Chapter 6

The most likely way for a fourteen year old to get from D.C. to Bethesda, Maryland on her own was public transportation. And if Hannah Johnson had taken the Metro, she would have left breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs Emily would follow.

There were two Metro cards registered to Steve Johnson, neither of which had been used that night.

"Can you see if anyone paid for a new Metro card with cash at the Metro Station at Connecticut and Woodley after 8:00 pm tonight?" Emily asked as she looked at the computer screen over Penelope's shoulder. Most locals would have a registered, reloadable Metro card, and most tourists would pay by credit card, but a kid with no credit card would pay with cash.

"Yes," Penelope replied as she typed frantically. "Okay, I have three cards bought with cash at that station."

"Were any of them bought between 8:00 and 9:00?" Emily questioned, trying to narrow it down based on when Steve said Hannah left the house.

"One of them. It was swiped at 8:42 pm. It was swiped again thirteen minutes later at the Bethesda Metro Station. That's the last time it was swiped," Penelope told her. "Hold on, I'm seeing if I can tap into the security cameras to see if it was her."

They waited as Penelope typed away furiously. She got into the stored video footage from the camera by the kiosks and fast-forwarded to 8:40 pm, letting it play from there.

The crowd had thinned out from rush hour, but there was still a steady stream of commuters. The profilers scanned the crowd for anyone who could be Hannah. It was mostly young professionals in business attire on their way home from the office, happy hour, or dinner. There were a few families in casual attire mixed in. They looked like tourists. A lone jean-clad teenager stood out from the crowd. The teenager was a girl with brunette hair. Penelope zoomed in.

"It's her," Emily said, seeing the purple sweater Steve said she was wearing. "That means she's still in Bethesda."

It gave Emily a starting point and narrowed her daughter's location down a little, but Hannah could still be anywhere in Bethesda.

"The Metro stops running at 11:30 pm during the week," Reid pointed out. "But the last train leaves approximately thirty minutes before that. It's after eleven now. If she missed the last train, she could be stuck there with no phone and no way of calling anyone."

Emily thought of Emma Duncan, who was taken when she was sitting outside of a Metro station late at night. Was Hannah was sitting outside the Metro station in Bethesda? She didn't like the idea of that. She didn't like it at all.

"Hey, at least Bethesda's outside the geographic profile," Alvez said with a glance at Emily.

Bethesda was only seven miles north of Washington, which might not seem like a lot, but it was a thirty-minute drive.

"It's unlikely the unsub will look for his next victim outside Washington," Simmons agreed.

"That's true. It's actually better for her to be stranded in Bethesda than for her to be anywhere in D.C. right now," Reid acknowledged.

"It would be better for her to be at home where she belongs," Rossi said definitively, knowing how he would feel if it were Joy who fit the victimology of their unsub. It wouldn't matter that the geographic profile didn't fit. A parent's worry for their child wasn't always rational.

"Emily, do you have any idea where she could have gone?" JJ questioned gently.

"I have a few ideas, but they're just that – ideas," Emily replied with uncharacteristic uncertainty in her voice.

"Care to share?" Rossi asked dryly.

Emily thought she'd check the treehouse Steve had mentioned first and then maybe the cemetery where Sarah was buried, but she knew Hannah might not be either of those places.

If she were angry with them for keeping her adoption a secret, the teenager could have gone somewhere that had no connection to either of her adoptive parents – someplace significant only to her. If she had, Emily would have no clue where to even begin looking for her. She didn't know Hannah. She didn't know the first thing about Hannah's favorite places in Bethesda or anywhere else – and she admitted as much to her team.

"Where did you go when you were a kid and wanted to be alone?" Rossi asked Emily.

He wasn't going to say it, but running away was classic Emily Prentiss - and he didn't just mean when she ran to go after Ian Doyle on her own. No, that he actually understood. She did it to protect the team. But then she left them again to go to London. If it had just been because the job offer was too good to pass up, he might have been able to understand, but he knew there was more to it than that. One minute she was about to buy a house in D.C. and the next Emily was moving to London. Even as recently as last year when Linda Barnes was investigating the BAU under her leadership, Emily's first instinct was to leave the team and go back to London. Thankfully Reid convinced her to stay. But the instinct to run away…that was something Hannah got from Emily. Was it so crazy to think the daughter might run to the same type of place the mother had as a kid?

At first Emily thought Rossi was posing the question to everyone on the team, but his gaze was fixed on her and everyone seemed to be waiting expectantly for her to answer. She stared at him blankly. "I…didn't have to go anywhere if I wanted to be alone. Growing up I was left alone in my parents' house when they were at work, and they worked a lot."

