It All Started With The Fight

by Emily's Girl

Emily has done a lot more then just one undercover operation. So when G Callen calls with a problem, what else was she supposed to do? Criminal Minds/ Criminal Minds Suspect Behavior/ NCIS LA crossover

11. The Night

Well, as you may tell by the chapter title, this one is The darkest hour and the longest night. I messed with canon a lot in this one- just warning you, have fun reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

It had started out a fairly normal day- woke up and went to work. It was now in what many have called the dog days of summer, and Emily was glad that she was no longer covered in bandages, considering how hot it was outside. She then started in on the endless piles of paperwork that had accumulated on her desk. While she took quite a bit of satisfaction from making sure that justice was served and evil defeated, she took considerably less in the amount of paperwork that it seemed to generate. They were almost about to go home, 5 o'clock was rapidly approaching and none of the team really liked doing paperwork past when they had to.

And then Hotch called then up to the briefing room, looking grim. Strauss was hurtling out of his office and out of the BAU, looking just as unhappy. Emily grimaced at the rest of the team, and they all followed him to where he already had pictures cued up on the screen.

"Hey, what did Strauss want?" Emily asked as she walked in.

"She needs us in Los Angeles." Hotch said, looking up at her.

"Home invasion homicide last night." JJ said from where she was standing next to Hotch. She handed then off the files as she continued- "Officers found Gregory Everson, 56, beaten, with a GSW to the head. His wife Colleen was equally beaten and raped repeatedly."

"Repeatedly?" Emily asked with a wince.

"That's what she reported." JJ said.

"Wait, she survived this?" Emily said, astonished.

"He chose to keep her alive." Hotch said.

"An intentional witness." Emily said. That was incredibly rare, especially from what she had seen from the case file. This guy didn't look disorganised.

"Everything but that speaks to an organized offender, an experienced one." Rossi said, looking around the table.

"Was she able to identify him?" Reid asked.

"She said he was white, with mean eyes and repulsive breath." JJ told them

"Rotten inside and out." Rossi sighed. "Did he rape her in front of the husband?"

"Yeah." JJ said softly, nodding.

"One home invasion rarely warrants Strauss personally sending us out." Morgan said, looking up from his file.

"No, there's more." JJ said, and hitting the button on the remote, making more pictures pop up. "Ballistics match a double homicide downtown L.A. 48 miles away." The women who appeared on the screen were covered in blood and tied to chairs. Emily inwardly winced again. Those poor women.

"Where 3 days ago, these two women were raped and killed." Hotch said.

"But last night he was in the suburbs." Emily said, that was a really large comfort zone.

"They are afraid of another night stalker." Morgan said.

"Exactly." Hotch said. "Wheels up in twenty minutes."

---

"This guy is way too good at this to have just started." Morgan said walking back from the coffee pot with a fresh mug of coffee. "He pulled off hours of torture and a homicide without disturbing the neighbors."

"And robbed the house." Rossi added.

"That could be a habit." Hotch commented. Emily nodded- for most killers, the kill is what they focus on. The fact that he robbed them after was very telling.

"You think he started as a burglar?" JJ asked. Despite not being an official profiler, JJ had picked up enough over the years that she was almost as good as the rest of them were, and often helped with the profiling.

"If it was just about the killing, he wouldn't bother robbing them." Hotch told her.

"Wait, how did he get in last night?" Reid asked from his perch on the arm of the long couch that he spent many of the flights home sleeping in.

"Mrs. Everson said there was a noise outside their door. They were outside of their room for a few minutes, and when they came back, he was there." JJ told them.

"He distracted them." Emily nodded.

"So he could climb through their bedroom window." Rossi finished.

"I'll have Garcia see if that MO was used in any other home invasions." Reid said.

"Well, victimology's all over the map. Three murders and he managed to kill men, women, old, young, black, white, hispanic. That's about as random as it gets." Emily said.

"Randomness implies a lack of predictability. I think that's the point. All the varying people in his message. He wants them all to fear him." Reid said.

"Oh, and they will." JJ said "Press got a hold of last night's home invasion."

"JJ and I will set up at the station. Dave, you and Reid go visit Mrs. Everson in the hospital. Morgan and Prentiss, the LAPD Detectives are waiting for you at the Everson house. We've gone over all we can, and it's going to be a long night and an even longer few days, so I would suggest everyone get some sleep while we can." Hotch said, and the team started to spread out over the plane, all following Hotch's advice.

---

They had been racing the night the entire time they were flying, so it was only about midnight when she and Morgan pulled up at the crime scene. Emily was surprised at the number of reporters of tv crews that were outside for that time at night. She was very careful to not let the cameras get a full view of her face as they walked up the porch, with the lights flashing and the shouted questions making it hard for the officers guarding the scene to keep people out.

"Detectives." Morgan said as they walked into the dark house to find the two detectives in the entryway.

"That's quite a crowd out there." Emily said.

"Matt Spicer." the younger detective said from where he was sitting on the stairs, standing up and giving them a wave. "Adam Kurzbard." he nodded to his partner.

"Emily Prentiss, and this is Derek Morgan." she said, shaking hands with them.

"Hey, thanks for flying out." Kurzbard said.

"So, what have you got?" Emily asked.

"Got our hands full, guy's been across the city in a week. Seems completely random." Spicer said.

"You don't think it is?" Emily asked.

"We're robbery-homicide in Newton division. The first two vics were right in the middle of it." He said, looking up at her. "The only thing that brought us all the way out here were the bullets."

"And the assault." his partner added in. "All the victims were raped."

"DNA match?" Morgan asked, momentarily distracted from his poking through the victim's house.

"He covers up." Kurzbard said grimly.

"The, uh, Everson's were in their bedroom upstairs when the electricity went out." Spicer said, pointing over his shoulder at the stairs.

"So the unsub cut the power." Morgan said.

"No, they've got rolling blackouts scheduled." Kurzbard said as Emily headed up the stairs. "Trying to get through this heat wave without the whole city going dark."

"So, is that why he came out here?" Spicer asked while Emily watched from the stairs.

"Well, people are afraid of the dark." she told him, walking back down the stairs. "He probably preyed on that."

"Ok, so the lights go out and this guy starts banging on the door." Morgan said.

"Why give them the heads up like that? Why not just break in?" Spicer asked.

"He probably likes getting their adrenaline going." Morgan told him. "Makes for a fun fight."

"Sounds like he got one." Spicer sighed. "Wife's real shook up. I don't think she's gonna be much help."

"Well, let's hope Rossi and Reid can work their magic then." Emily sighed.

---

When they got back to the station, Spicer offered to show her where the team was going to be working out of. Seeing the maze of grey walls and cubicles, Emily agreed- not because she thought she wouldn't be able to find it, but because the last thing that she needed was to have to ask some random cop where it was. Keeping up an aura of knowledge was an important part to making a lot of skeptical detectives believe that the BAU actually knew what they were talking about. Talking about the case with the lead detective didn't seem like he was showing her around, but a random cop would.

"Do you ever look at why this victim, why this day, why this crime?" Spicer asked her.

"Always," Emily told him.

"Hmm. Do you ever think that they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

"Sometimes." Emily sighed.

"Well, I don't believe in coincidences." He told her as they walked into the conference room that the BAU had apparently taken over for the case.

"How come?" she asked.

"Don't get me wrong, it's not like I talk to the universe or anything. I've just always believed that things happened for a reason." He said, staring at the newspaper clippings of the crimes. "It's hard to find the reason for this though. Utterly meaningless crime, no obvious motivation. Pure evil."

"Evil can't be scientifically defined. It's an illusory moral concept that doesn't exist in nature. Its origins and connotations have been inextricably linked to religion and mythology. This offender shows no signs of any belief." Reid said. He paused as Spicer stared at him "I'm, uh, I'm Spencer Reid."

"Matt Spicer." he said, still staring. Emily was very familiar with the look on his face. It was very normal for people when they first met Spencer. She and the rest of the team has long since gotten used to his rapid deliverances of information but many people were startled about how Reid knew so much about subjects that most people never even considered.

"Jennifer Jareau" JJ said, standing up to shake his hand, finally diverting his attention away from Reid. "The media has been asking for you."

"Yeah, well, nobody else around here wants to talk to them. I figure it hasn't hurt me yet." Spicer smiled.

"Uh, they would like an interview for the 11:00 news. Can we go over a few points?" JJ asked.

"Absolutely." Spicer said.

"I'm going to call a few contacts, it's unlikely that they will know anything, but it won't hurt to warn them." Emily said.

"Ok. Do you need anyone to go with you?" JJ asked.

"No, I'm just going to find an unused corner and make phone calls, not actually go anywhere. I'll tell someone on the team if I end up needing to go somewhere." Emily smiled.

"There's an unused office a few doors down- the one you can see boxes in through the window. You could go in there." Spicer offered.

"Great, thanks." Emily smiled, then went to the office.

A little while later, Hotch came and knocked on the door. Emily was only writing up notes on how the conversations went, so she called "Come in."

"We think the unsub is going to strike in Glendale next, it's where the next set of rolling blackouts are going to hit. We doubled patrols in the area, but we need to get some sleep. Are you done with your calls?"

"Yeah, I just finished up." Emily said with a yawn. "What time is it?"

"A little past midnight here. 3 am in DC."

"That explains things. Give me five minutes to gather my things and I'll be ready to leave.

---

The next morning they got the call they had all been expecting- someone had been killed in Glendale. It was only about 7 am, and it was already hot enough that she didn't bother putting her suit jacket over her short sleeve shirt. Instead, she slung it over one shoulder as she walked into the latest blood covered house.

"Annie Danzi." Kurzbard said grimly as the team minus JJ, who was dealing with the crowd of reporters outside, walked up the steps to the house. "30, single mom." Emily winced- that poor child.

