" In order to learn the most important lessons of life, one must each day surmount a fear. "
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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19.2 ; LESSONS LEARNED.
"COULD THEY GET ENOUGH anthrax?" Prentiss asked, her voice remarkably calm despite the circumstances.
"The letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle's office in 2002 only contained two grams of purified spores," Spencer said, his eyes never leaving Jind Allah on the tv screen. "That alone is enough to kill twenty-five million people if effectively distributed."
Prentiss didn't respond, the control room going quiet except for the static of the speakers connected to the interrogation room. Since they had discovered the cell's weapon of choice, Gideon had immediately launched into his interrogation with Jind Allah, who was now dressed in the orange jumpsuit her boss had provided him with.
Caroline didn't want to think about how much anthrax was in Virginia right now. Just the thought of her family, along with Hotch and Morgan, being in the same state as a weaponized disease made her nauseous, what little she had for breakfast this morning threatening to make an appearance.
She had to focus on what she could control, what she could do to help. She couldn't help back home, but she could help here by doing what she does best—observing behavior.
"Are you willing to have a chat with me?" Gideon's voice, soft and calm, floated to the speakers. He sat in a metal chair directly opposite of Jind Allah, who was staring at him with a composed expression.
"Go ahead, Gideon." Jind Allah's voice was raspy and course, pronouncing her superior's name like Jah-deon. "Let's chat."
"He's from Egypt," Emily said automatically. "Cairo."
Caroline glanced up at her, her eyebrows raised slightly. "You sure?"
She shook her head. "No, he could be Yemeni, but odds are he's Egyptian."
Caroline picked up the walkie-talkie directly connected to Gideon's earpiece and gently pushed it into her hands. Prentiss gave her a quick, almost grateful, nod before saying into the walkie-talkie, "Sir, he was born and raised in Egypt. They pronounce 'G' sounds as a 'J'."
On the screen, their superior showed no sign of a reaction as he continued to converse with the unsub.
"What type of name is Gideon?" Jind Allah asked, his head tilting to the side a little as if he was bored with the conversation.
Gideon smiled, his eyes crinkling around the edges. "American."
"I often forget that in your culture you put your country first and you God last."
"You don't consider yourself Egyptian as well as Muslim?"
Jind Allah hummed under his breath. "Hmm. Egyptian. In two minutes, you know more about me than those thugs found out in two months."
Both Caroline and Spencer glanced back at Emily, who had a small smile on her face. She could tell the fact she figured out something about the unsub before the CIA pleased her a little. She didn't blame her.
"They and I have very, very different motives and methodologies," Gideon said smoothly.
"And yet your country relies on them to protect you from us." There was a hint of malice in the unsub's voice, the way his lips pulled back over his teeth slightly. Disgust.
"Sometimes they're their own worst enemy."
"I suppose. Who is your worst enemy, Agent Gideon?"
"It's not a who. It's a what," he replied. "Ignorance."
Jind Allah's face opened a little more, almost as he was surprised by his answer. "You're a very honest man."
"And you? Must have become a Hafez by what, age ten?"
"Nine."
"Any person with the discipline and dedication to memorize the entire Qu'ran by the age of nine must have a very serious reason to choose a life of violence."
The unsub gave a little shrug of his shoulders, his head tilting to the side as if he had grown bored of the conversation. "Perhaps."
Gideon slowly stood from his chair. Jind Allah blinked once—surprise, disbelief—before saying, "Are we through already?"
Her superior shook his head. "No, not at all. The sun is about to set." He pointed to the left wall of the interrogation room. "Mecca's in that direction. I'll have a prayer rug and water bowl sent in."
With that, Gideon stepped outside.
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"You...inquired about my childhood earlier," Jind Allah said to Gideon as he set his bottle of water on the floor at his feet. At some point after his prayer, their superior had allowed the chains on his wrist to be taken off. "I will tell you...that it was a happy one."
Caroline rubbed the side of her head, trying to soothe the tender ache throbbing there. They had lost a couple of hours for Jind Allah's prayer. During that time, Garcia and JJ had found a message from the cell picked up from satellite monitoring that alluded to a bomb at a location in Allendale. The last call she got from Hotch was an hour ago and he and Morgan had been on-route before the call had ended.
Hopefully, something will turn up there. If not, she wasn't sure how much they were going to get out of Jind Allah. She had spent hours cataloging every move he made—every blink, every shift in his chair—for behavior tells but it was all useless information if she didn't have something to apple it to. He hadn't given them anything of substance yet.
"Until," Jind Alla continued, "one day a bomb fell out of the sky and leveled the bazaar that I was in with my family. I was only eight."
"He's opening up about himself," Prentiss noted.
"Maybe," Caroline murmured, her phone already in hand. "We need to verify what he's saying, though."
She pressed Garcia's number on her speed dial (lucky number seven, of course), and almost immediately her voice buzzed through on the other line, "Speak."
