Clyde Easter was nothing if not quick and efficient. It was less than an hour after making contact with Emily that they were now on a private jet winging their way to Germany where they would catch a military transport to take them to Virginia. All told, it would be about twelve hours of traveling before she set foot again in the BAU. Or would be if that was where Clyde was taking her.
"Safe house?" Emily cried out. "I'm not going to a safe house when Doyle has them!"
"Emily, we know you're his target so it works to everyone's benefit if you stay hidden until we locate him."
"Everyone but Hotch, Rossi and Morgan!" she snapped back. "Clyde, you know what Doyle is capable of. He'll torture them, keep them alive as long as possible and make them suffer every moment. I'm not going to hide away like some scared rabbit. You couldn't get me to do that when I 'died' and you're sure as hell are not going to get me to do that now!"
"Dammit, Emily! Remember the last time you went after Doyle? He nearly killed you. You almost didn't make it back."
"I'm well aware of that. But this is my family, Clyde. I need to go and help them. We're going to the BAU. I suspect there's an inter-agency effort going on now?"
At her raised eyebrow, Clyde Easter growled. "You know there is. Ian Doyle is one of the most wanted men in the world, especially in America. Now with three federal agents kidnapped, that gives you yanks all the more reason to play John Wayne."
"John Wayne isn't going to get the guys out of there alive," Emily mused. Easter could see that brain he admired as much as her beauty working rapidly. "How did Doyle find out about me?"
"There's been a security leak in your government. All evidence seems to point to an outside hacker, but the inner circle seems to think it's a mole. With what department, we're not certain, but he, or she, has been able to hack into several classified documents and sell the contents. We think this person stumbled across your file and sold the information to Doyle."
"You don't think it was someone on his payroll?"
Easter shook his head. "There's someone who's definitely been freelancing. But this person obviously knew enough about Doyle to know that he would pay very handsomely for information about your whereabouts."
"Is it in the FBI?"
Clyde shook his head again. "Unlikely. He seems to be keeping himself in international efforts. With the domestic focus, it's unlikely if he was FBI he'd be aware of where to look for some of this information."
"A mole," Emily mused. "CIA, NSA, State Department and other organizations."
Clyde tiled his head as he regarded her. "What is going on in that beautiful head of yours?"
Emily stared out the window. "Just thinking."
"She's alive?" Reid squeaked out, his eyes wide with disbelief as he stared at JJ.
Garcia sat down with a loud thump.
"How?" Reid squeaked again.
"When Emily got out of surgery, she was taken to an undisclosed location to recuperate. Ian Doyle is one of the most dangerous men in the world and Emily was the only one who knew him inside and out. She was deemed too valuable to put at risk so it was decided that her death would be faked and she would be given a new identity."
"And she just walked away, from all of us?" Reid asked angrily. "She just left us?"
"She didn't have much choice," JJ sighed. "If Emily was alive she either would have been taken again-"
"We would have protected her!" Garcia cried out.
"Or one or all of us would have," JJ continued in a strong voice. "Doyle would have killed all of us and all of our families. Your mother, Spencer. Kevin, Penelope. And Henry and Will. Jack would have died and Morgan's mother and sisters. Rossi has a sister in Oregon and likely she would have been killed too. We all had targets on our backs if Emily remained alive and Doyle free."
"Well, what went wrong, because it looks like that's what happened anyway," Reid snapped out.
"There's been a mole working the intelligence agencies for the past year. It's been very quiet and hush-hush because we can't seem to find any trace of him. All of his forays look like the work of a hacker, but we think it's been an inside job."
"Hacker? Mole?" Garcia echoed. "That's what you had me trying to figure out today."
JJ nodded. "The file the mole hacked into was Emily's. It contained the three potential aliases we gave her and passport information."
"Oh God, JJ," Garcia whispered. "Do you think he found her? I mean, this guy is good and I couldn't even figure out when he hacked into the file. We don't know how long he's had this information or how long Doyle has known."
"If he had Emily, he wouldn't need to take Hotch and the others," JJ said.
"Unless it was to make Emily talk," Reid replied. "Emily wouldn't break under torture. She'd let Doyle kill her first before she told him where Declan was."
"So why take Morgan, Hotch and Rossi?" Penelope asked.
"To smoke Emily out."
"Stay with me, Emily! Keep squeezing my hand!"
He could hear Morgan shouting frantically and his words flooded his body with panic. Hotch pushed aside SWAT members as he ran frantically to where Derek was leaning over Emily.
He gasped in shock when he saw her impaled by the wooden table leg. He dropped down next to her and heard himself screaming for the medics.
"Emily! Emily! Hang on!" Hotch cried out. His hand brushed back her bangs and the movement caused her eyelids to flutter and slowly she opened them to focus on his face.
"Let me go," she whispered.
"Like Hell I will," he snapped back. "Prentiss, you keep your ass in this world! That's an order! Where the Hell is that medic?"
"Let me go," she repeated, her eyes large and pleading.
"Never, Emily."
"Emily," Hotch murmured.
"I think he's coming too."
Even through a fog of pain, both physical and emotional as he remembered the last moments he spent with Emily Prentiss, Hotch could recognized that rough voice. Rossi. Slowly, Hotch tried to open his eyes and move his arms. When he could do one, but not the other, his head jerked up and he panicked slightly.
"Easy, Hotch!" he heard Derek to his left. "You're restrained."
His eyes focused and Hotch could see that his wrist and ankles were tied to the arms and front legs of the chair in which he sat. He looked to his left where a bruised Morgan gave him a lopsided smile and then to his right where what appeared to be an uninjured Rossi nodded at him.
Hotch shifted slightly in his chair and winced. He could feel the effects of the taser still. He could see he was tied to the chair by plastic restraints. He tested them and knew they were securely fastened. He looked at Rossi. "Doyle?"
"Who else? If the Irish accents of the guys who grabbed me wasn't a dead give away, I don't know what is," the older man replied.
"Anyone else taken? Reid? JJ? Garcia?" Hotch asked.
"I don't think so, Hotch," Derek replied. "I thought I heard a couple of my goons talking about how they couldn't get to them and to forget about it. That we were enough."
Hotch let out a relieved breath. At least they were safe and no doubt would have figured out something was wrong. Spencer and Garcia were waiting for them at the BAU and since Emily's death, Penelope had been keeping fairly close tabs on them. If they didn't show up, she would raise the alarm and wouldn't stop until someone investigated.
"What I don't understand," Rossi began as he gently tried to rotate his wrists, seeing if he could loosen the ties in some way. "Is why Doyle grabbed us? It's not like any of us know where the heck Declan is."
"Yeah, and it's not like any of us were getting close to him," Derek nodded. "None of us have gotten a bead on him for two years."
"I suspect Doyle will let us know exactly what he wants with us," Hotch replied dryly.
"How very perceptive of you, Agent Hotchner," a voice with a slight Irish lilt called out from the shadows. The speaker moved forward until one of the overhanging lights in the room hit him and the BAU men could see his face.
Ian Doyle.