Chapter 5
The team had been working diligently to figure out who was performing illegal kidney surgery on teenage runaways since morning. They had a late dinner of Thai from a place that delivered and were still at it hours later.
They had a geographic profile with the hospital as the epicenter. It had to be within walking distance from wherever the surgery was done since Emma made her way there on foot and it was also where Paige's body was dumped.
Between the anesthesia cocktail that was still in her system and her understandable fear and confusion at waking up alone in what appeared to be a hospital bed, Emma Duncan didn't remember much even with a cognitive interview.
They knew Emma must have been in a relatively low traffic area on the outskirts of the city since she all but passed out on a bench and no one found her like that. They weren't sure if she stopped to rest and fell asleep or if she actually fainted – and neither was she. Either way, the next time she woke up, Emma was on a bench somewhere she didn't recognize and felt awful. The drugs were starting to wear off so she was sore from the surgery. She'd also already developed a fever – probably from sleeping outside in November – and felt nauseas from the drugs. She started walking in what could only be described as a feverish haze and was lucky to have stumbled on the hospital. In actuality, luck may have had little to do with it if she'd unknowingly been close to the hospital the entire time.
Emma also couldn't remember seeing anyone before or after waking up. She woke up alone, and the last thing she remembered before that was sitting alone outside of a Metro station in downtown D.C. late at night. That wasn't surprising considering both victims had hypodermic needle marks in their necks. They were drugged by the unsub. That was how they were taken without a struggle, and it was why their only living victim couldn't remember much of anything.
They'd also interviewed a doctor who lost his medical license for selling organs on the black market and followed up on a few leads he gave them from his old network, but had come up empty on that front.
"We know it's not for profit and we know he's not a killer. There's no compulsion here," Tara said, summarizing what they knew as she paced the length of the conference room.
"What would make him abandon his Hippocratic Oath if not money?" Rossi questioned.
"A sense of moral superiority – a God complex if you will," JJ suggested. "And that's why he's targeting runaways…to punish them?"
"Which would make them unwitting donors for whoever he thinks is a worthy candidate," Rossi mused.
"The most likely candidate would be another child or teenager," Reid told them. "Proper organ size is a critical factor in a successful transplant. That's why children are essentially first in line for the organs of other children."
JJ narrowed her eyes in speculation. "It's possible our unsub had a child who died waiting for a kidney transplant."
Tara nodded pensively, adding, "Most likely a daughter since both victims are female."
"If he's a surgeon and his own daughter's death could have been prevented with surgery, that could have made our unsub feel like a failure on every level, personally and professionally," Reid theorized. "Think about it - he has all this training and he still couldn't save his kid."
"That could have caused him to spiral," Simmons acknowledged.
"Especially if he has a big ego," Alvez put in.
"Garcia, can you compile a list of any teenage girls who were on the waiting list for a kidney when they died and see if any of them have fathers who are doctors in the D.C. area?" Emily asked.
"Already on it, fearless leader," Penelope told her.
Emily heard her cell phone vibrate on the table and glanced at the display, frowning slightly when she saw that it was Steve Johnson. It was kind of late for him to be calling. The call she was waiting for had been at the back of her mind as she worked tirelessly on the case. The later it got, the less likely she thought she'd be to hear from him that night. She knew it was possible he hadn't had a chance to talk to Hannah yet or that Hannah just needed time to process everything.
"Excuse me, I have to take this," Emily told the team. She stepped out of the conference room the team was gathered in, only answering her phone once she was alone in the hallway.
Steve sounded surprised when she picked up after that many rings. They exchanged greetings as Emily walked to her office briskly, shutting the door firmly behind her.
"Sorry to call so late," Steve started awkwardly. "It's just Hannah – she ran out on me after I told her she was adopted. She's always done this…gone off on her own when she's upset. She always comes back. I just - I thought she'd be back by now."
"She ran away?" Emily said in a panicked voice.
