AUTHORS'S NOTE –
I am slightly changing the timing of some things such as putting Morgan's confession about surviving abuse on TV to sometime in early season 7 after Prentiss returns as I wanted to write some of my favourite characters. The original timing of the story was choppy, with lots of character's leaving/returning and I plan on writing it over quite a few series.
Thanks for your patience.
Sally POV
I knocked on her door a little nervously, waiting for an answer. It finally came in the form of a misquoted Dante expression.
"Embrace hope all ye who enter here" She called through the closed door and I entered the office but remained standing in the doorway.
"Garcia?" She nodded "Chief Strauss has made me your assistant. I'm Sally Matthews"
I prepared myself for a barrage of questions that I was sure would follow. I'd done my background research; I knew this woman was an ex hacker who was known for being outspoken and perky to the extreme.
"I don't really need an assistant... But wait. Weren't you the victim in one of our cases?" She asked. It was less than I had expected.
"Yes, I was. And it's not my decision, I was told to report to your office and that I was to be your assistant from here on out. Before you say anything, I know what I'm doing when it comes to a computer. I can read code and just between us I can hack most servers in under a minute without leaving a shred of evidence or getting caught. Of course, you'll have to bring me up to speed on your OS but I'm sure I'll pick it up quickly" I seemed to have stopped her in her tracks.
"What's your tag?" was her only subsequent question.
"May the Force be with you" I replied.
"You are good" She gasped.
"High praise from someone of your calibre" I remarked.
"Now park your posterior little miss" She said as she kicked another chair out from under the desk. I sat down, ready and waiting to learn.
Reid POV
"Garcia got an assistant, I thought she'd be pretty pissed that the higher ups considered it necessary, but she seems pretty happy about it" Morgan told us, laughing a little for some unknown reason.
"Oh?" was all I replied with, curious at who it could be.
"Yeah, little miss red hair and green eyes" he replied. My mind instantly flashed back to the day of her psych eval.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek softly, her lips felt warm and soft, I flushed a little. She turned and walked to the door. Stopping and looking at me.
"Goodbye... Spencer"
"You mean Sally Matthews?" JJ asked as she sat down.
"Yeah" He murmured before looking at me oddly. Everybody filtered into the round table room, I was too busy reading to notice, except when she walked in behind Chief Strauss.
"Everybody this is Agent Sally Matthews and she'll be Miss Garcia's assistant from now on. Agent Matthews, these are SSA's Derek Morgan, Emily Prentis, Jennifer Jareau, David Rossi, Aaron Hotchner and Doctor Spencer Reid" she said, pointing to each of us in turn before leaving the room again. Sally greeted us all before taking her place next to Garcia by the screen. She picked up a set of tablets and began to pass them out to everybody except me, underneath the tablets were two Manila folders, one of which she gave to me, the other she kept for herself. I found myself wishing I could have brushed my hand against hers as she passed me the folder.
"In Dallas over the past six months four eighteen-year-old girls have been kidnapped, drugged and then returned within thirty-six hours of being taken. The only thing being different about them is the fact that they are no longer pregnant. All of them were in their second trimester and the abortion was carried out with surgical precision. The first attack was six months ago, the second was three months ago, the third was last month and the fourth victim was discovered 3 days ago" Garcia finished morbidly.
"No physical evidence was found on any of the victims, the drugs in their systems were all medical grade but no hospitals have reported anything stolen as of yet.
"This unsub is escalating their timeline, why has it taken so long for them to call us in?" I asked.
"With no leads after each of the initial attacks until now and with them all occurring in different precincts it was difficult to connect each attack" He turned to look at Garcia "We're going to need you and Agent Matthews in Dallas with us on this case Garcia" Hotch announced.
"I told you it's Sally..." Sally murmured angrily.
"Why?" Garcia asked.
"Four different family planning clinics reported security breaches where personal data was stolen from their computer systems two days before each abduction" Hotch explained. Sally had her hand in her hair like she was thinking; it was cute... The thought disturbed me a little, this woman was an agent in our team and here I was thinking she was cute.
"Okay" Garcia and Sally chorused.
"I assume you have a 'Go' bag Matthews?" Hotch enquired. She scowled at him, then nodded.
"First assignment and you're already in the field. Scared newbie?" Morgan teased. She looked pissed for a second before her demeanour changed.
"Quaking in my Doc Martens Agent Morgan" She replied coolly. She put her hand back in her hair and smiled.
"How about you call me Derek little miss" Morgan flirted, it made me angry to see him speak to her in such a patronising way.
"How about I stick with Agent Morgan and you never do that again for as long as we have to work together" She smirked coldly.
