Garcia met them at the elevator, and Emily could tell right away from the look on the technical analyst's face that this was going to be a bad one.
"Garcia, is everyone here?" Hotch asked sternly.
"We're waiting on JJ and Rossi, sir, they're -"
"I don't care where they are, as long as they get here soon," he said, swiftly walking towards the round circle room with his signature scowl on his face. Garcia and Emily were both taking two steps to match his one stride, and they shared a concerned glance behind his back.
"Tell me what's happening," Hotch instructed Morgan and Blake and Reid, who were sitting around the table, heads practically pressed together as they poured over a file.
He quickly sank into his chair and rolled it up to the table. Emily sank into her seat, too, watching Hotch.
"Shouldn't we wait for -"
"From what I've heard, we don't really have time for waiting," Hotch snapped.
Morgan looked slightly taken aback, but he didn't say anything. Blake and Reid looked up from the file towards the screen. Garcia stood in front of it with the remote in her hand, as usual, and began to talk.
"Well, guys, there have been eight children kidnapped in the past twenty or so hours-"
"Eight?" Hotch repeated. "I thought we said seven."
"Another girl was taken fifteen minutes ago," Garcia winced.
"Why are we just hearing about this?" Hotch asked, glaring at no one in particular.
"Well, Sir, there haven't been any two cases in the same state, and police didn't put it together until it was too late to set up roadblocks in the eighth city-"
"Kids are being kidnapped from capital cities," Morgan explained.
"Our first victim was Michael Rodgers, six, and he was presumably taken from his bus stop around 3:15 yesterday afternoon in Augusta, Maine-"
"Presumably?" Emily inquired.
"Bus driver claims he let the kid off of the bus at 3:10 like any other day, but the parents said he never got home..." Blake said, trailing off at the end.
"And the others?" Hotch asked, looking back to Garcia.
"Kelly Sanders, twelve, reported missing when she wasn't home when her friend's mom came to pick her up for gymnastics around 7:45. Single mom, who was at work, her alibi checks out. This was in Montpelier. Then Michael Olston, fourteen, went missing around 9 after his basketball game in Concord, New Hampshire."
"After that things started to escalate," Morgan said. "Eight-year-old Kelly Simon was taken from her bedroom in Boston around 9:50 -"
"Are all of them named Kelly and Michael?"
"Yeah," Garcia said, nodding in confirmation. "And they're all taken from capital cities-"
"Is it even possible to get from city to city that fast? If the unsub has the kids with him, he's not going to fly -"
"It's definitely possible," said Reid. "The time between kidnappings coincides nearly perfectly with the time it takes to drive from city to city. I think that this guy still has the kids with him."
"The rest of the victims?" Hotch asked Garcia.
"Alternating Michaels and Kellys. Michael Donaldson, eight. Kelly Richards, six. Michael Sampson, four. Kelly Pierson, three. Taken from Providence, Hartford, Albany, and Trenton."
"Reid, what's geographically the most likely place-"
"Dover, Delaware," he responded immediately, frowning. "Garcia, what time did the last victim go missing?"
She clicked to the next slide, where there was a chart with the names, locations, ages, and times of the children that had gone missing. "Looks like 7:55, Sir."
Hotch glanced at Reid again. "How long until the unsub gets to Dover?"
"He'd arrive around 9:15," Reid responded.
Emily looked at her watch, and her shoulders slumped. "Guys, it's 8:57."
Morgan looked at their boss. "Hotch, man, there's no way we can get a profile that fast -"
"I know, I know," said Hotch as he pounded his fist against the table. "Okay, Reid, where would he go after that?"
"Annapolis, probably," said Reid.
"Garcia, call Annapolis PD and tell them to set up roadblocks everywhere. No one goes in or out."
"Yes, Sir," Garcia said, grabbing her folder and rushing out of the room.
"Are you all ready to get on the plane immediately?"
They all nodded, getting up.
JJ and Rossi walked in.
"You're late," spat Hotch.
"I know, I'm so sorry, Hotch. We were just -"
"If your relationship is going to get in the way of the job, it needs to end," Hotch told them sternly before pushing past them out of the room.
There was an awkward pause.
"That bad?"
"We've got eight missing kids, soon to be nine," Morgan said, his eyebrows pressed together. "How would you feel if you were him?"
It turned out that on this "special" occasion, the Bureau was going to use three different jets to fly its seven agents to different locations, so that their work could be done as efficiently as possible.
"Blake, you and Reid should go back to Maine. Start with the first victim's parents. Interview them, check the crime scene, check with forensics, the whole routine. Then fly to Vermont and do the same thing. Keep going in chronological order until you get to Albany. Then I want you to meet Emily, Rossi, and I wherever we are at that point. JJ and Morgan, I want you to go to Trenton first. Then Harrisburg, then Dover, then Annapolis. I hate to say this, but we probably aren't going to be able to catch this guy for at least two more days. Who knows how many more kids will be gone by then. Keep going and going until we're completely caught up with him. We don't stop until he does.
