A/N: I'm sorry for the super long wait. I just haven't had much time to write in the last few months. Based on everything I have going on right now, I can't promise to get back to more regular updates yet, but I am still writing when I have the time. This is a long chapter that will hopefully make up for the long wait at least in part.
Chapter 4
It had been seven days since Sky Evans and Grace O'Malley went missing.
As far as the BAU knew, the missing teenagers were still in Philadelphia. Sky's computer went online again two more times – once at a coffee shop with free WiFi and another time at a second public library in a different part of town – but the girls never stuck around long enough to be found. By the time the profilers arrived at the coffee shop and the library, they were gone.
The team showed pictures of the two girls to librarians at every library in the city. Libraries were open to the public, free, and, most importantly, provided temporary shelter from the weather when it got too hot or too cold - or worse - rainy. For anyone living on the streets, a wet cold was the worst kind of cold. Librarians generally left the homeless men and women who came in alone, but they all remembered seeing Sky and Grace and thinking that the two young teenagers should have been in school. One librarian questioned the girls about why they weren't in school. Sky and Grace left in a hurry after the librarian's unwanted attention and hadn't been seen in a library since.
The agents canvassed local homeless shelters, including one that was specifically for teenage runaways. In the week they'd been missing, Sky and Grace had never once darkened the door of any of the shelters. They were probably afraid that if they did, the police would find them. It was that same fear that stopped many teenage runaways from ever setting foot in a homeless shelter.
The profilers talked to homeless men, women, and teenagers on the streets of Philadelphia. Any time anyone had seen the girls, the agents thoroughly checked out the surrounding area, but they were always too late. The problem was that Sky and Grace weren't staying in one place. They were running scared. If anyone so much as looked at them funny, they moved on. They were the very definition of transient, and that made it harder to find them.
Making matters even worse, as they talked to the homeless, the agents heard disturbing rumblings of other missing kids – street kids that no one was looking for because there was no one to miss them. It wasn't the first time someone targeted transient populations in a city. They were low-risk victims for anyone looking for easy prey. When they disappeared – if anyone even noticed they were gone – it was easy for law enforcement to blame their mysterious disappearances on the high-risk lifestyle they lived.
The team wasn't there for a case, but they started quietly looking into the unsubstantiated reports of missing kids. What they found out was that there were eight dead teenagers matching the physical descriptions given to them by the homeless – four boys and four girls, with their ages ranging from fifteen to eighteen. The oldest victim was seventeen, almost eighteen. That told the profilers that the unsub was not exclusively targeting children, which meant they could probably rule out a preferential sex offender. There was a cocktail of prescription drugs in all of the victims' bloodstreams – a strange combination of Adderall, which was primarily used to treat ADHD, and sedatives. There were also electrical burns around two of the teenagers' necks. It was almost like the teenagers had been used in some kind of illegal psychological experiment or study. The cause of death for all of them appeared to be suicide, but the method of 'suicide' was inconsistent, ranging from slit wrists to drug overdoses, and none of the profilers believed these kids had committed suicide of their own volition, if it was really suicide. Their abductor could be killing them and making it look like suicide. The bodies were disposed of in dumpsters, which told the profilers the person behind this literally saw these teenagers as trash.
The BAU believed the deaths were all connected, and they managed to convince the local Police Chief that Philadelphia had a serial killer. The presence of a serial killer who appeared to be targeting homeless teenagers made time even more of the essence in finding Grace and Sky. Finally, the profilers decided that if they couldn't find Grace, they would make Grace come to them – or smoke her out as Rossi liked to call it. Using Grace's eighth grade school picture, Penelope created a missing child poster that was now on every street corner in Philadelphia and in every shelter and bus depot across the city. The idea was that if Grace saw her own missing child poster, Grace would try to leave the city out of fear of being recognized and reported to the police. All that was left for the profilers to do was wait. They were monitoring all public transportation the two young teenagers could use to try to get out of the city.
The only problem was that even if their plan worked, Emily still didn't have legal custody of Grace. She'd been working with her lawyer, who was confident the judge would nullify the adoption and return custody to Emily, but her court date wasn't for another five weeks…which meant it was very likely that Grace would spend over a month in a juvenile detention center.
