Title: Standing Still (3/4)
Author:
Rating: R for this chapter, but Part Four will definitely be NC-17
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Characters/Pairing: Rossi/Prentiss
Genre: Drama
Summary: Whilst conducting a custodial interview, Rossi and Prentiss find the nature of their relationship shifting. Things don't go as planned on both fronts.
Author's Note: Big thanks to Windy City Dreamer, who betaed this, despite the fact that she doesn't really like the pairing, and would much prefer that I be writing Morgan/Prentiss.
Warning: Some dark imagery, and be pre-empted of the fact that Part Four will be NC-17 rated. But you don't have to worry about that just yet.

Standing Still

Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still.

Chinese Proverb

Part Three

Rosenberg brings in some lunch from the prison cafeteria, and informs them that Albright is being kept in the interrogation room for the time being. On the one hand, they don't want to give the sick son-of-a-bitch the pleasure of being out of his cell, but on the other hand, chances are they'll need to question him further after they've figured out where he's hidden the bodies – if he's even hidden them at all.

Emily picks at the crusts of her sandwich, considerably more interested in the maps that are spread out on the table than the turkey on stale rye that has far too much cranberry sauce. For a full geographical profile, they'd usually turn to Reid, but they've both got enough experience to find a location without resorting to phoning a friend.

It's a lot less claustrophobic in here than it had been in the interrogation room; the air is flowing a little more freely, and Emily finds herself a little more relaxed. Oddly enough, it had been the close-quarters that had bothered her most about the interview, rather than the presence of a sexual sadist.

She'd found herself unperturbed by the threats Albright had made – it's not as though he'll ever get the chance to carry them out – but since they've left the interrogation room, Rossi's looking noticeably angrier, and it's not just the fact that Albright could well be jerking them around. Part of her is still thinking about last night. About the kiss and about the semi-awkwardness that had followed it. Now that she knows how he feels, things are definitely going to be different, and they're sure as hell going to need to talk at one point if things are going to go back to normal. Though, she's not sure if "back to normal" is quite what she's looking for. At the very least they'll need to pretend that everything's normal, because it's not as though any relationship between them would be condoned by the Bureau. But then, she remembers, she doesn't even know if Rossi's interested in anything more than sex.

From what she's heard, he doesn't exactly have the best record with committed relationships.

But then, that could just be her special kind of paranoia showing. He's not like the other men she's slept with; from Italy onwards, she'd always seemed to find the men that saw sex as nothing more than another notch in the bed-post, so to speak. It doesn't really help that she's never really had time for intimate soul-searching. In that sense, it's almost a given that the one person she's interested in actually finding something more than physical pleasure with is the one person who she's revealed so much of herself to. Out of all the team, he's the only one that really knows her secrets, and even then, he's barely scratched the surface. For all the time they spend working together, she doesn't really know anything about him. She knows how he takes his coffee, but doesn't know where he grew up. She knows his interrogation techniques, but doesn't know if he has any siblings. She knows that the look on his face means that he's thinking hard.

'The bodies we found were left in fairly public places,' says Hewitt, indicating the crime scene photos that border the map of Ohio. 'A park, a school. It doesn't quite fit with the words he used when…' He trails off, but Emily knows exactly what he's trying to say. It doesn't fit with the words he used when threatening to rape and murder her.

She nods. 'The terminology he used – "in among the earth and the rocks, a place so dark that not even air goes there." I don't know of any public place that fits that description.'

Evidently, Rossi too is in agreement. 'I'd venture that if he is responsible for these disappearances, then at some point, something happened to encourage him to change his M.O.'

'A trigger,' says Hewitt. There's a strained look on his face, and Emily doesn't really blame him. He's probably been thinking about this for some time. Right up until the case was deemed closed by the higher authorities. And probably for a little while after that. Cold cases don't just go away. They take their time weighing on your soul for as long as possible.

