I'm back! So nice to be back in England, even though Belgium and France were excellent, and the kids we took were the best ever!
Hope you enjoy – please review if you can! Thank you to all those who reviewed so far – I'm behind on my review replies, I do apologise.
Thanks once again to Lily Moonlight!
Calverville Point, South Dakota
'Fear is an emotion indispensable for survival.' –Hannah Arendt.
Chapter 9
"Hi, Jenna. I'm Agent Jareau and this is Agent Rossi. We have a few questions we'd like to ask you," JJ looked at the girl sat in front of her. She looked nervous and apprehensive and to be honest, that would have been exactly how JJ felt when confronted by two FBI agents at the age of 16.
"What can you tell us about Amy?" JJ said. "What was she like?" This was their third high school, and the same responses were coming from everybody. No, they had not seen anyone acting suspiciously; no, there had been no change in the girls' personalities; the girls were lovely, popular and bright and no, they didn't have serious boyfriends.
"Amy was... quiet," Jenna said. "She didn't like going out much, she preferred to stay in and study or read. She wanted to be a doctor when she finished college."
"Did Amy say anything to you about being followed, or thinking that someone was watching her?" Rossi said. He'd left most of the questioning of students to her, clearly thinking that they were more likely to respond to a female. He had grilled the guidance counsellors and teachers instead.
Jenna looked away from them, then nodded. "She said she thought Mandy Simmons boyfriend was following her. She wasn't sure though. He's at college and Amy met him at a party her older brother had and he started going out with Mandy. Amy thought she saw him outside her house, getting out of his car and looking up at her window. It freaked her out."
"Have you told anyone this before?" JJ said.
Jenna shook her head. "I thought she was being paranoid, or making it up to get attention, or annoy Mandy. Amy and Mandy never got along."
"What's changed your mind?" Rossi said, his voice as gentle as he could make it.
Jenna began to cry, her shoulders shaking. JJ moved around the table, putting an arm around the girl's shoulders. "What is it, Jenna? No one's going to be mad at you and you haven't done anything. Tell me what it is."
"I've seen him too," the girl sobbed. "I saw him outside my house, looking up at the window. Does that mean he's going to take me?"
JJ rubbed her shoulders, looking at Rossi. Jenna was verging on the hysterical; they'd get no more information out of her until she calmed down. "No one is going to hurt you, Jenna. I promise you." She handed the girl a tissue. "We need you to tell us some more information so we can catch him. What is Mandy's boyfriend called?"
"Gregory Newton," Jenna said shakily. "I'm not sure it was him though."
"Why not?" JJ said. "What made you think it wasn't?"
"It was a different car than what he drives. Greg has a VW, and this was an SUV. Amy was rubbish with cars, she wouldn't have noticed, but my dad's a mechanic..." she began to cry again, her brown eyes becoming red-rimmed.
"Jenna, have you had your photo in the media recently; or somewhere where someone outside of your family could see it?" JJ asked. Jenna had not been on Garcia's list of names of brown-eyed juniors in the media, and JJ was certain that Garcia would not have made a mistake.
Jenna nodded. "It was my sixteenth birthday in June and my parents had a banner made and hung it up outside the house. It had my photo on."
JJ looked across at Rossi, who had sat up straight, his eyes wide. They had just caught a break.
"I need you to think carefully. Where did your parents get the banner from?" she said, lowering her head so she could look Jenna in the eye.
Jenna shrugged. "I think it was Posters 4U. It's where everyone gets theirs from."
"Did Amy have one for her birthday?" Rossi asked, standing up.
"We all did. Nearly everyone in our class had one for their 16th," she nodded. "That's how he's choosing his girls, isn't it?"
Neither of them answered.
"I'm going to call Hotch," Rossi said. "Then Garcia." He left the room, leaving JJ with Jenna, who had stopped crying and now looked pale, her eyes terrified.
"Jenna, we won't let him get you. You have to trust us. When did you last see him?"
"Three nights ago. I heard my dog barking so I looked outside and saw him. I thought it looked a bit like Greg, but he was taller and he looked older," she choked back more tears.
"What time was it?"
"About nine-thirty. I had just finished my math homework."
"Did you tell your mom or dad?" JJ said, moving the girl's hair away from her face.