Emily had used all of her political capital and every connection she had to help Reid when he was in prison, and, as much as she hated politics, she would do the same thing now to keep her daughter out of a juvenile detention center. That was why Emily rented a car and drove back to D.C. for the day. Emily didn't have any connections in D.C. family court, but she knew someone who did.
"Emily, what are you doing here?" Elizabeth Prentiss asked, even as she opened the door wider and stood back to let her daughter in.
"It's good to see you, too," Emily said sarcastically in response to the less-than-warm welcome.
"It's always nice to see you, dear. But you've been back in D.C. for an entire year now, and you've never once dropped by unannounced," Elizabeth pointed out in a somewhat passive aggressive manner. She would like to see more of her daughter, but Emily always had an excuse – a BAU case usually - to get out of any invitations Elizabeth extended to her. The script was flipped from when Emily was a little girl, and it was always Elizabeth whose work kept her from spending time with her young daughter. Now, it was the other way around. Elizabeth never knew if Emily was really working or if the excuses were a form of payback for all of the times that she wasn't able to make it to her daughter's school plays and award ceremonies. Elizabeth was retired now and had more time to spend with her family, but her only child didn't want to spend any time with her. As an ambassador, Elizabeth Prentiss had been instrumental in peace talks and treaty negotiations. Why, then, was it so difficult to make peace with her own daughter? Deciding to extend an olive branch, Elizabeth added, "You are always welcome."
Emily nodded briskly and took the first step in the entryway. "I'm here because I need your help," she admitted, shifting uncomfortably. Her mother was the last person she wanted to ask for help, but there was no one else Emily knew who was as well-connected with D.C. judges and politicians as her mother, the former ambassador. "Can we talk?"
Her daughter never asked her for help. Emily had always been fiercely independent. From the moment she left home for college, she was bound and determined to make it on her own with no help from Elizabeth. Emily even insisted on working part-time as a waitress while in school. Elizabeth knew her daughter's meager wages would never cover everything she needed so she transferred money into Emily's account every month. They never talked about the money, and Elizabeth allowed Emily to pretend it wasn't happening. But Emily wasn't in college anymore - she was a smart, confident woman, and it had been a long time since her daughter needed anything from her. Elizabeth was very interested to see what was so important that Emily was coming to her for help now. She led the way into the living room, where they both sat down.
"Do you still have any friend who are judges?" Emily came right out and asked.
"I do," Elizabeth confirmed, eyeing her daughter a little warily. Was Emily in some sort of trouble?
"Do you have any friends who are judges in D.C. family court?" Emily asked next.
"Yes," Elizabeth answered, utterly bewildered as to what her daughter could possibly need from a family court judge. "Emily, what's this about?"
When she was fifteen and pregnant, Emily couldn't tell her mom. Emily would have thought it would be easier now, but it wasn't. Elizabeth Prentiss would react no differently now. Her traditional mother thought that love and marriage should come before the baby carriage. Just because Emily wasn't a teenager when she got pregnant with Ian Doyle's baby didn't mean that her mother would think Grace's birth was a cause for celebration.
"I'm petitioning for custody of a child," Emily started apprehensively. "I, uh…I met her father when I was undercover. It was thirteen years ago. His name is Ian Doyle. He was an international arms dealer."
Elizabeth noted that Emily used past tense when she spoke of the child's father. He was dead then. This wasn't about him though, was it? It was about a child. Elizabeth looked at her daughter with disbelief. "You're not petitioning for custody of his child?" It was ludicrous, but she didn't hear Emily denying it. "I don't understand. Why would you want to raise some criminal's child?" Elizabeth asked as if it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard.
"Before we went after him, I blew my cover on another undercover assignment." Emily was talking about what happened in Prague. Clyde saved her from what could have been a fatal mistake on her part. She was young then, still a rookie agent who was desperate to prove herself. She wanted to prove everyone who thought she wasn't fit for undercover work because of that one mistake wrong. "After that, I felt like I had something to prove. I would have done almost anything to get Doyle," Emily tried to explain. She looked at her mother wearily, her eyes desperately pleading for some kind of understanding from the woman who had never really understood her. "I did things I'm not proud of to get close to him."
