A Miracle From Hell

Chapter 10

In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.---Kami Garcia

Garcia played the clip over again, tears running down her face. "Oh god." she whispered. "Oh god." She reached for a stress ball, bright green with yellow and blue glitter splattered throughout. She squeezed it tightly, focusing her attention back on the screen. "Oh god." She repeated again. Pushing her chair out, she ran as fast as her platform heels would let her to find somebody, anybody. 

That somebody was Hotch. He was staring into his cup of coffee, swirling the liquid slowly. Her frantic "sir" jolted him out of his daze. 

"Garcia?" he took in her frantic behavior and caught her elbow as she teetered towards him. 

"Oh, sir, we just got another clip, and it-I-it's not looking good." Tears slipped down her face. He nodded sharply.

"Garcia, we need to see that as soon as possible." Garcia nodded and ran back toward her den. 

Hotch sat down at the table and looked round at the group. "We have another clip." He warned. 

Morgan cursed under his breath. "Sick son of a bitch." He shook his head as the clip started playing. 

Prentiss couldn't tear her eyes away from Reid's face. He looked awful. Bruises and cuts blossomed on his face, and his cheeks were hollow. Then came the announcement that Reid's deadline was cut from three days to two days. 

A hollow silence filled the air. Two days. Two days. 

JJ looked up. "Why is this guy doing this? Why is he targeting us?" She was surprisingly calm. The others looked at her. "I mean he must have some sort of vendetta, right?"

Hotch narrowed his eyes and looked at Garcia. Garcia nodded. "You know I'm already on it. Oh, and I have Chaser's families, and friends results back. They all come back clean." 

Morgan shook his head, "No, that's impossible Garcia, there has to be something."

"Morgan I wish there was but there's not."

JJ sat back, struck by a thought. "Garcia, you looked into Dr. Schneider, right?" 

Garcia nodded, "yeah, perfectly clean record. Why?"

"It's something I just remembered. Did you do a deep dive on him?"

"No, but you know I can."

Hotch looked at JJ. "What are you thinking." 

JJ sat forward. "I don't know, I was just going over Chaser's relationships. He had, or we assumed he had, an obsessive relationship with Dr. Schneider. Now, I met him, he was a narcissist. He could, if he knew was doing, manipulate Chaser's fragile mental state into doing whatever he wanted. All of this, was a setup for his masterplan."

Prentiss whistled. "JJ that's one hell of a theory." 

JJ glared at her. "Yeah, well it's a lot better than what we have right now, isn't it Emily?" 

Morgan spoke up, "theory or not, there's still a lot we don't know. If Schneider is behind this, we have to figure out his motive, we have to narrow down his location, and see if Schneider is connected with the FBI in anyway." 

"What made you think about Schneider?" Rossi asked gently. 

JJ looked up. "Reid said something to me that day, he said he felt that there was something off about him. I should have listened, I-I could have prevented, all of this." Her voice broke.

Rossi grabbed her hands. "JJ, look at me, that's insane and you know it. We all wish we could have acted differently that day. But that's in the past. JJ we have to focus on the now, we have to save Reid, now JJ." 

JJ swiped at her eyes, wiping away the film of tears that had threatened to spill over. "You're right. I'm sorry." 

Rossi smiled. "Don't apologize kid, just help us catch this bastard." 

Garcia looked up. "I, uh, did the deep dive." She emphasized "deep dive" with her hands, her chunky bracelets running up and down her arms. "And interestingly enough, Schneider didn't require any digging. There's nothing there, like no mention of family, former jobs, schools, no paper trails anything. So...."

Morgan sat back and let out a sigh. "So Schneider doesn't exist." 

"Not in that sense, no." 

Hotch stood up, "He wants us to find him, there has to be a tangent we're missing here." He paused looking at the boards. "We need to find Henry Chaser." His finger landed on the map. "And he, is somewhere, in here. The problem is, where?"

Morgan looked up. "He has to make another run soon. If we can figure out where that could be, we can bring him in." 

Hotch nodded. "Ok, focus on the robberies. Look for patterns, look at the types of stores robbed, the towns, anything." He turned back to the board. "Garcia, how much time do we have left?" 

Garcia's head shot up. "Sir?" She squeaked. 

"I said how much time do we have left." 

"Oh, um, 42 hours sir." 

"Alright, I'm splitting us up. Garcia try to find Schneider's real identity, Rossi and Morgan work on finding Chaser. Prentiss and JJ, shift through Chaser's acquaintances, and arrange interviews. We'll meet back here in about 15 hours." 

Morgan shook his head. "Hotch that'll leave us with little more than a day."

Hotch turned and looked at them.

"Then we better have results."