The following day

Rossi's Office

0700 hours in the morning

"Emily, you ok?" Rossi asks, noticing she isn't her normal chatty self on their weekly phone call.

"Not really. But then again, you know what it is like," she says, sounding tired.

"In a way, I do, but I had closure. You and Aaron haven't had that, my dear."

Rossi hears her pause at the mention of the unit chief's name. He wonders for a moment if she's going to hedge around the subject.

"I'm sure he's doing a far better job of coping than me," Emily says, dispelling Rossi of his doubts.

"I keep breaking down into tears. My team has no idea why, so I took some time off. Clyde wasn't happy, but it was needed."

"Have you told him the whole story yet?"

"No. And it's really none of his business. It's just another thing he'll use against me at some point. It was bad enough when I went undercover on his latest assignment that he took extra precautions so I wouldn't get pregnant. If I told him about her being taken or that I still had contact with her family, he'd go ballistic. As far as he knows she was adopted out to some family that was organised by the CIA and we haven't had contact since."

"Clyde holds far too much over you, my dear. You should quit working for Interpol and come back to us. I'm sure we could make you leader of the second team," Rossi says, then chuckles. "It would give Aaron a run for his money. We would have two top teams for cases. That alone would lessen the load on us. I'm sure I can talk Strauss into it for you."

Emily says nothing about his comment regarding Strauss. Rossi sits there, wondering what could be going through her mind, wondering if she would accept coming back to the States. He decides to tell her the truth about Aaron.

"Emily, dear, he isn't coping this time around and the team is picking up on it. Why don't you come back and just talk to him? Be here for each other. It would help both of you through this."

"I can't, Dave - not because I don't want to. 'Cause I do, but to be there talking to him and going through another year of this," she pauses and Rossi grimaces when he hears her take a couple of quick, shaky breaths. "I can't. I just can't, Dave. Being away from there has helped me to see that it wasn't good for me. Not when things were like what they were between us. I can't subject myself to being that close and knowing he's with someone else," she says as tears fall.

"You sure about that?"

"Yes, Dave, I am. I can't allow myself to be that close again unless she's found and it's necessary. Otherwise, being where I am now is better for both of us."

"Think what you want, my dear, but I can tell it isn't what you two want from reading between the lines."

"This coming from someone with three failed marriages," she retorts. He calmly gives her disdain an honest answer.

"And if I had listened to my family and friends, I would have only had one failed marriage. And both Aaron and you know the real reason why that one failed."

"Sorry, Dave," she replies. He can hear the regret in her voice.

"No need to be sorry, my dear. We only see what we want to see, not what is truly around us like our friends and family can see. It's just a shame that her kidnapping happen to take place a few weeks after her birthday. Aaron had been dealing with not seeing her. The day he saw that Amber Alert," Rossi sighs and shakes his head. "The Amber Alert sent him into a fit of rage that I had never seen out of him before. I didn't see it again until Doyle came back and you hid what was going on from the team. The team never saw the full effect that had on him, having to act as if you were dead. He does still care for you, Emily."

"No, he doesn't," she replied bitterly. "Or he would've given me a damn good reason to stay when I asked him to 'give me one good reason not to move to London'. He didn't."

Rossi hears her sadness and thinks, 'Yeah and you're still wishing to God he had.'

"Do you honestly think he would tell you he loves you while still with another woman?'

"He did while he was still married to Haley."

Dave hears something in her tone, something that may have been hope, but isn't he too sure. Maybe it had been the hope that since he did it once, why not do it again?

"But he was separated at the time, wasn't he?"

"Yes, but...," she stops herself, realising what Rossi meant.

"Emily, you and I both know what sort of marriage the two had. High school sweethearts, who knew nothing else, didn't know really what a relationship was like. He loved Haley because she was his first love. He loved you in a different way, though. I bet he only knows now that he loved you as the soul mate that you are for each other. They had a number of break ups. Haley always said it was due to his work, but I didn't believe that and Aaron would think otherwise. But what the team doesn't know is that it wasn't the FBI that caused the divorce. We do know she was seeing someone when he wasn't around. Like during the time she thought he was sleeping with you," Rossi says, hearing her start to protest, "Before you say anything, Aaron told me that Haley was seeing someone and he found out. Well, he got signs of it when he was on leave. Haley didn't understand, or maybe she just didn't want to, that if you two didn't go to that case in Milwaukee, you'd both be out of jobs. It was her final straw. Her lover was always there when she needed him, so she packed up and left. They would never have stop loving each other even if she was still alive, they just grew apart. It happens. He may be in a relationship with Beth and he thinks he may love her but he's not the same person I saw when the two of you were together. With the exception of Beth, there is nothing stopping you two being together. Why don't you come home Emily and just allow yourself to see what will happen? Remember, Emily, Aaron has always been one to follow the rules," he says at the end.

Rossi is trying to tell Emily there were reasons the younger man wouldn't say something to her, especially when she was still his subordinate.

'Aaron needs to grow a pair of balls and be honest with himself,' he thinks before hearing Emily's voice again.

"I can't, Dave, not while he is still with Beth. I'm not going to go down that road again. Been there, done that. And look where it got us in the long run. A child neither of us could look after, one we had to put up for adoption. And then, while I'm working undercover, she gets taken and no one told me about it for months. How do you think I felt coming home to find my only child had been kidnapped and it all happened six months beforehand? Leaving you two to deal with it and by the time I got back, there was nothing I could do."

"Well, you could let the team know about this. Let us try and find her. It's been ten years now, Emily."