"I told my mom, and she said it was just Mac who lived next door. She looked out but he was gone," Jenna said. "I'd seen him before though, near the bus stop when I came home late from school. We'd had a self-defence class as an after school thing so I got a later bus."
"What day was that?"
"It was a Monday, as I had to cancel my piano lesson."
"Okay, Jenna, I'm going to call your parents and let them know what's happened. You will be perfectly safe here in school, it's the safest place you can be right now. When school finishes tonight, your mom or dad will pick you up and we'll have a police car near your house to keep an eye on thing. You have to remember that he has only taken girls when they have been alone. Make sure you are with someone all the time. Don't go off alone." JJ gave her hand a squeeze and stood up. "I'm going to leave you in here and ask the principal if one of your friends can come sit with you."
She went outside, finding Rossi stood looking impatient. "I think this is going to aggravate him, JJ," he said. "If he can't get to the girl he's stalking because she's being protected, then he may just go for whatever he can get."
JJ nodded. She wasn't a profiler, but she was intelligent, and she agreed with Rossi's theory. "I'm also assuming that the list of possible targets has increased."
"It's risen by over fifty. Brown is the most common eye colour, and a lot of girls in the past six months celebrated their sweet sixteenth." He nodded at the principal as she walked passed to check on her student. "I've filled her in on what's happening. Thankfully, she seems a sensible woman. We just need to call Jenna's parents and then head on up to Breeze High School."
"I'm going to call Hotch to suggest we set up a press conference about keeping these girls safe. After our presence around the high schools, it's going to be common knowledge that we're working the murdered girls," she said, her mind running at the speed of light, composing what she would say to the media. "Can you drop me off at the station, Dave? You might need to do Breeze by yourself."
"I'll take Emily," he said. "She and Hotch are at the station already. She'll probably be thankful for a break away from the boss."
"Why do you say that?" JJ's interest was piqued, momentarily taken away from the upcoming feeding of the vultures.
"I heard them having a rather... well, it sounded like an argument, last night in Hotch's room. I don't think it was a professional conversation," Rossi said. JJ sometimes forgot that it was Dave who was the biggest gossip instead of Garcia.
She shook her head. "Emily would have told me if there was something going on," she said, frowning.
"I didn't say there was something going on, JJ," his eyes twinkled. "I think the issue is that there isn't something going on." Rossi paused at the school office where she needed to go to get the number for the parents.
"Maybe a little a romance to profile would cheer us all up," she said, as a school secretary answered her knock. "Especially Emily and Hotch."
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Snowflakes danced hypnotically across the window pane, some adhered to it for the last moments of their lives, the heat from inside melting them. Some built up, clinging together for cold comfort, and Emily wondered how long it would be before they would need spades to dig themselves out of the station.
She replaced the handset, having just called another parent to let them know that their daughter could be a target of the man that had butchered four other girls. "He looks for birthday banners and stalks them," she said, almost to herself. "Finds out about their family, their routines, and takes them when they're vulnerable. But he hasn't gone inside a house yet."
"That's not to say he won't," Hotch said and passed her a cup of coffee. "It depends on how desperate he gets. We need to make sure that Sophie and her mom don't go to the press. It may antagonise him."
She turned from staring at the window and looked at her boss. "You think he's going to try to take another girl sooner, don't you?" Her tone was almost accusatory.
He nodded. "The town is buzzing with what's happened. Our inquiries are making people more nervous. He will have heard all of this, no matter how much of a loner he is. I think he'll try to take his next victim in the next couple of days."
She sipped the coffee even though it was too hot, then became slightly aware of Hotch's close proximity to her. It was nothing unusual. They partnered each other a lot, because as he had said last night, they worked well together, but he was standing closer than Rossi would, or Reid. "It's going to be a long night, isn't it?"
Hotch glanced out of the window. "And a cold one. Those rooms weren't that warm last night."
"I have an extra blanket in my room. You can have that," she said, looking at the next number on the list. "This is the last one."
"When you've spoken to them, we should go over the information Garcia's found on the two missing girls from the college," he said, moving away from her. "I'm not convinced yet it's connected. They are twenty years old, and knew each other. None of the other victims are connected apart from the banners and appearance. Both these girls were blonde."
Emily made short work of informing a mother that her daughter was the killer's type. The mom was practical and unflustered and positive that they would catch him before anyone else came to harm. Emily just hoped that her belief would be justified.
"What've we got?" she said, sitting in the seat next to Hotch and looking over his shoulder.
