Here is the next chapter. Enjoy

CHAPTER 13

Emily walked slowly into the house through the garage door. Morgan had come back to the house with her so he could pick up his car. However, he was running late for a meeting with some friends who were collaborating on house flip with him so he didn't come in with her as he would generally do.

After dropping her bag outside the laundry room, she walked into the family room and collapsed onto the couch. Jack left the puzzle he was working on and came running up next to her.

"Mommy, mommy, are you OK?" he asked worriedly as he stood next to her.

Emily slowly turned her head so she was looking at Jack and gave him a small smile as she answered, "yes sweetheart. I was just at the gym training with Uncle Derek."

"Are you hurt?" he asked, looking at her with a concerned face that eerily looked similar to his dad's. He climbed up on the couch and moved to snuggle up next to her.

Emily wrapped her arm around him, "not hurt, just sore. Do you remember in soccer when your coach had you run and you were really tired but you had to run more to finish?"

Jack nodded and said as he looked over at her, "Yeah, I was really really tired and needed my water bottle."

"You remember you needed to sit down and rest for a few minutes before you wanted to do anything else." Emily said.

"Uh huh."

Emily flinched as she moved slightly before answering, "that's how I feel now. I'm not hurt. Just really tired and need to rest for a few minutes and drink some water." She paused and noticed that Jack has relaxed into her but still had a worried look on his face. After thinking for a minute, she knew what distract him from worrying about her. "I was thinking we should go on a walk later this afternoon."

Jack immediately perked up and looked at her with an excited smile as he said rapidly, "Yeah, can we get hot chocolate?"

Emily laughed internally knowing that she would get that reaction to a suggestion of going for a walk. Looking down at Jack's excited face, she gave him a thoughtful look before she said, "maybe. We'll ask Daddy."

Jack nodded and quickly scurried off the couch and ran out of the room yelling excitedly, "Daddy Daddy. Can we get hot chocolate this afternoon? Mommy says we need to check with you."

Emily smiled and closed her eyes as she relaxed into the couch. She could hear Aaron and Jack talking in the other room.

After a few minutes, she could hear Jack walking up the front stairs. She opened her eyes when she felt the couch next to her sink as Aaron sat down next to her and started stroking her hair.

"You OK?" He asked quietly.

Emily opened her eyes and looked at him before answering, "Yeah." She then moved slightly and grimaced before continuing, "Derek put me through the ringer. I ended up on my ass more times than I care to admit." She turned to him with a pouty look on her face.

Hotch chuckled at her pout before saying, "do you feel better?" It appeared to him that she was feeling lighter emotionally than she had been recently.

Emily took a deep breath and then looked at him with a smile, "actually mentally yeah. It's what I needed. I was able to forget about all the crap that's been going on recently." she stopped and sighed before continuing, "but I just wish that everything didn't hurt." When she turned to slightly face him, he didn't miss the wince as she moved.

Hotch leaned in and whispered to her, "everything? Even here?" as he placed a gentle chaste kiss on her lips.

Emily smiled at him as he pulled back before saying, "No there is fine."

"How about here?" He smiles and leaned back in closer to her. Pushing her hair out of the way, he kissed and sucked on the sensitive spot behind her ear. He sat back up, looking over at her expectantly.

Emily laughed and shook her head at his antics. "There is OK too."

Hotch gave her look as if he was deep in thought before he leaned in and whispered in her ear, "and here," before he started to kiss the pulse point her neck close to her collarbone.

As a moan escaped her, Emily whispered to him, "there is OK too." She reached up and as she ran her fingers through his hair, he reach around her back and drew her closer to him. The new position gave him a different angle and she said, "Oh god don't stop," momentarily not caring about the soreness in her body.

They heard movement upstairs and then all the sudden heard Jack yelling down from the top of the stairs, "Daddy, Mommy, Nat'le's awake and she smells really bad."

Hotch groaned as rested his forehead on Emily's shoulder. He hadn't planned on getting both of them worked up when he started kissing her. With Jack awake and Natalie set to wake from her morning nap at any time, there was a limit on what they could do at the moment. He had just planned on just teasing her.

Emily laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she said, "Well, that's a mood breaker. Raincheck?"

"Definitely." Hotch said as he moved away from her on the couch.

Slowly standing up from the couch after Hotch sat up, Emily said loudly, "OK, Jack. I'll be right up." As she said that, they could hear Jack running away from the stairs and back into the playroom.

Hotch stood up and put his hands on her shoulders, "No Em, I'll get her. Why don't you soak in the tub for a while?"

"Are you sure? I can get her." she asked hesitantly. As wonderful as soaking in the tub sounded right now, she felt that she should take over with the kids so that Aaron could have a break since he had been home with them all morning.

"Yes, I'm sure. I'll start the water before I get Natalie." Hotch said having seen the conflict in her eyes. He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss. When he pulled back he could see her smile before she answered, "Sounds good. I'll be right up. Thanks Aaron." before he walked towards the stairs.

####

As planned, the Hotchners had taken a walk together stopping at Emily's favorite coffee shop and Jack could enjoy some hot chocolate while Aaron and Emily talked over coffee.

"How are you feeling?" Hotch asked as he watched Jack who was in the kid area that the coffee shop that was set up with drawing supplies.

"Better. The bath was a good idea. Less sore now though tomorrow morning won't be fun. I need to be in the office for that early meeting." Emily responded after she finished settling Natalie with a rattle in her stroller.

Hotch nodded. "OK. I'll drop you off before I go to that meeting with Michael Donovan."

Emily looked at him gratefully, "thanks for meeting with him. I can't reschedule this meeting again."

