Chapter 13: The Desperate Search
The SUV tore through the Virginia night, a black projectile guided by Garcia’s streaming voice in their ears. Morgan drove, his knuckles white on the wheel. Hotch rode shotgun, his profile carved from stone in the glow of the dashboard. In the back, Reid scoured the frozen frames of the video on a tablet, his eyes scanning for anything they’d missed.
“The feed cut, but it was live,” Garcia said, her voice brittle.“He’s still transmitting. I’m trying to ping the signal, but it’s bouncing. He’s using some kind of packet-scrambler.Military grade.”
“The building, Garcia,” Hotch pressed. “The one with the concrete floor and the beam. Which one is it?”
“I’ve got two strong candidates. A decommissioned textile mill outside Manassas, and an old machine parts factory near Woodbridge.Satellite thermal is faint for both—old structures, lots of heat loss. But the mill… there’s a power draw.Minimal. Like a single line.”
“Go with the mill,” Reid said abruptly, not looking up from his tablet. He zoomed in on a corner of the video, where the concrete wall met the ceiling. “There’s a faint, periodic shadow here. Like something rotating, interrupting the light from that single bulb.”
“A fan?” Morgan asked, eyes flicking to the rearview.“No.The pattern is wrong. It’s slower.More irregular.” Reid’s voice tightened.“It’s a watermark. A rusted, chain-driven pulley system, partly occluded by the beam. Textile mills used them to move material between floors. It’s the Manassas location.”
“Confirmed!” Garcia chirped, keys clacking. “Blueprints show a central workshop area with… yes, an overhead conveyor system.That’s your beam.”
“ETA seven minutes,” Morgan growled, pressing the accelerator harder. The SUV’s engine answered with a roar.
Back in the bullpen, JJ and Prentiss watched Garcia’s monitors.A new window popped up, unprompted. The live feed was back.“He’s transmitting again!” Prentiss yelled into the comms.
In the SUV, Reid switched the tablet feed to live. The image was the same grimy concrete, the same swinging bulb.Y/n still hung from the beam, but her posture had changed. She was leveraging her core, taking some weight off her shredded wrists. Her head was up, her eyes tracking Durand as he paced before her like a lecturing officer.
His voice, clearer now through their speakers, was a study in venomous calm.“You think your grandfather disowned me over politics? Over some moral high ground?” He stopped, his face inches from hers. “He disowned me because I told him the truth. I told him Eleanor didn’t die from ‘complications.’ She died from the shock of what she’d made. The doctor’s face when you came out… he described it to me. A ‘taxonomic confusion.’ My sister’s body tried to reject you, and it killed her instead.”
Y/n’s breath was ragged, but her voice held. “My grandfather told me you were a small-minded bastard.Said you saw monsters in cribs. Guess he was right.”
Durand backhanded her again, a sharp, practiced motion. Her head rocked back, but she let the momentum swing her body, her legs coming up. She was testing her range.He didn’t seem to notice.He was lost in his revelation. “I’ve been watching you for eighteen months.Since the day you transferred to Quantico. I read your file—the real file the Marines buried.I’ve documented everything. Your routines, your coffee order, that pathetic little friendship with the boy genius.” A cruel smile stretched his lips. “I know which socks you wear on gym days. I know you cry at those sappy old movies you think no one sees you watch.I’ve been in your home. I adjusted the sight on your service pistol.It’s two millimeters off. Did you notice?”
A cold deeper than the chain biting her wrists seeped into Y/n’s bones.The violation was absolute, microscopic.
“You worked with Charles,” she stated, the words cutting through his monologue.
Durand paused, his pacing halting.“The elevator,” Y/n continued, her eyes locking onto his. “Two months ago.The suspect who got the drop on me.He knew my moves. He was waiting for my standard disarming technique.You trained him. You gave him my patterns.” She spat blood on the floor between them.“He’s dead. And you’re just a ghost handing out pamphlets.”
For the first time, Durand’s cerulean calm cracked. Rage, hot and immediate, flared in his eyes.“He was a disciple! A believer in order! You are a walking procedural error, and I am the system administrator!”
He stepped closer, well within her arc.It was what she needed.
“The system,” Y/n breathed, “is outdated.”
As he drew back his hand for another strike, she exploded into motion. Using the chain for leverage, she swung her body up, her legs scissoring with violent precision. Her thighs clamped around his neck with a force that drove the air from his lungs in a surprised grunt. She squeezed, crossing her ankles and using every ounce of strength in her core and legs to constrict his carotid arteries.Durand’s eyes bulged. He clawed at her legs, his nails tearing through her pants and into her skin, but the leverage was all wrong for him. He staggered, his face purpling, hammering uselessly at her muscular thighs. The world began to narrow, a tunnel of rushing sound.
His free hand flailed at the tool rack behind him, fingers scrambling over metal.They closed around not a knife, but a heavy, steel industrial pen—a grease pencil. With a final, desperate lunge, he drove it not at her body, but deep into the large muscle of her right thigh.White, searing pain obliterated Y/n’s focus. Her legs involuntarily spasmed, their grip loosening for a fraction of a second. It was enough.Durand tore himself free, gasging, sucking in huge, ragged breaths. He staggered back, the grease pencil protruding from her leg. Y/n hung limp again, a broken cry escaping her lips as the fresh, shocking pain radiated through her entire nervous system.
On the tablet screen, the team saw Durand stumble out of the frame, clutching his throat. They saw Y/n’s head drop, her body shaking from the effort and the new injury.
“We’re two minutes out!” Morgan shouted, the SUV swerving onto an unmarked industrial road.
On the feed, Durand returned, his breath still wheezing. He looked at the camera, then directly at Y/n.“They’re coming. Your family.” He yanked the grease pencil from her thigh.She screamed, the sound raw and stripped.He didn’t even flinch. “Let them see the mess they’ll have to clean up.”
He walked to the camera, his face filling the screen, a mask of righteous fury and bloody satisfaction. “Come and get her.” The feed went dead.The SUV skidded to a halt in a field of broken asphalt. Before them loomed the dark, hulking skeleton of the textile mill. No lights shone from within except one, a single, sickly yellow glow emanating from a ground-floor window.
Morgan was out first, his weapon drawn. Hotch and Reid followed, spreading out, moving in a practiced, silent advance toward the source of the light. The only sound was the wind through broken windows and the frantic, quiet rhythm of their own breathing. Somewhere inside that building, the clock was ticking down to zero.