"Was her child home?" Morgan asked.

"Spicer's with him now." Kurzbard said grimly.

Morgan just winced and walked deeper into the house. "So the power was out 10 to 1?" Emily asked.

"All the same tricks." Kurzbard confirmed.

"Forced entry?" Rossi asked.

"No."

"Were there rolling blackouts last summer?" Hotch asked from the bottom of the steps.

"Oh, just about every year."

"Anything like this happen?" Hotch asked, clearly wondering if the unsub was an LA native- no man could kill like he did the past few nights without practicing before.

"Well, crime always goes up when it's hot and dark, but this? No way." Kurzbard said, shaking his head.

"Hunting in the dark is definitely part of his signature." Hotch said, pulling out his phone and walking away. "Garcia." Emily heard him say. "I need you to check if there were any clusters of home invasions in previous summers during rolling blackouts in California. Look statewide."

"He left a message this time." Kurzbard said to her and Rossi before leading them into the house, and to the bedroom. With that sort of ominous warning, Emily wasn't surprised to find that the message was written in blood on the wall. It looked like something out of a horror movie; the way the blood had dripped down the wall and how the message was centered over the bed that Annie had clearly died in, from the amount of blood on the sheets. The message was particularly grim too- HELLO THER.

"A first time for everything." Rossi sighed.

"You think he's welcoming us?" Emily asked, looking around the trashed room.

"Who knows." Rossi shook his head. "At least he's telling us more with every crime scene. Uneducated." he gestured at the spelling of there on the wall.

"Made the kid watch." Emily added.

"Sadistic." Kurzbard said, and Emily nodded. Sadistic was a word often overused in popular culture, but if making a child watch as you murdered their mother didn't count, Emily didn't know what would. That child would likely have lifelong trauma from that night, even if they forgot what really happened.

"Trashes the place even though there's not much to steal. Angry." Rossi said.

"Chooses to hunt and kill in the dark. Doesn't want to be seen. Why?" Emily added.

"Maybe he's ashamed of something?" Rossi said, picking up the overturned picture frames and putting them back in their proper place.

"Well, he didn't have to knock those over." she said. Emily looked at the pictures of Annie with her child- was it the child that bothered him or the eyes in the pictures? If it was the child, he wouldn't have wanted the real life child to watch him so-

"He doesn't want any eyes on him." Rossi completed her thought.

"Except the kid. Didn't want him to miss a thing." Emily sighed. That poor, poor child.

"I think we have enough for a profile." Rossi told Hotch as he walked into the room.

"Good. This unsub isn't going to stop killing until we catch him. The sooner we can catch him the better." He sighed.

---

The line the team formed in front of a row of police officers was a very familiar sight. It often seemed like the police officers and police stations were just variants of a single one- they all looked similar when you had seen as many of them as Emily had. She was almost sweating up there in front of them- not from nerves, but rather from the suit jacket that she had put back on in an attempt to look a bit more professional.

"Forcing a child to witness this is clearly sadistic." Hotch said, looking around the room. "He destroyed the boy's innocence, and took away his childhood. This probably mirrors the unsub's own experience."

"That's an excuse for what he is doing?" an officer asked.

"There is no excuse for what he is doing." Hotch said.

"We're not justifying anything. Everything he says, everything he does, tells us what makes him tick, that's all." Rossi said, trying to reassure the officers.

"The message he left us was misspelled, which says that he was not well educated." Emily told them.

"Why did he leave one now?" Kurzbard asked.

"That we don't know-yet." Emily told him.

"Just because his recent attacks are in Los Angeles doesn't mean he's from here." Rossi added.

"Killing in the dark is a must for him." Reid said from where he was sitting on a desk, "We believe that's why he came to LA. That and his willingness to kill random people tells us that he's an opportunistic offender, and these types are incredibly difficult to predict."

"And as you all know, the rolling blackouts have been announced so residents can prepare for the few hours they will be in the darkness. Unfortunately, that also tells the killer whose windows will be open, whose alarms will be disarmed." JJ said.

"The dark is his signature. It's a habit, and we'll find that he's always killed this way." Hotch added.

"Cause he's a coward." An officer said scornfully.

"To some degree, yes. He also has intimacy issues. He even turns photographs away from himself. " Hotch told him.

"It's unlikely that a man like this has been in any kind of relationship." Emily explained.

"There's also a good chance that he has some type of shortcoming. Whether real or perceived, he's obviously self conscious about something."

"Like what?" Kurzbard asked.

"It could be like a physical deformity. It might be something small to us, but it means everything to him." Reid explained.

"People just want to fit in." Rossi added.

"Having one thing that sets him apart from the norm could be what led him to the extreme solitude of a violent schizoid personality." Ried finished.

"He takes his victim's power away, literally and figuratively. And he feeds off of making them feel powerless." Emily said.

"We had rolling blackouts all last summer, and this guy wasn't around." Kurzbard said. Emily could hear the unasked questions- why LA, why this summer, why not previous summers?

"Well he is now." JJ said quietly. "And based on the vicious nature of his crimes, the press has named him the prince of darkness." Emily winced. That was a particularly bad name to give an unsub, especially when he hadn't been caught yet. All it would do is make him more bold and more prone to showing what he really is the prince of- killing.

" Prince. That will fuel his ego." Rossi scoffed.

"Yeah, he's gonna be all over the news." JJ said.

"Once we unravel his need for darkness, we'll find him." Hotch said. "As we learn more, we will tell you. For now, increase patrols in the areas that are going to blackout. Not only during the blackout, but before- we don't know how early he starts figuring out who his next victim will be. Thanks everyone." Hotch said, and the officers began dispersing.

"Are we going to tell them?" JJ asked once the officers had left.

"That no matter how much they patrol, there will always be a spot they can't cover?" Hotch said "No. It's better that they think that they might have a chance that they can catch him before he kills again.

"Prentiss, I want you to call Morgan and fill him in; he should have dropped off the kid by now. The rest of us will keep going through the evidence, trying to find something that proves who the unsub is." Hotch said.

Emily went back to the office that she had worked in last night to call Morgan. This, as she often said, was going to suck. She dialed and waited. "Hey Morgan." she said when he answered.

"Yeah, Prentiss. What's the plan?"

"Rolling blackouts are still scheduled for tonight." She told him.

"How's LAPD going to patrol it?"

"With the number of calls they've been getting, their stretched thin already." she said, glancing from the map of LA to the ringing phones outside the office.

"Well, then they gotta cancel it." Morgan said.

"That's the battle. If they do that, the whole city could go dark if the power grid gets overwhelmed." That would be far, far worse, because the unsub would have an entire city to hunt in, instead of isolated neighborhoods.

"Yeah, you're right. That's not gonna work." Morgan sighed. "LAPD is outnumbered 10,000 to one."

"Unfortunately, yes." Emily said.

"All right, keep me posted." Morgan said, and hung up. Emily went back and rejoined the team working over the profile over and over again, until Garica called. By then, Hotch had left to go talk to Morgan and Spicer. When the computer made the normal beeping sound of Garcia video calling them, both she and Reid almost jumped out of their skins.

"Uh guys?" Garcia called- the computer was at an angle that she could see nothing but a wall.

"Yeah, we are right here, give us a minute." Emily said, rushing around the table to open the laptop more.

"Is the entire team there?" she asked.

"No, I'll bring you to everyone else." Emily told her, picking up the laptop and leading Reid, JJ, and Rossi to the bullpen.

"Guys, Garcia has something." Emily called as she walked up.

"Ok, everybody needs to sit down because I am about to rock your world and not in a way I like to do it." she said, tapping on keys. I have scoured and searched and you were totally right. This unsub has been doing it forever. There is nowhere he hasn't been in the last 26 years. Honestly. Every single state. Well, 48 continental. My point- he is the worst I've ever seen, and we've all seen some things." Garcia said grimly. Emily could predict a lot of cute baby animals in her future.

"How did you connect them?" Hotch asked, frowning.

"Everything you said. He's drawn to the dark. He shows up during a blackout, he robs, he kills, he leaves a witness."

"How is he getting away with this?" Kurzbard asked.

"He never hits the same city twice. Except Los Angeles.

"Sending everything your way, and you better load up that printer, because it looks like he started in Southern California way back in the summer of 1984."

"Thank God the press hasn't connected this." JJ sighed.

"The summer Olympics were in Los Angeles that year."

"So was Richard Ramirez. That's the year he started."

"Well, he never left. Stayed in LA for a few years."

"Fine, I'll look into it." JJ said, and walked off.

"It appears our unsub started that summer during a blackout in San Diego. From there he went to Orange County, after that he ended up in Los Angeles and then worked his way up the coast."

"Why did he come back?" Hotch asked.

"And why now?" Morgan added.

They spent the next few hours going over what Garcia had found, but there were so many case files and victims that they didn't make much progress. It wasn't long after darkness fell that they were called out to yet another crime scene.

Unlike the previous crime scene, there was no message, but the unsub had left the baby in the room- his desire to have a witness so strong, he left a child who would never remember or hopefully even know what happened that night.

"Yes, sir." Hotch said, walking into the large office the team was working out of. "Thank you very much." He hung up the phone.

"Hey, what's up?" JJ asked.

"Everyone will have power tonight." he said.

"They called off the blackouts?" JJ said, sounding scandalized. While it might seem like a good idea, with an unsub out there hunting people in the dark, but if the entire power grid went down, it could be even worse if he had the entire city to hunt in.

"After what happened earlier, we can't give him that again." he said grimly.

"Great, I'll tell the press." JJ said, walking out of the room.

