Stalker

Chapter Two

Garcia waited until they'd entered the restaurant and been seated before she said anything.

But then – as the other two women began arranging their shopping bags around the table –

"Out with it!" she demanded, looking from JJ to Emily and back again. At their surprise, she clarified: "JJ is looking at every man who passes by like he's about to bite her on the nose, and you, Miss Emily, haven't left her side for a second and I know you would rather come with me to clothing fun than go with her to pick up baby food blah. What's the deal? Am I supposed to be worried? 'Cause I'm getting close to worried."

It was JJ who answered, looking mildly apologetic:

"I was going to tell you. I'm not all that interested in talking about it, all right? I just… got something in the mail, yesterday."

"What kind of something?" Garcia pressed.

"A photo. Of me. Candid, walking down the street. Typical stalker fare, which is why I'm just… maybe a little nervous, today."

Was the girl out of her mind?

"Why wasn't that photo in my possession in my office being run through my programs the second it reached your hands? JJ, I can help with this! I do this! You know this!"

"I do, I talked to Hotch, we agreed to look into it on Monday."

"Well," Emily interjected, giving JJ a look. "You said Monday. Hotch was really more interested in immediacy."

"Smart man!" Garcia insisted. "Gold star, Agent Hotchner. Jaje, we know how these things go. What is not functioning in that pretty head today?"

Garcia looked at JJ, taking in her expression. The girl knew she was right. She hated it, but she knew.

"I'm just trying to enjoy the first weekend I've had to myself in months," JJ finally said.

"And how's that going, Jumpy?" Garcia asked, her tone gentle but intent on proving a point. "Having fun yet?"

JJ just looked at her, resigned.

And Emily jumped in, quietly:

"I… may have brought the photo," She admitted. Pulling it from her purse, she looked over at JJ and explained: "I heard you walking around last night. I haven't seen you eat a thing today." JJ opened her mouth to object, and Emily cut her off. "I know you don't need a lecture. I'm just saying, let us do this now, maybe you'll get a bite to eat and an hour or two of sleep before Monday."

JJ looked at her, held her gaze for a moment.

"You say that like anything we do or don't find out is going to make me feel better rather than worse," JJ pointed out.

"We can try," Emily offered, handing the photo to Garcia. It was under plastic now – mindful of fingerprints.

A moment passed in silence, Garcia looking it over, checking out the writing on the back.

Then suddenly, JJ spoke up quietly:

"You know what the worst part is?"

And then, at their looks, she added:

"Maybe not the worst part, but… the part that feels like a cheap shot?"

"What?" Emily prompted.

"Will," JJ told them, avoiding their eyes and instead watching her finger trace the rim of her water glass. "He calls me sweetheart."

They allowed a brieft moment of silence for that.

And then Garcia asked:

"Could this guy know that?"

And the dread returned to JJ's face.

"If he does, he's gotten closer than I thought."

Her phone rang in the silence that followed.

It took her a moment to step away and answer it.

When she returned, she looked both solemn and relieved.

"We have a case," she announced. "Eleven-year-old girl snatched from a mall in Texas. Which means we need to move."

"Eleven-year-old?" Emily questioned, trying to gather her own things at the same speed that JJ somehow seemed to be both grabbing her things and dialing her phone.

"Probably more tricked than snatched. All the same --"

"Right," Emily noted, chasing after her. "Looks like your weekend would have been shot, anyway."

JJ all but shrugged. Answered:

"Getting out of town is fine by me."

JJ was feeling energized when she ducked into her office to grab her ready-bag.

Moving, working, leaving town – it was all good.

The message light was blinking on her phone, but she'd access those messages remotely from the plane. A missing child always meant no time to spare.

She was nearly out the door again, ready-bag in hand, when she almost crashed head-on into Agent Andersen.

"You scared me," she noted casually, covering the little shocked gasp she hadn't been able to avoid.

"Sorry, but I wanted to catch you. There was a delivery earlier."

The feeling of unease – no, dread – crept back into her.

"What kind of delivery?"

He held up a small box of chocolates.

She could see the attached note from where she stood – that same awful handwriting: 'For you, Sweetheart'.

