Boxed Set

By Eligent

A/N: Set pre-Revelations. No major spoilers. I'm not English speaking. Usual disclaimers apply.

Summary: Kidnapping cases may be part of the BAU's everyday life, but they have never experienced something like this. How do you keep playing the game when you're the odd man out and the rules keep changing at every turn? Reid and the others are about to find out.

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"Conference room, now."

Reid looked up from his paperwork, surprised by his supervisor's harsh tone, only to see Hotchner brush by his desk, his dark coat still wet from the rain that had been steadily drizzling over Quantico the last couple of days.

"A new case?" he called after the fleeing figure. "Shouldn't we wait for Morgan?" He eyed the empty desk across from his.

"I said now, Reid." Hotchner was already moving up the stairs, two steps at the time, the very image of stress.

Reid and Prentiss looked at each other over the partition that separated their desks and Prentiss shrugged at Reid's silent question. With no more information forthcoming they gathered some writing materials and followed Hotchner up the stairs. They met up with Gideon and JJ, coming from JJ's office. Gideon was also still wearing a wet windbreaker and JJ's arms were suspiciously empty of new files.

"What's going on?" Prentiss asked her, but JJ just shrugged. She was just as out of the loop as the others. Gideon urged them on towards the round table room, his urgency making Reid nervous. What was going on?

The team filed into the round table room and took their seats. Hotchner remained standing. He shrugged off his coat and folded it over a chair before crossing his arms over his chest. "Morgan's missing," he said without preamble as soon as everyone had settled down.

"What?" Reid exclaimed, sitting up straight.

"What do you mean by missing?" Prentiss demanded with a frown.

"Since when?" JJ wanted to know.

"Hotch and I have just come from his place." Gideon sat forward to start his explanation, his hands clasped in front of him on the table. "This morning one of his neighbors was out walking his dog when he noticed that Morgan's patio door was open and that there was glass on the ground. He went up on the patio, looked in and saw signs of struggle. He immediately called the police. Once they found out who Morgan is, they contacted us."

"Why didn't you call us when you found out?" Reid asked, his worry showing itself in his slightly hurt expression.

"I was already on my way to work," Hotchner explained, "So I just had to turn the car around. It was the same for Gideon. And Morgan's place was packed with police and forensics, so we thought it would be better to come back here for a preliminary briefing."

"You said signs of struggle," Prentiss said, making eye contact with Gideon. "What did you mean by that?"

"There was a hole in the back door," Gideon answered. "It looked as if someone had tried to cut a hole in the glass to stick their hand through to reach the lock, but they dropped the piece of glass on the patio, which was what caught the neighbor's attention. And there were things knocked down all over the kitchen and in the living room; broken plates, books knocked down from shelves, things like that. There must've been two or more unsubs in there and from the looks of it, Morgan put up one hell of a fight."

"The police found blood and hair on one of Morgan's football trophies," Hotchner said. "Their theory is that the unsubs used it to knock him out. But there wasn't much blood in the house and no body, so we're pretty sure they took him alive."

Though the questions 'who' and 'why' were on everyone's mind, no one uttered them.

"Was anything missing?" Prentiss asked.

Hotchner shook his head. "His cell phone, keys and gun were still there. But I haven't spent enough time in Morgan's home to notice if anything special is missing. Reid, I want you to go there later today and look around. And bring Garcia too. I think you two are the ones who have been there the most."

Reid nodded mutely. In his mind's eye he was already there, making a mental list of things to be on the look-out for.

"Where is Garcia?" JJ asked. "I haven't seen her today. Has anyone told her yet?"

Hotchner shook his head again. "We just got here. Go and see if she's here, will you? We're gonna need all the help we can get."

JJ left the room, heading for Garcia's office.

"Did you find a message or a ransom note at the site?" Reid asked.

"No," Gideon said. "And as far as we know we haven't been sent a ransom demand either. Have any of you gotten anything in the mail? Have you checked your mail and e-mail today? Any strange phone calls?"

Everyone shook their heads, no one had received anything.

"I'm going to call his family soon," Hotchner said grimly. "I'll ask them too, but I doubt they will have heard anything. We need to put up surveillance on all of our phones and e-mails. Now where's Garcia?"