"Thanks." he said, walking over to where the rest of the team was sitting. He took a long look at the map Emily had spent the last hour putting together. With every pin she put in it, she wondered more and more how nobody had noticed this before. She didn't expect the local officers to put it together- if he only killed once or twice in each town, the local officers wouldn't have noticed it, but this was exactly what the BAU was created for. Someone in the FBI should have noticed this a long time ago.

"We're talking over 200 houses in 26 years." She told him.

"When he started in San Diego, it was all about the robberies." Reid said.

"But by the time he got to Orange county, he robbed and assaulted his victims. First murder was in Long Beach and he left a witness." Morgan added.

"He got away with it for 26 years. Why did he come back?" Hotch asked.

---

As the long hours of the night continued on, nobody bothered making any suggestions about going to sleep. The team just kept going through the files of people that were killed by the unsub. While there were 200 houses that they could link him to, there were more deaths then that, as sometimes the house had two adults and a child, and he would kill the adults and let the child survive. Emily was amazed that he hadn't been caught yet, considering his insistence on leaving someone alive.

"Thanks." she said to the officer who handed her more files.

"You're welcome." the officer said with a nod as he walked away.

"Well, the media coverage actually helped." JJ said as she got off the phone. "Neighbors were hypervigilant. As soon as they heard gunfire, they called the police."

"Did he leave a message this time?" Rossi asked Spicer and Kurzbard, who were walking in, as they had just some from the most recent crime scene.

"He actually left a baby in the closet." Kurzbard grumbled.

"There's got to be some kind of message in that." Emily said, looking up from her stack of files.

"He's taunting us. He's leaving behind witnesses that are too little to help." Spicer sighed.

"Ok," Emily said, getting up from her chair "Why them? Why now." she pointed at the picture of the two prostitutes that were the unsubs first kills of this time in LA "He kills these two women before the rolling blackouts. What is it about them? He killed them in a busy, well-light area. This is nothing like the others."

"It's, uh, shooting Newton. People hear gunfire down there all the time. He probably fit right in." Kurzbard said, walking over to the board next to her.

"It was in your division." she said.

"Hey, he had to start somewhere." Spicer said.

"So you think that it's just a coincidence?" Emily said skeptically.

Spicer raised an eyebrow, then sat down on the table. "All right, let's say it's not. What does that mean, he wanted our attention?"

"Well, he certainly has it." Kurzbard said.

"You're sure you never worked anything like this before?" Morgan asked, gesturing towards the board with the file in his hand.

"Trust me, this guy makes an impression."

"He started his career 26 years ago." Hotch said.

"Same as me." Kurzbard said. Emily could see the entire team perking up- maybe this was the piece that they were missing. "You think that this is because of me? That all these people are dead because of that?"

"Two women killed in your division, no survivors. Then a couple, leaving the wife as a witness. Then a mother, leaving the son. Now, two parents, but a baby survives." Hotch said. Emily could hear the question behind the statements- why did he not leave a witness for the first murders?

"If there's some kind of pattern, I've never seen it before." Kurzbard said.

"He circled back to LA for a reason." Hotch said grimly, staring intently at the two detectives.

"The first two murders here in LA county were close by. Long Beach is on the cusp of LA and Orange counties." Ried said in his typical rush of information way.

"Let's look into that one." Rossi said.

Reid was the first to find the file. "Home invasion. A husband was shot. Wife was left alive."

"Sounds familiar." Rossi said.

"What's the next one?" Hotch asked, digging through his own files.

"After Long Beach he went to Santa Monica. Wait a minute." Morgan said as he dug deeper into the file. "Spicer, do you have family out there?"

"Yeah, that's where I grew up." the detective nodded.

"Home invasion robbery. Double homicide. Joe and Sylvia Spicer were killed." Morgan told him. Emily felt her eyebrows shoot straight up. Maybe this was the link that they were really looking for.

"Those are my parents." Spicer said, shocked. The rest of the team was equally surprised. From the look on Spicer's face, it was clear that he didn't know that before now. "It doesn't make any sense. Let me see that." He stood up and reached for the file that Morgan was holding. "They died in a car accident. Drunk driver."

"Who told you that?" Morgan asked.

"My grandparents. I remember my grandfather waking me up. I was sick the night they died. I had a fever. How would I not remember that happening to them." the detective said, clearly doubting everything that he had ever learned about his parents.

"Maybe your grandparents never told you, Matt. They were trying to protect you." Kurzbard said gently.

"They lied?" Spicer said, shocked.

"You were the first child he left alive." Hotch said. Emily tensed. This was likely not going to end well. She quietly slipped her phone out of her pocket and opened up her text messages. Within moments, she sent a text to Hetty asking to borrow the boathouse. The response was almost instant- yes.

"You've been all over the news." JJ told him.

"This guy knows who you are." Morgan told him.

"Your family is probably in danger, and so are you, detective. We need to move you to a safe place. I have a friend who would let us use her safehouse. So you need to call everyone and tell them that I am going to come and pick them up. I will have one of her agents come and get you and the rest of the team- the location of this safehouse is classified, and she isn't going to risk it getting out." Emily told him.

"I have a daughter." Spicer choked out. "My sister is watching her right now, at my house. Ellie is my daughter and Kristen is my sister. My ex-wife left, I have no clue where she is, but she's not in LA."

"Listen, I need you to call your sister. Tell her to lock all the doors and windows, and that I'm coming to pick her up." Emily said, frantically, texting Hetty. Her phone chimes and she glances down at it, then sighs in relief. "An agent named Dominic Vail will be here to get all of you as soon as possible, probably around 15 minutes. Kurzbard- have you met Ellie and Kristen?"

"Um, yes ma'am."

"Good, then you are with me, I need someone there who knows them, who they aren't afraid of." Emily told him. "You need to make that phone call, detective." she reminded him. From the way he looked, like the past few minutes had been nothing but a dream, she was almost afraid that he would forget it.

"Why can't it be me?" Spicer said.

"Because he's obsessed with you, Detective. Not Kurzbard, you." Reid told him, already starting to gather up files.

"Morgan, until the agent gets here, can you give Spicer a cognitive interview?" Emily heard Hotch say as she rushed out the door, with Kurzbard right behind her.

"You are going to have to give me directions." She told him and she jumped into the big governmental SUV.

"I know where it is." he reassured her as she threw it into reverse.

Emily broke every traffic law that she had ever been taught on the drive, with Kurzbard giving her directions while hanging on to the oh shit bar. It felt an awful lot like her rushed drive through the desert of Texas, with the case in Terlingua. This time, however, she had traffic to contend with not a dusty old track that was rarely used. The traffic was worse- LA drivers were in no hurry to get out of her way, despite the flashing lights, siren, and frequent use of her horn.

After what seemed like an eternity to Emily, they were finally pulling up in front of what Kurzbard told her was Spicer's house. From the look of it, his sister had turned on every light in the house, and Emily approved, despite the fact that the city officials had been recommending as little power use as possible. Darkness was what the unsub wanted, and Kristen was making sure that her brother's house wasn't dark.

Kurzbard jumped out of the car the second that she had brought it to a stop, and Emily followed the second that she had put it in park. After a few moments, the door was opened by a clearly scared woman with dark hair. "Ellie, it's Kurzbard." She called as Emily walked up to the front porch. The child, who looked a lot like both her aunt and her father, appeared beside her.

"Kurzbard, get them in the car." Emily said, her hand dropping to her gun as she watched a beat up RV crawl down the street. "I'm going to check the house, turn off the lights."

"Yeah, be careful." He said, pulling his own gun out and pointing it at the ground, covering the street while watching for anything that might move.

"Lock the doors, I'll knock when I'm back. And take the driver's seat, just in case you need to make a fast exit. We can switch back once we get further away from here." Emily said, and walked into the house.

---

Fortunately, the house seemed to be normal, and after she checked all of the rooms, she shut the lights off. Before she shut the door, she left a little alarm system hooked up to it, so if the door was opened, it would make enough noise to wake the neighbors, just in case. She had gotten the alarm system from an old CIA friend, and fortunately had left it in her purse, which she managed to grab on the way out of the office. She narrowed her eyes as the RV crawled past again, pulling a pen out of her pocket and writing the license plate number on her hand. She would call Garcia with it once she got the Spicers to safety, just in case.

She knocked on the door of the car, and the doors unlocked before she could even start the second beat. "Let's get out of here." She said, swinging into the car, and slamming her door fast. Kurzbard had the car moving before she even started getting her seatbelt on.

They sped off, and Emily watched suspiciously for cars, especially that dented RV, but didn't see anyone following them. She had Kurzbard take them in the general direction towards the ocean, and once Emily was 100% sure that nobody was following them, she had him pull over, so she could finish the drive towards the boathouse.

Only a few minutes after she had retaken the wheel, the power went out, and it was abruptly dark other then her headlights and the headlights of the cars around them. "There goes the power." Emily sighed. Kurzbard glanced over at her, and made a face that pretty much said shit, but he didn't say anything due to the little ears in the backseat.

The unsub was probably going to attack someone, and if they were right about him being after Spicer, it was likely going to be one of his neighbors, as when the unsub realized that they escaped him, he would be so enraged that he would attack whoever got in his way first, and it would likely be a worse attack then anything they had seen out of him so far.

Despite the traffic, Emily didn't turn the lights and sirens on, as in the dark, they looked like just another large, dark colored SUV. Putting the lights on would draw more attention to them then Emily was willing to deal with. Because of that, it took them a while to get to the boathouse. However, she knew that Dom would be taking the team in the longest, most convoluted route that he could come up with, in an attempt to make sure the team didn't know where the boathouse was. She was fairly certain that most of the team wouldn't be able to find it, but if anyone could, it would be Reid, because of his eidetic memory, and Kurzbard and Spicer, because they actually lived in LA. Emily was relying on the darkness to keep Kurzbard from finding it, because she thought that it was more important to get the Spicers to safety then to hide it from Kurzbard. If Hetty really had a problem with her bringing Spicer and Kurzbard to the boathouse, she would have told her to leave them in the police station. And it wasn't like other members of LAPD had been in the boathouse before, of course.

