Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to the TV series, Criminal Minds.

Bravery
Part 1

By N. J. Borba

The little girl tried to sniff back her tears as she watched raindrops race down the exterior of the car window. Some would carve out new paths, while others rolled down the same line of the one that had come before it. She tried to pretend it was a maze game, like the ones her nanny, Molly, sometimes played with her. But Molly wasn't with her at the moment. She didn't know who was with her; she just remembered waking up strapped securely to a booster seat in the back of a car she didn't recognize. Her body shook a little as the vehicle rumbled along. She was cold and frightened, clinging to the stuffed ladybug in her arms as she sniffed again.

"I wanna go home now, please," she whispered.

A women's face peered back at her through the rearview mirror. "We are going home, Kacey."

She didn't like that the woman knew her name. And she didn't like the woman's crooked smile. It scared her. "To see daddy?" the child asked.

"Yes, of course we're going to see daddy," the woman replied, her tone calm and overly sweet. Kacey didn't like the woman's voice either. "Daddy will be home by the time we get there, and he'll be so happy to finally meet you. We've been waiting a long time for you."

Kacey didn't know what to think, or what to believe. The woman driving wasn't the nanny she was used to, or anyone else she recognized. And she didn't know where her daddy was. He worked a lot and went away on business trips all the time, but he always made sure to tell her where he was going and when he'd be back. And he hadn't told her anything about a new nanny or going to visit him. But she was helpless to do anything other than sit and wait, watching as the raindrops continued to chase each other down the window pane, much the same as the tears that trailed down her cheeks.

"I just wanna go home, please," Kacey cried.

xxx

Emily knocked on his door and poked her head inside the small office. "You busy?"

Derek's pen paused in mid-sentence as he looked up. Her voice filled his heart with a happy ache and he smiled to see her standing there. They'd woken up in each other's arms earlier that morning, but he felt sort of like a restless teenager, thinking about how much he'd missed her since they'd parted before heading to work separately. "If you're planning to stay a few minutes then I can certainly make myself un-busy," he replied, dropping the pen all together and rising to his feet.

His warm, inviting smile caused Emily to wonder how she ever could have thought to resist his charms. After just a few days of knowing him, she'd concluded that he wasn't her type. Yet with each passing day he kept evolving into someone she cared more deeply about. At first it had been their shared love of Vonnegut and the way they always instinctively watched out for one another in the field. From there they'd both slowly peeled back their protective layers. Emily had tried to deny her feelings for some time, making excuses along the way. She didn't want them to lose their jobs, and she didn't want her heart broken again, because that had cost her far too much pain once before. But denial had a funny way of fading with time. Before long, Derek Morgan had become firmly entrenched in her life.

The door closed and he took her right hand in his, guiding her toward the far corner of his office. It was the one place he knew the security camera couldn't view. Derek pressed her against the wall, threaded the hair at the back of her neck through his fingers, and kissed her. Eyes closed, lips met, and serenity settled in for a short snippet of time. But their tender conversation, spoken louder than any words, was over much too quickly. It was all rather ridiculously clandestine, but Emily Prentiss seemed to make his reasoing fly out the window. He knew it was more than that, though. She'd gotten under his skin like no other woman had before. Granted, it had taken nearly three years for him to act on it, but he'd never let himself trust anyone so completely, like he'd come to trust her.

Something still held him back, though. Derek knew Emily was the kind of woman who deserved the whole package; love, marriage, kids, and a house to go along with all of it. He could handle the house, even love and maybe marriage. But kids frightened him; the thought of holding innocent life in his hands and being responsible for shaping and molding that life. He was more willing to track down the lowliest UnSub than he was to take on the roll of fatherhood. But it ran even deeper than that. He was afraid his abuse had placed a permanent mark on his heart; that somehow being taken in by a monster had turned a small part of him into one. Some days that line of thinking seemed absurd. Other days it clung to him like the smell of stale sweat; a deep, pungent stench that was hard to wash away.

Her lips tingled from his brief touch, but she tried to regroup. "That's not why I came to see you," Emily let him know, revealing the thick file in her left hand.

"Of course not," he took the file from her and returned to his desk.

She slipped into the seat across from him. "Those are the medical reports for the Evan Webster case." Emily knew the man had killed half a dozen women in Utah, splitting open their abdomens and removing lengths of intestine. She hadn't been on board for that most recent fieldtrip due to a bout of food poisoning that had laid her out for nearly three full work days. Bad shrimp had curdled her stomach worse than seeing the evidence of Webster's crimes. Some days it scared her to realize how indifferent she was becoming to the horrors they dealt with. "Hotch said you were finishing up and needed that."