He spread out the papers. "Both disappeared without a trace within five days of each other. They didn't go home, didn't withdraw any money apart from $200 the day after they went missing, and have made no contact since. A bit like the men that have gone missing."
"You think that the men and the college students are connected?" Emily said. "I would say that our second UnSub prefers men and is either homosexual or has homosexual tendencies and is fighting them."
"I don't think they're connected. I agree with your theory about the UnSub, but why there has to be a way he abducts them? Anyway," he shook his head slightly. "We'll go through that tonight."
"My room this time," she said. "Might stop us shouting knowing Henry's next door."
He gave a barely noticeable nod. "Emily, have a look at Reid's map. Can you plot the dorm – it's called Calver Hall."
She unscrolled the map and found the place quickly. "Got it."
"The girls were last seen near their dorms, five days apart. What's near to the building?"
"Three hiking trails begin from there and rise straight up into the Hills. There's a lot of dense forestry." She looked at him. "Practise run? Maybe he knew Carrie, was even dating her, lost his temper one night and she disappeared. Emile got suspicious and confronted him."
"Maybe Carrie was the trigger. It could have been her who was pregnant." Hotch pulled out his cell. "Garcia. Did Carrie Jennings check into a doctors or clinic for an abortion in the weeks before her disappearance? I need you to be super fast with this, Garcia." As he waited, Emily found that he was watching her, and felt her cheeks redden under his gaze. "Thanks, Garcia." He nodded.
"Carrie had an abortion," Emily said, feeling the same wrenching pain she had grown used to over the years, the same empathy for anyone who'd had to make that decision.
"Three weeks before she disappeared. There's something else, Emily. If you look at the dump sites, the bodies were positioned so they faced west. If he went back to them, he could have looked at them whilst facing the sunset. That will be the romance for him," he glanced outside. "We need to get a search team out there before the weather worsens. Winters is outside, I'm going to tell her to get her men together."
Emily shivered as he opened the door, only for Rossi and JJ to take his place in the room. Emily filled them in quickly, her hands clasping the still warm mug of coffee. She had only finished when Hotch burst back through the door.
"Rossi, I need you on the search with me. And Morgan when he gets back. JJ, your press conference is all sorted; don't give anything away about the missing students. If anything is asked about the missing men, explain that we are also investigating that, but the missing girls are taking precedence. Emily, stay with JJ, then go up to Breeze High and finish the interviews. We still need to be thorough."
They nodded, and felt rather thankful that she would not be outside in the cold. She shivered.
"Prentiss," Hotch's voice came from the doorway. "Call in a pharmacy and get yourself some cold medicine. You look flushed." His eyes contradicted the harsh use of her last name, and she recognised a softness that was no longer as rare. As the door banged shut, she turned and looked at JJ, whose eyebrows were raised extremely high.
"You know," Emily said. "If the wind changes, your face will stay that way."
"And if I wasn't speaking with most of the media in South Dakota, you would have some explaining to do right now."
"Explaining about what?" Morgan fell through the door.
"Back out, Derek. You need to catch up with Hotch. He'll brief you," Emily said, thankful for an excuse to get rid of him.
"Aw, man. I already have frozen..."
"Go!" she shouted, making a rather warmer looking Reid, stand back in false apprehension.
"And where should I be?" he said.
"Heading in the same direction, I think," JJ took out a pocket mirror and checked her reflection. "It's time to face the press."
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"Hotch, man, wait up!"
Hotch slowed slightly, hearing Morgan's feet crunching the deepening snow. "Did Prentiss tell you what we've got?"
Morgan shook his head, then used his hand to wipe the snow off his scalp.
"The two missing girls..."
"Emile Landiere and Carrie Jennings. The dean's secretary told us a little about them. Her son was a friend of theirs," Morgan interrupted.
"I think I know where they might be." Hotch opened the doors to the black vehicle and they jumped inside, Reid rushing to catch up. "Detective Winters is meeting us at the start of the Farrington Trail near to the girls' dorm rooms. If the UnSub killed Emile and Carrie, their bodies are going to be in a secluded spot, about a mile off one of the trails in that area. He's probably left them together. Reid, get Garcia on the line and ask her to get satellite over where we're heading. I want GPS points for any places that provide a view of the sunset."
