A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, follows and favourites guys. They seriously mean the world to me! So, I wanted this chapter to be a bit longer, but as of tomorrow morning I won't have Internet for at least a week, so I thought you guys deserved an update. And as I always say, I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO CRIMINAL MINDS. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTFUL OWNERS. Please read and review. Enjoy!
"Yes, Morgan. I know you just gave us the profile. But I swear to you-"Emily said exasperatedly on the phone. She paused; looking around the parking lot to make sure no one was paying her any attention. J.J had parked the car at the back of the church parking lot, allowing Emily the chance to call Garcia and Morgan before she got distracted with their potential unsub. Most of the congregation had left; including Sophie and Robert.
"Robert Hastings fits the profile to a tee. J.J and I will look farther into it, but I need you to let the rest of the team know about him, including Garcia. Have her run background checks; see if he came into contact with our victims. Please Morgan, you have to trust me on this one." She almost pleaded with the man on the other end of the phone.
"Alright Princess. I'll let the rest of the team know. Stay safe, and say hi to-"Morgan was cut off by Garcia ripping the phone out of his hand. Emily couldn't help but laugh at the scuffling on the other end. J.J cast a sideways look at the woman sitting in the seat next to her.
"Morgan, give me the phone!" Garcia exclaimed, more scuffling filling Emily's ear.
"Garcia, if you give it a minute, you can have it." Morgan pleaded, followed by the sound of a smack. "Ow, baby girl. Give me a minute." He continued, making Emily laugh at the fact that the technical analyst had hit Morgan.
"What's so funny?" J.J asked, a little nervously. Emily smiled and covered the phone with her hand.
"Garcia and Morgan are fighting over the phone. Garcia totally just slapped Morgan." She explained, causing both agents to laugh.
"Tell them to put the phone on speaker." J.J said semi-quietly, Emily repeating J.J's words into the phone. Eventually, the scuffling died down and the phone was put on to speaker. Before Emily could say anything else, J.J held her hand out for the phone. The brunette passed the phone to the blonde woman with a smile.
"PG, I thought we went over this. You can't hit Morgan when you don't get your way!" J.J exclaimed, an amused undertone in her voice. Emily gestured for her to put it on speaker, which she did. The car was filled with the sound of Penelope Garcia's voice.
"Oh thank heavens you're still alive." She said, causing the two women in the car to look at each other.
"Why wouldn't we be?" Emily asked carefully, confused as to why Garcia would think they were dead after only possibly seeing their unsub, at a church, of all places.
"That's not important right now. How are my second favourite blonde FBI agent and my raven haired beauty doing?" Garcia said quickly, her tone becoming much cheerier. J.J looked at Emily and smiled.
"We're good PG. Why am I your second favourite blonde FBI agent? Who's your first? Last time I checked, Morgan wasn't blonde." She said with a laugh. Emily laughed quietly to herself.
"Oh, my beautiful sunshine. If you have to ask, I think I need to reconsider our friendship...but anyways. How was your first ever church service?" Garcia asked, causing J.J to gasp in mock exasperation, and then laugh.
"It was just as magical as I thought it would be." She said sarcastically. Emily laughed loudly, glancing out her passenger window. A black car that sat idling across the street caught Emily's attention, making her stretch out a hand and tap J.J on the arm.
"What?" the blonde asked lightly, still laughing from Morgan's witty response in the background. Emily carefully pointed to the car across the road. J.J stopped laughing immediately and took the phone off speaker. "Garcia, I need you to run a plate, and call us back when you get the results." She said. There was a pause, Garcia clearly speaking on the other end, but not loud enough for Emily to hear it. "Okay. T5G, 8P3. Yep. Okay. I have to go. Tell the rest of the team. Bye." J.J said quickly, hanging up the phone and putting it in the cup holder next to her.
"Did you see who got into that car, Em?" she whispered quietly, looking discreetly out her window at the car. Emily shook her head.
"No, there were a lot of cars here earlier...I wasn't really paying attention. Let's go out for lunch, Jay. We need to make them think we weren't doing anything." Emily told her. J.J started the car and drove out of the parking lot, downtown towards a sandwich shop they had been told about by some of the members at church.
