The words hung in the air with the dialtone for a few moments before Aubrey laughed. Everybody looked toward her, and she met steely eyes with Gideon.
"You just had to break the rules, because they don't apply to Jason Gideon, now do they? Every day, we follow your directions, and now, that's gotten one of us killed," Aubrey hissed. Spencer and Penelope stepped back in surprise; Hotchner was still slightly numb to the situation.
"Aubrey..." Gideon stepped forward into Aubrey's fist. He flew backward toward the desk as Hotchner quickly intercepted Aubrey. She screamed at Gideon.
"Elle's dead because of you, Jason! Her blood is on your hands!" Aubrey screamed.
"Gideon, go to the car," Hotchner said, pulling Aubrey back into his office. Although she originally fought him, she finally gave up and let him practically drag her to his office, where he slammed the door. She turned to him, desperate.
"I need to go to the hospital to see her," Aubrey said, seemingly ripping apart at the seams. Hotchner's eyebrows furrowed in concern.
"I think you need to stay here and distract yourself for now, okay? You are entirely too wound up," Hotchner said. Aubrey's eyes filled with tears and Hotchner sighed, bringing her in for a tight hug as Aubrey grabbed onto him. He shushed her as she dug her face into his chest, and he told her, "It's okay, Aubrey. It's okay."
"One of my best friends might be dead, Aaron. I just punched my second father in the face. What the hell is happening to me?" Aubrey asked, rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands as she pulled away from Hotchner. "I'm sorry, this is so unprofessional. I... I need to get this under control, I'm good."
She seemed like she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince Hotchner.
He shook that aside and said, "Sometimes people have strong reactions when someone close to them is threatened. You, more than any of us, have been through this, and perhaps you just finally lost your control, and that's totally normal. However, I have to ask you- reign it back in. If one of our superiors comes down here..."
"I know," Aubrey said, breathing in slowly as she tore a tissue off of Hotchner's desk to fix her smearing make-up. "I'm sorry."
Hotchner shook his head. "You never need to apologize for being strong enough to show your weaknesses. However, I still think it's better for you if you stay here with Reid and try to decode the messages we've been getting. You two, along with Penelope, are kind of our brain power."
Nodding, Aubrey grabbed the file off of Hotchner's desk and returned to the Pit. She was glad to see Gideon had done as Hotchner had asked and had left the building; she wasn't sure how she would be able to face her father figure while a black eye was forming on his face in the shape of the ring she was currently wearing.
She involved herself thoroughly in the work that she and Reid were doing, lifting the paper of mysterious numbers up to the light as if she expected there to be a hidden message in the shadows of the paper. She sighed, then said, "They're not latitude and longitude, or dates and times. So we can rule out places and times of previous murders or something like that. It's also not case numbers, so it's not previous unsolved murders the UnSub committed."
"They're not in any certain order, nor do they form a pattern, and even if you substitute in alphabetical letters, they don't spell out a certain message even if you use anagrams after substituting in letters for numbers," Reid said, half of his voice still in his mind.
"We need to look at the evidence he already gave us," Penelope said, pointing to the table as she struggled to work as if she was in the mind of a BAU profiler due to their immediate lack of. "The messages, mostly, I think will give us the clue as to what he wants us to do with it, like how you all figured out the mystery of the hotel room."
Aubrey began rifling through copied versions of the actual verbal messages the UnSub had given. "Okay, so the messages we do have include the ominous 'save her', the message to JJ, and the conversation he had with Hotch. The only thing that is an actual object besides the vic is..."
Aubrey's head flew up as she scanned the paper. She stood up quickly and Penelope asked, "What is it?"
"The book. The UnSub mentioned that there is a book that starts many people's adventures. These could be page, line, and word numbers, and pieced together, forms a message," Aubrey said. Spencer nodded, looking excited himself now.
"The problem is... where's the book?" Penelope asked skeptically. Reid went on to explain, in excruciating detail, about how the numbers were a code for a specific year and an author with the surname of Fowles. With a few inputs to her system, Garcia was able to effectively pull up the book- The Collector by John Fowles, portrayed by a cover with a butterfly, a skeleton key, and a lock of blonde hair on the front.
"He's emulating the book, reinforcing its significance," Spencer said, tapping the screen with the tip of his finger as Penelope shot him a glare. "We need this book."
"It says it hasn't been in print for years. It might be hard to track down," Penelope said, tightening her lips like she normally did when she was in a tough spot. She finally suggested, "We could try calling a librarian, having someone else look it up for us?"
