A/N: Hi readers! Have you noticed my typos, grammatical errors, etc. isn't as many as they were before? Well, that's because I have this amazing typo finder that helps me out. If it wasn't for her, there would be a few quite funny typos hiding in the chapters. Anyways, let's begin where we left off, shall we?
Hide & Seek
A Criminal Minds Fan Fiction
by Sweda
She woke up with a killer headache and almost no memory of the night before.
Emily groaned as she reached out to silence the alarm using her uninjured arm and then let herself fall back on the bed. The bed she vaguely remembered Morgan had carried her to after they had spent some time in the bathroom.
The bathroom. What the hell had they been doing in the bathroom?
As she asked herself that question, her memory came crashing back.
She had cried her eyes out.
And puked her guts up.
And Morgan had been there helping her, comforting her, trying to make her talk about what had made her reach for the first bottle and then the next one and then the next.
The aftermath of her drinking was now making itself present. Her head pounded and her mouth felt and tasted like a desert. Her eyes stung from tiredness and behind them was a dull ache she suspected came from the headache.
As she lay in bed, feeling like she had been run over twice, more bits and pieces of her memory started to come back to her in fuzzy flashes.
The mini-bar. Now she knew where she had gotten the booze from. The bill was going to be a bitch.
The pain. It had been both physical and emotional. She tried to recall what had caused her the physical pain but that piece of memory was still sort of foggy. The emotional she had no problem remembering but she chose not to think about it.
The next glimpse of last night was one of Morgan knocking on her door. She didn't remember opening it for him but she guessed she must have since he had been sitting with her in the bathroom. Also the fact that her hotel door was still intact led her to that conclusion.
A fight? Her next flash only caused her confusion as she was trying to interpret it. After letting her slightly intoxicated brain work with it for a while, the puzzle piece fell into place.
She had pushed Morgan! Crap! Shit!
She felt embarrassment burning her face and pulled the duvet over her head.
She had freaking used physical violence on her partner because she wanted space. Friggin' space!
More of her memory was coming back to her and she remembered of how they had sat in the bathroom and talked. She remembered how supportive he had been, no judgement or pity in his eyes, only empathy and concern. Because he had handled the situation like he had, she felt even worse for behaving like she had.
Emily kept her face hidden under the duvet and kept reliving how she had gotten herself into deep shit.
A memory of her mouthing off to Hotch after she had been scolded for dismissing an order created an unease in her stomach. That combined with her hangover had her making a beeline for the bathroom.
She emptied the small amount of stomach content she had left and kept her head over the toilet bowl as her body was wracked with dry heaves. Tears burned in her eyes and her throat stung. She was so done with throwing up!
She was just about to get up from kneeling on the floor when something caught her attention. Among her vomit there was blood. Great, she had reopened her bleeding ulcer.
Frozen at her spot on the floor she debated whether or not she should go to the hospital. Last time she had been there, they had told her to lay off the coffee and avoid stronger liquids until it had healed. Also, spicy food had been a big no-no.
She decided to quit coffee and stay away from alcohol for at least two weeks. It had worked before so why wouldn't it this time. She also made a mental note not to never get downright drunk again. She already had enough problems as it was, she didn't need a bleeding ulcer to add to the list.
Satisfied that she had made a decision, Emily heaved herself up and fell down again as her injured shoulder gave out. Crap! The Doctor said it was nothing serious but it sill hurt like a bitch. She made another attempt at getting up and made sure not to put too much weight on the shitty shoulder.
This time she made it and once she was standing upright she took a steading hold on the sink as her world began to spin. How the heck was she suppose to cover up the fact that she had a hangover when she can't even stand up straight?!
She stood in that position, hands gripping the sink, until she thought she had it under control. That was when she looked up at the mirror and met her own reflection.
She looked like crap. The dark circles under her eyes were what you only could describe as pitch black. Not to mention her eyes, they were red rimmed and unfocused.
As she inspected her eyes, she was happy that she kept a bottle of eyedrops in her go bag. It wouldn't solve the problem but it would make it less prominent.
The bruise wasn't as visible as it had been since it was now starting to turn yellow. Emily guessed that with the help of some make-up it would be almost as if it wasn't there.
Her hair was another problem though. It was a mess. Raven strands were pointing in all directions and tangles could be found pretty much everywhere, the worst ones at the back of her head. Emily knew she was going to spend a lot of time with her hairbrush to even begin to make it look anything less than a rat's nest.
