I apologize for the delay and the rather short chapter. Things will get longer and better, I promise, but I wanted to get this uploaded.

Westley Allan Dodd (1961-1993) was an American child molester and serial killer who raped and murdered three children and molested over 50 others. He was executed by hanging in Washington State on January 5, 1993.

Hotch stared through the glass into the interrogation room. It was a position he was very familiar with, having watched many a suspect through similar panes of one-way glass. This time was no different; the only thing in the room that he hadn't seen many times over was the face of the suspect.

It had been two hours since Morgan and Reid had brought Scott Jackson downtown. In that time, the evidence had been slowly mounting.

Dr. Chao's estimate of the time of death put the murders at between roughly eight and ten. On a hunch that the killer might have been scoping the area, Morgan asked Garcia to pull up all the surveillance camera footage room that night in a radius several blocks around the crime scene. There were no cameras that caught the crime as it happened, unfortunately, but there were several traffic cams posted at intersections along the main street. And lo and behold, one of the recordings had caught the 26-year-old bicycle courier walking eastbound in the direction of the crime scene at roughly twenty after nine the previous evening.

Rather, that was the former bicycle courier as Garcia had immediately launched into an all-out frenzy of a check on him as soon as he was identified as a main suspect. According to records, he'd been fired the previous day following a heated discussion with the company manager. This had occurred right after a phone conversation that turned out to be with the female victim Suzy McMillian. By all reports, it seemed, the conversation had not been a pleasant one.

JJ and Emily soon joined the others outside Interrogation. "We spoke to the missing woman's parents," the blonde said. "Her name is Kim Seo-yeon, age nineteen. They said she left at around nine after they argued with her about purchasing contraception. She was supposed to be back at quarter after. When she didn't return, her father went looking for her. He couldn't find her so they called the police."

"Do they know which direction she headed?"

"By the time they followed her out of the family store, she was gone and they couldn't say, but we think we have a hit at a pharmacy not far from the Jordan-McMillian crime scene."

"Where'd that come from?"

JJ looked at her older colleague, as did the others, but they were treated to only silence. Emily was looking straight ahead through the glass at the man sitting behind the table. Her face was blank and unblinking, staring at him as though he might disappear should she make the slightest movement.

Hotch cleared his throat loudly and Emily jumped a little bit. "Um, well… to be honest I think I saw her there last night," she said.

JJ was the only one who didn't raise an eyebrow. "Saw the victim?" Brighton asked.

"Yeah, I had a bad headache and went to get some Tylenol from the pharmacy. There was an Asian woman there trying to buy contraception who was refused service. The pharmacist said nineteen year-olds shouldn't be buying birth control; the woman got upset and ran out. She was wearing the same clothes her parents said she wore last night."

"How sure are you it's the same woman?" Hotch asked.

"Same hoodie, same timeframe, it'd have to be a huge coincidence if it's not."

The former prosecutor stared at her. "Anything else you'd like to share with us, Prentiss?"

Emily stared back at him. "Like what?"

It was Rossi who answered. "You seem to be in the middle of a lot with this case. All the way back to being the first one to speak with Jackson after the last bombing."

"So?"

"There anything else you want to tell us before we go in there?" Hotch asked pointedly.

Emily stared back at him, willing her face to not betray the sharp spike in her heart rate. "No."

The stare he gave her was not severe, but to her it felt almost like he was trying to bore a hole into her brain to see whether she was telling the truth. It made her nervous, but she didn't know what was causing it – guilt or fear.

Since she'd first seen Scott's name on her phone, she'd been a mixed bag of emotions; those two happened to be the strongest of both of them. At first, when she recognized the missing woman she'd debated not mentioning it at all but soon dismissed the idea; not only would it be easily discovered, it could very well be detrimental to tracking down the real UnSub.

Real UnSub… Emily couldn't remember the last time she'd used that term. Had she ever used it? Sure, they'd had suspects who, in the long run, turn out to be innocent but she never remembered labelling an UnSub as 'real' or 'false' before.

When she'd looked into Interrogation, Emily saw a 'false' UnSub in Scott Jackson. It wasn't just a gut instinct; she knew he was innocent – of this crime and almost certainly any other. She'd been with him at the time of Kim Seo-yeon's abduction. There was no way he could have anything to do with any of this... could he?

Morgan was speaking. "You know, Suzy's betrayal could have been the ultimate trigger. We theorized that his fixation on a particular woman was the source of this UnSub's rage. From what Garcia was able to find out, she cheated on Jackson with Chris Jordan. That was only a week before the Ramos killing. Maybe we just got the kind of woman who had humiliated him wrong."

"Have we got his background?" JJ asked.

"Twenty-six years old, born in Minneapolis, father left the family when he was thirteen. His mother died in 2006 and when he could no longer afford to pay tuition, he dropped out of a chemical engineering program at New York State and began working at Empire Deliveries."

"Any sign of sexual abuse as a child?"

"None reported. Never any indication of anything inappropriate."

"So what are you saying? That because he doesn't have the background you're looking for, he's not our guy?" Brighton demanded.

"Not necessarily. Westley Allan Dodd claimed that his family life could be turbulent but that he was never abused or neglected as a child. There were varying accounts, but the general consensus was he had relatively normal childhood," Reid said.

"Unless there's something there that we don't know about," Morgan added. "Maybe something about the relationship with Suzy that triggered something from his memory."

"No. No, I don't buy it." Emily vigorously shook her head. "This UnSub showed clear signs of hatred towards women, something far beyond just having a nasty breakup. If we're basing our profile off that, we may as well include every man in the state."

