Hidden Family Secrets
2
Chapter 2: 2005
Four days later, they were no closer to finding the unsub. Since the girls were all getting taken from schools in Quantico, Virginia, the BAU team could work from home, as such. Morgan, Spencer, Gideon and Hotch were all sitting around the table in the conference room when JJ hurried in, Garcia and Emily hot on her heels. The others all glanced up when the three women entered. Their expressions all said the same thing: please give us something new we can work with to catch this guy! JJ looked apologetically at them, reading their faces like well read books.
“Sorry, folks, there’s a brand new kidnapping that’s been reported. It just happened an hour ago. The school called us when they’d ascertained that the little girl was missing, and they said they would call the father of the child and then get back to us, just in case he’s taken her off the school premises, just without informing them” she said quickly, taking a seat next to Spencer.
“So all we do is wait for a bit?” he asked, resting his head down on the table surface.
JJ ruffled his shaggy hair and nodded.
“Yep, guess so, Spence” she murmured, leaning back on her seat.
It was at that precise moment when Morgan’s cell phone trilled, vibrating as well in case he hadn’t heard it. Hotch warily eyed him as he unclipped it and flipped it open to listen.
“This is Derek Morgan” he said, greeting formally as he usually did when the caller was unknown to him.
They all saw his forehead crease in puzzlement and then concern. A small distorted voice could be heard buzzing out of the phone.
“Did you take her out of the school, Derek?”
JJ sat up straight and glanced at Hotch with raised eyebrows. He nodded at her and then looked back at Morgan, worry beginning to settle in for the stay.
“No, I didn’t. Why would I do that? I’m working and she knows where to go if I can’t come and get her in the afternoons” he was saying, his brown eyes now filled with concern.
“Then she’s been taken away by someone else. I need to call someone else now, Derek.”
The businesslike voice cut off and Morgan sat uneasily in his chair, his cell phone clutched in his left hand. He waited and waited, and then the phone clipped to JJ’s pocket beeped and rang. She answered it and listened carefully to the same voice on the other end. It was the same voice that had spoken to her earlier and the same one that had just spoken to Morgan. After a minute or so, JJ nodded a few times and then hung up, reattaching her phone. She looked up and over the table at Morgan, who was awaiting her next words with baited breath.
“A little girl named Rosalie Morgan has been kidnapped from her grade school. She is eleven years old and she was adopted when she was four by one Derek Morgan” she said evenly, her eyes set on his face.
He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, leaning forward in his seat. They could hear him repeating the name ‘Rose’ again and again. Hotch spoke first, trying to rectify the situation a bit.
“Yes, guys, Morgan has a daughter. But that’s not the important thing, the important thing is that she has just been reported missing from her school and we have to find her, fast” he said firmly, standing up and looking down at Morgan.
He touched his shoulder lightly and Morgan lifted his head to look back at him. He ignored everyone else who still stared at him in shock.
“I told her I loved her this morning and then I left her at the school gates. Now she’s disappeared. I am going to kill him. I’ll rip him limb from limb!” he thundered, getting up so forcefully the chair fell over behind him.
“We’ll find her, Morgan. We’ll get Rosalie back” Hotch said quietly, attempting to placate him.
Morgan gazed unseeingly at his boss, looking right through him it seemed.
“How, Hotch? We haven’t found this guy yet, and he’s just taken my daughter. How are we going to rescue her?” he demanded.
Hotch shook his head. The rest of the team stood up then, looking from Hotch to Morgan, and then back again.
“We already have the profile. We’ll get the unsub and we’ll find Rose” Gideon said calmly.
Morgan glanced over at him then back at Hotch.
“She once told me that she trusts you with her life as much as she trusts me. Will you keep her trust in you and keep her safe? Will you help me to find her and take her back home?” he asked, his voice low and bleak.
Hotch stared at him quietly for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes, I will. I love her too, you know” he replied.
Morgan nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I know that. Let’s do this then” he said, a new determination showing in his tone of voice.
Emily patted his arm and smiled encouragingly up at him.
“We’ll get her back, Derek. I think it’s really lovely that you adopted a baby” she said kindly.
Morgan gave her a slight smile before turning and following them out of the round table room.