"Morgan, you, Emily, and I will go to Richmond right away. I realize that the flight is only fifteen minutes, but that saves us an hour at least. This guy is ten steps ahead of us, and we need to catch up. I hope everyone has a safe flight. We conference call on the computers as soon as possible."
Less than ten minutes later, they were speculating over the laptop. Garcia's face was smaller than usual, as she had to share the split-screen with two other pairs of people
Blake and Reid looked at them from one screen, and JJ and Morgan from another.
"Okay, so, what do we know about our unsub?"
"Nothing," Garcia said fairly confidently. "The kids are there one minute and gone the next. They plan it perfectly so that there aren't any cameras or witnesses. It's like they vanish into thin air."
"Someone must've seen or heard something," said Morgan. "These guys aren't just ghosts. This kind of organization probably means that this isn't the first time they've done this."
"They?" Emily and JJ questioned at the same time.
"A team," Blake said, picking up perfectly on Morgan's angle, "One to do the kidnapping, and one to keep control of the rest of the kids. You can't just leave eight kids sitting around somewhere without supervision, they're scared and they're going to try to escape. There could even be more than one keeping watch."
The rest of the team nodded, thinking.
"I hate to say this," said Rossi, "But we don't even know if these kids are alive."
JJ scowled at her fiancé through the computer. But it was true. They could all be dead.
"I'd like to assume they're alive until it's been proven otherwise," said Hotch.
Everyone nodded.
"But still, it's something we might have to consider at some point," said Rossi. "So we'd better not rule it out yet."
They all mumbled agreement, praying it wouldn't come to that.
"Another point with the organization," Blake began, "Is that they must be older, mid-forties, early fifties? Anyone younger than that wouldn't have the willpower to plan for a crime this extravagant."
"Yeah, our guy definitely was stalking them," said Rossi. "They knew all about these families. Their routines, when to snatch the kid when no one was looking. They knew how to get into the houses without waking anyone. Hell, they even had to find every kid named Michael or Kelly."
"Is Kelly even a popular name anymore?" JJ asked. "I haven't met anyone named Kelly under the age of twenty-five in years..."
"It's actually the three-hundred and fifty-third most popular girl's name, according to the US Census of last year," stated Reid.
Blinking a few times, the team decided to change topics. "What about victimology?"
"Well, other than the names, Garcia, what do all of our victims have in common?"
"Umm, let's see... They're all between the ages of three and fourteen... Our Michaels go from four to fourteen, while the Kellys are three to eight... All white. Michaels are brunettes, Kellys are blondes, and ... Oh."
They all looked at her, waiting.
"Ohh, jinkies, guys, all of them are raised predominantly by one parent. Military moms, single parents, divorced parents... All of them, except one."
"Which one?"
"Michael Donaldson. Looks like his mom just got remarried last month, though, so maybe our guy didn't know about it?"
"Maybe," said Hotch. "Garcia, keep digging. See if these families have anything else in common with one another. Our plane is landing; we have to go. Call immediately when you discover anything, even if it seems small. We might be in separate states but we're still one team working a case, and we have to keep in touch as if we were just down the road from one another." Hotch paused, and then added, "Remember to keep it quick. No stopping, no hotel rooms, nothing. We eat and sleep on the plane. There are kids out there that need us, and more and more are going to go missing. We have to stop this guy as soon as possible."
Around the same time the next day, they hadn't really discovered anything helpful. Blake and Reid weren't back yet, and neither were Morgan and JJ. They both had made their way through four states in twenty-four hours, partially due to the extremely cooperative parents and neighbors and police departments.
Emily and Hotch and Rossi were constantly chasing the unsub, who was beginning to seem more and more like a ghost. He somehow managed to get through all of their roadblocks, and even with heightened police and FBI and homeland security presence in each city, no one managed to see the latest kidnappings.
The unsub was due in Charleston, West Virginia at any minute. There were eight more missing kids at this point, from Richmond, Raleigh, Colombia, Atlanta, Tallahassee, Montgomery, Nashville, and Frankfort, bringing the total to seventeen. Nine Michaels and eight Kellys gone.
Rossi was out on the streets in an SUV with Mick Rawson and Jonathan Simms of Cooper's BAU Red Cell team, trying to help the police with the roadblocks.
Emily, on the other hand, was sitting at the Charleston Field Office in their basement day-care center with about twelve little blonde girls named Kelly, while each of their single parents were being interviewed by Hotch and Cooper upstairs. Gina LaSalle sat there with her grumbling.