She pulled up at the closest parking space to the boathouse, with Kurzbard staring out the window suspiciously. "What is this place?" he asked.

"This is the boathouse." Emily smiled, and hopped out of the car. Somehow, despite the adrenaline, Ellie had managed to fall asleep during the drive, so Emily opened her door, and helped her aunt get her out. Just as they were about to walk into the boathouse, Dom pulled up, and Emily stopped so that she would only have to explain the boathouse, and likely, the people within once.

"Hey Emily." Dom smiled as he jumped out of the car. Spicer hopped out of the passenger side only seconds behind him, and rushed to his sister, wrapping his arms around both her and his daughter.

"Hi, Dom." Emily smiled as she reached out and hugged him. "How are you doing?"

"Decent, all things considered. I'm a technical analyst now."

"That's good." She smiled, "Are the upstairs rooms being used right now?"

"No, but Callen has a Patriot in the interrogation room." he told her. That was the code that was used when the team had someone who they had someone who was detained under the patriot act.

"Good thing the kid is asleep." Emily sighed.

"I'll get them upstairs quickly, the team is going to want to say hi to you." Dom told her.

"Great, thank you." Emily said, then gestured at her team, leading them into what they obviously thought was a rather rickety shack, though as the light gleaming from the windows showed, a rickety shack that at least still had power, unlike every other building in the city.

They walked into the boathouse, and Emily loved seeing their expressions as they took it in. From the peeling paint to the life vests and kayaks leaning against the wall, it wasn't what anyone would expect of a safehouse. Added to that was the fact that you could hear the ocean waves gently lapping against the support posts, and the combination of the just as old looking furniture and the high tech surveillance equipment, which wasn't exactly an easy thing to reconcile. Sam and a long shaggy blonde haired man that Emily would guess was Deeks, the LAPD liaison that Callen had told her about on their last phone call were sitting at the long table, watching the interrogation.. From the Tv screen, she could see Callen and Kensi interrogating a suspect from one half of the screen, with Eric and the new technical analyst, Nell, on the other half.

"Hi Emily!" Eric called- he could see her, but Sam and probably-Deeks' backs were turned so they could see her walk in, though with the amount of alerts in the building, they probably knew she was there and coming in.

Dom very quickly led all of the Spicers upstairs, with Kurzbard staying downstairs with the team. He flinched as Callen got up in the suspect's face and started screaming at him. "What the hell." he said, and Emily could see that the rest of the team agreed.

"He is detained under the Patriot act." Sam said grimly. "Don't worry, we won't touch him, only threaten to do so. I'm Sam Hanna, NCIS, this is Marty Deeks, our LAPD liaison. The two in there are G Callen and Kensi Blyle. On the screen are two of our technical analysts, Eric Beale and Nell Jones, and of course you've already met Dominic Vail."

"This is my team- our Unit Chief, Aaron Hotchner, Agents Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid, David Rossi, and our media liaison, Jennifer Jareau. Hey, Eric, are you busy?" Emily asked.

"Not until Callen or Kensi actually get something out of this moron, no."

"There was an RV hovering suspiciously around Spicer's house. It was white-ish, license plate number HVT836L. Can you put it in Kaleidoscope?"

"Yeah, sure." Eric said, and frantic typing was heard. "Looks like that plate was stolen about two weeks ago, in a little town right on the California Nevada border."

"Probably so he would have California plates- out of state plates draw attention, even if it's just kids looking for out of state plates on a long drive." Kurzbard said.

"It's in Kaleidoscope. Unfortunately, a lot of the cameras I usually work with are down right now, due to the power outage, but if the usually all mighty eye in the sky sees him, I'll tell you." Eric told her.

"The stolen plates make me think that might be our unsub." Emily said. "It would be a decent way to avoid detection, as long as no cops run your plates and discover they were stolen."

"I don't know." Rossi said, "He would be risking a lot, if he got pulled over"

"Considering that we don't have any other leads on who the unsub might be, we need to work off of whatever we can." Hotch said, and Rossi nodded, conceding the point. Emily's attention is drawn back to the screen as Callen throws his arms up in the air, and stalks out of the interrogation room in what she thought was not entirely a fabricated huff.

"Hey Emily, glad to see you made it!" he grins "Do you want to go for a swim?"

"In this weather?" Emily scoffed "Why wouldn't I?"

"You know where everything is, then." G grinned and grabbed two cement blocks from a corner and lugged them over to the door of the interrogation room as Emily ran up to the second floor and went to the room where the orange prison jumpsuits were kept. It only took her a few minutes to change, and she ran back down, twirling the handcuffs with a safety release around in her hands. In that few minutes she had changed a lot about how she looked. She had removed all of her makeup, and her face was covered in blood, cuts, and dirt. While she had been gone, Sam had disappeared, leaving the team and Kurzbard talking to Deeks.

"Ready?" she asked G, grinning.

"Give me two minutes to terrify the crap out of him, then I'll come and get you." he smirked, then stormed back into the interrogation room, slamming the door hard, which made the suspect jump.

"What is going on?" Hotch asked.

"That suspect is a terrorist, and it's better if you don't know his name right now, believe me. He's being detained under the Patriot act, and no we aren't going to actually hurt him. Make him think that he's going to die, maybe, but he won't be hurt." Emily assured him as Kensi and Callen flung the table against the wall, and then forced their suspect to stand up. Then they shoved the chairs to be with the table and pulled up the hatch in the floor, revealing the ocean underneath. Callen then stalked out of the room, and Kensi stayed to guard over their prisoner, keeping him from trying to run out the open door.

Callen stomped theatrically out the room and headed for the door outside. He slammed it open, waited a few moments, then slammed it again. He walked back over to Emily and she snapped the cuffs onto her wrists, trying to resist laughing at her teammates' faces. She took one second to roll her neck and think about the persona that she would need, then held her wrists out to Callen, who grabbed her elbow and dragged her into the interrogation room.

"Now, do either of you have anything to say?" Kensi demanded, stalking towards them threateningly.

"Fuck off." Emily said in an accented voice.

"Well, if that's what you want." Callen dragged the cement block over to her and tied it to her cuffs.

Do you have anything to say now?" Kensi smirked.

"Go to hell." she spat.

Callen just picked up the cement block and dropped it into the hole, and shoved her to make her fall in. Emily waited until she was deep enough that the suspect wouldn't see her, then hit the safety release on the handcuffs to release her. Sam was beside her, in scuba gear to make sure that she got them off, then they swam to the side, so the terrorist wouldn't see them, before they popped up on the surface. They climbed up a ladder on the side of the building where some towels were waiting. Emily wrapped her hair in one, though she was kind of enjoying the cold water in her clothes at the moment, even if they would feel gross from the salt water in a few minutes. She was much cooler then she had been a few minutes before, so she didn't really care.

They stayed silent until they got back inside the boathouse, where the terrorist was spilling everything that she knew to Kensi and Callen. The hole in the floor was still threateningly open, with a cement block next to it. It didn't really seem to be needed though, as Emily's "death" seemed to have terrified her enough that she was willing to tell them anything that would mean that she wouldn't be killed.

"I love watching their faces after we pull that trick." Sam smirked.

"What just happened." JJ stared at her.

"I went for a swim to incentivize a terrorist into talking." Emily said dryly.

"And you guys do this regularly?" JJ said, turning her attention to Sam.

"No, not usually. Most of the time we have the information we need without resorting to anything like this. But we needed this information to take down a terrorist group operating on US soil, so we did it" he told them. The terrorist was winding down, apparently having told Callen and Kensi everything she knew. They pressed her for a few more minutes, but when they realised they weren't going to get anything more, they came out, after closing and locking the hole in the floor. They left the cement block in there, just as one last threat as what they could do if she had lied to them.

"Emily." Kensi grinned, coming over to hug her, despite the fact that she was still dripping in salt water.

"Long time, no see." Emily grinned back.

"I know! If we both solve our cases, then we should hang out."

"Totally. I'm thinking a raid of Hetty's closet." Emily smirked.

"She lets you get away with that?" Callen asked, sounding scandalized.

"Yep." Emily smirked.

"That's so not fair." Sam said.

"Yep."

"Um, I hate to be the party pooper, but can we get back to the unsub?" Morgan said.

"Right." Emily said. "I'm going to go change, then I'll be right back." She went upstairs and took a shower, then got dressed and came back down, ready to catch this bastard.

"So, with what we've learned since we gave the profile, what do we know?" Hotch asked. The NCIS team, having finished their interrogation, had all left except for Dom, who had stayed in case they needed to leave, so someone was with the Spicers. Matt Spicer hadn't come back down, and Emily hoped he was asleep- he looked like he had gotten less sleep then she had the previous night, and the emotional impact of Morgan putting him through the cognitive interview had to suck.

"We know that he has a habit for always leaving someone alive. The first ever child left alive was Spicer, though there was a wife who was left alive before him." Reid said.

"We should check on her, see if she's still alive. If she died or something, it could have shaken the unsub up, prior to him realizing that Spicer was the child he left alive all those years ago." Morgan pointed out.

"Yeah, but wouldn't that mean he would be killing in Long Beach?" Reid questioned.

"Well, he's clearly obsessed with Spicer, so I think we should focus on him for now." Prentiss pointed out.

"I agree with Emily, we should look into the wife, and if possible, the other surviving victims of the initial murders here in LA county, but we should focus on Spicer for now. He is the one that the unsub is focused on right now, so he is the one we need to look into." Hotch said. While he had said that, Kurzbard had walked away to take a call and came back with a grim look on his face.

