Author's Note: The next night.

The Cleaner

Hotch leaned over the small sink to splash water onto his face.

As he straightened up, the tiny droplets dripped back down onto the white porcelain.

At present, it was a little after ten p.m., and he'd just returned to the clinic after getting the strangest series of reports all day.

And given the type of news that he received on a regular basis, that was saying something.

And although he had no proof (nor would he be seeking any out) that Emily's father was the cause for the bizarre events that had occurred over the last twenty-four hours, Hotch was almost positive that he was responsible. The odds of mere coincidence were just too astronomical. But again that was simply Hotch's personal assessment.

And again, he was keeping that assessment to himself.

But since Richard Prentiss had left China Lake approximately thirty-six hours earlier, the forensic examiner appointed by the special prosecutor in Dave's case . . . a woman who had been expected in from L.A. the night before . . . had been delayed just prior to her flight, by a sudden, extremely violent, case of food poisoning.

A case severe enough to actually put her into the hospital.

And with Dr. O'Connell not flying in as expected at eight p.m. last evening, the autopsy of Emily's abductor, which would have taken place immediately upon her arrival, had obviously been delayed. And during that delay, there had been a small electrical fire at the county morgue where the body was being held. Even though nothing actually happened to the corpse at that time . . . that probably would have been too simplistic a plan for a man like Emily's father . . . the electricity had been knocked out because of the fire. And with the electricity out, and the cold storage unit therein compromised, it was around one am when it was decided by the State's Attorney General, that for the sake of 'preserving the evidence,' it would be best to immediately move Exhibit A to the main lab at the State Police headquarters.

And that was where things began to take the real turn for the bizarre.

Shortly before the body was officially received in Carson City, there was a grisly, six car pileup out on the Interstate. Five dead. And although Hotch would NOT have presumed it possible that Emily's father would choose to kill 'innocent' civilians on whatever the hell cleanup mission he seemed to have been on . . . at least he hoped not, his baby was going to share that gene pool . . . fortunately it had turned out that the dead in that pileup weren't so innocent. All of the fatalities were in one vehicle.

A prison transport bus.

It was the set, twice weekly, four a.m. run for recently convicted inmates, being taken from the Carson City Jail, to their more permanent lodgings at Ely State Prison. It should be noted that Ely took only the worst, of the worst, offenders. And once the bodies were identified later that morning, it was confirmed that these five dead, definitely fell into that category.

Two child molesters, a wife beater recently turned family annihilator, a gang banger who had shot three kids in a drive by school shooting, and lastly, a thrice convicted drunk driver who had just topped off his resume by wiping out a family of six returning from an out of state funeral.

So basically, miraculously, every single fatality on that highway would, by most civilized standards, be considered an absolute waste of human refuse. And even MORE miraculously, the bus was hit in just such a fashion that the passenger area . . . the prisoners' area . . . had practically been steamrolled by the tractor trailer that had rolled on top of it.

The cab of the bus on the other hand, was virtually untouched.

Which meant that the prison guards accompanying that human refuse, had all walked away with very minor injuries. Bumps, bruises, one case of whiplash, a broken nose, and a cracked humerus.

Similar injuries were reported by the drivers of the other vehicles.

It was almost like the accident had been professionally staged.

Maybe.

But of course nobody would ever really know what had happened out there, because the two key witnesses . . . the drivers who had separately cut off the tractor trailer, and the prison bus . . . they'd disappeared at the scene. They were both described as Hispanic . . . not uncommon for the area . . . one male and one female. The opinion of local law enforcement, who weren't about to put in any overtime for a pile of dead inmates, was that those other drivers were likely undocumented, and that's why they'd fled the scene.

Hotch had his theories on that bullshit assessment, but again, for the sake of family unity, he was keeping those opinions strictly to himself.

But fine, okay, so what would a 'random' highway collision resulting in a pile of dead sociopaths have to do with his personal life? Ordinarily, probably nothing. But in this instance, it turned out that every one of those bodies scraped up off I-80 was brought to the EXACT same State Police lab as the late Peter Lee Mahoney. Mahoney of course was better known as the cretin who had abducted and tortured the future mother of Hotch's child.

Not to mention the primary suspect in the disappearance of fourteen missing women over the last four years.

And with this understaffed autopsy lab that ordinarily processed perhaps five bodies in a week, suddenly flooded with six bodies in a single pre-dawn, graveyard shift, morning, there had been, understandably, a little confusion with some of the paperwork.

