Fic: Live and Die This Way 9/13
Title: Live and Die This Way [9/13]
Author: wanderingjasper
Rating: FRT
Characters: Morgan/Reid, JJ
Word Count: 1351
Themes: AU, action, angst, romance.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, but I do take liberties with them for no financial gain.
Notes: Warning and rating deal with the chapter content. The story as a whole deals with the concept of sexual slavery and other adult themes. Previous chapters. Thanks go to my beta reader.
Warning: Violence, adult concepts.
Summary: Someone comes to Morgan's rescue, and he plans a rescue of his own.
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Morgan woke with very little recollection of what had happened, his recall blurred by pain. He was on a couch in a very suburban living room, and he ached. He was only in his boxers under a blanket, with medical dressings on his thigh, arm and shoulder. The clink of coffee cups drew his attention, and he looked up to see the striking petite form of an old friend.
“You’re a lucky bastard, Morgan,” JJ said, handing him a mug. An ex-government deep cover agent who had faked a pregnancy while infiltrating a Neo-Nazi group with ties to domestic terrorism, Morgan had met JJ through Garcia after she’d gone into witness protection.
“Yeah?”
“Your shoulder was a through-and-through. I got the bullets out of your leg and your arm without doing any more damage. The shot to your leg only just missed your femoral artery. If you’re after a ride on the Pennsylvania Pony, this is a pretty dangerous way to go about getting a sympathy fuck.”
“JJ,” he sighed, giving her a serious look. She frowned back at him, one hand on her hip as she sipped her coffee.
“What the hell have you gotten yourself into, then?”
Morgan sighed, smoothing the blanket down over his lap and put the mug down on the coffee table. “I was transporting something which turned out to be a person. A guy, Spencer. One thing led to another and now I need to get out of dodge as soon as possible.”
“Early retirement?” JJ gave a small laugh. “Well, you can crash here until you can move.”
“I’m not staying.”
“Morgan, you got shot, you’re not going anywhere.”
“I have to,” Morgan said. “The men who shot me took Spencer.”
“So?” JJ shrugged. “Not your problem, and you’re lucky to be alive.”
“He’s been sold into sexual slavery, JJ.”
“It’s still not your problem.”
“I promised I’d get him out.”
“What?” It was JJ’s turn to sigh. “Why the hell would you do that? You can’t make a promise like that. You can’t save everyone, Morgan.”
“I can save him,” Morgan muttered. “But I need your help. Well, I need Garcia, but she’s run. Which is my fault.”
Softening, JJ crossed around the coffee table so she could put a hand on his shoulder. “Emily and Penelope know what they’re doing. They’ll be fine.”
JJ found him some new clothes to wear, and didn’t comment when he made the painful journey from the couch to her office, and sat heavily in the chair next to her as programs started and beeped.
“Lucky for you, Garcia taught me plenty of tricks. Tell me what you need.”
“I need to find a location and a person. I need you to do some very illegal things.”
“Just give me stuff to go on, let me worry about the law,” JJ urged, her fingers poised over keys and they both hoped this time the protections the programs offered would keep them from being traced and arrested.
“The drop location for the delivery I had was a warehouse on the east docks. I figure the buyer wouldn’t keep Spencer there, but take him to a secondary location, but he’d have to be comfortable enough to have something like that dropped there.”
“So maybe he owns property there. Gimme more.”
“The men who shot me mentioned a name: bright-cough? What do you think?”
“Breitkopf,” JJ said, typing, “German. Pretty unusual. Okay, nothing is coming up with ownership. What else can you give me?”
“Spencer said he was known on the scene as ‘The Spear,’ that he runs illegal trading on organs and stuff.”
JJ didn’t seem to be listening, but she was typing, eye intent on the screens and head bobbing slightly as if to an internal drumbeat. Finally she stopped, casting her eyes across to him briefly.
“Maybe this is something. Spearhead Industries is a manufacturing firm owned by Frank Breitkopt. His company owns several warehouses on the east docks. He’s married to a Jane Breitkopt nee Hanratty, no children. No criminal record, no flags on his financials...”
“He’s not gonna take Spencer to his office, the business is probably legit for the most part. And he’s not gonna take him to his house, right? His wife probably doesn’t know.”
“Really? You think she wouldn’t know there was something up with a guy like this?”
“There’s a lot of ways to twist someone you’ve got power over around your fingers. She probably doesn’t want to know.”
“Jeez, probably not,” JJ winced as she looked across at a secondary screen. “I ran Jane through here, she’s been into the emergency room four times in the last decade with injuries bad enough to be flagged as suspicious. Nothing was followed up.”
“She probably knows not to ask about his business,” Morgan murmured, taking in all the information on screen that he could. “See if he has any secondary properties.”
“Nothing,” JJ said, then, “nothing he owns, anyway. But looking at these records, there’s a house that used to belong to his mother, which now Jane owns.”
“You think she has any idea?”
“Maybe. But if you look at these places,” JJ said as she pulled up a map with the locations of the warehouses, the Spearhead offices and Breitkopf’s home plotted on them. “They’re all within fifteen miles of each other. The house Jane owns is well outside of that zone, fifty miles or so. And public record shows it had work done about ten years ago, but it’s never been rented. I mean maybe it has, but if he’s fronting as legit then he’d declare any income from it. And it’s never been listed as for sale.”
“That’s where he is,” Morgan said surely. “That’s where he’s taken Spencer.”
“What if it isn’t?”
“Then he’s as good as dead, sooner or later.”
“Are you sure he isn’t dead already? If he was with you, they might have just killed him as bad stock.” JJ cringed at her own choice of words, but Morgan understood.
“I don’t know. I have to try.”
She led Morgan out of the room into another, and a locked box under a bed containing several firearms. She knelt and handed a pistol with sight, holster and several clips to Morgan.
“Want anything else?”
“Give me another handgun, and that taser,” he said, and she handed them to him. “And I need a phone and a car.”
“I can do that. But I expect extra for late payment, and the risk I’m taking that you’ll die anyway and I won’t get paid at all.”
Morgan laughed. “Such faith in me.”
“Is this guy worth it?” JJ asked as she straightened up, still giving him her usual sceptical look.
“He’s a human being. He deserves to be free.”
“Nothing more to it?”
“That’s beside the point-” Morgan started.
“Knew it. So this is your fairy tale ending, huh?”
“This isn’t a fairy tale,” Morgan snapped. “He’s in danger, and I am not leaving him to be some sick bastard’s fuck toy.”
“Okay.” She held her hands up in surrender. “I just don’t want you to get killed. I don’t want your hero complex to get you killed. Only you, Morgan. Only you could walk away from everything to run drugs and god knows what else, but never lose the hero complex.”
As Morgan strapped on the holster, he ignored her assertion. “In two hours, I need you to call in an anonymous tip to the sex trafficking team at the FBI, and call the police to the second house. They’re probably tracking this guy, or whatever he’s involved in.”
“You should be out of there by then, right?”
“That’s the plan.”
JJ closed the distance between them, a hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Morgan was more than a little surprised, and didn’t respond, but didn’t pull away either. As her lips left his, she stroked his cheek, looking at him more fondly than she had the entire time she’d been with him.
“That was for luck. Don’t die.”