Chapter Text
Shots had already been fired before they even reached the scene – and when the two Federal SUVs screeched to a halt, there were more police than Emily had ever seen in one place at one time – and she’d seen a LOT of cops in her time.
“Looks like every cop in town is here.” She muttered to Morgan as they hopped from the vehicle.
“Good day to be a burglar, I guess.” He chuckled as they followed Hotch.
Hotch immediately headed for the SWAT team leader – a huge blond man by the name of Bridgers - for a breakdown on the situation. All around, police officers were crouched and ready, taking cover behind cars and bushes, their weapons drawn and trained on the house.
“See the looks they’re giving us.” Dave whispered as he noted the scowls and anger emanating from the local police. And he was right - from the way half of the police looked at the BAU members, many of those guys believed the BAU’s very involvement had led directly to this escalation; this siege.
“I don’t think we’re very popular.” Morgan muttered into Emily’s ear.
“They shouldn’t blame us.” Reid pointed out, keeping close to Derek. “An escalation like this was inevitable, given the –“
Dave cut him off. “Regular cops don’t trust profiling at the best of times, kid. As far as they are concerned, before we landed on their doorstep they had a Peeping Tom – and two seconds after we descend on them, we get a siege with God knows what happening inside that house.”
They stood and watched Hotch and Bridgers gesticulating wildly to one another. A few minutes later Hotch returned.
“Well?” Dave asked.
“Bridgers wants to storm the place. I’ve managed to get them to hold off for the time being until we figure out this mess.” Hotch sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose.
“Do they really blame us for this?” Reid wondered.
“For everything since JFK.” Dave noted with resignation.
“I’ve got JJ fending off the press, but…it doesn’t look good. Bridgers thinks we might have a family annihilator in there.” Hotch said.
“I thought the dude was a peeper?” Derek queried.
Hotch shook his head. “Maybe he escalated. Maybe the pressure our presence put on him triggered something we hadn’t accounted for. Maybe –“
“Maybe our profile was wrong.” Dave noted gravely.
Emily frowned. That was a hard truth to accept – if it were, in fact, the case. She didn’t dare to contemplate that.
“So where does that leave us?” Derek asked.
“I’ve persuaded SWAT to hold back on storming the place until we have at least made every attempt to initiate communication with Jacks. We need to know who – if anyone – is still alive in there. And Jacks is keeping himself very much out of the line of sight.”
Reid pointed to the building. “Whose house is this?”
“Co-worker to Jacks – Lily Hughes. We think he had been stalking her for quite a while, and the press conference we did must have put her on edge – made her do something that made Jacks escalate beyond voyeurism.”
“Forced him to act on his impulses.” Derek nodded.
“Was she alone in there?” Emily asked.
Hotch shook his head. “Her husband, Ashton; her younger brother Jamie; and George - her four year old son - are all suspected to be in there.”
The team fell silent, their eyes drifting to the eerily silent house.
It was Dave who aired the question they were all avoiding. “How many shots have been fired in there?”
“Three.” Hotch breathed.
“Not four or five.” Reid noted sombrely. “So at the very least, Jacks must still be alive.”
Gary Jacks was a non-descript nobody kind of guy. The guy that people ignore – or rather not notice enough to engage with. An only child, he seemed to live in a fantasy world of comic books and TV shows – very violent TV shows. Oh, and pornography. Lots and lots of it. The team read reports from three or four women who had worked previous jobs with Jacks, that they would open their curtains in the morning and spot him across the street, watching, like he’d been there all night just waiting for those curtains to part. They said he’d leave weird and inappropriate gits on their desks or even on their front porches. One of them awoke in the night to find him in her bedroom – her boyfriend at the time landed Jacks in hospital that night... but for all his creepiness, he seemed relatively harmless and rather pathetic, so aside from a couple of restraining orders and fines, there were no real charges laid against him.
“If he’s alive in there, how come SWAT haven’t already taken him out?” Derek said, eyeing the firepower outside.
“Jacks has been keeping out of sight – curtains drawn. They haven’t been able to get a clear shot.”
Dave scoffed, having seen sieges go sideways more than a few times in his career. But irrespective of that, the team donned vests and made their way to the crowd of police – who made no attempt to hide their derogatory remarks.