Damn it, she should have told Steve to hold off on telling Hannah news that could upset her until after they caught the unsub targeting teenage girls who ran away from home. Why didn't she think of that? Now her daughter was out there on the streets of D.C. somewhere. Emily realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Hannah would fit the victimology perfectly. She couldn't stop her mind from jumping to the worst-case scenario possible – her kid in the hands of the unsub.
"She didn't run away," Steve said a little defensively. "She'll come back on her own when she cools off, but it's getting late and I don't know if I should stay here in case she comes back or go look for her." He was beginning to wonder if he should call the police, but that seemed a little extreme. "Should I call the police? I thought since you're FBI maybe you'd know what to do."
"You said she's done this before?" Emily questioned, wondering just how often her daughter ran away from the parents Emily chose for her.
"She's always gone off on her own when she's upset. That's just how she is," Steve told her. "When she was little, she used to hide out in the treehouse I built her in the woods behind our old house. The last time she hid out there was after Sarah's funeral. It was the only place she could be alone with all the people in the house. Hannah doesn't like to cry in front of anyone. She never has."
Emily's heart broke for the twelve year old girl crying over losing her mother alone in a treehouse. She didn't know what to say.
"Now she usually just goes for a walk when she needs to get away," Steve continued. "She's never stayed gone this long though. It's been hours. I don't know what to do. I'm getting really worried."
"How long has she been gone?" Emily demanded.
"I told her after dinner so around 8:00…8:30 at the latest."
It was after eleven. Hannah had already been missing for three hours, give or take. Emily's heart plummeted in her chest. As an FBI agent, she knew how crucial the first few hours were in finding a missing kid. They'd lost that time because Steve waited so long to call her.
If this were strictly work, Emily would have asked why any parent waited that long to report their kid missing, but she didn't want to start playing the blame game with Steve. That wouldn't end well.
"Have you tried calling her?" Emily asked instead. She would usually ask if a parent had checked with the friends of a missing kid, however if she liked to be alone when she was upset, Hannah wouldn't be with anyone else.
"She doesn't have her phone with her. She doesn't have her phone or backpack or anything with her. She didn't even take her jacket. She just left in the heat of the moment. I'm telling you she wasn't running away," Steve insisted.
Hannah may have been running away from the conversation, but she wasn't actually running away from home. She must have left in a hurry, not even taking her cell phone or jacket. Most kids took a backpack of supplies with them when they ran away.
There was no plan. Even when Emily Prentiss was reckless, she always had a plan. Ian Doyle had also planned meticulously. How had they managed to have a kid who would just leave home with no plan whatsoever?
"Did she say anything before she left?" Emily inquired.
"Not exactly," Steve said with an audible sigh. "There wasn't a lot of talking. More like yelling…at me."
Emily got the sense that Hannah wasn't just shocked by the news, but also angry at having the truth kept from her. If she felt like her adoptive father betrayed her trust, there was a chance she'd go looking for Emily.
"Does she know who I am? Did you tell her my name?" Emily asked.
"I was going to, but she ran off before I could," Steve told her.
It would have been easier to find Hannah if she were looking for Emily, but Emily knew it wouldn't be good for her if Steve saw her as any more of a threat to his role in Hannah's life than he already did just by nature of who she was to Hannah. It was probably a good thing Hannah hadn't run out on him to find her.
But that left Emily with absolutely no idea as to what the girl could have been thinking when she ran out of her house or where she might have gone. Emily knew she had to think like a profiler and not a mother, but that was easier said than done when she felt a mother's worry for her child. It was a whole new level of fear and panic unlike anything Emily had ever experienced. How was she this scared for a kid she didn't know?
Emily tried to put herself in Hannah's shoes – something the BAU did to piece together the movements of unsubs and victims alike.
Would the girl want to talk to her adoptive mother or would she be just as angry with the dead woman as she was with her adoptive father?
Would the familiarity of the house she'd grown up in bring Hannah comfort when she probably felt like her entire world had been turned upside down? Steve referred to the house with the treehouse as their old house. Someone else would have moved into the house when they moved out, but it crossed Emily's mind that Hannah could have reverted back to hiding in the treehouse in the woods behind the house. It would be a good place to go if she wanted to be alone.