A couple of toe tags had gotten mixed up.

And so when the Chief Medical Examiner had finally gotten around to officially assessing Peter Lee Mahoney's body to sign off on its arrival in her lab, she'd discovered that on its face, it appeared that their serial murderer had died of extreme blunt force trauma.

And oddly enough, there wasn't one gunshot to be found.

Yes, it turned out that 'somehow' Mahoney's tag had been placed on the body of the thrice convicted drunk driver/multiple murderer. And Mahoney's body . . . his REAL body . . . had then been picked up (in "error") by a local funeral home who had been called in to collect a simple heart attack case from the day before. And that pickup . . . Mr. Sandowski, who had gotten the drunk driver's toe tag . . . it had been scheduled for cremation.

Which is exactly what happened to it.

Except it wasn't Mr. Sandowski who had been dumped into the furnace. No, instead the bullet hole riddled corpse of Peter Lee Mahoney, again, also known as future Exhibit A in the case of the State of Nevada versus David Federico Rossi, had gone up in smoke.

Literally.

And although there was egg on enough state officials' faces to make an omelet big enough to feed a family of six, really, there was no deliberate malfeasance that could be discovered anywhere along the way. As far as the AGO investigators were able to piece together from their interviews over the last twelve hours, it had just been a series of random, non-criminal, events.

Yeah . . . Hotch bit back a weary sigh . . . random events his ass. In his gut he knew that Emily's father, and Emily's father's friends (the "undocumented" Hispanics) had SOMEHOW knocked over one domino after another until they'd 'accidentally' wiped Mahoney off the face of the earth.

It was kind of like how the CIA toppled governments.

With a pre-determined calculation of acceptable collateral damage, (the dead prisoners), and a whole lot of plausible deniability.

Leaving the scene of the accident.

But as Hotch now wiped down the bathroom sink at the China Lake clinic, he was very worried that Emily's father might have overextended himself on this one. Of course Hotch wanted Dave free and clear more than anyone, but he didn't see how this wasn't going to still come back and bite EVERYONE on the ass.

Yes, without the autopsy to prove manner of death, the sheriff was going to be forced to release Dave. But that just meant that Mahoney's father was going to be even MORE hell bent on blowing up their lives to figure out what the hell had happened to his son. Just because the body was gone, it didn't mean that the investigation was going to end. Lack of evidence had never stopped a Special Prosecutor before.

Just ask Kenneth Starr.

But as he scrubbed his hands down his face, Hotch knew that there was really nothing more that he could do to help Dave at the moment. Certainly not that night anyway.

Maybe he'd have a fresh idea in the morning.

So after he'd straightened the towel, and flipped off the bathroom light, Hotch opened the door and stepped back out into the small hospital ward where he had been living for the last week. Then in the semi-dark, he walked down and over to the two bed, two chair, one nightstand, 'suite' that had been partitioned off for him and Emily six days earlier.

After lifting the curtain surrounding their area, he ducked underneath the thick white cloth. As it fell down behind him, his gaze immediately shifted to see Emily curled up on her side, sound asleep. His expression softened.

Even though she'd come far in six days, her recovery still had a long ways to go. The bruises especially would take probably a couple months to completely fade. So far they'd gone from black and blue-ish to blue-ish and purple. They actually looked worse than they had on that first day, but Emily said that they weren't hurting so much now, and that was really what mattered.

How she felt.

And as he stood there looking down at his girl lying there quiet and still, he so badly wanted to climb into her bed. That was one thing that he'd missed terribly that whole week.

Just being able to hold her.

At first her poor body had been so battered that he hadn't dared to do more than lean in to give her a loose squeeze to approximate a hug. But then a couple days ago, Emily told him that she was feeling a bit better, and that's when she'd started trying to sneak in REAL hugs just before he helped her back into bed after her bathroom trips.

Bathroom trips still being the only time she was allowed to stand up and walk around.

Of course that plan only worked for them if they had total privacy, and moments of total privacy . . . outside of this time of night . . . were rare.

So basically their physical contact had pretty limited that week. And before they'd left on this God awful case, they'd been hugging and kissing every night after work. Emily had also been sleeping in his arms for three to four nights out of every seven, and they'd had sex on every one of those nights.

And now they'd just gone eight days basically just holding hands.

He was miserable, and also seriously debating just how much longer he could go on with her being so close, and yet basically still completely out of his reach.

