Author's note: Apparently, sometimes, we break our own rules. This chapter in many ways felt like it called for a different kind of storytelling, but it's part of a larger plot and as such it is what it is.

Stalker

Chapter Three

Later on, sitting in an ER waiting room, Emily would wonder if this is what Reid felt like all the time.

The most vivid of memories.

Seared into the mind's eye.

Unbidden.

There was Morgan.

Hurtling down the hall --

Diving into the stairwell --

Then, the door frame moving over her, as she stepped through it and into JJ's room.

(They said smell was the strongest precursor of memory, but it was the sight of those walls moving past her that was forever going to be connected to the most intense feeling of dread she'd ever known.)

The moment, then, that Hotch and Reid's kneeling forms parted and she could see beyond them, to JJ.

There was the thing she couldn't forget – the detail that hit her harder than the fact that her friend clutched a bed sheet with white knuckled fingers and pressed herself into the corner of the room.

It was the trail of blood dripping into her eye, staining the wide-eyed stare.

There were things she saw at the time that escaped her memory – the gun on the floor, the bullet lodged in the wall, the smashed mirror. Logistics that barely mattered.

She didn't remember them.

But she remembered the faces.

And the words.

"Dave is calling an ambulance," Hotch told JJ quietly.

They were all so still, so painfully gentle, that JJ's reply sounded curt.

"I'm not hurt," she told them.

"That cut on your head… it begs to differ," Reid told her softly.

And Emily thought – so did her eyes.

Her eyes begged to differ, too.

The shock they'd all seen on too many faces – it was familiar, and it was there.

But there was something else, too.

Some kind of genuine confusion.

A beleaguered mind trying to make sense of something.

Hotch had seen it too –

"What is it, JJ?" he asked her.

She never looked at any of them.


But she asked them, lost in the thought of it:

"Can, um…" Her voice strained, and if she'd been more aware, she would have coughed that tone away. "Can you have someone go through my house? He's got… he's got something in my house."

Emily was vaguely aware of the other two agents exchanging a glance, but she couldn't rip her gaze away from those eyes.

"What kind of something, JJ?" Reid queried.

"I don't know."

There was more glancing as footsteps sounded behind them, and Emily didn't have to turn to know it was Morgan re-joining them, and she didn't have to see his face to recognize the torment in his words:

"I lost him."

Sirens reached their ears after that, and Rossi was back too, and when Emily turned she realized there were two young paramedics pushing a stretcher by his side.

She reached out to help JJ up, and wasn't particularly surprised when JJ barely registered her outstretched hand.

"How can we reach Will in New Orleans?" Rossi questioned.

And that caught JJ's attention.

"No," she told them rather sharply. "Don't call Will."

There was yet more glancing between them.

And then finally, JJ took Emily's hand.

Reid found Emily in the waiting room, and had to touch her shoulder before she noticed him.

"How is she?"

"I don't know." Then, at his look: "She wouldn't let me stay with her."

Emily met his eyes, and neither of them said aloud that it was worrisome.

That if nothing much had happened, that might not have been the case.

"So far we haven't got much from the hotel," he said instead. "Their video surveillance is limited and the room's about as covered in fingerprints as you might expect. They do have a maid who isn't sure how she lost her master key, though, which probably explains how he got into her room."

Emily barely nodded.

Which made sense.

It hardly mattered.

He took a seat next to her.

And a moment later, she spoke up:

"She doesn't want us working this."

"Did she say that?"

"Not in so many words. But I asked her, in the ambulance, what happened. And I couldn't get much more from her than 'I'm not a case'."

"It's not really surprising," he pointed out.

"It's also not what she was saying yesterday," she countered.

And he thought about all the ways he could argue with her.

'Of course, things have changed.'

'Even the best case scenario…'

'JJ likes her privacy, always has.'

But he knew the question Emily was obsessing over.

And he'd seen those eyes of JJ's, too.

And so he sat with her, and said nothing.

There was always a fucking rock and a hard place.

Emily, to her credit, sat quietly and waited.

No pressure.

But it didn't make JJ's choice any easier.

The desire to never share any detail of those moments was strong.

But the desire to never have any of it happen again was stronger.

Not by much.

Enough, to make her settle on letting her friend the profiler in.

When she opened her mouth and no sound came out, Emily spoke instead:

"We can take it easy," she offered, leaning forward in her chair. "Tell me something that doesn't hurt."

With a grateful nod at the reprieve, JJ told her:

"He wore a mask."

It took a moment for Emily to process that, and when she did, she noted:

"That's unusual, for this situation. That might mean something. That's good."

