Missing Persons (Part 2/3)
May. 18th, 2007 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missmara13Title: Missing Persons (Part 2/3)
Author: Mara
Fandoms: The OC/One Tree Hill/Criminal Minds
Rating: R
Warnings: Crossover. Language. Violence. Blood. Pain. Psychological Torture with hints of physical torture.
Summary: A serial kidnapper is on the loose in Southern California, and the latest victims are Brooke Davis and Ryan Atwood.
Notes: A three-way crossover! lol... Hopefully it works out the way I want it to... Takes place 3rd Season The OC, 2nd season OTH, and 2nd season Criminal Minds. I'm slightly screwing with the timelines, but... whatever.
Little Timeline notes:
Criminal Minds - Takes place sometime in Season 2, so Prentiss is on the team instead of Elle.
The OC - Johnny's still alive. Ryan and Marissa are still together but it's shaky.
OTH - Brooke and Lucas have gotten to be friends again, but they're NOT back together.
Missing Persons
Cohen House ~ The Poolhouse
"This kid's really neat," Prentiss said as she and Gideon looked around the room. "It barely looks lived in and he's been living here what? 3 years?"
"It's about control," Gideon commented. "His life before coming here was out of his control, and when he came here that didn't much change. So he keeps everything in order so that there's no reason for anyone to get mad at him. He doesn't want to end up out on the streets."
"I don't think he has to worry," Prentiss said as she glanced towards the main house, where Sandy Cohen was talking to Hotch and the other son, Seth, was sitting at the counter looking like his puppy had died.
"He's scared of being alone," Gideon said, spotting the handful of pictures of Ryan with others. He picked up a notebook that sat in the upper corner of the drafting desk and flipped it open, finding a list of pros and cons about the different colleges. "He's worried about going to college too far away, thinks he'll lose the Cohens if he does."
"Not possible," Sandy said from the doorway. "I don't really understand how looking through Ryan's things is going to help you. He's... he's going to be upset when he finds out."
"Figuring out how he might react to the situation will help us figure out how to react to him," Prentiss explained. "He might be disoriented, might see us as another threat, we need to know how to interact with him to make him feel safe."
"Talk slow, even, don't move fast," Sandy said, sitting down on the edge of Ryan's bed.
"You have experience with him being upset?" Prentiss asked.
Sandy sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "My wife and other son don't know, but Ryan has nightmares sometimes. When he first moved in here, I kept finding him up before I was, and I got up early to go surfing. He'd be sitting with his legs in the pool, smoking, and he tried to say it was nothing, he just liked to get up early. Then one night I felt like a midnight snack, and I saw that his light was on, so I came out here and found him asleep, tossing and turning... he was crying and begging someone to stop. When I woke him up, he... he panicked, he yanked away from me and acted like he thought I was going to hurt him. When he snapped out of it, he tried to say it was nothing, a bad dream, but... after it happened a couple times he admitted that he was dreaming about his father and his mother's boyfriends, how they used to beat him and his brother."
"He still has them after 3 years?" Gideon said.
"They went away for a while, he was actually sleeping until Seth would come out here and start talking at him until he woke up. The last spring... some things happened and he started having them again. It's been getting better, though, the last few weeks," Sandy said. "You gotta talk quietly, calmly, tell him that no ones going to hurt him, and... and move real slow, if you move fast he's gonna fight you... He got me in the ribs once, spent weeks apologizing... I told Kirsten I got hit with my board after a wipe out... Ryan's a good kid, you just gotta be careful with him... we can't lose him. We've come close, we've let him be in danger, we can't lose him now... I never should have asked him to help Matt with the work that night..."
"It's not your fault, Mr. Cohen," Prentiss said. "The UnSub might have taken him at a different time, or someone not as strong as Ryan might have been taken."
"The other agent said something about believing that the kids are being kept alive for a while?" Sandy asked. "I think he was trying to give me hope."
"We think that may be the case," Gideon agreed. "It would explain the fact that no one's been found."
"If there's anyone else there alive," Sandy began. "Ryan'll get himself killed trying to protect them."
"Gideon," Hotch said as he came out. "We just got a call from JJ. They found one of the missing girls."
"Alive?" Prentiss asked.
Hotch glanced at Sandy then back at Prentiss and Gideon before answering. "Dead."