"I understand why you have to sit here, because Hotch is overprotective of you, but just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I enjoy sitting here with all of these children crawling around me-"
Emily rolled her eyes. "You know what? I think I can handle it here, if you want to go see what Cooper and Hotch are doing upstairs."
A look of pure gratefulness crossed her face and she quickly gathered her things and practically ran out of the room.
"Miss Em'ly," a three-year-old Kelly said, tugging on the sleeve of Emily's sweater.
"Yeah, sweetie?" Emily asked.
"I tired," she said. "I want Mommy."
"Oh, I know, honey," Emily said, lifting the little girl into her arms. "Mommy will come and get you soon, I promise."
The little girl buried her face in Emily's chest and was soon fast asleep.
Emily looked around the room. There were two twelve-year-old Kellys that were sitting on their iPhones texting in the corner. A ten-year-old Kelly drew a picture with some old crayons. The rest of the Kellys were asleep, except for two five year olds, who were playing Barbies in the corner.
Hotch entered the daycare suddenly. "Emily, we've got the guy on camera."
"What? Where? Is Rossi -"
"He's on his way there, we have to go meet him. The parents are going to be down in a minute or two. Let's go."
Emily hesitated. "Hotch," she said, indicating the sleeping child in her arms, "Can we wait just one minute-"
"Prentiss, we've got a psychopath that's kidnapped seventeen kids in the past two days. We have to go. Now."
Emily scowled at her boss and gently set the little girl down on a mat in the corner. Hotch was waiting for her at the door, and he handed her her jacket and allowed her to pass through the door in front of him. As they walked down the corridor, he gently put his hand on her back.
Her heart raced and a blush crept onto her face even as she attempted to calm herself down.
The corners of Hotch's lips curled up as he saw the blush that Emily was trying to hide. She's so cute, he thought.
His thoughts were interrupted by the shrill ring of his cell phone.
Signaling for Emily to keep walking, he answered, "Hotchner."
He stayed on the phone until they were next to the SUV.
Emily looked at him tiredly and raised her eyebrows, pointing with a manila folder towards the driver's seat.
Hotch shook his head, and Emily shrugged and walked around the car to the passenger's side. They both got in and shut the doors.
"Okay. No, that's fine. You guys go ahead, get there ASAP. We'll meet you there. Oh, and JJ... be careful." He hung up.
Hotch pulled out of the parking lot, and Emily patiently waited until they were on the highway for Hotch to begin to tell her what the phone call was about.
"That was JJ. The unsub slipped up. He kidnapped a Michael, when he should've taken a Kelly."
Emily frowned. "We should've taken all of the Michaels into protective custody-"
"There was no way we could've known that he would break his routine. It doesn't fit, he's been so organized up until now!" Hotch exclaimed, smacking the steering wheel.
The horn blared, and Emily jumped.
"Sorry," muttered Hotch.
They drove in silence for a few minutes.
"Where are we going now?" Emily asked.
"Airport," he said tiredly.
"To?"
"Lansing, Michigan," he yawned.
"Why are we skipping Ohio?"
"Morgan and JJ are there."
"And the others?"
"Indianapolis."
"Where's Rossi?"
"He's driving there. Wants to scope out the freeway and see if he can think of anything we haven't."
They fell silent again. Hotch yawned, and Emily threw her head back in exhaustion.
Glancing at the clock, she realized that none of them had slept in almost thirty-six hours.
"Any chance we have time to stop for coffee?"
Hotch looked at the clock, seeming to weigh the possibility.
"This guy is working fast-" he began.
"I know, I know," Emily said, knowing full well that she was very close to having a meltdown. Thirty-six hours with about forty total minutes of sleep, not enough shitty police station coffee, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that they made on the plane, rotating the same three outfits without a shower, speeding around in the SUV, talking to weeping mothers and fathers and pissy police chiefs, and living out of the plane was hard enough without having the emotional mood swings and cravings of a pregnant woman.
One sideways glance at Emily revealed this all to Hotch and he pulled into the next Starbucks drive-through.
Emily was staring blankly out the window and trying not to cry, and she didn't even notice that they had stopped until she heard the drive-through speaker.
"Welcome to Starbucks, what can I get for you?"
Emily looked at Hotch in complete adoration as he ordered his coffee and hers and some Danishes to go along with it.
He handed her her extra tall caramel Frappuccino and she said, "Hotch, I think I'm in love with you."
Hotch's face turned a deep shade of red as he continued on towards the airport.
"Well, I'm sure I'm as sick of pb&j and PD coffee as you are," he said, "Plus we both need it. Are the circles under my eyes as noticeable as yours?"
Emily, taking no offense, flipped the SUV sun visor down to open up the mirror.