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"Hello!" Morgan shouted once again, his voice growing hoarse. "Hello! Is anyone there? Hey, can you hear me? Hello?" He pounded on the door with a clenched fist. "Hey, let me out!" Not that he had much hope of being let out. You didn't kidnap someone and chain them up in what Morgan assumed was a basement only to let them out a few hours later with a slap to the back and a 'there's a good sport'.

With a last, frustrated bang on the door that left his fist aching, Morgan walked away from it, once again surveying his prison, even though he already knew that the only way out of the room was the door. The very locked and bolted steel door.

The room was medium sized, maybe fifteen by fifteen feet. Two cots were standing head to head in one corner, a pile of coarseblankets at the foot of one of them. In the opposite corner, directly across from the door, stood a screen and behind it were a toilet and a sink, both made out of stainless-steel as if they belonged in a public restroom or a prison. Morgan didn't like the sight of them. While it did suggest a certain care for the hostage, it also suggested that this was supposed to be a long term arrangement. There were no windows and the white walls were bare. A fluorescent tube hummed in the ceiling. The room was reasonably clean, no dust or grime on the floor. There was a new sensation to the place too. There was a faint, moist smell in the air that Morgan associated with wet paint and the stainless-steel appliances were just that; stainless. They looked unused while the cots and blankets looked like they had been picked up at an army surplus store somewhere.

There was a steel shackle locked around his left ankle, with a long chain that rattled as he paced across the floor. The chain was padlocked to a u-bolt which in turn was securely bolted to the wall at the spot furthest away from the door. The chain was long enough for Morgan to move around the room, but was stretched taut when he stood by the door. He wouldn't be able to take one step outside this room. He had already checked every individual link in the chain, looking for weaknesses, but it was as strong as it could be.

He was wearing jeans, an old navy-blue t-shirt with a faded Chicago Bears logo on it and tube socks. No shoes. That fact irked him to no end. The floor was concrete, painted gray. It had no insulation whatsoever and his toes kept curling up to ward themselves from the chill. The shackle was fitted on top of his jeans so at least it wouldn't chafe. It wasn't all that snug either, it was loose enough not to be constricting… except of course for the fact that he couldn't take it off. But it still lay heavily on his ankle bone, thumping against his foot when he moved around.

Morgan walked over to the sink, taking a mouthful of ice cold water into his mouth and then splashing more over his black eye and then at the lump at the back of his head. There were more bruises hidden on different parts of his body, but no serious injuries. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing that he hadn't made it easy for his kidnappers to take him, they'd been forced to knock him out first.

The attack had come from nowhere. He'd been home alone, slouching on his couch with a bowl of popcorn in his lap, watching a movie, when the sound of shattering glass had startled him and sent his pulse racing out of sheer surprise. Letting the popcorn bowl clatter to the floor, he'd raced towards the kitchen. His first thought had been that it was a baseball gone astray or a football or something like that, but it was too dark for anyone to be out playing. In the archway to the kitchen he'd almost collided with the first of the kidnappers, who was racing the other way to get to him. Morgan's gun was kept in a lockbox in his bedroom and he knew there was no time to get it, because behind the first man he'd seen two others come to help, all three of them wearing ski masks.

The fight was still a bit of a blur in his mind, outdrawn as it had been. He vaguely remembered one of his pictures falling off the wall as he slammed one of the kidnappers into it, and hearing other things smashing as they moved around in the apartment. He knew he'd gotten a couple of good punches in himself before something hard had smashed into his skull and the next thing he knew he woke up on a cot in this room with a blinding headache and his foot shackled to the wall. Since there were no windows here he didn't know what time it was or how long he'd been here. He hadn't been wearing his watch, he'd taken it off together with the gun and his shoes as he'd prepared for a lazy night in.

Suddenly the sound of a key inserted into a lock echoed throughout the room and Morgan hastily walked out from behind the screen, prepared to come face to face with his captors.

The door opened and a man stood on the other side of the threshold, carefully out of reach for anyone in the room. It was a man Morgan had not expected to see.

"Hello Morgan," he said calmly.

Morgan's eyes narrowed dangerously and he walked quickly towards the door until the chain ruthlessly yanked him to a stop just out of reach from the man. "You?" he hissed furiously, his fists clenched by his sides. "You bastard. Where is she? Where's Garcia? What've you done with her?"

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TBC…