Helpless (Aaron Hotchner Fanfic)

Chapter Five

Jessica saw the black SUV screech up towards the office building, and she chewed her thumbs nervously. Hotch was going to be furious about this. He had already lost a wife and now he might lose a son. Jack was all he had left. Jessica had no idea what had happened to the little boy. After checking on him, she returned back downstairs but had a very odd feeling. After five more minutes, she went back upstairs to check on him again, but all hope was lost as she found the window open and the cold wind rustling Hotch's empty bed sheets.

"Where is he?!" Hotch's frantic voice bellowed out into the night as he tore out of the SUV before it could even stop. Morgan followed close behind him. Jessica's eye widened as the man ran up to her and put his hands firmly on her shoulders and gave her a violent shake. "Where. Is. My. Son?!"

Jessica started crying. "I don't know Aaron! I checked on him once and after I had gone downstairs I had this weird feeling. When I returned upstairs the window-" and with that she broke down. "My little nephew!" She cried into Morgan's shoulder and he looked up at Hotch sympathetically.

"Take her into the station. Get her out of the cold. I'd like to talk with her in a couple of minutes when she's calmed down." Hotch rubbed his tired eyes as Morgan nodded, leading a sobbing Jessica into the building.

Another SUV drove up holding Reid, JJ, Prentiss and Garcia, all returning from the bar to help. They ran up to Hotch and gave apologetic smiles for running behind. Hotch sighed and spun around to stride into the building, his fists clenched and his team feeling horrible for what he has been thrown into.

~~ TIME SKIP BROUGHT TO YOU BY REID'S GORGEOUS BRAIN ~~

Hotch closed the door of the interrogation room. Jessica had been sitting in here for half an hour, crying 'my baby nephew!" and throwing profanities around like confetti. He sat down across the table from her and handed her a tissue. She gave a wobbly smile. Hotch sighed.

"I need you to tell me exactly what you saw when you walked into my room and found Jack missing."

"Well I walked into the room, it was cold," she sniffled. "Colder than usual. I knew you had fans on but it was too cold. Noticing the window was open was my first indication that something was terribly wrong. Then I saw the bed sheets-" She choked on her words, but soon recomposed herself. "The sheets were just fluttering in the wind. I also found this."

She held up a note, which was enfolded in a napkin ... smeared with blood. Hotch's eyes started to tear up. It could be his son's blood smeared all over that. He took a deep breath to stop himself from crying and gently took the note from her hand.

"Reid?" His voice wavered as spoke into his radio. "I need you in here with an evidence bag ... now."

Soon enough, Reid came in, his brown locks bouncing up and down with his powerful and determined strides, with the evidence bag and latex gloves. He gently took the folded piece of paper, eyes wide when he saw the blood smears and looked towards Hotch. Hotch just nodded silently, signaling that he was going to be okay and turned back to Jessica as Reid exited the room.

"We'll take that and examine it. Did you read it?"

"No. I was too scared to open it. I grabbed it with a napkin. I didn't want to put any prints on it, just in case you ran the paper for some."

"Thanks, that will help. Tell me more. What did the room look like? Was anything out of place?"

"No, nothing was out of place. The captor must've crawled through the window because it was open and the desk below it had a muddy footprint on it. Besides that, nothing. Just the empty bed."

"Okay, Jessica. Thank you so much for this information. We sent police over there to take some pictures for us, so we should be able to analyze what happened. I'll leave you for now. One of our men will escort you home, okay?"