Newport Beach Police Department ~ Conference Room
"Head trauma," Reid said as he looked at the photos on the table.
"It's not what killed her," Morgan replied, looking at the papers sent to them by the coroner along with the photos. "She's missing part of her liver, a length of intestine, and a lung. Someone harvested this girl's organs in unsanitary conditions, and between infection and blood loss... she never stood a chance."
"Do we have an ID yet?" Hotch asked as he, Gideon, and Prentiss walked in, leaving Sandy and Seth in the squad room with Kirsten.
"Just got it," JJ said as she followed them in. "Jess Sather, student at Harbor, just like 3 of the others, including Ryan Atwood. Her parents thought she'd run away with, get this, Trey Atwood, Ryan's older brother."
"Does anyone know where to find the brother?" Gideon asked.
JJ shook her head. "No one's seen him since last fall, when he skipped out of the hospital, a warrant out for his arrest."
"Why did the parents suspect Ryan's brother?" Morgan asked.
"Apparently they found their daughter's diary, she'd been having a sexual relationship with Trey Atwood," JJ said.
"Is it possible the brother's involved?" Hotch asked. "Ryan might not be a victim but an accomplice."
"Everything the foster family's said about him goes against that," Gideon said. "And everything in here," he added, holding up the notebook he'd taken from the poolhouse. He opened it to the page of pros and cons. "Pro: If I go to college, Sandy and Kirsten will be proud of me, and I won't end up like Trey. Con: I'll be alone again, and without them I might become like Trey."
Morgan took the notebook, flipping through the pages until he came to something of a journal entry. "I refuse to be like Trey. I wanna build, not destroy. I want to help, not hurt. I will never do to anyone what Trey did to Marissa..." Morgan paused. "That's the girlfriend, so what did the brother do?"
Hotch walked back to the door. "Mr. and Mrs. Cohen, can you step in here for a moment?"
Seth came with them, and no one argued about it. "What is it?" Sandy asked, noticing how Prentiss and JJ were quickly gathering photos, though he did catch a glimpse of the girl's battered face.
"What did Ryan's brother do to his girlfriend?" Hotch asked. "His journal mentioned something."
"Trey tried to rape her," Seth said.
"Ryan took it hard when he found out," Sandy said. "What does this have to do with anything?"
"The body that was found, it was a girl who's parents thought she might have run off with Ryan's brother," Hotch explained.
"You mean Jess?" Seth said. "Jess is dead?"
"Yes," Gideon said. "We're trying to figure out whether Trey Atwood could be involved."
"Ryan didn't have anything to do with it, besides being a victim, if that's what your suggesting," Kirsten said, her voice cold. "He would never do something like this."
"We're just trying to get a handle on the situation, we're not accusing anyone," Morgan said.
Unknown Location
Ryan woke to the sounds of sobbing, and realized his head was resting on something soft. He slowly opened his eyes and realized he was laying with his head pillowed on Brooke's lap, and she was crying. "Brooke?"
"Thank god," she said, one hand running through his hair and the other touching his cheek. "I thought you wouldn't wake up..."
"My back..."
"They did something," Brooke said. "When you came back... your shirt was bloody and your... I think there's stitches. I don't know what they did..."
"Are you okay?" Ryan asked. "You hit your head."
"I'm okay," Brooke said. "They haven't taken me out of here since they put me in. But I know the girl they took before you came, she had at least three places where she had stitches..."
"We gotta get out of here," Ryan said, using an elbow to push himself upright, reaching with one hand to feel along the wall and closing his hand around the second bobby pin that he'd left there earlier. "How long since they brought me back?"
"I don't know... it seemed like forever," Brooke said. "But... I don't think it's been that long. Maybe an hour or two?"
"Any idea when they might come back?"
"Not for a while," Brooke said.
"Good," Ryan said, going to work on the padlock for the second time. "And good that they didn't put something more complicated on here."
"It didn't work last time and you weren't hurt then," Brooke pointed out.
"Well, now I know how to do it, so I can go faster," Ryan said. "And now I know that they're fucking around with my body, so I've got even more of a reason."
"I don't want them cutting me open," Brooke said.
"It's not gonna happen," Ryan replied, trying to sound sure. "We're gonna get out of here, Brooke. Trust me."
