The Long, Lonely Road Ahead

The following events take place after Hotch’s divorce but prior to JJ’s giving birth.

Hopefully this story is still entertaining you all. I know there aren’t many of us out there who read and write Criminal Minds Fanfic, but I enjoyed writing this story and I still enjoy reading it (while I edit it, mind you), so I guess that’s okay.

I’d love feedback, but I know that most people who read don’t bother to review or even rate the stories they read. I now try and review whenever I read a story, just to “pay it forward” and hope it will bounce back to me someday.
In the meantime, I hope this entertains!

The Long, Lonely Road Ahead

Chapter Twenty-Five

We drove back to the Redding field office, stopping for dreadful 7-11 coffee in Weed instead of breakfast. We apparently didn’t have the time for breakfast, but coffee seemed a moral imperative. I rode in the backseat of the SUV wedged between Prentiss and Morgan. Aaron was driving, with JJ sitting up front with him. Reid and Rossi were in the SUV behind us. The team was quiet for most of the 90 minute ride, sipping their coffee in silence. I guess I was the random factor, the thing that made them silent. They knew about Aaron and I, they knew I was more than likely under arrest for my part in the activities of the previous night… and with me in the car, they couldn’t comfortably talk about either the case or anything else really. Nothing could be said in front of me. When we got to the Redding field office, Morgan lead me into an interrogation room and left me there.

“You need to stay here for a bit,” he told me. “Just stay put, okay?”
“Where would I go?” I sighed.
“I’m just saying,” he replied.
“Don’t worry,” I said, putting up my hands. “I’m not going anywhere.” He walked out and closed the door, and I was alone again. My stomach growled, and I needed a bathroom, but I could wait. I tried to amuse myself by examining the grain of the table, by counting ceiling tiles, and finally, just by putting my head down on the table and closing my eyes. I felt like I couldn’t get enough sleep, like I could sleep forever. Maybe I would. Then I thought about what Aaron had said to me in the motel, and I sighed. I’ll just take a nap, that’s all. Just a short nap.

When I was awakened, it was JJ shaking me awake, not Aaron.
“Terra? Come on, it’s time to go,” she said.
“Wh… uh, what’s going on?” I sat up and rubbed my neck.
“You can sure sleep anywhere, hunh?” she said with a smile.
“That’s how I was raised. I didn’t have an actual bed until I left the compound,” I told her and she frowned. “What’s going on? I thought someone was going to ask me questions. Isn’t that why I’m in this room?”
“Agents from this office were… suggesting that you should stay here and be questioned by them, but Hotch and Rossi… um… asked them to consider,” she said, leading me out of the room.
“I’ll be they did,” I said, shaking my head.
“So you’re coming back to Quantico with us on the plane,” she said.
“I hope you’ve got a separate compartment for me,” I said. “I stink, frankly. I’ve been wearing the same clothes for, like three days now.”
“It’s not as bad as you might think,” she said with a laugh. “But I think I can find you an air freshener if you want.”
“Uh-hunh. Might not be a bad idea,” I replied.

We regrouped with the BAU team.
“The only way we can make this work is if we take you with us as a suspect,” Morgan told me. Hotch seemed angry, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was talking with one of the agents from the Redding office, who also seemed angry. Morgan pulled out his cuffs. “I’ll put them in front this time.”
“Thanks,” I said, holding out my wrists for him. He put the cuffs on me and then we headed out the door to the SUV and the airport. This time I rode between Reid and JJ, with Morgan driving and Prentiss up front. I didn’t know where Aaron and Rossi were. We got to the airport, and the BAU’s plane was waiting for us, ready. Morgan helped me up the stairs, although with my hands in front of me, my sense of balance wasn’t quite so bad. I sat near the back, while the others settled themselves closer to the front. Ten minutes later, Rossi and Aaron appeared. Aaron knocked on the pilot’s door.
“We’re all here,” Aaron said. The pilot prepared for take-off as Aaron and Rossi strapped themselves in. Then Aaron noticed that my seatbelt wasn’t done up, and he got back up.
“How are you holding up?” he murmured as he assisted me with my seatbelt.
“I’m okay,” I said with a sigh. “I’m sorry I’ve caused so much trouble for you.”
“Let’s just get through the flight. We can talk about trouble when we get back to the office,” he said. I could tell he wanted to touch me, reassure me in some way, but after what I’d done… I guessed it wouldn’t seem professional. I sighed inwardly as he strapped himself into his seat and we headed down the runway.