But then as Hotch again took in how huddled up Emily was under the blankets, suddenly an idea popped into his head.

Perhaps he could slide in behind her on the bed.

His brow scrunched . . . he'd probably fit. She was sleeping on her side, and with the exception of the little Hotchkin bump, she was still basically as skinny as a beanpole. Plus . . . he thought to himself as he began to get more enthusiastic about his idea . . . the nurses had started bandaging up her burns two day earlier. So there was no risk of him brushing against them. And also . . . he started to slide off his shoes . . . her stab wound had had clean white bandages for at least thirty-six hours now.

That was healing over too.

She really was mending quickly.

So yeah . . . he began to unbutton his shirt . . . okay, he was going to give it a try. As long as he could fit on the bed he was doing it.

And now properly motivated to attempt to get perhaps his first good night's sleep since they'd left Virginia, Hotch put his gun and holster down on the end of his bed before stripping off the rest of his work clothes and hurriedly jamming them into his ready bag that he'd already placed on top of the sheets. Then he yanked out his last clean pair of pajama bottoms . . . he really needed to do a wash somewhere . . . and pulled them on with the t-shirt he was already wearing.

The last thing he did for bedtime prep, was what had become the usual ritual that week . . . turn out the small lamp on the nightstand he shared with Emily.

That left just the soft overnight lighting from the track in the middle of the ward. At this hour, it was set bright enough to move around without tripping on anything, but not so bright that you couldn't sleep with it in your eyes.

And sleep . . . he slipped his holster onto his pajama pants and moved around the side of Emily's bed . . . was all that he was hoping to get that night.

So to that end, he very slowly pulled back the sheet and two blankets that were covering his girl. And when she didn't stir, he carefully climbed up onto the mattress.

Once he had himself on his side and situated to the point that he was pretty sure he wasn't going to fall off backwards and hit the floor . . . that would be a fun way to wake everyone up . . . he shimmied over the last two inches so he could slip his arm around Emily's waist.

Then he tugged her back against his chest and sighed.

Finally!

For a second he just closed his eyes and breathed her in. The nurses had washed her hair earlier that day, and he could still smell the shampoo.

It was a bit like Jack's 'No More Tears.'

The scent both comforted, and saddened him. He missed his son so much that his stomach hurt. Though he wouldn't for a second have entertained the idea of leaving Emily alone in Nevada, it had been difficult for him to emotionally reconcile that choosing to stay with her, meant that he was also choosing to stay away from Jack. But then he would remind himself . . . there really had never been a choice made at all. Emily was hurt, Emily had to stay in the hospital, and he had to stay there with her.

And that was that.

Sometimes choices were determined by circumstance, and not by individual. And he just hoped that someday he'd be able to explain that fact to his son. And thinking about that future, and the lives of his children, Hotch found his hand falling down to lightly brush over the tiny bump under Emily's hospital gown.

His other child.

If he couldn't be with one, at least he was there for the other. And as his fingers began to lightly, and somewhat unconsciously, trace over the curve of Emily's stomach, he felt her suddenly stir in his arms. For a second he froze, realizing that he'd probably just woken her up, and hoping that she'd fall right back to sleep.

But then he felt her fingers come up to cover his.

"This hand better belong to Hotchkin's daddy," she murmured, "or else it's about to be torn off and drop kicked across this patient ward."

Hotch chuckled as he dipped his head down to kiss her neck.

"It does belong to him," he whispered back with a soft caress of her belly, "and I'm sorry I woke you, but I didn't think that you'd mind sharing your bed." He again pressed his lips to skin.

"I missed holding you," he murmured.

"Yeah," Emily's eyes crinkled as she turned to give him a sleepy smile, "I missed this too. I actually tried to stay awake until you got back just to see if we could get in another hug, but this is so much better. But you should probably slip out before morning shift." She winked, "Nurse Lisa's going to yell at you."

His lips twitched.

"I'm a big boy, I can take it."

Nurse Lisa was not his biggest fan. Though she was perfectly pleasant and sociable with Emily, and had no problem with her FBI presence on their military ward, for some reason she was very clipped and curt whenever she spoke to Hotch. Emily's theory was that he looked like an ex.

Hotch's theory was just that she was a witch.

"Did you send JJ and Reid back to the hotel?" Emily continued softly.

"If you're asking if I sent our teammates away before I stripped down and climbed into bed with you," Hotch responded drily, "then yes, sweetheart, yes I did do that."