"Gee, you are the psychos with scalpels, who should I trust with my life?" Brooke asked sarcastically. "Such a tough one."
Ryan grinned slightly as he heard the lock click open for the second time. "Leave the chain until I'm free," he said, turning his attention to his own ankle. It went fast this time, clicking open within moments. He quickly pulled the chain free, and heard Brooke doing the same before she helped him to his feet. "Next we gotta get through the door," he said.
"Yeah, how do we do that?" Brooke asked.
Newport Beach Police Department ~ Conference Room
"I showed a surgeon at HOAG the pictures," Malcolm said. "He says it's definitely surgical wounds, done by a professional."
"So we've got a rogue surgeon butchering teenagers?" Morgan asked.
"Illegal organ trade isn't unheard of," Reid said. "While paying the lower class for their organs can keep a supply, there's no guarantee that the organs are healthy and clean of drugs. But taking them from wealthy young people, it's more likely they'll be clean."
"Not with all the drugs and alcohol the locals kids use," Malcolm said. "Recipients are probably waking up stoned."
"But this way they can get the organs, get multiple organs," Prentiss said, disgust and disbelief on her face. "And they can also collect ransom. They're mutilating children so they can get rich."
"We've gotta find these other kids before it's too late," Hotch said.
"We may have something," JJ said, walking in. "A man in LA just got a kidney transplant. He's the same blood type as Ryan, and the kidney wasn't packed for long travel, probably only removed a half hour before the surgery, but no hospitals within range had a donor of that blood type."
"Great," Morgan said. "So now we know they've cut him open. Who knows what else they took. He could already be dead."
"We should look at teenage John and Jane Does that were assumed to be homeless," Reid said. "Jess Sathers was covered in dirt and grime, she was initially thought to be homeless until she was run through the missing persons database. Some of the other might have turned up, maybe in the wrong city, and they haven't been run yet, or they're faces were damaged and they couldn't be identified, but were assumed to be homeless."
"I'll get someone started on that," Malcolm said, hurrying out.
"We're racing against the clock," Hotch said, looking around. "Every second it takes us to find them is one less second that this kid has."
Unknown Location
"Go," Ryan said from his place near the door.
"No!" Brooke screamed, huddled over the old, stained, blanket that was rolled up to make it seem like a body. "Ryan! Please, wake up!"
Ryan flinched at the shrill tone in her voice, but steadied himself as he heard footsteps outside the door and the hinges creaking as the door was flung open. A single man stepped into the room, and Ryan grabbed him from behind, slamming his head into the wall three times until he went limp. "Come on!" he yelled to Brooke, reaching to take her hand and pull her down the hall.
"You're bleeding again," Brooke said, seeing the growing stain on his shirt. "God... Ryan... what the hell is this shit?"
"I don't know," Ryan said. He heard noises back the way they came, and pulled her into an empty room, lifting a hand to cover her mouth so she wouldn't make a sound. Brooke nodded and quietly moved away from the door and towards the windows that were boarded up. Peering out, she smiled and went back to Ryan's side, putting her mouth against his ear to whisper. "Fire escape."
Ryan looked at the window, then shook his head, pressing his lips to her ear this time. "Too noisy. Never get the boards off before they hear us."
Brooke shook her own head emphatically. "They'll find us anyway. Barricade the door and slow them down."
Ryan hesitated, then nodded, pointing at a chair.
Newport Beach Police Department ~ Conference Room
"We've identified two more bodies," Malcolm said. "How the hell did we miss it?"
"You didn't have the right clues," Hotch said. "We..."
"We found the courier who delivered the kidney," JJ said. "We've got the pick up address, it's an old free clinic downtown."
"I'll bet these kids aren't their first victims," Morgan said.
"We're gonna have to look back on years of John and Jane Does, anyone with surgical wounds..." Malcolm said. Then he shook his head. "Let's go. Maybe we can keep there from being another body."
Unknown Location
"Almost..." Ryan said as he pulled on the last board he needed to free. Brooke couldn't help thanks to her broken wrist, so she was sitting in the chair, adding her weight to it and helping keep the door closed against the men trying to get in.
"I can't hold it!" Brooke cried.
