A/N: Thank you for the kind comments. As I said, this is my first CM story and I haven't been a long time fan of the show, having just really started watching it about two years ago and getting caught up either with A&E or ION, so feedback on whether I've "captured" the characters and the show itself is truly appreciated. As for length, as I said, this will be a long story and I'm not sure, with what I have planned out, if it'll be one story or should it really be broken up into 2 or 3 stories. We'll see how that goes. Thanks again for the feedback.
"He did what?" Rossi asked as Garcia smugly related the events from earlier that morning.
"He took Berenson down a peg or two and got that cracked glass replaced," Garcia crowed. "How dare that woman treat our Emily that way?"
Rossi glanced at the others and could see Morgan and Reid nodding in agreement with Garcia. In many ways, Rossi did too, but intimidating someone, especially someone as nice as Michelle Berenson who's only crime was not moving fast enough on an administrative action, that was a bit much. He moved away from his companions and mounted the steps that led to Hotch's office.
"Got a minute?" Rossi asked as he poked his head into the Unit Chief's office.
Hotch looked up from the file he was reading and nodded. He casually closed the file and set it aside. Rossi noticed his actions.
"What's this about Berenson and Emily's picture?"
The flicker appeared in Hotch's eyes at the mention of Emily's name, but unlike Garcia, Dave Rossi definitely noticed it. Hotch sighed. "The woman was being unreasonable. All she had to do was take a few minutes and fill out a form and send it on. In fact, it took her precisely three minutes and fifteen seconds to do it. Instead she decided to just push it aside."
Rossi frowned. "Aaron, Berenson's got a pretty complicated job. I'm sure she had a good reason for taking so long to get that done."
A flicker of anger now appeared in Hotch's eyes, surprising Rossi. "It was disrespectful to Prentiss."
Rossi knew Hotch had been taking Emily's death hard. They all had, but in the past two months, the change in Hotch was beginning to worry him. It wasn't obvious to anyone else, not even the other members of their team, but Rossi had known Hotch for a while and he was an excellent profiler.
There was the shortness of temper, the minor clashes he had begun having with local law enforcement, and more disturbingly, losses in concentration. They were in Cincinnati a few weeks ago and Rossi had noticed Hotch had completely drifted off a couple times. He had immediately stepped in to cover any lapses by the Unit Chief, but it was worrying to Dave. They were small things but they added up to Rossi. While the other members of the team have been taking tiny steps forward, Hotch had remained firmly entrenched in his grief. If anything, he was taking steps back.
Just how close was he to Emily?
She was a beautiful woman, something Rossi had noticed immediately when he first met her. And while Dave did like women a little younger than himself, he never looked at Emily in that way. He was fond of her and thought of her more as a daughter. He knew both Reid and Morgan saw her as a sister and it went without saying that was how Garcia pictured her, but Hotch? Ask him a year ago and Rossi would have said Hotch looked at Emily with nothing more than brotherly eyes, but now? The younger man wasn't even this withdrawn and upset when Haley died and he loved and married her.
Now this whole incident with the photo. The Hotchner he knew wouldn't have even bothered with this, respecting Berenson enough to allow her to do her job.
Granted, Hotch's reactions could simply be an accumulation of grief and losses he had suffered over the last few years or something else like guilt or inadequacy was in play. Lord knows Rossi felt guilty every day for failing to help Emily out when she needed them the most. But Rossi knew that there was something more there, that Hotch harbored deeper feelings for Emily Prentiss. Maybe he didn't even realize it himself until she was gone and now that she was, it was too late for him to do anything about it and he was only left with 'what ifs' and regrets.
They had been sitting in silence for several seconds and Rossi watched as Hotch absently tapped his finger on the folder he had closed when Dave walked into the office.
"Is that our next case?" Rossi asked with a nod towards the file.
"No," Hotch replied evenly. He picked up the file and slid it into a drawer. "Just some budgetary items Strauss asked me to look over."
Liar. Rossi thought. The one thing Erin Strauss wouldn't ask Arron Hotchner to do is look at anything relating to the budgets.
"Liar," Rossi said, deciding to confront Aaron. "That's your file on Doyle, isn't it?"
Hotch's brow furrowed deeper and his face darkened. Rossi marveled that so many people thought Hotchner showed no emotion when his face was one of the most expressive ones he had ever seen. You just had to know how to read "dark".
"And if it is?" Hotch replied evenly. "You're telling me you don't have one? That Reid or Morgan or even Garcia hasn't tried to track down Ian Doyle, the man who killed Emily?"
That was something else Dave noticed. Since her death, more often than not, Hotch had been referring to her as "Emily". While he and the other members of their team used both her first and last name with equal frequency, Hotch had mainly addressed her as "Prentiss". Dave thought he could count on one hand the number of times he has heard Aaron actually address her "Emily" when she was alive. But now, it was almost always "Emily" he used.