Rosalie woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom. It didn’t belong to her; gone was the sunshine yellow wallpaper, the animal books, her four poster bed with the lacy pink canopy. Gone were her soft toys and all her Disney DVDs and CDs. Instead, in the place of all those comfy, familiar things, was a hard wooden floor and a dingy set of bunk beds. She was lying on the bottom one. The walls weren’t painted and there was old, dead plaster bits falling from the ceiling above her. She sat up and looked around herself. Rosalie’s brown eyes took in everything all at once, and she knew immediately that she’d been kidnapped and taken somewhere else that her dad didn’t know about. She wasn’t scared; he would find her with his team. He and Aaron would find her and bring her home again. She missed her best friend Alyssa, though. She would still be in school, or maybe at home by now. Rosalie contemplated how horrible it was when she first met Alyssa and she never talked. Her daddy had found out that Alyssa’s real parents beat her daily and he had organised for her to be taken away from them and adopted by somebody else in a similar line of work as him. Then she smiled, swinging her feet back and forth against the lower base of the bunk bed. Now Alyssa was living with Mark Sanders, who worked in the white collar crime division at Quantico. Her dad knew him from way back and he adopted Alyssa when she was six. Rosalie pulled her feet up under her when she heard the door open. Quietly she waited and fiddled with the hair grip circling her left wrist. She toyed with the idea of tying her long black hair up in a ponytail, but decided quickly against it. Whoever had kidnapped her from school wouldn’t want her to be doing something so trivial as playing with her hair. He would expect her to be scared, so she bit down on her lower lip and made her eyes well up with fake crocodile tears.
The man now inside the room with her knelt down before her and stared into her small child’s face. What he saw pleased him to no end. The small girl was already upset and crying, and her top teeth were practically embedded in her bottom lip. He nodded with satisfaction and reached behind him with one hand. Unseen by him, Rosalie tensed up, anticipating a gun or other weapon of some sort, but what the man presented to her was a large, life sized doll baby. He held it out towards her, and so she took it from him with falsely trembling hands.
For good measure, when she had the doll firmly clasped against her chest with her left hand, Rosalie stuck her thumb on her right hand into her mouth and started sucking on it. She had never once in her short life sucked her thumb, but she would do it now if it only threw the man off a little bit more and made him think she was childish and weak willed, which she was neither of those two things. She watched his short, quick movements with wide eyes, following him with her steady gaze. He had dark hair, greying at the temples, cut close to his scalp. His eyes were a dark blue that she hadn’t seen before in life, and he wasn’t very tall. Rosalie realised with much satisfaction that either her father or Aaron Hotchner could easily take this man down without much of an effort. Behind her thumb decoy, she was smiling, pulling the disgusting toy closer to her as if she actually need it for comfort. Was this guy really so dumb? She snorted and then pretended to cry again, squeezing more crocodile tears from the corners of her luminous dark eyes.
Four days later, they were no closer to finding the unsub. Since the girls were all getting taken from schools in Quantico, Virginia, the BAU team could work from home, as such. Morgan, Spencer, Gideon and Hotch were all sitting around the table in the conference room when JJ hurried in, Garcia and Emily hot on her heels. The others all glanced up when the three women entered. Their expressions all said the same thing: please give us something new we can work with to catch this guy! JJ looked apologetically at them, reading their faces like well read books.
“Sorry, folks, there’s a brand new kidnapping that’s been reported. It just happened an hour ago. The school called us when they’d ascertained that the little girl was missing, and they said they would call the father of the child and then get back to us, just in case he’s taken her off the school premises, just without informing them” she said quickly, taking a seat next to Spencer.
“So all we do is wait for a bit?” he asked, resting his head down on the table surface.
JJ ruffled his shaggy hair and nodded.
“Yep, guess so, Spence” she murmured, leaning back on her seat.
It was at that precise moment when Morgan’s cell phone trilled, vibrating as well in case he hadn’t heard it. Hotch warily eyed him as he unclipped it and flipped it open to listen.
“This is Derek Morgan” he said, greeting formally as he usually did when the caller was unknown to him.
They all saw his forehead crease in puzzlement and then concern. A small distorted voice could be heard buzzing out of the phone.
“Did you take her out of the school, Derek?”
JJ sat up straight and glanced at Hotch with raised eyebrows. He nodded at her and then looked back at Morgan, worry beginning to settle in for the stay.
“No, I didn’t. Why would I do that? I’m working and she knows where to go if I can’t come and get her in the afternoons” he was saying, his brown eyes now filled with concern.
“Then she’s been taken away by someone else. I need to call someone else now, Derek.”
The businesslike voice cut off and Morgan sat uneasily in his chair, his cell phone clutched in his left hand. He waited and waited, and then the phone clipped to JJ’s pocket beeped and rang. She answered it and listened carefully to the same voice on the other end. It was the same voice that had spoken to her earlier and the same one that had just spoken to Morgan. After a minute or so, JJ nodded a few times and then hung up, reattaching her phone. She looked up and over the table at Morgan, who was awaiting her next words with baited breath.
“A little girl named Rosalie Morgan has been kidnapped from her grade school. She is eleven years old and she was adopted when she was four by one Derek Morgan” she said evenly, her eyes set on his face.