"So, now you're a messenger girl? Is there anything you can't do?" Derek teased, using humor as his failsafe against the stronger emotions welling in his chest. Morgan had a feeling he'd learned that trick from her somewhere along the way. "You still feeling okay?" his concern finally seeped through a second later, despite his best efforts to keep things business like between them.

Emily was touched by his worry. "I'm fine," she assured him. "As for being a messenger… Hotch was passing by my desk, he looked rushed as usual, so I offered to drop the file off for him," she swallowed. "And we really need to be more careful about what we do around here."

Morgan nodded, noticing the serious look on her face. "You're right, as usual. So, maybe we should make plans for doing something outside of the office. How about tonight? Do you have any dates with a hot tub that I should know about, or maybe a hot stud?"

As hard as she tried, Emily couldn't remain serious for long where he was concerned. She worried it would get them into big trouble some day. "You've been hanging around Garcia too much, she's made you full of yourself. And I'll be spending the weekend alone, unless a better offer comes along."

Derek's right hand covered his heart. "You are a cruel woman, Emily Prentiss."

She stood up and moved toward the door, chuckling softly at his antics. "Well, this cruel woman needs to get back to work." Emily opened the swinging partition, but turned to glance at him over her shoulder. "You'll let me know when you're about to leave this evening?"

"Count on it," he replied.

xxx

Emily spent the rest of her day catching up and wading through a sea of reports, work that often seemed pointless to her. She wondered who it was that decided everything in the world needed to be broken down into tiny bits of factual information. Some days she wished their reports could be summed up in short, succinct words, such as... UnSub caught; good guys win, bad guys lose. Or even... A crap load of people are dead because the bad guy got away. Hours of therapy later we'll still be a shell of our former selves for having been wrong this time. And we'll have to deal with that pain for the rest of our lives. The end. Unfortunately, the FBI brass usually liked things much more thorough, and less emotional.

She ran both hands through her hair and looked away from the computer screen, realizing she definitely needed a break. Reid plopped down in his chair giving her the perfect opportunity to distance herself from work for a moment. "So, do you have any big plans for the weekend?" Emily asked him. "It seems we might actually get a full two days off. Or, rather, you and the others will. I'll probably be spending those days here, still trying to catch up. And I certainly won't be ordering Thai take-out any time during those two days," she joked.

Reid looked up, pleased to have her back. "Well, there's a chess tournament in the park that I'm looking forward to tomorrow. And I also reserved both of the Spock vs. Q audio CDs at the library. I haven't listened to those in a while."

Her mouth hung open for a second, head shaking from side to side. "Seriously, Reid? Do you really need to re-listen to them? First of all, I'm surprised you didn't memorize all the details of those recordings after just one time through. And second, Spock wins hands down," she stated, as if there was nothing to be debated.

"But Q is omnipotent!" he protested. "And my memory is eidetic, which means it's based on image recall, not sound."

Her eyes rolled in an exaggerated fashion. "I know what the word eidetic means, Einstein. Anyhow, Spock is wise from having gained knowledge over his many years of experience and living. Q is just a part of the Continuum, so his powers and knowledge were sort of always there, right?"

"Which is what makes his story even more interesting," Reid perked up, fingers poised above his coffee mug. "He didn't have to try to understand humanity, he wanted to. Sort of the way Data tried to learn what it meant to become human. That struggle and awareness is something we can all identify with."

A gentle nod of her head acquiesced to that point. "But Leonard Nimoy's voice is so… textured. Not to mention, there is something I find very sexy about pointy ears," she joked.

Spencer quickly stuck his fingers in his ears. "I don't think I want to be having this conversation with you anymore."

"What conversation is that?" Morgan asked, sauntering toward them with a file folder in one hand. He stopped and stood in the aisle between their two desks, his eyes moving from one to the other in a questioning manner. "I'm missing out on important stuff by not being in the bullpen, aren't I?"

Emily caught Reid's eye and they both chuckled softly. The young doctor nodded for her to be the one to ask. "Well, since you don't want to be left out… Spock vs. Q, who wins?" she asked.

Derek's face shifted to one of confusion. "Who and what?"

She sighed; a lopsided grin perched upon her lips. "We really need to nerd you up a little more."

"And now I know I haven't been missing anything important by not being out here with the Wonder Twins," Morgan surmised.

"Wonder Twins?" Emily's brow arched. "I'm impressed, Morgan. Perhaps there is a little nerd lurking inside you after all," she grinned. "Although, if Reid and I start holding hands and talking about activating our profiler powers, I'll be the first one to let you call the men in white coats."