“Whose side are you on?” one of them hissed. “That press conference sucked ass.”
“If you got that family killed…” Another warned.
“This is a small town – not a big city. We knew those people! Damn Feds screwing everything up!” Another spat.
Derek nudged Emily’s arm, feeling the tension in her muscles as she fought to restrain herself. “They aren’t worth losing your shit over.”
She nodded tightly.
“You’re pretty quiet.” He added. When all he got was a shrug in response, he nodded to himself. “You trying not to punch these guys out, huh? I get that.”
Emily sighed, her jaw tense. “Why can’t they see we’re just trying to goddamn help here!”
“Hey, I hear you, baby… but if we did get that profile wrong, then maybe they’re right to be angry.
Emily scoffed bitterly and glared back at the cops. She’d been present during the press debacle – the one where JJ had delivered the official line, designed to draw Jacks out by making him feel inadequate. They hadn’t figured on Jacks being on a hair trigger. They hadn’t anticipated the lightning fast escalation. They had been caught completely off-guard by the news that a family had been taken hostage. And JJ? Poor JJ was currently neck deep in shit and fighting to save the BAU’s reputation with the press and trying to prevent reporters from descending on the scene.
*
The minutes ticked by slowly as Hotch and Dave took turns in trying to get a response from Jacks. They addressed him through a loud hailer, but didn’t get so much as a curtain twitch from inside the house.
“We’re wasting time!” Bridgers growled. “Look – I let you try it your way and you got bupkis. So now it’s our turn. We’re going in.”
Hotch nodded in defeat. “Very well.”
The BAU stood and watched, despondently, as SWAT geared up and the local PD double checked their weapons.
“That damn house will be Swiss cheese by the time they’re through.” Dave noted.
“Forensics’ll love them!” Derek laughed humourlessly as Hotch took a call from what could only be a furious SC Strauss.
“I guess the situation here has made the news after all.” Dave sighed. “Strauss will tear Hotch a new one.”
“Speaking of…” Spencer said, pointing to where a press van – followed by two more – pulled up.
“Jesus. They’re going to get someone killed.” Hotch hissed as the reporters and camera crews piled out and started throwing questions at the cops and SWAT, pushing their way through the barricades and under the cordons, each of the desperate to get the ‘exclusive’.
“This is turning into the Springer show.” Derek spat.
Emily sighed and wandered a little further from the group; from the sounds of guns being loaded and cocked; from the stinging, accusatory looks that felt like knives. The media would make mincemeat of them. She reckoned JJ would need a shoulder after this. A shoulder and a double whisky.
She looked up at the house – and she thought she saw something. Was it Jacks? Her heart sped up at the thought and she fixed her eyes on the spot – on the slight movement at the smaller window on the side of the house. She saw a shadow there! It was him! It was Jacks! The commotion – or maybe the news report – must have piqued his curiosity.
She was just about to turn and relay the information to SWAT; to tell them where to concentrate their fire when she saw it.
A hand.
It pressed against the window, just for a second, before it disappeared.
A child’s hand!
She nearly missed it. God, but she nearly missed it.
In its place was a sad face drawn in the misted window pane.
A child. Jesus! The kid was still alive.
She ran to Bridgers, sprinting as fast as she could as he assembled his men. “WAIT! You gotta STOP!” she panted, pushing and shoving her way through the cops and SWAT team.
Bridgers sneered at her through the visor on his headguard. “Your boss has agreed that we –“
“STOP GODDAMNIT!” she yelled, shoving him as hard as she could and jabbing her finger towards the house. “The kid is still alive in there!”
He immediately held up a fist to stop his team in their tracks. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I saw his hand – the farthest window. Port side.”
“Hold positions.” He ordered his team, before getting one of the snipers to use their telescopic sight to confirm Emily’s suspicions.
When the ‘affirmative’ came through, Bridgers exhaled heavily and nodded to Emily. “Good work.” He turned to Hotch. “I guess the ball is back in your court, Hotchner. We’ll take our instructions from you.”
The local police were not too happy about being denied the chance to blow Jacks to smithereens, but once word was passed that the boy was still alive in there, they fell silent.
