A/N: As always, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. This is the first part of the action. I think I may be able to finish the rest and post it within the next week.

Chapter 32

Even though they all did what they could over the weekend, by the time Monday morning rolled around, the BAU was no closer to catching Jeremy.

And, after two days with no attempted break-in, Steve was beginning to question whether Emily's presence there was really necessary…especially since he thought Emily's presence was creating a strain on his relationship with his daughter. Two was company, and three was a crowd.

Steve honestly thought that by Monday morning Hannah would have gotten over being sent to her room the night before. It wasn't the first time she had been sent to her room as punishment, and although she never liked being punished, she had always been ready to apologize and act nice when he and Sarah allowed her to come out of her room again. Steve wasn't even going to make her apologize for the way she spoke to him the night before. This was different from when she was younger and had only been in her room for an hour or so. This was a new day, and, in the father's mind at least, a fresh start. He greeted his daughter normally when she came downstairs, already dressed in her uniform. "Good morning, sweetheart."

Hannah glanced at her dad in surprise and then looked away. Was he seriously acting like nothing happened the night before? The fourteen year old wasn't even really upset about the childish punishment anymore, but her feelings were still hurt. She didn't understand how her birth mother could believe her without question, and yet the dad who knew her better than anyone didn't believe her when she tried to tell him she wasn't doing anything wrong. "Morning," she mumbled very halfheartedly as she brushed past her dad. She didn't look at him once as she moved through the kitchen, putting two Pop Tarts in the toaster and pouring a glass of juice.

Taken aback by the brush off, Steve just stood there at the island where he was nursing a cup of coffee in stunned silence. "Don't be like that," he said reproachfully after several seconds.

"What? I just said good morning," Hannah responded defensively, already gearing herself up for an argument.

"It's the way you said it," Steve told her.

"I just won't say anything then," Hannah replied obstinately.

The father and daughter were already off to a bad start, and it wasn't even eight in the morning yet.

The young teenager's vow of silence only lasted until Emily joined them in the kitchen. Her entire standoffish demeanor changed when she interacted with the woman. Instead of the open hostility she displayed with Steve, Hannah was her normal self as she played the role of hostess, offering Emily one of the two Pop Tarts and asking what Emily wanted to drink. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire and instantly reignited Steve's hurt feelings and jealousy from the day before.

When their Pop Tarts were gone and Hannah was rinsing her glass and Emily's mug out in the sink, Steve glanced at his watch and picked up his briefcase. "Are you ready to go?" He prompted his daughter.

"I thought Emily was taking me to school," Hannah protested.

"I can take you," Steve said, his patience with his daughter already wearing thin. He was taking this as yet another example of Hannah preferring her birth mother. While all of the other examples that he was thinking of were just in his head, this time he wasn't wrong. If the fourteen year old had a choice in whose car she rode in, she certainly wasn't going to choose the parent who had spent the better part of Sunday angry with her.

"I thought I needed an armed guard to go anywhere," Hannah said dramatically as she subconsciously gravitated closer to Emily's side. She wanted to go with Emily.

"Not to go to school," Steve told his overly dramatic daughter, rolling his eyes.

"Fine," Hannah muttered unhappily. Spurred into action by her dad's impatience, the girl slid her feet into the saddle shoes that were by the front door where she left them when she took them off on Friday afternoon and then looked around for her navy blue pea coat. "Have you seen my pea coat?" She asked, not directing the question to anyone in particular.

"It's in your room hanging over your desk chair," Emily supplied, only knowing that because she was currently sharing a room with the girl. When Hannah ran up to her room to get her coat, Emily turned to Steve with a guarded expression and said in a carefully neutral tone, "I was planning to take her and pick her up until Jeremy Sayer is caught."

Like many people, Steve believed there was safety in numbers. Surely no one would be so brazen as to try anything at Hannah's school in broad daylight with hundreds of other kids around. "I can do it," he insisted stubbornly. "Shouldn't you be out there trying to find this guy?" He questioned. Two days where nothing happened had him feeling like Emily should be doing more than just sitting around his house with them.

