Under Control

Finally, it was over.

The man picked up a towel from nearby and wiped the blood from his hands. She whimpered, and the sound took up the last of the energy she had in her. Even when he gave her the harsh orders to put her clothes back on, she couldn't make herself move.

"Fine. Lay there naked, just like the whore you are," her captor sneered. He spat on her limp form before leaving the room; it must have been night because the rare ray of sunshine she could sometimes see didn't peek in when he opened the door.

Isabeau tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. When was the last time he had given her a drink of water? She couldn't even remember. After she heard the front door of the apartment shut, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She forced her muscles to find another bit of energy – anything they could muster – and pushed herself up on her hands and knees. She crawled over to where her clothes were laying and, slowly but surely, dressed herself.

She reached her arm across her mouth, feeling the blood smear as she pulled the limb over her face. The liquid had to be running from several different locations; the man had beat her nearly unconscious before starting this most recent attack. Her ears rang out from the several blows to her head, but Isabeau made herself focus. She hadn't ever had much determination for anything in her life, but her determination to stay alive was contradicting her reaction to every other opportunity she'd ever let pass her by.

Pain shot through every nerve she had as she once again moved to her hands and knees. Wincing against the protesting of her bones and muscles, she started crawling to the bedroom door. Usually her captor figured her too incoherent too escape, but she had built up an endurance to his attacks. She forced herself to remain aware as she reached for the doorknob; it turned and gave. She was making progress.

Her destination wasn't that far away. It was by the grace of God – and she swore she'd go back to church just as soon as she made it out alive – that they had run into that man as the monster who had hid her away over the last few weeks dragged her into the apartment building. That fucking Fed, he had muttered under his breath before ordering her to act normal if she wanted to live. With a gun at her spine, she made the difficult choice not to cry out for help.

If there was anything she had made herself concentrate on over the weeks she had been raped and beaten, it was that apartment number. 2C. Maybe she didn't remember what day it was or exactly how long she had been here, but she remembered that apartment number. Maybe it was just a door to anyone, but to Isabeau, it was the door to her savior – even if he had yet to know he was savior to anyone.



Spencer Reid had just come off the plane back to Quantico, and despite the restless sleep he'd managed on the flight, he was ready to fall into his own bed and sleep for at least a few hours before he had to be back in the office.

He started the shower, hoping the warm water would help relax his muscles from the uncomfortable position he had slept in on the airplane. He went in search of a clean towel – laundry needed to be moved to the top of his to-do list – but before he could find one, a sound in the hallway caught his attention. He waited a few seconds, but it still sounded too faint.

Frowning, Spencer turned off the water so he could hear better. Sure enough, there was the sound again. A thud against his door. Not a knock hand or a pounding fist; certainly no noe had ever announced their presence at his door this way.

Walking slowly and with a phone in hand, just in case, he looked out the peephole but saw nothing. Just as he backed away from the door, another thud rang through the door.

"Please," a weak voice pleaded. "Please be home. He's going to kill me."

Spencer's eyes grew and as quickly as possible, he unlocked the door. When he opened it, a young woman fell backwards onto the floor; he figured she had been hitting her head against the door to get his attention. After overcoming a moment of shock, he kneeled down next to her and dialed the emergency line.

"I don't know her name or what happened," Spencer told the dispatcher in a more than frustrated tone when asked for a second time the woman's information. "Just send an ambulance, immediately."

He set the phone down on the floor. Holding her face in his hands, he turned her eyes to his. All he could think to do was to keep her talking.

"Can you tell me your name?"

She swallowed hard. "Isabeau … Marcure."

"All right, Isabeau. You're going to be just fine, help is one the way."

"He raped me," she blurted out. It was suddenly difficult to breathe and if she was going to die, somebody had to know what had happened. "And he beat me. I've been in his apartment for at least three weeks."

"You really should try not to talk so much," he cautioned her. "The police will ask you all of this."

She gasped for breath. "I can't … my chest is …"

The realization hit him like a Mack truck. If she had been beaten, Isabeau more than likely had broken ribs, and broken ribs could result in a collapsed lung. He could hear the sirens coming; they would be there any minute. He just had to keep her breathing until they arrived.

"Okay, look at me. I know it's hard to breathe – your lung is probably collapsed. I can hear the sirens and they're going to be here any time and they'll fix that for you. Just please, stay with me until then."

Isabeau nodded, keeping her eyes locked on his. When it became harder for her to breathe, she reached up and grabbed his hand. Spencer saw the fear in her eyes and did the best he could to give her some semblance of reassurance.

Squeezing her hand, he promised she was going to be fine. "You just have to stay with me. They're going to be here – I can hear them coming up the stairs."

Couldn't they run up those stairs a little faster? This woman was dying right in front of him, and for once, Spencer Reid had no idea what to do.



She had never welcomed pain so readily. The smell of antiseptic stung her nose and every nerve in her body fired off with agonizing sensations, but Isabeau didn't care. If she could feel the pain, it meant she was alive. She hadn't died there in that apartment after all.

No, because she had made it out of that apartment. She had made it to the federal agent's apartment. As her eyes fluttered open, she vaguely remembered trying to tell him who she was and what had happened to her before her chest tightened and the whole world faded to black.

"Miss Marcure?"

Isabeau looked over to see a nurse looking down at her with kind eyes. "I'm alive."

The nurse gave her a comforting smile. "You are, indeed. How do you feel?"

Her throat was dry and her voice came out scratchy, but Isabeau was thankful enough that she could even speak. "I hurt. All over."

