Disclaimer: I do not own anything Criminal Minds related. Characters are merely borrowed and will be put back later. ;)
A/N: The response to the Prologue has been great. I hope you all enjoy this chapter- the next one is about Emily and the unsub. :) Let me know what you think!
Suffer and Save
Chapter One- The Beginning
"I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer. I was born with the evil one standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since."
Dr H H Holmes
Hotch made it to the office early; just as he liked it. He was determined to fine Emily early and kiss her, tell her that his visit with Jack had been wonderful and whisper to her that he loved her. She wasn't there when he arrived, but he thought nothing of it. She sometimes arrived a little bit late, as Rossi was also wont to do. Reid was sitting at his desk talking to JJ, who was in the seat next to him, a file in her hand. She was clearly waiting for Hotch.
Morgan was making coffee in the kitchenette, and Garcia was just stumbling through the door with a large, plastic, colourful bag, bangles on her wrists, hair perfectly curled and a smile on her face. Morgan saw her come in and yelled "Hey Beautiful!" and she replied, quirkily as ever, "I'll show you a good morning sweetcheeks!"
Rossi arrived shortly after her and passed a morning greeting to whoever he saw on the way to his office. Kevin walked by Rossi in order to see Penelope and blushed, still acutely uncomfortable around Rossi, given their "talk" that time, about Penelope- a "talk" which had made Dave laugh internally, though externally he had come across as cold and strict. Poor Kevin was still not over the incident, and though Rossi smiled as he walked by, Kevin scooted past him as quickly as he could, convinced that the pleasant smile was menacing.
Hotch chuckled slightly at that and moved into his office to meet JJ at exactly 8.30. He sat behind his desk and invited her to sit nearby. "What have we got?" he asked her directly. "A case in Matoaca, Virginia. It's not that far from here, but it's pretty nasty. I think it's a one you might want to look at, but there are three other possibles. They're all in the file," she said, handing it to him. He nodded at her and she rose to leave.
"JJ?" he asked suddenly, and she turned back to face him.
"Yeah?"
"Have you been talking to Emily since yesterday?"
"No, why?"
"No reason," he said, "When she arrives, if I'm in here, will you send her in to me?"
"Sure," she said, noticing that he looked a bit worried, and wondering had they maybe had a fight. She knew that Emily did a good job, and so he likely didn't want to talk to her about any aspect of her work. She shrugged off her curiosity and left, knowing that the phone on her desk was ringing nonstop, requests and cases to be dealt with in other places. Her headache wasn't helping her patience, and she knew she would struggle to maintain her calm on the phone. Even when Hotch called her at 9am to say that he had decided they should take the case down in Matoaca, she had been rather quiet and detached with him.
Sometimes, days were just exceedingly busy. Today was one of those days, though she didn't realise just how bad things were going to get. Her headache would be a great deal worse before 5pm.
By the time she got back up from her desk and tuned in to what was going on around her, she knew that something was up.
Emily had not arrived into work at all, and it was past 10.30.
Emily was never that late; if she would be late, she would tell Hotch, and since they had formed a relationship, her communication with him was obviously excellent. Morgan had been the first to really raise concerns, and then Hotch had come into the bullpen asking about her. By the time JJ got there, it was an established fact that nobody had received any emails, phone calls or texts from her. JJ rang her house phone and listened to her messages- nothing from Emily. And while JJ checked her messages, the others did the same.
Nobody had heard from Emily.
The next step was a mild panic. Emily was one of those infuriating people who never, ever skipped work. She just didn't. There were days when she would arrive sick and Aaron would literally have to bring her home in order to make her stay there; and even in her entire time with the BAU, that had happened twice and twice only- and on each occasion, she had been phoning every five minutes wanting to help instead of healing.
He stood at the head of the team and tried her cell, her house phone and even her neighbour's phone. None of them answered. So he took a deep breath and announced that he was going to make sure she was alright. He asked that they stay behind and keep working; he was sure she was okay, that maybe she had just slept in or something. It had never happened before, but that meant nothing.