"Oh, God," she said, quickly pushing the visor back up to get rid of the mirror. "I never want to look into a mirror again."
"Oh, you don't even look half bad," said Hotch, and a slight smile appeared on her face.
"You're sweet," she said, "But you don't have to lie to me."
"I'm not-"
Emily's phone went off, and she answered it. "Hey, PG, what's going on?"
"The case is over, my lovelies," she said gleefully.
"Wh- really? Why? How?"
Hotch looked over at his partner, wondering what was going on with Garcia.
Emily, noticing this, said, "Hey, Garcia, slow down and start over. I'm putting you on speaker, Hotch is here."
"Hello, boss man," Garcia saluted from the tiny speaker.
"What's happening, Garcia?"
"We've got the unsubs."
"Wait, what? Where? How?"
"Reid and Blake were driving down the freeway in Indianapolis and our boy genius happened to recognize one of the little girls on a school bus as Kelly Sanders."
"They had a school bus?" Emily asked, her eyebrows shooting up.
"Yep, and then our BAU clan followed them until they stopped at a rest stop. The man went in first and the woman stayed in the driver's seat. Luckily, she was really, and I mean like REALLY drunk. Our girl Blake snuck into the back of the bus and got the kids off and snuck them behind a semi. She stays with them and by that point backup was there and they arrested the woman, but Blake had to shoot the man because he shot at Reid-"
"He SHOT Reid?" Emily and Hotch frantically and simultaneously asked.
"No, no, no no no no no. No. He shot AT Reid. The bullet missed."
"And are the kids okay?" Emily asked.
"Yeah, they're a little freaked out and they're pretty tired, but they're going to be okay. One kid has a broken wrist, but other than that, they're unharmed. Their parents are all on their way to Indianapolis PD to pick them up."
"Why did they do it?" Emily asked.
"Ah, yes. Well - the unsubs were Cheryl Dougal and Norman Bronsten- they're both single parents, or, well, they were until a few years ago. Cheryl's daughter Kelly died in the same bus accident that Norman's son Michael died in, and it seems like they were trying to recreate that event and kill all of these Michaels and Kellys."
"And has Cheyrl said anything to the police?"
"No, she's not talking, but- hang on, guys, Reid is calling me-"
"That's fine, Garcia. You can catch us up at the office tomorrow."
"Tomorrow's Saturday, Sir-"
"Right, right. Monday, then."
"Alright, I'll talk to you then. TTFN-"
"Garcia?" Hotch said.
"Yes, sir?"
"Thanks."
"You're very welcome, Boss."
They hung up.
"You have a car?" Hotch mumbled tiredly.
"Shit, no. We drove together, remember?"
"Drive you home," he mumbled.
She just nodded, too tired to argue.
They got into Hotch's car and drove in silence. He pulled into a parking space at her apartment complex.
"I'll walk you to the door," he murmured.
"You don't have to."
"You look like you might fall asleep on the way there."
She made a sound that sounded like a mix of yawning and chuckling.
They got out of the car and - to Emily's dismay - the elevator was out of service, again. Hotch gently put his hand on her back as they went up the stairs, like he was trying to make sure she didn't trip.
She turned around once they were in front of her door.
"Stay with me," she whispered.
"Prentiss..." he began, "I don't think that would be entirely appropri-"
"You're too tired to drive," she mumbled, grabbing his wrist and pulling him into her apartment.
Hotch sighed, and without a word, he slipped off his jacket and shoes. He followed Emily into her bedroom, the thought of sleeping on the couch completely evading him as he saw that she had already flopped face first onto the bed.
Her fatigued mind barely recognized his touch as he pulled her pumps off of her feet and dropped them onto the floor. She only barely noticed when he slid his gun belt off and put it on the dresser, and then slid hers off and put it next to her on her night stand.
He then tugged at her jacket, pulling it off so that she would be more comfortable in her sleep. He discarded this onto the floor with his dress shirt, kicked off his shoes, rolled Emily - who was finding it very difficult to keep her eyes opened - onto her back, pulled the covers over her nearly-unconscious form, and flopped down on the bed next to her.
"Hotch?" she mumbled.
"Mmm?"
"Thanks," she whispered.
He opened his eyes to see her half-shut pretty brown ones looking at him as though waiting for a response.
Looking back, he wasn't sure what prompted him to do it- he wasn't entirely sure that it was completely him, either - one second they were just looking at one another, and the next their lips were pressed together in a very passionate kiss.
Her arm snaked around his neck, pulling him closer to her, and her fingers grasped the hair at the base of his neck.
He deepened the kiss by shifting his position so that he could kiss her from above, and she moaned slightly.
She felt his head drop down to land on her shoulder and his breathing became deep and steady before she, too, was overcome by sleep.