"Garcia, I need you to check something for me," she said softly, still watching the interrogation. "I'm looking for a stray bombing in a bazaar somewhere in Egypt approximately thirty years ago."
"Okay, Care. That's not too obscure." She could hear the sarcasm practically seeping from her voice.
"I don't need the details. We're trying to set a baseline for Jind Allah's truthfulness. I just need to know if it happened at all."
"When I know, you'll know."
Once Caroline said her thanks, the line went dead. Another stab of pain popped up in her head like a fire poker, this time it felt to be centered in her forehead. She couldn't help but wince from the pain as she started to rub her forehead.
She felt something warm on her arm and she glanced over at Spencer beside her, a small frown on his face and nothing but concern in his eyes. His focus was on the spot on her head she kept rubbing.
"I'm fine," she told him. "It's just a stress headache. No big deal."
He looked unconvinced, his eyebrows pulled together. "Do you want some Advil?"
She shook her head, training her eyes on the screen in front of her. "It'll go away once we get something useful from Jind Allah."
She highly doubted the words coming from her mouth, but she would say anything to get him to stop looking at her. She couldn't afford to get lose focus right now and she was highly aware that he was her biggest distraction, especially when she could feel the weight of his gaze resting on her.
It mystified her—completely and truly—that despite the fact they were on a case with the potential for millions of victims, her racing heart was because of Spencer's hand still lingering on her arm instead of a potential anthrax attack.
She heard the sound of someone shuffling behind her and turned her head to see Agent Prentiss standing behind them, her eyes on Spencer's hand on Caroline's arm. She looked almost confused for a moment, her eyebrows pulled together and her mouth drawn, but her expression smoothened when she caught her gaze.
However, Caroline said nothing as she carefully pulled her arm away from Spencer, her face flush. Instead of looking at either of them, she refocused her attention back to the interview.
Jind Allah was still talking about the bombing. As he told Gideon that half of his family had died in the bazaar, she noticed how his hands were balled tightly on his legs, the skin taut over the knuckles. An effort to keep composure, redirect negative emotions to a singular part of the body.
The interview lasted for a few more minutes before her phone rang again. This time, Hotch's contact appeared.
Finally, she thought to herself as Spencer informed his mentor. She hated the radio silence, not knowing exactly where the other half of her team was. And, hopefully, they had found something, anything, that indicates where the attack will take place.
She watched as Gideon quickly excused himself from the room, disappearing behind the metal door. He reappeared moments later, this time in the small confines of the control room.
"You have Gideon, Prentiss, Reid, and me," Caroline said immediately once she got on speakerphone.
Hotch cut straight to the chase, not bothering with any greeting. "We're at cell location number two. No cell members, no lab, no dispersal devices. We're still looking for escape tunnels."
She recognized the tightness in her superior's voice because she felt it in her chest, the reason she had a hard time breathing normally. It was the tightness of knowing they were on an impending clock and if they didn't have anything when time runs out, people were going to die.
Gideon nodded, his face hard as stone. "Call us."
There was a sharp beep as the call disconnected. The four profilers stood in silence for a moment, digesting what to do next, before Spencer said, "We're running out of time. The attack's supposed to take place in less than twenty-four hours."
"So getting Jind Allah to talk is our only chance of finding them," Prentiss stated. Again, that weird calm washed over her which made her sound like she was talking about what she wanted for dinner and not about a potential terrorist attack. There was no trace of concern in her face or her voice—no worry or fear either.
"It's time I confronted him with the truth," Gideon said.
Caroline glanced over at him, biting the inside of her cheek. Agent Prentiss may not be concerned with recent events, but she was. "What are you going to do?"
"Show him my hand."
With no other explanation than that, Gideon went back into the interrogation room, his previously calm demeanor gone. The moment he entered the room and sat across from the unsub, his movements were fidgety, almost uncontrolled.
"I'm going to give you the respect of telling you what just happened." Even though the speaker on the wall, Gideon's voice was rushed, clipped. Jind Allah leaned forward, almost eagerly, to listen. "A team of agents raided an Omega cell location. Actually, both of them. Our men are in place in Annandale as we speak."
The moment Annandale was mentioned, the hands balled at Jind Allah's lap immediately relaxed, fingers stretching across his thighs. Open. Relieved.
"Care, did you see that?" Spencer asked her.
"What?" Confusion colored Prentiss's voice. "What happened?"
Caroline leaned forward and pressed her finger against the cool glass of the screen. The pad of her finger rested on one of Jind Allah's now open hands.
"He's relaxed," she whispered.
Automatically, Spencer picked up the walkie-talkie on the counter and said, "Gideon, something's wrong. He seemed relieved by what you just told him."
The relief, she thought as her heart fell to her stomach, of not getting caught.
Gideon didn't bother excusing himself this time as he darted out of the interrogation room. Beside her, Spencer had already dialed Hotch's number and held the phone in his outstretched hand to his mentor.