He jumped into his car at lightning speed and drove like a maniac in order to get there as quickly as he could. Despite his reassurances to himself, he was sure that there was something wrong. Had she slipped in the shower? Could she have fallen down the stairs? What if she was hurt? Trying to shake off his unease, he pulled up outside her building and took a glance up to her window. Nothing seemed out of place, but he knew that he was stupid to base any assumption on a closed window.
He ran up the few steps and pushed open the door, taking the stairs two at a time, assured that his running was faster than the movement of any elevator. He reached her corridor and walked the hall quickly. On reaching her door he knocked and knocked, and then knocked some more. When she didn't answer, he pounded his fists against it and roared her name, banging on the small window next to the door that he could just about see through. Her winter coat was pegged up near it, and so his view was slightly blocked, but he was immediately unhappy with what he saw. Her coffee table was off line- almost as though it had been pushed away- and the rug she loved so much was rolled over onto itself in one or two places, uneven and ragged on the floor.
There was definitely something wrong. Panicked, he picked up the phone and dialled Morgan. "There's something wrong," he said, "I can see the table is pushed back and the rug is damaged. What should I do?"
"Jesus, break down the door man!" Morgan replied. Aaron nodded to himself and held the phone away from his ear while he shoved his leg against the door and it banged open loudly, rebounding off the inside wall and half closing again. Hotch put the phone back to his ear. "Okay, I'm looking now," he said.
Morgan, for his part, had put Hotch on loudspeaker, and the entire team had gathered around to hear. "What's going on Hotch?" Morgan said, as he heard a crunch on the line. "There's uhh... there's a broken glass on the rug...." Aaron muttered, knowing that the glass was one of Emily's favourite things; a beautiful glass of delicate Crystal JJ had given to her on her birthday.
He delicately stepped over it, his hand shaking as he held the phone, and he called out for her. The lights were out, there were signs of a scuffle, and he could only assume that she had been mugged or something like that. He walked through the kitchen and found nothing, there was nothing in the living room, she wasn't in the dining area and when he checked upstairs, she wasn't in the bathroom or the linen closet. The spare bedroom was the same, empty, and when he looked in her bedroom, he found that the bed had not been slept in and that her clothes from yesterday were not in the laundry basket. She was always oddly particular about that, preferring to get things washed and dried quite quickly. She had not taken off her clothes from yesterday.
So where the hell was she?!
He ran through the apartment yelling for her, checking everywhere, and then checking again, all the while muttering incoherently into the phone. But the facts were clear and in front of him. Emily was gone, vanished with barely a trace, nothing nearby to tell him where she was or why she had gone there; no way of knowing when or if she would be back.
And so he told the team to join him there, and he walked into the hall, impatiently pacing while he waited for them. As he paced, he looked from side to side, hoping for some sign, any sign, of anything that might help. He had been doing that for about five minutes, still impatient, when he saw a small dark box on the floor by her neighbour's apartment. Remembering that he had not gotten an answer when he rang Mr Tralker's number, he walked closer and reached down. It was Emily's phone, cracked and broken in two. He had an odd theory that Mr Tralker was either on holiday, or in trouble- and he was pretty sure that Tralker never went on holidays.
He knocked on the door once, twice, three times, and heard nothing. And just as he considered breaking that door down too, Rossi walked around the corner and met him halfway. "Show me," he said simply. In his time at the BAU, Dave had become close to Emily and knew a great deal about her. He felt protective of her and valued her as both a professional asset and a trustworthy friend. And he knew that Hotch was already falling to pieces inside. He walked into Emily's apartment and took a brief look around as Reid and JJ followed up the rear, Morgan arriving last, his face set in an angry form of determination.
"I don't get it," Morgan said, "there are no signs of a struggle outside, but isn't that her phone on the floor?"
