Emily's wasn't a bad cook. In fact, she'd pulled off some concoctions from Clyde's recipe books that have been downright some of the best food I've ever eaten. But when it came to baking anything from scratch, she'd been fairly hopeless.

Ridiculously hopeless.

So hopeless that every time she tried, I fell a little bit more in love with her, if that was even possible.

It's like some people with house plants. They can follow all of the rules, from sunlight to watering to temperature, and still the plants would die. That was all of Emily's baking experiments in the time we'd lived together - they'd all died a slow, painful death.

My last birthday fell on a Wednesday. Chris was visiting Andrew in Delaware for a few days. My mother was gone because my sister was having surgery; she'd return on Friday and we'd celebrate my birthday on Saturday with everyone and one of my mother's cakes. I had an all-day meeting scheduled at the DOJ, and Emily was still with the Department of Defense full-time. So that morning, I'd dropped Rory and Leon off with JJ, who was off work for the day.

My meeting was cut short due to some emergency where my skills weren't required. Even though Emily was going to pick the kids up from JJ's after work, I decided to head there. I welcomed the extra time with the kids; in a few short months, my job would become full-time, and getting a break like this, mid-day on a weekday summer afternoon, would be rare.

When I got to JJ's, she looked very surprised to see me at the door. I could hear Rory babbling and Leon and Henry playing. She grinned when I told her my meeting had been cut short. She put her hand on my chest and pushed me out of the doorway. "Go home," she said.

"What?" I asked.

She patted my chest. "Just go home. Trust me."

So I drove home, not sure what to expect. When I arrived at the house, there was the very evident smell of burned food and a slight, smoky haze in the air. I found Emily in the kitchen staring at a cake pan that held nothing more than a charred mess. She had a towel wrapped around her, and her hair was dripping wet, like she'd run from the shower when she'd smelled the burning cake. Or maybe when she heard the smoke alarm.

"What in the ever loving fuck?" she cursed at the ruined cake.

I laughed. I couldn't help myself. The sound startled her and she looked at me apologetically. Then she quirked her eyebrow. "What are you doing home?"

"My meeting ended early."

"The oven hates me," she said sadly, looking at the ruined cake.

"It's perfect," I said as I stepped towards her.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I could sprout a second head, and you'd still think I or anything I made was perfect."

My fingers trailed through the wet, tangled mess of her hair and I gazed at her face. "Probably," I said before I kissed her. I pulled away and surveyed the kitchen and then opened the refrigerator. Steaks marinating, vegetables already cut up and ready to cook, and a bowl of frosting greeted me. I grinned and grabbed the bowl, dipping my finger inside the bowl and then bringing it to my mouth to taste it.

"The frosting's delicious."

"I didn't have to bake that," she replied, somewhat dejected.

I put the frosting on the counter, kicked the refrigerator door closed, wrapped my arms around her and let my lips trail over the damp skin on her neck. "You took the day off to bake me a cake for my birthday?" I queried.

"And make you dinner," she replied a little breathlessly, tilting her neck to give me better access.

"Hmmm. How late are the kids staying at JJ's?"

Her breath caught when I ran my lips over the shell of her ear, but she managed to answer. "Leon's spending the night. She said she or Will would bring Rory home between 8:30 and 9:00."

"Hours then," I whispered in her ear. Before she could respond, I lifted her into my arms and deposited her on the kitchen table. "Lay back," I told her.

With a raised eyebrow and a small smile on her lips, she laid back casually on the table with her hands behind her head. I went for the tuck on the towel first and peeled the terry cloth away from her body. I could think of no better birthday dinner than the feast before me on the kitchen table, the velvety smoothness of her skin, the slight smell of lavender from the body wash she used, the way her nipples puckered in the air conditioned room.

I smiled at her and kissed her nose, then turned for the bowl of frosting and a spatula.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Having my cake and eating it, too," I said.

She rolled her eyes at that line and then graced me with one of her delicious, light laughs. "Have at it, birthday boy."

I smeared a healthy amount of frosting over her belly button and she sucked in a breath, goose flesh rising on her skin. "Shit, that's cold."

"Hang on, Em. I'm getting inspired." I put the bowl and spatula down and opened the small cupboard above the stove, finding the birthday candles and a book of matches. "Stay very still," I whispered as I pushed one candle into the small mound of frosting. Her eyes were on mine, and then on the match in my hand, her breath shallow so the candle wouldn't fall over.

"Do you want me to sing?" she asked when the candle was lit.

I laughed. "No time for that. I don't think it's going to stay up very long."

She glanced at the bulge in my dress slacks and gave me a saucy, "It's not?"

I gently nipped at her hip in response to that. "I meant the candle," I said, and then closed my eyes and blew it out.