Rossi smoothes the map with his hand, eyes focused on the Mahoning County area. Albright had grown up in Youngstown, a symbolism that doesn't go unnoticed by anyone. Prior to his arrest, though, he had lived in Ashland, several counties over – it's close enough to be suspicious, but far enough away that it could well be just a coincidence. Of the four Ohio victims, one had been from Cleveland, one from Youngstown, one from Ashland, and one from Toledo. All bodies had been dumped in their respective cities. It's an idiosyncrasy that doesn't help matters, though, if they're to take the profile down to its basic structure, then they'll have the best luck looking at the places with which Albright has the closest ties, which leaves them Ashland and Youngstown.

'Albright's father died when he was young…' Rossi starts, and at first, Emily's not entirely sure what he's getting at. The file tells them that Steven Albright had died when his son was four years old, leaving the boy in the care of his abusive mother.

'Mining accident,' says Hewitt, and suddenly, it all clicks. "In amongst the earth and the rocks, in a place so dark that not even air ventures there."

'Abandoned mine,' announces Rossi, voicing the thoughts of everyone. 'He hid the bodies in an abandoned mine.'

Emily's heart falls a little, because there are a fair few abandoned mines out there, and they'll have to profile Albright further if they want to determine exactly which mine the bodies are in, and if they even have a chance of finding them after so long.

She boots up the laptop and calls Garcia, the blond lab tech greeting them enthusiastically. Hewitt raises an eyebrow at the sight – if Emily had thrown his judgment on FBI agents a little, then Garcia's a veritable cocktail shaker.

'There are around 4000 abandoned mines in Ohio that have been mapped,' the tech tells them, twirling a rather extravagant pen with her fingers. 'Plus another 2000 or so for which "no detailed maps are available." Let's hope that Mr. Albright decided to dump his bodies in a mapped mine.'

She inputs the variables into the system; abandoned mine accessible at the time of the disappearances, proximity to Albright's address at the time, and so on and so forth. Ten minutes, and they've narrowed the list down somewhat. While there are a lot fewer options than there were before, it's still going to take a hell of a lot of searching. Chances are, it will probably get handed over to the local police anyway.

Hewitt seems a little irritated at that though, Emily can tell, and she knows Rossi can too. With good reason. It's not the kind of thing that will take priority, and with the relevant safety procedures in place, it could take months, even years before Hewitt finally gets his answers.

'We could check out some of the local ones,' Emily suggests, before Rossi can get a word in. 'Even if there's nothing there, it's worth a shot.' Sometimes that's what the job is. Taking a long shot and hoping like hell that it works out. Really, though, she thinks, that's what life is as well. Legendary profiler or not, making a move had been a real risk on Rossi's part. She feels the slightest tinges of embarrassment when she realizes that she's thinking about the kiss yet again. That's probably something to do with the reason why Bureau relationships are frowned upon, but then she thinks that unresolved sexual tension has as much opportunity for disaster as resolved sexual tension.

Rossi nods, but he doesn't seem entirely sold on the idea. He's been working the job far too long to leave things like this to chance, Emily knows. 'You could work Albright further,' she suggests. 'I'll go with Detective Hewitt.'

She can see the gears of his mind working once more; on the one hand, he's sure as hell not going to want to leave her alone with Albright, but on the other hand, it's not as though they'll be trawling through pet stores looking for the cutest puppy.

'You know, twenty-two people were killed in abandoned mines last year,' Garcia says from the laptop screen. Emily feels the slightest bit of indignation at the insinuation that she might not be able to do her job properly. God knows it had been difficult enough when she had started at the BAU. She doesn't need people doubting her now. Then, she realizes that Garcia isn't trying to be hesitant about her skill set – Garcia is just being Garcia.

'Alright,' Rossi says finally, and Emily's not so sure if she had been looking for his approval because he's the senior agent, or if it's because she has a less than professional interest in his opinion. Either way, she doesn't miss the concerned look he gives her as she walks out the door ten minutes later.

***

She picks up her Glock from the security checkpoint on the way out; if this is a trap of some variety, then she doesn't want to be going in unprepared. But then, not all traps can be taken on with the help of a weapon.