The flight was uneventful; most of the team slept or played cards, or chatted about nothing of consequence. I found out, inadvertently, that the DEA and ATF found what they were looking for at the compound. Apparently Josiah and the others were engaged in all sort of criminal activities, not just peddling child porn. There was polygamy, drug and gun running, prostitution, child slavery… you name it, they were into it. Most of it I had no clue was going on at all. I wondered briefly what happened to my mother and children, but figured I would find out sooner or later. Every once in a while on the five hour flight, someone would come back to check on me, see if I needed a drink or a bathroom break. I spend most of the flight doing what I did best—I slept. It was becoming my best escape from the events that surrounded me. I was in the middle of a nightmare, one I’d had before in some way before, when we landed. It was the dream where Aaron and I were making love, and then he was threatening to shoot me, but it wasn’t quite the same dream. Pen wasn’t in it, for one thing. No, this time we were making love, and then it wasn’t Aaron any more. It was Josiah who was on top of me, and his neck was broken but he was trying to kiss me. And I screamed, I think, and then Aaron was there again, with a gun pointed at us. But instead of threatening to kill Josiah, he was telling me to stop struggling or he’d have to shoot me. And then I know I really screamed, because suddenly I was awake and Aaron was kneeling next to me, his hands on my shoulders.

“Terra! Terra wake up! You’re having a nightmare,” he said. I rose from the nightmare, images of Josiah still in my head, my breathing hard, tears on my face.
“He was.. and then… You were going to shoot me… oh God, Aaron… I can’t…”
“Shhhh… It’s over. It was just a nightmare,” he said, smoothing my hair, and tucking it gently behind my ear. I rested my forehead against his, fighting the tears that threatened to overwhelm me. “It’s okay. We’ll be landing soon. Is your seatbelt on?” I nodded and looked up. His team members were both watching us and trying not to watch, except for Rossi, who was watching with a strange look on his face.

“You’d better go back and sit down again,” I whispered. “I think you’ve really blown your cover this time.”
“You were screaming, Terra,” Aaron said, standing up. “I couldn’t just leave you like that.”
“Thank you,” I told him quietly. And then he planted a gentle kiss on my forehead before walking back to his seat to strap in for landing. I didn’t look up, but I knew looks were being passed between the members of the team.
“Is she okay?” Prentiss quietly asked Aaron.
“She had a nightmare. I’m not surprised, frankly, given what she’s been through in the last week,” Aaron told her.
“Did you notice? The bruises from where Darrel Hollowfield tried to strangle her are finally coming to the surface… vividly,” Reid murmured.
“Yes, I noticed,” Aaron said.
“What’s going to happen to her, Hotch?” Morgan asked.
“That depends on a number of things,” Aaron answered. “Perhaps this is not the best time to discuss it.”
“She’s committed a number of offences, not the least of which was shooting Shaum in the knee,” Rossi said. “But we need to go back to when she left DC. There’s a car-jacking to start with there.”
“Again, perhaps this is a subject that needs to be discussed later,” Aaron said.
“Terra has ears and she knows what she did, Aaron,” Rossi said. “She knows better than we do what she’s been doing since she left us in DC.”
“True,” Aaron said. “But we’ll need to see if the DA is willing to swing a deal for any information she might have on the Blackhawk Militia or any other paramilitary groups affiliated with them. After all, someone had to help her get across the country so quickly.”
“Makes sense,” Rossi admitted.
“Remember David, I was a prosecutor for several years before joining the BAU,” Aaron told him. I smiled. I didn’t know that about him. He was a lawyer originally. That explained a lot about him, actually.
“We need to know the whole story, I think,” Prentiss said.
“We do. And that will have to wait until tomorrow, I think,” Aaron said. And then the pilot announced our imminent arrival and all conversation stopped for a while.