"Would she have gone to your old house?" Emily questioned the man who raised her daughter.
"I don't know. I don't think so," Steve answered honestly. "She would have to take the Metro from D.C. to Bethesda, and I don't know if she'd even know which line to take. I always drive her if she wants to see her friends there."
"Does she ever take the Metro?" Emily asked. "Not necessarily to Bethesda, but anywhere in D.C?"
"Only to get home from school in the afternoon," Steve replied. "And she knows she's not supposed to take the Metro alone at night. If she has volleyball or anything that goes late, she knows to call me for a ride."
Emily thought that was a good rule, but didn't know that the kid would be following the rules to the letter just then. If she were angry enough, Hannah might break her father's rules just to spite him.
"I know you said she didn't have anything with her, but did she have any money?" Emily asked suddenly.
"She might," Steve said. He thought about how many times he'd had to dig money out of the bottom of the washing machine. Hannah had a habit of stuffing change in the back pocket of her jeans and forgetting it was there. It wouldn't be much, but she could have change from a twenty after getting coffee or food with friends. "She could have had some in her pockets."
"What was she wearing?" Emily questioned.
"Jeans and a purple sweater," Steve answered confidently.
"Okay, stay there and call me if she comes home. I'm going to find her," Emily told him resolutely.
Everyone stopped talking and it felt like all eyes were on her when Emily walked back into the conference room where the team was gathered.
"Is everything okay?" Rossi asked.
"I'm going to need to take some personal time. I'm not sure how much…probably just the rest of the night," Emily announced, ignoring Rossi's inquiry completely. "Dave will be Acting Unit Chief until I'm back."
Rossi blinked in surprise and tilted his head to the side, giving her a long look. Emily Prentiss didn't take nights off, especially not in the middle of a case. "Okay," he agreed. "But first a word?"
Emily recognized the steely command disguised as a polite request. She nodded and stepped outside the conference room once again, knowing he would follow her.
Since Rossi already knew about the daughter she gave up, it would be easier to tell him what was going on than it would be to tell anyone else. Considering the victimology, Emily knew the team needed to know about Hannah.
"You know I'll cover for you while you're out, no problem," Rossi started. "But not until you tell me what's going on with you."
To his surprise, Emily was forthcoming with information. She filled him in on her meeting with Steve and the phone call she'd just received.
Rossi could hear the stress and worry in her voice as Emily told him her daughter was missing. It didn't take a genius to make the connection between the victimology in their case and her missing kid – a connection he knew she'd already made. He winced. "She picked a hell of a time to run off."
"If I had just told her adoptive father not to tell her until after we found this guy…" Emily trailed off. Her guilty expression said what she didn't – she was blaming herself.
"Don't do that to yourself," Rossi said, his eyes pleading with her to actually listen to him and give herself a break for once in her life. He knew Emily Prentiss was harder on herself than anyone else could ever be. "If her adoptive parents had told her she was adopted when she was old enough to understand what that meant, it would be a non-issue now. And I'm sorry, but Hannah isn't exactly blameless here either. However upset she is, running off like this is not the answer. Look, all I'm saying is that there's plenty of blame to go around, but playing the blame game isn't going to help Hannah right now."
"Yeah, well, they didn't know our unsub is targeting teenage girls who run away from home. I did," Emily muttered with a sigh.
"Don't worry, Emily. We'll find her," Rossi said in a reassuring tone, giving her shoulder a comforting squeeze.
"There is no we," Emily told him. "I can't justify pulling anyone from a BAU case to help me with something personal."
"Pardon my French, but that's bullshit and you know it," Rossi said bluntly. "I hate to say it, but Hannah fits the victimology to a tee. Emily, she's your daughter. That makes her one of us. We take care of our own in the BAU. Now do you want to tell the team or should I?"
As tempting as it was to take the coward's way out and let Rossi tell everyone, Emily wasn't a coward.
They all reacted differently when she told them about Hannah. Predictably Penelope Garcia had the biggest - and loudest - reaction of anyone.