"Yeah, ten years since she was taken and six years more when I found out I was pregnant while undercover. Which didn't go down well at all with the CIA, finding out that their master of disguise was pregnant and got pregnant while still being undercover."

"What? You were undercover when you and Aaron had that time together?"

"Yes."

"So you're telling me Aaron was duped into all of this?"

"No, he wasn't. I shouldn't be telling you this, Dave. Even he doesn't know half the shit that happened. All he knows is that I got pregnant and found out while overseas on assignment. I told him I would return for the birth and he had to sign the papers, which he did. He never stopped me from doing it. He supported me. He was there when I gave birth and there when we handed her over. He never left my side till I was sent back undercover two weeks later. He never left my side from the moment I returned to the moment I left."

"I know, dear, I was the one that granted him his leave for personal matters and told Haley he was away working on a case that was classified. She threw a shit fit, but I said his knowledge of the legal system was very important and that I would get him to call when he could."

"Anyway, I should let you go. You most likely have work to do," she says, deciding she doesn't want to talk about Aaron or their child anymore.

Rossi recognizes her sudden change in direction, as in 'I don't want to go on anymore', but he isn't going to let it go. Something never sat right with him over Isabelle's kidnapping.

"Yes I do have work to do but talking to you is just as important, Emily. Don't let this go on any longer than it needs to. Just say the word and I can have the team looking into this. As I always said to Aaron and those investigators years ago, this was no random kidnapping. They wanted her for something. And there have been a number of children around her age getting taken every year."

Emily says nothing at all before hanging up the phone on Dave, tears falling down her face. Rossi slams the phone back down on its receiver. JJ hears it as she walks past.

"You ok, Rossi?"

"Yeah, just got disconnected and can't get back through," he lies.

He knows that he's been hung up on because he just had to push that little bit more.

'But JJ doesn't need to know who I was talking to or why.'

"Oh, well, try again later. It's likely you're both trying to dial at the same time."

"Probably," he says. He sees a file in her hands and points toward it. "Do we have a case?"

"Yes, we do, but this one is different," JJ says as she heads to the conference room to go over the case.

"Where's Hotch?" Morgan asks as Rossi takes his seat and JJ stays standing.

"He's coming. He's just getting off the phone right now," JJ says. She flicks on the screen.

"Over the last ten years, the missing persons unit has been working on what they think is a major child abduction case. Where children are taken at a young age either to adopt out at high prices or kept to have babies to sell."

"And what does this have to do with us?" Morgan asks before letting JJ finish.

"Because in the last two weeks, this has been turning up," JJ says as she flicks the screen on to pictures. The group look and stare at the photos of three young women with cuts and bruises all over their bodies and barely clothed.

"So what links these three together?" Rossi asks.

"All three were taken in 1997, sixteen years ago from three different states. All have been found in the same state they were taken. All three girls were five at the time of abduction. No leads were ever found. Nothing at the abduction sites. All of them were taken from within their homes in the middle of the night. No clothes were taken, no signs of forced entry, or a struggle. No signs of any drugs being used. And the missing persons unit thought that it was a job done within the family because all three families involved had problems within their marriages," JJ says as Hotch enters the room.

"Now, on the autopsy of all three victims, they found that they were well cared for while being held. But notice how they all have similar scars on their wrists and ankles," JJ says as she shows photos of the markings. "Their hair is all the same length. Fingernails are short as not to leave any marks on anything or anyone. And, on further investigation, they found all three victims had been sexual active for a long period of time because there was old and healed scarring found. They also found out after I asked them to do further testing that all three females were, in fact, infertile. It confirms the theory that they think that these victims were being used to produce babies for sale." The team sits there looking at the photos and thinking to themselves.

JJ gives them time to go over what is in front of them and what is shown on the board before she drops the next bit of information. It's a rather large pile of information to go through.

"What else is there, JJ?" Aaron asks, noticing her still standing by the board when he looks up.

"John from our FBI Missing person unit thinks there is at least sixty children involved with this. And that's just in the last fifteen years. He thinks they go back even further than that since there's between three to five abductions that all are similar because of the way they happen and the type of families involved. Most cases the LEOs have all thought the family was involved. For most of the investigation, it's only been himself, but within the last three years he has had a couple of extra people to help him." JJ turns and presses a button on her remote for the screen in front of the team.

"John thinks that from 1998 through to 2000, these children were taken as part of this," JJ states as pretty, young girls varying in skin, eye, and even hair colour appear on the screen. "All are girls all aged around five or six. Looking at them, you wouldn't think there is any link between them."

"These are the ones from 2001 through to 2003," she says as another set of missing children's pictures appear before the team. "John and I have agreed all parents need to come in to be re-interviewed," JJ says.

Hotch and Rossi barely register her words because at the bottom left hand corner of the screen is a picture Hotch and Rossi didn't expect to be up there. Hotch goes white at seeing his daughter's picture. Everyone notices their unit chief pale and the shocked look on Rossi's face as they are sitting there. Hotch rises and grabs a few items of his from in front of him.

"JJ, we'll work this case from here. I need to go make some phone calls. Use anything and everything you need and if the FBI won't pay I will. This case needs to be solved," Rossi says as he stands.

Hotch walks out of the conference room and heads toward his office. His hand is on his forehead, rubbing it as he tries to hold in his emotions in check.

In the conference room, the others hear Rossi's stern message, realizing there must be something personally about this case for both of them. What they do not know is how that little girl up on the screen is connected to them. Just that the case needs to be solved. Each of them ponder Rossi's parting words.

No matter what the cost.