She made her way out of the bathroom to check the time and to pop a few pills before moving on to the task of making herself presentable.
Six thirty, the clock read. That meant she had more or less an hour to take care of the mess also known as Emily Prentiss. After swallowing the pills dry her eyes locked on her phone. She was then reminded of what had her reach for the booze in the first place, Dylan had called her.
She unlocked her phone and was surprised when she didn't find any missed calls or unread messages from him. How come he had been so eager to reach her last night that he had changed his number but now, when he could actually reach her, he hasn't made any attempt to do so since yesterday?
Even though it made her utterly confused, Emily settled on being thankful that he had decided to leave her alone for the moment. She made sure to block his new number too and once she had, she put the phone down on the unmade bed.
It was with a big burden she made herself walk the way to the bathroom for the second time since she woke up that day to begin her transformation from a zombie to an, almost, human being.
It had been half an hour since he woke up, memories of last night fresh in mind.
He thought he created a new record in making himself ready for work this morning. He was hoping to catch Hotch before leaving and maybe have a little talk with him.
Showered, shaved and dressed he emerged from his room and entered the corridor. He walked the hallway and scanned the diner, looking for Hotch and found him sitting at a table eating his breakfast.
Morgan moved to join him and ordered some scrambled eggs and bacon on his way over.
"You mind if I sit?" Morgan asked as he reached Hotch's table.
"Not at all," Hotch answered and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"I was wondering if you might have a minute to talk?" Morgan began.
"About.." Hotch trailed off.
"Emily."
"Something happened?" Hotch asked, his voice expressing concern.
He knew Emily had had a couple of rough days lately and he had felt bad for yelling at her yesterday but he had no choice but to do so. She behaved recklessly and ignored orders. No matter how much he had wanted to go easy on her, he couldn't.
Just as Morgan was about to start, the waitress arrived with his food and placed it in front of him. He thanked her and waited for her to leave before he began to speak.
"I went by her room last night after getting back to the hotel, just to check up on her."
"Mhm," Hotch voiced and nodded his understanding.
"When I got there she was kind of..." Morgan stopped talking as he tried to think of a better word than drunk. "Kind of a mess," he settled with.
"How do you mean?"
Morgan debated how to best inform his Boss about Emily's breakdown without getting her into unnecessary trouble. He had no doubt that she would be hungover today which would make everyone understand she had been drinking yesterday. Morgan reasoned that it would be more kind to her if he gave Hotch a heads up and by that hopefully spared her some of Hotch's rage.
"She had been drinking," Morgan made a short pause.
"She had-" Hotch began but Morgan cut him off.
"Just let me finish," Morgan interrupted and held up his hand. "Dylan called her last night and I guess that's when it all came to her. You and I both know Emily refuses to deal with things, especially emotions. She thinks she's the master of compartmentalisation and refuses to let us see her vulnerability. I think yesterday was the day it all became to much for her and she didn't know what to do."
Morgan tried to give Hotch a picture of the situation without revealing too much of what Emily had told him. She had told him in confidence after all.
From the look on his face, Hotch was understanding. Morgan knew he was disappointed in her for her behaviour but his features had softened.
"Hotch, I'm not asking you to ignore what she did because I know you have to talk to her about it. It was reckless and stupid and she needs to know that," he paused and tried to read Hotch's face for some kind of reaction. He came up empty handed so he decided to keep talking.
"But I am asking you to go easy on her. I know having a couple of bad days isn't an excuse but I think she's in a place where she can't handle much more right now," Morgan said, hoping that Hotch would understand.
"I hear you, Morgan, and I will take that into consideration when I talk to her but it's inevitable. As you said, I can't ignore it," Hotch said with a stern face.
"Thank you," Morgan breathed and began eating his breakfast. He could live with that.
The rest of the team soon joined them, except for Emily who was still trying to make herself presentable for the rest of the world inside her room.
Reid arrived first, then JJ and Rossi at pretty much the same time.
They gathered around one table and once they had Hotch decided, after consulting with Morgan, that it was for the best to tell the rest of the team about Emily's state the night before. He gave them the same version of the story he had heard from Morgan minutes ago.
"Is she okay?" Reid questioned, worry etched in his voice.
"As for today I don't know but last night before I went back to my room she was doing okay," Morgan answered. "We talked some and I think it helped."