"I assure you that we're doing everything we can to find him," Emily said placatingly. It was the same response she would have given anyone who questioned the BAU team's methods. Steve was hardly the first worried parent to feel like the BAU should be doing more. Nothing they could do was ever enough for any parent when their child was in danger.

Steve recognized the canned response for what it was, and it frustrated him to no end. He thought Emily owed him a little more than that. It was his kid that was in danger, and Emily was the reason. It all went back to her job. "Why don't you keep doing that then?" Steve said, deciding in that moment to dig his proverbial heels in on this. He needed Emily to do her job as an FBI agent and find this guy, and she wasn't going to do that at the prep school. Part of this was just the adoptive father not wanting to surrender any parental duties to Hannah's biological mother, and part of it was that he really thought Emily's time would be better served looking for Jeremy Sayer than driving Hannah to and from school. "I am capable of getting my kid to and from school," Steve told Emily.

This went beyond who was dropping Hannah off at school and picking her up. Emily understood the adoptive father didn't want her there when Hannah got home from school. He clearly wanted some time with the girl, minus Emily.

Knowing she was quickly wearing out her welcome with the adoptive father, Emily felt like she had no choice but to defer to him on this, but she didn't like it. After keeping Hannah cooped up in the relative safety of the townhouse all weekend, Emily was hesitant to send the girl back out into the world. There was a big part of her that didn't want to let Hannah out of her sight.

The FBI agent and mother felt like protecting Hannah from a family annihilator was her job, but Steve was Hannah's parent. Emily could only do what the adoptive father let her. She had entrusted Steve Johnson with her baby girl fourteen years ago. She was just going to have to trust that he could get her daughter to and from school safely now.

Even if Hannah wasn't hers and there was no tension between her and Hannah's father, Emily wouldn't have been able to do anything without the father's permission. There were rules about what the FBI could do when a minor child was involved in any way. Emily couldn't even talk to a child without the parent's consent.

Other than the townhouse, Emily knew the safest place for Hannah to be was school. Because all of the kids wore uniforms, anyone who wasn't wearing a uniform and wasn't a recognized as a teacher would stand out. It was extremely unlikely that Jeremy Sayer could get into Hannah's school without attracting a lot of attention. That was what Emily told herself anyway.

Whatever their differences, Emily knew Steve would never recklessly endanger Hannah. If he knew what to look for, Emily believed he would do his due diligence.

After a moment's hesitation as she debated internally, Emily unlocked her iPhone and found the screenshot of Jeremy Sayer that Penelope had managed to grab from the footage on Derek's doorbell camera. It was the best close-up picture they had of his face. She showed it to Steve. "This is Jeremy Sayer."

"He looks like a kid," Steve said with a surprised look on his face.

Emily knew exactly what he meant. At their age, they looked at college aged-kids and even the twenty-somethings who had already entered the workforce but were still learning how to adult and saw them all as kids. It was why they would never see Hannah as the grown up she wanted so badly to be seen as.

Jeremy Sayer was twenty-one, but he still looked like a little kid to them. He had a little bit of a baby-face and was on the scrawny side. Emily knew she had to remind Steve how dangerous this 'kid' was. "Yeah, a kid who killed nine people. During the last break-in, he broke the window over the back door. That's how he got in. Before you and Hannah go inside, you should check for any signs of a break-in," she advised the father. "Call me if anything seems off."


A call from the Property Manager in Emily's building had Emily, Rossi, and Derek standing in Emily's bathroom on Monday afternoon. The Property Manager called to let her know he entered the condo because he suspected a gas leak had caused an explosion. Emily knew the moment she heard the word explosion that it wasn't a gas leak. It was a pipe bomb like the one Jeremy Sayer detonated in Derek's house.

JJ and Hotch were at the BAU when the Property Manager from Emily's building called. They both went home in case Jeremy hit one of their houses next. They didn't think he would, but he had escalated quickly from taunting the profilers with photographs and voicemails to explosives.

Two pipe bombs in four days wasn't much of a cooling off period, and not one of the profilers could have predicted the pipe bomb at Emily's condo. Jeremy's behavior was becoming more and more unpredictable, and the profilers weren't entirely sure what he would do next.

Jeremy sent four of them photographs. That was what started this whole thing. Did that mean there would be four pipe bombs before he was done? Emily sent Reid with JJ and Simmons with Hotch…just in case.