They take Hewitt's car, an unmarked blue sedan with a few dings and scratches marring its body.

'Car chase,' explains Hewitt, clearing the passenger's seat for her. 'Not as exciting as it sounds, trust me.'

She gives a slight grimace. 'Yeah, I know that feeling.' It's the same response she has to anyone who gets overly interested when she tells them about her job. Not as exciting as it sounds. It's the truth, of course; eighty percent of the time they're caught up in paperwork, or consults, or giving guest lectures at the Academy. The other ten percent is nine parts investigative work, and one part sheer terror. That said, they seem to get themselves into trouble a lot more than any other team on the BAU rotation. Reid in particular has more hospital visits that entire teams combined. Emily only has two to her name – Milwaukee and Colorado – and she's determined to keep it that way.

Hewitt's a lot mellower than when she was first introduced to him, mere hours ago, and she figures that if she sat down and got to know him, he'd probably be a pretty nice guy, if a little too attached to the job, but then she knows exactly where he's coming from. At the BAU, workaholic is a way of life.

Hewitt plugs the first location into the GPS, and within moments, they're on their way. After some consideration, it had become evident that actually exploring the mines in question without appropriate safety measure would be dangerous, so they'd settled on simply scouting out the locations, to determine whether or not they would be viable for further investigation. Even with the narrowed down results, there's still miles and miles worth of underground tunnels that will need to be searched, if indeed, their assumptions had been correct. Albright could have been talking about the sewers, or a basement, or it could all be just a red herring to satisfy his sadistic urges. Somehow, the thought of that seems just as disturbing as if he actually did kill the women in question.

'So how long have you been in the FBI?' Hewitt asks, and Emily jerks out of her momentary reverie. She isn't quite sure if he's just trying to make conversation, or is trying to make up for his behavior this morning, but she gathers that it's a mix of both.

'Thirteen years,' she says, while simultaneously thinking, Shit, has it really been that long? It's amateur compared to some people, but she knows for a fact that there's nowhere she'd rather be. The BAU is home. The team is family, or at least, the closest thing she's ever really had to a family. She loves her parents dearly, but they had never really been there for her when it counted. Not in the way the team has. She mulls over this fact far longer than she had intended, apparently, because when she looks up, Hewitt is looking at her, something approaching concern in his eyes.

'Everything okay?' he asks.

'Yeah,' she replies, even though she's not quite sure that it's the truth. She's not quite sure that it's ever been the truth. 'Just thinking.' He buys it, which is understandable, because it's the same act she's been spinning for a long time now, and it would be kind of embarrassing if a detective that she just met could see right through it. It doesn't fool everyone, though, and that's part of the reason why she's in this mess in the first place. She doubts that she'd have the connection with Rossi, if she hadn't bared part of her soul to him. She's still thinking about it when the car finally draws to a stop which makes her suddenly realize that she has fallen hard.

***

Almost an hour after Emily's departure, he sits at the table across from Albright, watching those dark and seemingly empty eyes. David Rossi believes in a lot of things. He believes in good and evil, heaven and hell. He believes in God. He believes in the soul. But now, looking into those eyes, he's not entirely sure that Robert Albright ever had a soul. His lack of remorse is typical of sociopaths, and he's fairly sure that Reid would have some kind of neuroscientific explanation for the concept of evil, but the part of Rossi that was brought up as a good Catholic (not too good, though) doesn't want to believe that that's all there is to it.

There's silence between them, and Rossi has been a law enforcement officer long enough to know that whatever Albright had hoped to achieve today, it hasn't finished yet. There's still a slightly smug look on his face, as if her were the cat that caught the canary.

'What happened to your whore?' he asks, and Rossi takes great pains not to respond. That's all Albright wants, in the end. A response. He wants his deeds to be acknowledged, to be praised. He wants people to know. It feeds his narcissism. But then, that doesn't really fit with the idea that he dumped the bodies of six women where no one would ever find them, and he wonders briefly if he hasn't made the biggest mistake of his life.