"I think you just got shot down Morgan" JJ laughed.
"That's enough. Wheels up in twenty" Hotch announced before getting up and leaving the room. Everybody else left except Sally, I watched from the doorway as she scribbled furiously in the margins of the other paper case file before shutting the dossier and getting up. I ducked into an alcove as she passed and watched as she walked into Hotch's office and shut the door behind her.
Sally POV
"So why do you think that Chief Strauss gave the best technical analyst in the FBI an assistant?" I said as I entered the office and shut the door. Hotch looked a little startled but recovered quickly.
"The FBI knows you used to be a hacker Sally, but what's your theory?" He asked, staring straight at me.
"That somebody messed with the program" I answered, staring straight back. I looked for some sign of his involvement but saw nothing in his eyes.
"Go on..." He encouraged me.
"What did you put in my psych eval Hotch? What did you say about me?" I questioned, I was getting angry at him and myself for this mess. This was my first real assignment in the FBI and I was stuck in close quarters with Spencer, if I wasn't careful then I could ruin myself. Even at this point, I was already doubting my every move.
"I recommended that you be placed within the BAU because you're a natural profiler" He admitted. I was embarrassed by his praise but honoured all the same.
"Thank you, but you must be wrong. How can I be a natural profiler Hotch?" I demanded, I was confused, I wanted him to get to the point.
"You profiled me. Before you'd even been to any of the seminars. You just knew" He explained, I could see that he wanted to be done with this as much as I did. I must have been annoying him.
"Years of overanalysing every interaction I've had plus two months living with a sick bastard who liked to torture me tends to be a pretty good foundation course in analysing human behaviour. You learn, you adapt, or you die. I lasted those two months because I adapted. We better go" I rambled before I turned and left.
I was sat in a window seat in the biggest jet I had ever seen, I was in awe, stuck in my own little world pouring over the case file I had annotated until Dr Reid sat next to me. Suddenly, I was hyper-aware of everything. I snapped the folder shut and sat rigidly in my seat.
"I think you may be on to something there, but it wouldn't become conclusive unless we got another victim" he concluded, I was embarrassed that he had seen my notes. They were just some initial thoughts, a bit of early pattern analysis. It's not as if they would help.
"I'm going to get some tea" I stood up and walked around him "Want some?" I asked, hoping he would say no.
"Sure. Same as you have it but with two sugars" he replied quickly. I walked to the small kitchenette and grabbed two cups and set them on the counter. I started to open cupboards to find the tea bags, but somebody passed them to me.
"Thank you Agent Prentiss" I dropped the bags into the cups and filled them with boiling water from the dispenser.
"Emily. Please." I nodded in acknowledgement "I read your file, you majored in English language and minored in Psychology" she stated, I stirred the tea and opened the fridge to get the milk.
"The subjects encompassed everything I love, reading, writing and analysis" I explained before adding the milk to the tea and removing the bags. I dumped them in the bin and turned to look at her, but she had already walked back to her seat. I grabbed the cups and took the tea back to my seat, I handed Dr Reid his before sitting down. I opened my laptop and was greeted by shocking news. The unsub had struck again.
"Garcia? Are you getting this?" I called out, I sent the file to the printer to get a copy for Dr Reid and one for myself to annotate and sent copies to everybody's tablets. I walked to the printer and grabbed the print outs. I returned to my seat and handed the copy to Reid, he smiled gratefully. I looked over my own paper copy. Despite being a techie, I preferred to be able to annotate my work on paper with my notes or questions.
"The unsub struck again" Rossi mumbled.
"Looks like the unsub confirmed your theory Matthews" Reid said from next to me. I stayed quiet while everybody looked at me for an explanation.
"I wrote some notes on the file... I didn't think it would be correct or I would have said something. I was just some early pattern analysis. Three months, two months, one month. It's like a countdown… But I thought it would be weeks. I thought we had three weeks until the unsub struck again. Not three days… It's only been three days since the last victim came in. That's a rapid escalation of the timeline. If the pattern holds then we have twelve hours until another girl goes missing." I explained reluctantly, getting slightly emotional towards the end.
"You're right and if he…" my face screwed up slightly at the use of the male pronoun "What?" Hotch asked, he must have noticed my change of expression.
"Nothing"
"No. You have another theory" Rossi interjected.
"What if it's a woman?" they look at me sceptically before urging me to explain my reasoning. "The whole thing just looks like it's a woman doing this. The fact that the victims are still alive, that they're dropped off at home. No defensive wounds, use of drugs to subdue them. It just seems too caring to be a man" I surmised.
"I have to agree" JJ said with a look of resigned disgust etched across her face. Knowing that she was a mother, I could understand the feeling.