Chapter 11
Leaving Yasmin to talk with the team in the conference room, Emily slipped out and approached her mother.
"Mother?"
Elizabeth gestured for her to follow her and walked back into JJ's office. Erin Strauss paced around her wife's office furiously.
"What is it, Erin?" Emily enquired worriedly, a little concerned her section chief would pounce on her literally, not metaphorically.
"Barnes has gone; her car is still parked in the lot. Security is reviewing the camera feeds to find her; if she hasn't left the base, we will find her," she sighed. She left her cell phone in her office.
Taking Erin Strauss by her shoulders, Emily guided her to the couch and gently pushed her onto the cushion. Bringing the worried woman's hands together, she knelt and squeezed her hands gently, "Jennifer Strauss-Jareau is the strongest person I have ever known, Erin. The recent things I have discovered about her confirm that she is my best friend for me. I will not rest until I get her back to you and that sweet girl over there," Emily sighed, her emotion-filled voice breaking.
Her mother made her jump as she wiped away the tears rolling down Emily's cheeks with the pads of her thumbs. Emily released her hold on one of Erin's hands and grasped her mother's hand, gently squeezing it in silent appreciation.
"Senator, Ma'am," Ashley greeted them as she opened the office door.
The senator beckoned her in.
"Ashley, Thank you for saving Yasmin," Erin told her as she hugged her daughter tightly, never wanting to let her go again.
"Mom, I want Mama back," Yasmin told her mother.
The fax machine in the office jumped to life as it printed out its document and dropped it into the collection tray. Reaching out, Ashley handed the single page to Erin. Looking at the page, it simply reads.
'Important information sent to you Erin Strauss-Jareau...re: Jennifer Strauss-Jareau'
She handed the fax page to Emily, logged into her wife's computer, and accessed her E-mail. Opening the E-mail with the subject title Jennifer Strauss-Jareau - URGENT, she found a video entitled 'ouch'. The FBI computer detected no malware or virus, so she started the enclosed video file.
"No!... Jenny, BITCH!" screamed Erin Strauss after witnessing the amputation of her wife's hand.
Everyone rushed across to see what had happened. The video file had been arranged to play on a loop until everyone arrived in time to catch a glimpse of the glowing machete blade hacking off her right hand. Yasmin collapsed into her mother's arms, distraught. Elizabeth remaind outwardly undisturbed inside. She was horrified. Ashley kicked out, crashing the waste paper basket into the office wall. Emily glared at the repeating images of her best friend on the computer monitor, her face growing ashen, her hands in tight fists.
Suddenly, Hotch and Morgan burst through the office door with weapons out. The sight before the two seasoned agents was dreadful. Erin Strauss consoled her sobbing daughter, Emily, looking ashen-faced as she glared at the screen. Senator Prentiss guided her distraught daughter over to the couch and beckoned Ashley.
"It's on the monitor, Aaron," the senator told him.
The remaining team members crowded around the computer screen and watched in horror as they witnessed the brutal footage. Garcia gasped as she caught the scene before her. Her hatred for her blonde friend is instantly forgotten as she sees the harrowing scene. Silent tears start cascading down her pale cheeks.
"Come here, baby girl," Whispered Derek as he opened his arms, inviting Garcia in for a hug.
EJ
A knock on the door broke the office's silence, and three uniformed security guards entered the office with the head of the mailroom team.
"Chief Strauss, this package was delivered to you by a messenger. We have scanned the box for explosives and contaminants. It's clean, but we have irradiated it to be safe. We...er...scanned it and...found." Emily stopped the upset lady; donning a pair of latex gloves, she took the package, knowing what it contained.
"Spencer, go with Mrs Grady and question the messenger and try and get as much information as you can from them," ordered Emily. She needed to get Spencer away from her. She was losing her grip on reality and seriously needed to hit something. Unfortunately, Spencer Reid was looking like a prime candidate for her at the moment. She knew he wasn't directly responsible for JJ's kidnapping, but he had pitched in to help Barnes. Ashley looked like she wanted to rip his head off, literally, not figuratively.
Spencer realised now he had been played by Barnes, using his relationship with Ashley against him. The evil glares he was constantly receiving from Ashley and Emily didn't require his profiling skills to determine what their body language indicated. He nodded and followed Mrs Grady and a security officer.
The package was placed on the desk; Emily opened her pocket knife and Slit the box open. Sitting on a pad was a severed right hand clasping the FBI credentials of Jennifer Jareau. A gold necklace was wrapped around the fingers. Emily recognised the pendant on the chain as JJ's older sister that she had presented to her when she was 11, the day before she killed herself.
"Do you recognise these earrings, Erin?" asked Emily, opening her hand to reveal the gold earring from the box.