Gideon grabbed the phone and start yelling, his words echoing in her head like the beat of a death march. She felt frozen in her chair.
Get out. Get out, now. Get out get out get out.
Then, she heard the sound of the blast though the phone's small speakers, and her heart stopped.
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Caroline stared intently at Gideon across the room, who had been pacing while on the phone for the past fifteen minutes. He was calling Hotch and Morgan and, so far, there was no answer.
She felt Spencer's hand on the small of her back, slowly rubbing small, reassuring circles in an attempt to calm her down. It had worked, at first. But as each minute past with no word, she could feel the panic slowly creeping up on her, smothering and all-consuming. At this point, the action became something to soothe him, giving something to do with his hands as they wait.
She pressed her hands against her legs to stop them from shaking. Dammit, Hotch, Morgan, pick up the damn phone.
"They're going to be okay," Prentiss said. She wasn't sure if she was talking to her or Spencer or both. She couldn't take her eyes off Gideon as he re-dialed. Another missed call. "We warned them. They had time to get out."
Caroline could hear the words, but couldn't focus on them. Understood, but not realized. All she could do was watch Gideon as call after call went through with no answer and wonder what she was going to tell Haley and JJ and Garcia about what happened if someone didn't answer the fucking phone—
Then, Gideon stopped pacing, his eyes alert. Caroline's hand shot out automatically and latched onto Spencer's other hand, gripping onto it tightly like it was a lifeline. He squeezed back, grounding her. Beside her, she heard Agent Prentiss suck in a quick breath.
The older profiler spoke quietly into the phone after a moment of intense listening. Another pause and then he slipped the phone into his pocket before turning to face them.
His face was smooth, impassive, no indication of who was on the phone or what had been said. She wanted to scream from the pressure building in her chest, but she couldn't find her voice.
"We were right about the trap," he finally said. "It was rigged to explode. A SWAT agent was killed."
The explanation should've been enough for her, but she couldn't stop herself from asking, "What about Hotch and Morgan?"
"They both made it out in time. They're fine."
Caroline let out a breath she hadn't know she had been holding, the elephant on her chest evaporating. Relief swept over her like a tidal wave, so hard and so fast she felt tears in her eyes, and loathed herself for it. Someone had died in that explosion and her first reaction wasn't to feel horror or sadness. That SWAT agent had family, people who loved them and she was relieved.
But Hotch and Morgan were okay. They were alive. It was all she could focus on.
As she took a second to relearn how to breathe properly again, Spencer squeezed her hand for a second time, letting her know everything was okay. Even though the panic had subsided, she still clung to his hand, almost afraid to let it go. She wanted to feel safe just for another moment.
"Was there anthrax involved?" Prentiss asked once she had processed the news. Thankfully, she seemed to have recovered from the news a lot faster than Caroline or Spencer, whose hand was still shaking.
Gideon shook his head and said, "No."
"Then that's not the final target," Spencer blurted, his voice a little shaky.
The older profile said nothing else as he headed back through the doorway, his destination the interrogation room. It suddenly dawned on her that she had a job to do. There was no more time to be relieved.
Spencer seemed to come to the same conclusion she had because he slowly removed the hand from her back. His other hand, however, lingered in hers.
Prentiss seemed to be suddenly very interested in the screens because her attention was wholly focused on them, not once looking at their still joined hands. As she slowly pulled her hand away, she gave Spencer a small, timid smile.
She didn't even try to tell herself that the heat blossoming in her chest was just the product of adrenaline. She didn't explain away the butterflies fluttering in her stomach as a symptom of nerves or relief.
She didn't because she knew better.
By the time Gideon had sat back in his customary seat across from Jind Allah, Caroline had composed herself, shoving back everything else. She could—no, would—deal with everything later. But, right now, she had a job to do.
She watched as Jind Allah tilted his head at Gideon, a predatory smile stretching across his face. She hated that smile, just as much as she hated what he stood for.
"You look troubled, my friend," he almost purred at the older profiler.
"You killed one of my men," Gideon said in reply, his face solemn.
A face of mock-confusion appeared on the unsub's face. "I was here with you."
"The second location was a trap. One of my agents was killed in the explosion."
"This is war," he said simply as if it were fact. "We expect casualties. Shouldn't you?"
"He was a good man," Gideon whispered.
"Well...if he would convert, there would be no reason for him to fear death."
"What do you say to his family?"
Jind Allah's hands clasped together in front of his body, almost as if he were going to pray. A lone, solitary tear streaked down his cheek. "I say...where were you to mourn when my son was murdered?"
Caroline leaned back in her chair, her eyebrows knitting together. His son?
Spencer turned to her, pointing at Jind Allah's now-tight face on the screen. "Did you see that? When he told the story about his childhood, the bomb landing in the bazaar, his behavior changed."
"We know he was lying, though," Prentiss pointed out. "Garcia couldn't find any record of a bombing during the time Jind Allah was a boy."
