This is just a short, separate POV to the last chapter (because you guys were just so great with your reviews!) :)

EDIT: I thought I'd be able to get another chapter in before I leave the country for three weeks, but alas, it did not happen. So please don't fear, this story is NOT abandoned - it will be updated again in a little while... :)


She really didn't mean to sleep for this long.

She had arrived in town just after lunch, pulling into the nearly abandoned parking lot. She had made sure to avoid both Greenhaven and Westvale, since the two different mini-teams of FBI agents were working in those two towns. However, she knew she didn't want to go far – she tried to convince herself that it was all in order to confuse those tracking her, but she couldn't deny her selfish need to feel somewhat close to her family again.

So she drove to Evensly and selected the only motel (and, fittingly, restaurant) in town. She'd intended to check in, inspect her room and set up her defences before planning her next move, but the minute she entered her standard issue motel room she'd been overtaken by a more primal instinct – that of a tired mother-to-be requiring more sleep. She'd barely kept her eyes open long enough to do a perimeter check and to set up her hidden weapons (three in total) before collapsing onto the bed and falling into a deep slumber.

She'd awoken six hours later, startled out of her restful state by the sound of voices at her window.

Groggily, she rouses herself out of her bed, lamenting the loss of her ability to instantly spring from sleep to action, a skill lost around the time her body's demand for sleep had increased. She moves silently to the edge of the window, hidden from view by the mauve curtain lining the interior of the window. Her gun is ready at her side, prepared for anything.

Well almost anything, as it turns out.

She nearly drops the gun in shock as she watches Ashley Seaver and David Rossi cross the parking lot, followed immediately by Derek Morgan and Aaron Hotchner. The four of them are all caught in conversation, heading towards the rooms on the opposite side of the parking lot, where two black Suburbans are now parked. A fifth person runs up behind them, aiming to catch up to the rest of his group, and her heart involuntarily skips a beat as she realizes who it is. Spencer Reid makes it back to his teammates in time to bid them all goodnight, as they all wave goodbye to each other for the evening, making their ways into their respective rooms.

All she can think in that moment is: Shit.

How could she have been so stupid? She should have been more careful, should have been more prudent in her choice of town and motel. Well, not like Evensly had any other lodgement choices, but still, she was much too close to the team and the investigation to begin with, and now here she was checked into the same motel.

Her first instinct is to get her things together, throw them into the vehicle, and to get the hell out of Dodge. However, there's still way too much daylight, even in this late in the evening, and the parking lot is much too small to risk moving to her vehicle without drawing the attention of one of her five former team members. Though a few more vehicles have pulled in for the night after her, it's still nowhere busy enough for her to slip out unnoticed.

So she'll have to wait. She can't leave in the morning, after them, because if they've already questioned the night manager upon their arrival (who hadn't checked "Sarah Ryan" in), they'll question the day manager first thing, and it's pretty damn certain that he'll remember the lone pregnant woman checked into room 116. She is, at the very least, moderately pleased that she'd realized one of her mistakes, that of alternating first letters with her chosen pseudonyms. She'd recalled it last night, after seeing Reid's face on the television screen, about how he'd overheard her talking to Tsia about "Lauren Reynolds" and how Interpol had arranged the whole L.R thing for its agents.

She decides to make her move in the middle of the night, to have everything ready to go and waiting, so that she can just slip away into her vehicle and out back onto the safety and obscurity of the open road. She turns on the television and prepares to wait out the remaining six hours or so, fighting hard against the temptation to open her curtains and casually watch the respective windows of her former teammates. Propped up against the bed, her hand rubs over her stomach nervously, as if she is afraid that somehow her unborn child will sense the proximity of its other genetic donor (somehow "father" doesn't quite seem appropriate), so close and so nearby.

Finally, three am rolls around, and she quickly turns off the lights and the television, grabbing her bag on the bed as she makes her way to the door. She hopes that if, by chance, someone does see her, one might assume she was a prostitute or some other unsavoury character prone to wandering the night, leaving her to her own affairs. She closes the door, placing the bag done once more as she fiddles with the lock. She starts to make her way to her vehicle when a feeling a panic overcomes her, and she recognizes it as the sensation of being watched.

Hurrying to the vehicle, she places the bag on the passenger seat and moves to get in. That's when she hears the door open behind her, somewhere on the other side of the parking lot, and she's already decided that it's time to bolt.

"FBI!" she hears called out from behind her vehicle, and her heart almost shudders to a stop from the shock of hearing his voice again. He yells out again, instructions to stop the vehicle and to get out, but with the blood pounding in her ears she can't quite make it out. She shifts the vehicle swiftly from reverse to first gear, and then on to second, looking back in the mirror once before she rockets out of the motel parking lot and out onto the adjacent stretch of dark, open road.

The moment where she looks back is ingrained in her head: she can see him standing behind her vehicle, gun drawn parallel to the car, his hair all askew in the night air. He is clad in only a t-shirt and sweatpants, and it reassures her, somehow, that nothing about him (physically, at least) has changed.

"Stop it, Emily," she whispers out loud to herself, because she knows what she is doing. She's romanticizing everything, now; ever since she's been pregnant, she's found herself putting a romantic spin on her one night stand with Spencer Reid, altering her memories to make it feel much more sensitive and emotional than it really was.

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts, and focuses on the problem at hand. She's on the run again. She can't go back the way she came. And they are getting closer – both Doyle's henchmen and her former team. They are moving in from all angles, and she really and honestly does not know what to do.

So she decides to do the one thing she always does when she is left without answers. Taking a deep, calming breath, she grabs her cellphone and dials a number she committed to memory long ago.

"Penelope. It's me. I know it's late, but I need your help."