"I just got a call for dispatch; I told them to call me if anything happened around Spicer's house, and had them station units in the area. It took a while because of the no power thing, but one of Spicer's neighbors was heard screaming, and the officer ran in. He broke the front door to get in, and the unsub heard that and ran away before the officer could get to him. Fortunately, the neighbor seems like she is going to make it, and she doesn't have anyone else in the house- she has a son, but she is divorced, so the son was with his dad this weekend, gratefully."

"Ok, let's all go look at the scene. Spicer should stay here, to keep the unsub from seeing him, just in case that he is watching, but the rest of us should." Hotch told them.

"Dom, are you ok, keeping watch here? You don't have anything else you need to do?"

"No, I've got my laptop, and a connection to Eric and Nell. I'm good." Dom smiled "Go do what you need to do. If I need someone to replace me, I'll call Ranko- he has a broken arm and would do just about anything to get away from all of the backlogged paperwork that Hetty is making him actually finish." he snorted.

"Poor Ranko." Emily said dryly, and led the team out the door. "I will lead the way to Spicer's place in one of the cars. I won't go the ridiculously convoluted route that Dom took you to get here, Hetty finished running all of your clearances by the time Dom got you to the boathouse, and decided it was ok for you to know where it was. You probably won't ever learn where the main base is though." She said.

"Ok." was all Hotch said, as he climbed into the driver's seat of the other SUV.

By now, it had been long enough, and had gotten late enough, nearly 4 am, that almost nobody was on the road, and with light and sirens, it took Emily a fraction of the amount of time it had earlier to get from the boathouse to Spicer's house. She was glad that Kurzbard had decided to ride with her again, with the addition of JJ and Reid in the backseat, because with all of the streetlights out, it was very hard to navigate around the massive, sprawling city.

Fortunately, between Reid and Kurzbard, she managed to get to the house without messing up, which she was rather grateful for. Which of Spicer's neighbors was the one attacked was fairly obvious- there was a live of cop cars out front, and someone had the smart idea to turn their spotlights on and point them towards the house, so once inside you weren't relying on the dubious light of the homeowner's candles and the flashlights of the hovering officers.

This too, was a place where JJ's public notice campaign showed it's value- when the homeowner heard someone other then her in the home, she had gotten out of her bedroom, and was almost to her front door, car keys in hand, when the unsub had caught up to her. The second she saw him, she started screaming her head off, before he managed to gag her and make her be quiet. He raped her, but was interrupted by the officer, and had fled out the back window that he had entered the house in.

Before she had gone to the hospital, she had told the officer that she had deliberately closed all of the windows- better to be hot then attacked, she told him. There was only one downstairs window with a broken lock, and the unsub found it. What was worse was that one incredibly suspicious CSI officer had the idea to go check Spicer's other neighbor's windows, and the unsub's prints were all over them too, but there weren't any open windows or doors that he could find to get in through. Emily thought that if he hadn't found the one window, he would have kept going down the block until he found someone who wasn't as careful.

"Well, he definitely is going after Spicer." Rossi sighed, staring down at the section of the victim's living room floor that was marked off as where he raped her.

"That's an understatement." Emily sighed. "What are we supposed to tell all of the neighbors? That you should probably go drive a hundred miles to find the nearest hotel with power and availability, just so they aren't near here anymore?"

"And should we start getting a list of all of Spicer's friends, and tell them all the same thing? And his sister's friends, and his kid's friends? By that point, we'd be evacuating half of LA. We can't do that without the unsub hearing about it, and then he would know that we are on to him." JJ sighed.

"I think that we should put everyone on alert, anyway. Forewarned is forearmed after all, or however that saying is supposed to go." Rossi said.

"But what's the limit to caution them, or unnecessarily terrifying all of those people out of their wits? We can't inform everyone they ever talked to. But we need to warn at least some of them. Where is the cut off point?" JJ argued.

"At this point, I'm not sure if this unsub has a cut off point, JJ." Emily said somberly. "He's clearly enraged by the fact that the Spicers weren't here for him to attack."

"Considering that he likes to leave children alive most of all, I think that we should warn the parents of all of Ellie's friends first- they both have children that can be forced into watching, and they are friends with the Spicers. Attacking one of Ellie's friends would be the closest he could get to attacking the Spicers and making Ellie watch." Reid pointed out.

"Guys, what if it isn't about Matt Spicer after all?" Emily said, her brain whirling through a new angle.

"He's clearly focused on the Spicers, though, Emily." Rossi said.

"I saw some of his press conferences on the flight over, he mentions his daughter in them a few times. What if it's about Ellie- the child he let live had a child, whose parent he could kill in front of her." Emily blurted out, sounding more like Reid usually did when he was in the middle of an idea.

"So it's something about the child watching." Rossi said thoughtfully.

"Maybe his mother or father made him watch something awful when he was a child." Hotch said from behind them, walking up after looking over the rest of the house with Kurzbard.

"Did you get how old he was from that first lady that he raped?" Emily asked Rossi.

"No, but she would have mentioned if he was elderly, and we know from Spicer's description of him he wasn't that young when his family was attacked, so we can probably guess an age range from the two of those." Reid said before Rossi could even get his mouth open.

"So, we know that he has really bad breath, that he's probably driving a white or off white RV, because that rather suspicious that he was driving it, saw me take the S[icers out, then went into a rage, and the fact that he didn't try the Spicer house, so he knew that they weren't in there." Emily started

"We know that he is at least 50, probably 60. And that he had some sort of childhood traumatic event." Reid added.

"Maybe he's like that one guy, in the case in Buffalo, the one who had the recording of his stepfather killing his mother? Maybe one of his parents died while he was watching." Rossi suggested.

"Or the one where the mom was a prostitute, and made her son sit outside? Though I think this mother would have made her son sit in the closet, with his obsession with putting people in closets to watch things." Morgan suggested. "He might be terrible now, but that poor child." he winced, and Emily couldn't help but agree- that had to have been awful.

"Well, let's give all of that to Garcia, as see what we can come up with. For now, is there anything else that we need to see here?" Hotch said.

"Should we warm the neighbors?" JJ asked.

"He's attacked twice in one night, which he hasn't done before. It's 5 am, daylight will be here soon, and the cops here won't be leaving for a while. We have the daylight hours to catch this guy. We just have to hope we can do it before it gets dark again." Hotch said. "I do think we should get a list of all of Ellie's friends, and warn them now though. They need to be on guard- children are easier to attack then adults no matter the time of day, and while he hasn't hurt a child before now, there's a first time for everything, especially if you stress an unsub out enough, and for this one, we are stressing him out a lot."

"Ok, we can do that on the way back to Emily's creepy safehouse." JJ snorted.

"It's called the boathouse. Though I can't deny it's kind of creepy. It was designed to scare people, so it's on purpose, kind of." Emily snorted.

"Oh, that makes me feel so much better." JJ scoffed, trying not to laugh as they walked down the porch steps to the cars. Not laughing at crime scenes was hard sometimes, considering how much time the team spent on them. But they had to appear professional in front of the neighbors watching from their (closed) windows.

"Well, if you want we could go to the hotel." Emily offered with a smirk once she was in the car and the neighbors couldn't see her.

"That doesn't have power! No, I'll take your creepy safehouse, thanks." JJ laughed.

---

They spent the rest of the long hours of the night talking through everything they knew about the unsub over and over again. It felt like the longest night that Emily had ever lived through. Eventually, she got tired and took an armchair to get some rest in, with Rossi claiming the couch and Kurzbard on one of the beds upstairs. The rest of the team just kept talking. When Emily woke up it was to bad news- the unsub had managed to strike a third time that night. Despite JJ's warnings; he had managed to get to one of Ellie's friends before the FBI agent dispatched to protect them did. Fortunately, the agent managed to get there before he killed both of the child's parents, so while the child lost his father, he wasn't an orphan. The team were worried about what would happen, considering that he was interrupted in the middle of two different attacks- it might make him more willing to take risks so he could kill, but they were pretty sure he wouldn't attack in daylight hours.

JJ was in the middle of a press conference, warning people that the unsub was still out there and to be careful after dark. She was also emphasizing that people should go stay with friends, as if they were with a large group of people, it was unlikely the unsub would attack them. Added to that, a massive amount of people had left Los Angeles the last few nights to go just about anywhere else that didn't have a serial killer, further limiting the unsub's victim pool. Emily didn't blame them- if she wasn't an agent, wasn't on this case, she would have left too. If the unsub had to break into multiple empty houses, just to find one that has some people in it, he might be caught in the act, or someone will hear him breaking in.

Meanwhile, the team, along with Garcia, and Eric, Nell and Dom in Ops were working on really long lists of children who were left orphaned whose parents were killed in California, in about the timespan of when they think the unsub could have been a child. It was an incredibly long list, and Emily was really glad that Callen and his team managed to catch their terrorists, or else it would be just Garcia trying to dig up all of that information, which would really suck for her.

"Wait, guys." Kurzbard said, looking at the picture of the crime scene they had tacked to every exposed board that wouldn't be ruined by a few thumbtacks that showed Annie Danzi's bedroom. "Didn't Spicer say in that interview thing that Morgan did with him that the first thing that the unsub said to him was hello there?"

"Yes." Morgan said slowly.

"What if the message wasn't for you feds like we thought it was, but for Spicer? A repetition of what he had said earlier to him as a kid? Serial killers like that kind of repetition, right?"

"What happened to Spicer's old house?" Emily asked Kurzbard.

"His grandparents sold it- so they didn't have to live in the house his parents died in, and the money went to college funds for him and his sister."

"So someone might live there now, someone that the unsub could attack." Morgan said slowly. It would fit with the repetition theme that the unsub had here in LA- attacking people to get Spicer's attention by repeating things he did to Spicer's parents.