Reid couldn't help himself. "You know… Zan was only able to take on the properties of water and Jayna's shape shifting abilities were pretty much limited to animal forms," he explained. "So, I'm not really sure how that would help us with a profile."

Morgan and Emily stared at him for a moment before laughter consumed them. "You always gotta take it just a little too far, kid," Derek shook his head.

Their fun ended a little abruptly when the three of them noticed the light in Hotch's office go out. Their boss, briefcase in hand, descended the short staircase and focused on Morgan. "Did you finish up the Webster report?" Hotch asked.

"Right here," Derek waved the file in his hand. "I was just about to leave it with you."

"Good, you can put it on my desk and I'll look it over on Monday. I'm headed out for the weekend," the unit chief replied.

Emily glanced down at her watch. "You do know it's only a quarter to five," she mentioned.

"I have a dinner and movie date with my son tonight," Hotch announced, flashing them all an infrequent smile. "And Dave is all ready off on his weekend duck hunting trip, so why don't the rest of you take off. It's rare that we get this kind of free time. Take it, and use it wisely," he advised.

"I have a lot to catch up on after being gone…" Emily started to protest.

"Prentiss," Hotch stopped her from continuing. "You still look a little green around the gills. You should take the weekend off like the rest of us," the man insisted as he edged toward the main doors.

They watched him go. "Was that our boss, or some pod clone?" Emily asked.

"I'm not going to question it," Derek chuckled and broke away, planning to run the file into Hotch's office before following his boss's orders. The prospect of spending the next two days with Emily loomed in his sights and brought a little extra spring to his step. He was just half-way up the short flight of stairs when he heard a familiar voice and turned back to see Strauss making her way through the bullpen.

"Agent Prentiss," the older woman came to a stop beside Emily's desk. There was an agent in a dark suit with her.

Emily got to her feet and stood in an almost military stance before the woman. Even after all the crap Erin Strauss had put Hotch and the team through, she projected an air about her that demanded respect. Emily only gave what she got in return, though, and challengingly eyed the woman. "Director Strauss, is there something I can help you with?"

"Yes," Strauss motioned toward the man at her side. "This is Agent Morris from the St. Louis field office. He's come to ask you a few questions."

"About what?" Emily's heart beat a little faster, not liking the combination of the man's stern face and his connection to a city she'd once lived and worked in; a city which still held a rather large chunk of her heart. She noticed that Hotch had backtracked and was standing just behind Strauss and the other agent. Morgan had also wedged in closer from her opposite side. And Reid was looking on with keen interest. "Is there something I can help you with, Agent Morris?"

Morris was tall, with blonde hair and green eyes. He looked almost like a stone statue as he stood beside Strauss. "I need to speak with you in regard to a possible child abduction," he relayed in a calm manner.

"Possible?" Emily nervously ran her tongue along her bottom lip, then bit down gently on it. "If a child is missing then we should be on the case." Emily quickly glanced over at Hotch, looking to him for some sort of support.

"Can you account for your whereabouts from midnight to four o'clock this morning?" Morris asked.

Her eyes widened at the accusatory tone she heard in his voice. "Excuse me?"

"Perhaps we could discuss this privately," Strauss suggested, noticing that the bullpen had gone rather quiet and others were staring.

"The conference room is free," Hotch gladly led the way. The group of six settled around the table, Strauss and Morris across from Emily. Reid and Derek sat to her right, Hotch to her left. It seemed the sides of an unknown battle were all ready clearly defined. Hotch eyed Strauss and then Morris. "With all due respect, Prentiss is right. If there's been an abduction the FBI should be running point on search efforts. 4am was over twelve hours ago. I really don't think I need to explain to you that time is of the essence in such a matter," he concluded.

Morris appeared unmoved as he flipped open the folder in front of him. "No, you don't need to explain, Agent Hotchner," he addressed the man, not looking up while he perused the file. His green eyes then rose, latching on to Emily. "Which is why I was sent to speak with you," he let her know. "You are the biological mother of this child," he shoved a photograph across the table. "Six-year-old, Kacey Donovan. Is that correct?"

Emily's whole world imploded in that second. Her vision blurred, the floor beneath her seemed to suddenly lurch violently to the left and she was pretty sure her heart had stopped beating. Then everything jolted back into place again as she glanced down at the picture. "Yes," the single word dropped from her lips like a prayer and a wish all wrapped up together. She stared at the child. "What is going on?" Emily asked.

