blue. criminal minds

four...heavy liftings

BLUE.

chapter four —— heavy liftings

ATLAS STANTON IS NOTHING LIKE JUDE LEVY. Sure to the BAU they're the perfect married couple, committing crimes left, right and centre. They're the real Bonnie and Clyde, that much the bau team can see, and from what they know Jude has all the knowledge and Atlas' got all the strength. Oh, how wrong they are.

When Atlas and Jude were paired together by Barr, it had been determined that it would be Jude who would do all of the heavy liftings — she was the one supposed to get close to Odessa Croft, and Atlas, well he would be the person integrated into the 'crew' as it was called. Not a gang, it couldn't technically be classified as a gang, perhaps a more technical term would be cult? but even then there were differences between what a cult was and what Croft had created.

The crew was a select group of people, hand-picked like strawberries, by Odessa Croft herself, they would be chosen from the madness, they were the ones who survived. Originally there had been twenty-two members, they were Croft's closest allies, her family she would tell you. Although, by the end of the first year that the young woman had known Jude she had cut ties, and when I say cut ties...

Odessa Croft had a signature, every good killer had one, but every crime boss had four. One for traitors and liars alike, a second for business partners who have screwed you over. Then there was a third, this was for people you didn't like, specifically speaking, for those arrogant sons of bitches that found themselves speaking up at the most horrible and inconvenient times, ruining important situations. Finally, there was the signature kill for putting down friends, family. And since Croft didn't have any left of the latter, the members of the crew were the ones to be on the receiving end of this.