CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MATT !

13x19

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THE MINUTE CASEY GOT A CALL ABOUT A HOSTAGE SITUATION, SHE IMMEDIATELY TOOK TO NOTIFYING EMILY AND THEY WOULD TELL THE REST OF THE TEAM SOON AFTER. Seeing as Rossi and Matt were already there, Casey directs her attention to them.

"Rossi, Matt, we're gonna need all hands on deck. I just got off the phone with the director. He wants the BAU to take charge of a hostage situation in progress downtown." Casey explained to Matt and Rossi.

"Where downtown?" Rossi asks. "Cordon Plaza, fourth floor. The offices of the American Legal Defense Council." Emily explains.

"ALDC?" Matt questions and there is a terrified look on his face. Emily and Casey exchange a look and Casey nods, "Uh, yeah, that's right."

"Hostage rescue team is on its way, so..." Emily is interrupted and Casey hears Matt mutter out: "Kristy." Casey then realizes something's wrong when Matt says his wife's name under his breath.

"What about Kristy?" Rossi asks and Matt tells, "She just started working for the ALDC a few weeks ago."

Casey's mouth drops and she realizes that Kristy is in danger and is also being held hostage at the Cordon Plaza.

Matt doesn't even waste a second and heads to the entrance of the bullpen. "Whoa. Matt, wait!" Casey rushes downstairs as she, Emily and Rossi follow after him in a haste. Casey understood with this being about Matt's wife, of course he wanted to go down there to get to her, but he couldn't. It was protocol.

"I need to get down there right now. I can handle HRT's response." Matt tells as he heads towards the elevator. "Matt, please." Emily pleads. "You know you can't go down there." Rossi tells as Matt presses the button on the elevator.

Matt shakes his head, "Screw the damn protocol, Dave. We're talking about my wife here." Rossi nods, "I know. And I can't imagine what you're going through right now."

Matt exhales and a great deal of pain is shown on his face. Casey would've expected nothing less from the family man. "Kristy and I actually had a plan for the kids in case something like this happened, only we thought the roles would be reversed." He then looks towards Casey. "Just... please don't make me be a bystander to all this."

Casey nods. If this was Christopher, she'd be acting the same way. She wouldn't give up, they would probably have to pry her away from the elevator. "Okay," Casey nods to Matt, knowing she can't have him sit there and do nothing. Matt had to do something. "You can stay here with us, help build the profile."

Matt agrees to that and nods at Casey, "Thank you." With that, they head towards the bullpen and towards the conference room. "Alvez will take point with HRT and run the tactical OP on the scene." Emily decides. "And JJ and Tara will coordinate hostage negotiations." Casey follows.

Casey had called everyone else in and sent Luke, Tara and JJ to the plaza and Spencer had come in to help them build their profile with Garcia. These unsubs had disguised themselves as maintenance for the ALDC, which is how they were able to get past security.

Tara and Luke had called with news. "These guys are running their own playbook. They've made no provocative action since seizing the hostages, and we've been trying to open a line of communication with them, but for the last 20 minutes they just pick up the phone and then hang it up." Tara explained.

"And they probably think we're gonna be thrown off by the uncertainty. It's a crude psychological warfare, which makes me think we're dealing with young men." Spencer stated. "How long does Commander Nash think it'll take to disarm the IEDs?" Rossi asks.

"Not sure," Luke answers. "The C-4 charges are not only hard-wired to all the doors, but there might also be a remote detonator."

Matt pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a breath. "Have you guys been able to get any thermal imaging of the offices yet?" He asks. "Commander Nash says it's on its way." Tara told. "So you can't see what's going on up there, can you?" Matt asks and there's a pause from Luke and Tara. "No, Matt, we can't. Not yet." Tara tells.

"It's probably for the best." Casey told, putting a reassuring hand on Matt's shoulder. "I know you want to be here, but..." Emily starts but is interrupted by Matt. "I need to be here." Matt looks towards both of his bosses. "I'm okay." He assures.

Casey nods, "Okay," She then follows with, "But the minute you're not okay, you let me know."

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The team had finally realized what this was about when Tara had been doing negotiations with the unsub. The unsub in charge had requested one demand and that was to release Leonard Hagland from prison before he started executing hostages every fifteen minutes.

With the help of Garcia, they were able to hold up files for Leonard Hagland. Matt started as the photo came on screen. "Leonard Rudolph Hagland, 75 years old, former leader of a separatist group called The Horsemen." Matt presented.

"Didn't the ALDC identify The Horsemen as a hate group?" Emily asks. "They did, five years ago, and since then, the ALDC lawyers, like Kristy, have been waging a nonstop legal battle against the horsemen." Matt told.

