Chapter 19
Please…consider this my last request to you, the only people in this world that have ever made me feel at home.
The plea rang in the ears of all six agents as the recording was played over and over again.
"She said 'last request'." Reid pointed out the obvious. "Why would she say that if Volkov only plans on keeping her for a short while?"
"Don't be so naïve, Reid." Morgan pouted. "That woman will never let Ava just go home."
"Perhaps it was on the paper she was forced to read." Rossi suggested only to see Emily already shaking her head in disagreement.
"No, that part wasn't scripted." Emily took in the skeptical looks from her old teammates. "Her mannerisms and expression change when she's going off-script. Watch closely." Emily replayed the video, taking in the clearly agitated faces of the men. Garcia seemed adamant at avoiding the screen. "The same thing happens when she calls you guys her family…and when she makes sure to add that JJ is supposed to be returned 'alive and in good health'."
"Emily's right." Hotch agreed. "I see it now." The rest of the team nodded, also catching the not-to-subtle tells Ava was giving off. They frowned at themselves, annoyed that they needed to be shown something that was so blatantly in their mandate.
"That's why I'm here." Emily tried to reassure them. "I know you guys care for her as much as you do for JJ. I'm here to be as objective as possible given the circumstances."
"Objective?" Morgan crossed his arms. "How can you be objective when you know that JJ is no more than two feet away in that video? You can't pretend like you didn't hear her yelling in the background."
"I'm not pretending, Derek, but hearing her only tells me one thing: she's alive. And besides, hearing and seeing her aren't the same thing." Emily knew that the longer she pondered about her friend's fate and wellbeing, the more difficult it would be to focus on finding her. Of course she wanted to help Ava but she had never met the woman. However, the moment Volkov had dragged JJ into this, she made it personal and Emily wasn't about to let her walk away.
"Garcia, can you analyze the video?" Hotch requested. "Any information you can give us will be useful." Without a word, the normally bubbly technical analyst rose and left the room hurriedly.
"I suppose someone should deal with that." Rossi motioned casually to the sobbing woman they had confined to the briefing room. No one was particularly keen on calming down, let alone consoling, Ava's ex-fiancée after she had seen the news coverage but her sobs were beginning to distract the entire bullpen and it wasn't exactly productive.
"I'll do it." Emily sighed. "I'm probably the least likely out of us to shoot her."
"Careful, she might accuse you of sleeping with Ava." Morgan's disdain for the woman was evident but Emily couldn't help but chuckle.
"Even I'm not that good." As the door shut gently behind her, the men of the BAU slowly turned to look at their Unit Chief.
"So what are you going to do to convince her to come back?" Rossi was the first to ask. Reid and Morgan simply crossed their arms as they waited for a response.
"Emily will come back if she wants to come back. There's nothing stopping her." Hotch replied. The three listening were clearly dissatisfied.
"We all know she left because she needed space from us after Doyle." Rossi explained. "JJ explained it perfectly when she said that we treated her differently so I can't exactly blame her for leaving."
"Then what makes you think she's suddenly ready to leave the life she's made for herself in London just for us?" Hotch raised an eyebrow in question.
"Are you serious?" Morgan almost laughed. "She dropped everything the second she heard about JJ. We're her family, Hotch. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if she's wanted to come back for years."
"Then what's stopping her?" Reid added. "Rossi's right about why she left but it's been years since Doyle. If she wants to come back, why hasn't she already?"
"Maybe she's waiting for an invitation. Maybe she thinks, especially now that we found Ava, that we don't want her back." Rossi guessed.
"That's ridiculous." Hotch shook his head. "Emily knows how much we care about her. But it seems like you're forgetting the literal life-or-death situation that she came here for…and the fact that her agency was in charge of Volkov's release."
"I have no doubt that she's here to help save JJ and Ava." Morgan raised his hands defensively. "But I also think that one of us should talk to her after all of this is over." All eyes, once again, fell on Hotch.
"Why does it have to be me?" Hotch didn't exactly dread the conversation but wanted to know why his team was so adamant that he be the one to speak to Emily.