Penelope saw Emily keeping her daughter a secret as a personal affront. The tech analyst prided herself on knowing everything about everyone and felt like she'd failed at her self-proclaimed sacred duty to be all-knowing by not knowing about Emily's long lost daughter.
Emily refrained from telling Garcia that it was none of her business, but she wasn't going to apologize for keeping her best-kept and most fiercely guarded secret from the notorious gossip that was Penelope Garcia. Emily loved the woman, but she couldn't keep a secret if her life depended on it.
Fortunately the bubbly blonde couldn't stay mad at anyone long. Her excitement over the prospect of finally having a niece to spoil won out over any annoyance she may have felt. She wanted to know everything there was to know about her new honorary niece. Her fingers flew across the keyboard on her tablet as she searched for the digital footprint any living, breathing fourteen year old would leave.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Garcia, but there are no pictures of her online," Emily said, trying to save her the trouble. "I looked."
"Ah, but you are a mere mortal, and I am a tech goddess. You should leave the technical sleuthing to me," Penelope told her as she expertly bypassed the privacy settings on the girl's Instagram and projected a picture of Hannah with her arms wrapped around a Golden Retriever on the screen in the conference room.
The newer members of the team had all been relatively quiet. None of them knew Emily as well as the others who had worked together for more than ten years, and they didn't really feel like it was their business. Luke couldn't resist making a crack about the Golden Retriever though. He'd pegged Emily as a cat person from day one. And, true to form, she'd been the only female member of the team who didn't fawn all over Roxy at his housewarming party, proving him right – she was definitely a cat person.
"Prentiss' kid is a dog person," he said with a smirk. "I didn't see that one coming."
"She's so beautiful," Penelope breathed. "She's like a mini-Emily."
"If you take Emily's hair color and Doyle's hair color into consideration, there's almost no chance that a biological child with both their genes would have hair that's any color but brown. Now genetically speaking her eyes could have been brown or blue, but statistically brown is the most common eye color. It's estimated than anywhere from seventy to ninety percent of people in the world have brown eyes," Reid said in a matter-of-fact tone.
JJ stared at Reid with wide eyes as he casually told everyone in the room who the father of Emily's child was. Everyone who'd been a part of the team when Ian Doyle escaped from prison had been able to do the math, but the newer members of the team didn't know Doyle was the undercover assignment Emily referred to when she gave them the rundown on Hannah.
Reid paused uncertainly, seeing the look JJ was giving him. He knew he didn't always react the way people expected, but he was simply stating facts. "What? I'm just saying it's not surprising that Emily's daughter has her coloring."
JJ merely smiled and shook her head at how oblivious the genius could be part of the time. She supposed she should just be glad he hadn't said anything tactless about adoption - yet. Reid had his own abandonment issues from his father leaving. If he started relating that to Emily leaving Hannah with someone who wasn't her, they'd be in trouble.
With her clearance level, JJ knew more about Doyle than anyone else on the team except, of course, Emily. She was also the only one there who'd actually seen Emily when she was recovering from the injuries and torture Doyle inflicted on her in the hospital.
Knowing what she did, JJ could understand why Emily didn't feel like she could keep her baby safe. As the only other mother on the team, JJ recognized the act of giving her daughter up to protect her as truly selfless. Emily wouldn't have parted with her child unless she felt she had no other choice. JJ knew Emily wanted kids. Having a kid out there somewhere that wasn't with her had to be killing her.
"Thanks for the biology lesson, Spencer. Maybe we can continue it sometime when Hannah isn't missing," Rossi said pointedly. As the most experienced profiler in the room and one of the most respected members of the team, he had no problem taking control of the room. When he spoke, everyone listened. "Now, as I'm sure we're all aware, Emily's daughter fits the victimology, which means we need to find her before he does."
A/N: This was getting too long with the promised JJ and Emily conversation so it will be in the next chapter instead. Most of the next chapter is written so it should be done soon. Please let me know if there are any characters you want to see more of.