Hotch nodded understanding the realities of the job, "no problem. Unless a case comes up, my morning is open until conferencing at 10. That reminds me, he called while you were at the gym and asked for me to bring the originals of the receipts and appraisals. Where did you put them?"

Mr Donovan had called the previous week requesting a meeting to go over the status of the cases concerning the estates. As expected, Mr Sinclair was fighting their claim as well as stating items in the house were his which was why Mr Donovan needed the receipts and appraisals to prove that they were, in fact, part of the estate. Emily had sent over copies after she found them in the safety deposit box however with going to court, her lawyer needed the originals.

"They are in the document lockbox in a manila envelope. It should be right at the top."

"Ok, I'll get them out tonight."

####

Hotch was sitting at his desk in their home office working on signing off reports at his desk. As he finished the stack that needed to go to the office with him the next day, he stood up and opened his briefcase and placed them inside. He then took the files he was leaving at home and placed them in a desk drawer before locking it.

The kids were not allowed to go into their office unless Hotch and/or Emily was there and said it was ok. Will and JJ had a similar rule at their house. Even with the rule, Hotch and Emily agreed when they moved into the house to install a lock on the door as well as the drawers in both of their desks. They did not want any of the kids to go in one day for a piece of printer paper or a pencil or a good hiding place for hide and seek and see something they couldn't unsee.

As he was getting ready to leave the room and head to bed, Hotch remembered that the envelope that he needed for his meeting with the lawyer in the morning. Putting the briefcase down next to his desk, he walked over and opened the filebox where he and Emily kept all of their important personal documents. As promised, there was a manila envelope on top.

As he pulled the envelope out and verified its contents, Hotch didn't see another document fall out and onto the floor. Putting the briefcase up on Emily's desk, he opened it and placed the envelope in before closing it again.

When he turned back to close and lock the lockbox, he noticed the document that had fallen onto the floor. Leaning over, he picked it up, glancing at the top sheet as he moved to put it back into the lockbox.

Emily's adoption papers. He remembered her mentioning that they were one of the items in the safety deposit box. He had been away on a case when she went to the bank to open the safety deposit box and then went through all of the items that had been contained there.

As the lawyer in him became curious, he changed his mind about putting it back into the filebox and walked over to sit back down at his desk and paged through the document.

Since the day of the will reading, something wasn't sitting right with him about the whole situation though he hadn't had the opportunity to investigate yet.

Why was the document put somewhere that Emily's only living parent couldn't access it? Even Emily herself couldn't have accessed it until after her 30th birthday.

Then there was the Ambassador's assertion that she never agreed to the adoption which just didn't make sense. His inner profiler was telling him to look deeper.

As he paged through the paperwork, several items concerned him. While family law was not his specialty, the biggest red flag was that the phrasing in the document was more consistent with property law than the adoption of a child.

Turning to the last page, he looked at the signatures, noting the attorney and judge that handled the adoption. Looking at the names, he could feel the hairs standing up on the back of his neck.

He had seen these names before.

"I thought you were just finishing up and were going to come to bed in less than 20 minutes." Hotch jumped up as he heard Emily's voice in the doorway. As he looked at the clock, he realized that he had been looking at the document in front of him for the last 45 minutes.

Emily noticed that her husband had stopped paging through the papers in front of him and asked, "Aaron, are you OK? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Aaron turned to look over at his wife and then back down to the papers in front of him. If what he suspected was true, she would be devastated. And she had already been through so much in the last few weeks.

But they promised to not keep secrets from each other when they got married. When Emily had been distant after the will reading, he had felt helpless and didn't like the changed dynamics in their relationship. They had been working over the last couple of weeks to get back to a good place. And that had been her keeping her feeling to herself while now he was contemplating keeping information a secret from her. Information that directly concerned her. He didn't want secrets to be the new normal in their marriage.

But before telling her what he suspected, he needed to verify that it was actually the same people. Perhaps those involved the case he was thinking of just had similar names or it was the same people however they were involved in a completely different case.

There was no point on getting her upset only to find out he was wrong. But he didn't think he was because both last names were uncommon. That is why it immediately registered for him that he had seen the names before.

He needed to talk to Neil Anders tomorrow while he was at the office dropping off the documents for Mr Donovan. Hopefully he would be available. He could talk to Mr Donovan about it if needed however on something this important, he preferred to speak to the attorney with whom they had a longstanding relationship.

Hotch stood up and took the papers before walking over to his briefcase to place them inside. He was hoping that Emily hadn't seen what the document was. As he closed the case, he said, "I'm sorry Em. I was almost done about 45 minutes ago. It just a situation that I thought had been mostly resolved but now I have more questions and few answers until I talk to some people tomorrow."

Emily looked at him concerned wondering what case his team had gotten recently would have had a drastic turn to cause this nervous reaction in her usually unflappable husband. Walking up next to him, she asked, "Is it anything you want to talk about? Anything I can help with?"

Hotch shook his head and placed his briefcase by the door. He then said gently, "It's not anything you can help with, at least not tonight. We aren't going to talk about this tonight." He noticed that the worried look was still on her face.

Emily frowned, knowing that he was keeping something from her. She asked, "Are you sure nothing is wrong Aaron?"

He took her still worried face in between his hands and gave her a short kiss before he moved back though still holding her face. Looking her in the eyes, he said calmly, "I promise I'll let you know if there is anything to worry about. But for now, we are going to bed. It's already late, you're tired and we need to get an early start in the morning so you can be at your meeting"

Any chance she had of objecting was eliminated by a yawn. He wrapped his arm around her and they walked out of the office. After closing and locking the door, they walked to their bedroom.

Emily was still not at ease as they got ready for bed. Unfortunately his assurances did nothing to alleviate her concerns that something was very wrong.