Too many more moments passed in silence.

Then Emily asked:

"Tell me about your house. Why do you think he left something there?"

This was a harder question than Emily could know.

This one hurt.

"He knew things…" She paused at the inevitable nausea. "That he shouldn't know."

"About your house?"

"About Will. And me. Us."

The tone in Emily's voice at the next question told JJ she already suspected the answer:

"What kind of things?"

And JJ dared to meet her eyes then, just for a moment.

Just to see if Emily understood what had been ruined for her, when she admitted:

"He told me… he knew what I wanted. He said things Will says. And," she stopped, because if the look on Emily's face was any indication, she didn't have to say much more.

But Emily asked the hardest question, without ever really asking it at all.

"JJ…?" She was looking for confirmation, avoiding the words.

The tiny nod JJ managed in response sent the first of her tears sailing down her cheek.

She licked it away from her lip.

Locked her gaze on Emily's clenched fists.

And told her:

"He couldn't."

She could hear in the too-quiet room the breath Emily released.

She could see without really lifting her gaze to look that her friend felt hope at that.

A moment later Emily stood up and crossed over to sit next to her.

And a minute after that, something – maybe her stillness, maybe her tears – told Emily that there was more to it than that.

She didn't look up at Emily's face – didn't want to see – as Emily put together a question.

It was silly to have this conversation.

She could see it in her eyes -- Emily knew.

They all did.

"JJ… he couldn't…" The break in Emily's voice would have been incredibly touching if that kind of thing could have mattered anymore. "Or he couldn't..." The breaths it was taking Emily to get the words out, they hurt. "He couldn't finish?"

JJ held her own breath to avoid sobs.

Maybe Emily would be a profiler, in this moment.

That would help.

Maybe she would tell her that this was an anomaly, an oddity, and it might help them pin this guy down.

Maybe, if she said little more than that and walked out through that door, no one would have to break down.

But instead she whispered that she was so sorry.

And they both cried.

When the sun was about to come up and Emily had gathered much of the team in her own room, she went looking for the last of them.

Morgan wasn't answering his cell phone, wasn't with hotel security.

Wasn't in the stairwell where he'd failed, either.

She found him on the roof.

He looked her over, then didn't ask.

He turned back in the direction of the sun that was just beginning to rise, and lamented:

"She was ten feet away on the other side of the wall."

It was guilt and pain and what-a-fucking-shame, and she replied:

"I almost slept in her room last night."

Which was much the same.

She gave him a moment, then touched his arm and returned to business.

"We've got an hour to talk this out before we're supposed to be back at the local station."

Emily was intent on giving them the basic facts.

"He wore a mask. He's either planted some kind of audio or video devices in her home, or he's actually been in her home undetected. He tried to use things he's heard Will say and things he's seen Will do to impress her in bed."

Reid balked at that.

"The CSI guys… they said they found… that there was no conclusive evidence of… of any sexual activity. I thought – I hoped…?"

Emily shook her head.

This was all so damn surreal.

These words weren't supposed to have anything to do with them.

"He's not… entirely, impotent. But he couldn't… maintain himself, either. He got angry, and that's when he hit her and when she managed to throw the TV remote at the mirror. She grabbed her gun and pulled the trigger but he was already taking off." She paused, and added: "She doesn't want us thinking about any of this any more than we have to. She wants us to take what we can and give it to the locals and then stay away from it."

None of them said anything at all for a long moment.

And though she'd promised JJ she'd quickly talk them through a preliminary profile and then force them to return to their own case, she had to ask:

"Has anybody called Garcia?"

No one answered for a moment, and then Morgan spoke up:

"I will."

There was more silence, and then it was Reid who broached the subject at hand.

"I don't know that I can tuck this away and give the Dwyer kidnapping the attention it deserves."

Emily met his eyes.

She understood. Completely.

But --

"I know that JJ wants us to."

"And she doesn't want us to call Will?" he asked.

"I think it's complicated," Emily told him. "Now more than ever. But no."

"Here's where we hit a wall," Morgan started. "We can't put together a preliminary profile and hand it over for two reasons. One, I've got questions JJ's not going to want to answer. Two, none of this makes sense. You can't pull a profile out of this mess. What's the picture, here?" he demanded, letting the tension get the better of him. "What the hell kind of stalker tries to emulate the current boyfriend? What kind of stalker gets wrapped up in some 'Sweetheart' fantasy and then doesn't even want his girl to see his face? We got all kinds of assumptions we can make about a guy who can't get started, but I don't even know what the hell this is. This is my thing! Obsession! I know these guys! And I don't get it."