"Oh come on." Morgan tilted his head in amusement. "It's just us here man. You don't have to hide it."
"What exactly is it that I'm hiding?" The look on Hotch's face was almost threatening, daring Morgan to answer.
"All we're saying is that you've known her the longest." Rossi jumped in to save his tactless friend. "You have a better chance of getting her to tell you what she's really thinking. You know how she is when any sort of emotions come up. If any of us bring it up, she'll close right up."
"I suppose you have a point." Hotch's glare slowly left Morgan as he conceded. "But after we get JJ and Ava back." The others nodded, adamant on making sure the two women were safe before anything else. As Hotch left the room, presumably to check on Garcia's progress, Rossi slapped the back of Morgan's head.
"What the hell?!" The taller man cried out.
"A bull in a china shop is subtler than you." Morgan rubbed his head as he frowned.
"Don't tell me you're not just as tired of watching them shoot bedroom eyes at each other as I am."
"That's not the point." Rossi and Morgan ignored Reid's low 'what?'. "The point is that we can't play matchmaker with them. We couldn't before and we most certainly can't now."
"Well 'before' kind of led to her moving three thousand miles away so I'm not really picking up what you're putting down, Rossi."
"Have you ever met two more stubborn people in your life?" Morgan shook his head. "Exactly. If we even hint at the possibility that they have feelings for one another, both of them will adamantly refuse it until it's too late. So keep your trap shut and let's focus on finding our girls."
"Fine. Then hopefully JJ could have a little sit-down with Emily and make her see just how into Hotch she really is."
"We have to find her first." Rossi reminded him somberly. Morgan nodded, holding the door for the older man as the two returned to their desks. Reid was left alone in the office, a dumbfounded expression on his face as his mouth hung slightly.
"Hotch and Emily?" he asked himself. Dismissing the possibility with little more than a scoff and a shake of the head, Reid quickly collected his things and rejoined his teammates in the bullpen.
"I just got off the phone with the news station that aired the video." Emily announced. "According to their security, it was dropped off at the station around 5 o'clock this afternoon."
"Right on time to make the 6PM news. How convenient." Rossi muttered under his breath.
"We've got video surveillance of the drop-off coming in now but I think it's safe to say that we won't be surprised when it's one of the two men who kidnapped Ava and JJ." Emily crossed her arms, hugging herself as she took in the defeated looks on her teammates' faces.
"What do we do now?" Reid asked, the sadness in his voice clear. They all felt as he did- demoralized and exhausted- but knew that there had to be something more. No one simply vanishes into thin air, not even professional kidnappers.
"Ava's team in the CIA caught wind of Volkov because she operated in a select few areas." Hotch explained. "Maybe she's made the same mistake now."
"Whatever assets she had were confiscated by Interpol when we cut a deal with her." Emily frowned, doubting that Volkov would be that stupid.
"Yes but she's not alone." Rossi reminded them. "What if it's not her assets they're utilizing?"
"Even if one of those guys is able to help, we don't know who they are." Morgan huffed in annoyance. "How are we supposed to find their assets without knowing their names?"
"We start with what we do know." Emily concluded. "We know that Volkov has had people on the outside since before her arrest. We know that at least one, if not both, of those men have worked with her before. That's where we start."
"ID them and the mice will lead us straight to the cheese." Rossi nodded slowly in agreement. Just as Emily was about to speak again, her phone went off. A light seemed to go off behind her eyes as she quickly read the screen.
"What is it?" Hotch was the first to notice, sitting up straighter than before. Emily looked up and beamed at him.
"The best lead we've had since all this started." Emily was already collecting her jacket and purse, motioning for the others to follow as she explained. "Metro PD tracked down our anonymous courier. He's got quite the list of priors as well as, wait for it, a kidnapping charge in 2011 in the same city Volkov was operating in that year."
"Is he one of the guys who took Ava and JJ?" Morgan asked quickly. Emily shook her head.
"No. He's his brother."