"We're hoping you can help us figure that out, Agent Prentiss," Morris replied, his calm exterior like a wall of ice. "The girl went missing late last night and the child's father has accused you of taking her. So, we need to ask you a few questions. The first being, when was the last time you saw Kacey?" He glanced down at the file again. "It states here that Mr. Donovan has had sole custody of the child for the last five years?"

She opened her mouth and closed it, repeating that process several more times before actual words would form. When they finally did it felt like cotton was stuck in her throat. "I haven't seen Kacey since two weeks after her first birthday," Emily answered the first question. "And, yes, he does have full custody."

"That's rather unusual, isn't it?" Morris dove in again. "In my limited knowledge of the matter, it seems rare that a mother would have all of her rights revoked. You don't even have visitation, and you haven't seen her in five years? Five years is a very long time, especially through the eyes of a child or a mother separated from that child. Did it become too much for you, Agent Prentiss, enough to make you take the child forcibly from her home?"

"We are wasting time here!" Emily slapped her hands down on the table. Even Hotch jumped a little from the force of her outburst. Morris had wanted her upset, and he'd done a damn fine job of it. "Do you have any idea what can happen to a child in twelve hours? Any idea!"

Morris continued to stare at the file. "Can you account for your whereabouts from midnight to four o'clock this morning?

Emily slowly retracted her hands from the table, dragging them along the surface and balling them up in her lap. "I was at home," she told him.

He plucked a pen from his breast pocket and made a note. "Can anyone testify to that fact? Do you live alone? Do you have a boyfriend? What about the last few days? Where have you been? What have you done? Can you account for every hour of your time this week?" he pressed.

"I was away from the office for three days this week, down with a case of food poisoning," she did her best to keep calm. "Last night, I was alone," Emily carefully bit off that lie, trying to protect Derek at all costs. "Today is the first day I've been back since Monday."

The stone-faced agent made another note in the file. "Three days is plenty of time to plan an abduction," Morris mused aloud. "To gather supplies, find a good hiding place for her until you can flee the country, perhaps? Plus you had ample time to fly into St. Louis last night, snatch your daughter and get to work this morning before anyone was the wiser."

"I didn't go anywhere last night. I was at home," Emily growled.

"Right," Morris scoffed. "Alone."

"She wasn't alone," Morgan interjected. "I was with her last night." He watched as Emily glared at him, practically begging him to suck those words back down his throat. But he couldn't. Derek was still reeling from the news that she had a daughter, which had come as a slap in the face in regards to the honesty and trust he felt they'd attained in their relationship. Still, he wasn't about to let her take the fall for a crime he was one hundred percent sure she hadn't committed. "I got back from a case in Utah at about 7pm last night and went straight to her place. I was with her last night."

"Morgan," Hotch's voice was dangerously low, a clear warning. He didn't know if the man was covering for Emily or if he was actually telling the truth, but Hotch didn't think he liked either option very well. "Maybe you should step outside for now and…"

Derek shook his head and stared at Morris. "I was with her until six o'clock this morning."

"And what were the two of you doing all that time?" Morris inquired.

"Do I need to draw you a diagram?" Derek spat.

"Morgan," it was Emily who piped up with a warning this time. She knew her outburst, coupled with Morgan's revelation about their night together, was not doing her any favors. Her eyes locked with Morris. "I did not take Kacey, and the longer we sit here and split hairs over this matter, the longer the real kidnapper has to take her just about anywhere and do just about…" she couldn't bring herself to finish the thought.

Morris grabbed two slips of paper from his file and handed them to Strauss. Then he flipped the file closed. "You're right, this really isn't getting us anywhere." He stood. "Agent Prentiss, I need you to surrender your weapon and place your hands behind your back," he relayed the orders while walking around the table, withdrawing the handcuffs at his waist.

"You're arresting her?" Hotch asked, getting to his feet as well.

"I have a warrant to search her car, residence and all other property holdings, including her work locker," Morris conveyed. "I am not making an official arrest, but I also have documentation which will allow me to hold agent Prentiss for up to seventy-two hours without charge, pending further investigation," he nodded his head toward Strauss who was still looking over the papers.

Hotch frowned as he watched Strauss nod her head in indication of the paperwork being in order. The unit chief faced Emily as Morris cuffed her. "One of us will go with you," he insisted.

"No," she shook her head. "You all need to get to St. Louis as soon as possible. Contact Lucas Donovan, 314-555-8222. I want you on this case," her eyes flicked from Hotch to Reid and settled at last on Morgan. "Please, find Kacey for me."

To be continued…