"Of course we all have files," Rossi replied. "You know we do. And you know we've all tapped whatever sources and resources we have and after two months, none of us have come up with anything substantial." He raised his eyebrows. "Have you found something?"
Hotch let out a small sigh. "No. I'm just going over everything again to see if there was something we missed."
"Nothing?"
"No."
Rossi nodded his head gently. "What little we know of Doyle, he has resources and a vast network. He can disappear. It's not going to be easy to find him."
"But we will," Hotch replied coldly. Rossi shot him a look. "We won't stop until we find him and make sure he pays for what he did to Emily."
Six Months Later. Paris, France.
Sean O'Malley's feet hit the roof hard and his knees buckled. He fell to all fours, but with his body protesting the movement, forced himself upright as he ran across the roof, ready to jump to the next one.
It was fortunate that these Paris rooftops were so close together. Sean had thought that this would be the best way to elude his pursuer, but that shadowy figure had simply followed, gaining ground with each step. Whether it was a man or a woman, he did not know, just that it was some dark figure, a shadow that blended in with the cloud-covered night and would at times disappear from his vision when he dared to look back, only to suddenly reappear out of the blackness, closer than ever. He couldn't even hear any footfalls and wildly wondered if it was some phantom chasing him.
A phantom with a very real leg that sent Sean sprawling. He landed hard, the wind knocked out of him and this time his body wasn't going to let him get up no matter what his mind was screaming for it to do. The shadow materialized out of the darkness and bent over him, grabbing a fistful of his shirt in one hand and shoving a gun against the middle of his forehead with the other.
"Ian Doyle," the shadow whispered. "Where is he?"
"I don't know!" Sean cried out. "I've never seen him. I just deal with the lieutenants!"
"Who does he have in his stables now?"
"Morely. Some bloke named Jonas Morely. Mean SOB. And uh, Frye. John Frye is his name. That's all I know!"
"And the shipment is definitely going through Madrid?"
"Yeah! Yeah! That's right!"
"It's not very wise to lie to me, Sean," the voice cooed out. "I happen to know its Barcelona. You've been a very bad boy."
Sean could hear the trigger being pulled back and whimpered. At the last second, the shadow shifted the gun and struck Sean, knocking him out. With the man unconscious, the shadow removed a pair of handcuffs and put them on him. A small sound, no louder than a whisper had the shadow spinning around and dropping to one knee as another man emerged from the door that led into the building.
"Well, that was neatly done," Clyde Easter said as he slid out of the darkness to stand by the shadow that slowly stood up. He gazed down at the unconscious, handcuffed man. "How much do you think he'll be able to give us?"
The shadow shrugged. "He gave up two names. Doyle's lieutenants. It brings us closer to him."
"What were the names?"
"Morley and Frye."
"Ah," Clyde nodded his head gently. "Two particularly nasty pieces of business. And the shipment? Still Barcelona?"
"That would be my guess. He tried lying to me and saying it was Madrid, but he's a terrible liar."
"Especially to a trained and very talented profiler," Clyde replied dryly. He glanced around. "You'd best be off before the clean-up team comes by and sees you." When the shadow moved towards the edge of the roof with the intention of jumping onto the next one, he called out. "You know luv, you could always take the stairs."
At that moment, there was a break in the clouds and a light of the moon touched upon a pale face with large dark eyes, framed in long, thick lashes. A pale pink mouth twitched into a wry smile. "Yeah, but it wouldn't be as fun," Emily Prentiss said before she leaped nimbly over the edge and landed with barely an audible sound onto the roof next door.
San Francisco, CA
"What do you mean the Barcelona shipment was intercepted?" Ian Doyle roared at the underling named Smythe who quaked in front of him. "What the hell happened?"
"I don't know how, but the authorities were there to meet us," Smythe continued.
"Get out! Get out!" Doyle yelled at Smythe. After the man had scurried out of the room, Ian Doyle threw himself into his easy chair and brooded.
How had they known about the Barcelona shipment? It was an old drop point that he hasn't used in years and anyone who knew about it was dead. This was the second operation that had gone horribly wrong. Doyle gazed into the distance and narrowed his eyes. Did he have a mole in his house?
If there is one, he thought grimly. He knew exactly how to deal with it.
One Year Later. New York City, NY.
Little by little, Ian Doyle's organization had been chipped away. Operations were disrupted, deals were broken up and nothing he did seemed to have worked to stem the tide of failure. Several of his own people had been tortured as he tried to ferret out who could be passing information on to the authorities for there had to be an inside person, otherwise, how could so many things be compromised? It was as if someone knew his mind inside and out, but that was impossible. The only person that Doyle thought might have been able to do that was long dead.
How, how were they doing it? It was driving Doyle mad and soon there would be nothing left of what had taken him decades to build.
That was when the call came in that changed everything.