"Don't tell me you actually slept with this man," Elizabeth said, clearly appalled by the thought. She really hoped she was wrong and that wasn't what Emily was trying to tell her.
Emily bowed her head shamefully in a slight nod. This was not a conversation she ever wanted to have with her mother.
"Oh, Emily," Elizabeth said despairingly with a mixture of profound sadness and grave disappointment in her voice.
Sitting there under her mother's disappointed gaze, Emily felt like she was a teenager again – one who had only ever disappointed her parents. "I got pregnant," she confessed resignedly. "I couldn't tell you. I knew you wouldn't approve."
Elizabeth sat in stunned silence for several long seconds. Emily had a baby. Not even a baby – a child. Elizabeth had a grandchild. Emily said the undercover assignment was thirteen years ago so the child must be twelve or thirteen by now.
And apparently her daughter kept this enormous secret just because Elizabeth wouldn't approve of her questionable relationship with the child's father. Relationship wasn't even the right word for it. It was an unsavory affair, a problematic entanglement, a major indiscretion. Not a relationship. It was not exactly the ideal way for Emily to become a mother.
Still, Elizabeth was surprised Emily even cared what she thought. Emily had never acted like she cared what Elizabeth thought before.
"I don't know what to say," Elizabeth said honestly. Really, what could she say that wouldn't make her daughter retreat even further? Should she pretend to be happy that her daughter had a baby with a known criminal?
"I don't need your approval," Emily told her. "I know I won't get it. I'm asking for your help. Please. I wouldn't ask if there was any other way."
This was an opportunity to show some goodwill toward the daughter who tended to treat her like the ruler of a hostile nation. Elizabeth knew if she didn't help Emily now, this would be the very last time Emily ever asked her for anything. It could either be the start of a new and improved relationship with her daughter or the moment when Emily decided to isolate herself from Elizabeth completely. There was only one way to respond.
"What do you need me to do?" Elizabeth asked after a moment.
The honorable Judge Amanda Shepherd – Amy to Elizabeth Prentiss – had served a very brief stint in federal court before returning to family court. She didn't like the politics that slowed down court proceedings. She liked to leave her courtroom at the end of the day knowing she had made a difference, and she liked to think that she did make a difference in the lives of abused and neglected children in D.C.
She had a full docket, but when Elizabeth called her, she agreed to hear Emily Prentiss' case during her lunch break. She and Elizabeth weren't overly close, but there was a sort of sisterhood that formed between women of their age who were involved in the very male-dominated world of D.C. politics. Emily's relationship with Elizabeth wouldn't affect Amy's ruling on custody, but Amy would at least hear the Ambassador's daughter's case.
Amy looked at the petition for custody filed by Emily's attorney and the supporting documentation in between hearings. Emily Prentiss was the birth mother. In the State of Virginia, which is where the adoption took place, the law said that birth parents had twenty-five days from the day of the baby's birth to revoke their consent to the adoption. The date of birth for the child in question was August 30, 2004. Emily's daughter was thirteen years old. And Emily Prentiss wasn't even listed as the mother on the original birth certificate – a Sophie Moore was? Frowning at that discrepancy, Amy rifled through the documents provided until she found the legal adoption paperwork. It was also signed by Sophie Moore, not Emily Prentiss. And yet a copy of DNA test results confirmed that Emily was, in fact, the birth mother. If Emily never legally consented to the adoption, then the adoption was not legal. But, in that case, why wait until the child was thirteen to try to overturn the adoption? It would be highly irregular to return a child that age to a birth mother she didn't know and had no relationship with. Usually when adoptions were annulled, the child was an infant, not a teenager.
