of letting something happen is 'not prevent or forbid'." Reid realized that Makaia could be a carbon copy of himself as she spoke. "For him the 'let' anything happen, he would have had to be present for the event that he did not prevent. Therefore, he did not let this happen. And arguing and blaming others is not helping anybody."
Liam was stunned into silence. By the look on his face, Reid could tell Makaia used dictionary definitions and logic to get points across often. "You're right." He finally sighed.
"Thank you." She sighed as well.
Suddenly the door banged open again. "Have you made your decision?"
CMCMCMCMCM
"Garcia." Morgan answered halfway through the first ring, immediately pressing the button for speaker phone and placing the phone in the center of the table.
"Okay." she didn't sound nearly as perky as normal, obviously due to the absence of the team's youngest member. "I looked into all of the plumbers, carpenters, contractors, electricians, even auto mechanics and janitorial services in Pasadena. There are over four hundred. And of course I've already picked out the ones whose uniforms consist of blue jumpsuits, which leaves us with three hundred and twelve."
"How many employees are males between the ages of twenty and forty?" Hotch asked.
"That would be…." The sound of rapid fingers on a keyboard came through the phone. "Oh wow, eight hundred ninety six. Anything else to narrow this down?"
"Take out blondes, redheads and those with light brown hair." Hotch remembered Adam telling him that the suspect had dark hair.
"Okay, we still have five hundred seventy nine. I need more."
"He's got to have some kind of criminal background." Morgan said. "There's no way this is his first string of crimes."
"Okay that narrows it down to… still two sixty three. You people are clearly forgetting that you are in an area with a very high crime rate! Pasadena is only safer than twenty two percent of cities in the United States!" Garcia was getting frustrated now, angry that she couldn't just magically find the man that had her Boy Wonder and another completely innocent Girl Genius.
"Garcia." Blake piped up. "Search for any unsolved rapes, murders or abductions. Nationwide."
"Okay got it." She seemed happier with that than just trying to narrow the impossible list of public service workers. She hung up and started typing immediately.
After a few seconds, pictures and reports started popping up. She briefly read into each report, seeing similarities immediately. She isolated the cases that were abduction, rape and murder with obvious signs of sadistic torture. There were fifty six over the past ten months.
"Oh my god…" Garcia mumbled to herself as the crime scene photos imprinted themselves in her brain. Each was eerily similar to the ones from Pasadena. Girls had their faces mutilated and men had castrated and had their biceps removed.
Garcia quickly dialled Morgan back. As soon as she heard him answer she started talking. "He's been doing this for at least ten months. Reid and Makaia are his FIFTY NINTH. The cases didn't show up as serial because he's never struck in the same city until now. He's never abducted two people at the same time until he got to Pasadena."
"So what made him escalate?" JJ wondered aloud.
Suddenly, more cases popped up on Garcia's screen. "Uh guys…" her eyes widened. "The cases go back further than I thought…"
"How far, Baby Girl?" Morgan asked.
"Oh god… murders with the same MO that went unsolved go back to two thousand one." Garcia read further into the cases. "The reports resembling them stopped from September of two thousand twelve to…" Garcia gulped, "ten months ago."
"He's too organized to be psychotic." Rossi said. "He had to gone to prison for that time."
"Garcia," she already knew what Hotch would tell her to do next, "look at-"
"Forty six prisoners matching our rough description were incarcerated during September of two thousand twelve in Iowa which was the location of the last abduction/rape/murder that matches our unsub." Garcia kept typing. "Twelve of them were released ten months ago."
"Any of them in for attempted sexual assault?" Blake asked.
"Four."
"Do you have their last known locations?" Hotch was getting anxious, knowing they were close.
"Two are still in Idaho, one in Florida and… the last one seems to have disappeared completely." Garcia grinned, knowing she had found their guy. "Charles Blaine has not left so much as a bread crumb since he got released. The murders started up again three weeks after he was released, the first of which was in Colorado thank you and goodnight!"
"Is he working under an alias at any of the companies we looked at?" Morgan asked. "He's clearly planning on staying in Pasadena for a bit of time and wherever he's keeping Reid, he might have to pay rent."
"Looking now and… yes! He is working as one Anderson Smith for Stokoe's plumbing which is two miles from your location. Address of the business is sent. He also has an apartment under that name. That address is also sent!"
"You're the best Garcia!" everyone's voice came through the phone in unison.
"I know." She smiled. "Now bring my Boy Wonder home!" she hung up pointedly with her pink, fluffy pen and sat back, hating that she could do nothing to help Reid anymore. But she trusted the team and knew Reid would be back with them soon.
Hope you enjoyed! As always, I am asking for reviews because your feedback has all been so positive and I'm loving it! It inspires me to write faster! I really hope I got Garcia's character right... she's a difficult one. Oh well, I tried :). Alrighty, I will post soon! Sayonara!