Rossi suppressed a grimace as Emily reminded him how lonely her childhood was. He knew she wouldn't want his pity so he wouldn't give it, but he thought she deserved so much more than what her parents had given her. Sometimes David Rossi wondered how someone raised by such cold parents could have turned into the warm, caring woman he knew and loved as if she were family.

"I ran away once, if you could even call it that. I just went to the park by our house," JJ said with a self-deprecating scoff and an eye roll. "I was eleven. It was after Roz died. I ended up going home before my mom even realized I was gone. My sleeping bag had nothing on central heating." She offered the team a sheepish grin. While it wasn't something she was proud of, JJ was willing to swallow her pride if it got the team's attention off of Emily and her complex relationship with her parents.

"I never ran away," Reid said.

"I did," Alvez told them. "After I got suspended for fighting at school. I knew my parents were gonna be pissed so I took off. I crashed at a friend's house. I thought my parents would be so happy to see me when I came home the next day that they'd go easy on me."

Tara raised her eyebrows. "Did they?"

"No," Alvez muttered ruefully. "I got in even more trouble."

"Running away doesn't make problems go away. It's better to face our problems head-on," Rossi said.

"Hannah's not going to have much choice," Emily said wryly. "She's going to have to face me."

As much as she wanted to be a part of her daughter's life, she would have respected it if the girl weren't ready for that. But by running away the teenager had inadvertently moved up the timeline for meeting Emily. Whether she was ready or not, Hannah would soon find herself in a room with her adoptive father and her biological mother finishing the very conversation she was running from in the first place. Hannah wouldn't be able to run this time – if she tried, her FBI agent mother would catch her before she made it out the door. The kid would have to stay and face the fact that she was adopted. It would give Emily a chance to explain the circumstances and answer any questions Hannah had. Emily didn't think it could get more head-on than that.

Rossi tilted his head slightly, his eyes narrowing as the implication of her words hit him. "You're not her problem, Emily. Her problem is with her adoptive parents not telling her that she was adopted."

Emily raised her eyebrows skeptically, scoffing. "Oh, and you don't think she's going to have a problem with me giving her up?"

"She might," Rossi acknowledged. "Just remember you're not the one she ran away from here."

"I'm going to go find my little runaway," Emily told them.

Rossi glanced at her. "Take someone with you."

"I can't take anyone else away from the case," Emily said with a weary sigh, sensing the pending argument. "We've already established that Hannah's outside the geographic profile. She's not in danger."

Rossi stared at her a little incredulously. "Your daughter doesn't have to be a victim for us to help you find her. Are you telling me we wouldn't help JJ and Will if it were Henry who was missing or Matt if it were one of his kids?"

"That's different," Emily protested.

"No, it's not," Reid argued, earning a small glare from Emily. "If it were any of us, you wouldn't let us handle it alone. Why should you be any different?"

"Take someone with you, Emily." Rossi wasn't making the request as a colleague, but as someone who cared about her. "You did name me Acting Unit Chief as of about twenty minutes ago – around the same time your personal time started," he reminded her, trying to preempt her pulling rank on him. "Now pick someone or I will."

Emily knew they had a point, but she didn't have to like it. Her gaze roamed over the faces of the team members as she carefully weighed the pros and cons of each of them.

Luke Alvez was the first she eliminated. He'd taken his demotion in stride, but it hadn't even been a month. Emily knew he probably harbored some resentment toward her for coming down on him when he disobeyed her orders and went after former DEA Agent Jeremy Grant on his own.

Reid was like the little brother Emily never had, but she knew he lacked tact at times. Emily wasn't going to risk him saying anything insensitive to Hannah. Plus, she was a little annoyed that he and Rossi had tag-teamed her.

David Rossi was the single most experienced member of the team. Emily needed him to take the lead while her attention was split between the case and her missing kid. Even if she wanted to pick him – and a part of her did - she knew she couldn't.

Emily was a notoriously private person, and she still didn't know Matt Simmons that well outside of work. She didn't want or need an audience the first time she met her daughter, but if she had to have one, it wasn't going to be the newest member of the team who she was still getting to know on a personal level.

That left Tara Lewis or JJ. Logically speaking, they both had merit. Tara's psychology background could come in handy when dealing with an upset kid. Then again JJ was a mother and had the most firsthand experience with kids of anyone on the team.

But JJ was JJ – Emily's best friend in the entire world.

Emily cut her eyes to the blonde profiler. "JJ?"


It was just under an hour drive from Quantico to Bethesda. Traffic was light that late at night, and they were in an FBI Suburban equipped with emergency lights so the speed limit wasn't an issue for them. At the rate they were going, they were probably going to make it there in a little over half an hour.

