Unknown- A Criminal Minds Fanfic

Chapter 22- Human Skin Is Not Bulletproof

Morgan kicked open the front door--the wood was so rotten any of us could have kicked it down--and I covered him as we entered the house, our backs pressed to the walls as we quickly searched room by room.  I cleared the kitchen off to the left of the main hallway, JJ cleared the mudroom to the right, but then Morgan stopped in the middle of the hallway on his way into the living room, his gun raised.

"Drop the firearms, now," he commanded.  

A man was standing in the doorway, holding the girl around her middle, his fingers curled around a large pistol in each hand.

There was a gaping bullet hole in the wall to the right, I'm assuming the shot we heard must have been him shooting one of his guns off in a fit of rage.  The decaying structure of the house didn't hold up well to the force of a bullet, at least if the slivers of discolored wood scattered on the floor were any indication.  The little girl being used as a human shield looked terrified, and I could see cuts littered all across her body, rust stains dried on her tattered clothes.  But she was alive, and sniffling quietly as she tried not to cry.

I stepped around Morgan to flank his right side and Reid came into the living room through the second set of mudroom doors, his gun drawn.  He took up a spot next to me to cover the only other exit our unsub could use to escape.

"Sir, I'm asking you to put the guns down and let the girl go," Morgan said calmly, taking a step closer.  Judging by the nervous look in his shifty eyes, our unsub was bordering on a psychotic break.  Made sense, it fit with the profile.  But that also made him three times as dangerous.

"No!  No, I won't!  I need her to please him," the man shouted, jerkily waving one of the pistols around as he backed towards the wall, dragging the girl in front of him. 

Morgan adjusted his grip on his own gun but stopped walking forwards.  He couldn't shoot, he would have hit the girl.

"Give her to us and we can take her to him.  We can take her and the other boy, Jeremy," Reid said, his voice sincere.

"You can't.  The other boy--the other boy is gone!" the man yelled.

"We found Paul but we didn't find Jeremy.  Is he gone, too?" Morgan asked.

"Yes," the man said, and I could hear how deranged he was just by the giddy tone of his voice.  No one should sound that excited when talking about murder, especially murdering children.

Reid, Morgan, and I exchanged looks.

The unsub kept talking, repeating himself, "Yes, the boys are gone, and soon the girl will be, too.  I must do his bidding."

He looked directly at Reid and raised his gun.  I saw the twitch in the unsub's eye right before the twitch of his finger. 

On instinct, I shouted, "Morgan, get the girl," and then tackled Reid to the ground, a nanosecond before the unsub fired the gun. 

Splinters of wood showered down on both of our backs, the loud crack fading as slivers of wall hit the floor around us.   I lifted my head to see the unsub sprinting towards us in an attempt to get out the door Reid was no longer blocking, and then I noticed Morgan raising his gun from where he was crouched, shielding the girl.  Before he could fire, I lunged and snagged the unsub's ankle, and he collapsed on top of Reid and I.  I heard Reid grunt in pain from the heavy man flattening us to the floor as the man's pistols jarred loose from his hands and clattered across the boards. The fall had stunned him enough for me to clamber out from under him and drag him to his feet with minimal resistance.

"Morgan," I said, and he reached behind his back and grabbed his cuffs from his belt and tossed them to me.  The girl was still curled in Morgan's chest, hugging him.

I slapped the cuffs on the unsub and then handed him off to one of the local cops and Rossi who wrestled him out of the house. 

As I followed Reid out after them, he asked me indignantly, "Did you have to pull him down on top of us?  It feels like I broke my shoulder." 

My back hurt, too, I'm assuming from just that; the unsub was a big man.  Of course I didn't admit that to Reid, though, but before I had a chance to make a sarcastic comeback, JJ cut in.

"That's probably because you have a splinter of wood sticking out of it," she addressed Reid. 

I craned my head back to examine his shoulder, and sure enough, a large blood-coated splinter was jutting from the red stain spreading over the pale blue fabric of his button-up shirt.  Looks like his vest hadn't protected him from that. 

JJ led him over to the paramedics waiting by an ambulance in front of the old farmhouse, leaving me with our unit chief.

"McDowell," he said to get my attention.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"I'm temporarily suspending you from active duty," he said sternly.

"What?  Why?" I demanded, surprised.

"Unless you can give me a suitable explanation for your actions in there," he started, pointing towards the house, "you are on desk duty for an entire week," he commanded.

"What do you mean my actions in there?  We took him down without firing a single shot," I protested.

"You went in without a vest, or even adequate back up.  You weren't on coms to communicate with the rest of us, you tackled a member of your own team, and you did not follow protocol for detaining a mentally unstable armed suspect.  Not to mention both you and Reid got hurt because of your rash actions.  It was irresponsible and dangerous, and numerous people could have gotten killed," he chastised.

I opened my mouth to protest that I wasn't hurt other than a few bruises, and that didn't even count, in my opinion, but Hotch wasn't done.

"We are a team, McDowell.  You'd better learn how to work as part of one or you won't have a future with the BAU," he said before gesturing for a paramedic to come check me over and then heading for one of the SUV's.

I stared after him, more stunned than anything, but that could also have been the adrenaline wearing off.  I definitely felt more than a few bruises now, and the paramedics informed me that I had splinters of wood imbedded in my back, too.  Which meant a trip to the hospital. Maybe that's why Hotch had snapped at me for not wearing a vest, aside from human skin not being bulletproof, of course.

Now I had plenty of extra time to sulk about Hotch basically threatening to fire me, and wonder who the unsub had meant by 'him' and whether or not he was telling the truth about Jeremy being gone.  This desk duty thing was going to suck more than I thought.