"One night, in April 2015, Hagland shot and killed two Virginia state troopers during a raid of his house." Garcia stated. "Hagland now sits on death row in Virginia. He's exhausted all of his appeals. He's scheduled to die by lethal injection Monday morning." Matt explained.

"Sounds like Hagland's last desperate effort to stay alive." Rossi comments. "Using some good soldiers recruited from The Horsemen." Spencer added.

"I say we bring Leonard Hagland in here," Rossi suggests. "If he is indeed the brains behind this operation, I bet he'll be such an arrogant son of a bitch, we won't be able to stop him from bragging about his master plan."

Emily looks towards Casey. "It's worth a shot." She tells and Casey looks at the group and makes her decision, "I'll make the call." She grabs her phone as she walks out of the room.

JJ and Luke had found the abandoned van that belonged to the actual maintenance workers that the unsubs had replaced. They tied them up and the worker reveals that the unsub that was ordered to kill them didn't actually kill them but made it look like they did.

When Hagland had finally arrived, Rossi had decided to take care of talking to him to get info out of him. When that was going on, Garcia had come rushing into the room, holding her cell phone. Emily, Matt and Casey all being in the room.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God. It's Kristy! She called 911. They patched her through to me." Garcia holds the phone to Matt and Casey exchanges a look with him and Casey urges him to pick it up.

"Kristy?" Matt asks. "You okay?" Kristy answers with a shaky breath, "I'm okay." Matt takes a soft breath of relief. "How many men are holding you?" Matt asked. "There are three, in their 20s." Kristy answers.

"Okay," Matt nods. "You know what could really help us right now is if you could use your phone's camera to show us what's going on in there."

"I know. I know. But they took all of our devices, so this isn't my phone. It's the one I just bought you. But even without the service being activated, it let me make an emergency call." Kristy tells.

Emily looks up at Garcia. "Can you activate the phone she's calling from?" She asks and Garcia nods, "I sure can. Give me a sec." She rushes out of the room and Matt takes a sharp breath and Casey can tell he's holding back his tears.

"Kristy..." He starts. "I want you to know how much I love you."
"I love you, too." Kristy tells and then she lets out a gasp. "Oh, no."

"Kristy? What's wrong?" Matt asked but Kristy doesn't answer. This time, another voice picks up. A man's. "All right, can I have everyone's attention? It doesn't seem like anyone on the outside cares whether you people live or die."

The three hear a man pleading for his life and then a gunshot is heard. "Kristy?" Matt asked. A minute or so passes and Matt is still hunched over the phone when Kristy's voice picks up again. "Matt, Matt, are you still there?"

"I'm here." Matt tells. "Okay, I'm ready to do this when you are." Kristy tells and Casey calls Garcia from her lair. "Garcia, we need to activate this phone and now." Casey orders. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Almost there. And we are... live. Kristy should be able to switch to a video call now."

The minute Kristy's face appears onscreen, Matt gives her a hopeful smile, he's grateful to see her face. Kristy gives him that same look back. "Matt." Kristy breathes out. "It's really good to see you." Matt tells. "You, too." Kristy nods.

"Okay, let's do this." Kristy looks around and decides to set the phone up where the team can see her and the unsubs. "So even though I might now be able to keep talking to you, I might still be able to hear you 'cause I have this wireless earbud in." She shows the earbud and looks around to make sure she's not caught. "Okay. I hope that helps." Matt nods, "That's perfect."

Kristy goes back to her original spot and Emily speaks up, "Garcia, back to you. We need to uplink this to the command post." Garcia nods, "Already making the connection."

When it's given Garcia what she needed, she heads to the team with new information of the two unsubs. "You're looking at Dalton McCann, 24, and this is Jasper Talbot, 26. Both of them are ex-army, dishonorably discharged, ex-cons. They are suspected for a series of bank robberies in Florida." Garcia explains to the team.

"So I've been following up on some friends of Hagland, and I found a lead on our third man." Rossi turns his attention to the screen of video footage of Hagland with a young boy, sitting at the visitor's spot. "Now, according to visitors logs, the young man sitting with Leonard Hagland is a Roland Cole."

"And when Rossi asked me to do a little more digging, I couldn't find any real record of a Roland Cole." Garcia told. "Now, take a look how the two interact with one another." Rossi tells.

"The body language does suggest a particular bond of intimacy." Spencer points out. "Yeah. And what I'm seeing is the interplay between a father and son." Rossi explains. "Except there is no official record of Hagland having a son." Garcia stated. "He has three daughters from one wife."

Emily looked at Rossi. "But you think he also has an illegitimate son." Rossi nods, "A son desperate to be legitimately acknowledged by an absent father." Casey sighs, "A son seeking recognition from his father. Seen it before, we'll see it again."

"Well, I'm still going through the ALDC files and I should be able to verify that information." Matt told. "We should do that. We need the details. I'm gonna go get confirmation right from the source." Rossi decides as he sits up from his seat.