"Not every man in New York knew people who betrayed them who were later killed," Hotch replied evenly. "Or who were caught on surveillance camera close to where a missing person was last seen."

"Or who had the general know-how to possible construct explosive devices," JJ added.

"A couple years of college does not equal knowing how to create bombs," Emily argued.

"Unless he picked it up from a central authority figure," Morgan interjected. "He's had six years to learn. And besides, we can't dismiss the possibility of a single leader in all this. You know that, Emily."

"Derek, I'm not saying to dismiss anything! I'm merely following what the profile's telling me, and this guy's not clicking!" Emily cast a look at the group staring at her. "Look, I observed the kind of person he was a couple days ago at the hospital. Arrogant, yes. Loud-mouthed, yes. And I agree that if anyone was to recruit someone that a younger person would be ideal because they're usually more impressionable, but there is nothing here that would indicate that Jackson is the type that would go for that."

"You got all that from less than an hour with him?" Reid asked.

"Well, if I did, I'm pretty sure you would have in about a minute."

"Personalities can be difficult to read," Hotch said, this time more pointedly. "You spent only a short amount of time with him. You know as well as any of us people can put on different masks to show who they truly are. Faking emotion in order to hide a lack of emotion is right up there."

Emily stared at her boss, unsure if she had actually just heard what she thought she had. "Hotch, you sound like you're suggesting he's a psychopath!"

"The UnSub very likely is. I'm not suggesting anything yet but until we know otherwise, we treat him the same as any other suspected UnSub."

Emily let the retort 'but he's not the UnSub!' die on her tongue. What the hell could she say? That she had a gut feeling he wasn't guilty? That her previous life and experience that taught her how to lie with a straight face gave her the special insight into when a person was guilty or innocent? Emily racked her brains frantically trying to think of something that would prove her point, but the only thing she could come up with was to reveal the real reason she knew he wasn't the UnSub. That, she thought to herself, was out of the question.

Brighton cut in. "Look, I need to know if you really think this could be our guy. I've got valuable manpower occupied going through his apartment and his records, but I'm not going to have a whole division of the NYPD chasing a false lead. If he doesn't fit – and personally I think he's looking really good for at least the double murder last night – tell me."

There was a moment of silence before Rossi piped in. "Let us talk to Jackson. I'm willing to bet there's a good chance he knows more than he's telling. If he's at least one of the UnSubs, he's bound to slip up and make a mistake. No one can maintain the perfect lie at all times, not even geniuses," he added, throwing a look at Reid.

Hotch nodded. "JJ and I will work him from different angles, see what we can uncover."

"I'm coming in too," Emily said. She didn't know what prompted her to say it - the words were out before she had time to process it – but Hotch immediately cut her down.

"No. That's exactly what you're not going to do."

"Why not?" Emily demanded.

Hotch stared at her as though slightly taken aback by her aggressive tone. "Because you already talked to him. He knows what to expect from you. And besides, you've already made your point on whether you think he's guilty or not clear."

"I'm just following the profile!"

"As am I. Look Prentiss, I know you've still got some things on your mind, but -"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Emily demanded. "There's nothing wrong with the way I do my job, Hotch. You're making it sound as if I've been compromised or something!"

She regretted saying that a split second after it came out of her mouth. She pursed her lips, wishing she could take it back as Hotch stared a hole through her.

"Like I said, I'm not suggesting anything. But I do think you need to step back a little bit. You've already been in the middle of a lot of this case. Let JJ and I handle this part of it."

Emily willed herself to keep her mouth closed, fearing letting anything else slip. She'd already destroyed her chances of being in on the interrogation; one more wrong word could bring her whole charade crashing down.

She knew things were less than ideal either way. If she went in there, her presence during the interrogation may cause a slip on either her part or Scott Jackson's. Visual cues and tics were always there, even if verbal acknowledgement wasn't. And all the people on her team were highly trained to look for such slips. But at least she'd be right there to deal with it as it came along. In Interrogation, she'd at least have had some control over how the questioning went. She could guide Jackson into telling the essential truth while making sure that anything that didn't need to be said wouldn't be. It would be the most ideal situation: he would provide them with information that would clear him and stop them from following a false lead and her secret would remain just that – a secret.

But what would happen without her in there? Scott Jackson may be quick-witted but against two FBI profilers, he may as well be a wet-behind-the-ears college freshman who'd been caught smoking pot behind the cafeteria and was now being looked at for assaulting another student. She had no idea how he stood up to pressure. Without her to guide the process, he might end up putting both of them in a bad position. And what would happen after that? The case could go off on a completely false trail. The real UnSubs could go on killing. An innocent man could be accused of heinous crimes. And her? Emily didn't want to even imagine what the consequences for her actions could be.

All of this whirled through her head in the blink of an eye. She couldn't just allow it to happen. Yet as she stood there and watched as her two colleagues turned towards the door to Interrogation, that's all she could do - watch. Her muscles seemed frozen and her voice seemed to have disappeared. She was aware that most of the rest of the people in the room were still staring at her; in an attempt to deflect any suspicion, she turned towards the one-way glass that looked into the interrogation room.

As Hotch and JJ entered, she turned her attention towards the young man seated behind the desk. She didn't know what she was looking for. Something that indicated this would turn out alright. A sign that, somehow, he was not going to invite further suspicions on either of them. That she didn't have to blurt out that she knew they were chasing a false trail while the real UnSubs plotted to murder more innocent people.

She looked for it – and it wasn't there.

The door clicked shut behind Hotch and JJ. To Emily, it sounded like the door of an execution chamber shutting behind a condemned prisoner.

TBC…