Dark Eyes
A/N: Thanks so much to all who have read, reviewed, favorited and put this story on alert! You make me so happy!
Chapter 2 – Rossi the observer
Running up the steps of the BAU jet Emily almost lost her balance stumbling over her own two feet. She'd never been the most graceful of people and at the moment her clumsy tendencies were exaggerated by the fact that she was in an almighty hurry.
She'd accidentally fallen right back to sleep after the alarm had woken her. Then she'd slept nearly an hour and woken up with only forty five minutes to spare before take off. And it hadn't even been restful sleep. Who knew you could have a dream like that in less than an hour?
As she slipped through the narrow entrance she was met by five sets of eyes all looking her way. Smiles were on the faces of JJ and Reid, Morgan uttered a cheery greeting and a polite nod was passed from Rossi. Finally Hotch's dark gaze met her eyes setting them on fire.
"Good morning, Princess!" Morgan laughed. He'd obviously gotten over last night's crankiness just fine. "So you finally felt like gracing us with your presence?" He smirked raising a perfectly groomed eyebrow at her.
Glaring at him Emily replied by flipping him off behind her back and walked up to where Hotch was sitting. "Sorry, sir. I overslept." She explained giving him a weak smile.
"Don't worry about it, Prentiss." Hotch answered without looking up from the crime scene photos he had spread out across the small table. "You made it by a few minutes. We won't be delayed."
Emily gave him another smile and this time he looked up at her and gave her a slight half-smile back. The sight of the tiniest dimple appearing made her body tingle and she had to roughly push the mental image of him naked and in her bed to the back of her mind if she didn't want to turn into a puddle of goo on the cabin floor.
She let her eyes glide around the cabin taking in the common scenes playing before her. Reid was sprawled out on the couch going over some detail of the case. His lips was moving rapidly as he silently read. Morgan and Rossi were sitting next to each other talking vividly about something or other. The look in Morgan's eyes told her that it wasn't about the case. JJ was sitting in the seat closest to the entrance looking at something on her cell phone, probably pictures of Will and Henry.
The last seat left was the one next to Hotch who was sitting by himself opposite Rossi and Morgan. His entire attention was turned towards the pictures in front of him. She sat down next to him feeling the heat radiating from beneath his dark suit and once more she had to fight back the pictures flashing before her eyes.
After a while the jet was safely up in the air and everyone was busy going over the details of the case one last time. Rossi leaned back into the comfortable leather chair he was sitting in and took on the role of observer. He noticed Hotch glance ever so slightly to his right before restarting the discussion from the previous night.
"So, what do we know?" Hotch asked eying the team around him his gaze lingering just that tiny bit too long on Emily who was leafing through the case file.
Rossi wondered to himself if he was the only one who noticed.
"Well..." Emily began glancing down at the photos Hotch had spread across the table. "Except for the fact that they all have different hair colors they do share quite a few similarities."
"Yes they do." Hotch concurred also looking at the pictures of the smiling women. "They're all in their late thirties, about the same height and built and they all have brown eyes."
JJ nodded. "They're also all very successful in their respective careers. Although in completely different fields." She indicated something written on the file she was holding. "Kelly was the head of marketing at a local cosmetics company and Linda owned a chain of bakeries." She glanced down at the file in her hand. "Mary-Anne is a lawyer at a large firm and Denise a high school principal."
"These are smart and beautiful women. He either uses an elaborate ruse or these are blitz attacks. I don't think he's charming them into coming with him." Morgan chimed in.
"You're right. It has to be a really convincing act if he's using some sort of ruse." Emily cut in. "I can't see any of these women just willingly following some stranger. Besides Denise Carlson was taken late in the evening. She has a boyfriend and two kids that she was on her way home to. She wouldn't just leave them." She said with conviction
"That's probably the case." Hotch said turning to face her. "But at this point we can't rule anything out. We'll know more once we've talked to the coroner and the families."
He didn't get the chance to say anything else because at that point the laptop sitting in the middle of the small table came to life and Garcia's smiling face came into view.
"Good morning, my lovely crime fighters. This is your favorite goddess of information calling. Will you be taking the call or are you all just too darn busy being fantastic? " She greeted them cheerily. No one would ever be able to tell that she'd been up all night gathering information about the town they were now heading to.