Amy wouldn't make the decision to remove a thirteen year old from her adoptive parents lightly, but as she continued to make her way through the documents provided, it turned out that she wouldn't have to. The death certificates for Elizabeth and Greg Olsen would make her decision easier. She also saw a death certificate for an Ian Doyle. According to the petition in front of her, Ian Doyle was the birth father, but his name wasn't listed on the original birth certificate. Assuming he was really the birth father, Emily Prentiss was the child's only living parent, biological or otherwise.
Emily's attorney had provided all of the necesary information for Amy to consider awarding her custody. There were bank statements showing that she had the financial means to support a child. There was a copy of a lease agreement for a two-bedroom apartment in Dupont Circle. There was nothing noteworthy in the background check. At first glance, the only big red flag the judge saw in Emily's ability to take care of a child was what she did for a living. She was a Senior Supervisory Agent with the FBI. That wasn't exactly a 9 to 5 job. Agents worked long hours and some nights and weekends. They risked their lives. They died in the line of duty. As a judge, Amy had the utmost respect for law enforcement, but it was her job to place children in stable homes where they would have proper supervision. From the paperwork filed, it appeared that Agent Prentiss was unmarried and lived alone. How much supervision would this child have in Emily's home? What would happen to her if anything happened to Emily in the line of duty? Amy would have some questions for Emily about that, but it helped that she knew Emily had family in the area. Now that Ambassador Prentiss was retired, she was back in D.C. full-time.
At the very back of the paperwork, Amy found a series of newspaper clippings from when Kate Olsen first went missing from her home after a housefire and a police report from the day Grace O'Malley was abandoned at a Metro police station roughly seven months later. Well, that could explain why the file from Social Services was for Grace O'Malley, not Katherine Olsen. Initially, Amy thought the wrong file had been sent over in error. What Amy thought she was reading now was that the child in question was a kidnapping victim and her name had been changed, but she would need more information to make sense of this. It was all very convoluted.
At noon Elizabeth and Emily Prentiss entered the courtroom with Emily's attorney. After exchanging pleasantries, Elizabeth introduced her daughter. Emily hadn't actually wanted her mother to attend the hearing, but Elizabeth insisted. Once Emily had been properly introduced, the two Prentiss women took their places in the courtroom. Emily sat next to her attorney, with her mother sitting directly behind them.
The child's caseworker, Caitlin Grover, hurried in just a few minutes later, having rearranged her schedule for the day to be at the very impromptu hearing. Amy had seen Caitlin in her courtroom before and liked her – she was one of Amy's favorite caseworkers, young enough that she wasn't burnt out but had been at it long enough to know how to do her job and do it well.
There was one person who was glaringly absent – the child. The child should have been with her caseworker. She had the right to attend this hearing, and the judge had planned on talking to her. Amy didn't like making decisions on custody without first talking to the child. She shot Caitlin a questioning look. "Where is the child?"
"We don't know. She's a runaway," Caitlin told her.
"Let me get this straight. We're here to decide physical custody of Katherine Olsen, also known as Grace O'Malley, but no one here knows where she is?" Amy asked in disbelief. Even if she reinstated Emily's parental rights and gave her full custody, there was no child for her to actually take custody of. What was the point of this hearing?
"Your Honor, my client is an FBI agent. Her team is out looking for the child as we speak," Emily's attorney, a man named James Walsh, interjected, speaking up for the first time. He went to law school with Hotch and had come highly recommended by the former Unit Chief.
At that point, Emily provided a detailed explanation of her team's efforts to find her missing daughter. "We believe she's in Philadelphia, and we are very close to finding her," Emily finished confidently.
"But you haven't found her yet," Amy said, sitting back a little to survey everyone in the courtroom. "Why are we here?"
"When we find her, she'll either go back to a group home or to a juvenile detention center unless I can take custody," Emily said.
Amy shifted her gaze to the caseworker. "Ms. Grover, is this the first time the child has run away from a placement?"
"It is," Caitlin said.