She watched me as I removed the candle and licked the end of it. She hitched in another breath when my tongue swiped across her stomach, collecting some of the frosting. One of her hands moved and gently rested on my head as I set about the task of cleaning her skin.

"What did you wish for?" she asked when I was done.

I raised my head and looked at her heavily-lidded eyes. I took in the way her chest rose and fell with shaky breaths, and the slight flush on her ivory skin. "That you would never attempt to make me a birthday cake again. Just frosting, and this, for every birthday for the rest of my life."

She put her hand on the back of my neck and drew me down for a kiss. "Deal," she whispered against my lips. "But you're wearing too many clothes."

I pulled back and grabbed the bowl of frosting. "I'm not done yet."

She laughed when the next swipe of the spatula smeared frosting on her right breast.

I looked up when a flash of red from the kitchen window caught my eye. There was the woman with the red, curly hair and the man who helped kidnap me two years before. They were both shaking their heads and laughing at me. "She won't be making it to your next birthday, Derek," the woman said.

Scared, I looked down at the table, and Emily was gone.

And I was left with the taste of frosting and her skin on my lips, her delighted laughter still ringing in my ears.

I startle awake, my heart hammering in my chest, disoriented for a few seconds. I'm on a sofa sleeper in the den at the mansion in Delaware and Rory is sleeping peacefully beside me. I'd laid down with her for a few minutes this afternoon because she needed a nap, and wouldn't settle down on her own.

I can't believe I fell asleep. Emily and JJ are out trying to get my mother back, and I'm on a different continent taking a nap. I must have drifted off; I'd barely need both hands to count the number of hours I'd slept in the past few days, and snuggling up with Rory must have proven too much for my deprived body.

The dream comes back to me. The dream and the very twisted ending that was a far cry from the reality I remember. Reality was Emily letting me eat my fill of frosting off her body. Reality was her standing on shaky legs when I was done and divesting me of my clothing, then pushing me on the table. Reality was her taking her turn with the sugary concoction in the bowl and zeroing in on only one part of my anatomy. It was me desperate and tugging gently on her hair and arm to stop the inevitable. It was her giving in with a laugh and moving up my body, her legs on either side of me. It was us creating a sticky, sweaty mess between us as the kitchen table creaked and groaned under her undulations, and the stunningly beautiful look of release on her face, quickly followed by my own.

It was her breathing in my ear, "There are no words for how much I love you. It's like the word hasn't even been invented yet, the word that describes what I feel for you. It's beyond what a dictionary or thesaurus is capable of. It's everything good in the world multiplied infinitely."

I jump from the sofa bed, leaving Rory to slumber, my short nap feeling a lot like betraying Emily. I can see Chris, Andrew and Leon through the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard, trying to get a kite up in the air.

I find Rossi in the living room.

One look at his face with the phone pressed to his ear is all I need to know that my dream wasn't a nightmare, but perhaps a premonition.

"What happened?" I cry out, my voice hitching and breaking in fear.

Rossi shakes his head. "We don't know yet."

I grab the phone from his hand. "Garcia?"

"It's Hotch," comes the somber voice over the line. "Garcia is trying to track something right now."

"What happened?" I ask again.

"They found Fran, and then we don't know. Emily found a computer and got the IP address for Garcia, and Garcia discovered that the camera was on and someone was watching Emily while she was at the computer. She's trying to track that person now." Hotch paused and cleared his throat. "It sounds like there was an explosion."

"Let me hear," I say. My voice sounds very far away to my ears and I'm not actually sure my heart is still beating.

"Morgan," Hotch says softly. It's the first time he's used my last name to address me since I left the BAU, and I hate it. I hate it because of the emotional dismissal that I sense in his tone, like he's protecting me when he knows what I might hear could destroy me.

"Aaron," I counter. As a friend, not a colleague anymore. "I have to hear."

I hear some shuffling over the line, I can hear Garcia's voice muffled with tears. And then, "OK," from Hotch.

My wife's voice rings in my ear. My wife, the mother of our children, my best friend, my savior, my completeness, my salvation, my everything.

We've got her. I need to know everything that's on the computer sitting in front of me.

I listen to the back and forth between Penelope and Emily while Emily retrieves the information needed. Her voice is distracted, I can tell. Distracted by what? I wonder.

I hear the faint sound of an electronic beep. And then it's Penelope hissing on the line. Get out of there, Emily. The camera on the computer is on and someone is watching you right now.

A second of silence and then Emily yelling, "Go!"

Pounding sounds, like feet running. Jayje, the girl by the kitchen island. Grab her if you can. We have about thirty seconds before this place blows. Fran you go straight out the front door. Gil! Get Nick and get out of here!

There's a clatter, like Emily dropped the phone, the faint sounds of feet. And then a loud sound of something...something falling? I can hear a grunt. I know it's Emily.