"Yeah," Hotch intoned. "She called me last night, but I was in the car and before I could pick up, the call ended. I tried ringing her back but it didn't work. Now I know why. She must have called me for help," he said forlornly.
"JJ, call Garcia and have her check security footage in the building," Rossi said. "If she can find something, we might be able to make some kind of trace."
JJ said nothing, but stepped outside to make the call, feeling a very horrible lump of terrifying nausea forming in the pit of her stomach. "Garcia," she started, "Rossi wants you to...."
Inside Emily's apartment, Morgan took a quick look around, and noticed Reid's quiet stance. "Reid? What are you thinkin'?" he said softly.
"I'm thinking that Emily's strong. Anyone who would overpower her would need to be stronger still. Hotch, what time did the call come through?" he asked suddenly.
"About ten minutes after I left her here. And I left at about..." for a moment, he didn't remember. And then he recalled checking his watch. "It was quarter to ten. I left here at quarter to ten, just about," he said. "Why?"
"Give me your phone," Reid said, and when Hotch handed it over, he checked the missed calls. "Emily called you at 9.51."
"So?" JJ said, joining them from behind.
"So if Emily was attacked by someone, which seems evident, then Hotch may have passed that person on the stairs- or at least may have passed him by. Now that we know the call times we can try to be more specific with any footage Garcia finds."
It seemed pretty conclusive that something bad had happened to Emily; nobody doubted Reid's grim analysis. But still, the wait was a fairly silent one as they awaited Garcia's call back. Hotch pointed to the glass on the floor. "She never would have dropped that. It meant the world to her, she was always really careful of it. She barely used those glasses unless we had a night in with dinner. Is there any way to check who last used it or to take DNA from it in case whoever was here used it?" he said, half heartedly, thinking that really it was a very clinical analysis. But Rossi nodded enthusiastically "Yes, we'll do that," he said, and picked up his phone to route a CSI team to Emily's apartment.
Seconds later, JJ's phone rang and Garcia, on the other end, was in a panic. "OhmiGod ohiGod ohmiGod," she panted. "You guys have to see this. I can't reroute the footage to a cell, you'll have to come back and see it," she said, "but come quickly. She's been kidnapped."
The team ran from the apartment, leaving Rossi behind with the calmest team member, Reid, who was thinking the problem apart with his standard code of practice. He worked with the CSI team when they arrived, and before long he and Rossi were both on the way back to Quantico.
By the time they arrived, each member of the team had seen the tape at least four times. It was a poorly placed camera, showing only the corridor in front of Emily's apartment, and not showing the door of her room at all. The tape was horrific. It showed her running from the room, phone held aloft, clattering to Tralker's apartment and getting no answer before being attacked by the hulking figure chasing her down the hall at top speed. Aaron Hotchner gripped the back of the chair he stood behind tightly, trying to will himself to stay upright for as long as he could. He could feel a lump building in his throat.
They saw the phone hit the floor and fall to pieces, and they saw Emily dragged back to her own apartment. And just about twenty minutes later, the man emerged with his arm around her as she slouched, drugged, next to him. He walked with her calmly, patiently, after closing the door to her apartment. He was out of sight of that camera before too long.
"Garcia," Reid began, "we need to take the timing back a little, to when Hotch was with Emily, and then we need to try to trace all of the movements at once to see what we can find. Hotch, can you stay with us to tell us how it all happened?"
Hotch nodded but said nothing, and he was grateful when JJ stood up from the set he leaned against, allowing him to sit down and pull the chair as close to Penelope's screens as she would allow. As soon as she saw what a state he was in, she reached for his hand and squeezed it. "We'll find her," she said. "We will."
As Rossi and Morgan stood nearby, he tried to recount the previous night and watched as Penelope ran through security footage, opening files and checking pictures frame by frame, asking times and dates, while Reid carefully stole the night before form Hotch's perspective, noting it all in his perfect brain, in the hopes that it would help them find the man who had done this to Emily.