"Exactly, but when this time he mentioned his son, he looked at his hands, like he had to concentrate to control his anger." He gestured towards the unsub's hands firmly clasped together in his lap. The knuckles were going white.
Caroline shook her head as she starting dialing Penelope's number. "Because the first story wasn't about him. It was about his son."
"Garcia," the tech analyst's chirped, her voice slightly muffled by speakerphone. She held her phone in her lightly out-stretched hand to the profilers beside her.
"We need you to look for a bombing again in Egypt," Spencer said quickly, "but this time anything in the last ten years. We're looking for civilian casualties, an eight-year-old boy."
"Okay, I'm cross-referencing bombings and child victims. And—huh. Seven years ago, in the heart of Cairo, the Egyptian government blamed Hezbollah, but conspiracy theories on the street claimed it was a joint U.S./Israli strike that went astray." There was a brief moment of silence as she searched before she said, "Your ghost detainee's name is Jamal Abaza."
Finally. They were getting something. Caroline brought the phone closer to herself as she asked, "What about the son's name?"
Five seconds barely passed by before Garcia announced, "Amir Abaza, eight-years-old. Killed in the blast."
Spencer began to talk quietly into the walkie, informing Gideon of Jind Allah's real name, as Caroline said into the phone, "P.G., you're the best."
Despite the situation at hand, Penelope's upbeat laugh breezed through the phone. "I know. I'll keep you updated on anything else I find. Peace out, crimefighters."
Once the dial tone sounded, she slipped her phone into her pocket just as Gideon walked through the door. She could tell by the look on his face the interview hadn't gone as planned. On the screen, Jind Allah—or now, Jama Abaza—was starting what looked to be his salat-al-isha prayers, his night prayers. From that point, he would sleep while they stayed awake, watching.
Which meant they officially had one day left to find out where the attack was going to be.
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"The name Jamal Abaza," Gideon said patiently to the two CIA agents, who had done nothing but glare at him for the past five minutes, their dark eyes wary and apprehensive. "Does it mean anything to you?"
Caroline stood behind the older profiler, her arms rigid at her side. Beside her, both Prentiss and Spencer held themselves similarly, but their newest agent was the only one staring them down with sharp eyes, almost as if she were sizing them up.
After their last jaunt with the CIA a few months ago, Caroline had grown increasingly suspicious of the agency as a whole. All their secrets and hidden agendas—who knew what else they were hiding? But she had to put reservations aside because right now, they were on the same side.
Fifteen minutes after they had called Garcia, she had dug up all she could on Jamal Abaza and what she had found was unsettling, to say the least. He had been in the U.S. for the past three years, volunteering at the Deerfield Correctional Center as the prison Imam. It was there where he most likely recruited militant Islamic members composed mainly of American citizens with a reason to despise the government.
Home-grown terrorists—which meant this attack just became domestic as well as international.
"Abaza was an Imam in Cairo," the agent with dark, unforgiving eyes and thick mustache answered. "He preached Jihad to his followers, but he fell off the grid seven years ago."
Gideon sighed. "That's because when his son died, he took the Jihad name: Jind Allah. He came to America to recruit sleeper cells."
Both agents tensed, their faces growing even more hostile than before. The agent that hadn't spoken yet slowly rose from his chair, almost towering over Gideon. Automatically, Caroline took a small step forward, even though she wasn't sure what she could even do. Both of her co-workers seemed like statues beside her.
However, Gideon stared the agent in the eye, his expression unwavering.
"You're telling us," the agent said slowly, forcing the words, "that that detainee in there is Jamal Abaza?"
"Amazing what you learn when you talk to people."
Suddenly, both agents were now standing, glaring at Gideon. They hadn't liked what he had said or implied in the slightest. Hard and pure anger swept over both of the agents' faces for a brief moment before disappearing by a cold mask of composure, one created from years of training.
"He was also a prison Imam in Virginia three years ago," Caroline added. She kept her face neutral as both pairs of hard eyes flashed to her. "Are you familiar with the militant Islamic society?"
The agent who had spoken first frowned at the words, his eyebrows drawing together. "They're home-grown?"
"We know the cell that Abaza put together has access to Anthrax, but we can't find any reports of any going missing in the States," Prentiss explained.
The other agent shook his head once, his jaw clenching. "We have protocols that we have to follow."
"You're really going to allow a terrorist attack on U.S. soil because of protocols?" Gideon demanded. He gestured towards the interrogation room with a hard point of a finger. "I told you what I learned in there because you and I—FBI, CIA—right now we have the ability to break through all the protocol and share information."
A beat of silence passed between them before the second agent answered, "Let me see what we can do."
In CIA language, that must have been a confirmation, because Gideon said, "Coordinate with Agent Jareau and Penelope Garcia at Quantico."
