Title: Identity
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Prentiss-centric - gen
Genre: Angst/Drama
Summary: In the clutches of Ian Doyle, Emily dwells on her past. Meanwhile, the team are forced to dig deep into their colleague's secrets in order to find her.
Author's Note: No matter what happens tonight, I will finish this story. Somewhere between five and ten more chapters left. Hope you're all enjoying, if that's the right word to use.

Chapter Ten

Hotch sat across from Clyde Easter and stared. Morgan had once seen a suspect burst into tears under that gaze, but all Clyde did was cross his arms and raise an eyebrow. 'Why are we here?'

'We're here because you're leaking information to Ian Doyle.'

Clyde did not seem overly perturbed by the line of questioning. 'You're serious.'

'I'm never not serious.'

'You really think that I would spend three years of my life to bring down a man that I was working for?'

'You're the only one that knew my team were going to the hotel.'

Clyde laughed; it was not a happy laugh. Derek kind of felt like punching the guy. 'Agent Hotchner, I can't imagine how you ever lost a case with such concrete evidence. Ian Doyle has a network of criminal contacts that would make any Mafioso blush with embarrassment – it would not be beyond him to know that Emily Prentiss was staying in a hotel. It would not be beyond him to have sources within the FBI.' There was a long pause. 'Do you trust your team?'

'With my life,' Hotch countered.

Clyde relaxed his shoulders slightly. 'Emily trusts you too – don't doubt that. She would have done anything, just to keep you safe.'

But she didn't trust us to keep her safe, Morgan thought to himself. 'You don't seem overly upset that she's missing.'

Clyde shot him a dirty look – the first outward show of significant emotion that Morgan had seen from the man.

'Agent Morgan, it is just as important for me to keep my emotions in check in my line of work as you do in yours. Not that any of you seem to be doing an overly good job of it. When I sent Emily Prentiss undercover, I promised that I would not let her get hurt. That promise is broken, now.'

'How long have you known Emily?'

'Long enough to know that "befriending" Ian Doyle was the hardest thing she ever did.'

And we never even knew about it.

'When you say "befriend" you mean seduce, right?' Morgan queried.

They'd seen the photos, of course, but he needed to hear it from someone who had been there. Clyde did not answer, but gave a look that all but confirmed his suspicions. 'But that wasn't what she found the most troubling.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Morgan demanded.

'She spent two years undercover in an attempt to get closer to an arms dealer,' Clyde said bluntly. 'There was bloodshed.' He didn't elaborate, and Hotch didn't ask him to. Morgan was a little stunned by the revelation. He had been in deep cover himself, once, but that was mostly street level drug stuff, not international weapon rings.

It was no wonder she had never told them. If he knew Emily Prentiss then she still felt a bucketload of guilt for whatever things that she'd done, in the name of the job or not. There was a difference between pulling the trigger when an unsub was about to kill his victim, and pulling it when there was no immediate threat, and Morgan was willing to bet on the fact that this kind of bloodshed was the latter.

'How much?'

'Enough.'

'Is there any place you know of where he would have taken her? A place that has some kind of meaning for him?'

'Doyle ran his operation out of Boston,' Clyde told them, 'But he had outposts in a lot of cities. He could be anywhere.'

The pronouncement was not a particularly helpful one. Morgan didn't realize how much they'd had banking on Clyde's knowledge of Doyle's activities. That, in conjunction with the fact that every single damn file in this case seemed to be classified meant that they knew a lot less than they should have.

'...But,' Clyde continued, 'We have been keeping an eye on his movements, which are somewhat sporadic – it might not tell you where he is definitively...'

'But it will narrow down the geographic profile,' Morgan finished. Which meant they needed to get Reid back from the hospital as quickly as possible.

'I want to help,' Clyde announced, in the kind of voice that suggested he wasn't going to take no for an answer. 'Emily Prentiss has been a friend for a long time. If Doyle kills her...'

Hotch and Morgan shared a brief look. Technically speaking, as an Interpol agent, he had the authority to be there. It wasn't as though he was a civilian.

'Alright,' Hotch said eventually. 'But you do not get to participate in the raid, and if I see one thing, to indicate that you have anything to do with this, you will regret it.' There was a quiet fury in Hotch's voice, and Clyde didn't even react.

'How much longer do you think he'll keep her alive?' Morgan asked Hotch in a low voice, once they were out in the hallway.

'For all we know, she's dead already,' Hotch said, with a grimace on his face. 'But...if the profile is right, then he won't kill her until he's sure that she's suffered enough. With someone like Doyle, that could be weeks.'

The problem wasn't just about finding Emily, Morgan knew. It was about finding her before Doyle broke her. They'd seen enough torture in their line of work to know that indescribable pain could be delivered in seconds. He didn't even want to think about what could happen in hours, or days, or weeks.

If he broke her, they would have as good as lost Emily anyway.

For the first time in what felt like years, Derek Morgan prayed.