"Come on!" Ryan yelled, yanking one last time and having the wood splinter and come loose. He dropped it and lifted his arm, smashing through the glass and ignoring the pain as it cut into his skin. Once he had an open space, he went to the door, putting his weight against it. "Go! Get out and go as fast as you can, I'll be right behind you!"
Brooke ran to the window, climbing out before stopping to look back in at him, for the first time both of them seeing each other clearly. "Come on!" she said.
"Go!" Ryan repeated. He watched as Brooke hesitated another moment, then turned and ran down the stairs. Then, he waited until it sound like she was at least a floor below him, and pushed himself away from the door and towards the window, almost jumping through the opening and slamming painfully into the railing of the fire escape. He tried to catch his breath, looking down to see Brooke had stopped to look up at him. "Go!" he yelled, looking down the street and spotting three cop cars. "There! Go!" he said, pointing, just as the door broke open and two men came into the room.
On The Street
"Look," Morgan said, spotting Brooke as she ran down the fire escape and following her frantic glances up to see Ryan a few floors above her, stumbling as he tried to follow. As the cars screeched to a stop, the BAU team and the police jumped out, guns pulled and ready to shoot, and they saw two men climbing out a window not far from Ryan, just as the teenager stumbled and fell, his back slamming against the railing and revealing the blood stain on his shirt.
"Freeze FBI!" Morgan yelled, aiming at the men. One of them did as they were told, but the other, already closer, continued to Ryan and grabbed the teenager to use him as a shield.
Prentiss darted forward to grab Brooke as she reached ground level, and pulled her clear. "Come on, it's okay, you're safe," she told the girl.
"They're gonna kill him!" Brooke screamed, looking back up at Ryan, who was clearly in trouble, slumping in the grip of his attacker, who had a gun to his head.
"Let the boy go!" Hotch yelled up.
"Back off!" the man replied as Ryan went limp, sagging down until the man switched to pointing the gun at the FBI agents. "I said back..." he began.
That's when Ryan suddenly stood upright, throwing his head back so that it connected with his attacker's face and blood spurted out of the man's broken nose. Ryan shoved him and hit the stairs running. By the time he reached the ground, both of the men on the fire escape had opened fire, and Ryan collapsed to the ground in pain as he felt like something inside tore. He looked across the open area to the cars, and saw Brooke being held back near a van marked FBI.
Knowing she was safe, that she would be okay, he let himself sink into the welcoming darkness.
To Be Continued...
One more chapter to this... lol
Author: Mara
Fandoms: The OC/One Tree Hill/Criminal Minds
Rating: R
Warnings: Crossover. Language. Violence. Blood. Pain. Psychological Torture with hints of physical torture.
Summary: A serial kidnapper is on the loose in Southern California, and the latest victims are Brooke Davis and Ryan Atwood.
Notes: A three-way crossover! lol... Hopefully it works out the way I want it to... Takes place 3rd Season The OC, 2nd season OTH, and 2nd season Criminal Minds. I'm slightly screwing with the timelines, but... whatever.
Little Timeline notes:
Criminal Minds - Takes place sometime in Season 2, so Prentiss is on the team instead of Elle.
The OC - Johnny's still alive. Ryan and Marissa are still together but it's shaky.
OTH - Brooke and Lucas have gotten to be friends again, but they're NOT back together.
"This kid's really neat," Prentiss said as she and Gideon looked around the room. "It barely looks lived in and he's been living here what? 3 years?"
"It's about control," Gideon commented. "His life before coming here was out of his control, and when he came here that didn't much change. So he keeps everything in order so that there's no reason for anyone to get mad at him. He doesn't want to end up out on the streets."
"I don't think he has to worry," Prentiss said as she glanced towards the main house, where Sandy Cohen was talking to Hotch and the other son, Seth, was sitting at the counter looking like his puppy had died.
"He's scared of being alone," Gideon said, spotting the handful of pictures of Ryan with others. He picked up a notebook that sat in the upper corner of the drafting desk and flipped it open, finding a list of pros and cons about the different colleges. "He's worried about going to college too far away, thinks he'll lose the Cohens if he does."
"Not possible," Sandy said from the doorway. "I don't really understand how looking through Ryan's things is going to help you. He's... he's going to be upset when he finds out."
"Figuring out how he might react to the situation will help us figure out how to react to him," Prentiss explained. "He might be disoriented, might see us as another threat, we need to know how to interact with him to make him feel safe."