JJ was driving, and Emily was sitting in the passenger seat looking like she was lost in her own thoughts – thoughts that were probably not very pretty. JJ waited until they were on the highway and then decided she had to say something or Emily would spend the entire drive like that.

"It's amazing how easy it comes," JJ started with a glance at Emily. She waited for Emily to look at her with a quizzical expression, showing that Emily was actually listening. "Worrying," JJ explained once she had her friend's attention.

Emily blew out her breath. "It sucks."

"Yeah, well, get used to it," JJ told her with a soft chuckle. "You're a mom now."

"Hardly," Emily scoffed. "I'm a virtual stranger to her."

"Yeah, a virtual stranger she looks exactly like," JJ said, not bothering to hide her smirk.

"Not exactly."

"Pretty close," JJ said in an amused tone.

"Let's just hope she doesn't act like me," Emily muttered.

"Because it would be so terrible if she graduated from Yale cum laude," JJ said sarcastically.

"That was when I was older. When I was her age, I was busy checking all the boxes for teenage rebellion. Smoking, drinking, boys…you name it, I did it," Emily said warily.

It wasn't brand new information for JJ. Emily had been known to drop little hints about her rebellious youth on cases – just a comment here and there about her parents not knowing she smoked or drank as they came across teenagers engaging in the same risky behaviors Emily had when she was their age.

With little to no parental guidance, Emily Prentiss had somehow gone from a gothic teenager to an FBI agent with a Master's degree from an Ivy League school. She hadn't completely lost her edginess along the way. It was just well hidden under the perfectly tailored suits she favored.

They had all seen rare glimpses of the rebellious teenager Emily once was in the woman she had become. It was most evident when Linda Barnes, Erin Strauss, even Aaron Hotchner did something to piss her off. Emily had mastered the fine art of being perfectly polite while injecting just enough disrespect into her tone to make her opinion of whomever she was talking to crystal clear. JJ could definitely picture a sassy teenage Emily giving her mother major attitude.

Emily still bent the rules from time to time, but it was always for a good cause. JJ knew her friend had a cause for her bad behavior as a teenager – it was just a little less noble.

"You would have done anything to get your parents' attention," JJ said with a knowing expression.

Emily nodded slowly. "When you're a kid, negative attention is better than no attention."

JJ stared straight ahead out the windshield as she thought of her own kids – the kids she hated leaving to do the job she chose. "Henry does the same thing sometimes."

"No!" Emily exclaimed in a scandalized tone. "I don't believe it."

"Usually right as I'm leaving because we have a case. I think he thinks if he acts out, I'll stay home to deal with him. Last time he saw me grab my go-bag, he immediately picked a fight with Michael. You would think I was leaving him alone instead of with Will." JJ rolled her eyes at that.

"Will's a good father," Emily said with conviction. She offered JJ a small smile, knowing her friend was feeling guilty for how often she left Henry and Michael. "And if my mother were half the mother you are, I wouldn't have done all the things I did as a cry for attention."

"So you still would have done some of them?" JJ said wryly, fixing Emily with a mock-stern glare.

"Hey, I had to try to fit in even though I'm a closet nerd," Emily said defensively.

"Oh, you came out of the closet a long time ago," JJ told her. "We know you're a huge nerd, and we love you anyway."

Emily was able to laugh at herself a little, and JJ was laughing along with her. It was good to hear Emily laugh when she was so tightly wound with worry for her missing kid. JJ knew the worry was still there – how could it not be? But at least the good-natured teasing that her nerdiness was no secret had succeeded in distracting her momentarily.

"Outside of stereotypical sibling rivalry, Henry's a really good kid," Emily assured her friend. "And if he's going to emulate anyone on the team, it'll be his godfather. He really looks up to Spencer."

"I know, right?" JJ agreed. "He's been watching magic trick tutorials on YouTube." She was quiet for a minute as she studied her friend, contemplating whether Emily would take what JJ wanted to tell her in the spirit it was intended – as an honor – or if it would just serve to make the other woman feel guilty. "You know, your name came up as a potential godmother for Michael. It was actually at the top of the list. The only reason we didn't ask you is because you were in London when he was born, and we didn't know if you were coming back."

Garcia and Spencer were already Henry's godparents. As another one of JJ's best friends, Emily was a natural choice when they had their second-born, but she was living in London. Emily was good at staying in touch – she'd had to be with how much she moved around, but Michael wouldn't have been able to have the kind of relationship with her long-distance that Henry had with Penelope and Spencer.

