AN: Apologies for the length between chapters. Thanks for your patience. TW: vague implied reference to suicide
Dave Rossi glanced at the rest of the team from his seat on the jet. The team had quickly mobilized after JJ presented this case to Hotch. Two teenage girls missing in California. That these victims were teens was going to make the case challenging for the team all of whom dreaded cases involving children.
Then they had gotten word mid flight that one had been found dead. Her body mutilated in such a way that an identification couldn't be made by fingerprints or facial recognition. To get a definitive ID they would need to wait for DNA results which they had hypothesized would return too late for the other girl.
They had already discussed the case based on the limited information that they had as well as the latest update from Garcia. Now all any of them could do was to wait until they arrived so they could go to the location where the locals had found the body for them to profile before decisions could be made on next steps.
While in this familiar yet loathed holding pattern of waiting for the jet to arrive at their destination, Dave let his mind wander. Since Hotch's unexpected reaction in that hotel hallway in Pittsburgh, Dave had been covertly observing him … and Emily. Or at least trying to observe them.
Since returning from Pittsburgh there have been very few opportunities in the office to observe their interactions because there hadn't been very many. Almost immediately after their return, Hotch had been pulled into a series of meetings that had been postponed while he was out of the office for the court appearances for his divorce and then for their case in Pittsburgh.
In between meetings Hotch had mostly been holed up in his office plowing through his bottomless inbox of paperwork except when the team met for their daily briefing. That was before he left around five o'clock on most days.
The team all knew that he was doing this in order to have dinner with Jack before Hotch needed to take him back to Haley. Hotch would then return to the office in the evening usually after most of the team had left for the day to again tackle the neverending stack of paperwork that Strauss had been leaving on his desk.
While Dave had noticed that Hotch was frustrated at the paperwork, he also noticed that Hotch was less stressed or differently stressed than Dave had seen him since he had come back to the team months earlier.
From the short conversation they had had having the divorce finalized and the custody arrangement decided had relieved the increasing pressure of his broken marriage however reading between the lines Dave saw that the process had opened wounds in his friend.
With being divorced three times, Dave realized that reality was not unexpected though he hadn't discovered what had happened with Hotch. Dave hadn't missed the deep pain that Hotch had been trying to hide from all of them. Did it have to do with his divorce or was it something else?
Dave shook his head as he looked over at his friend who was still working on paperwork on the other side of the jet before he turned away and looked a few seats away at the other subject of his musing. Similar to Hotch, she was focused on the case file in front of her, making occasional notations while the others were resting.
As she was distracted, Dave glanced at her several times still trying to figure out Emily Prentiss. As a profiler it didn't happen very often that he couldn't successfully profile someone. That made her all the more interesting to him.
Of everyone on the team, she had been the hardest to read. Even harder than Hotch though Dave had known him when he was new to profiling which gave him an advantage at identifying Hotch's tells.
There were a few certainties that Dave had elicited from either her file or from interactions with her. That aside, he did have to admit that both her file and their interactions many times left him with more questions and few answers.
A constant he did have was that he knew the type of man her grandfather had been. Her reaction to the conversation they had about him had probably been the clearest information he had been able to determine about her.
Then just a few days ago, he had heard part of a conversation that sparked a memory that tapped into his curiosity in understanding Hotch's reaction in that hotel hallway in Pittsburgh. He overheard Emily mention in passing about her estrangement from her mother. Always interested in potential insight about the team he had stopped and listened if she revealed any details.
Unfortunately he had arrived back at his office empty handed as Emily had quickly changed the subject when the question about why had been posed by others in the bullpen.
It hadn't been until that conversation that Dave learned that the Ambassador had brought the BAU what sounded like a strange case shortly after Emily came to the team. However that wasn't what set off Dave's curiosity.
No, that was at the mention of Ambassador Prentiss herself. Yes he had known for a while who Emily's mother was, he had even met her years earlier but this had been the first time he heard her mentioned specifically.
It was at that mention that Dave recalled when he had looked over Hotch's file when he was considering offering the younger agent a position in the BAU that he noted that Hotch had once been assigned to the Ambassador early in his time with the FBI.
He remembered at that time being intrigued by the wording of the report from Ambassador Prentiss. It hadn't been that the report was positive or negative but the careful wording that had caught his attention. That observation as well had brought more questions than answers.