Both agents gave him a curt nod before exiting the room, whispering among themselves in hushed tones. Once the CIA was down the hall and out of earshot, Spencer turned to his mentor and asked, "Do you think it'll work?"
"I don't know."
"CIA's tough," Prentiss stated. "They play it pretty close to the vest."
For some reason, Caroline could hear Penelope's voice in her head, repeating what she had told her after their last case with the CIA. No one wants the other kids peeing in their sandbox, she had said.
The CIA generates intelligence, but they certainly don't share it.
"Well, if we don't all work together," Gideon claimed in a low voice, "then more people are going to die. A lot more."
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Twenty grams.
That's how much anthrax had gone missing from a Dutch lab a month ago. With that amount, it would be enough to kill a quarter of a billion people.
250 million people dead—some within minutes and some within days or weeks. She couldn't even estimate how many lives would be affected outside of the deaths. The number was too large to even begin to comprehend in her head.
Maybe it was what everyone else was thinking in the room as well because all the profilers were silent, absorbed with the television screens in the front of the room with a devout intensity. They had known the stakes were high, but now that there was a number—of faces, of lives, of human beings—it made it feel all the more horrifying.
Before this job, she hadn't even realized that millions of people could die at once at the drop of a hat. Before this job, she hadn't known that there were people out there who wanted that kind of destruction and annihilation. Not just wanted but needed it. Craved it.
"He seems much calmer than he was yesterday." Spencer's voice cut through the silence, pulling her out of the dark place she always seemed to retreat to. "May make the reading of his body language less accurate."
From across the room, Gideon whispered, "I know."
A small, discontented frown appeared on Prentiss's face as she asked, "Is that what we want?"
"I hope so."
"Well, isn't that the exact opposite of—" She had stated twisting in her chair to face their superior, but once she had fully turned around, he had disappeared into the other room to do god-knows-what.
Prentiss let out a soft sigh as she turned back around in her chair. She glanced over at Caroline and Spencer as she said, "He hopes so? We have less than ten hours before the new crescent moon rises."
"Nine," Spencer automatically corrected, like a knee-jerk reaction.
She ignored him as she sighed again, resigned and wary. "Aren't you guys worried?"
"I've been with him long enough to trust him," Spencer answered earnestly, the sincerity ringing in every word.
Prentiss gave him a look mixed with hesitation and something else she couldn't decipher—reassurance, maybe? She saw the internal struggle in her eyes. The clock was slowly working against them and they were running out of ideas. But it was hard to doubt Spencer's absolute confidence in his mentor, the almost child-like trust he had.
But when Prentiss turned to Caroline, she had only said, "Gideon knows what he's doing."
It was all she could think to say. She wished she had it in her to say something more reassuring, something that no one could doubt, but she didn't. Right now, she was clinging to the possibility that they might find something to get herself through the next few hours.
Prentiss opened her mouth to say something, but before she could even get a word out, Gideon stepped back into the room. For a moment, the look on his face was almost excited, wild and open.
He has an idea.
The older profiler had a mischevious grin on his face as he turned to Caroline and asked, "How's your acting skills?"
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The door shut behind her with a quiet thud, the sound echoing off the metal walls of the interogation room. The sound of her feet walking across the cold, hard floor almost resembled the sound of her heart thumping wildly in her chest.
Caroline kept close to Gideon as they brushed past the two stone-faced agents standing against the wall, their arms crossed in front of their chests. She avoided eye-contact with them, keeping her eyes trained on the cracked linoleum floor.
"Have you finished?" She heard Gideon ask. She glanced up for a second and saw Jamal Abaza staring at her. He didn't look the same as he did through the screen. He had dark bags under his eyes and unnervingly dark eyes. Those same eyes stared into her, like he was looking to see into her soul. A grin spread over his face, wide and open, showing his yellowed teeth.
In that moment, his motives were laid bare to her. He was a trickster, one who genuinely enjoyed whatever torment he could inflict upon others.
As his gaze rested on her, she thought the temperature of the room dropped a little. She adverted her gaze as his grin grew even wider than before.
"As you said," Abaza drawled as he switched his gaze from her to her superior, "the sun has set."
"I'd like you to meet a collegue of mine," Gideon announced as he gestured to Caroline. "This is Agent Caroline Lucas. May we speak?"
"Of course. I have a little time."
Both Gideon and Caroline paused. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat as Abaza chuckled, a low, deep sound, at the look on their faces.
"That was a joke," he said as he gestured to the room around him. "I have all the time. Please."
"A joke," Gideon mused. "Well, we're making progress."
Abaza seemed to contemplate his words, his face spacing out, as he murmured, "Yes, progress. That is true."
"Is there no way for this thing to end?" Her superior's voice was no more than a whisper, his quiet voice almost a breeze through the room. "This Jihad?"
"The Jihad will end when Allah wills its end," Abaza answered confidently, almost as if he rehearsed it.
"And how will you know that it is Allah's will?"