Tara and Luke were at the closest Metro station to Emily's condo, looking for Jeremy Sayer there.

The nature of the destruction in Emily's condo wasn't targeted like it had been in Derek Morgan's house, but the damage was more extensive. The worst of the damage wasn't caused by the explosion itself, but rather by a pipe in the master bathroom that had broken when the bomb went off. The water damage was pretty bad.

The window in the master bedroom was broken. Emily's security alarm didn't go off because Jeremy never used the front door. It looked like Jeremy had just lobbed the pipe bomb from the fire escape, not even caring where it landed. Unfortunately, it landed in the en suite bathroom, where the explosion damaged the drywall, the vanity and the pipe under the sink.

"What a mess," Emily grumbled lightly as she took in the full extent of the damage.

"It's nothing that can't be fixed," Derek told her gently.

"Do you think my renter's insurance covers serial killers setting off pipe bombs?" Emily said dryly. Somehow, she didn't think so.

"This doesn't fit the profile," Rossi said with a perturbed expression.

"It's his second pipe bomb in four days, Rossi," Derek pointed out. "Maybe the profile's changed."

Unconvinced, Rossi shook his head. "No, I don't think so. In your house, everything he touched had to do with Hank…a family photo, a children's book, Hank's bedroom. He was still going after your child, albeit indirectly. His methods were different, but at its core, everything he's ever done has been about using a parent's love for their children to hurt them. He was trying to scare you by detonating a bomb in your son's room. He made you feel like it wasn't safe for Hank in his own home."

"Yeah, but Hannah doesn't have a bedroom here," Emily rationalized.

"Maybe at this point he just likes blowing things up," Derek said.

"He's a twenty-one year old man-child," Emily said, scoffing disparagingly. "There's a reason action movies with big explosions are a hit with that demographic. He's just decided it's more fun when the explosion is real and not on TV."

"Assuming he didn't just blow Emily's bathroom up for fun, why here? Why now?" Rossi questioned. "It makes no sense! Unlesss…" Rossi thought of something suddenly, and his expression turned grim. "What time does Hannah get out of school?"

"3:25." Emily glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes after 3:30. It was almost like Jeremy timed it. That couldn't be a coincidence. Detonating a pipe bomb in her condo was a distraction to ensure Emily was otherwise occupied when her daughter got out of school. Jeremy couldn't have known Emily was never picking Hannah up from school to begin with. Her mouth dropped open in horror as Jeremy's intentions suddenly became clear. "It's a distraction," she concluded, drawing the same conclusion Rossi had. She was already scrambling frantically for her phone as Rossi and Derek ushered her out of her condo.

"Who are you calling?" Rossi asked, looking at Emily in concern.

"Her father," Emily answered.

Rossi nodded his understanding. "I'll call everyone and tell them to meet us at Hannah's house."

They would all meet at Steve's townhouse because that was where Hannah should be. And the timing of all of this was too coincidental for Jeremy not to be going after Hannah now.


Her dad was on the phone when Hannah slid into his black BMW. She knew not to talk while he was on a business call and settled into the passenger seat wordlessly.

The young teenager took her cell phone out of the front pocket of her backpack to entertain herself during the silent drive, but it was snatched out of her hands before she could do anything with it. The surprised teenager looked up to see the pointed look her dad was giving her as he powered her phone off and put it in the center console before putting the parked car in drive. Right…she was still grounded. Her shoulders slumped in defeat as she sat back in her seat for what was sure to be a boring drive.

When they got home, her dad didn't pull the car into the garage like he normally would. Instead, he circled the townhouse, slowing down as they went around the back of the house and staring out the window for several long seconds. Hannah wondered what he was doing and shot him a questioning look, but either he didn't see it or he was just ignoring her.

Seeing no broken windows or any other signs of a break-in, Steve doubled back and pulled his BMW into the garage. Hannah was already out of the car and in the house while Steve was still attempting to switch from the car's Bluetooth to his cell phone.

Having heard the garage door open, Alex was waiting to greet Hannah at the door, his tail wagging furiously as the fourteen year old kneeled down to pat him. As soon as she stood up, the dog raced over to the front door. He was ready for his walk.