However the rest of the reports in Hotch's file had been positive including his next assignment which had been an international taskforce. Once Hotch had accepted the offer and joined the team, Dave hadn't thought of that again until now.
Now that he remembered that piece of information he had to wonder if Hotch and Emily met back then?
If so, why didn't they share that information with the team when Emily was assigned to the team?
If they hadn't known each other then had something else happened when Hotch was assigned to the Ambassador that resulted in the strange wording on the report in his file as well as his role in the shaky start Dave had heard Emily had had in her early days with the BAU?
And not seeing Hotch and Emily interact more now that he was evaluating these factors was unfortunately impairing his ability to profile what, if anything, was going on between them.
But Hotch hadn't been the only one focused since they had been back from Pittsburgh. Emily's attention had had its own outlet.
The day after they returned, Dave had walked into the bullpen in time to see Emily tossing Derek's gym bag at him as she informed him that they were going to the gym. Surprisingly Derek didn't argue at the declaration but looked down and sighed before picking up his bag and slowly following her out of the bullpen. When they returned a couple of hours later the tension that had started in Pittsburgh between the two had diminished somewhat.
The next day, Reid and Morgan had been pranking each other while Emily had been over at the Academy most of the morning giving a lecture. As Dave had observed them that morning he was relieved that for once they weren't pranking him as they had been several times a week recently.
The most anxiety producing prank for him had been the previous week. He had walked into his office to find the top shelf of his bookcase, the shelf where he kept his copy of each of the books he had written, now had several harlequin romance novels carefully placed in front of each of his books.
Thankfully he remembered he had a box in his closet. He had just had just finished taking them down and put the box back out of sight in the closet when Strauss had unexpectedly walked into his office. Given their history and her feelings towards the team, that situation could have ended poorly.
Unfortunately for Morgan today, his last prank on Reid today went wrong just as Emily was entering the bullpen. After a heated discussion, he saw Morgan look down and sigh once again before all three of them walked out of the bullpen.
After an hour had passed with no further indication of where they had gone or when they'd be back, Dave wandered down to Garcia's office.
His objective for the visit had been to see if he could find out anything about where the trio went. Since coming back to the team Dave had come to realize that Garcia generally knew where each member of the team was at all times. As he entered her office, he was distracted yet pleasantly surprised to see that she had Young and Restless up on one of her monitors.
During his retirement, Dave had started watching the show as he rarely had commitments in the middle of the day. He wrote best in the mornings and most public engagements were in the late afternoons, evenings or weekends. Now that he was back at the BAU not watching this show was one of the few aspects that he missed about being home during the day.
Suddenly forgetting the reason he had come to Garcia's office, he sat down and started to watch as well. Surprised at his sudden appearance in her office and now uncharacteristic reaction, Garcia had looked over at him and started to say something twice before stopping herself both times. Apparently she did not know how to approach not only being caught watching TV during the workday by one of the team leaders but then for him to unexpectedly sit down to join her.
Then 15 minutes later they were surprised when Morgan bursted into the room. Without seeing Dave, Morgan started complaining to Garcia about Prentiss and Reid and from Dave's recollection something about doors.
It wasn't until Dave shushed him that Morgan realized that Dave was even there. Surprised Morgan looked back at Garcia to see her struggle in response. After shaking his head Derek sat down next to her and they all watched the daytime drama in silence until the end.
He had left shortly after the show finished with just a wave to Garcia and Morgan. However now he was regretting not finding out what Derek had been doing with Reid and Prentiss as well as how doors were involved. He was curious what they had done to have Morgan so annoyed when he had arrived in Garcia's office.
Before he could consider that too much, there was an announcement by the pilot to prepare for landing as the plane was making its final approach. Time to turn his focus back on this case.
####
Not being sure what else she could gain from the file for their current case sitting in front of her before they arrived, Emily sat back in her seat and closed her eyes aware that once they landed it may be awhile before the team had an opportunity to rest given the case involved missing kids.
They had discussed the case after takeoff and then just a few minutes earlier when Garcia called up with an update. For now they had done what they could until they landed in just under an hour.
As she moved to get into a more comfortable position, Emily winced as the seat touched a bruise on her leg. After the pain subsided, she smirked as she remembered how she had gotten it.
Even on the flight back from Pittsburgh, she had been unnerved by how Derek had looked at her at the hotel. While it annoyed her particularly since he was supposed to have been there to give her a work related message, she was more concerned that he was starting to see her differently. She hadn't been able to get the images of Morgan staring at her body out of her head.
