Hello everyone! I've been working on this story for a while. Let me know what you think? This is a Hotch/ Emily and Reid /OC pairing – do note, I've never done a Reid story before as he's such a complex character and I wanted to make him right. If I had done him incorrectly, I do apologize.

This takes place post Zugzwang.

.Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from TV series Criminal Minds!

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Acceptable Risk -

.Chapter 1.

"Reid, it's just a three day trip to London. Not one month." Hotch eyed the especially oversized dark gray luggage.

Spencer Reid shook his head and replied, "Actually, the contents are not my clothes. Some of the stuff in there are mine but the rest are … well Garcia's presents for Emily… and from JJ, and Derek, and Rossi. Apparently, they want to save postage."

Hotch shook his head, "Custom might have something to say about that but I'm not arguing over this." He glanced at his wristwatch. "Are you ready?" He made to pick up his luggage, a three piece medium sized luggages.

Reid nodded his head as he picked up his own two pieces as well as the huge behemoth of a luggage. As expected he was having difficulty with it.

"Here, let me." Hotch shifted his bags and began to heaved the bigger luggage and almost threw his back.

"Son of bit…!" he muttered, "what the heck is in there?" he glared at the younger man as he hefted the luggage again; it seemed to weighed as much as 100 lbs! "Never mind. If I know Garcia, and we know Garcia, it's better not to know what's in there. It just had better not be a dead body …" Hotch continued to mutter as he lifted the heavy bag.

Reid, relieved that he didn't have to lift it, followed Hotch out of his apartment building. He was intrigued as to what the team had packed in there.

As expected, they ran into a slight problem at the airport. The slight problem was the fact of the problematic luggage and the weight factor. Luckily, Rossi knew they had to pay an extra fee for the weight; a lot of overweight fee so he helped cover the charges.

"Is Emily expecting us?"Reid asked.

"Yes." Hotch replied, his heart skipped slightly as he looked forward to seeing her again.

As the two Federal agents settled into their seats, Hotch reflected on the situation leading to their present trip to London.

It happened a week ago. The BAU team had wrapped up their latest case. Hotch felt that Reid was still feeling unhinged; he was not over the death of Maeve Donovan. It was understandable. Reid had formed a unique relationship with her even though he had only met her once; when she died. But the bond they had formed during their correspondence was much closer than physical, much more transient for Reid. Her senseless death had shaken him to the core and it was going to be a very long time before he recovered from it. Hotch hoped he was able to do so, like he did from the death of Haley. It was a slow process but he did. He hoped Reid would let him help him heal, if not maybe someone else. Hence, Emily Prentiss, if anyone who had experienced trauma, it would be her. He was banking on her help.

At the same time, he was helping her as well.

INTERPOL in Syria had intercepted an entire warehouse full of crates. Ten of the crates contained at least 200 notebooks. They were in short-hand. The warehouse was registered in Arabic, therefore Al Qaeda was suspected. They sent it to London to inspect the contents of the warehouse and realized that five crates contained computer software. What they discovered in the software were five sleeper cells based in London. The locations were in the notebooks.

No one in INTERPOL knew how to interpret short hand and the only ones that knew how were the secretaries and they did not have top-secret clearances.

Looking into all the INTERPOL agents' files, they were not so lucky either. It was only during agency meeting when Emily came across the information of the notebooks that she remembered Spencer Reid's specialty. She approached her bosses and within hours, the agency quickly managed to get the Director of the FBI's cooperation into this situation, directed Emily to coordinate Reid's expedited arrival and assistance. The INTERPOL was anxious to locate the sleeper cells and eliminate them.

In short, once Reid arrived in London, he had less than two days to interpret the notebooks. Emily took a deep breath when she returned to her office with stack of sealed files, and sat before her laptop.

As the time zone indicated, it was almost 7pm her time she saw that it was only nearly 3pm in Virginia. Great, she hoped Hotch was in his office at this time and not in the field in some godforsaken state working on whatever dark and diabolical case. She called up his number on her cell phone; some things had not change, their phone numbers being one of them. Emily was glad of that one constant. She smiled when his face came up on her screen as the call was going through. International calls were still taking some time to go through, especially in the INTERPOL building as it worked through the scrambling codes. She knew their conversations would be recorded.

"Hotchner," he answered in his usual baritone voice. Emily smiled again; she missed his voice.

"Hey, it's Emily." She greeted him.