"How many editions are there?" Reid asked. Penelope blinked blankly at him, and he sighed, demanding, "Scroll down."
Penelope seemed to tighten her jaw again at being bossed around by Reid, but as she scrolled down, it was revealed there was only one edition out. They were able to find it at a local library, and had the librarian read the message that Randall had left for them through Fowles: "The path to the end began at his start to find her first calm. She its in a window with secrets from her knight. Is it adventure that keeps him out of her sight?"
"So, a hostage?" Reid proposed. Aubrey nodded in agreement, and he asked, "Wife?"
"No, I don't think so," Aubrey said slowly. "Saying she's keeping secrets from him, but then he has a separate life from hers, but he still loves her immensely to be focusing his obsession around her... I think we're looking at a father-daughter."
Reid nodded in agreement, and Penelope just watched them both in wonder. "How?"
Blinking, Aubrey turned to Penelope to mirror her confusion. "How, what?"
"How do you guys know all this?" Penelope asked in exasperation, earning a small smile from Aubrey. "It's craziness. Just leave me with my search engine, you guys go dig up whatever you have to."
Aubrey and Reid stood up to leave Penelope alone in her Techie Cave, but a wave of exhaustion hit Aubrey like a wall. She grabbed Spencer by the elbow, probably a little too tightly, and asked, "Hey, Spence, would you mind if I take a nap? I think everything is..."
"I get it," Spencer said, finally honing in to Aubrey's emotions. "Go take a nap."
Aubrey gave him a half grateful smile as she went into Hotch's office, closing the door behind her. She rummaged around in one of his desk cabinets, finally finding the blanket he kept stashed for long nights, as she crawled over to his couch and went promptly asleep for what she intended to be an hour but ended up being several more.
"Hey," Derek said as he gently shook Aubrey awake. She sat up, and he kissed her forehead before wrapping her up in a tight hug. Aubrey placed her face in his neck, and he asked her, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Elle's not," Aubrey said, biting her lip as Derek saw a few tears spring up. "That doesn't matter. How's everything?"
"We let you sleep," Derek said, preparing for Aubrey to be angry at him. "We already arrested the guy- Randall Garner. It seems his house was put on fire a few years back and it killed his wife and nearly him and his daughter, too. He's all burned up from saving her, and he went crazy, so the daughter went into the system, got real messed up, had a bad rec. Apparently he was one of Reid's mom's sanitarium mates and he somehow made us the villains- the Knights of the Round Table, and his daughter as the Holy Grail, and..."
"He as the Fisher King," Aubrey said in a still sleepy voice. Derek nodded, glad that she was catching on despite her surprisingly distracted demeanor she was letting off.
"So he set up this whole scenario. When we got there- me, Hotch, Reid, and JJ, and the tac guys of course- he was holed up in his office with a bomb strapped to his chest. Reid wasn't able to talk him down, so he set it off, but it was low caliber and nobody else was hurt. We got Rebecca out of there, safe and sound," Derek said, instinctively pushing back Aubrey's hair. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said slowly, blinking at him. "Just tired."
Something seemed off to Derek, more than just exhaustion, but he chalked it up to immense jet lag and stress and forgot about it. "Okay. I've got to stay here for a little bit, but I think it's best if you go home. I'll have Hotch walk you out, okay?"
Aubrey nodded as Derek helped her up from the couch and out to the Pit, where Gideon was filling in JJ and Reid with news of Elle. When he looked up, however, Derek started.
"Woah, what the hell? Why does Gideon have a black eye?" Derek asked in surprise. It was like a switch flipped in Aubrey's inner workings.
"I punched him in the face after we heard about Elle," Aubrey said simply. Derek looked over at her, more surprise covering his face. She shrugged, saying, "I don't regret it. He played with fate like he normally does, and somebody else paid the price, like normal."
"Aubrey," Derek said, trying to take her hand. She pulled it out of his hold, and stepped away from him. "Aubrey?"
"Ready to go?" Hotchner asked, directed toward Aubrey. She nodded and grabbed her bag from the desk. Derek watched her in ultimate confusion as she looked back over at him, barely locking eyes with him before she left.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said to him, walking out with Hotchner. Derek watched her leave, and she didn't look back as her words rested in his brain. She hadn't said later, which meant he wasn't invited over; and she hadn't said soon, which meant she just needed time. She had said "tomorrow", to specify she'd see him at work.
Like she didn't want to see him at all.