No sooner had the words had left his mouth, than he felt the vibration of Emily's chuckle.

"Just checking," she huffed before squeezing his fingers again. "I really did miss this." She sighed, "of course I'm grateful that they've been letting you stay here with me at all, but pillow talk just wasn't the same when you weren't sharing the same pillow."

Oddly enough, neither JJ nor Reid had commented on their sleeping arrangements, i.e., Hotch bunking in her curtained off section of the ward. Emily was presuming that they just figured it was more of him being overprotective about her safety since the abduction. Which it absolutely was.

But just for totally different reasons than would have been clear to the two of them.

"Yeah," Hotch brushed his other hand lightly along Emily's shoulder, "I know what you mean. But you're sure that you're okay though, right? I'm not crowding you, or brushing up against anything that hurts?"

"No," she quickly shook her head, "no, I'm fine. Pain meds are working as advertised. Still achy everywhere, but," she brought his hand over from her shoulder to kiss his palm, "I'd be achy anyway. At least with you I won't be lonely too."

Feeing that recurrent stab of grief return to his chest, the persistent reminder that he could have lost all of these days with her, Hotch's hand once more lightly pressed his palm against her stomach.

"Good night my pretty girl," he murmured with a kiss to her neck.

And Emily's eyes crinkled as she turned her head.

"Good night my handsome man," she whispered back.

Hotch's lip quirked up as he leaned forward to give her a kiss. And when they broke apart, she gave him another little smile, before turning back around. Then he tucked her just a little bit closer, and she squeezed his hand just a little bit tighter, and he closed his eyes. And for the first time in a week, he fell right to sleep.

/*/*/*/

Richard slipped back into his daughter's clinical ward almost forty-eight hours after he'd last left it.

Once again all it had taken was a flashing of his ID at the main gate . . . and then the front desk of the clinic . . . to get him free reign of the base.

There weren't many clearances higher than his.

It was now a little before three a.m., and as he walked up to the curtained area where he had last visited his daughter, he braced himself for seeing her injuries again. Though there were many horrible things that he had seen (and done) over the years, nothing really compared to the sight of your child having been brutalized by a serial killer.

Though when he lifted the curtain to slip back inside her partitioned area again, Richard's eyes widened at what he saw. Things weren't exactly the same with Emily as when he'd last been there.

Now Agent Hotchner was there too.

And as he looked down at the two of them curled together, sound asleep with his hand clutched between hers, Richard's expression softened. They really did seem devoted to one another.

He hoped that they would be happy.

And though he of course did not begrudge his daughter's attempts to find physical comfort from this man who clearly adored her, for a moment Richard now hesitated, unsure of whether he should stay or go. He was exhausted, and had hoped to talk to Emily, and then catch a quick nap there on base before he left for home. But now seeing her like this, he didn't have the heart to wake her (them) up.

But then his gaze shifted over to the other, now unoccupied, bed in their little bunk area. He started to blink.

Damn, that thing looked good.

And it would be a shame to let a perfectly fresh set of Navy boiled sheets go to waste.

So after quickly, and quietly, untying his boots, he slid them over next to the nightstand. That was all he took off before climbing up onto the bed a few feet away from his daughter, and her new protector. And it was clear from the way that Hotchner was holding her, that was exactly the role that this man had appointed for himself.

That was a role that had once been Richard's alone.

For a second he lay there on his side, on top of the blankets, just staring at the two of them as they slept. He was thinking about that baby on the way.

His grandchild.

Finally Richard took a breath and rolled onto his back. His hand flopped onto his chest. The last thought he had as his eyes closed wasn't of the mischief that he'd been up to since he'd been gone, but something more positive. A thought for the future. He'd never had a son.

But Hotchner would make a good son-in-law.

Then he fell asleep.

A/N 2: I said her father would clean things up, and I didn't really think that to do it "professionally," it would be obvious to anyone but Hotch, what he'd actually done. And as to wiping out the prison transport bus just to get a stack of fresh corpses, it was a good reminder that he's a man who does terrible things for a living. So far all that's really been covered as relates to him in the Girl'verse, is his relationship with Emily. And everybody likes Emily's dad, but it's important to remember that he's not soft and cuddly out in the world. If you live a life in the grey margins, you're not going to be a person with much regret for what he did here to men who nobody would cry over except their mothers. Collateral damage for the greater good.

Thanks!