"Emily! This is a surprise." He paused for a moment before he continued again. "Is everything okay?" There was concern in his voice; was she having one of her bad days? It had been a while since they last talked. He felt bad and guilty for not calling her, checking up on her as he had promised himself to do so but the case with the Replicator had taken precedence over everything. He mentally smacked his forehead for neglecting his friend.

"I'm fine Hotch. I was just wondering if you have a few minutes, actually several. I need to discuss something and I need to 'borrow' Reid for a few days over here in London. The Bureau Director has given the green light on this." She bit her lower lip as she began to pick on her nails.

"Borrow? I…I guess an explanation is in order. What's going on, Emily?"

"First of all, I can't talk on the cell. It's not secure. We need to talk on a landline and I need you and Reid in the conference room." She said.

Hotch thought for a moment as he looked out into the bull pen; luckily for her, the team was on stand-down for the week as they worked on the Replicator case as well as catching up on other cases they had closed previously.

He finally said, "We'll talk in the conference room in five minutes, is that okay?"

Emily replied, "Er, you'll need about half an hour. Here's the number to the phone." As she read off a set of numbers, Hotch realized that she wanted to talk in a much more secure telephone and location; what the heck is going on? But he didn't ask her, he figured she would tell him in due time.

Emily nodded, "Thanks Hotch, I owe you one."

"Don't worry about it. What are friends for and…" he hesitated for a moment as an idea came to him suddenly and he continued, "in fact, you might be doing me a favor."

Puzzled, Emily asked, "Favor? I don't understand…"

He grinned suddenly and then realized she couldn't see him, "I'll explain later. So, I'll see you in half."

"Oh! Yes, Half. Bye."

"Bye."

Hotch stared at his cell for a moment, his smile remained as Emily's face disappeared from the screen.

He picked up his office phone and began to make a few phone calls, fifteen minutes later, with confirmation from the Director himself, he stood up and left his office.

Hotch stood up from his desk and left his office. Coming down, he approached Reid and said, "Got a moment?"

The young doctor, in the middle of his files, looked up and nodded, "Yeah, what's up Hotch?"

"I need you with me in the Secure Briefing Room." Hotch began to walk out of the BAU section.

Reid frowned as he stood up, closing his files and followed his Unit Chief. Morgan looked up from his work and gave Reid an arched look.

Reid tried not to look too nervous; he knew Hotch was still not pleased with him at his performance on the last case. He was trying hard to get over Maeve but it was too recent for him. Everything involving Maeve was too recent and no one in the team understood him and how he felt for her.

He wished they would leave him alone. He would handle his pain in his own way. He was a doctor after all.

Catching up with Hotch, Reid found him by the elevators. He noticed the button Hotch had pressed was going down. Hotch had mentioned the SBR but it was two floor up not down.

"Hotch? Where are we going?" He asked.

Hotch explained to him that Emily had requested a secure phone conference. The set of numbers she gave him were not for regular phones but for the STE phone which stood for Secure Terminal Equipment. It was encrypted to prevent anyone from intercepting secure conversation. A crypto card was required to be inserted into the phone for the encryption to work; otherwise, the phone was use as regular phone. The Middle Eastern countries had yet to break the codes in the encryption. As much as he could, Hotch explained to him what Emily had requested, which really was quite vague.

"Why did she request a secure land line conference? Why only the two of us?" He asked again.

Hotch looked at him and shook his head, "Reid, I don't know. We'll find out when we talk to her in a bit."

Reid nodded as they rode the elevator down to the basement. As they exited, Hotch led them to an encrypted door where he entered some numbers into lock before turning the handle and entered.

"I feel as if I'm with James Bond all of a sudden. Garcia would love this secretive stuff." Reid said in a hushed tone as they walked along a long corridor.

Hotch stared at the younger man and shook his head, "By the way, you cannot tell anyone about this location, not even Garcia." He said, deadpanned.

Reid, believing the secrecies eagerly, nodded his head, his eyes were huge as saucers as he took in the places.

Hotch chuckled and shook his head, "I'm pulling your leg, Reid. It's okay, she knows about the Dungeon, as she likes to call it. She's been here plenty of times."

Before Reid could answer him, they arrived at another set of door with encrypted locks on it. Again, Hotch entered a set of codes and soon the door was unlocked. The two men passed through and entered into a smaller room that consisted of a large desk with a telephone and two chairs.