"Talk slow, even, don't move fast," Sandy said, sitting down on the edge of Ryan's bed.
"You have experience with him being upset?" Prentiss asked.
Sandy sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "My wife and other son don't know, but Ryan has nightmares sometimes. When he first moved in here, I kept finding him up before I was, and I got up early to go surfing. He'd be sitting with his legs in the pool, smoking, and he tried to say it was nothing, he just liked to get up early. Then one night I felt like a midnight snack, and I saw that his light was on, so I came out here and found him asleep, tossing and turning... he was crying and begging someone to stop. When I woke him up, he... he panicked, he yanked away from me and acted like he thought I was going to hurt him. When he snapped out of it, he tried to say it was nothing, a bad dream, but... after it happened a couple times he admitted that he was dreaming about his father and his mother's boyfriends, how they used to beat him and his brother."
"He still has them after 3 years?" Gideon said.
"They went away for a while, he was actually sleeping until Seth would come out here and start talking at him until he woke up. The last spring... some things happened and he started having them again. It's been getting better, though, the last few weeks," Sandy said. "You gotta talk quietly, calmly, tell him that no ones going to hurt him, and... and move real slow, if you move fast he's gonna fight you... He got me in the ribs once, spent weeks apologizing... I told Kirsten I got hit with my board after a wipe out... Ryan's a good kid, you just gotta be careful with him... we can't lose him. We've come close, we've let him be in danger, we can't lose him now... I never should have asked him to help Matt with the work that night..."
"It's not your fault, Mr. Cohen," Prentiss said. "The UnSub might have taken him at a different time, or someone not as strong as Ryan might have been taken."
"The other agent said something about believing that the kids are being kept alive for a while?" Sandy asked. "I think he was trying to give me hope."
"We think that may be the case," Gideon agreed. "It would explain the fact that no one's been found."
"If there's anyone else there alive," Sandy began. "Ryan'll get himself killed trying to protect them."
"Gideon," Hotch said as he came out. "We just got a call from JJ. They found one of the missing girls."
"Alive?" Prentiss asked.
Hotch glanced at Sandy then back at Prentiss and Gideon before answering. "Dead."
"Head trauma," Reid said as he looked at the photos on the table.
"It's not what killed her," Morgan replied, looking at the papers sent to them by the coroner along with the photos. "She's missing part of her liver, a length of intestine, and a lung. Someone harvested this girl's organs in unsanitary conditions, and between infection and blood loss... she never stood a chance."
"Do we have an ID yet?" Hotch asked as he, Gideon, and Prentiss walked in, leaving Sandy and Seth in the squad room with Kirsten.
"Just got it," JJ said as she followed them in. "Jess Sather, student at Harbor, just like 3 of the others, including Ryan Atwood. Her parents thought she'd run away with, get this, Trey Atwood, Ryan's older brother."
"Does anyone know where to find the brother?" Gideon asked.
JJ shook her head. "No one's seen him since last fall, when he skipped out of the hospital, a warrant out for his arrest."
"Why did the parents suspect Ryan's brother?" Morgan asked.
"Apparently they found their daughter's diary, she'd been having a sexual relationship with Trey Atwood," JJ said.
"Is it possible the brother's involved?" Hotch asked. "Ryan might not be a victim but an accomplice."
"Everything the foster family's said about him goes against that," Gideon said. "And everything in here," he added, holding up the notebook he'd taken from the poolhouse. He opened it to the page of pros and cons. "Pro: If I go to college, Sandy and Kirsten will be proud of me, and I won't end up like Trey. Con: I'll be alone again, and without them I might become like Trey."
Morgan took the notebook, flipping through the pages until he came to something of a journal entry. "I refuse to be like Trey. I wanna build, not destroy. I want to help, not hurt. I will never do to anyone what Trey did to Marissa..." Morgan paused. "That's the girlfriend, so what did the brother do?"
Hotch walked back to the door. "Mr. and Mrs. Cohen, can you step in here for a moment?"
Seth came with them, and no one argued about it. "What is it?" Sandy asked, noticing how Prentiss and JJ were quickly gathering photos, though he did catch a glimpse of the girl's battered face.
"What did Ryan's brother do to his girlfriend?" Hotch asked. "His journal mentioned something."