The significance of the dump sites had occurred to him when they looked at the map. They had all faced west. The UnSub would sit and look at the victim whilst the sunset in the background.
"Who the hell is that behind us?" Hotch said, catching a glance at the new Mercedes right behind them.
"Judging by the registration, my guess is that it's the mayor," Rossi said. "Hotch, pull over. See what he wants."
Hotch indicated, in no mood for politics. The Mercedes almost failed to break in time as Hotch slowed, screeching to a halt.
"Is there a particular reason you are trying to run my team off the road?" he said, allowing an impatient tone of iron into his voice as the mayor came round to his window.
"Are you Agent Hotchner?" The mayor was small and round, his face showing the signs of too much alcohol and too rich much food.
"I am, and at the moment you are stopping me getting to a potential murder scene," he felt annoyance bubble under his skin, in much the same way he had when idiot politicians had endangered Emily and Reid in Colorado.
"You haven't even come to see me and you've been in the town two days. My son is missing, possibly still alive, and you're not doing a damn thing about it! You're not going anywhere until you tell me what you're going to do..." his face reddened, looking about to burst.
Hotch resisted the urge to stick his hand out of the window and grab hold of his tie. "You are impeding a federal investigation and I suggest you get back in your car, turn around and go home. Get as much information on your son as possible, including any offshore accounts he holds, and an agent will come see you as soon as we have one available."
"As soon as you have one available? Do you know who I am?" The mayor's face puckered in anger.
"Quite frankly, I don't care who you are. Get out of my way, or I'll arrest you." He revved the engine.
A young woman walked beside him, her face concerned and cold. "Get back in the car, dad," she said. "We'll sort this later."
"Damn right we'll sort this later," he said, glaring at Hotch before turning round.
"If he's not had a coronary by then," Hotch heard Morgan mutter. He put his foot down, catching sight of the lights on Detective Winters' car half a mile in front.
"The first two victims, Isabel and Amy, were found places where they wouldn't be found that easily. It's not until the third and fourth victims that he became more confident and left them in more open spaces. But they're will still be some space around them, he will have needed the room," Hotch said, checking the rear view. The Mercedes had gone back to the town.
"He's a sexual sadist, Hotch. He will have gotten off on torturing them. If these are his first kills, then they taught him that he enjoyed their fear," Morgan said. "He will have still bound them, possibly to a tree, and the second kill would have been the best."
"Because Emile would have been looking at Carrie's body, knowing what was going to happen to her," Rossi said, disgust in his voice.
Hotch put the wipers on full, shifting the snow that was now coming down quickly. "This may be futile," he said. "The weather's worsening."
"We may catch a lucky break," Rossi said. "And we're nearly there. There's Detective Winters."
"Agent Hotcher," she called. "I have four teams of men made up of the older rangers and officers. We need more of an idea where to look."
"Hotch!" Reid interrupted. "Garcia's sent me some starting points. She's given me six set of GPS coordinates, all of which have a lookout over the east and are about a mile off the nearest path."
Hotch stood back as Winters gave the information out to the teams. He was conscious of the weather and the need to have his team at full strength. Emily already looked as if she was about to come down with a bug, even if she hadn't realised it yet. He knew her well enough to tell. "Reid, you go with Detective Winters. Rossi, go with team C and Morgan, team B." He looked at the fourth team, who were stood there, their faces grim. "Let's go," he said. And they went, heading off into the snowy blackness, the wind's soft murmur sounding lonely in the vast emptiness.
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"That went well," Emily said, as JJ followed her back into their conference room. "No tricky questions."
"And a lot of support," JJ said, looking relieved. "The media are being extremely cooperative, which makes a nice change." She put her hands in her pockets and Emily braced herself for the inquisition.
It didn't arrive. "We should head up to the school. Maybe we can get something to eat there," JJ said. "And you do look pale. You should get some cold meds."
Emily rolled her eyes. "Don't you start. I'll pick some up later. I do have a sore throat," she confessed. "Let's get in the car."
She drove with the radio on, listening to the news bulletins that were now filling the air waves, all reporting on the description of the UnSub and preventative measures. The weather report followed, predicting a severe snow storm, and she thought of Hotch and the rest out in the woods. "We'd better stock up on cold meds for Morgan too," she said, flicking the radio off as it began to play country music.
The school was twenty miles away, and given the driving conditions, they'd barely covered five in fifteen minutes. She saw JJ glancing at her and sighed in exasperation. "What do you want to know? You may as well spit it out now."