Jennifer "JJ" Jareau was deep into a file when her computer let out a warning beep. Her head snapped up and she turned to look at the machine, hastily moving the mouse and taking the computer monitor out of sleep mode. What she saw caused her heart to quicken and her palms to sweat. A few quick taps of the keyboard did nothing to ease her anxiety.
JJ didn't have Penelope Garcia's way with computers and her technical knowledge was limited, but she had learned a few special tricks all for this particular file and calling them into play she was incredibly unhappy with the results.
Someone had accessed a file they shouldn't have, a file where only three people had clearance and a password to see and she was one of the three. She knew neither of the two remaining people had accessed it either. They would have no reason to do so. But someone had gone in there to look around and they had done it in some way without using any of the three existing passwords.
JJ started to reach for her phone, to get one of the Department tech analysts on this problem and see if the intruder could be traced, but she hesitated. There had been talk of a mole at the State Department for the past year. A quiet investigation had been going on but JJ knew they were no closer to finding the identity of the leak. She didn't know if she could trust someone in-house and this was definitely something she wanted kept under the radar as much as possible.
There was only one person she knew who had the ability to track the leak and that she trusted implicitly. She just had to make sure that this person never looked into the file.
JJ picked up her phone and started to dial.
"So Garcia is meeting us?" Rossi asked Morgan as he slid into the seat next to Hotch.
Derek nodded. "She said she had to do something first and then she would meet us here."
They had just returned from another exhausting case, this time in Nebraska and it hadn't gone too well. The UNSUB had killed five more people after they had arrived and was holding a sixth when they finally moved in on him. The hostage didn't make it and while they could say it was a victory in that the killer was captured, it was small comfort to the victims' families.
While no longer reeling from Emily's death, Rossi knew they were still off their game and wondered if they would ever get back on it. He was tired and he knew the rest of the team were too, none more so than Hotch. Dave glanced at the younger man who silently sipped his beer. Hotch's face appeared to be permanently set in a dark scowl these days. He was more short-tempered than ever and clashed repeatedly with Strauss. How he got away with it, Dave wasn't sure. In the past, Strauss would have fired or at least demoted Hotch's ass, but he had some guardian angel looking out for him. Dave sometimes wondered if it was Emily herself.
"I think I'm going to go home now," Hotch said as he abruptly stood up. "Go see Jack."
"I thought you said he was spending a week with his grandparents in North Carolina," Reid said.
Hotch threw the young man a glare as Morgan and Rossi looked at him.
"Hotch, just give it a rest," Derek said gently. "Don't go to the office tonight."
"There's a lot of work to be done," Hotch commented stiffly.
"You're just going to go over the Doyle casefile again," Reid piped in with an edge to his voice they rarely heard. They all turned to look at him and Hotch's scowl deepened. "We've been searching for 18 months and none of us have found one lead on the man. Even the original profile Easter gave us isn't helping. We know he has an extensive network, but we can't find any way to trace any part of it. Yet, we all go and read the casefile again and again and again, hoping we'll find something and we never do. I have an eidetic memory, I remember everything after I've read it once, and I still read the casefile." His shoulders slump and he seemed to grow smaller. "But I always come to the same conclusion. We failed Emily again."
Reid's outburst silenced the men and Rossi could see a faint glimmer of some emotion other than what has become the usual anger and pain appear in Hotch's eyes. Regardless of how he himself was feeling, Aaron still cared deeply about all of them.
Hotch placed a gentle hand on Reid's shoulder. "Spencer, I swear we will find this man and we will make him pay."
Reid sighed. "You've been saying that for almost two years and we're no where near any closer to finding him. How can we make Doyle pay when we have no clue to where he is?"
Hotch swallowed. "I don't know. I don't have that answer, but I have to believe we'll bring him to justice one of these days for Emily's sake."
They were silent again and Reid, though unconvinced, tried to smile for his boss. However, it did stop Hotch from leaving and he sat back down again to finish his beer. He never got to do that because Garcia entered the bar and walked slowly over to them. Morgan spotted her first.
"Well, here's Baby Gir-," his voice trailed off when he took in Penelope's appearance.
Her tights were mud splattered and shoes that were a bright turquoise were now ruined by more mud. The cardigan that covered her dress was slipping off one shoulder and the feathered headband she wore was askew on her head. But more disconcerting to the men was the pallor of her skin and the look of shock in her eyes.
"Penelope!" Derek leapt to his feet and his companions followed a second layer. "What happened?" He gently took her by the arm and sat her down in the chair he had just vacated. He knelt down beside her and gently stroked her arm. "Talk to me."
Garcia looked around at the ring of concerned faces. She swallowed and then opened and closed her mouth several times before she finally found her voice.
"I went to go put flowers on Emily's grave. You know, I do it every Sunday but this last case kept me in the office so I had to do it today and I wanted to do it before it got dark, that's what delayed me."
All the men nodded and Derek's warm hand encouraged her to continue.
"When-, when I got there, oh God," Garcia sobbed. "Some-, someone had dug her up and broken open her casket. They took Emily's body!"