Amy glanced down at Grace O'Malley's file, considering. "Grades are good. And she doesn't have a juvenile record," she said more to herself than to anyone else. She wouldn't have been surprised to see misdemeanor charges in there somewhere. Too many kids in the foster care system had records. If the young girl ended up in a juvenile detention center, most of the kids she would be with would have records already. Sending a kid who wasn't actually a juvenile delinquent to lock up just increased the chances of her becoming one. Amy would feel better about sending the child home with Emily, but without proper supervision, a child that had already shown a clear disregard for the rules by running away could still find a way to get herself into trouble. Amy cleared her throat and addressed Emily again. "Agent Prentiss, you live alone. You work long hours, nights, weekends. You see where I'm going with this…"
"I do. I also travel to consult on cases in other cities and states," Emily acknowledged upfront, knowing it would come up. Her attorney had prepped her for this. Although Grace wasn't so young that she needed constant supervision, she really wasn't old enough – or trustworthy enough - to be left alone for long periods of time either. It wouldn't look good for the thirteen year old to always be going home to an empty apartment or to have to fend for herself for dinner. Emily had gone over the options with her attorney, who advised against taking Penelope up on her offer to 'hang out' and have slumber parties with Grace when the team was off fighting crime. While Penelope didn't usually travel with the team, they needed her, which meant she worked the same crazy hours they did. Emily couldn't ask Will to take Grace – he had his hands full with Henry and Michael. There was really no one else Emily felt comfortable asking, which left her with only one option…hire someone. A housekeeper it was, then…someone who could pick Grace up from school and just be there if Grace needed anything. There was a part of Emily that hated the idea of a housekeeper. Growing up Emily felt like the various nannies and housekeepers had taken on more maternal duties than her own mother. That wasn't the kind of mother Emily wanted to be. She told herself she wouldn't be. When she was there, in D.C., she would spend as much time as she possibly could with her daughter. Emily took a deep breath and recited the response she'd rehearsed with her attorney. "My team has four weeks remaining of six weeks of mandated leave. I will take as much additional time off as needed to help her adjust. Before I go back to work, I will hire a housekeeper…someone who can be with her after school and stay with her when my team is consulting on cases that aren't local."
Although she didn't look particularly impressed with Emily's answer, the judge nodded in acceptance and moved on to try to establish the legitimacy of the adoption. "Who's Sophie Moore?"
"Sophie Moore is an alias Agent Prentiss used throughout her pregnancy and the adoption in an effort to shield the child from her birth father," James responded.
"Are you telling me that Agent Prentiss did, in fact, knowingly consent to the adoption, but she misrepresented her identity on the legal paperwork?" Amy clarified.
"Yes, Your Honor, but Agent Prentiss was under duress when she consented to the adoption," the attorney began, leaping into the legal argument he had prepared. "The child's birth father, Ian Doyle, was an international criminal. Agent Prentiss was working for Interpol. She was sent undercover as part of a year-long undercover operation that led to Ian Doyle's arrest."
After laying the groundwork for her, James Walsh let Emily talk, knowing her version of events would be more compelling to the judge. Emily started with Ian Doyle's escape from prison. She told Judge Shepherd how many people Doyle killed after his escape. She took the judge through the events leading up to Aaron Hotchner and Jennifer Jareau's decision to fake her death. She described the full extent of her own injuries – the injuries that were inflicted by Doyle in that warehouse in Boston.
From where she was sitting directly behind her daughter, Elizabeth Prentiss actually had tears in her eyes as she listened to Emily tell the courtroom what Ian Doyle did to her. Until that moment, Elizabeth had never understood how Emily could let her think that she was dead. It was cruel, and Elizabeth had never known her daughter to be cruel. While Elizabeth mourned the loss of her only child, Emily was off gallivanting around Paris – at least that's how it seemed to her at the time. This was a much better explanation than the vague one Elizabeth received when Emily had suddenly returned from Paris, alive and well, with a rather lackluster apology. For maybe the first time since Emily's miraculous return from the dead, Elizabeth understood how terrified Emily must have been, how broken and hurt Emily was, how much this Ian Doyle had destroyed her.