A female voice with a British accent. Give me my boy.

A beat of silence and then a loud rumbling that is so booming I have to pull the phone away from my ear.

And then silence.

Silence. There's nothing else.

The questions are stacking up in my head. Did they try to call JJ? What's going on? Do they have any contact at all?

I can't formulate a single word. I sink to my knees on the plush carpeting in the living room and stare in the phone. I'm sobbing, I realize. I'm sobbing and rocking and my body is shaking. One hand clutched on the phone, the other clutched around the necklace and Emily's wedding ring that I'm supposed to be keeping safe for her. I feel a hand on my back, Rossi's hand. There are words coming from my mouth, but it takes me a second to hear my own voice.

"You promised," I'm sobbing over and over again into the silent phone.

I'm on an island of wood and plaster. There's barely room for my feet around the piano. There are bits and pieces of floor still supported by beams here and there, but none close enough for me to jump to. The house groans. I watch as the stairway leading to the second story starts to crumble and absorb my reality as those steps give way, falling into the basement below.

The smell of smoke is acrid and burns my eyes and nose. There's no one in the open doorway leading out to the front of the house and no way for me to get to that doorway anyway. It's crumbling. Crumbling right before my eyes.

The bit of floor I'm standing on isn't too stable. I know there are flames below, flames licking the support beams that are holding me on this perch right now.

I don't dare look down. I can't face the possibility of seeing the little body I let go of. I'm removing myself from that action as I stand here. No version of myself I ever knew would have been able to do something like that. But if I hadn't, I'd be dead, too.

I know that. It was an inner battle, my fingers of my right hand on the piano leg slipping in harmony with my fingers of my left hand that held onto that little boy with red hair. The war had waged inside until survival kicked in and I let him go. I let him go so I could use my left hand to find purchase on the flooring and haul myself up before we both fell and died.

I still can't reconcile myself with the action of letting go of that sweater and managing to haul my body up on this miraculous piece of flooring.

There's warmth and wetness on the inside of my right arm, and I realize I must have punctured my skin when the floor initially fell from beneath me.

Where's JJ? Where's Gil? It's been less than a minute between the time JJ said they were coming and now.

I hear glass breaking, a thousand shards shattering over the roar of the groaning house around me. I look to my left, and there's Patrick Joyce of all people. Gil and JJ are there, too, right behind him. I have no context for the brightness of fabric in his hand, and can't figure out what it is for a second.

"Emily!" JJ shouts. "Grab the backpack!"

Backpack? My numb mind registers what's in Patrick's hands. It's the bright coloring of a parachute - a parachute that was probably in the helicopter - it's been twisted into a rope, and it's protruding from a backpack that he's swinging and getting ready to toss my way.

I shake my head to snap out of the horror I just committed. I did it to live, to get home to Derek and my children, like I promised him I would. I can't lose sight of that now. I turn towards the window and nod. Patrick swings the backpack my way, and my fingers that feel like they are separated from my body latch on. Just a minute ago, those fingers were clutching the sweater of a baby.

I blink and shake my head again. I pull the backpack on and not a second too soon. The bit of floor beneath me shifts, the piano tilts, a loud banging sound emanating from its organ. The floor beneath me is gone before I get the harness attached around me, but I hang on for dear life to the straps around my shoulders, grunting slightly as the weight of my body pulls the straps against my armpits and painfully presses the machine gun on my back against my skin.

And then I'm being pulled up, up, up.

Up and through the window and being carried away from the house that is collapsing before our eyes. Fran is there and she's kissing my forehead. My eyes meet Patrick's first, his because I remember everyone else getting through the front door, and he was the one who looked back right before Marietta grabbed my ankle, looked back and saw me holding the baby.

No matter what you did or have to do, remember that salvation can only come in finishing the job. It's Clyde's voice that rings in my ears slams me back into the reality of an agent.

I glance away from Patrick and find Gil and JJ. "We're not done yet," I hear myself saying. "JJ, where's your phone?" Mine is gone. I dropped it when I bent to pick up the baby.

The baby. An innocent little boy.

I close my eyes briefly and sit up, shrugging the backpack off me.

JJ's nearly a blur as she runs to the helicopter to retrieve her phone. Nick is still out, as is Holly. They're on the ground near me. Fran's arms are around my neck and she's sobbing softly, and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and fly her home. Home. Home to Derek and Rory and Leon and my dad and everyone else.

But we're not done yet. There was someone watching me on that computer. Watching me in a house where I wanted no one to know I was.

I reach into the front pocket of Patrick's jeans and grab onto keys. The keys are useless now, but it's the little black fob I'm interested in. "This detonates your ankle bracelet?" I ask.