When they got out of the car, Emily gripped J.J's hand in hers as J.J gave Emily a quick peck on the cheek. The black car hadn't followed them, or as far as they knew, but if they somehow had, they needed to pass this off as a real relationship.
Inside the shop, they each ordered their lunch and took a seat at a table in the back of the restaurant. Emily insisted on taking the seat against the wall, so she could see the front door. J.J complied, taking a seat across from her best friend. As they ate their sandwiches in a peaceful silence, Emily's phone buzzed in her purse. Looking around the shop, she pushed the talk button on the phone.
"Emily Prentiss speaking." She said casually, hoping that she was passing this call off as ordinary.
"Okay, my raven haired beauty. I'm afraid I have some bad news. That car isn't registered to your guy." Garcia said, twirling a pink pen between her fingers.
"Then who's is it?" Emily asked quietly as J.J gave her a questioning look. The brunette waved her hand, silently telling J.J to wait.
"It's registered to a Joseph Tyler. It appears he also attends church with the victims. And get this. Our friend Joseph here just went through a horrible divorce. Wife left him a little over a year ago for a woman, named Georgia Patterson. They're married now, and raising Joseph's sons, George and Mark, together." Garcia explained. Emily sighed. This case just got so much more complicated.
"Alright. Let the others know about both of them. Call me later if you find out more. Bye" Emily said, hanging up the phone and taking a bite of her sandwich.
The women ate their lunch peacefully, laughing and chatting about random things, mostly want they 'wanted to do' in Raleigh now that they were permanent fixtures of the city. They both understood the silent agreement they had made to not speak about what had just happened on the phone while in public.
"Where to now, Em?" J.J asked as she took hold of Emily's hand in hers. Together, they walked out of the shop into the blistering summer heat of Raleigh. Emily looked around and saw a park across the street.
"Want to go for a walk in the park? It would be a shame to waist a nice Sunday afternoon like this." Emily told J.J. The blonde agent nodded and together they walked across the street and into a park about the size of two, maybe three city blocks. They spent the better part of the afternoon strolling through the park, laughing and talking and enjoying each other's company.
It was nearing five o'clock when they pulled into their driveway; tired yet happy from their day out in Raleigh. When they walked in the door, J.J headed upstairs to change out of her dress as Emily pulled out her phone to call Garcia and Morgan. The phone rang once, twice, three, four times and then went to voice mail.
"You've reached Morgan Contracting. I can't come to the phone, but leave a message and I'll give you a call back real soon." Morgan's voice said, ending with a beep.
"It's me. Call me back when you can. I want to see how the plans are coming along." Emily said, refusing to put too much information into the message, in case someone decided to listen to the messages. Hanging up, she moved to start dinner when J.J walked in on her phone.
"Yeah, that sounds great." She paused as the other person spoke. "Yep. We'll see you next Sunday then. Bye bye." The blonde said with a smile, hanging up the phone and putting it in the back pocket of her jeans. "Me or you first?" she asked the other profiler. Emily smiled and gestured to the blonde, allowing her to speak first.
"Okay. So I just got off the phone with Sophie. We have a double date with them after church next Sunday. Coffee at their house." She explained. Emily nodded, reaching into the fridge and pulling out chicken breasts and some carrots.
"That's good, Jay. Help me with dinner?" she asked, passing the blonde a pot and the carrots. J.J complied, going to fill the pot with water. "So, I called Morgan to check in on things and the phone went to voicemail." Emily said, putting the chicken into a pan, and then placing it in the oven.
"Okay. So, what did Garcia say when she called you?" J.J asked as she placed the carrots on the stove top and moved to put the pot of potatoes on the stove as well. Emily explained everything that Garcia had told her as the two women waited for dinner to be ready.
"So do we think Robert is our unsub, or is it this Joseph guy?" J.J asked later that evening over coffee on the front porch. Emily sighed with a shake of her head.