"I know you guys are worried but Morgan and I think we'll just make it worse if we're watching over her like hawks and smothering her with questions," Hotch told them. "Keep an watchful eye on her but give her some space."
The others nodded their understanding.
"And for God's sake, don't tell Garcia just yet!" Hotch added as he realised what would happen if the Technical Analyst found out.
The people seated around the table laughed lightly at the picture of the hell that would break loose if Garcia found out about Emily's meltdown.
They finished up their breakfast and was just standing to leave when a raspy voice caught their attention.
"I guess that means I'm late for breakfast," Emily stated, standing a few tables away from their own.
The team members quickly scanned her appearance and concluded that she did look pretty much as they had expected her to. Her damp, dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and the dark circles under her eyes were nothing new. She had on a pair of dark slacks and a long sleeved shirt, covering the bruises on her wrists. The cut on her lip had a scab and the bruise on her jaw was hard to notice if you didn't know it was there.
They could see that the bright light was bugging her eyes and they all guessed she had a pretty nasty headache from a blow to the head combined with her hangover.
"You can always order take-away," Morgan suggested which made the corner of her lips turn upwards.
"Come on, I'll stand in line with you," he said and waved for her to join him. "I'm guessing you guys would like some coffee to go?" he continued, turing to the gathering rooted by the table.
Noises and gestures of confirmation told him that he had guessed right.
"I'll get the usual," Morgan replied and started walking towards the line. "You coming?" Morgan asked and looked over his shoulder at Emily.
"I'm coming," Emily replied and started making her way towards him with careful steps.
As Emily and Morgan walked the short distance to the line, the rest of the team started to move towards the waiting cars outside on the parking lot.
It hurt her head to walk so she tried to minimise the pain by walking slowly with careful steps and it seemed to do the trick. The pills she had taken hadn't kicked in yet, hopefully coffee and food would help minimise the pain. Shit! Not coffee, decaf she realised.
"How are you feeling?" Morgan asked her in a low voice once they had reached the line.
Emily was once again filled with an enormous guilt for her behaviour last night and she turned away from him, looking out the window.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, still refusing to meet Morgan's eyes. "I didn't mean to push you, I just need some space," she tried to explain.
"Hey, I get it," Morgan informed her and placed a hand on her arm, trying to make her turn to face him.
She obligated and spun around.
"I'm not mad at you," he continued. "Or maybe I am, a little, but not for pushing me. I'm pissed that you don't feel like you can trust us enough to tell us when you're not feeling well," Morgan told her in a soft voice.
"I'm sorry," Emily said once again, not sure what else to say.
"Just promise me one thing okay, Sugar?"
Emily smiled at his usage of yet another one of his famous nicknames.
"Next time you're feeling like you want to drown your sorrows in Smirnoff or whatever you got your hand on last night, please come talk to me first," he pleaded.
"I promise," Emily told him and held his gaze.
"Good," Morgan said.
That was when her stomach decided to join the conversation.
"I think someone's in desperate need of food," Morgan chuckled.
"I guess," Emily smiled. "Thank you for last night." She realised she hadn't thanked him properly for last night and felt the need to.
"No need to thank me, you already did," Morgan said referring to last night when she had said her thanks while being two seconds away from falling into her sleep induced coma. "And I would do it again," he said and flung his arm around her shoulders.
"I know you would," Emily smiled. She ignored the dull ache the action caused her injured shoulder and put her arm around his waist, giving him a sideways hug.
They had arrived to the station at approximately eight o'clock and it was now two am. They had made Reid and JJ run for lunch and had ended up filling their stomachs with Chinese.
Since last night they had some new material to work with. Rossi and JJ had been sent to interview the girl who could currently at the hospital, recovering from the ordeal without any complications.
The girl had told them that she hadn't gotten a good look at the kidnappers face but she thought he smelled fresh, like he had recently taken a shower. Unfortunately that didn't help them much, pretty much everyone of their suspect could get access to a shower one way or another.
What was different about this kidnapping contrary to the others was that the girl told them she had been snatched on her way walking home from a friend's house.
In all the other kidnappings the victims had been taken from remote locations where the risk of their UnSub getting caught was low. Something had made him bolder and they needed to figure out what.
They devoted the rest of the day to discussing the matter and was surprised when they didn't hear anything about a new kidnapping. Because of the UnSub's escalation, they had counted on having another victim the next day, but they never got one.