"That's to be expected for the injuries you sustained," the nurse told her. "Several bones in your left arm and hand were shattered. Your right tibia was also fractured – both of those limbs are in casts, so they're going to feel heavy. Your ribs are fractured and they're going to be sore for a while. We had to put in a chest tube in order to allow the air in your chest to escape. You fought the staff a lot on that, so you've been in a medically induced coma the last couple of days. Your lung is already healing though, and you seem to be breathing all right on your own."

Her eyes full opened now, Isabeau glanced down; sure enough, plaster encased her left arm and right leg. That wasn't going to be so fun getting around. She didn't even try to move around, just knowing the pain that follow.

The nurse lowered her voice. "We also performed a rape kit while you were in the coma. I apologize, but it was necessary in order to get the agents the information they needed."

"Agents?" Isabeau asked with a frown.

"Apparently you aren't the first girl who has been kidnapped in this same fashion, but you're the first to make it out alive. If you're feeling up to it, there's an agent here who would like to talk to you about what happened."

Isabeau took as deep of a breath as her sore body would allow and nodded. "I suppose that would be all right."

The nurse jotted down some of Isabeau's vitals and promised to be back in with some pain medication for the IV and the federal agent for Isabeau to speak with. It was only a couple of minutes before the nurse returned. Isabeau expected the morphine; she didn't expect the agent to have a familiar face.

"I'm Dr. Spencer Reid," he greeted her. "How are you feeling?"

"All right, I guess," she answered quietly. "You're the guy …"

Spencer nodded, cutting her off. "That was me."

"You saved my life," Isabeau told him, looking down to her uninjured hand in her lap. Somehow, she felt embarrassed saying that. Although, she had to admit, she felt a little less tense once this Dr. Reid had stepped in the room.

He gave her a small smile. "You saved your own life, Miss Marcure. You just happened to knock on the door of a responsible citizen."

"First of all, call me Isabeau," she requested. "Second of all, that wasn't coincidence. When he dragged me into that apartment building, you were in the hallway. He cursed and told me you were with the FBI and to keep my mouth shut. He had a gun at my spine; I had to make a choice."

"No one can fault you for that," Spencer told her. "Whatever brought you to my door, I'm just glad I could help."

He couldn't tell her about how panicked he had been, thinking she would die right there on his apartment floor. Then, when the team took on the case of the girls before her who hadn't lived through their ordeals, Spencer had quickly volunteered to be the one to question her when she woke up.

"The nurse said you had some questions for me?" Isabeau prompted.

"Right," Spencer nodded. "You said you were abducted about three weeks ago. Do you remember the date when he picked you up?"

Isabeau frowned. "Around the thirteenth of June, I think? I don't even know what date it is now."

"July twelfth," Spencer supplied. "So it was closer to four weeks ago."

"Must have lost a week in there," she mumbled. More and more she was feeling the defeat of this thing.

"Tell me about when he abducted you."

She sighed. "I never thought it would be me. I was the type who never had much self-motivation – I let other people motivate me. My parents are really conservative, and we're Catholic, so they always had me in private schools, and I even started at a private Catholic college. I did everything I was supposed to, until I didn't." Another deep, painful breath. "I met a Marine when he was visiting friends in my hometown. My parents flipped shit, and in that instant, I rebelled. I left with him and came here to Quantico."

Spencer hadn't asked for her life story, but any little bit could give them clues to solving this thing. So, he just listened to whatever she had to say.

"That lasted for all of about four months. I couldn't go back home – my parents had basically disowned me. So, I tried to get back on track. I moved to Fairfax, started at a college there. I got my accelerated master's in psychology and I've just been working with the school system since then."

"Do you ever come back to the area?"

Isabeau nodded. "Every few weekends I'll try to come down and visit with friends I made while I was here. More during the summer since I'm not working. There was this going away thing for one of the guys – he's deploying soon – so we went out to this bar. I got a hotel room this weekend because the friends I normally stay with already had some other people in town. I hailed a cab in front of the bar, and when I got in, this guy was already in there."

Spencer nodded, and pointed to the chair next to her bed. "Do you mind if I sit?"

"Go ahead," Isabeau shrugged.

He sat and ran through all the details she had given him so far. "Did you recognize him?"

Isabeau shook her head. "No. And he didn't look military – shaggy hair, scruffy face."

"Could you recognize him if you saw him again?"

She closed her eyes and tried to picture her captor. It was fuzzy, but it was enough for her to know she would know him again if she saw him. "Yes. I think I would."

"All right. Here's the deal. We haven't released to anyone that you've been found. For all this guy knows, you're lying dead somewhere."

Isabeau scoffed. She could be lying dead, if she hadn't made it to Spencer's apartment, or if this guy had found her before she made it there. What if he hadn't been home? She just couldn't believe that everything had worked out in her favor.

"So what now?" she asked.

"We're going to move you to a safe house, here in the area. I'll take you to get some clothes and things, and then we'll put you into hiding until we can find this guy."

Isabeau nodded. "All right. Thanks."

Spencer stood and looked down at her with a reassuring smile that reached into his eyes. "You're going to be just fine. We'll get you through this, I promise."

The morphine was kicking in, making her drowsy. Spencer told her he needed to check back in with his team, but he would find out when she was being dismissed and come back for her then. Isabeau wanted to thank him again, but didn't want to keep pelting him with words of gratitude. As a psychology major, she knew all about PTSD and transference and all of the chemicals in her brain that were growing her attachment to Dr. Spencer Reid. She knew everything she needed to do to focus on her recovery and get on with life on her own, but it was as if everything else in her body was fighting all these things that her mind knew.