"Trey tried to rape her," Seth said.
"Ryan took it hard when he found out," Sandy said. "What does this have to do with anything?"
"The body that was found, it was a girl who's parents thought she might have run off with Ryan's brother," Hotch explained.
"You mean Jess?" Seth said. "Jess is dead?"
"Yes," Gideon said. "We're trying to figure out whether Trey Atwood could be involved."
"Ryan didn't have anything to do with it, besides being a victim, if that's what your suggesting," Kirsten said, her voice cold. "He would never do something like this."
"We're just trying to get a handle on the situation, we're not accusing anyone," Morgan said.
Ryan woke to the sounds of sobbing, and realized his head was resting on something soft. He slowly opened his eyes and realized he was laying with his head pillowed on Brooke's lap, and she was crying. "Brooke?"
"Thank god," she said, one hand running through his hair and the other touching his cheek. "I thought you wouldn't wake up..."
"My back..."
"They did something," Brooke said. "When you came back... your shirt was bloody and your... I think there's stitches. I don't know what they did..."
"Are you okay?" Ryan asked. "You hit your head."
"I'm okay," Brooke said. "They haven't taken me out of here since they put me in. But I know the girl they took before you came, she had at least three places where she had stitches..."
"We gotta get out of here," Ryan said, using an elbow to push himself upright, reaching with one hand to feel along the wall and closing his hand around the second bobby pin that he'd left there earlier. "How long since they brought me back?"
"I don't know... it seemed like forever," Brooke said. "But... I don't think it's been that long. Maybe an hour or two?"
"Any idea when they might come back?"
"Not for a while," Brooke said.
"Good," Ryan said, going to work on the padlock for the second time. "And good that they didn't put something more complicated on here."
"It didn't work last time and you weren't hurt then," Brooke pointed out.
"Well, now I know how to do it, so I can go faster," Ryan said. "And now I know that they're fucking around with my body, so I've got even more of a reason."
"I don't want them cutting me open," Brooke said.
"It's not gonna happen," Ryan replied, trying to sound sure. "We're gonna get out of here, Brooke. Trust me."
"Gee, you are the psychos with scalpels, who should I trust with my life?" Brooke asked sarcastically. "Such a tough one."
Ryan grinned slightly as he heard the lock click open for the second time. "Leave the chain until I'm free," he said, turning his attention to his own ankle. It went fast this time, clicking open within moments. He quickly pulled the chain free, and heard Brooke doing the same before she helped him to his feet. "Next we gotta get through the door," he said.
"Yeah, how do we do that?" Brooke asked.
"I showed a surgeon at HOAG the pictures," Malcolm said. "He says it's definitely surgical wounds, done by a professional."
"So we've got a rogue surgeon butchering teenagers?" Morgan asked.
"Illegal organ trade isn't unheard of," Reid said. "While paying the lower class for their organs can keep a supply, there's no guarantee that the organs are healthy and clean of drugs. But taking them from wealthy young people, it's more likely they'll be clean."
"Not with all the drugs and alcohol the locals kids use," Malcolm said. "Recipients are probably waking up stoned."
"But this way they can get the organs, get multiple organs," Prentiss said, disgust and disbelief on her face. "And they can also collect ransom. They're mutilating children so they can get rich."
"We've gotta find these other kids before it's too late," Hotch said.
"We may have something," JJ said, walking in. "A man in LA just got a kidney transplant. He's the same blood type as Ryan, and the kidney wasn't packed for long travel, probably only removed a half hour before the surgery, but no hospitals within range had a donor of that blood type."
"Great," Morgan said. "So now we know they've cut him open. Who knows what else they took. He could already be dead."
"We should look at teenage John and Jane Does that were assumed to be homeless," Reid said. "Jess Sathers was covered in dirt and grime, she was initially thought to be homeless until she was run through the missing persons database. Some of the other might have turned up, maybe in the wrong city, and they haven't been run yet, or they're faces were damaged and they couldn't be identified, but were assumed to be homeless."
"I'll get someone started on that," Malcolm said, hurrying out.
"We're racing against the clock," Hotch said, looking around. "Every second it takes us to find them is one less second that this kid has."
"Go," Ryan said from his place near the door.
"No!" Brooke screamed, huddled over the old, stained, blanket that was rolled up to make it seem like a body. "Ryan! Please, wake up!"