"He found out about the baby somehow," Emily continued, completely unaware of how her words were affecting her mother. "That's exactly what I was trying to avoid. She was only six when her adoptive parents, Elizabeth and Greg Olsen, were killed. They were killed in a similar manner to some of Doyle's other victims. They were shot in the head and their house was set on fire. Kate Olsen was taken from her home that night. In September of 2011, Ian Doyle was shot and killed while in FBI custody. Two weeks later Grace O'Malley was abandoned at a Metro police station."
"You think Ian Doyle had her," Amy surmised. "Can you prove that?"
"Ian Doyle's name wasn't on her birth certificate or any of the adoption paperwork," Emily told the judge. "Last week a girl who lives in the same group home as Grace hacked into the file the FBI has on Doyle."
Amy cut her eyes to Caitlin to see if she would corroborate Emily's story. "Sky Evans," Caitlin supplied the name of the hacker. "She and Grace are friends. They ran away together."
"How would the child know her biological father's name if she's never met him?" James asked hypothetically.
"We also found this when we searched the room Sky Evans and Grace O'Malley share at the group home," Emily offered, holding Grace's necklace up for the judge to see. She'd been carrying it around with her ever since she realized who Grace was. She supposed it made her feel closer to her daughter somehow. "It's a four-leaf clover necklace," Emily explained. "Ian Doyle was Irish. He and all of his men had four-leaf clover tattoos."
"Ian Doyle was a murderer, Your Honor." James paused there for dramatic effect. "Agent Prentiss had reason to fear for her own safety and her child's safety. She knew what Ian Doyle was capable of. That's why Agent Prentiss thought the child would be safer with somebody else. She didn't want to relinquish her parental rights. She felt like she had no choice. She did what she thought she had to do to keep her child safe."
"Due to the violent natures of Ian Doyle's crimes, I'm inclined to agree that Agent Prentiss' actions were influenced by the perceived threat to her and the child," Amy conceded. "And, given that her consent was only given under duress, that consent is null and void. Agent Prentiss, do you understand that if I overturn the adoption, you will have all of the same rights and responsibilities as any other parent? You will be financially and legally responsible for the minor child until she reaches the age of majority?"
The "Yes, Your Honor" came quickly, eagerly. Emily was nervous going in, and this was the first time since the hearing started that she felt like the judge wasn't…well, judging her. Or at least that the judge was judging in her favor.
"You understand, then, that you may be held legally responsible for any crimes she may commit as a runaway?" Amy continued to spell it out for Emily, knowing the probability of a teenage runaway engaging in criminal activity - stealing to survive, for example - was high. "And you don't want to wait until the child is found to proceed?"
"I understand," Emily said quickly. "And I accept that responsibility. I want to do this now."
"Am I to understand it that the child has been known by the name of Grace O'Malley for the last six years?" Amy asked with a quick glance at Caitlin.
"She has," the caseworker confirmed.
"That's not her legal name," Amy pointed out. "Her legal name is still Katherine Olsen but annulling the adoption will permanently sever her relationship with the adoptive parents, the deceased Elizabeth and Greg Olsen. She won't be an Olsen anymore. And, she's not now, nor has she ever been, an O'Malley. Agent Prentiss, am I correct in assuming that you want to change the child's last name to Prentiss?"
"Yes," Emily answered.
"After I reinstate your parental rights, the State of Virginia will issue an amended birth certificate for the child. For the mother's name, the new birth certificate will have your name. Because we are changing the child's name, the amended birth certificate will have her new last name. Now, are we also changing her first name?" Amy asked, not entirely sure whether she should process the legal and administrative paperwork with the name Katherine or Grace. This had to be one of the most convoluted cases she had ever presided over.
Emily had already thought about this. The BAU was called in to help with kidnapping cases often enough that Emily had been there to see the reunion of children who had been missing for years with their parents. The odds of finding a child after that long weren't good, but it did happen. And, when it did, the children generally seemed to prefer the name that was given to them by their abductor – the name they'd been called for so long that their real name sounded almost foreign to them. As much as Emily hated the reason Ian chose the name Grace O'Malley for their daughter, her name was Grace now. It was what she had been called for more than half her life.
After finishing with the judge, Emily left the courtroom as the proud mother, legally and biologically, of Grace Katherine Prentiss.