"I don't know. All signs point to Joseph, but I can't shake this feeling that Robert has something to do with it. The way Sophie acted when she talked to us, that, that was fear in her voice J.J. I'm not sure of what exactly, but I'm willing to bet half my monthly paycheque it's Robert." Emily answered, playing with J.J's feet that the blonde had placed in her lap. J.J giggled as Emily tickled her feet.
"I know Em. That's why I called Sophie and set up the coffee date next Sunday. If anything suspicious is going on with them, we'll see it on Sunday." The blonde agent told her best friend. Emily smiled and reached for the blonde, pulling her into her lap. J.J rested her head on Emily's lap and smiled, pulling the brunette down to kiss her on the lips.
The kiss lasted longer than others; maybe 5 or 6 seconds. It made Emily see stars. When the women pulled away from each other, Emily smiled down at the woman in her lap. J.J smiled and let out a giggle.
"Wow Em. Where'd you learn to kiss like that?" she asked the woman quietly, starring up at her. Emily laughed quietly.
"Wouldn't you love to know? See, I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you." She told the blonde with a wink. J.J laughed and grabbed a hold of Emily's hands in hers'.
"Ha, like you would Prentiss. You love me too much to ever hurt me." J.J said with a smirk, looking across the street at some passersby. Emily couldn't help but smile at the irony in J.J's comment. J.J had no idea how smitten Emily was with her. No idea at all.
The next six days passed fairly quickly, with Morgan stopping in twice to relay information and check in on the women. J.J and Emily had gotten along great in that time; no arguments or anything, which surprised the team. Emily and J.J were best friends, but they also both had very strong opinions and were both a little pig headed at times, making the team sceptical if they could get through this assignment without fighting.
The team had narrowed their unsub possibility down to either Joseph Tyler or Robert Hastings. Both men attended St. Paul's with the couples that were murdered, and both had gone through a break up with a woman who left him for another woman. This seemed incredibly odd, that two men had similar break ups at the same church. And the fact that so many lesbian couples had attended the church also caused the team to question what was going on; sure, the church was accepting and welcomed anyone willing to practice the Christian faith, but six, well now seven, lesbian couples in a congregation of less than 100 was just plain odd.
Joseph worked for a cell phone company in the city that two of the three dead couples got their service from, and Robert worked at a hospital on the outskirts of town, with Tatiana McKinney, half of the first couple that was murdered by their unsub.
Given this information, the team, even Reid, were confused on how to proceed. They'd never had a case that had two potential unsubs, but clearly showed the work of one man and one man only. All signs did point to Joseph; he went to the same church as the victims, provided cell service to two of the three couples, and went through a brutal breakup with a woman who announced she was a lesbian and proceeded to raise his sons with another woman. But Emily just couldn't shake the feeling that it was Robert.
Before the women knew it, they were once again standing in front of their closet Sunday morning, deciding what to wear to church. J.J reached for two blouses.
"Which one, Em? This one," the blonde paused and held up a light pink blouse. "Or this one?" she asked, holding up a white blouse with light gray lines running through it. Emily thought about it for a moment, and then pointed at the blouse in the blonde's left hand.
"Go with the pink." Emily told the other woman as she zipped up a black pencil skirt, tucking in her charcoal gray blouse into it and slipping on a pair of 3-inch black heels. J.J pulled on the blouse and tucked it into her the top of her gray skirt, and pulling on the matching blazer. She slid on a pair of light pink pumps that made her the same height as Emily, even in the heels she was wearing.
"J.J, why are you wearing those heels to church?" Emily asked, eyeing the blonde as she put her earrings in. J.J shrugged, pulling her hair up, holding it in place with a large, light pink clip.
"It's the only thing that matches. Plus, I look great." J.J said with a smile, spinning in a little circle. Emily couldn't help but chuckle at the blonde.
"Well, Jennifer Jareau, at least you aren't vain" she told her best friend with a smirk, jumping out of the way of JJ's attempted smack.
Later that day, after a thrilling service about how Christ was their lord and saviour (Emily tried very hard to hide her laughter, which she luckily succeeded at), Emily and J.J were following Sophie and Robert back to their house for lunch and coffee.