"Sorry, Alex," Hannah said as her dad came in and headed straight for his office, still talking on the phone. "We have to wait for Dad to get off the phone before we can go for a walk."

Alex sighed loudly and stared at Hannah, not understanding what she was waiting for. It felt to the dog like his people had been gone forever. He needed to go out. Why didn't Hannah understand that?

"You can go out in the backyard," Hannah told the dog as if he understood what she was saying. She moved to the back door and unlocked it, holding it open until Alex went out in the backyard.

Hannah didn't go out with him. She got a can of Coke out of the refrigerator and opened it before wandering back over to the back door to see if Alex was ready to come in. He wasn't at the door yet so she moved to the window to watch for him. As her eyes roamed over the small fenced yard, Hannah didn't see Alex anywhere. She set her Coke down on the kitchen table and went outside. Her heart lurched when she saw that the gate was open and Alex was gone.

It wouldn't be the first time the lawn service that came by once a week to mow the grass and trim the trees left the gate open. Without stopping to consider for one second that maybe there was another - more sinister – explanation for the wide-open gate, Hannah ran out into the alleyway, calling the dog in a panicked tone. She didn't want him to get lost or run over.

The gate wasn't open when Steve did his drive-by mere minutes before, but Hannah didn't know that. She hadn't been paying any attention to the gate at the time.

Hannah saw Jeremy the moment she set foot in the alleyway, but she didn't know who he was. Emily had only ever shown the picture of Jeremy Sayer to Steve, not Hannah.

All Hannah saw was a relatively normal-looking guy who looked to be about the same age as her oldest cousin standing there, holding onto Alex's collar to stop the golden retriever from running off. Alex was straining to break free, pulling with all of his might.

"Alex!"

Jeremy looked up from the dog with his most innocent expression – the one that had convinced Nancy Riverton to take him home for the night instead of leaving him at the police station. "Is this your dog?" He asked innocently.

Hannah nodded and moved toward Jeremy of her own free will. Once she was close enough, she bent down to get a firm hold on the dog's collar.

The second Hannah took her eyes off Jeremy he grabbed a fistful of her hair. She cried out in a mixture of surprise and pain as he dragged her by the hair, yanking and pulling until she was standing up straight with her back pressed firmly against his chest. Sometime in the process, she lost her grip on the dog's collar. Alex didn't go anywhere though. He stayed where he was, barking at Jeremy in warning when Hannah cried out.

When Jeremy had Emily's daughter right where he wanted her, he brought the blade of a long chef's knife to her throat. At first Hannah was equally scared and confused, but when she felt the cool edge of the blade resting against her skin, fear definitely won out. She glanced down fearfully, inhaling sharply when she laid eyes on the gleaming silver of the blade.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Jeremy said. "Your mom just has to tell me what I want to know, and I won't hurt you."

"She's not here," Hannah told him, feeling almost hysterical.

"She will be," Jeremy said confidently. "She loves you. She tried so hard to keep me away from you. She'll tell me where my mom is if I promise to let you go."

Jeremy wasn't stupid. He knew Emily Prentiss and the other feds would come. That was what he wanted. They would tell him where his mom and Carrie were. They would tell him, and he wouldn't hurt Emily's daughter.


Steve was on the phone with Emily, tearing through the house as he looked for Hannah, who wasn't coming when he called her. The girl wasn't even responding, no matter how many times he called her name. He checked the teenager's bedroom and bathroom before going back downstairs. When he was at the bottom of the stairs, the back door opened and Hannah appeared, but she wasn't alone.

Steve saw the look of pure terror on his daughter's face before he noticed the very large, scary knife that was pressed against the delicate skin at the base of her throat. The father's mind went completely blank when he saw his small, helpless daughter at the mercy of a cold-blooded killer. He forgot all about the FBI agent on the phone until Jeremy spoke.

"Is that Emily on the phone?" Jeremy asked casually as he maneuvered to where he wanted to be - with his back against the wall in a corner and Emily's daughter in front of him like a human shield. The feds wouldn't shoot him if Emily's kid could get hurt. Jeremy smirked at Hannah's dad. "Tell her I said hi. I can't wait to see her again."