Grace could hardly believe it when she saw her own face staring back at her from a missing child poster on a busy Philadelphia street corner.
How could she be missing when there was no one to actually miss her?
The social workers and staff from the group home sure as hell didn't come all the way there just to find her. Grace knew from being in the group home when a new girl named Gabriella Perez ran away that they would only call the police. She didn't think the cops ever found Gabriella either. Gabriella never came back, and they didn't even wait a week before giving her bed to another new girl. Grace wondered idly if someone else was already sleeping in her bed.
It had to be the cops who plastered Grace's face all over Philadelphia. Was it just regular cops or was it those FBI agents who were at the group home the day she and Sky ran?
Surely the FBI had better things to do with their time than to chase two kids around the country. It wasn't like they actually hurt anybody. Grace just wanted to know where her dad was and what happened to him. What was so bad about that?
And why wasn't there a missing child poster for Sky, too? Grace didn't actually want her friend to get in trouble, but the hacking was done on Sky's computer. Why was it just Grace who the cops were looking for? Grace looked around nervously and then ducked her head, hoping no one would recognize her. It was probably all in her head, but she felt like everyone was looking at her. It was making her paranoid.
They had to get out of there, and they had to do it fast.
Of course, being thirteen and on the streets in the middle of the day when any normal kid would be in school naturally attracted unwanted attention so it was hard to tell if people recognized her from the poster or if the looks she was getting were just the shouldn't-you-be-in-school looks she received at least ten times a day.
The looks had been the worst when they were at their grungiest. They tried to clean up in public bathrooms whenever they found a bathroom that was empty and wasn't too gross. After seeing one too many homeless people who were missing several teeth, they came to the conclusion that they wanted to keep all of their teeth and swiped two toothbrushes and a tiny travel-sized tube of toothpaste from a drugstore. They used hand soap from the soap dispenser and paper towels to wash themselves off sponge-bath style. Because they had no way of washing it, both girls were wearing their hair up, but at a certain point, even messy buns didn't hide how dirty their hair was. And their t-shirts smelled bad, even to them. At that point, they knew they badly needed real showers and a change of clothes.
And, then, as if the universe was smiling down on them, they were walking by the athletic fields behind a big high school when they happened to hear the football coach yell out to all the sweaty football players on the field, "That's it for today! Hit the showers!"
The high school locker rooms must have showers! They waited until there were no cars left in the teacher or student parking lots, and then they tried all of the doors until they found one that wasn't locked. They took showers in the girl's locker room, letting the hot, steaming water wash away half a week's worth of grit and grime.
There was also a big box that served as a lost-and-found conveniently located just inside the door to the locker room. The box was filled with all kinds of things that teenagers forgot. There was jewelry that had been removed for sports practices, hairbrushes and tubes of lip gloss that had been forgotten on the bathroom counter tops, and, finally, clothes. Most of the clothes were jackets or sweatshirts that were easy for kids to leave behind if it wasn't cold outside. Grace and Sky traded their smelly t-shirts for sweatshirts. They also found money in some of the jacket pockets. The two young teenagers felt like they were making out like bandits with the twenty-seven dollars and some odd change they scrounged together. They left the high school looking and smelling a lot better, and with enough money to get something that was actually semi-decent for dinner.
That was two days ago. They still looked and smelled okay for the most part.
They would get to the desperately-needing-a-shower stage again soon, but they weren't there yet.
They would get out of Philadelphia and then find another high school where they could sneak showers in a city where Grace's face wasn't on every street corner.
They'd learned a few things about life on the streets in the last week.
They knew that no matter how nice the weather was during the day, the temperature dropped at night and it got cold. When they slept on the hard cement underneath underpasses where homeless people were camped out, it felt like they were sleeping on blocks of ice. Even when they found an abandoned building that they could sleep in, the floor was hard and the broken windows let the cold air in from outside, chilling the entire building. It didn't make for comfortable or restful sleep. If they were leaving Philadelphia, Grace and Sky were going to go somewhere warm. Grace said they were flying south for the winter like birds and embraced the idea that they were free as a bird – or birds in their case. This then sparked a conversation about what kind of bird each of them would be. Grace was easy. She would be a raven because of her raven-colored hair. Sky was harder, but they eventually agreed that she would be a swan.
