White Rabbit - A Criminal Minds Fic

Twenty Three

When Aaron, Spencer and Dave rejoined the rest of the group they were met with the news that Derek and JJ had indeed located the compound.

They'd scanned aerial photos of the area of the park surrounding the county where Alice had called her sister from and worked from there, coming across a cluster of trees that looked different to the rest, set further part from each other and spotting a small line that when they zoomed in as much as they could, looked to be a wall. When Garcia had pulled up different images of the area, they'd seen what was clearly a brick building, although you wouldn't have known it if you weren't looking for it as there appeared to be some sort of garden set atop it.

When Alice had been shown the images, she'd exclaimed that it had to be there, they used to have vegetable and flower gardens on top of the buildings, the greenery and shrubs helping the huts to blend in.

As much of a break through as this was, Aaron was concerned. The building were extremely well hidden and although the trees were set slightly further apart that the rest of the forest, they were still close enough to cause a problem and to block the team from getting any area intel if they were to send Spencer and Alice back in. He'd have to think on this extremely hard and work out the best plan of action to get close enough to the compound to still have some sort of visibility of whoever they sent in and to intervene at a moments notice, but to be far enough away so as not to arouse any suspicious.

This wasn't going to be easy and he needed his best thinkers on hand to help him. He signalled for Agent Anderson to join the team, asking him quietly to take Alice for lunch so that the team could talk. Her ears pricked up immediately, sensing they wanted her out of the way to discuss a plan.

"No. I'm not going anywhere. I want to... I NEED to be apart of this." she crossed her arms in front of her body stubbornly, planting her feet firmly on the ground.

"You will be a part of this, Alice. But we need to figure out the exact details, figure out how we can get inside to scan the property and to infiltrate. However we do this, we need to be careful due to the sheer amount of people that reside there."

"And who best to help you with that? Surely the person that lived there and experienced it for nearly five years" she told Aaron, sounding exasperated. "I can draw you a layout of the compound as it was when I left it, I can tell you where they kept the weapons, where they kept the cars. I can write you a list of all the people who were living there when I was, give you the names and ages of the all the children that were there. You need me here for this, for your planning."

"Hotch, she's right. We need to involve her, especially if you're thinking of doing what you talked about earlier. You can't think about sending her in without involving her in this." Rossi addressed his fellow Agent, Aaron nodding at him, accepting that he was right and hearing a loud gasp from Alice as she took in Rossi's words.

"You want to.... you want to send... send me back?"

"Only if we can do so safely. We think that because Lewis was that obsessed with you that you'll be welcomed back and we can use it to our advantage. You won't be sent in alone though, we have an idea of how this is going to go down, but we just need to flesh it out and work on the details. Obviously, Alice if you think you can't do this and we can't do it safely then it won't be done."

Hotch watched the girls face, assessing her body language as she fought with herself internally. After around a thirty seconds silence from everyone in the team as they waited, Alice finally nodded.

"I can do this."

..

The next two days were organised mania, the team working hard and fast to work out exactly how to go around this. Aaron used his contacts within the police department that the compound would have technically fallen into, bringing them on board with the fast forming plan.

Alice and Spencer worked with JJ, drawing a huge layout of the compound as Alice remembered it, using aerial images of the surrounding area to map out the terrain as best as they could.

Garcia used the photographs that Alice had bought back with her, scanning them into her computer and using facial recognition to match the majority of faces to people that had been reported missing by the their families over a number of years, Alice shocked to find out that some of the people she'd lived with for years had abandoned high end careers to choose to live in Wonderland.

Setting up a chart, they listed the names into columns, Alice providing a small amount of detail about what she recall about their personalities and whether or not they'd be a risk or an asset to the operation if needed.

A team of undercover Agents had been despatched into the National Parks, posing as hikers in small groups and trying to get as close to the compound's wall as they could. The BAU were waiting for feedback on any information that they'd gathered.

The plan was coming together nicely.

At the end of the first day it was decided that the team would send a message via the website, claiming to be from Alice and asking if she could come back. If they didn't let her, they'd need a new plan after all. After getting Alice's approval on the words sent, Penelope quickly worked her magic so that the email was in no way traceable to there current location and then hit send.

Now they just had to wait.