BETRAYED
Story takes place early in season 3.
Section Chief Strauss offered Hotch a job heading a white color crime unit. Haley Hotchner was delighted at the prospect of having a normal life with her husband and wanted him to leave the BAU for the new job. Aaron was reluctant and when he traveled with the team to solve a case, he came home to find that Haley had left him.***
Chapter 1
The only people in a tavern at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday night are hard-core drunks, and people who are too miserable to go home. Derek Morgan fell into the latter category.
He sat nursing a rum and coke, watching a hockey game on the television above the bar. The Capitals and somebody were playing. Tampa Bay? He didn't know. Hell, he didn't even like hockey. Although he was worn-out, he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He couldn't get the Cincinnati case out of his mind. He would have enjoyed the escape of getting a little buzzed, but he had to work in the morning. He needed to be clear-headed when he talked to the Review Board. He wasn't really worried about meeting with the hierarchy. It was a formality whenever an agent fired a weapon, but it would hardly be good for his reputation to show up hung-over.
Morgan killed a man today. He pumped three bullets into Frank Durst. He didn't have a choice when Durst turned and fired on him. Shame he didn't run, Derek thought, angrily. He could have taken perverse pleasure in chasing the psycho bastard down and beating the hell out of him. Durst was one suspect he would like to have sent to jail. Prison has its own justice for perverts.
No one on the BAU team said much on the plane trip back from Ohio. They were all shaken by the case. It was always hard when the victims were children, but Kayla Ryan's death was particularly bad. When they found the child, she was still warm. She had a faint pulse. Hotch tried, desperately, to breathe life back into the little girl. He gave her CPR long after the rest of the agents realized it was hopeless. When the paramedics arrived and did their assessment, they just shook their heads. "If she'd been found a few minutes sooner," he heard one of them say.
Morgan had never seen Aaron Hotchner come so close to losing it. His normally stoic supervisor was teary eyed when they pronounced Kayla dead. Morgan figured he was so affected because the child was near in age to his son, Jack.
Derek was concerned about Hotch. Ever since he had come home from a case and found his wife and son gone, Aaron was edgy and distant. Hotch wasn't a person who confided his feelings to anyone. Even his admission to Morgan that his wife had left him was more than he shared with most people. Damn, he didn't want to go home tonight? How the hell could Hotch face it? Haley and Jack had always been his solace from the job.
The Capitals scored a goal, and the patrons in the lounge cheered. He glanced around at the people in the inn. There were several fraternity boys drinking beer and playing pool. A couple of seedy looking men sat at the bar. Both were alone and looked like regulars. A pudgy, middle aged woman in garish dress and makeup sat at the bar cracking dirty jokes with the bartender. She laughed too loudly and was obviously tipsy. Morgan studied her with his profiler's eye. She was probably attractive once, before booze took its toll on her. He wondered what unhappiness brought her to this point in life.
At the back of the pub, a couple sat at a table near the wall. The woman was blond and well-dressed. The man was bald, or shaved his head. He had a thick moustache. Derek couldn't see them clearly in the dim light. Two people having an affair, his instincts told him. They didn't want to be seen.
Morgan finished his drink and ordered another, the second of the two drink limit he had set for himself. He stared up at the television but didn't see the game. He saw Kayla.
During the investigation, he'd looked at so many pictures of the girl, playing with her dolls, running with her puppy, and splashing in the pool with her older brother, but the image he couldn't shake was of the child lying on the trash strewn floor of an abandoned house, a cord tied tightly around her neck. She was naked from the waist down. Her legs and genital area were bruised and bloody.
How fucking sick do you have to be to rape a four year old? Rage welled in him at the thought. "DAMN," he said aloud. The other people in the bar thought he was reacting to the goal missed by the home team.
Derek checked his watch. It was nearly eleven. He sipped his drink, wondering if he was tired enough to sleep. Occasionally, when a case was particularly painful, he was troubled by nightmares. Early in his career, Gideon helped him through his dreams. The man had faced monsters like Durst for thirty years, but eventually, even Gideon burned out and had to quit. Could he last as long? He didn't know. Sometimes, it was so damned hard.
Elevated voices coming from the back of the room interrupted his thoughts. The couple at the table was arguing. "No…Just leave me alone," he heard the woman say.
Morgan looked at them. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman. The man stood up, holding her by the wrist, as if to pull her out of her chair. "C'mon," he said, gruffly.
"Let go! You're hurting me," she pleaded.
"Look, bitch…" The man grabbed the woman's other arm and hauled her to her feet. "Let's go." He turned to lead the woman out of the tavern, and came face to face with Derek Morgan.
Athletically built, Morgan could appear very menacing. "Take your hands off the lady," he said, harshly.
The man studied Morgan for a moment. Intimidated by Derek's imposing presence, the man complied without protest. "Uh, hey, man, I don't want no trouble." He glanced at the girl. "Sorry," he mumbled, but there was a look of sheer hatred on his face. He quickly headed toward the exit. He shot a fast glace over his shoulder and saw that Morgan watching him, stone-faced.
"Are you alright?" Derek asked her. She was visibly shaking.
"Y-Yes, thank you, Derek," her voice quivering. It was then that he recognized her.
"What are you doing here?"
xxxxx
Aaron Hotchner's car was one of the last in the parking garage. On his way to the elevator, he had passed Daisy, one of the women who cleaned the floor where the Behavioral Analysis Unit had their offices. She gave a startled jump when she saw him.
"Y'all still here, sir?" She questioned in a deep, Southern accent. "Goodness gracious, I thought everybody had done hot-footed it out of here hours ago." She was vacuuming near Morgan's desk in the bullpen.
"Daisy," Aaron gave her a polite nod of greeting as he passed. He was never one for making small talk, and certainly not inclined to give explanations for his behavior to anyone. Truth be known, he hated going home to an empty house, and since Haley had left, he postponed leaving the office as long as possible.
He'd called Haley earlier to say "good-night" to his son. Jessica said her sister was "out for the evening" and put little Jack on the phone. He'd suspected for awhile that she was cheating on him, but he didn't want to speculate on where she might be tonight. His son's voice was especially sweet, after the awful child abduction case they'd been working on. "I love you, Da-ee," he said signing off.
There was a terrible pain in the pit of his stomach when he replied. "Love you, too, Sport."
He passed several eateries on his route home. He thought about stopping for a bite to eat. He hadn't had anything since…shit, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a meal, but he didn't have the appetite. A couple of his co-workers commented recently that he looked like he had lost weight.
Aaron's elegant DC home always seemed warn and inviting when he'd pulled into the driveway, knowing Haley and Jack were waiting for him. Tonight, it appeared cold and dark. Letting himself in through the back door, he flicked on the light, and put down his briefcase. He knew he had to eat something, and sat down at the table with a bowl of cereal. There was a floppy-eared animal on the box. Jack loved the cereal but it tasted like cardboard to Aaron.
He took a couple of ibuprofen for the headache he'd been fighting all day, and went up to bed. He undressed, quickly, and got into the king-sized bed that seemed way too large for one person. Gratefully, he escaped into sleep.