"Rossi said you and Hotch had a bit of a heated discussion last night in his room. I wanted to know what you weren't sharing," JJ said.
Emily saw the small, amused smile on her friend's lips and groaned. She was useless as keeping secrets. That had always been part of her problem; she was too open. "We did some work on the missing men case late last night in his room, and we ended up telling each other a few home truths. There's nothing there, JJ. He needs to move on from Haley, which is what I told him."
"And what did he tell you?"
"Something about why I didn't have meaningless sex because I didn't mind being lonely." She tried to focus more on the road and less on Hotch's words.
"Hotch is interested in your sex life?" JJ said. Even without looking, Emily could tell that JJ's eyes were glowing with delight at the thought.
"No, Hotch isn't interested in my sex-life. He was profiling me, it wasn't personal!" All she needed was that little snippet going back to Garcia and that would be all she would here until she resigned from the BAU.
"Personal!" JJ said. "How can you say him profiling you isn't personal? He partners you with him nearly all the time..."
"That's because we work well together," Emily interrupted, slowing down to take a sharp corner.
"And you work well together because you study each other," JJ said, her voice now at a normal volume.
"Like we all study each other..."
"No, Emily. I do not look at Morgan or Reid the same way you look at Hotch. Nor do I stand that close to them, and when you do work together, when you interview suspects, you read each other's minds. He's the first person you look for when you enter a room," JJ said, sounding a little too happy about it for Emily's liking.
"Bullshit!" Emily said, glancing at the map on JJ's knee and wondering how long was left of the journey. "We had a bit of a shout at each other, and said some things we wouldn't have done under normal circumstances."
"Hmmm," JJ said, the left a short gap of silence. "'Fess up, Em. I promise I won't tell."
Emily sighed. She had been avoiding thinking about this all day. "You swear on Henry's life you won't breathe a word of this conversation to another living soul, including Garcia?"
"I swear," JJ said, laughing. "How old are we Emily?"
"Old enough to know that developing feelings for your boss isn't good."
"Even when they're reciprocated?"
"They're not." Emily saw a sign for the high school. She sent a swift thank you to which ever god was currently on duty.
"I disagree. And I'm not the only one. Hotch was over Haley before they were divorced, he's just not gotten over the guilt yet," JJ said.
"Oh, I know that," Emily said, her tone self-deprecating. "And I told him as much last night. I also accused him of wanting to have an affair with Kate Joyner when he was in England."
"Good going, Em," JJ said. "Classic moves."
"They weren't moves. And now you can assure yourself that Aaron Hotcher thinks of me as his subordinate, and only as his subordinate. I will die a lonely death," she added, rather melodramatically, pulling over in what she thought was a parking bay, only the lines were obscured by snow. "Say nothing, Jareau. I know a thousand and one ways to kill you, and have a friend who'll take care of your body." Humour was always the best solution to bury a situation.
"This conversation isn't over," JJ said, slamming the car door shut, and following Emily into the school. "You couldn't harm a fly."
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Morgan wondered if being subjected to extreme temperatures had an adverse effect on the possibilities of becoming a father as he avoided tripping over the roots of a rather large tree into a small clearing.
It was his team's second location, and they had now been walking and searching for nearly an hour. He looked around the site at the trunks of the trees, certain that he'd see markings if one of them had been used to help tie someone. Nothing was visible. He moved until he stood facing east, looking through a gap in the blanket of trees out over the fields, or as much as he could see through the snow.
"I want to see her with the sun behind her," he said, his eyes scanning the ground. The thickness of the trees meant that there had only been a light scattering of snow, and Morgan could see piles of leaves and branches in various places on the forest floor.
Then he saw rope.
The tiniest sliver of rope was coiled next to a pile of snowy leaves, like a dead snake, its poison sapped. "Over here!" he shouted. "They're over here!"
Leaves were brushed away, branches moved and bone uncovered. Two skulls, a few tangles of blonde hair nearby, and a detritus of bone. He could see knife marks on what were the thigh bones, too neat to be the markings of animal's teeth.
"Hotch," he said into his cell. "We've found them. Call everyone off. We've found Carrie and Emile."
The snow continued to fall as he walked back, now numbed to the cold, warmed by anger and determination to catch the bastard who had already taken too many lives.
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Sarah