Given how often they worked together in the field his extended scrutiny of her body concerned her. Additionally he had begun acting differently towards her since that night. It was subtle but definitely there.
She needed him to see her as Agent Prentiss, the field agent who was able to take him down as they both knew she had previously done in the gym. She didn't want him to start treating her as he did Garcia and even JJ to some extent. She had worked damn hard and sacrificed too much to get where she was for that to happen.
He had tried to convince her that it wasn't an issue but she couldn't take the chance. If he couldn't keep the image of her that evening at the hotel out of his head while in the field, it would increase the risk to both of them as well as potentially others on the team.
As they were working on paperwork after arriving back from Pittsburgh an idea came to her. After they had completed all of their reports for that case, Emily had taken his gym bag from where it generally laid next to his desk and tossed it at him deciding that the best way to handle the situation was to head to the gym and work out together. They both worked out just about daily and were comparable skill wise in hand to hand.
With all of the apprehension about potential fallout given what the pictures of Declan were made to look like, she was stressed. To handle the stress, she had been increasing her gym sessions. For this purpose that was good for two reasons - the gym was an area that she could hold her own against Derek and he knew that from experience and second she was working out anyway and could use a partner. When he called it after she had taken him down for the second time she had agreed feeling that she had made her point.
When it came down to it, Emily didn't want to blow up at him because she considered Derek to be a good person. However, the incident had needed to be addressed before anything happened. They couldn't continue working the way they had been if they didn't address the issue now.
As they headed back to the BAU after both stopping in the locker rooms, Emily could feel that the gym session had been successful even as he had teased her about her navel ring. She promised him that one day he was going to wake up with bright yellow nail polish on his toes since he had liked her polish so much. She laughed at his horrified expression.
The next day she found herself annoyed with him again when she arrived back in the bullpen and walked in on him pranking Reid. It wouldn't have taken a profiler to see Reid needed a break. Over the last year, she had come to know Spencer well as she was still his primary support in his recovery from Dilaudid.
For months, Dr Nelson had been suggesting he consider additional avenues of support. With the uncertainty of her situation since she made the decision to fake Declan's death, Emily had been gently encouraging him as well. However the role that support groups had for their victims in Pittsburgh had been weighing heavily on Spencer. But after that case, Emily couldn't say that she blamed him either.
In Morgan's defense, Reid was generally an equal participant with pranks though Rossi had been their main target recently. They were all somewhat amused that he had started to occasionally prank them back. Hotch had warned her though she hadn't believed it until she saw it.
In order to halt what was turning into a prank war, Emily convinced both of them that they should go to practice at the Academy. They agreed and left the bullpen shortly after that.
After successfully working through several of the challenges, they entered where they practiced how to properly kick in a door. It was no secret that this was one of Morgan's favorite areas.
As they practiced, Morgan gave pointers to Reid, stopping in between attempts to instruct while adding teasing. As she listened Emily's eyes narrowed at Morgan as she once again saw Reid tense up at the comments.
As Morgan was talking an idea came to her. She quickly pulled the lock pick out of her pocket and quickly unlocked the door that Reid was working with. As Reid and Morgan turned back to doors she mouthed to Reid to just open the door to which he nodded. After a jab to Reid about the goal being to just get in the door, Morgan called for them to try again. At that Reid took a couple of steps forward and turned the knob and walked through the door frame.
Surprised at Reid suddenly and unexpectedly being able to walk through what was supposed to be a locked door while he was midkick had Morgan losing his balance causing him to land on his ass.
When he turned back to them both now laughing, Morgan immediately knew that Emily had somehow been involved. After grumping at them, they headed back to the BAU with Reid and Emily going back to their desks and Morgan disappearing to Garcia's office.
The positive thoughts she had at the memory were quickly extinguished when the pilot announced they were preparing for landing. All focus now needs to be finding out what happened to these girls.
####
Emily startled as the SUV stopped. Looking up she noticed that Hotch had parked outside the police precinct. After they had returned to the SUV after checking out the movie theater where the two missing girls were last seen, Hotch had called the team to share what they had found. Since then the rest of the team was gathered there as they started to put together their boards for the case.
Before Emily could open the door Hotch asked, "how have you been?"
Emily turned to look at him before replying, "OK." She sighed before she stated, "things have been weird between us in the office."