He nods. I nod back at him and glance at the parachute. "Pack it up," I say to Patrick. "And then we have to get the decals off the side of the helicopter. This place is secluded, but not secluded enough to think that someone won't call in an explosion. We don't have much time. Gil, take Nick and Fran to the car and head towards the airstrip near here."

I turn to look at Patrick, who is stuffing the parachute as best he can back into the backpack. "You can fly?" I ask him.

He nods.

"Good. Grab Holly. We'll meet them at the airfield."

JJ runs back with her phone. "Garcia found the location of the man watching you on the computer. Geoffrey Bench." she says breathlessly. "Just outside Wexford, in Ireland. She's locked down his computer and is erasing everything."

Geoffrey Bench. I know that name. He was part of the staff at the home Adrian Stancu's family rented in Provence every summer, sixteen years old to Adrian's thirteen years. He was another person who was interviewed in the disappearance of Tatiana. He was in the general area where she was last seen that day so many years ago in Provence. He fell off a cliff. The police interview took place when he was in a hospital. His accident rendered him with no feeling below the waist.

JJ passes me the phone and I take it in my hand. I'm expecting to hear Garcia telling me information. Instead I hear sobbing. Sobbing coming from the man I love beyond any feeling of love I ever thought I was capable of.

"You promised you'd come back to me," he's sobbing.

I don't know what to say. I can't find myself here. I am horrible and alive. I am breathing and dead. I am lost and I can't be found until I get home, if I can be found again at all. But we're not finished yet.

So I give him what I can in the moment. "And I'll keep that promise."

The whir of the helicopter is almost deafening to my exhausted ears. I'm not happy about what's happening here, but we didn't have time to argue anymore. Gil was coming with me to get Geoffrey Bench, and so was JJ, no exceptions. That left Fran, an unconscious Nick and Holly, and Patrick.

We'd moved the car onto a little side road near the airfield. We'd left Fran with Holly and Nick and a gun. Fran, who insisted there was no way in hell anyone would find or touch her or them, who reminded me she knew how to use a gun, had told me to go.

So we went.

Patrick is our ace in the hole, and Gil and JJ know it. We'll set him up to take the fall for this, which would be easy if he wasn't behaving so damned nicely.

"She wanted to start over again. She wanted to start the auctions up again in hopes that the baby would someday run the same business his father did," he whispered in my ear before the helicopter took off from the airfield. "He wouldn't have been innocent for long."

I said nothing.

"What first?" Gil asks me. He's at the controls of the helicopter for this stretch of our journey and I know what he's asking. It really makes no difference who comes first - Patrick or Geoffrey. But the need to get Patrick away from me, to erase the person who has the best idea of what I did, that I let that baby go, is heavy on my mind.

"This first," I say to Gil.

He nods and flies the helicopter over the sea, hovering there.

Patrick looks at me. "I killed them. I took Fran. I deliver her back to the US and then I disappear?"

I have the decency to meet his eyes and nod.

He looks out the window of the helicopter. "It's a good plan." His voice is scratchy in my earpiece.

He takes off his seatbelt and turns towards me. I can feel JJ's eyes from the front seat on both of us. Patrick doesn't flinch when I raise a gun at him. He does reach forward and push the gun down, though. "You've done enough today, I think. I've done so little good in my life for anyone else. Let me do this for you."

I am numb when he reaches for the keys in my other hand. I am numb when JJ hisses, "Emily" and raises her gun towards Patrick. I feel the cool blast of air when Patrick opens door of the helicopter and slides it open. He looks back at me and takes off his earpiece.

"For you to go home again with Fran and make sure you're never questioned about being here feels a lot like the absolution I was looking for before I died. Thank you," he says loud enough for me to hear.

Before I can say a word, he jumps. I lurch forward in my seat to watch him fall into the darkness below. Before he lands in the water, a blast of orange shatters the night, the bomb on his ankle going off. He'll be shark bait before he ever washes up to shore.

I wish I had tears. As confusing as it is, tears would be appropriate right now. But I have nothing. I blink and close the door of the helicopter again. "Let's go," I say.

"Emily," JJ whispers again.

I put my head down, not able to meet her eyes. Gil is quiet, flying on towards Ireland.

We eventually land on a field behind the address Garcia gave us. I move to stand, but JJ's body is in front of mine before I even know she moved from her seat. "You have done enough. You stay. We'll take care of this."

I am physically and emotionally tapped out, but I still move to stand. She presses her hands on my shoulders and then Gil is there. He kisses my forehead. "Enough," he says.

I stare at them and finally nod. I'd be more of a liability at this point than any help and I know that. I watch them take off towards the house and my body starts shaking. The tears I've controlled since I let go of that little boy in my hand rise up in me and cascade down my face at an alarming rate.

Clyde, I think. Does salvation come when you let someone else finish the job?"

I clutch my gun and wait, but Clyde's voice is quiet in my head.