JJ didn't have Rachel's cell phone number, but Emily did, so when calls to reach Hotch continued to fail, Emily tried the teenaged girl's number. At the very least, Rachel could confirm that Hotch had probably been dead asleep to the world when she left for school that morning. It wouldn't stop Emily from swinging by the apartment to check, but it would relieve some of the worry that had taken root in Emily's mind.
The woman forced herself to wait an hour after her matched set of voicemail and text message was sent. After all, Rachel was in class. But Emily knew from experience that Rachel kept her cell phone in her pocket during the day on vibrate and would check messages during passing periods.
When it was nearly noon and Rachel hadn't gotten back to her, Emily truly began to worry. She left Reid with Barton and made a beeline for Hotch's apartment. When she could hear Hotch's cell phone ringing behind his closed but unlocked door, her instincts took over.
She cleared the front room, holding her gun steady in front her thanks to a rush in adrenaline. She never made it past the dining room where she found a large bullet hole in the wall and two distinct, separate blood stains on the carpet.
Holy shit, God damn.
"What do you mean something's happened to Hotch and Rachel?" Garcia demanded shrilly.
Emily hadn't spared the otherwise optimistic and cheery computer genius the details.
"Jeffrey Barton goes to the same high school as Rachel," Garcia pointed out. "I'll call the others and have them track her down. Maybe she's not involved…"
"Garcia," Emily interrupted. "You cannot tell the others. They can't be distracted right now."
Her compartmentalization skills allowed her to say the words as much as the vast majority of her being screamed at her to rush to the high school herself. She was searching for Rachel's cat, Hannah, when Garcia called with the name of a hospital.
Realizing who was behind the damage and disappearances did send Emily speeding to St. Sebastian's. She didn't breathe a sigh of relief until she saw Hotch and Rachel with her own eyes. Granted, they were both knocked out from sedatives after their respective surgeries, but they were both alive.
And then she started reading the medical charts and felt a wave of fury course through her veins, demanding justice or revenge if she could get away with it.
Eventually, the team joined her at the hospital, albeit with one more casualty to add to the hospital's roster.
Once the others had joined Emily outside of Hotch and Rachel's neighboring recovery rooms, they started trying to piece the story together.
"Why leave Hotch alive and why risk the hospital?" JJ demanded.
"Foyet is all about power and control," Rossi said. "He would want Hotch to know that his life was in his hands."
"But what about Rachel?" Emily asked. It had been bothering her all day.
Morgan, Rossi, and Emily exchanged glances, all three of them thinking the same thing. JJ glanced at all of them in confusion.
"What is it?"
"Rachel should be dead," Morgan stated heavily and reluctantly. "Foyet had a lot of options for what to do to her."
"Kill her before Hotch even got home so he finds her body or kill her right in front of him so he has to watch," Rossi listed bluntly.
They didn't find an answer until after Hotch had woken up and found the last piece of Foyet's puzzle: a ripped out page on his address book and a picture of Haley and Jack.
"Rachel won't agree to Witness Protection," Emily said privately to Morgan after the Marshalls had left with Haley and Jack and Rossi was talking with Hotch.
"She would see it as running away," Morgan agreed. "She won't let Foyet make her more of a victim than he already has."
"Hotch will try to convince her anyway," Emily predicted. "When that fails, he'll push her away so that she's less of a target."
"That's it," Morgan breathed in stunned realization. "That's why Foyet left Rachel alive."
Emily had caught on at the same moment. "With Haley and Jack, Foyet tortures Hotch by keeping them apart, but with Rachel… Hotch will be reminded every single time he looks at her of what happened."
"And Hotch will feel that guilt every damn day," Morgan finished. "Not to mention just the possibility that Foyet could easily come after Rachel again, making her a perpetual target."
"Son of a bitch," Emily swore, at a loss for what else to say.
"Then we'll make sure that doesn't happen," Rossi interrupted, joining them in the hallway.
Really, there wasn't anything else to say after that.
Notes:
Thanks for venturing over here. I hope that this has fleshed out the teams' actions a little bit more since with Sonata in G proper, I'm limited with the first person narrative.
Please come back next week for another chapter here at Common Tones. Spoiler alert: special appearance of a previous character and his reaction to Foyet's attack. Really, it will be worth it.
Cantoris