Yasmin gasped as she recognised them instantly, "They were a present from my mother and father on my tenth birthday. I left them in Afghanistan. I didn't get the chance to pack them before we left that night. Does this mean my biological mother has Mama?" Yasmin asked her mom
"I think that's a possibility, sweetheart, and it's what we were afraid of,"
"Barnes!" screams a furious Emily, her anger turning into pure wrath as she hurls JJ's ceramic pencil pot against the wall.
"Emily! Calm down; you are not helping Erin or Yasmin," scolds her mother.
Pulling out her credentials, she tosses them at Derek Morgan. "I am going to get my friend, and god help anyone who gets in my way," announced Emily
"I'll help you find Zaba, Special Agent Prentiss; she is my friend. I owe her my life," announced the Israeli female voice from the open door.
"Zehira, Zehira Levee," smiled Erin, "Are you here officially?" asked Erin
Zehira greets Erin and Yasmin with a hug and kisses Elizabeth on her cheek. She nodded, " No, I have their blessing to help find Zaba. She did a lot of good for my people. She helped stop many deaths. They will renounce me and leave me to rot if they need to.
EJ
The injured kidnapper groaned into her oxygen mask as she started to come around from her anaesthetic. Three faces looked down, their faces still covered with surgical masks. The faces looked hazy as she still felt the lingering effects of her anaesthetic mixed with her painkilling medication.
"Where is Jennifer Jareau?" The voice asked in Pashtu
"Taken to Benezra and Benesh as instructed." Slurred the woman
"Good work, cousin. You will be rewarded for your good work. Don't worry. We are going to get you out of here shortly. How do we contact Benezra? Our satellite phone was destroyed in the shootout. We had to break you out from the American FBI agents," the masked man asked.
"I don't know. I was responsible for Yasmin, taking her to a smuggler in Canada and sending her back by tramp steamer. I communicated with Sebastian in Tel Aviv for security to keep both Teams compartmentalised for security. Tell Sebastian he will contact Benezra and Benesh and pass your message," she answered sleepily, fighting the drugs to stay awake.
"I know this, Sebastian; his small team of hackers works with Hamas predominantly but doesn't have many scruples. If you have the money, they will work for anyone." Answered the man in Hebrew
The hospital speaker announced a code black; the missing patient had been discovered, and their time questioning the wounded woman was almost over. They needed to leave before the hospital was in lockdown.
"Do you know where Linda Barnes is?" He asked her finally in Pashtu
"No,"
With her final answer, the team of three walked out of the room, pressing the emergency alarm, ensuring hospital staff could locate their missing patient. The group of three dressed in hospital scrubs calmly walked out of the hospital, entered the waiting SUV, and drove off without incident.
"Zehira, it's Nadia. Put me on speaker, please." She asked when her call was answered
EJ
"What do you have, Nadia? Have you found Zaba?" Asked Zehira
"She doesn't know they were responsible for getting Yasmin to a Canadian smuggler to be taken out of the country. They used an Israeli hacker called Sebastian, who is known to us. I asked Uncle Avi to have a little chat with him." Nadia answered coldly. "Uncle Avi will contact you and Erin at Quantico once he spills his guts," she ended the call.
"Uncle Avi?" Emily asked curiously
Zehira smiled at Emily. "Yeah, Avi Levee, my father," she replied, her head bowed as Emily and her FBI colleagues realised who her father was.
"Wow. Wouldn't want to be that particular hacker," smirked Penelope Garcia. The fellow hacker, for once in her life, didn't feel any regret that this man might be hurt when questioned. She was very annoyed that she had been deceived, and her JJ had been disfigured in the fluffy, multi-coloured world of Penelope Garcia. This was karma. She could live with it just this once. No one hurt her family no one.
EJ
Jennifer shivered as she lay on the stable floor. JJ's eyes shot open as she recovered from the traumatic amputation of her hand. Her left arm was fastened securely behind her back, and her right arm was unrestricted as it was useless without her hand. The pain was horrendous when they used the glowing machete blade to cauterise her stump. The ridiculous thing, JJ thought to herself as she shivered. 'My right hand is bloody cold.'
"I am so sorry, Rin," JJ uttered as she shivered, lying on the stable floor. Suddenly, a metal loop is pulled tight around JJ's neck and pulled tight, stopping any air from entering her body. Jennifer's right arm instinctively flies towards her neck, trying to release the pressure from the tight loop constricting her throat. The burnt stump of her amputated hand painfully thumps into her neck, causing excruciating pain.
JJ sucks in the air through her nose now that she can breathe again. While struggling to breathe, the material is jammed into her open mouth, covered with masking tape wrapped around her mouth. With the gag in place, the wire noose is removed from around her neck.