"You okay with doing this Em?" J.J asked, glancing over at the brunette in the driver's seat who couldn't stop fidgeting her hands on the steering wheel. Emily gave the blonde a shaky smile. She wasn't sure if she was, to be honest. The agent just couldn't shake the feeling that Robert was their unsub, and she wasn't sure if she was ready to see something like that. But, in true Prentiss fashion, Emily steeled her nerves and pushed her feelings into one of those little boxes in her head.
"Yeah Jay. I'm fine." She told the blonde. J.J cast a weary look at her best friend, but decided to leave it at that. They didn't have the time for that conversation right now.
When Emily and J.J pulled into their potential unsub's driveway, their profiling skills went into overdrive. They began to take in every little detail; from the way the windows in the basement were covered with bushes, to the way the mail box's paint was slowly peeling off. The house wasn't bad; it was a pretty nice place. A two bedroom split level ranch with a pool in the back and a big shady oak covering a good part of the yard.
The inside of the house was nice too. No peeling paint, or lots of dirty dishes, or any sign of clutter what so ever. There were no visible signs that a serial rapist/killer lived there; well from the parts Sophie showed them anyways. The basement was off limits, because apparently there wasn't anything down there but some boxes full of Christmas decorations and an old couch they had been meaning to take to the dump. As the two agents followed Sophie into the kitchen to help prepare lunch, they exchanged a brief look. Maybe they were wrong about Robert after all.
"So, what do you two do for a living?" Sophie asked Emily and J.J as the four of them sat in the living room, talking over coffee. J.J smiled and took a sip of her coffee, placing it in her lap.
"I used to teach second grade, but when Emily and I got married I decided to retire early." She explained, resting her head on the brunette's shoulder. Emily smiled slightly.
"And I used to work on Wall Street. Now I just spend my time with Jennifer." She said, causing J.J to laugh quietly as she raised her mug to take another sip. "What do you two do?" Emily asked casually. Robert cleared his throat.
"I work for a cell phone company, Logitech Institutes." He told the women, a proud undertone to the statement. Emily and J.J noticed it, and couldn't help but question why someone would be so proud of working at a cell phone company. Even top ranking FBI agents weren't that proud of their jobs, and they actually had a reason to be. Of course, neither of them mentioned anything.
"And I am a nurse at Grace Hospital." Sophie told them with a slight smile.
"Really? I always wanted to be a nurse when I was younger. What do you work in?" J.J asked, trying to keep the conversation going. Emily took this as a signal to try and go have a look in the basement of the house. Before Sophie could say anything, Emily gently pushed J.J off her shoulder and sat up straighter.
"Sorry to interrupt, but did I happen to see a bathroom on the tour? I can't seem to hold my coffee like I used to." She asked with a laugh. Sophie nodded and gestured to the bathroom in the back by the kitchen, next to the door that went downstairs. With a grateful nod, Emily stood from her seat and walked into the kitchen towards the bathroom. With a look over her shoulder, she made sure no one had followed her, or could see her for that matter.
With a solid thud, Emily shut the bathroom door, to make it look like she was in there, then ever so quietly pushed open the door to the basement and was met with the unmistakeable smell of death and decay. It took everything Emily had to continue farther into the basement, but with the smell, she had to.
Slowly she walked down the wooden stairs, praying nothing would creak or snap and give away her location. Emily turned her phone on when she reached the bottom of the steps and shone the light around the dimly lit, putrid smelling basement.
In the far corner sat two sets of shackles; hands and feet, which were drilled into the stone wall. An old, wooden table sat in the middle of the cold room. A series of knives were laid out in perfect precision on a smaller table to the side. The floor was stained with what looked to be blood. A cabin with a padlock sat against the wall next to the staircase. Emily couldn't believe her eyes. She had found the unsub's lair.
Quickly, she shut her phone off and made her way back up the stairs and eased open the door to the kitchen, praying no one was in there. Luckily, no one was, and Emily slid into the bathroom, flushed the toilet and washed her hands. She walked out into the living and put on her fake smile. Taking a seat next to J.J, she wrapped an arm the blonde and placed a kiss on her head.