At the end of the day when Hotch noticed that everyone was getting tired he decided it was time to call it a night. He ordered the team to go home but asked Emily if she could stay for a minute.
Emily had a pretty good guess of why he wanted her to stay and had been surprised this morning when he hadn't called her out on being hungover. She assumed Morgan had something to do with the fact.
Hotch asked Rossi to close the door after himself when he left the conference room and as he did, Hotch sat down opposite Emily by the table but he didn't say a word.
"I'm guessing you want to talk to me about yesterday?" Emily said and started wringing her hands. Hotch had been quiet for quite some time and she was starting to get nervous.
"Morgan told me you had it a bit rough," Hotch told her.
"How much do you know?" Emily feared to ask him the question but she had to.
She kept her gaze locked on the table in front on her as she asked the question. Arriving to the station, she had been surprised he even let her work today.
"I know you made some decisions I don't approve of and I know what caused you to make them," Hotch spoke in a collected tone.
Emily kept quiet and waited for him to begin yelling at her but he never did.
"Emily." She looked up as he used her first name. "I thought we made a deal that you would tell me when you were having a bad day."
To her, he sounded almost hurt. Like he felt betrayed when she had decided to turn to the bottle instead of talking to him. She realised she would be too if she had offered to help one of them but they choose not to.
"I didn't want to bother you," she mumbled. It was a lame excuse and she knew it, the truth was she hadn't wanted to talk about it.
"You wouldn't be bothering me, Emily. I would be happy to listen to you and try to help you. What I'm not happy about is how you're treating yourself. Stop thinking that you don't deserve to be happy or thinking that you're weak because you're feeling bad. The feelings won't go away even if you pretend they do, trust me I know," Hotch revealed. "If you don't talk about them, they will only get worse and then it will end up like it did yesterday. Or maybe even worse."
He stopped talking and locked eyes with her.
"I'm here as your friend right now, Emily, and not as your boss. Because if I had been you would have been ordered to stay away from this case and to take some time off to straighten everything out. But as I friend I know it would only make things worse for you, so I'm going to let you stay on this case if you promise to talk to me when you think you don't need to. Or talk to Morgan, or JJ or someone else, but you have to talk to someone because you can't keep everything bottled up on the inside. If you do, it will all become too much and at some point, it will be extremely hard to recover from."
When he was met with no response he spoke again. "Do you hear what I'm saying?"
During the time Emily had been sitting and listening to him talking, the lump in her throat had grown bigger and the tears in her eyes had come close to escaping.
She had been an idiot yesterday thinking that she would bother them with her problems. She was causing them more pain by pushing them away than she would have if she had just talked to them. She made a promise to try to be more open towards the team, even though she knew it wouldn't be easy.
Emily then made an attempt to clear her throat but realised she got a rather lame result as she heard her own voice when answering him.
"I hear you," she replied hoarsely and was met with an unusual small smile.
"Good. Then I think it's time for us to get back to the hotel and get some sleep," Hotch said and rose from the chair.
Emily followed suit, still in a minor state of shock over how Hotch had treated her disaster. She had expected screaming and shouting, maybe even to get suspended but in no way had she expected this.
She remained quiet all the back back to the hotel as Hotch drove. She only spoke to wish him a good nights sleep while she stepped out of the car.
She made it back to her hotel room and stopped once she had walked through the door.
On the floor lay the empty bottles from last night. Determined to get rid of them as quickly as possible, she grabbed a plastic bag from the cabinet and threw them inside. She then flung her door open and marched off with the bag in her hand to the dumpster on the other side of the street.
Once she had deposed of it, she turned around and walked back to her room where she went straight to bed.
They assembled at the station the next day. After gulping down some coffee, they went right on to business and began where they left off the night before.
After going straight at it for about two hours and coming up with nothing new, Morgan threw his file at the table.
"We're stuck," he said frustrated with their lack of progress.
He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.
"Maybe we should call Garcia and ask her if she's having better luck with the tape then we are with this," Rossi suggested.
Everyone agreed on what sounded like a good idea and listened as the signals rang.
"Speak and be heard, Mere Mortals!" Garcia answered as she picked up.
"Hi Pen!" JJ greeted as it was her phone they were using to make the call. "You're on speaker."
"Oh, but I was hoping I could tell you about this really awesome thing Kevin and I discovered last night when we-"
"I think it would be best for everyone if you stopped talking right there," Rossi informed her.