"Bitch!" Snarled Linda Barnes as she kicked the prone blonde in her ribs. "it's all your damn fault Strauss-Jareau. The FBI now wants me, and an international arrest warrant has been issued. You once again torpedoed my plans…but alas, Jennifer Strauss-Jareau, this will be the last time…..screw the Akhtar families revenge," Barnes paused her tirade as she straddled Jennifer to look directly into her eyes and plunged her knife into the blonde's right thigh.
Muffled screams can be heard through the gag as Barnes twists the knife in Jennifer's thigh, trying to cause her as much pain as possible, but time is not on her side. Linda Barnes knew she was rapidly becoming dead wood.
Keeping her eyes transfixed on her blue eyes, Linda Barnes slips the wire loop back over Jennifers' head and pulls it tight, pushing the slide down to prevent the wire from lowering and reducing the tension around her neck. "Any final words you want me to pass on to your wife?" Barnes asked as she watched the tears falling from her nemesis eyes. She wanted to watch every moment of death.
Kicking her legs and trying to get Barnes off her was her only chance. Barnes quickly ended her desperate attempt by twisting the knife in her right thigh. Barnes laughed as she heard the muffled sound from the gagged mouth of the Blonde struggling beneath her. The struggling blonde's face so transfixed Barnes that she didn't hear the approaching footsteps.
"Get away from her!" Benesh Akhtar yelled as she pulled Barnes off her prisoner. Two guards took hold of Linda Barnes and secured her hands with handcuffs. Banesh Akhtar was furious with the disgraced FBI agent, and this woman dared deprive her of her vengeance on this American whore.
"She won't die by your hand, Linda. She has to suffer for much longer. I have plans for this one. You have outlived your usefulness…time to get rid of you…get rid of her and bury her body somewhere in the fields." she announced coldly.
Barnes was dragged to the door. "I am a federal agent. You can't kill me. Please," begged Linda Barnes as she was pulled out of the stable block. "I have a family; please don't kill me,"
Benesh watched Barnes being dragged from the stable block, disgust on her face that a woman should accept her death quietly begging was disgusting. "you're not getting away from me that easily, Jennifer; I have painful plans for you. I am going to become very well acquainted over the next few weeks." she told her with an evil smirk, "get some sleep. You are going to need it,"
"Arghh!" screamed JJ as the knife was pulled out of her thigh and tossed to the floor.
"bleed a little for me, Jennifer. If your lucky, your blood won't attract the rats," laughed Banesh as she walked out of the stable.
EJ
Erin held Yasmin tight as she sobbed on her shoulder. Erin was trying to stay strong for her daughter. Her heart was broken after watching her wife lose her right hand. A sad smile appeared on Erin's face as she remembered their visit to Snowshoe Mountain with Jennifer and Yasmin. Their Afghani daughter was fascinated with the snow, only seeing the snow-capped mountains on the horizon in her native Afghanistan.
Flashback
"scoop the snow up like this, sweetie, and squeeze it tightly like this," Demonstrated Erin to her daughter as she made a snowball.
"That's great, sweetie; now make a small pile ready to attack your Mama," smirked Erin, holding her finger to her lips to tell her daughter to stay silent.
Both worked quickly, amassing a good pile of snowballs for their sneak attack on the unsuspecting blonde. Erin Strauss-Jareau threw the first snowball, hitting Jennifer on the back of her head with a devilish smile. JJ turned her head to see where the snowball had been thrown from to receive a second snowball directly into her face from her daughter, who was now in hysterics with her mother.
Two well-aimed snowballs from JJ hit both laughing mother and daughter in their faces, and the family of three proceeded to attack each other with snowballs.
"She got you good, Jennifer," smiled Erin
End Flashback
"What?" asked Yasmin, bringing her mother back to reality
She pulled her daughter tighter into her chest, "I was thinking about our trip to Snowshoe Mountain when we ambushed your Mama with the snowballs. You got her perfectly in her face when she turned around. She was so happy…." Erin answered her daughter
"I loved that weekend. That was our first family holiday," smiled Yasmin. Erin wiped the tears from her face with the pad of her thumb.
"Erin Strauss-Jareau," she answered her cell, no longer caring about keeping up the subterfuge.
"Erin, it's Avi Levee. We have talked with the Hamas hacker and his compatriots. They were very candid with a little cajoling. We have travel documents for them to cross the Canadian border and a booking for a float plane to rendezvous with an Iranian freighter at sea to transfer Yasmin to sea. We traced Benesh Akhtar through an emergency prescription for her insulin after having to replace her horse-damaged stock. They hacked a local pharmacy using an alias to have the insulin delivered to a stable. I have sent Anlyst Garcia the relevant files and current satellite images. I have a cloned copy of Barnes's private laptop, complete with her numbered offshore accounts. We believe that underneath the grain silo is an underground complex used for training and storage. If you need anything, call me, and I do mean anything, Erin. Bring Zeba back safely; she is like a daughter to me." Avi told his friend
"Thank you,"