As they sat down, Hotch put the phone on speaker mode and began to dial the set of numbers Emily had given him. A minute later, after a series of dial up tones and beeps, the phone rang and Emily's voice came on.

"Prentiss."

"Emily, It's Hotch and Reid."

"Hey Hotch, Reid."

"Hi, Emily, how are you?"

"I'm doing well, Reid."

Without delay, and anxious to know what was going on and why the sense of secrecy, Hotch asked her. "Is it safe to talk now?"

She chuckled before her tone became serious, "Seven days ago, INTERPOL intercepted a cargo coming into Syria. They found a lot of wooden crates inside and to make a long story short which I'll brief you more on this when you get here. The main point is, this has Al Qaeda written all over it."

Hotch and Reid looked at each other with trepidation; a trip to London?

As if reading their minds, "Yes, I hope your passports are current."

They grinned as Hotch shook his head at her perception; how well she knew them.

Emily continued, "There are 5 sleeper cells here in London that's about to become active. INTERPOL wants eliminated. There are 200 notebooks written in shorthand, thankfully in English. We suspect whoever wrote it is British subject or has English affiliation. This is where Reid will be coming in to help. INTERPOL needs these notebooks interpreted ASAP."

The line on the other side was quiet for a moment before Reid spoke.

"Emily, how long do we have?"

"You have minimum of two days, Reid."

Emily paused for a moment before she spoke again.

"Spence, tell me now if you can help us. The thing is when you get here, you'll be sequestered into a room with the notebooks. But you'll have a guard who will be keeping you safe."

Hotch looked at Reid, "What do you think, Reid? Can you help them?"

Reid thought for a moment, and then he nodded. "Sure Emily, I can help you. Two days? No problem."

Reid actually smiled at the prospect of interpreting the notebooks. A new challenge.

"Emily," Hotch asked. "What kind of risk are we talking about?"

There was a slight pause before she replied, "We're not sure. Whoever misplaced this cargo will be looking for it."

Hotch nodded, "Sounds like they'll do whatever means necessary to recovery it. It's not going to be pretty."

"Hotch, I need your profiling expertise to go over the rest of the contents. Also as soon as Reid interpreted the notebooks, we hope it will direct us to names and locations of these sleepers. There is a stack of what looked like manifestoes that I hope you'll go over as well."

Hotch was perked; manifestoes were usually written as declaration of the author's intentions and wants. His anger at the atrocities over the mistreatments of his people usually in the name of religions.

Emily continued, "It's in Arabic. I'm interpreting them and as soon as I'm done with them, I'd like for you to go through them with your mind."

Hotch nodded, "It's no problem." Then he had to ask, "Why are you asking just the two of us, why not the entire team?"

Emily shook her head, not realizing they couldn't see her through the phone, "The less people the better. Sorry Hotch. I had to choose only one more person besides Reid. I mean if you can't make it, pick another agent." She hoped he would not decline the help.

"No, that's not what I mean. Two of us are fine." He said. He turned to Reid, "Is your passport current?"

Reid nodded; all FBI agents were required to keep their paperwork current and up-to-date.

Hotch spoke again, "Is tomorrow soon enough?"

Emily couldn't help but grinned, "That would be perfect. I'll get my secretary coordinate the flight info to yours. Hotch?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you very much."

"No problem, Emily."

"See you guys later."

"Bye."

"Bye, Emily!" Reid interjected quickly. He was looking forward to seeing his friend again.

When Hotch pressed the button to end the conversation, he heard a set of beeps before the dial tone set in, and then the line was dead.

As they made their way back to the BAU office, the two talked a bit, "Hotch, how much should I pack; two days? Three or a week?"

Hotch thought for a moment and then answered, "Emily mentioned you'll be sequestered for at least two days, maybe three. How about a week, just to be on the safe side."

Reid nodded. Hotch noticed there was a slight spring on his step. He smiled slightly as he was glad that the young doctor was beginning to 'thaw' out of his darkness. He was glad Emily had called.

Then he stopped smiling. The Replicator. Seriously. He can't go. He couldn't abandon his team when they were in the middle of this crucial case. He needed to talk to Rossi. And Strauss.

When they arrived at the elevator, Hotch turned to Reid, "Reid, finished you files, go home and pack. I'll let you know as soon as I have the flight information and I'll pick you up tomorrow."

Reid nodded.

Hotch continued, "I need to talk to Strauss and Rossi."

The young man nodded.

…

End of Chapter 1