6:45 am, Suspect's House
The door flew open under Morgan's boot and they all rushed inside the old farmhouse, searching rooms. The place was pretty rundown, but that was typical when dealing with an unsub like this. There was a broken TV in the living room and JJ skirted around the shattered remains of a whiskey bottle on her way to check the dilapidated dining room, Rossi and Prentiss circled around to check outside, and the rest of the team spread out over the remainder of the first floor, calling, "Clear," when they had finished searching a room.
JJ and Hotch met up with Morgan at the back of the house in a dimly lit hallway.
"Anything?" JJ asked, but Morgan kept his back turned to them, slowly opening a creaky door covered in peeling white paint.
Prentiss and Rossi joined them in the hallway, and Morgan flashed his light across a weathered set of stairs descending into what could only be the basement. Everyone else silently drew their guns and clicked on their flashlights as they started trailing down the stairs. Morgan went first, followed by Hotch and then JJ, Rossi behind them and Prentiss taking up the rear as they all cautiously descended the stairs and emerged in a dank room with crumbling cinderblock walls, stagnant puddles leaving brown stains on the pitted concrete floor. There was a rusty vault-like door set in the wall, and an old computer propped up on a table lined with...blood-stained medical supplies. A wooden chair was neatly pushed in in front of the blank computer monitor, and JJ lowered her gun before stepping closer to the table.
She holstered her gun and then picked up a neatly folded white T-shirt that had been sitting on the edge of the table. It unfolded as she held it up, and they could all see the torn fabric and rusty stains splashed across it. It was unmistakably the shirt Reid had been wearing in the security footage from his apartment, and similar expressions of fear and worry showed on all of their faces.
"Get this door open, now," Hotch demanded, keeping his gun trained on the vault door as Morgan and Prentiss cranked the handle and then pulled it open. It groaned in protest and Morgan stepped into the room, sweeping his gun and light in an arc, but it was empty.
"No one's here," Prentiss said, lowering her gun as Rossi, Hotch, and JJ joined them in the room.
Morgan stared at the stainless steel metal table in the middle of the room and the rusty chains dangling off the sides of it. An old-fashioned metal food tray was set on the seat of a chair right next to the table, but it was the splashes of color in the otherwise dull gray room that caught his attention.
Sprays and droplets of it were splattered across the floor, a few older almost-brown spots, some drops of rust red that matched the stains on Reid's T-shirt, and a larger amount of fresh bright red blood sprayed across the floor, a lot nearer the door than any of the other stains. Some of it was smeared, like something, or more likely someone, had been dragged through it.
"We need to get forensics down here right away," Hotch said.
"It doesn't mean it's Reid's blood. At least not all of it," Prentiss tried to be reassuring, and JJ quietly remarked, "There's not a lot of fresh blood."
No one wanted to say that if Reid wasn't there, that probably meant the unsub had taken him to a second location to kill him and he was almost or already dead.
They all stared in silence at the varying shades of red spread across the floor but were startled out of their trance when Morgan's phone rang.
Upon seeing it was Garcia, he glumly answered it, "Hey, Baby Girl."
"Is he there? He's not there, is he?" Garcia hurriedly asked but then continued rambling without waiting for an answer, "That's good though, because I know where to find him. This icky bad guy has followed the pattern of dumping bodies a certain distance from Reid's apartment, so that means that if Reid's not there, then he's back at his apartment," she brightly exclaims before continuing, "But that means that he's getting close to..." she trails off before adding, "But I'm not going to think about that, cause you guys are going to save him. Good luck and Godspeed," she says before hanging up.
"She's right, let's go," Rossi said, and Morgan was already running out of the room and up the stairs with the rest of them before he'd finished returning his phone to his pocket.
7:00 am, Capital Plaza Apartments
The man loaded the gun with real cartridges, sticking it in the waistband of his pants before bending down in front of the doctor. The man placed his hands on his knees to keep his balance, staring right into the doctor's closed eyes. One was swollen, blood crusted in a trail over his eyelid, the other was just discolored by a nasty bruise, but one whole cheekbone was puffed up, obliterated by tinges of deep purple and blackish red, and the rest of his pale face was covered in various scratches, cuts, and bruises.
He reached out and roughly smacked Spencer's cheek, and the young doctor jolted awake, his head snapping up. He frantically glanced around the room, looking like he was squinting against a bright light--even though it was only a little lighter in the basement of his apartment than it had been in the man's sanctuary--because his eye and cheekbone were so swollen.
"What--where--" Spencer started to ask before his hoarse words dissolved into a flurry of coughs. His lips were speckled with red, fresh spots of it landing on the dirty bandage around his middle.
The man smiled viciously. He couldn't wait to see the bright red blood spilling from a hole in young Spencer's head, dripping down his face like a crimson waterfall.
Just not...
Quite.
Yet.
YOU ARE READING
Pretty Boy- A Criminal Minds Fanfic
Fanfiction"Who are y-" With a swift backhand to the face, Spencer was silenced, yet again. The force interrupted his balance and he swayed a bit before falling onto his back. The man stood above him, weapon pointed at his head.