"All right, I'll add that to our list of places to be guarded. But we are quickly running out of agents available for guard duty, even with half of Ellie's friends deciding to take impromptu vacations." Hotch sighed. Emily didn't blame him- having to scrounge up that many agents this fast, while most of the city's law enforcement was trying to deal with the effects of the still ongoing blackout was not fun. Fortunately, officials said they should have the power grid back up soon, for the more lucky areas. However, for other areas, it might take days for power to get back on, or possibly more, all depending on how badly the power system was damaged. The power company was sending workers out, now that there was daylight, as the workers were rightfully a bit scared of having to work at night in areas with no power, all by themselves, when there was a serial killer out there. Even if he hadn't attacked anyone who wasn't in a house yet, he was likely going to be desperate enough soon that he would take any opportunity to kill someone if it presented itself to him.

"And LAPD can't take anymore then we already have, most of our officers are on major intersections playing traffic cop. Though why anyone's bosses would want them to come to work this morning when there is no power to work by, I have no idea." Kurzbard sighed.

"Food is going to become a problem soon; the food in people's fridges is spoiling, and with no restaurants or grocery stores open people are going to get desperate." Emily said grimly.

"Water too, especially with this heat." Reid added "Added to that, the chance of heat related illnesses such as heat stroke, heat syncope, heat exhaustion and Rhabdomyolysis increase sharply as it gets hotter, considering that most people will not have access to air conditioning, we run the risk of a lot of people getting sick or dying because of this heat." he glanced around in his usual slightly nervous manner, as if waiting for someone to rebuke him for his special of information. While the team only rarely stopped him from telling them things, it was a long ingrained action- probably from high school or college, where people don't normally take well to someone who is years younger then them who is clearly much smarter then they were. It was in moments like this that she always felt bad for Reid- no matter how much she hated growing up in embassies, it was clearly the far better option then being a child genius with no real parental figures, no matter how much he loved his mom.

"Unfortunately, I have to add to the bad news train, people." Garcia sighed. "We finished compiling that list and it is scarily long. There are a horrifyingly large amounts of mothers who were accused of something child abuse related, who had sons. We didn't add any limiters, so whatever you guys can come up with is great.

"Well, let's start with people who have jobs- with how much traveling this unsub does, he probably doesn't have one, not even the most lenient of jobs will let you travel all over the US for over 20 years. And with how illiterate he is, he wouldn't be able to get one of the few jobs that you can travel while doing." Morgan said.

"Ok, that knocks some off. Unfortunately, child abuse in the past has a correlation with a spotty work history." Garcia grimaced.

"He probably won't have a home address- or if he does, it was the house of a family member of his, but we haven't seen him consistently return to one area, and he wouldn't be able to resist killing if he could. So he probably lived entirely out of that RV I saw, and gets money from stealing."

"No home." Eric nodded, and Emily could see the list drop again, but not as much as she would have liked it to.

"Would it be possible for him to not have a valid driver's license? If he doesn't live in any state, without a permanent address, it would be pretty hard to renew your license." Dom asked.

"Definitely." Morgan said, and they watched the list drop even smaller- only about a dozen names.

"Ok, going off the no home thing- Garcia, can you find any of these people- if you know where they are, and you know they aren't in La right now, we know they aren't the unsub." Emily asked.

"Ok, everyone take a name," Garcia told the computer crew.

"James Smith moved out of the country- we couldn't find anything on him because he's lived in England for the past 23 years." Eric said

"Same with Larry Moon, he's in Norway." Dom added.

"Jeffrey Woodward seems to be in New York City- he has a subway card, which has been used in the last 24 hours." Nell said.

And on and on the list went, the computer crew finding more and more creative ways to find people until there was only one name they couldn't find- Billy Flynn.

"And with even worse luck, the last photo we have of him is in 6th grade. We can age it up, of course, but there is a difference in someone who works out a lot and eats healthily, and someone who is overweight and eats nothing but fast food.

"Is there any chance the wife, the one he left alive, would be able to work with a sketch artist?" Hotch asked.

"I don't know, she was pretty bad when we talked to her. She tried to kill herself a third time after we left." Rossi said, frowning.

"Well, it's better then putting the boy from his next kill through a cognitive, and he didn't see anything, anyway." Hotch said. "I want you to go back, talk to her again. Ask her, say that it will help catch the man who killed her husband. You were the one that talked with her originally, you have a bit more of a rapport with her then any of us would. Kurzbard, you talked to her at the scene, right?" Kurzbard nodded, and winced. "Then can you go with him?" Kurzbard nodded again, and he and Rossi walked out the door.

"My cameras are starting to come back online, so if he crosses into an area with power, I'll find him." Eric said.

"He needs food and water just like anyone else. He might have some stockpiled, but eventually he'll need something, and then we can catch him." Nell said. "We'll call when we find anything, but we have a new case coming in that we need to pay attention to. Fortunately, it's just some AWOL marines. They probably are stuck somewhere because of the power outages, hopefully."

"Thank you for your help." Hotch said, right before the screen clicked off and returned to it's screensaver. "JJ, I want you to get access to the emergency alert system. We might need it to warn people about the unsub, and it's better to start the fight to get it now, then have to try and get it when we actually need it later. Everyone else, let's keep working on the profile, and try and add everything that we know about Billy Flynn to see if he really is our unsub."

"Wait." Garcia said. "Let me tell you why I really think it is Billy Flynn."

"Go ahead." Hotch said.

"Let me preface this by saying that a 40-year old murder in a suburb of Los Angles is an absurdly impossible task. Having said that, yours truly happens to know that the Pollack library at Cal State-"

"Garcia." Hotch said- his way of saying get to the point.

"Yes sir, sorry. Uh, anyway this murder was apparently quite a scandal."

"For southern California in the sixties that's saying something." Emily snorted.

"So, Nora Flynn was a prostitute and a drug addict living in a desert community just outside of Los Angeles. It appears bikers were her stock in trade, rough bikers, and one fateful day, her and a client were murdered by her 13 year old son, Billy. Shot to death. The customer, ironically named John, was able to tell the police before he died that Billy made him beg for his life then shot him anyway. And he was convicted, but-"

"He's a juvenile." Morgan said grimly.

"So at 18, he was released in 1973, never heard from again." Garcia told them.

"Oh, he was heard from." Emily said sarcastically, tying her hair up in a bun on the top of her head. It was too hot to have it hanging down.

"And he never released a statement as to why he killed them, although it does appear his childhood was horrific. I'm sending you the picture from the day he was released to your PDAs."

The grainy picture, without the knowledge of what Billy Flynn had done was remarkably innocent looking- he looked like he was graduating high school or something, with the smile he had on his face. With the knowledge, however, it was incredibly creepy.

"Guys!" Morgan said and he held up his phone, quite a bit of arguing over the profile later. "It's LAPD, he tried to go for one of Ellie's friend's houses. The officer at the house was a plainclothes, and he was inside the house, so Flynn didn't even know that he was there. He tried attacking the family, but the officer shot him. He's wounded, and the LAPD thinks that they have him confined to a mile radius.

"How far away are we. ?" Hotch asked.

"About 15 minutes." Morgan said.

"Good, tell the officer not to engage with him unless he absolutely has to until we get there. JJ, I want you on the emergency alert system. Garcia, did you finish the aged up picture?"

"Yes, and it looks pretty similar to the one that the wife came up with. "

"Good, send them to the officer, and see if he can confirm whether the person that he shot was Billy Flynn or not. "

"Will do, sir." Garcia said.

"Everyone else, come with me. Oh, and someone warn Spicer that we are leaving? I don't want him coming with, the unsub is too focused on him.. if Flynn sees him, he might decide that he will do anything to kill Spicer, or attack him because we managed to get Ellie away from him."

"Ok, this is a longshot." Emily said as they got into the car, "but what if he sees himself as some kind of grandparent to Ellie? If he hadn't let Spicer live, Ellie wouldn't have been born in the first place."

"That's creepy." Reid said, as Morgan ran up to the car and jumped in. The second that Hotch knew that Morgan was in the car with this seatbelt on, he peeling out of the parking lot, speeding through the trafficked streets, trying to get to Flynn before he decided to kill someone else that didn't have a cop watching over them.

Emily's phone rang- she glanced down to see JJ's name. "Yeah?" she asked.

"Can you put me on speaker?" JJ sounded stressed.

"You are on speaker." Emily told her after clicking the appropriate buttons.

"What exactly do you want me to say on the alert system, Hotch?" she asked.

"I want you to give his name, our profile. Just like you would do in a press conference. But we don't have time to call a press conference, so it will just be you. It's likely that the unsub will be listening though, so don't say anything that will piss him off too much"

"I'm not a hostage negotiator, Hotch." JJ said.

"Well, you are today,"Hotch said. "Call Emily back when you are in the room."

A moment later, Morgan's phone rang- he answered, said thank you , then hung up. "We have confirmation that Billy Flynn is the unsub, the sketch that the wife did was perfect according to the officer." he told them, and Emily sighed in relief. That was good.

Five minute later, Emily's phone rang again. "Ok, I'm in the room." JJ said.

"Ok, you are going to want to start off with saying that you are with us and our unit. Say that you are trying to catch the unsub, and then use his name. If we know who he is, he's lost some of his power. If people know who he is, he will be hunted, he won't be able to kill without opposition like he has for all of these years. We will be taking the power that he has had for so long away. Power is something that he lives off of, it's why he has left so many victims alive for all of these years. Also, can you send his picture to news stations and set up a tip line when you are done?"

"I'll set that up first, the press is waiting outside, and for the tip line all I have to do is tell the agent waiting for me to do it, I've had it ready this entire case. Then I'll do the emergency alert, so that by the time I'm done, the new stations are already making his face famous." JJ said.