Ryan flinched at the shrill tone in her voice, but steadied himself as he heard footsteps outside the door and the hinges creaking as the door was flung open. A single man stepped into the room, and Ryan grabbed him from behind, slamming his head into the wall three times until he went limp. "Come on!" he yelled to Brooke, reaching to take her hand and pull her down the hall.
"You're bleeding again," Brooke said, seeing the growing stain on his shirt. "God... Ryan... what the hell is this shit?"
"I don't know," Ryan said. He heard noises back the way they came, and pulled her into an empty room, lifting a hand to cover her mouth so she wouldn't make a sound. Brooke nodded and quietly moved away from the door and towards the windows that were boarded up. Peering out, she smiled and went back to Ryan's side, putting her mouth against his ear to whisper. "Fire escape."
Ryan looked at the window, then shook his head, pressing his lips to her ear this time. "Too noisy. Never get the boards off before they hear us."
Brooke shook her own head emphatically. "They'll find us anyway. Barricade the door and slow them down."
Ryan hesitated, then nodded, pointing at a chair.
"We've identified two more bodies," Malcolm said. "How the hell did we miss it?"
"You didn't have the right clues," Hotch said. "We..."
"We found the courier who delivered the kidney," JJ said. "We've got the pick up address, it's an old free clinic downtown."
"I'll bet these kids aren't their first victims," Morgan said.
"We're gonna have to look back on years of John and Jane Does, anyone with surgical wounds..." Malcolm said. Then he shook his head. "Let's go. Maybe we can keep there from being another body."
"Almost..." Ryan said as he pulled on the last board he needed to free. Brooke couldn't help thanks to her broken wrist, so she was sitting in the chair, adding her weight to it and helping keep the door closed against the men trying to get in.
"I can't hold it!" Brooke cried.
"Come on!" Ryan yelled, yanking one last time and having the wood splinter and come loose. He dropped it and lifted his arm, smashing through the glass and ignoring the pain as it cut into his skin. Once he had an open space, he went to the door, putting his weight against it. "Go! Get out and go as fast as you can, I'll be right behind you!"
Brooke ran to the window, climbing out before stopping to look back in at him, for the first time both of them seeing each other clearly. "Come on!" she said.
"Go!" Ryan repeated. He watched as Brooke hesitated another moment, then turned and ran down the stairs. Then, he waited until it sound like she was at least a floor below him, and pushed himself away from the door and towards the window, almost jumping through the opening and slamming painfully into the railing of the fire escape. He tried to catch his breath, looking down to see Brooke had stopped to look up at him. "Go!" he yelled, looking down the street and spotting three cop cars. "There! Go!" he said, pointing, just as the door broke open and two men came into the room.
"Look," Morgan said, spotting Brooke as she ran down the fire escape and following her frantic glances up to see Ryan a few floors above her, stumbling as he tried to follow. As the cars screeched to a stop, the BAU team and the police jumped out, guns pulled and ready to shoot, and they saw two men climbing out a window not far from Ryan, just as the teenager stumbled and fell, his back slamming against the railing and revealing the blood stain on his shirt.
"Freeze FBI!" Morgan yelled, aiming at the men. One of them did as they were told, but the other, already closer, continued to Ryan and grabbed the teenager to use him as a shield.
Prentiss darted forward to grab Brooke as she reached ground level, and pulled her clear. "Come on, it's okay, you're safe," she told the girl.
"They're gonna kill him!" Brooke screamed, looking back up at Ryan, who was clearly in trouble, slumping in the grip of his attacker, who had a gun to his head.
"Let the boy go!" Hotch yelled up.
"Back off!" the man replied as Ryan went limp, sagging down until the man switched to pointing the gun at the FBI agents. "I said back..." he began.
That's when Ryan suddenly stood upright, throwing his head back so that it connected with his attacker's face and blood spurted out of the man's broken nose. Ryan shoved him and hit the stairs running. By the time he reached the ground, both of the men on the fire escape had opened fire, and Ryan collapsed to the ground in pain as he felt like something inside tore. He looked across the open area to the cars, and saw Brooke being held back near a van marked FBI.
Knowing she was safe, that she would be okay, he let himself sink into the welcoming darkness.
To Be Continued...
One more chapter to this... lol