"Don't be such a party pooper!" Garcia whined. "If you could just keep your minds open and listen to what I have to say for a few minutes then-"
"My mind is as closed as it can get" Rossi interrupted her.
"Well, Wise Man, I will respect your wishes and talk about something else then," Garcia said, agreeing to Rossi's terms.
"How about the tape we sent you?" Hotch suggested. "Have you made any progress?"
"The tape," Garcia repeated. "Yes, I've made some progress but I don't think it will help you very much when it comes to catching this Man of Explosives you see, 'cause that's the only thing I can tell you. That it is a man's voice talking on the tape" Garcia clarified. "And that, my Sparkly Friends, you already know."
"Sparkly friends?" Reid muttered in confusion.
As Morgan heard him, he just shook his head signalling that he should just let it go. Sometimes Garcia was just Garcia. She said things lacking a reasonable explanation, like now for example.
The two agent's focus shifted back to the conversation in time to hear Emily ask a question.
"How about the sounds in the background?" she questioned.
"Those, my Raven-haired Warrior, don't exist. I'm sorry to disappoint you but I've tried everything. All types of hocus-pocus I could come up with but I still got nothing. I took away the voice and then tried to isolate any other noise that I thought might be present and ended up with nada, ziltch, niet. Your guy must have been recording it in some cellar or a sound proof room because I can't find squat," Garcia declared with a frustrated sigh.
"Too bad," Emily joined in on Garcia's frustration. "Thanks though."
"My pleasure!" Garcia quipped. "If that's all for now, I will once again get on to the task of scrutinising every single nanosecond of this tape and hopefully I'll find something I missed the first three times around."
"That's all for now," Hotch informed her.
"If that's the case then, bye. And stay safe, Dear Crime Fighters!"
The call disconnected and the room fell silent.
"Well, that didn't help us much," Rossi was the first one to acknowledge.
"Tell me about it," JJ murmured.
"We can still go over the girl's statement from yesterday one more time," Morgan proposed, looking around the table at his colleagues. "Or we could try doing a cognitive interview with you," he said focusing on Emily. "You may have seen more of the UnSub than you know."
Everyone turned their attention to Emily, curious about what her answer would be.
"I doubt it would give us anything but we can try."
"You want me to do it or do you prefer someone else?" Morgan asked.
"You'll do fine."
Morgan rose from his chair. "Let's get on with it then."
Emily was just about to follow suit when the door to the conference room flung open and Detective Moore interrupted them for the second time in three days. He breathed heavily what the agents guessed was from hurrying to tell them something.
"He's got another one," the Detective finally manage to squeeze out between his laboured breaths.
"Show us," Hotch ordered in a stern voice.
"Guys, bring it over here!" the Detective yelled, turning his head out the door towards the sea of desks.
Two men quickly rose from their respective chair and made their way over to the conference room. Both men were strangers to the agents and Emily found herself wondering where the twins had gone.
"Here you go," one of the men said and handed over everything he had in his hand to Detective Moore.
"Thank you," he replied as he took the envelope from his subordinate.
The Detective then walked up the the table and pulled out its contents on the table. A map, a photo and a voice recorder landed on the surface.
Reid reached out for the map and began unfolding it. Once he was done, he carefully place it on the table on top of the other things laying there.
The gathering leaned forward to study it and everyone noted the red circle marking a specific area.
"What's in this area?" Reid asked the Detective and pointed at the encircled area.
Moore reached out for the map and turned it around so that he could get a better look. "Lots of woods and some acres. It's an old farming community. They had to shut the whole thing down after a few years 'cause nobody had the time to drive all the way out there to get a few potatoes that you could buy at the local supermarket. A lot easier and a lot less time consuming."
"So, it's isolated and people rarely visits. Sounds like our guy," Rossi commented.
Reid grabbed the map and went to put it up next to the other once and also drew a circle on the map which he had drawn all the other marked areas. While trying to come up with a geographical profile, he had also marked the preliminary and secondary crime scenes that they knew of with red pins.
After marking the new area, he took a step back and studied the map trying to see a pattern. To Reid, it looked just as random as before. Disappointed, he returned back to the others now calling Garcia to have her run the photo through facial recognition trying to secure a name to the boy in the picture.
"He's getting bolder," JJ observed as she took the picture in her hands. "Now he's kidnapping young boys in broad daylight."
"Should we listen to the tape?" Morgan directed his question to Hotch who just had returned from finish talking to Garcia.