We pulled into the Federal building at Quantico sometime around 9 pm. There were still a number of people walking around as I was led into the building, still handcuffed. The other members of the BAU had paperwork to fill out, so they scattered to their desks and started on it, prepping it for the morning I guessed.
“Don’t stay here too late,” Hotch told them, as he lead me into his office along with Rossi. “Close the door,” he told Rossi. He sat down at his desk and appeared to gather his thoughts. “Terra, we need to know everything you did to get to the compound on December 27 and 28. From the moment you left my house to the moment you arrived in Gazelle.”
“You want to know what else I did that was illegal, right?” I asked him. He nodded. I sighed. “I told you I don’t trust easily—if at all—but I’m going to try trusting you, Aaron. Okay?”
“I appreciate that,” he said, his eyes dark.
“Okay. After I took the jeep… oh, I guess assaulting an officer would come first, eh?”
“Assaulting an officer?” Rossi asked.
“She, uh… kneed the officer outside my front door in the groin,” Aaron told him, and Rossi winced.
“Ouch.” Rossi grinned. “I’m sure that surprised him.”
“Anyway, then I stole the jeep, and took it to this chop shop I found somewhere along the 495 I think. I really don’t know where it was, exactly. I was kind of navigating by feel.”
“A chop shop? Are you sure?” Rossi asked.
“Mmm, yeah. They were disassembling a BMW when I drove in. I left the Jeep and took a Harley.”
“Took a Harley.” Aaron looked at me with a frown. “I’m sure it wasn’t quite that easy.”
“Uh… no. I kind of had to… uh… assault two men first. Then I took the keys, some cash, and a gun they had in the back before I took off again.” Aaron put his head in his hands.
“Okay, so we’ve got grand theft auto, twice, assault on an officer, assault on those two men… I’m assuming they survived?” Rossi asked me.
“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t do anything permanent, if that’s what you’re asking.” I shrugged. “I needed to get away and the Jeep had OnStar. It made sense at the time. Oh, and I also took this leather jacket I’m wearing.”
“I was wondering where that came from,” Aaron said with a sigh. “What happened next?”
“I drove to Hebron, Virginia.”
“What’s in Hebron?” Rossi asked.
“A gas station, well known in Militia circles. The couple that run it are members of the Patriots, a group that operates outside of Goshen. They run a lot of things out of that store, and it’s understood that one group will help another. One hand washes the other, eh?”
“Do you have names?” Aaron asked, writing down the information I was providing.
“Uh, yeah. Mabel and Henry. Son is named Brad, daughter Julie manages the Motel 6 down the road from the Hebron crossroads. Just first names, sorry. But Brad has a Cessna he keeps at the Hebron airfield. Julie gave me a room, free of charge, for the night, and Brad flew me to Redding.”
“Really? They’d do that for a fellow Militia member?” Rossi asked.
“Really. Brad was running guns down to Sacramento, so he was heading that way anyway. Probably selling them to the group that’s out of San Jose. They always need more guns. One of the guns Morgan took from me I got from him.”
“We left that with the Redding office, but Morgan got the serial number from it,” Aaron told Rossi, who immediately got up and walked out of the office. “What about once you got to Redding?”
“That’s the easy part. Brad gave me a lift to Weed, where we stayed in a… uh… it was a Comfort Inn. I had breakfast the next morning at the diner attached to the motel, and then hitched a ride with a trucker up to Gazelle.”
“And we know the rest. You borrowed a car from the woman who runs the motel in Gazelle, and drove to the allegedly abandoned house ten miles outside of the compound.”
“Yep. That’s pretty much it. So aside from trespassing and maybe breaking and entering, let’s add up the charges, shall we?” I held up my fingers. “What did David call it? Grand Theft Auto, two counts. Assault on an officer. Assault and battery on the two mechanics. Theft of the cash and the gun, although, honestly, I have a feeling those funds were ill-gotten gains anyway. Then we’ve got accessory to.. uh… smuggling? Gun running? What would you call it?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” he said, shaking his head. “Please, just stop.”
“I’m trying to be honest here, Aaron. I did all these things. And in the end, Josiah is dead, Matt is injured, but not dead, and Frank is too, although I didn’t shoot him. I wanted to, but I didn’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this.”