"Mr. Antonov," Emily dragged the steel chair out for herself, dropping a pile of files on the desk in front of her. The man on the other side of the table, Dima Antonov, narrowed his gaze as he scanned his eyes over her. "I have little time and even less patience so here's how this is going to go: you're going to tell me where your brother and Katya Volkov are hiding out and I'm going to attempt to dissuade the Attorney General from charging you with assisting in the kidnapping of two federal agents."
"Federal agents?" The Russian accent was slight but detectable. "What are you talking about?" Emily sat, crossed her legs, and took an audible, deep breath.
"Dima," she sighed, reaching out to open the files on the table and reveal photos of the video Volkov had sent in, "what part of 'I have no time or patience' didn't you understand?"
"I understand perfectly, lady." Antonov slammed his hand against the photos and shoved them away. "But if you're trying to pin this on me, I sure as hell am not about to help you."
"We know it's your brother who took them." Emily calmly explained. "Your brother, his friend, and Katya Volkov are looking at the death penalty and unless you want to join them, you're going to tell me everything you know."
"I got the tape, I dropped it off. That's not a crime, now is it?" Antonov could tell that Emily was running low on restraint as the brunette bit the inside of her cheek. "Now unless you're going to charge me with something, сука, I suggest you get out of my way before I-" The threat was never completed as Emily stood abruptly, reached forward, and grabbed the man by the hair. Slamming his head down on the table, she brought her face dangerously close to his as he groaned in pain.
"Here's what I suggest, bitch:" Emily could already hear the BAU opening the door behind her but she didn't care. Enough was enough and she wasn't about to be jerked around by a low-life like Antonov while her family was in danger. "You tell me everything, and I mean everything, about your scum brother and his girlfriend before they hurt my friends or I will rain legal brimstone down on you so hard, it'll make God jealous."
"Emily," Hotch's voice in her ear almost caused her to grind her teeth to dust before he finished, "we've got something." With that, she shoved the man back into his chair and tilted her head as she spoke.
"Think long and hard about this decision, Dima." She told him. "Your brother set you up to take the fall on this and you know it. If that's the kind of guy you want to get the chair for then by all means, keep covering for him. You have ten minutes." Emily left the room without a second glance, leaving the man with his thoughts. As she entered the observation room, Reid felt obligated to inform her.
"The District of Columbia doesn't have the death penalty." Emily merely shrugged.
"Does it look like he knows that?" Reid cast a sidelong glance at the man behind the glass. "We don't have time to place nice, Reid. Ava and JJ could already be…they could be hurt." Reid raised his hands defensively, signaling that he was not questioning her methods.
"Garcia's got something on the video." Morgan informed her as the group of five speed-walked towards where they knew the analyst would be. Before they were all even in the room, Garcia was already explaining her discovery.
"So as much as I hated- and I mean really, truly, deeply, despised- having to watch this video as many times as I did," she sighed, "I found something. You see where Volkov enters the frame and uh…manhandles Ava?" The rest nodded, having committed the scene to memory. "If you zoom in and isolate the image enough, you can see that there's something in her back pocket." Garcia giddily demonstrated and, sure enough, the rest of the BAU could eventually make out the image.
"It's a piece of paper." Morgan squinted. "With writing on it."
"I've already started working on cleaning up the image." Garcia beat him to it. "So far I've made out 'Mabel Wadsworth'."
"Does that help us in any way, Garcia?" Rossi frowned, unsure as to why this discovery was so important if the name didn't mean anything.
"Oh, my Italian Stallion, it helps us in every way." Garcia grinned. "Mabel Wadsworth isn't a person. Well, I'm sure she was a person at some point but she's not relevant to us at this point in time. The Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor, Maine is a health clinic."
"A clinic?" Emily raised an eyebrow. "Why would she be going to a clinic in between whatever she's been been doing to JJ and Ava?"
"Could she be bringing them there for some reason?" Hotch asked. Garcia tsked in response.
"Not unless we're missing a crucial detail about one of our crime fighters."
"Why not?"
"Because the Mabel Wadsworth Center is an abortion clinic."
Back in the writing mood so I'm sure I'll have more for you soon. Hope everyone had a good holiday and a happy New Year. Let me know what you think so far in the reviews!