"When the Jihad ends."
"I have been lying to you," Gideon confessed. Caroline glanced over at him, her eyes widening. What was he doing?
However, the look on Abaza's face wasn't beyrayed, but it was satisfied—the look of a man who had been waiting for this admission, searching for any sign of wrong-doing. "Of course you have."
"My colleague has been outside watching us as we talked on monitors. Watching your body langauge, trying to figure you out."
At this, the unsub's gaze flashed back to Caroline, her arms wrapped her arms around herself. She kept her head down, almost as if she were crawling inside herself, as he asked, "Were you successful?"
She hesitiated and glanced over at Gideon, who gave her an encouraging nod. She took a deep breath before replying, "Somewhat."
He cleared his throat and rolled his hand towards her, motioning for her to continue.
"Your name is Jamal Abaza. Your son Amir was killed in 2003 in a bombing at the Mahfouz bazaar in Cairo," she whispered, her throat too sore to speak any louder. "Since then, you've been recruiting M.I.S. members in prison by convincing them that U.S. economic policies are exploiting third world nations. You turned them into extreme fundamentalists by promising a better existence with Allah."
Abaza sighed as he nodded sagely at her. "I would say that you were more than somewhat successful."
"But we did not learn where your M.I.S. cell is going to make an anthrax attack in the U.S. at the new cresent tonight," Gideon said.
Abaza simply shook his head. "I have no knowledge of such a thing."
"Yes, you do, Mr. Abaza. And there is still time."
Gideon froze as his hand went to his earpiece, listening intently to the other side. She watched as his face slowly fell, suddenly a mask of frozen horror.
"Gideon," she said in a low voice, casting him a quick look. "What is it?"
He said nothing as he turned his back to them, whipping on his heels as he marched out of the interogation room. A moment later, he came back into the room, leaving to door wide open. Standing outside the doorway was Spencer and Prentiss, both their faces plastered with mute horror. A low voice floated from the television screen in front of them.
"We go live to the site of what appears to be a terrorist attack."
Caroline brought her hand to her mouth, the news passing through her like a hurricane. She could feel the tears prick in her eyes as the desolation crept on her, leaving her numb.
They were too late.
"Something had happened?"
She whirled to face him, the tears falling down her face steadily now. Abaza was watching everyone's reactions with rapt devotion, feeding off the pain. He was smiling at the television.
"How could you?" Gideon murmured, his shoulders sagging like hte strength had been sucked out of his body. The lives of millions—gone. "You chose to contort Islam into an axcuse for a life of violence. You have perverted your faith to justify murder."
"Now," Abaza said, "we are finally chatting, Gideon."
"You accuse Americans of being puppeteers of the third world, yet you used your own people's faith tonight to make them dance for you. Why? Why is it always those who profess to be the most fervert belivers in this war, they always manipulate other people to die for them?"
The unsub shot up from his chair. "Does your president go into battle?" He demanded, his voice hard. "Or does he send your children?"
"But tonight...all those innocent people," Caroline said, her voice thick from holding back tears.
"There is no such thing, Miss Lucas," Abaza snapped at her. Her body started to shake with silent sobs. "They were infidels. And they were engaged in activites that spread American policies over the netire world. Your incessant need to own things, material things. Your capitalism rests on the back of third world countries. No one's hands are clean! No one is innocent!"
"Those people tonight, they were innocent," Gideon insisted. "They never hurt you."
"They hurt me by existing!"
The whole room seemed to flinch at that, but Abaza had found his voice now. His body shook with anger as he started yelling, "Yes, the infidels shall fall at the hands of the righteous. And that is when the Jihad will end!"
"So you are ready to murder four billion people?"
He grinned, a horrifing, icy smile. "America has learned nothing from the past. You harden targets like your power plants, but you leave the soft root for our taking. What has happened tonight will affect your economy for years, the way September 11th has affected air travel. And maybe the next time a giant shopping center opens, people will think twice before going."
Gotcha.
In that moment, everyone started moving fast, faster than Caroline could keep up. Gideon dashed out of the room without a second glance, his phone already in hand. Prentiss and Spencer were right behind him, not bothering to shut the door.
Jamal Abaza watched with wide-eyes as the fake news feed on the TV shut off. In the control room, someone pulled up the blinds and a streak of sunlight spilled into the interogation room.
The unsub turned to her, his face morphing from confused to panicked, as she wiped away the stray tears left on her cheeks. She stood straight, her shoulders and head high. She was no longer the weeping damsal-in-distress.
"Has the sun not set yet?"
His voice trembled a little from the disbelief, unable to process the light filtering into the room now. His hand covered his mouth in horror.
She was half-way out the room before she answered, "No," and shut the door behind her.
For the first time in two days, she felt good. Gideon had actually done it. Garcia knew what to search for now, and Morgan and Hotch had an hour to find the shopping center befoer the attack.
Her good mood, however, disappeared automatically when she saw the look on her co-workers faces.