Hotch nodded his answer. "Play it."
At fist, they were only met with silence but the a voice started talking.
"Congratulations! You won the last round! How does it feel? I guess you feel pretty good about yourselves right now since you failed to get to the other one in time." It was a slight pause where everything and everyone fell quiet once again. Seconds later, the voice was back.
"I hope you've manage to get dry by now, Agent Prentiss," the voice said in mocked concern. "Anyway, sorry for taking so long to continue our game but I had some things I had to take care of first. Like the fact that you created a hole in my arm, Emily. It kinda hurt."
Everyone around the table looked at Emily.
"I would advice you guys not to mess with her. She may look harmless but I have to tell you, she has one hell of an aim even when she is falling from a bridge," the UnSub said and chuckled lightly. "I'd hate to see what she can do while having both feet on the ground."
A slight pause then the voice was back. "Now back to the game. I needed this round to be perfect so it took me a while to find someone who could fit that little criteria. I have to say I'm pretty proud of what I've come up with. Let's not waste any more time, we all know how delicate that is during these circumstances," the voice mocked. "Let the new round begin."
The team was just about to start talking, thinking that the tape was finished when the voice returned.
"Oh, I almost forgot! Emily, you will be expecting a call very soon."
An abrupt click let everyone know that the recording had stopped for real this time.
"What the hell was that at the end?" Morgan asked, confusion written all over his features.
"I don't know but I bet we're about to find out soon," Hotch answered. "I want this tape sent to Garcia immediately."
He was interrupted by his phone ringing. He stepped away from the table to take the call, leaving the rest of the team and Detective Moore to ponder over the recording.
Everyone sat quiet, lost in their own thoughts, and waited for Hotch to return to the table. He did a few minutes later, phone still in his hand.
"The boy's name is Danny Bentley and it appears that he was taken from a playground near his home while out playing with a friend. His dad is a single parent after the boy's mother died three years ago. From what Garcia could dig up, the mother's death wasn't ruled a suspicious one. The father Joshua was the one to file the report along with the parents of Danny's friend after the friend ran home crying that Danny was gone," Hotch informed the others.
No one made a attempt to talk since they all knew Hotch wasn't done yet.
"JJ, I want you and Rossi to handle the interviews. Reid, you keep working on putting together a geographical profile. Prentiss, you're staying here waiting for that alleged phone call to come and when it does, have Garcia out a trace on it. Morgan, you are driving out to have a look at the primary and Detective Moore, I would appreciate if you could help me dig up as much information about the boy and his family as you can," Hotch distributed his orders.
"Sure," the Detective answered him.
"We're on it!" Morgan said and started walking towards the door, closely followed by JJ and Rossi.
As the Morgan, JJ and Rossi left the room, the others started working in their respective tasks.
Reid walked straight up to the maps and a concentrated frown was immediately placed of his otherwise smooth forehead.
Hotch and the Detective settled down at a desk outside the room having a computer on it. Emily saw Hotch pick up his phone and dialling a number which she guessed was Garcia's. She got her suspicions confirmed moments later when the fax machine started spitting out papers and Hotch went to fetch them.
She brought her focus back to her on task, waiting for the phone to ring as the UnSub had said it would. She made a quick call to Garcia borrowing Reid's phone, telling her to put a trace on the next incoming call to her phone. When Garcia asked why, Emily told her that the UnSub had said Emily should expect a call in the nearest future. Of course Garcia started rambling about what she thought of their latest Man of Evils and Emily only listened to half of what she said.
With Garcia talking non-stop in her ear, Emily let her eyes wander the table. There, on the far end of it lay the photo of the kidnapped boy. The photo in which Emily had yet not gotten a chance to look at. She reached out for it and brought it to her. Before turning it around so she could see the image, she told Garcia she had to hang up and waiting to do so until she heard Garcia say her goodbyes. Emily answered with a simple 'bye' and then hung up. Her concentration was on something else.
She had flipped the photo around and the minute she laid eyes on it, she saw the resemblance. The blond locks and the piercing blue eyes made her almost believe it was him. But it wasn't.
The photo was a picture of a four year old boy named Danny Bentley. A four year old boy who looked almost exactly like Declan had all those years ago.
A/N: There you have it. Chapter 10. I can't believe we've made it this far. I'll be back with more later on and while you wait, you can always let me know what you think of the story :)