"Sweet guy, your husband," Agent Andersen noted congenially.

And JJ didn't bother to correct him on Will's official role.

She didn't do anything other than nod.

In fact, she was pretty sure she was staring.

The chocolates were here absolute favorites. A luxury. Christmas, her birthday, maybe Valentine's Day. That was it.

Who the hell was this guy?

And how was she supposed to focus on this case?

She'd tucked the miserable box of chocolates into an envelope and put the whole thing into her ready bag by the time she met up with the others at the elevator.

But there was no hiding that she was rattled.

"Something else happened?" Hotch asked immediately.

"Else?" Reid queried.

"Garcia… has, um, the photograph," JJ told Hotch. "The rest can…" She licked her dry lips, swallowed back her nerves. "It can wait."

"Something going on?" Morgan asked.

"Starting to be, I think," JJ admitted, looking at Emily and then Hotch. "I realize now's not the time."

"Let's get to the jet, get briefed," Hotch focused everyone. "Get ready. Then we'll talk."

No one argued.

But it was a damn tense elevator ride.

They were on the jet watching video surveillance from the mall on a laptop less than an hour later.

"She's nervous," Morgan pointed out, looking at the child in the grainy zoomed-in video. "He's talking her into walking out of there. She probably doesn't know him."

"These are the only angles we have?" Hotch questioned, and Garcia's face popped up onscreen.

"Only angles," she confirmed. "But I'm going to run enhancement software until I'm close enough to see if he's got contacts in his eyes."

"That'll be a trick," Rossi noted. "Seeing as we've only got him from behind."

"See if he's got plugs, then," Garcia amended, though her spirit was tempered by her next order of business: "Now, if I may? JJ?"

JJ looked up, pulled from deep and unpleasant thoughts, met her eyes onscreen.

"You find something?"

"Not yet, but I'm accessing all the video surveillance I can from that corner on that date. I'll be in touch ASAHP."

It took a moment of thought for that one.

"Humanly?"

"Or heroically. We'll see."

JJ nodded, told her:

"Thanks."

And Garcia disappeared from the screen.

"Answers, now?" Rossi prompted.

"I got a weird piece of mail last night," JJ started.

But before she could say anything else, Emily was holding out copies and going full steam ahead.

"Garcia's got the original," Em informed everyone. "She'll get someone fingerprinting. The guy's definitely got a hell of a zoom lens, he would have to be on the other side of the street to be unseen." As the others started looking over the photo, she turned to JJ. "What happened before we left?"

Wordless, JJ bent and pulled the box of chocolates from her bag.

"This. Delivered to the office."

"On a Saturday?" Reid was incredulous. "That's odd. How'd he know you'd be there?"

"We sure this isn't just Will trying to do something nice for you while he's gone?" Morgan questioned. "Picture would be weird as hell, but --"

"It's not his handwriting," JJ interrupted. "And he wouldn't. He'd know how I'd react. He knows I don't like surprises. He'd know this would be worse."

"Why didn't you call us last night?" Reid asked, looking genuinely confused by the thought, and maybe a tiny bit hurt.

"I didn't want to panic," JJ told him.

And before anyone could comment on that, Hotch noted:

"We'll have to get that fingerprinted, too." He gestured to the chocolates, held the box by the corners when he took it from her. Then he addressed the others: "We can't do anything else on the Dwyer kidnapping until we land. We have half an hour."

The others caught his meaning without it being implicitly stated – they were to work JJ's case until then.

Reid gestured to the notes, outlined what little he could glean from the wording and the writing.

"It's short and to the point, like he expects you to get it. Like he thinks he already has a relationship with you, which is… well, it's textbook. But just 'Sweetheart', nothing else… it feels…" He shot her an apologetic look. "It feels intimate."

He left a beat, and JJ tried not to feel everyone's eyes on her.

Then Reid continued:

"But it's at odds with the graphology, which is strange. He's nearly pressed what looks like a permanent marker right through the paper."

He lifted the note from the chocolates with a pen, to show them where the ink had bled through to the other side.

"The wording is gentle and familiar, but the handwriting is… angry. It's weird," Reid concluded.

"Garcia's analyzing the angles, trying to get a height?" Morgan asked, holding a copy of the photo.