"Ok." Hotch said.

"One question, what if I mess up?" JJ said, sounding more nervous then Emily had ever heard from her.

"You won't." Hotch said.

"Thanks." JJ said, sounding slightly better, then hung up.

A few minutes later the radio station that had been playing news was interrupted by the sound of JJ's voice. She sounded better, more confident. Emily could tell she was in her dealing with reporters mode, even if there were no reporters to deal with.

"Hello. My name is Jennifer Jareau, and I am with the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I am interrupting this to tell you that we have found the identity of the Prince of Darkness. His name is Billy Flynn. Unfortunately, he has killed a lot more people then just those we know of in Los Angeles. So far we have connected him to over 300 murders in the last 26 years. If you have any information about any of these murders, please call the FBI tip line at 1-800-225-5324."

"Mr. Flynn, if you are listening. Please turn yourself in. We know who you are, we will catch you. This can end a lot easier if you just turn yourself in."

"He's not going to turn himself in." Emily said grimly

"He's been killing for 26 years. He thinks he's invincible. If we catch him, it will most likely be a suicide by cop scenario. He won't want to live without killing." Morgan added.

Hotch forced the car into a tight turn, the tires squealing, and Emily idly wondered about the lifetime of FBI car tires when the BAU was around- it seems that there was always either a car chase of something that they had to get to really fast which involved the sounds of the rubber protesting whatever the agent was making it do. At least with the BAU, it was tires, rather then G's unit, which seemed to have windows shot out at least once a month, even with bullet resistant glass in all of the cars. Hotch would not be happy after dealing with the budgeting committee if that happened to them on a regular basis. Neither would Emily, really- the worst part wasn't trying to avoid the bullet coming at them, it was trying to avoid the shattering glass, because even bullet resistant glass shatters after a few bullets hit it, and while you might have thought you got away ok, after you finish chasing down the criminal that shot at you, you find glass everywhere- in your clothes, in your hair, small pieces in your skin- it was a nightmare to deal with. "Five minutes out," he said.

An officer's voice crackled over the radio. "I've found the RV, abandoned. A few blocks from where he attacked. He might have stolen another car to try and get away, or he might be on foot."

A series of responses was heard as Hotch grabbed the car's radio "What's the exact location of that RV?" he asked. The BAU didn't have any magical unsub finding powers, so that could be left to the LAPD, but if they searched the RV, they would have a better chance of knowing what he would do when he was cornered.

As they pulled up to the dirty RV, the officer standing guard over it waved at them. "The first units all got here within four minutes of the unsub breaking into the house. We've locked down a square mile grid, but no signs of the unsub yet. We believe he never made it out of the area."

"You were the one that shot him?" Emily asked.

"Yes ma'am." The officer said. "Unfortunately, he managed to find something to cover his wound, because the blood trail fades after about half a block, and I couldn't chase him because I had to stay with the family- I didn't want to chase him, just to have him circle around the block and attack them before I could catch up with him."

"Tell the officers not to approach him if they spot him. He's getting desperate. Then start up a door to door search- you don't need to actually search the house, but if the owners don't come to the door or are nervous or scared when they do, be suspicious. Then start evacuating families out of the area- if there are no people for him to attack, we might catch him breaking into empty houses." Hotch told him.

"Yes sir. I have another officer headed this way to relieve me, because I discharged my firearm, so I'm headed back to the station."

"Ok, thank you." Emily smiled and headed towards the RV. While they had been talking to the officer, Rossi and Kurzbard pulled up, with copies of the sketch that the victim had done. Emily briefly wondered how they had gotten copies. Rossi had probably charmed some nurse into letting him use the hospital copier, she snorted. They walked over to Hotch, probably filling him in on anything new that they had gotten from the poor woman, while Reid went straight for the RV with his usual single minded focus, with Morgan following him.

The RV's inside was just as dirty as the outside, and the smell of cigarettes was horrendous. It was even worse then just cigarettes, with the nauseating combination of unwashed body and disgusting breath. "Well, this is how he stays awake at night," Morgan said, holding a crack pipe he found in a cupboard.

"Great. Not only is he injured and running from the cops, he's probably going to start craving that soon, and he's not going to be able to find and crack in this neighborhood." Emily scoffed.

"He's already desperate enough, withdrawals are only going to make him more desperate." Morgan agreed.

"Look at this article on Spicer." Reid said, handing it to Morgan.

"We already know that he is obsessed with all of the attention Spicer was getting." Morgan reminded Reid.

"Yeah, but look at what's underlined three times." Reid said, pointing to the spot. Emily abandoned the area around the driver's seat where she was searching to stare over Morgan's shoulder at the paper.

"8 year old Ellie, bright happy child," Morgan scowled "Ellie was his target all along, not Spicer." he led the way over to where everyone else was standing "Look at this. There's a whole stack of them in the RV." he said, handing the newspaper to Hotch.

"So, we profiled his obsession with Spicer was for not getting credit for his law enforcement career. But we knew he was also obsessed with Ellie. So maybe it's Ellie that he's mad about not getting credit for?" Rossi asked.

"He thinks he's responsible for her." Morgan glared.

"Well, she wouldn't even be here if he hadn't allowed Spicer to live 25 years ago." Emily pointed out.

"A bastardized version of a grandparent." Rossi agreed.

"That's a pretty twisted delusion. It's a good thing that Ellie and Spicer are both safe, and there is no way that Flynn can get to them." Emily sighed.

"Well it only has to make sense to him." Hotch said.

"And when a delusion like that crashes, it crashes hard. Our hiding Ellie from him might have made it crash, which would be why he started going after her friends instead."

"Hey guys?" Reid said, walking up to them. "The officer outside said they think that they managed to corner him within a block, and are holding that block because we said not to approach him. They also have SWAT on the way."

"Let's go." Hotch said, leading the team out the door at a jog. It only took about a minute of driving before they got to the block that was surrounded by police cars, all with their sirens blaring and lights flashing.

"Sir." an officer said, one that Emily recognized from when they gave the profile- a tall man who, after the profile was over, asked a few good questions about profiling and how accurate they were. "Unfortunately, we hadn't cleared this block yet, and so he might have taken someone hostage."

"If he does have a hostage, it will most likely be a child- with many of his previous kills, he kills the parents, and leaves the child alive to suffer through the trauma of what happened to them. If there is no child, or the child is too small to be an effective hostage, he will hold the wife hostage." Hotch told him.

"How long until SWAT gets here?"

"Two minutes." the officer said. Just then a scream was heard from one of the houses- a child with a high pitch voice, with a man's bellowing heard over it, then a gunshot and silence.

"We don't have time to wait for SWAT." Morgan said, moving towards the house. The rest of the team fell in behind them, and a few of the police officers followed, with the rest staying behind to hold the perimeter.

The house, if the flashing of the police lights hadn't been reflected on it, would have looked like any normal idyllic suburban home. The light blue paint needed a bit of a touch up, there were children's toys laying in the yard, shoes lying on the porch. Instead, it was a grim scene that should have belonged in a horror movie. The owners of this house would never forget what was happening inside of it, if they managed to survive long enough to escape Flynn. They wouldn't remember the bbq's or the fun days in the pool every summer, but instead, they would remember this. Emily wouldn't be surprised to learn that they moved after this- there are some things that you just can't recover from.

The door came down after one solid kick from Morgan, and they rushed into the dark house- all of the curtains had been closed, and there was still no power in this area, so even though it was daytime, it was as dark as night. The unsub probably did it to make it look more like his normal hunting conditions, Emily absentmindedly noted as Hotch motioned for her to check the kitchen with Rossi. If Emily had to bet on where the unsub was, she would say the would be in the master bedroom, because that was were all of his kills normally took place, but he could have realized that and purposefully moved somewhere else, so she made sure to thoroughly check the kitchen, even looking in that pantry, even through the unsub wouldn't be able to fit in there. It was a good thing that she did - there was a small boy, maybe 3 years old hiding in there.

"Hello." she said softly. "You want to get out of there? there are a bunch of police officers outside waiting to see you." He nodded, clutching a toy car as she scooped him up and put him on her shoulder.

With Rossi covering her retreat, she took the boy outside, just as she heard Morgan yell "Put down the gun!" and heard another child crying. She winced, but continued. This child only had her, while Morgan had the rest of the team plus the officers. There probably wasn't room for her in whatever room the unsub had been found in anyway, and the boy was too young to be trusted to get himself outside.

She ran down the porch, across the brown grass, and over to the officers, handing the boy to one of them just as SWAT pulled up. "Come with me!" she yelled at them, leading them into the house. Right as she got through the door, she heard shots ring out, echoing through the house.

"All clear." she heard Morgan yell, and she sighed in relief, putting her gun in its holster.

"I found a boy and took him outside." she yelled back, heading deeper into the house, until she found (as she expected) everyone in the master bedroom. The girl that Emily had heard screaming was crying in Morgan's arm, her parents tied up with duct tape on the floor. Emily took a few pictures of the tape with her phone for evidence, then pulled her knife out and started cutting them free. They both were alive, though beaten pretty badly, and the wife looked like she had been raped, from the state of her clothes and how shocky and scared she looked. "Hey there it's ok. I took your son outside, he's fine." she murmured to the woman. The woman smiled for a moment, then burst into tears, falling into Emily's arms.

"EMTs are on their way, we had them waiting outside our 1 mile barricade just in case. They will be here in a minute." an officer said softly.

"Thank you." she mouthed over the woman's shoulder. From what little she could see of the room, the daughter had moved from Morgan's arms to her fathers, clinging on to him for dear life. Morgan was checking the unsub's body, and Emily's nose wrinkled- now that the adrenaline wasn't running through her, she noticed that she could smell him from here. No wonder he avoided people- he would have gotten glares from everyone he walked past.