"Let's talk about the mask," Rossi prompted, and Hotch nodded and added:

"I don't think we can rule out the possibility that she knows him, and would recognize him, and he knows it."

"Which is crap," Morgan spit. "That level of awareness is crap. You've got three basic stalkers. He knows her and he harrasses her day-to-day and face-to-face -- that's out. The basic love obsession says job one is to make her know he exists – he doesn't contact her like she already knows him. So we go to erotomania, which starts to fit because he for damn sure thinks there's something between them. But they don't do this. They keep their distance, and even when they don't, they're about romance. They don't escalate from chocolates to rape. Not in hours. And they sure as hell don't think they need a mask."

The frustration had him clenching his jaw, and he moved to where the photograph that had started all of this was laid out.

Looked over the handwriting that had already confused them.

Then turned back and looked Emily in the eye.

"I get why JJ doesn't want us anywhere near this." His eyes hardened, making a point. "I get that. But if we can't make sense of this, what are the locals gonna do?" He turned to Hotch, and changed his tone. "I need you to let me work this instead of the kidnapping. At least for today."

Hotch looked at his watch.

"We're supposed to be back at the station in seven minutes."

He said this, but none of them moved.

"I've not yet called Chief Strauss," he continued. "Obviously, JJ will be given leave. The rest of us will most likely be expected to focus on our own case."

He looked up at Morgan, told him:

"Let her sleep today. I'll make sure there's someone stationed at her door, and we'll talk to her tonight. There's still a missing child out there."

Still, no one moved.

So Hotch took the lead, and made his way to the door.

The others trailed after him. To work the most emotionally gruelling case there was with their sleep-deprived bodies and ill-prepared minds.

And to wonder, about these lives they were leading.

When they finally returned to the hotel that night, they'd made little progress and the elapsed time made it almost a certainty that the young Dwyer girl was dead.

It was enough to make any one of them want to crawl into bed and hide from the world.

But there was still JJ, and Emily trudged down the hall to her room.

There was no immediate answer to her knock, and Emily wondered briefly if she might have left for home, her case be damned.

But a moment later, JJ opened her door.

And she spoke first:

"They want me down at the station." At Emily's look, she clarified: "Not us. The local cops. They have questions."

"Why aren't they coming to you?"

"There's something they want me to see."

Emily looked her over. She looked like she was in the process of getting dressed for work. She was in professional clothes, though she'd missed a button and had yet to apply her eye makeup.

"You know you don't have to look the part of an agent," Emily told her. "Not for this."

"It's the same building. It's actually, believe it or not, some of the same people. One more reason not to be a fan of small towns. Yesterday I walked in there and shook their hands and let them know I was in control. Today…" She paused, added: "I don't need 'fragile, handle with care' stamped on my forehead."

It made enough sense, and Emily was ready to leave her to it.

"Let me know when you're ready. I'd like to go down there with you, and if you'll let him, Morgan too." She tempered her tone, made it apologetic. "He's got some questions. We all do."

Hoping JJ wouldn't argue about it, she moved for the door.

"Emily?" JJ called her back.

"We can't help if you don't let us," Emily tried.

But JJ's mind was elsewhere.

"I shot a man between the eyes and didn't blink."

Emily nodded, but didn't quite get it.

"I know."

"Will you please remember that right now?"

She gave her another nod. What was JJ getting at?

"I need help," JJ admitted.

"Okay," Emily told her.

And JJ's gaze turned to her own hands.

Emily followed JJ's eyes, and noted that she was clutching her eyeliner in one hand.

And both hands, they were shaky.

And it made sense.

There was no applying eyeliner with an unsteady hand.

JJ couldn't meet her eyes, which made sense to her, too.

There was pride to cling to.

And so she didn't say anything, other than:

"Sit down."

And JJ did.

They were silent as Emily took the eyeliner from her and got started.

It was odd.

And quiet.

And close quarters.

And Emily asked her:

"Has anyone talked to you about going home?"

"I'm not. I can't…" JJ trailed off. "I don't want to face home. Or Will. And I'm not allowed to work, and the locals don't want me to leave town, so I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to do other than sit in this room."

Emily left a moment of silence, in acknowledgement of that frustration.

Then:

"Then you're staying here for now."

"I guess I am."

Emily nodded, touched up the corner of her eye.

"I'm gonna get that cot."

It took a moment.

Maybe a moment to swallow the burden of the fact that nothing was over yet.

The fact that somehow, this might not even be the worst.

And then JJ told her:

"Okay."