Hotch sighed as he realized they hadn't really talked since he left her apartment on the morning of his divorce hearing. So much had happened during that time and right now was not the time to talk about it. He put his hand over hers before responding, "I know and I'm sorry. I'm adjusting to the divorce. I've been trying to spend more time with Jack within my visitation as I never know when we will be called away…"
Emily squeezed his hand as she interrupted, "...Aaron stop. You don't owe me an explanation but it is good to talk to you again. I'm glad the divorce hearing is over and that it sounds like you got what you wanted in terms of visitation."
Hotch nodded, "I did mostly. Thanks."
Emily smiled before answering, "Good. Why don't we head inside? We have a missing girl to find."
They opened their respective doors and after exiting the SUV walked together into the station.
####
While Dave, Morgan and Reid were at the Vaughn house, Emily had spoken to the coroner before she and Hotch continued to work on victimology while JJ was collaborating with the locals about media reports.
Shortly after JJ came back to their workroom, Hotch stepped to the other side of the room to take a call. While he was on his phone Emily filled JJ in on what the coroner had found as she worked at the board. Emily and JJ paused when they heard Hotch's tone change on the call which they now knew was from Morgan.
After hanging up, he looked over at them and said, "there's been a complication."
####
Hours later the team arrived back at the station with Jack Vaughn and his assigned agent from the US Marshals Service. Ever since that phone call, Emily had been uneasy about this development. A complication with the father of the missing teen that they needed some clarity concerning the situation of how they ended up in Witness Protection.
There was a growing frustration on the team about the lack of forthcomingness from both the agent and Jack Vaughn. This case now had the potential to become much more complex and they needed answers to determine how this new information affected their profile.
As they all sat in the conference room, the hair of the back of Emily's neck stood up as it was explained by Jack Vaughn and the US marshal agent the broad stroke of his background.
It wasn't until it was pointed out to Jack Vaughn that the BAU and locals primary objective was to find Lindsey unlike the agent from the Marshals Service. Jack nodded at the recognition of the accuracy of the statement before he blurted out:
Two or more men
Irish American
Out of Boston
With each piece of information Emily felt her anxiety rise. What was going on?
As soon as there was an opportunity, she excused herself from the room and stepped outside, finding a quiet area to process what she had just learned. The first thing she did was send her codeword to Cooper about having an urgent need to speak to him concerning their case. She couldn't tell the team anything and if this was what she feared, she was going to need his help to protect the team.
With that done, Emily went through what she had learned. Jack Vaughn was in Witness Protection and was set to testify in a couple of weeks against his former employers, the McCrelan brothers who just happen to be players in the Irish mob out of Boston. She knew the name from her undercover days.
Jack had gone into Witness Protection 10 years ago which was long before her involvement in the Doyle case. While she knew who the McCrelans were during that case she hadn't had any direct involvement with them. However they were most likely at least somewhat affected by the disclosure of the information she gathered while undercover as well as the tracing on the weapons that she was 'dealing' into Doyle's network.
The huge red flag for her now was the timing. It had only been a few weeks since she had submitted the pictures of Declan appearing to be dead and then placing him in his new home. Enough time had passed for them to have reached Doyle as well as her former teammates and for them to plot revenge.
It was also possible that she was overreacting and that all of it was a coincidence. She had learned years ago to avoid personalizing cases but in this case she needed to examine these factors as it wasn't just her life that could be in jeopardy.
A factor that she hadn't been able to get a good read from was if Jack Vaughn was compromised -either voluntary or by force.
Was Jack Vaughn even involved or did the McCrelans implement the disappearance to bring both Emily and Jack Vaughn out into the open so that the mob could eliminate two problems at the same time?
While both girls had disappeared, it had been Katie who had been killed. Had the disappearance happened because they knew missing children would get the quickest response from the BAU and thus get Emily far from Quantico?
Was Lindsey actually missing or hidden in a secret location for her safety? Or was she being held by the McCrelans to force Jack's hand to be an enforcer one more time?
With the trial Jack was testifying in coming up in a fortnight, if the McCrelans were going to act, this would be when they would act. Had she and the team just been lurked across the country to walk into a trap because of her past?
Emily took a few deep breaths as she tried to calm herself. She needed to analyze what they knew and she couldn't do that if she was freaking out. Each of these possible scenarios would drastically change the profile. As she considered it objectively, she received a brief message back from Cooper that he would make some inquiries. It was only then that she could feel herself relax marginally. That feeling was short lived as she received a message about a lead on the house it was suspected the girls were being held.