He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, leaning forward in his seat. They could hear him repeating the name ‘Rose’ again and again. Hotch spoke first, trying to rectify the situation a bit.
“Yes, guys, Morgan has a daughter. But that’s not the important thing, the important thing is that she has just been reported missing from her school and we have to find her, fast” he said firmly, standing up and looking down at Morgan.
He touched his shoulder lightly and Morgan lifted his head to look back at him. He ignored everyone else who still stared at him in shock.
“I told her I loved her this morning and then I left her at the school gates. Now she’s disappeared. I am going to kill him. I’ll rip him limb from limb!” he thundered, getting up so forcefully the chair fell over behind him.
“We’ll find her, Morgan. We’ll get Rosalie back” Hotch said quietly, attempting to placate him.
Morgan gazed unseeingly at his boss, looking right through him it seemed.
“How, Hotch? We haven’t found this guy yet, and he’s just taken my daughter. How are we going to rescue her?” he demanded.
Hotch shook his head. The rest of the team stood up then, looking from Hotch to Morgan, and then back again.
“We already have the profile. We’ll get the unsub and we’ll find Rose” Gideon said calmly.
Morgan glanced over at him then back at Hotch.
“She once told me that she trusts you with her life as much as she trusts me. Will you keep her trust in you and keep her safe? Will you help me to find her and take her back home?” he asked, his voice low and bleak.
Hotch stared at him quietly for a moment, then nodded.
“Yes, I will. I love her too, you know” he replied.
Morgan nodded slowly.
“Yeah, I know that. Let’s do this then” he said, a new determination showing in his tone of voice.
Emily patted his arm and smiled encouragingly up at him.
“We’ll get her back, Derek. I think it’s really lovely that you adopted a baby” she said kindly.
Morgan gave her a slight smile before turning and following them out of the round table room.
Rosalie woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom. It didn’t belong to her; gone was the sunshine yellow wallpaper, the animal books, her four poster bed with the lacy pink canopy. Gone were her soft toys and all her Disney DVDs and CDs. Instead, in the place of all those comfy, familiar things, was a hard wooden floor and a dingy set of bunk beds. She was lying on the bottom one. The walls weren’t painted and there was old, dead plaster bits falling from the ceiling above her. She sat up and looked around herself. Rosalie’s brown eyes took in everything all at once, and she knew immediately that she’d been kidnapped and taken somewhere else that her dad didn’t know about. She wasn’t scared; he would find her with his team. He and Aaron would find her and bring her home again. She missed her best friend Alyssa, though. She would still be in school, or maybe at home by now. Rosalie contemplated how horrible it was when she first met Alyssa and she never talked. Her daddy had found out that Alyssa’s real parents beat her daily and he had organised for her to be taken away from them and adopted by somebody else in a similar line of work as him. Then she smiled, swinging her feet back and forth against the lower base of the bunk bed. Now Alyssa was living with Mark Sanders, who worked in the white collar crime division at Quantico. Her dad knew him from way back and he adopted Alyssa when she was six. Rosalie pulled her feet up under her when she heard the door open. Quietly she waited and fiddled with the hair grip circling her left wrist. She toyed with the idea of tying her long black hair up in a ponytail, but decided quickly against it. Whoever had kidnapped her from school wouldn’t want her to be doing something so trivial as playing with her hair. He would expect her to be scared, so she bit down on her lower lip and made her eyes well up with fake crocodile tears.
The man now inside the room with her knelt down before her and stared into her small child’s face. What he saw pleased him to no end. The small girl was already upset and crying, and her top teeth were practically embedded in her bottom lip. He nodded with satisfaction and reached behind him with one hand. Unseen by him, Rosalie tensed up, anticipating a gun or other weapon of some sort, but what the man presented to her was a large, life sized doll baby. He held it out towards her, and so she took it from him with falsely trembling hands.
For good measure, when she had the doll firmly clasped against her chest with her left hand, Rosalie stuck her thumb on her right hand into her mouth and started sucking on it. She had never once in her short life sucked her thumb, but she would do it now if it only threw the man off a little bit more and made him think she was childish and weak willed, which she was neither of those two things. She watched his short, quick movements with wide eyes, following him with her steady gaze. He had dark hair, greying at the temples, cut close to his scalp. His eyes were a dark blue that she hadn’t seen before in life, and he wasn’t very tall. Rosalie realised with much satisfaction that either her father or Aaron Hotchner could easily take this man down without much of an effort. Behind her thumb decoy, she was smiling, pulling the disgusting toy closer to her as if she actually need it for comfort. Was this guy really so dumb? She snorted and then pretended to cry again, squeezing more crocodile tears from the corners of her luminous dark eyes.