"I'm sure she is." Emily offered a small smile. "I wouldn't be surprised if she calls later with height, weight, hair color --"

"Address and phone number," Reid added.

"And whether he, too, has contacts or hair plugs," Rossi added, smiling.

The hope and smiles didn't reach JJ.

"I think he's been watching me for four months," JJ announced soberly, garnering stares.

It threw them into silence for a moment. Then -

"Why?" Emily asked.

"'Cause those aren't chocolates you buy in the grocery store," JJ told them. "Those are from a boutique. Those are the kind of thing you only get as a gift. They're an old favorite. My old favorite. I haven't had them since my birthday. But he knew. What to pick. For me." Emotion threatened to catch up with her. "Which means, he's been watching me, for at least four months."

Another moment of wretched silence, then Rossi jumped on the information:

"Why now? If he's been silently stalking her for months, why is he making contact now?"

Morgan spoke up, started what sounded almost like a lecture – he was their expert in obsessional crimes, after all – and JJ barely heard it.

She moved for the back of the plane, when the others were ensconced in what they were doing.

She went into the tiny washroom, stared at herself in the mirror.

Thought about all the things she'd done in the past four months.

Did this guy follow her to the gym? To buy groceries?

To take a walk with her son?

Her mind went further – did he know that there was that one section of curtains in the bedroom that never quite closed properly? Had he taken advantage of that? Watched her dress?

Watched her sleep?

Watched her with Will?

Did he know what she liked in the bedroom?

It made her want to vomit.

It all made her sick – the things he might or might not have seen, the fact that her team was a few feet away worrying about her instead of the eleven-year-old they were supposed to be trying to save.

Even the motion of the plane, she realized, as it caught up with her and she bent forward and retched.

Ten hours later, when leads had been exhausted and there was nothing else they could do for the poor Dwyer girl until morning, they checked into their hotel.

Their rooms were all blocked together, which was nice.

They trudged down the hall, as exhausted as their leads.

They came to Morgan's room first.

And though JJ's situation had been on a back burner for the past several hours, no one had forgotten it.

"If you think of anything," Morgan offered.

"Or need anything," Reid offered next.

JJ was either tired of talking about it or too tired to talk, it seemed, because she said a simple "Thanks", and went on her way.

Emily let her go, started unpacking in her own room.

She thought about just going to bed.

But a thought had occurred to her, and if anything happened to JJ and she hadn't done everything she could…

She left her own room, knocked on JJ's door.

JJ answered with her phone to her ear, held up her finger to signal that she needed a minute.

Emily followed her into the room.

"Love you too," JJ said casually after a moment. "Yeah, you too. Okay. Night." She looked relieved to be able to hang up.

"You told him?"

JJ bit her lip, shook her head.

"I didn't. I was going to. But he would have come here."

"And that would be… bad?" Emily queried, feeling her out.

"I don't want Henry anywhere near this. At least for now, he and Will are better off staying there."

"And you couldn't have told him that?"

"He wouldn't have listened. He gets crazy when he's scared for me. You remember him showing up in New York? He would have come here."

Emily nodded. Decided to let it go, and get to the matter at hand.

"Listen," she started. "I could get a cot. If you'd sleep better. I could sleep in here."

She watched JJ closely – saw what might have been half a second of consideration quickly turn to a less-than-convincing smile.

"I'm okay," JJ told her. "I appreciate the offer. But it's really… You don't need to do that. I feel better being away from home. And really… I mean…" She let her voice trail off, then smiled genuinely for the first time all day. "I'm a better shot than you, anyway."

"Oh, is that how it is?" Emily returned the teasing smile. "Try to get some sleep, Bulls-eye-Girl." She moved for the door. "If you need anything…" She let her voice trail off.

"Em?"

She turned back.

"Thank you," JJ told her. "Thanks."

With a nod, Emily left her.

When Emily woke it was sudden and disorienting.

She lay there in the dark room, and listened.

Wondering what had woken her up.

But then there was a bump -- and a crash -- in the room next to hers --

JJ's room, she realized, flicking on a light and grabbing for her gun.

She was half way to the door when a gunshot boomed.