####
It was until hours later that there was some certainty that this case was not connected to work on the Doyle case. She had spoken to Cooper after her and Hotch spoke to the dead accomplice's father and Cooper had reported he had not found any chatter and there was no indication at this point of a connection. He agreed to keep monitoring the situation until the team was heading back. They agreed to meet up once she was back at Quantico.
Cooper's information backed up what the team was finding as they started to make progress on the case. After identifying the body they found, it looked more and more like the kidnappers were casually acquainted with the girls through school.
But Emily didn't feel like she would truly be able to relax until the jet was heading back to the East Coast. Even without there being a connection, this case illustrated because of the nature of the job how easily it could have been for the team to have landed in a trap.
####
Emily entered her apartment then walked directly into her bedroom. She had left the office as soon as her report was done. She needed to touch base with Cooper in person now that they were back to set up a meeting time but that had to wait. She needed to do something that she had been avoiding but after this case, she couldn't delay it anymore.
As she passed, she placed her go bag on the bed to be repacked before walking into her closet. After changing into yoga pants and a tank top, she walked over to the safe she had installed in her room after moving into this apartment.
After taking out the medication bottle that she had placed in there months earlier, she walked out of her room. Locating her boots near the front door, she picked them up before going into the kitchen and sitting at the table. It was only then that she shakingly looked carefully at the label on the bottle.
In the weeks following her exfiltration, she had hoped albeit naively that the danger to her would never reach this point with Doyle arrested.
However that mindset shifted once she had some back onto the grid and was informed of the assault and murder of not only the agents who had escorted her out of Doyle's estate that day but also the agents at the safe house she was to have gone after her hospital stay. It was then that she knew that the danger came from more than just Doyle himself.
Those fears had slowly dissipated with time as she had reintegrated into her life first in DC and then in Chicago once she was cleared for her first assignment following her return to the FBI. It hadn't been until after she accepted the position in the BAU and returned to DC that that part of her life had started to creep back.
First it had been Easter attempting to make contact which she ignored. Ignored as long as she could when in the course of them both ambushing her she discovered that he had sent first Jeremy and then Tsia to request information from her. She didn't trust any of them given the multiple errors and oversights during the Doyle mission. Even now none of them cleared of wrongdoing in that case. It was after those encounters that she knew she needed to solidify her exit strategy plans.
The first step was going to a contact that none of her JTF-12 teammates knew. That part had been vital in obtaining identification documents for a new identity for herself that no one could trace. Not Clyde, Jeremy or Tsia. And not the CIA.
While Alicia, Cooper and Sean all knew she had new documents she hadn't told them or Gideon for that matter the specifics of her new identity. However that hadn't been a trust issue as much as for their protection.
The BAU didn't know either but it was impossible to tell them that part when she couldn't explain the context of why she felt she needed it which she wasn't cleared to do.
The second part had been somewhat easier to decide. If she needed to disappear she would go to her grandfather's cabin in France. Given what had happened with the safehouse, she didn't consider the boltholes assigned to her by the CIA or after the Doyle mission to be options as there was no guarantee that those locations hadn't been compromised as well.
That cabin had been her safe haven since she was a child. It was the primary quality she wanted if she needed to disappear. That expectation of safety at the cabin was why she had been angry with herself after mentioning its existence on the jet a year earlier. It was safer as a hide out if no one knew about it. Since the Doyle case, she had made some upgrades and stocked it with not only food and supplies but also with weapons.
She could only hope that if things went wrong she could get there. However if it was bad enough that she couldn't get away well that was why she had the pills in the bottle now in front of her.
After donning a rubber glove, she carefully opened the bottle. She took one of the two pills out of the bottle. With the other hand she picked up her left boot, finding the small pouch that she had sewn into the lining.
With that done, she placed the boot back on the floor before closing the bottle before putting it back in the safe. Coming back to the kitchen table, she just looked at her boots on the floor next to her. No one knew she had gotten the pills, not even Alicia.
She didn't want to use them but she knew what Doyle and his ilk were capable of doing. What she had done with Declan to protect him had been a calculated risk that had the potential to blow up in her face. If that did happen the pill was the last resort to take herself out of the equation to protect the other. All she could hope for now was the day would never come that she felt compelled to use it.
AN: The next chapter will cover the episodes Lucky/Penelope, however depending on length, it may end up being two chapters.