“Do you have more information on either the Blackhawk Militia or any other militia groups?” he asked me. “That information might be worth trading for immunity from the charges. I’d have to call the DA’s office first though.”
“I know lots, but it’s almost worth more than my life,” I said. “I’m already likely to be killed for what I did yesterday. I mean, fuck, my own kids will probably want to kill me. They’ve been brainwashed by those freaks all their lives, eh?”
“What a depressing thought,” Aaron said. There was a knock on the door. “Come in.”
“Oh thank God you’re okay!” Pen said, rushing in and hugging me. “Why are you handcuffed? Sir? Why is she handcuffed?”
“I’ve been pretty damn bad, Pen,” I told her. Then I grinned. “What’s new, eh?”
“You’re not a bad person, Terra,” she admonished me. “You’ve just had… a difficult time.” She looked at Aaron. “Can’t we take the cuffs off? It just makes me so sad to see her like this. It’s like kicking a puppy, or something.”
“Of course,” Aaron said. “I can’t believe I forgot.” He pulled out a key and threw it to Pen, who took the cuffs off of me.
“Oh, your poor neck!” she exclaimed, gently lifting my chin to see the bruises on my neck. “That looks just awful.”
“Gee thanks. I smell pretty bad too,” I said.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Did you want something Penelope?” Aaron asked her.
“Oh. Yes, Sir. Morgan got the serial number from the gun and I ran it through the system. It was one of almost a gross of guns that were stolen from a factory in Georgia last month.”
“I’ve got some names for you to run through your computer,” he told her, ripping off the page from his notebook and handing it to her. “And I want everything you can give me about the Patriot Militia in Virginia.”
“You got it, Boss,” she said. Then she stopped, one hand tentatively in the air. “Sir? What’s going to happen to Terra?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m under arrest, Pen,” I said with a sigh. “I really have been bad.”
“How bad are we talking here?”
“I didn’t kill anyone if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh thank god,” she said, holding her feathery pen to her chest.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen yet,” Aaron admitted. “But when I know, I’ll be sure to let you know. Okay?”
“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” she said. She gave me a quick hug and then left.
“So, what else do you want to know?” I asked Aaron after a long pause while he continued to write some notes for himself.
“I’m not sure at this point,” he said. “I’m not sure what to do with you for the night either. Frankly, I should take you to a holding cell, but I can’t… I don’t want to do that to you. You’re as much a victim here as a suspect.”
“I’m sure many of the people you arrest are victims. What makes me any different?”
“You’re not a serial or spree killer for one thing,” he said.
“True. I’ve only ever killed one person in my life, so not a serial killer,” I agreed.
“You’ve killed one person?”
“I told you. When I was twelve, I had to kill someone outside the compound in the woods. If you search the woods around the compound, you’ll find a number of mass graves. There should be one on each side of the compound.”
“Who were these people?” Aaron asked, picking up the phone. “Get me the Redding field office.”
“I’m not sure, really. I think some of them were probably cops or officers, spying on the Militia. Some were probably just people the lieutenants brought in from wherever for us to hunt and kill. Some might even have been people trying to escape or leave the compound. We weren’t told who they were, just what they looked like so we could hunt them down and kill them.”
“This is SSA Hotchner, Quantico. Yes, right. I’ve just received new information. There are four mass graves in the woods outside the compound. You’ll need to excavate,” Aaron said into the phone. “Yes. Hold on.” He put his hand over the phone. “Where would you look for these graves?”
“Uh… points of the compass.”
“Use the points of the compass for a referent. Right. Let me know what you find.” He hung up the phone. “How many bodies would you estimate are buried in those graves?”
“Well, let me think. The Militia was running for… uh… If I’m thirty-five and I got there when I was six… and it was running for about five years before my mother joined… I’d estimate thirty-four years. I remember the twelve-year-old ritual from when I was little, so let’s assume it started when the Militia started. There were about five or so kids every year who turned twelve, maybe six at the most…”

“That means there should be about 170 bodies or more buried in the woods,” Aaron said, his voice hushed. “That’s unbelievable.”
“It’s just one more thing they’ll have to answer for. I’m actually kind of sorry Josiah’s dead. Now he doesn’t have to deal with the courts or prison,” I said, shaking my head.
“The problem is that men like that often have very good lawyers who can find a way to get them off when they should get the death penalty,” Aaron said, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “But we have the rest of the leaders of the Militia and we will find a way to make them pay for what they’ve done.”
“I sincerely hope so,” I said. I yawned and then my stomach grumbled so loudly, even Aaron heard it. “Uh…”
“It’s late. Let me see what I can do for you,” he said, picking up the phone again. “It’s SSA Aaron Hotchner with the BAU. I know it’s late, but can I speak to the DA? Of course.” There was a long pause. “SSA Aaron Hotchner, with the BAU, Sir. Yes, I know how late it is. We’ve just come back from California, Sir. Yes, the raid on the Blackhawk Militia. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Sir. I’ve got Terra Wintersmith here in custody, but… yes, I realize that, Sir. No, that wouldn’t be my first choice. But I do think I’ve got a viable solution to this problem.”