Now that Emily was back, she was a favorite of both JJ's kids. Emily was always game to play the games the other adults preferred to sit out – games like hide-and-seek and chase. They always had a great time playing with their fun Aunt Emily, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy them.

Emily glanced at JJ, visibly touched.

"You were a little busy, you know, running Interpol," JJ continued with a grin.

"Not too busy for you," Emily told her.

"I know," JJ acknowledged.

Emily more than proved that when she dropped everything and came back from London after JJ was abducted by Tivon Askari. He and Michael Hastings – mainly Hastings - were torturing JJ for her access code to the systems containing sensitive data from her previous assignment with the State Department. The team would never have been able to find her without Emily's help.

When it came down to it, there was no one JJ would rather have on her side than Emily in a moment like that when everything was on the line.

Emily Prentiss didn't let just anyone get close to her, but she would do almost anything for the people that actually made it past her infamous walls. JJ considered herself lucky to be one of the select few on that short list.

JJ just wished Emily would see that it was a two-way street. Why was it so hard for Emily to accept their help?

Unbeknownst to Emily, they were not the only two profilers on the way to Bethesda. JJ, however, knew from a text message that Rossi was sending Tara and Reid to check the Bethesda Metro Station and then hit the streets on the off chance that Hannah wasn't in the treehouse or at the cemetery like Emily thought she would be.

Rossi waited for Emily and JJ to leave because he didn't want to hear any argument about it from Emily. They were helping her whether she wanted their help or not.

They hadn't forgotten about the case in the midst of Emily's personal drama. While Emily was on the phone with Hannah's father, Garcia had compiled a list of teenage girls who were on the waiting list for a kidney transplant when they died and then cross-referenced it with relatives who were or ever had been doctors in the D.C. area. They had a suspect who fit the profile, and Matt Simmons and Luke Alvez were headed to his home address. If he was there, they would be bringing him in for questioning.


Emily didn't know what she was expecting, but the treehouse in the woods just behind the Johnson's old house was not it. For one thing, instead of natural colored wood, the treehouse was painted light pink with white trim. It had definitely been built for a little girl. The paint had faded and chipped over the years, but she could tell a lot of love went into making it. It was fairly elaborate. It looked more like a playhouse than a rustic treehouse. There was an impressive wraparound porch, a door, and windows.

Emily had not been looking forward to climbing a tree, but it turned out she didn't need to worry – there was an actual ladder. JJ waited on the ground while Emily went up the ladder.

"Hannah?" Emily called out, not wanting to scare the girl if she were in there. She opened the door, ducking her head so it wouldn't hit the doorframe, and looked around. It was empty.

Emily shook her head as she emerged from the treehouse, silently conveying to JJ that it had been a bust. She didn't know that her hunch was right and Hannah had been there earlier. Emily was just too late. If Steve had called her earlier, Emily would have found her daughter crying in the treehouse.

JJ had her cell phone pressed to her ear. She watched warily as Emily descended the ladder. When Emily reached the ground, JJ moved her cell phone away from her ear a little. "Would now be a good time to tell you that Tara and Spencer are here?"

"What are they doing here?" Emily demanded. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate their help - she did. It was just that they now had more than half the team looking for her daughter instead of looking for their unsub. If there was another victim, it would be on Emily.

"The same thing we're doing, only they found her," JJ told her. "She's sitting outside the Metro station. What do you want them to do? Emily?"

Emily held out her hand for JJ's phone. Taking it from the blonde, she gave instructions. "Stay in the car. Keep eyes on her until we get there. If you see anyone else approach her, get her out of there. I'm on my way."


Bethesda was an affluent suburb. The highly rated public schools were a big draw for families. For the most part, it was established families with school-aged kids who could afford the housing prices in the area. As a result, there were a lot of families with teenagers and some empty nesters in the area. Most of them were asleep. No one was out.

The dark street would have been completely dead if it weren't for the FBI agents. Tara and Reid were idling on the street in their Suburban. Emily watched JJ slide into the backseat and waited for Tara to drive away. As grateful as she was for their help, Emily didn't want an audience when she met her daughter for the first time.

There was a stone fountain outside of the Metro station. Hannah was sitting on a white brick ledge facing the fountain. The sound of the fountain running must have drowned out the sound of Emily's light footsteps because the girl didn't even look up when Emily approached her cautiously.

"Hannah?" Emily called out gently.

Hannah's head snapped up when she heard her name, startled red-rimmed eyes meeting Emily's gaze for the first time. It was clear the girl had been crying even though she wasn't crying anymore. Her brow furrowed and she gave Emily a questioning look as she wondered how the woman knew her name.

"My name's Emily."