During the day, they weren't cold. Instead, they were hot. Philadelphia had mild weather in September. It had been in the seventies almost every day. The problem was that the humidity made seventy-five degrees feel more like eighty degrees, and the sun beating down on them made eighty degrees feel hot. It was nice in the shade, but it didn't take long to get warm when they were in the sun, especially since they were both wearing sweatshirts. They had a newfound appreciation for trees because trees provided shade. Maybe they could go somewhere that had a wooded area or a forest. They could sleep in a tree like Katniss in The Hunger Games. Okay, maybe Grace just had books on the brain. There wasn't much of anything to do to pass the time on the streets so she'd been reading a lot. She had always liked to read, but she was taking it to a whole new level now that she had nothing to do all day except avoid cops and concerned citizens who might call the cops. She 'borrowed' some books from the local libraries and had read the entire Hunger Games series and started on the Divergent series. She found it was much better to lose herself in a fictional world than to sit around thinking about how hungry she was all day, but even though Katniss had done it, Grace wasn't actually sure if it would be possible – or comfortable – to sleep in a tree in real life.
When their money first ran out, they experienced real hunger for the first time. It wasn't the kind of hunger any normal growing teenager had when they reached for an after-school snack, but the kind of hunger that made their stomachs ache deep inside. Now that they had money again, thanks to the generous 'donations' from the high school lost-and-found, they were trying to make it last. They had learned some tricks along the way. If they were going to buy – or steal – something from a convenience store, protein bars were more practical than candy bars or chips. The protein kept them full longer. A single stick of gum helped dull the hunger, at least temporarily. If they were going to splurge on fast food, they could get two meals for the price of one by repurposing the lettuce and tomato from their burgers as a salad. They could even use ketchup as dressing.
The reality of trying to survive on their own was very different from what they had imagined. Even so, they would still take the constant hunger and boredom over life in juvie. They were sure there was a cell waiting for them if they were ever caught.
They decided to head for the hills – the Hollywood Hills, that is. Or, really, anywhere in California. The idea of Disneyland and sandy beaches was attractive. They didn't have enough money for two bus tickets though. And, even if they could come up with the money somehow, they didn't know if anyone would actually sell two teenagers traveling alone with nothing but backpacks cross-country bus tickets. Probably not. Sky thought she might be able to hack into the website and 'create' ticket reservations. They'd been avoiding public libraries because of one nosy librarian that they were sure was about to call the cops on them, but now Grace and Sky made their way to a library they hadn't been to yet in order for Sky to use the Internet. Little did they know, the second Sky's computer connected to the Internet, Penelope Garcia would be tracking her every online move. It didn't matter that Sky reserved the bus tickets under fake names –Sam Puckett and Melanie Puckett, names inspired by the Nickelodeon television show iCarly. Penelope knew the reservation was made on Sky Evans' computer.
While Emily was in court in D.C. with her phone on silent, the rest of the BAU was closing in on the two young teenagers. Tara and Matt went to the library. Penelope had footage from all of the security cameras in the bus station pulled up on her computer and was watching carefully for the little girlies. Dave, JJ, Luke and Spencer went to the bus station and spread out to cover all entrances and exits. Grace and Sky would not be getting past them.
A/N: Thank you for reading. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure how realistic Emily's hearing was, but I did some research and hopefully it came across as at least somewhat believable. I also tried to research runaway teenagers to make Grace and Sky's experience as realistic as possible. Finally, good news – I'm very close to finishing the next chapter of this and the next chapter of Can't Go Back Now. I'm hoping to be able to update both in the next week or two here, but no promises. I'll try really hard to update CGBN first, but I'm coming up to the point in this story where Emily meets Grace and I'm really excited to write that part so writing this one has been coming much easier to me lately. I will literally sit down to try to finish the next chapter of CGBN, and instead dialogue for this story will just start coming to my mind.