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"Redding, Cassie is missing," Michael said, shaking him awake in the middle of the night. "Did you see her going out of the house or anything?"
"What?" Dean said, rubbing his eyes and getting up.
"Cassie is missing and unaccounted for. So is Agent Sterling." Briggs seemed to appear out of nowhere, standing at Dean's doorway.
Dean registered the words Briggs was saying and bolted up from the bed as if he'd just gotten burned. "Are the others up?"
"Lia is. She's waking Sloane up," Michael told him.
Dean nodded absently, already thinking about what might've happened to them. He slipped into Cassie's mind while walking down the stairs. I toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep. He thought about the most likely scenario that Sterling and Cassie would be missing together. I walk down the stairs and see a light from Sterling's temporary room. She lets me in.
After that, his mind went blank. What might've caused both of them to go out in the middle of the night? Unless someone broke in? No, one of the others would've heard it.
"No info on Cassie's whereabouts?" Lia asked when Dean came to the kitchen, where the director and Judd were waiting as well. They looked as if they had been arguing, both wearing expressions of subtle anger. Dean shook his head.
It was then that Dean realised, the only reason both Cassie and Sterling would go out of the house in the middle of the night was if Sterling had gotten a call about a dead body or something. Cassie would've followed her, because she cares. He should've realised this sooner.
"Christopher Simms is dead," Director Sterling said, dropping the words like a bomb once everyone was in the kitchen. "Hanging in his own prison cell."
He murmured something under his breath a few times. Dean could barely make out the words, but since he was close enough, he heard them, Veronica told me something was off.
"We have reason to believe they've been kidnapped by this possible third UNSUB," Briggs said. "Their location is unknown and they are unaccounted for by everyone in this house."
"Cassie has the ankle tracker Sterling put on her," Sloane stated. "We can track their location using that." For someone who just woke up, her brain was working awfully well.
"Yeah, but wouldn't they have the location already?" Michael asked Sloane. To that, she had no answer.
"Unless Sterling was bluffing," Dean said. I put the ankle tracker on Cassie to give her a warning. I thought wearing it was enough of a threat.
Everyone in the room turned towards Briggs and the director, except for Michael. Whatever he saw on their faces when Dean had said that confirmed what he thought. "She didn't activate it," Agent Briggs confirmed.
"Is there a way to activate it?" Sloane asked, though she probably already knew the answer. "Use it."
Briggs immediately went to his study, which wasn't really his study right now, and grabbed something. The paperwork for the ankle tracker.
Dean went for the front door. Lia grabbed his wrist. Where are you going? she asked with her eyes.
"Briggs's car," he replied softly, so that the director wouldn't hear. He didn't have to say more. Lia understood and let him go, silently telling him to be careful.
In a rush to come to the house, Briggs hadn't locked his car. Which was good for Dean, allowing him to sit inside and wait for Briggs to come and drive to Cassie's location.
While Dean waited, he thought of all the possible scenarios that might've happened to Cassie. Bind them. Brand them. Cut them. Hang them. He didn't want to think about that scenario. That would mean they were almost certainly dead, unless they were left to themselves for a while. And to think about Sterling having a second brand? Absolutely not.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was really only a few minutes, Briggs entered the car and drove off, sparing a glance at Dean for half a second through the rearview mirror.
"So where are they?" Dean asked.
"At some cabin," Briggs replied tersely. "Why are you here?"
Dean shrugged. "Same reason as you."
Briggs didn't say anything more and continued his drive to the location Cassie and Sterling were being kept at.
~
The area Briggs drove to was some secluded area with the cabin he'd mentioned and a bunch of trees. He slowed to a stop near the cabin first. "Cassie's location changed to somewhere in the woods."
So not my father's MO then, Dean thought, feeling a bit of relief wash over him. "Did she escape?"
Briggs grimaced. "Doubt it. Too easy." Fair enough. He got out of the car and jogged towards the cabin. Dean followed him.
Briggs reached the cabin and opened the door. Dean stopped beside him. Agent Sterling was tied to a wooden post with zip tie on her wrists behind her back. She didn't look up from the floor.
"Ronnie," Briggs whispered, barely audible, as if talking to himself.
"Tanner?" Sterling said, only looking up then. "How?"
"Ankle tracker." Briggs didn't let Sterling have a chance to register those words. "Dean, grab me the knife on the floor," Briggs ordered.
Dean obeyed, handing him the extremely sharp cutting knife. It was probably for live animals.
Briggs slashed through the zip ties at Sterling's wrists. When her wrists were free, she shook them for a few seconds before saying, "Dean, what are you doing here?"
"I'll go get Cassie," Briggs said, glancing at his phone and already turning towards the direction she was in.
Dean took a step, about to follow Briggs to Cassie, but he pointed at him. "You, stay here. The UNSUB is still out there and you're not getting hurt on my watch."
Dean stayed in his place.
At least, for as long as he could. He followed Briggs ten seconds after he took off for Cassie, too anxious to just stand and wait here. If Michael were here, he would say that Dean's predominant emotion was anxiety.
Soon, he reached where Briggs and Cassie were. He walked through the vegetation all around him and finally saw the red hair that only belonged to one person.
"Cassie," Dean called. Briggs and Cassie turned around.
Briggs said something to Cassie before turning to Dean. "I told you to wait at the cabin," he said, the annoyance clear in his voice.
Cassie took three steps towards Dean. He closed the majority of the space between them and placed his hands on Cassie's shoulders, surveying her. She's okay. She's real.
"What are you doing here?" Cassie asked him.
He didn't reply, just moved his hands from her shoulders to her face. He cupped her cheek with his right hand and buried his left hand in her hair, holding her head up.
"Activating the tracker was Sloane's idea." Briggs seemed to have disappeared from Dean and Cassie, Dean registered faintly. "Everyone else forgot about it. Briggs was at our place when we got the coordinates. I may have arranged it so that I was in his car when he went to leave."
Cassie looked a little bit stunned and amused at Dean's confession.
"What happened?" he asked, trying to keep his calm disposition.
"I hit him in the head with a rock. Then I jumped on him from up in that tree." She gestured vaguely to the tree with a hand.
A thousand emotions rushed into Dean at once. And then his lips were turning upward at the corners of their own accord. "I was wrong when I said I just felt something." This is a mistake. This is right. "When I said I wasn't sure it was enough."
Dean had pushed away whatever he felt for Cassie, thinking he was just like his father, thinking he couldn't love right. But he was different. He wasn't his father.
It had to be true if the proof was right in front of him.
Gently, he pulled Cassie towards him. His lips touched hers softly, but it felt like everything. She placed her hands on the nape of his neck and pulled him closer.
He was wrong earlier, this was everything. Her rising up on her toes and pressing her body against him, her returning the kiss ten times stronger than he gave. Everything faded away, only him and Cassie in this world.
In his world.