"What happened?" Caroline asked as a cold thrill of fear shot through her. "Garcia was able to find the location, wasn't she?"
"She was," Prentiss said, her eyes somber.
"Okay, that's good. So why are you looking at me like that?"
It was Spencer who took a step forward, clearing his throat. "It's the grand opening of the U.S.A. mall. The one in McLean, Virginia."
The words smacked her in the face, leaving her stunned. She blinked a couple of times as she tried to wrap her thoughts around what he had said.
A moment later, when it did hit her, the horror rooted her in place, filling her airways to the point where she almost struggled to breathe.
How could she not have seen it earlier? Just yesterday, she had told her sister-in-law to take her sisters to the mall opening without a second thought. Without her.
"Rebecca...I told her—" She shook her head, trying to expel the screaming inside her head. "She was going to take Cait and Cass to the new mall. She,"—Caroline was moaning now, her hands trembling out in front of her—"She was going to meet with Haley and Jack, too."
"We know. Hotch called," Gideon said as he watched with no expression. "He tried calling, but there was no answer."
No answer? That didn't make any sense. Rebecca always had her phone on her; she never let the house without it. And if she wasn't answering...
Why wasn't she answering?
Spencer stood in front of her, his face apologetic. She met his eyes and saw the pity reflected in them. Her whole body began to shake.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, pressing her against his chest. She buried her face in the side of his neck, seeking familarity as she felt the waves of panic crashing into her. She felt his hands running gently over her back and shoulders.
Neither Prentiss or Gideon said anything as they embraced.
➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴
"When did you know you were gonna have to trick him?"
Caroline pulled her gaze from wispy, starless night outside the jet at the sound of Prentiss' voice. The bright, cheerful noise had distracted her from her thoughts, pulling her attention away from the white crescent moon that was now hanging low in the sky.
She supposed if there was ever a reason to be cheerful after a case, this was it. Hotch had called Gideon just before they boarded the jet—they had gotten there just in time. The chemical bombs had been destroyed and the rest of the cell members were being sent to Guantanamo Bay to join their leader.
Not long after Hotch's call, she had recieved her own from Rebecca. She explained how she cancelled the mall trip until next weekend so Caroline could go. After knowing that, the relief that had flooded through her had been dizzying, chasing away the adrenaline that had been keeping her awake for the past two days.
Even now, she struggled to keep her eyes open as Gideon said, "The first time I talked to him."
"You realized you couldn't break him?" Prentiss asked.
The older profiler glanced up from the chessboard laid out in front of him, an uncharacteristically small smile on his face. "Well, I realized he was too smart to have had that Nextel phone registered to him accidently. He wanted our prescence at GTMO to confirm that he was successful."
"And that's when you started moving up the time of his prayers," Caroline observed as she watched Spencer looked up from the chessboard, his attention focused more on the conversation than the game.
"If I'd used an actual clock, he might have caught on."
A small, amused smile tugged at her lips as Prentiss let out a breathless laugh from the couch. Beside her, Spencer stated, "So it was all just a chess game."
"We won this round," Gideon said, the smile slowly fading away. "But you all heard him. Jihad never ends."
Spencer glanced down at the game in front of the two profilers, biting the inside of his cheek in thought. After a moment, he moved his white bishop diagonally two spaces down. Gideon didn't hesitate to move his queen five spaces, blocking in the the young doctor's king.
"Checkmate."
Spencer stared at the board for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief. "I quit," he said as he stood up from his seat, a thin blanket tucked under his arm. "Yield. Surrender. Capitulate. I'm gonna take a nap."
As Spencer clambered onto the couch beside Emily, Caroline gently nudged Gideon with her foot under the table. He looked up at her, his brow furrowed in surprise. She tilted her head encouragingly towards Prentiss, who was now staring out the window behind her. The older profiler seemed to hesitate for a second before saying, "Prentiss?"
The black-haired agent turned to him. "Sir?"
"You play?"
A smile stretched across her face as she settled in Spencer's seat. "Yes, sir. I play."
As Gideon started to reset the board, Caroline turned to face the window, her eyes drifting over the thin silver puffs of clouds passing in the night. Her eyelids started to feel heavy. She had just closed her eyes when she heard a soft voice whisper, "Thank you. Again."
Caroline didn't open her eyes as she whispered back, "You're welcome. Again."
➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴ ➴
She hated coming to work at night.
During the day, Quantico was bustling with life. It smelled of coffee and freshly printed paper. There were people chatting about work or family. With the horrors she sees in these walls every day, the sounds and smells of life provided a nice distraction to keep her mind from wondering to that other dark place.
But at night, it was quiet, dark, and smelled of cleaning solution from the freshly mopped floor, courtesy of the night janitor. The only source of light in the bullpen was coming from under Hotch's office door.
