Nurse Ned lowered the sheet in defense of Hotch's modesty.
He didn't know who this early-morning visitor might be, but he was sure the patient wouldn't appreciate being put on display. Especially with his private parts decorated so…so…brightly. Blatantly. Strangely. When the man whipped out his phone and motioned for Ned to raise the sheet again, preparatory to taking a picture, the nurse found his tongue.
"No way, man. Ain't no way I'm gonna let this dude's business be plastered all over Instagram. Get out."
Biting back anger that rightfully should be directed at Megan Kane, Rossi lowered his phone, flipping out his badge instead. Placing it directly under the nurse's nose. He didn't want to intimidate a man who was demonstrating the honorable intention of protecting Hotch, but Rossi found this turn of events disturbing on several very deep levels.
She was here. Our unsub was here. With Hotch. Alone. She might have done anything. And she's sending us a message we better not ignore.
"FBI? No shit?!" Ned lost his aggressive edge, but still kept a firm hold on the sheet. He needed to keep a grip on something familiar. Like an anchor. This day was getting weirder and weirder at an alarmingly rapid pace.
"No shit." Rossi tucked his badge away. "Any pictures I take are evidence, not social media fodder. Now…?" He raised his brows, motioning toward Hotch's blissfully unaware…or so he hoped…body.
The nurse still didn't like it, but he couldn't argue with a badge. He just felt sorry for the patient…and a little betrayed about having felt so warmly sentimental toward the lip print on the man's cheek. It had seemed like such a sweet gesture. Until its nether-region counterpart and a special agent from the FBI made the whole incident feel dangerous and sordid.
Ned lifted the sheet, averting his eyes for no good reason other than it felt like the right thing to do.
Rossi pushed down the surge of fear-tinged anger Megan's handiwork incited in his gut. He snapped a few photos he swore would only be seen if absolutely, without-a-doubt, the-alternative-is-death, necessary. And only then by the fewest eyes possible.
When he was done, he stepped back, delivering brusque instructions. "Clean him up. And don't mention this to anyone. It's now confidential evidence. Property of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Got it?"
Ned nodded. He knew about the tactic of withholding details related to crimes; about using those secret bits and pieces to identify the true perpetrator as opposed to those who had some sick urge to claim responsibility and a subsequent few minutes of fame.
"Sure…sure…" He bent to the task of removing hot, red lipstick from his patient, starting with the imprint on the man's cheek.
Ned was a considerate practitioner. He wanted to find the most expedient combination of solvent and pressure before tackling the marks branding a much more delicate and sensitive location of this poor man's body.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Rossi strode from Hotch's room, smoldering with rage. At the unsub. At the hospital. At himself.
He demanded an audience with the security staff and access to surveillance tapes. While he waited for viewing arrangements of the appropriate footage to set up, he called J.J., confident her liaison status, aided by her gentle composure, would put things in place in record time.
"Set up a police guard 24/7 on Hotch's room. And get the task force on this whole mess together in two hours. We've got a name and face on our unsub, but the profile's changed. She isn't going away."
XXXXXXXXXXXX
"She did what?!" Morgan voiced the general outrage.
"You heard." Rossi found the whole lip-sticky-kiss incident too distasteful to linger over the particulars any more than necessary. He only revealed Megan's version of graffiti to Hotch's immediate team. If he had his way, none of the details would be entered into any official reports, thereby avoiding the risk of ever being made public knowledge.
"Wow." Prentiss gazed into the middle distance, eyes unfocused as she considered the implications of what they were hearing, and arriving at the conclusion Rossi had already deduced. "She's not going away, is she?"
"No. We thought she'd be long gone by now, but…no."
"But why?" J.J. shook her head in honest confusion. She wasn't technically a profiler, but her skills acquired by association were formidable. "She had enough time and opportunity to make a clean getaway. Why risk everything by staying here?"
"Because we were thinking that her freedom was the most valuable coin at stake." Rossi rubbed a hand over tired eyes. "But escape isn't what this unsub wants. She wants…"
"…attention. Acknowledgement. Recognition, but in a reverse way." Reid's agile mind had latched onto the new angles of Megan Kane's evolving profile and was running with them. "The worst thing that could happen in her book is if she does get clean away. It puts her on the same level as the men she wants to punish. She wants to remain in the forefront of public awareness to draw attention to the…the…horribleness…of the men she's victimized."
"She victimized Hotch. He's not 'horrible.'"
"No, that message was just for us," Rossi sighed. "That was to let us know that we're the ones on foreign ground. Dallas is her turf…her territory."
Prentiss looked from one to another of her colleagues. "So what's next?"
"More bodies. The murders are her public address system; her big message. Hotch is just a private communique for us. So what she did to him stays between us for the time being." Rossi's voice had a tone of command.
It was more out of reflex than necessity. None of them would want Hotch to be publicly humiliated. In that regard at least, they could have his back.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Garcia was chewing her way through every sugary treat in her considerable hoard.
It was her way of dealing with frustration. She'd branched out in her search for Megan Kane by digging through the woman's relatives and anyone over the last decade who gave off even a hint of association.
Nothing.
The unsub's possible whereabouts remained a cyber-cypher.
So now Penelope was waiting, and casting her professional eye over what was considered the baseline activity of every techie when they weren't dedicated to a specific search. The FBI along with the CIA and Homeland Security and several deeply-placed, yet unnamed, departments, kept watch over billions upon billions of scraps of web activity that might have a whiff of terrorism attached.
Whole cadres of employees made this their fulltime job. Others, like Garcia, dipped in on occasion, donating the expertise of eyes sensitive to patterns and suspicious repetition. The first layer of inspection consisted of filters. Some were set to sift out key words like 'Isis,' or combinations of terms like 'suicide' and 'glory.' The one that was up for consideration when Garcia signed on this time was looking for communiques about branches of the U.S. government. 'FBI' was one of the terms.
As she let her eyes go into the slight unfocused mode that was her own personal form of filter…and a reliably productive one at that…Garcia relaxed her mind, too. Sometimes, when she was running into brick walls and dead ends, a brief session of this kind helped jog her mind into the realm of previously ignored solutions.
Penelope sighed and let the lines of code and embedded images flash by.
And nearly choked on the lemon lollipop she'd been nursing.
Across her screens, with increasing frequency that marked it as something going immediately and highly viral, was an image tied to 'FBI.'
More specifically, a hashtag including 'FBI' and 'BAU' and 'AARON.'
More specifically, an image of someone's flagrantly red, lurid lip prints topping off a gentleman's very private endowments.
"Oh, God." Garcia's voice went weak, lemon lollipop falling from a mouth gone slack. "Oh, no." More than half in a daze, she punched in Rossi's number.
"Uh…uh…Sir? There's something you need to see…well…not really need to see, but…well…everyone else is so…well…uh…"
"What, Garcia?!"
The tech analyst sent a copy of the image making its way around the globe. "It's gone viral, Sir."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Rossi's complexion had drained.
Curious, J.J., Prentiss, Morgan and Reid gathered close to see whatever it was that Garcia had sent which could have such a profound effect on the oldest, most experienced agent among them.
Then, they all turned a bit grey.