"Hey, Baby Girl." Morgan shot her a row of brilliantly shining teeth. "You know very well that no one here could ever be as fantastic as you."
Garcia gave him a saucy smile. "Oh Sugar, stating the obvious!"
"What do you have, Garcia?" Hotch shot in trying to speed the process along.
"Other than my biting wit and flaming sex appeal, you mean?" She shot them another smile before becoming a lot more serious. "Well, I can tell you that you are right now on your way to Sleepy Town, USA. Population 125 000 and not a thug in sight. I'm telling you this is a totally uneventful place. Nothing happens there... Other than a few brutal murders that is."
"Go on, Garcia." Hotch prompted.
"You wanted me to see if I could find any other crimes in the area with a similar M.O." She said looking at them through the web cam. "So I searched for other crimes involving women beat to death or cases were they took a bad beating but survived. And let me tell you that was no fun at all."
"What did you find, Baby Girl?" Morgan asked in his sweetest voice.
"Nothing. I mean I've found cases of domestic violence and rape but nothing this brutal in the last five years. This is a town filled to the brim with cookie cutter middle class families and little old ladies."
"Keep looking Garcia, there has to be something. Widen the search."
"Will do, oh captain, my captain! Garcia out." The screen went blank.
Reid who'd been quite most of the flight, most likely due to him losing himself in thought something he did more often than not, ran a hand through his messy hair. "I'm confused..." He said to no one in particular.
"So? What's new?" Morgan teased Reid earning himself a small reprimanding glare from Hotch.
"Go on, Reid." Hotch told him.
"I can't say if he is organized or unorganized." Reid exclaimed. "He seems to have some idea about what kind of women he wants. Then he holds them for a month. But he most likely blitzes them and then he beats them to death. And finally he just drops them badly concealed in semi-public places. He's all over the place."
"He wants them to be found." Morgan cut in. "He doesn't care about them and he wants everyone to know. He wants everyone to know what he thinks of these women. To him they're trash. He's probably got some kind of narcissistic disorder. "
They all felt the jet starting its descend before the pilot told them to strap themselves in. Focus was moved from the folders and pictures and again Rossi noticed glances between the two dark haired profilers. This time it was Emily sneaking an almost imperceptible look at Hotch. Rossi smiled.
"Alright." Hotch said looking around. "When we get to Birka JJ and I'll go to the police station and set up shop. Rossi and Reid you'll go to the coroner's office. See if you can find out how he takes the women and what he does to them while he has them. Prentiss and Morgan..." He looked at Morgan rather than Emily."I want you to go to the dump sites."
Rossi hadn't really contributed to the discussion. Although he'd agreed with everything that had been said he'd also been preoccupied. With watching their unit chief and the beautiful brunette next to him. Finally he noticed that when Hotch leaned back in his seat he brushed against Emily's bare arm. He could tell that the touch made her shiver a bit. He just wondered if Hotch had noticed that too.
After the jet touched ground and they were allowed to once again walk around the cabin there was a flurry of activity getting everything together. Reid had accidentally knocked his messenger bag over and was now crawling around on the floor searching for his lost keys to Morgan's great amusement.
"Oh... Crap!" Hotch heard from behind him and turned around to see Emily with a huge wet coffee stain on the front of her shirt. It made her white shirt cling distractingly to her ample form.
"Great, now this shirt is ruined." She muttered to herself not noticing Hotch looking at her. "Oh! And it's soaking right through. So a ruined bra to add to that... Just awesome." She looked up as she heard someone chuckling and saw Hotch displaying two small dimples. She'd never seen anything sweeter.
"You're almost as bad as Reid." Hotch smiled gesturing in the general direction of the genius still crawling around on the floor. "Maybe I should talk to Strauss about adding helmets into the budget for you two. Just in case."
"Ha! Very funny." She told Hotch sending a small glare his way. Although silently she was reveling in the fact that it was with her he had decided to share one of his very very rare jokes. God knows she had tried suppressing it but she just couldn't deny that her stomach did back flips every time he smiled at her.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think. I really appreciate it!
Next one will be up Wednesday.
/ Sussi