“Great call, Princess.” Derek whispered, patting her shoulder.
As the BAU and SWAT worked a plan together, the local cops were doing their best to fend off the press and keep a lid on the siege – but everyone knew that the situation was becoming a powder keg.
While the local cops pulled back, Dave was putting his negotiation skills to the test – and once Jacks realised that they knew the boy was still alive, Dave was able to get the asshole engaged in a telephone conversation.
The team listened in to the call, deciding that Jacks was a little slow – but also on a hair trigger. The boy was sobbing and wailing in the background, and Jacks was becoming increasingly angry with him.
“SHUT UP!” Jacks yelled – causing only louder cries.
“He’s gonna kill that kid.” Derek warned.
They could all feel it building, they could all hear Jacks’ temper fraying by the second.
“Hey Gary,” Dave cooed. “I know that must be pretty grating for you – but kids cry when they’re scared. So how about letting him out, huh, so we can talk properly?”
“NO! You’ll shoot me if I do that!”
“I give you my word that won’t happen, Gary.” Dave assured him.
“I don’t believe you! I seen the news! The press people are saying I’m crazy! And the FBI lady said I wasn’t capable of doing something like this. Well I showed her!”
Dave took a breath, cursing their little ploy that, with hindsight, turned Jacks’ stressor into a trigger. “Okay, I hear you, and I’m sorry about that. We got it wrong. So how about you come out and put it right, hmm? Or maybe I can come in there with you and we’ll talk it through?” He concentrated hard, waiting to hear Jacks’ response over little George’s hysterical crying.
“I can’t think with that NOISE!” Jacks screamed.
“Look, how about I send someone in there to calm the boy down? It’ll give you time to think. A bit of peace and quiet.”
“You’re trying to trick me!”
“No tricks. Honestly. I’ll send one of my people in there and they can help you with him.”
“Damn kid! I only wanted her! Just HER!”
“I know that, Gary. Is she alive, Gary…?”
“She’s in here.” He replied.
Hotch frowned and whispered, “If she were still alive, the boy would be calmer.”
“I’ll go in.” Spencer volunteered. “I’m no threat to him.”
Hotch nodded. “Good. I’ll tell Dave, and –“
Emily grabbed Hotch’s arm. “Let me go in, Hotch. The boy is terrified. He might respond better to a woman.”
“But will Jacks.” Hotch muttered rhetorically. “You know you resemble Lily Hughes?”
“I know.” She nodded. “Maybe I can use that to my advantage.” She cast an eye around at the disgruntled police officers. “And maybe I can get our reputation back, and show these guys that we’re cops too and we know how to do our damn jobs!”
*
“You take it easy in there, Princess.” Derek whispered, setting a hand on Emily’s shoulder as she shrugged off the Kevlar vest, passed him her holster and gun, and readied herself to go in.
“No worries.” She muttered, taking a breath.
“Gary?” Dave eyed Prentiss nervously as he continued communication over the telephone with Jacks. “We’re sending our Agent in now – if you look out the window, you will see her. She’s unarmed – she will just be there to calm the boy, okay?”
“Be careful.” Hotch whispered as Emily passed him and walked up the little path towards the front door, her hands raised in the air.
“There’s movement.” Reid noted, as a shadow passed behind the frosted glass of the door.
SWAT trained their guns on the exact spot, just in case – but when the door opened, Jacks stood there, gun in hand and the little boy, still sobbing loudly, held in front of him, blocking any shot that might have been available.
“Is the boy okay?” Emily asked.
Jacks ignored the question. “Turn around. And keep your hands up.”
“I’m unarmed.” Emily assured him, turning full circle for him to see that she was weaponless.
“Show me your ankles.” he demanded.
“I haven’t a secondary firearm.”
He scoffed. “I watch TV! You people always keep a gun down there!”
Humouring him, Emily did exactly as asked. “See? I’m unarmed, Gary. Can I come in and help you with the boy?”
“I need you to get him to shut up!”
“He’s just scared, aren’t you buddy?” she cooed, heading inside.
Hotch closed his eyes as Emily stepped inside the house. “Tell me again why this wasn’t a lousy idea?”