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Casey had brought the team to Rossi's office as she began to explain Rossi's theory to JJ, Luke and Tara. "So, if Roland Cole is Hagland's son, then the way to defuse this situation right now is to somehow undermine his belief that "this sacrifice is gonna earn him his father's long-withheld approval." Tara stated.

"Well, one way we can start to get inside of his head is by using his real name. Looks like it's Josh Martin." Matt told. "Also, I'm not sure if Kristy's even aware of how much deep background research the ALDC did on Hagland and his Horsemen, but the rumor was that most of their money came from running illegal guns through Mexico.

"And then up into New Mexico, where Josh was born and raised." JJ said. "Matt, how confident are you that this research is accurate?" Tara asked.
"You're asking because you want to know if that's who Josh's mother really was?" Matt asks.

Garcia walks into the room. "You know I never say die. I've been going through my digital bag of tricks figuring a way to hack the building back from the bad guys. I found a discrepancy in the blueprints of the building server and those on file at Vextel security." She shows on her laptop.

"Wait, I think Garcia just found it." Matt told. "This is the way they think they can guarantee walking away from this."

Luke speaks up, "Oh, no." Casey furrows her brows, "What's up, Luke?"
"He found the camera." By the look on Matt's face, his heart drops and Casey grabs her cell and begins to rush towards the conference room for the footage as everyone follows behind.

When they see the screen, Kristy is on her knees and Josh is standing behind her and faces the camera as he sets it up in a different area. "Want to watch? Watch this." He threatens.

Casey feels helpless as she keeps her eyes on the screen, clasping a hand over her mouth as she hears the gun cock behind Kristy's head.

"Josh," Kristy speaks. "You don't have to do this." The man pulls his gun away. "What did you just say?" He questions and Kristy faces him.
"I know who you really are. Your name is Josh Martin." Emily nods, "That's right."

"What the hell is she talking about?" One of the other unsubs asked Josh. "The Horsemen were running guns through Mexico, and that's where Leonard Hagland met Gabriela. He took her as his mistress... and then he snuck her across the border and moved her to New Mexico. Truth or consequences, New Mexico, where she gave birth to you, Josh." Kristy told, getting inside of his head, thanks to Tara.

"Shut up!" Josh yells. "Shut up!"

"She's getting in his head." Spencer points out. "Hey..." Garcia speaks and Casey looks towards her. "Where's Matt?" Casey looks around the room and realizes Matt is no longer with them in the conference room. "Oh, my God." Casey mutters and the realization really dawns on her because she's unit chief now and is responsible for her team. "Oh, my God!" She rushes out of the BAU room and heads towards the plaza, taking one of the SUVs there.

When she had arrived, luckily, Matt had saved Kristy from Josh and he was brought into custody. His pals were killed due to him killing them himself and JJ and Luke had taken that opportunity to take him into custody.

When they'd exited the building, Casey greeted Kristy and Matt and Casey gave a hug to Kristy. She'd known Matt and Kristy for a long time. They'd go on double dinner dates while the kids played in the backyard and of course, with this job, they were considered family.

Casey pulls away and looks towards Kristy, "That cut's gonna go away. And the bruising will, too, I promise." Casey assures to Kristy and the woman gives Casey a small smile and a nod. She had been headed towards one of the ambulance to take a look at her cut, leaving only Matt and Casey.

Casey raises a brow at him, crossing her arms. "I know," Matt speaks, noting to his stunt of leaving to go and save his wife from imminent danger. "I'm sorry. I should've stayed. But... it was Kristy."

"I actually was going to tell you to take some time off." Casey recommends. "After what happened, you two deserve it. And plus... you need time off because you are on probation for defying an order from your unit chief. It won't be long. But I'm just saying... use that as time to stay with her." Casey told and Matt nods, "Understood."

"Now, go home with your wife. You owe her that." With that, Casey pats Matt's back as she watches him walk towards Kristy.

Casey smiled, remembering how protective Spencer was when it came to her and their son, like how Matt was with Kristy and their children. It made her think of the better times for a moment, without remembering the bad stuff. It made Casey wonder if she was ever gonna find that again. That love with someone other than Spencer. But what if the only person she could experience that kind of love with was Spencer? Maybe she was right, maybe she was doomed from the start. But she knew that even if she couldn't have that love anymore, she'd save it up for her son and have him realize he was so much more important than anyone else.

Casey took a breath and headed home for the night, reminding Matt over text to take time off and to take it off now.

hey lovelies!
this was lowkey a filler chapter bc i love matt and his friendship with casey <3

no memes but enjoy this photo of my husband <3

he is so darn cute🤭

anywayssss
thank you for reading
and i love you all
-mya </333