Caroline set the go-bag on her desk before walking up to the unit chief's closed door. She frowned at the closed blinds. Hotch very rarely closed his blinds. The last time she could remeber seeing them closed was a few months ago—the day she had told the team the horrors of her sixteenth birthday.
Her stomach twisted sharply at the painful memory, as if her body was punishing her for remembering it. She softly knocked on the door twice before opening the door and stepping inside.
Hotch sat at his desk, his head bent over a file in his hands. He glanced up at the sound of her entrance, closing the file and setting it in front of him.
"Close the door," he said in greeting.
Caroline paused in the door when she saw his face. He was tense, that much was obvious, but she couldn't pinpoint the other emotion she saw in his eyes. Unease? Consternation?
"Hotch, it's"—She glanced down at her watch and huffed out a breath—"one in the morning. What, are you afraid the nonexistent people in the bullpen going to overhear us?"
"Close the door." Nothing but clipped, hard words. She frowned at him for a moment before reaching behind her and closing the door with a soft click.
"Are you going to tell me why you called me in so late?" She asked him conversationally, trying to ease the tension in the room. "As I said, it's one in the morning. It's been a long two days and I just want to go—"
"What do you remember about your mother?" Hotch asked her suddenly, the interuption causing her to trail her sentence.
She blinked at him. "My...my mom? Why are you asking?"
She forced down the knot of sadness lodged in her throat as she sunk into the chair behind Hotch's desk. Why did he want to know about her mother?
He looked over at her with wary eyes, waging an internal battle of what to answer within himself. She didn't like the way his eyes followed her, the secrets behind them. She didn't like how he sat either, his posture was too straight and his shoulders too rigid.
Her eyes drifted to his hand on his desk, laying palm-down on top of the file he was reading before. The corners of her mouth turned down at the black seal peeking between his fingers.
"That's a CIA file." She recognized bold, inked eagle head that seemed to glare at her.
"It is."
"How did you get it? Is there a case we don't know about?"
He ran an anxious hand through his hair. "Garcia found something."
A weak laugh escaped her lips. "Doesn't she always? But what does that have to do with my mom?"
Hotch didn't comment on her weak attempt to lighten the mood. He slid the file towards her. With a heavy sigh, she dragged the paper towards herself. The file felt heavy and solid in her hands.
"Is this about him?" She whispered into the quiet office as she let the file fall into her lap.
"Garcia has it programmed in the system to alert her to whenever your name or the word 'Ivy' is searched or inputted into a database," Hotch explained slowly. "It was just a way to keep tabs in case he decided to kill across state-lines again. But when she hooked into the CIA's database—" He gestured to the file in her lap. "That came up."
She ran a finger down the folder, tracing the outline of the seal. "What is it?"
"It's best that you read it for yourself," was his only answer.
She glanced down at the file staring up at her. She took a deep breath and turned the cover open. Her eyes scanned over the typed words over the page, looking for something familar. Then she saw it.
At the very top left of the file, her mother's photo was clipped to the page. Underneath the photo read: AGENT OLIVIA LUCAS. STATUS: DECEASED.
Instinctively, she slammed the file closed. She squeezed the paper in her hands tightly as she tossed it back on Hotch's desk.
"That's impossible," Caroline said through gritted teeth, pressing her shaking hands against her leg. "My mother was not a CIA agent. She worked at a law firm as a legal secretary."
Hotch's lined face remained stoic as she went through the million racing thoughts in her, not daring to say a word.
The file had to be a lie. There was no way her mother—of all people, her mother—worked for the CIA. Her mother was kind and loving and gentle. She cooked pancakes and read her stories and helped her with her homework.
She just couldn't have a whole other life that she didn't know about.
"Why are you showing me this?" Caroline whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. Her whole body felt like it was slowly tearing itself apart, eating away from the inside out.
"Your mother worked on a lot of overseas operations, most of them undercover," Hotch said, keeping his voice low. "A lot of the details aren't in the system, but it looked like she worked in small unit called JTTF-17."
Caroline paused, her back stiffening in response. "A terrorism task force?"
"It operated mainly overseas. The unit was run by Special Agent Michael Westen, who died five years ago of a heart attack. However, there are two other surviving members—Agents Maria Chase and Johnathan Peters."
She stared at the now-undisturbed file sitting on his desk. It was strange how a few pieces of paper could be so daunting, so destructive.
"There's something else, isn't there? You wouldn't tell me this if it didn't have something to do with...him."
Hotch took a deep breath, steeling himself. There was a roaring in her ears, so loud it was almsot deafening. When he finally spoke, his voice sound muffled by the blood rushing to her head.
"Your mother's last undercover name was Ivy—Ivy Harris."
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adaline updated!
it's like 11:30 right now hahaah love it when i can't sleep :)
anyway, i hope you enjoyed the chapter! we're really digging into some major story arcs now, peeps. it's time for the super top secrety stuff hehe. let me know what you think!
as always, i love you all with my entire being. thank you for reading!