A/N: Almost there :). Just a few more after this one. Small warning: if you don't like cliffhangers, you might want to wait 'till I've posted the rest of the story, because from now on, they'll all end in a cliffie :). But I'll try not to keep you waiting too long.

Enjoy!

12.

JJ and Garcia were standing outside the school building, waiting for Amy. They often went for a coffee on Thursdays, seeing as they all had a free hour at the same time then. Garcia didn't have any classes at all before noon, and JJ's class got out a little early, leaving the two to wait for Amy, who had made a habit of arriving late. When she finally joined JJ and Garcia, JJ thought she saw Lauren looking at her from a distance. She lifted her arm in a half-wave, and her heart leaped when she saw the other woman wave back. Maybe not all hope was lost after all.

Emily watched the blonde and her two friends leave, and a beacon of hope formed inside of her. Maybe, when all this is over… She really needed to talk to the blonde, so she followed her and her friends.

Meanwhile, Hotch and his team had been working non-stop ever since they had gotten Emily's phone call about the attack. Two agents had been sent to the hospital as protection detail and to question the victim when he woke up.

Hotch had their technical analyst hack into the files of the local police department, and keep track of any info about the attack, but since the officers hadn't done their jobs properly, it was all rather useless. No updates came other than the initial report, which was pretty meager to begin with.

The real breakthrough had come when Morgan called in with Emily's info. All the data were put in the computers immediately, and everything there was to be found, would be found.

"Lynch, were are we on our suspects?" Hotch asked, waltzing into the analyst's office.

"License plate is registered to a Tom Brooks. Twenty-five years old, born in Maryland, moved to DC four years ago. Squeaky clean, not even a parking ticket," Kevin Lynch answered.

"Keep looking. I want to know everything; friends, family, shoe size, everything," Hotch ordered as he left the office.

"Yes sir," the analyst answered, already typing away.

Hotch returned to his office, just in time to pick up his ringing phone. One of the agents who were standing guard at the hospital was calling to notify Hotch that Jackson Miller, the victim, had regained consciousness. That was about all the good news he could give, since Jackson hadn't really seen anything. All he had seen was someone giving something to someone else, while a third person was sitting in the car. When they noticed him, one of them ran away, and the other two started beating him up, but he was too shocked to see or remember anything about them. It was just an unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This new setback made Hotch check up on every agent working the case, trying to find anything useful. Kevin Lynch was getting the majority of the calls, with Hotch demanding information the poor man couldn't give. When the last search Lynch set up also came up empty, he decided to do some more creative searching, and he pulled up Brooks' Facebook page. Wielding through the series of Tom Brookses in the search results, he finally found the one he was looking for, only to find his profile was for friends only. So he did what any good FBI employee would do – he hacked the profile.

Fifteen seconds later Hotch received a phone call from an overly excited technical analyst.

"It's the girlfriend!" was how Kevin greeted his boss.

"Excuse me?"

"Tom Brooks' girlfriend is a student at Riverdale. And she plays soccer. It's her, Hotch! It's gotta be her! She must've borrowed her boyfriend's car or something," Kevin said happily.

After scribbling down every bit of information Kevin had found about this girl, Hotch called Morgan.

"Morgan, it's Hotch. Lynch got us a name, Ellen Fielding. She's Brooks' girlfriend. Can you search her locker, get us enough for a judge to sign a search warrant?"

"Sure thing," Morgan responded.

He went to the security's office and checked which locker was registered to Ellen Fielding. Lockers remained property of the university, so he didn't need a search warrant. And being a security officer, part of his job consisted of keeping the campus free of drugs and weapons, so he was allowed to search lockers and bags without apparent reason.

They would, however, need a search warrant for the girl's dorm room, but the bag of pills and thousand dollars in cash he found in the girl's locker would make sure that getting a warrant wouldn't be a problem.

The search in Fielding's dorm room led to a warrant for her arrest, along with many others, as they had gotten enough evidence that she was involved in the trafficking, as well as the attack the previous night. They even found her little black book, with names and phone numbers of her clients and accomplices. The names were encoded, but it would only be a matter of time before they were linked to the actual people.

This girl was the linchpin of the drug rink. With her in custody, they would be able to shut down the entire organization. Arrest warrants were written out for everyone who was already identified as part of the organization, and an elaborate operation was set up to arrest them all simultaneously.

There was just one problem: they had no idea where the girl was. The FBI and DEA both had teams searching the campus, and Hotch had sent a picture to Morgan and Emily so they could help searching. Riverdale was a small university, and the campus was cleared in no time, with still no sign of the girl.

They had no idea that the girl was sitting in a coffee shop just off campus. The same coffee shop where JJ and Garcia were standing in line, waiting to order. The same coffee shop where Emily was standing outside, trying to figure out what to say, and trying to work up the nerve to actually go inside and talk to Jennifer.

After standing outside for two minutes, garnering looks from passers-by, she finally took a deep breath and opened the door. She walked over to Jennifer with a confident stride, checking her surroundings as she went. While she was walking she spotted another familiar face in the coffee shop. She had seen Hotch's email about their suspect, so she recognized the girl immediately.

Emily shot a look at Jennifer, and saw that the blonde had noticed her as well. It pained her, but she decided that her talk with Jennifer could wait. Arresting Ellen Fielding and putting an end to the operation was more important right now. This is gonna get ugly, Emily thought as she turned her head back towards Fielding.

"Ellen Fielding, FBI. You're under arrest for – "

And that's when everything went wrong.

She vaguely heard Jennifer call out in surprise, and Emily's heart broke when she saw the hurt expression on Jennifer's face when she cast a glance in the blonde's direction. Looking back at Fielding, she saw a flash of black metal, directed at a point next to Emily. Her first reflex was to push Jennifer out of the way, and the two tumbled down on the ground as the shot rang out. Emily felt a sharp pain in her side, but she didn't pay attention to it. She didn't notice the drops of blood that appeared on her shirt either, as she jumped up in pursuit of her suspect, who was already running out of the coffee shop.

Ellen Fielding was fast, but Emily, as a trained FBI agent, was faster, so she caught up to her quickly. With a swift tackle, Emily got the other girl to the ground. She had already cuffed her and was reading her her rights when she saw that the girl was unconscious, and she noticed the burning sensation in her side.

When she looked down, she saw a red stain on her shirt, growing larger as she looked at it.