"Em, we were just talking about how every year, Raleigh has this big summer festival downtown. Its next weekend, and Sophie and Robert were wondering if we wanted to go with them. What do you say?" the blonde asked her best friend, attempting to search her eyes for some sort of clue as to what Emily found. But of course, the brunette wasn't letting anything out.
"Sure. That sounds like fun." Emily said with a smile towards the three other people. They continued to chat about random things for another few hours, until Emily couldn't stand it any longer and had to make up the excuse that she was supposed to call her mother soon.
"Well, it was lovely of you two to stop by. I guess we'll see you next weekend then?" Sophie asked, giving J.J a little hug, followed by Emily. Robert stood by the porch, refusing to say goodbye for whatever reason.
"Definitely. Thank you for having us." J.J said as she got into the passenger seat. With a wave, the two women backed out of the drive way and drove down the road, back towards their own house. It was at least ten minutes before Emily told J.J everything she had seen in the basement. J.J was left speechless. She couldn't believe that Sophie, who seemed so nice, was part of that horrible man's scheme.
When they got back to the house, Emily called Morgan and told him what they had found in the basement as J.J went to go lie down for a bit. The blonde wasn't feeling very well after learning these new developments.
"I can't believe we didn't see it. Good thing we have you on the team, Princess." Morgan told Emily over the phone. The brunette smiled.
"Why thank you Morgan" Emily said, pausing as she heard running footsteps upstairs. "I got to go. I'll call you later." She told Morgan, shutting the phone off and running up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
The brunette arrived in the bedroom to find J.J hunched over the toilet, dry heaving. Emily rushed over to the blonde and pulled her hair back out of her face. Rubbing soothing circles on the blonde's back, Emily whispered to J.J.
"It's alright J.J. You'll be okay." Over and over until J.J reached up and flushed the toilet, leaning back into her best friend.
"I don't know what got into me." The blonde whispered. With Emily's help, she stood up and brushed her teeth, then joined her best friend in bed. Emily pulled the other woman into her and held her tightly as J.J let the tears fall.
"I'm sorry for doing this Em." J.J said as she wiped away the tears. "Just, all this with Will and the assignment...I...I just...I need a minute." She cried. Emily pulled the upset woman as close as she could and kissed her lightly on the top of the head.
"It's alright Jayje. You're allowed to breakdown. Just let it out. They're going to catch Will, alright? They're going to catch that bastard and then he's never going to hurt you or anyone else ever again." She whispered to the crying blonde. The women remained that way for a long time, until both J.J and Emily drifted off to sleep.
Emily awoke about six hours later, noticing that she was still in her church clothes and J.J was still wrapped up in her arms. Quietly, Emily eased her arms out from the blonde's grasp and slid off the bed, pulling on a pair of old jeans and a hoodie she found on the floor of the closet. With one last glance back at the blonde, she walked downstairs and took a seat on the front porch. She had a lot on her mind that she needed to clear up. A moving figure in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and before she even had a chance to scream, a sweet smelling cloth was clamped over her nose and mouth. The world slowly faded to black.
J.J noticed the cold spot in the bed next to her and reluctantly opened her eyes. She drowsily looked around the room for Emily. With the brunette nowhere in sight, J.J got off the bed with a sigh and went downstairs to go look for her best friend. She really needed to talk to someone.
The blonde looked all around the house, even on the front porch and in the back yard. When she couldn't find Emily, she tried her cell. Maybe she had gone for a walk or something.
"C'mon, pick up, pick up!" J.J said, bouncing up and down. She began to grow very worried when she heard Emily's phone ring upstairs. What if Will had her? Or worse, Robert? Without thinking twice, she dialled the first number that came to mind.
A/N: So, I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Next chapter will have Emily waking up in our unsub's lair, and we'll find out who J.J was calling. I'll try and post as soon as I can, but as I said before, I won't have internet for at least a week. Please review!