---

After a while, the team met up in front of the house. "Alright team. Back to the boathouse, gather our stuff there, then to the police station to grab what we left there and to drop the Spicers off, then to the hotel. I managed to argue Strauss into letting us have a few hours to sleep before we fly back home."

"Thank you." Rossi said, yawning. "I'll pay for half of whatever you bribed her with."

The drive back to the boathouse seemed to take twice as long as the drive to the RV had. Emily was driving, as she got a decent amount of sleep the night before, even if it was in a chair, and the rest of the team had turned into zombies fighting sleep.

She smiled as she saw G's car outside the boathouse, with Kensi's right next to it. She was glad that she had a chance to say goodbye to them before leaving, even if her and Kensi's raid of Hetty's closet wasn't going to happen.

"Hey guys." she grinned as she walked in the door, the team surrounding her. "We got him." The entire NCIS team, with Eric, Nell, and Dom on the computer screen glanced up at her.

"I know, we were listening in on the police radio. Good job." G smiled. "When are you guys leaving?"

"Tonight." Emily sighed. "Hotch was only barely able to argue Strauss into giving us enough time to sleep before we got on the plane. She doesn't like it when we spend more time on a case then we have to."

"That sucks." Deeks scoffed.

"Hey Emily." Nate smiled at her. He had been doing psychological evaluations the entire time that she had been here, so they hadn't run into each other yet. "When you say enough time to sleep you mean how much time exactly?" he said suspiciously.

"Well, by the time we get to the hotel, and adding in the time it takes to get to the airport, about 4 hours." Emily winced.

"Ouch." G said.

"It's not like you sleep for more then 20 minutes at a time." Sam rolled his eyes at his partner, though there was a grin on his face.

"And? I'd still like to have more then four hours before I had to get on a plane and go home." G scoffed.

"Have any of you told Spicer?" Morgan asked.

"No, we work undercover enough that we avoid just about anyone seeing our faces. Well, Deeks went up there about 30 minutes ago and gave them some food and water, but he already knew Deeks."

"Ok, I'm going to go do that then." Morgan said, and the rest of them started to clear up all of the files and pictures that they left scattered all over the boathouse.

"I think Hetty wanted to talk to you about something, but I don't think that it was urgent, or else she would have come with us when we said that we were going here to see you." G told her at a whisper as he helped her unpin pictures from the wall.

"Ok, I'll talk to her." she whispered back.

---

It didn't take long to clean the boathouse of any hint of them ever being there, other then a few holes in the walls where they had hung pictures, and given what the boathouse looked like, it was unlikely that anyone other then Hetty would ever notice those.

Morgan had offered to drive the Spicers directly home, so he took one of the SUVs and did that, while everyone else went to the police station to collect the few things that they had left there, and dropped off the files of all of the kills for someone else to deal with. Emily was just glad it wasn't her, and from what JJ had said about the tip line, it was overflowing with people who thought that their relatives or parents had been killed by Flynn, or that they had been a victim themselves. While Flynn was dead, it was going to take a long time before they knew the real number of how many people he killed.

Kurzbard, who had caught a ride back to the police station with an officer, came up to them right as they were about to leave. "I can't thank you enough." he sighed. "If you guys hadn't realized that he was after my partner, I might have lost him."

"If you guys hadn't fought for us to be called in, we wouldn't have been here. Give yourself some credit." Hotch said.

"Still, thank you. If you hadn't come out, who knows how long he would have kept killing." Kurzbard sighed.

"Until he died or someone managed to catch him, probably." Emily sighed. "There would be even more victims added to the already long list."

"Well thanks a lot, I'm glad that didn't happen and we managed to catch him." Kurzbard said.

"Anytime," Hotch said, reaching forward and shaking his hand. "And call us if you have anything else weird happening, even if we can't fly out here, we can always consult."

"This is LA, Agent, if we called every time something weird happened, we would be calling every other day." Kurzbard chuckled.

"Good point." Morgan snorted, as he led the way out the door. "Bye." he called, and the rest of the team echoed him and followed.

The short drive to the hotel that they had barely seen during the case was a relief. When they had gotten to the police station, Emily had texted Hetty to meet her in the little bookstore next to the hotel. She had chosen the bookstore because it was fairly normal for her to explore bookstores in whatever town that they were in. Normally, Reid accompanied her on her expeditions, but with how tired he looked, she was pretty sure that he was going to go straight to bed. She was pretty sure that he hadn't slept at all the night before, too focused on trying to find the unsub. After she dropped all of her stuff off in the hotel that she and JJ were sharing, she told JJ that she was going down to the bookstore. JJ just nodded sleepily, and collapsed in her bed.

In a matter of a few minutes, Emily got out of the hotel without anyone on the team seeing her, and down to the bookstore, lingering in the history section about the cold war. She and Hetty had only met in a bookstore once before, but that was where they had met the last time, so she guessed that would be where Hetty would be.

She was right- a few minutes of boredly looking for the book that she thought was the most wrong of all of them, Hetty appeared next to her. "Don't even think about buying that." she said.

"I was thinking of reading it like satire." she smiled, but put the book back on the shelf where it belonged. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Nate." Hetty said, browsing through the books herself. "He wants to become a field agent. I want to throw him into the deep end of the pool, but I need to make sure that he can swim. He is a psychologist, and I think he would do well in the BAU. Not permanently, just a training liaison position. He can't start out with my team, they know him too well and would coddle him too much. He needs people he doesn't know, but a lifeline."

"And I'm that lifeline." Emily said. "Well, I can't say whether or not the FBI would agree, or that Hotch would agree, but if you manage to get them to agree, I will volunteer as his trainer." she smiled, and pulled a book about the CIA out, and read the back cover, snorting over the inaccuracies. If historians knew half of what happened then…. Well, she was pretty sure that half the things that she did for the CIA would not have happened.

"So you are ok with it? There are other places I could put him, but I think that the BAU would be the best."

"What do you want him to do after the BAU?"

"Well, Leon wants someone new on the rabbit run, and I don't want that for Nate. He would be good at it, and his profiling would be useful there, but long term? I do not want him to die of burnout." Hetty told her, and Emily winced. The assignment was one of the worst you could get in a federal agency. You ran from one assignment to the next, all over the world. The assignments were often very dangerous, and you had little to no backup. Emily had been lucky enough to have never gotten the assignment, given that her mother was an ambassador, and would have raised all kinds of hell if she had gone missing on that kind of assignment. In undercover assignments, at least she had back up most of the time, in the form of a partner also on the assignment, or had a team waiting somewhere vaguely near where she was.

"Well, it will be good for him getting more experience with profiling serial killers- he's a very good profiler of course, but what we do isn't based on interviews like what he usually does, we have to guess based on very few clues." Emily smiled.

"I was thinking about seeing if we could create a BAU in NCIS- not the size of the FBI's of course, NCIS does not need that many teams, considering that we are such a small agency, but maybe a team or two."

"Do you want Nate to lead them?" Emily asked with a frown- he was a bit young. He was experienced, she couldn't deny that, and by the time the BAU got done with him, he would be able to profile just about anything, but other people's opinions of him would matter when he came to a new place, leader of a team. Hotch had probably only been maybe 5 years older then he was when he took over the BAU when Gideon got hurt, but Hotch had been a lawyer and an experienced profiler. He was very good at being intimidating and concealing his emotions. Nate was not. He had done undercover work before, admittedly, but he was so cheerful, he would not be able to replicate what Hotch had done without extreme amounts of work, and it really wouldn't work with his personality. Though given what the team had said of how Hotch had once been, before he had taken over the team, the grim leader she knew well wasn't what Hotch had once been either. With Haley, he was a profiler, but he had been happier, easier to smile and laugh with them, before their relationship had started going downhill, before Foyet. Or, at least that is what the team had told her. She could see it, though. With Jack, he was happier, more carefree.

"I don't know yet. We don't have that many experienced profilers in the agency, after all. Or at least not ones that want to be field agents." Hetty told her, frowning. Then they both went silent as an employee walked over.

"Hi, can I help you guys find anything?" The girl said, a patent customer service smile on her face- the one that practically screams that she didn't want to be here, but she had to be, and has to be cheerful.

"No thanks, I'm good." Emily said, and Hetty gave her a similar statement, both waiting for her to get a little further away before talking again. They were fortunate that there were very few customers in the store- the Prince of Darkness must have scared them off, as even though he was dead, people would want to stay close to home for a little while longer before they had to go anywhere that wasn't important or urgent. She was just glad that there was power in most areas now, people could hunker down in their homes without risking heatstroke. "The BAU doesn't have to be a field agent position- you can consult from base without going anywhere if you want to. We just work a bit better if we can actually see the crime scenes and the areas around them- the stuff you won't see in pictures. However, it's better if at least a part of this team and it's leader for sure are field agents."

"Well, let's see how well Nate does, before we start creating this hypothetical team." Hetty smiled. "And for the record, I think he will surprise you."

"Well, I hope I will be surprised." Emily smiled.

Hetty glanced down at her watch. "Drat. I have a meeting with the Director and SecNav soon. I will call you with more details tomorrow or the day after. And I'll tell you when I bring up the idea to the director."

"Great, thanks Hetty." Emily smiled, and disappeared deeper into the stacks of books. Now to find something that she might actually want to read...

Notes:

I had to give JJ her moment, even if I had to drastically change it because of all that I changed in the story.
I stole the idea of a rabbit run from some other NCIS fic, though I can't remember what is was right now, but I will update if I remember. What do you guys think about Nate temporarily joining the team?
I hope you enjoyed it, and I'm already working on the next chapter, so hopefully that will be out in a week or two! see you next time!