'She's busy,' he says shortly, deigning not to give Albright anything more than was necessary. Hell, he probably didn't even need to give that.

'Such a pity,' he says softly. 'I could have fucked her until she screamed, given half the chance. Tell me, Agent Rossi – would it be you that she was screaming for? Have you fucked her like the dirty slut she is?'

He feels his brow creasing, his fists clenching, but doesn't do anything. Doesn't say anything. The best thing he can do is just sit there and try to ignore it, but he's not so sure he's strong enough.

'You haven't,' goads Albright, 'But you want to. You want to ride her. Want to fuck her hard. Want to come in her as she cries out your name. She looks like a screamer.'

'Just like your mother,' Rossi says suddenly, because he really, really doesn't want to deal with Albright taking control of the conversation, so he brings up the one topic he knows will get the sadist's attention.

'My mother,' he spits. 'Good for nothing whore. She didn't deserve my father.'

'Is that why you killed them?' Rossi says, with a veneer of calm. 'Because they looked like your mother?' It's Profiling 101. The motivations behind the deaths. But it will get Rossi a little closer to finding out more about Albright, and it will get Albright a little further away from his rape fantasies about Emily.

'I killed them because they were worthless,' he says, sneering slightly. That might be the case, Rossi thinks, but unconsciously, he killed them because they resembled his mother – the one woman he never had the chance to kill. The file tells him that Marian Albright had been murdered by an ex-boyfriend six years after the death of her husband. If he hadn't been caught, he would have kept on killing; none of the deaths would have been enough to avenge that deep hatred he held for the woman that had birthed him. People like Albright are the reason Rossi advocates the death penalty.

'Tell me about your father,' Rossi prompts, hoping to move past the ranting that has started to define the session. He had evidently respected his father in one way or another; at least, as much as a four-year-old could respect his father. Maybe that's where all this started. With a father's death. Rossi knows a lot of people that had absent or inadequate father figures, and they didn't end up as serial killers; the team are a fairly good example of this. But then, he wouldn't go so far to as to call them normal. They've all got some pretty screwed up things in their life to make them who they are.

Albright says nothing; he just smiles. 'Don't think you'll fool me that easily, Agent Rossi,' he says eventually, and at first Rossi's not so sure what he's getting at. 'Trying to trick me into revealing something that will help you find their bodies. I thought you were smarter than that.' Rossi bristles at that, because he's not the humblest man in the world, and he really doesn't like the insinuation that he's stupid. But then he does feel like an idiot when Albright speaks again, because damnit, he should have seen this.

'You really think that if I'd killed them, I'd have hidden them away from the world?'

And it's true. He's a narcissist. He would never have done that. Not even for leverage. And Rossi had been so distracted that he hadn't even seen it.

'If you were really as smart as you thought you were, you would have realized that that whore of yours was walking straight into a trap.'

Rossi stands suddenly, and briefly contemplates something violent, because he's pissed – and not just at Albright. He's pissed at himself. It's not worth the effort though, so he turns from the table, and calls for the guards. Strangling this guy to death isn't going to help Emily. Ten years ago – hell, five years ago – he probably would have walked out of this one with bloody knuckles, but he's not the same man that he once had been. He's not a lone ranger anymore. What he does has an impact on the people that he works with. On the other side of the coin, he's got people to protect now, too.

Logically speaking, there's no way that Albright could have set up a trap. He's been on death row for a while now, and security isn't something that's taken lightly. The more likely option is that he had simply fed them information that would send them to a place where it was entirely possible that they could die – a last stand of some variety – and while it's fairly unlikely that anything will go wrong, Rossi pulls out his cell phone anyway, pulling up Emily's number on speed dial.

Call cannot be connected.

He feels that crushing guilt as he realizes that he may have just sent Emily to her death.

***

The mine entrance is a little out of the way, and it seems a lot more foreboding than any Emily's ever seen, but that's probably just because there's the slightest possibility that there are six skeletons rotting away inside of this mine.

They're canvassing the outside of the mine, looking for any indication that Albright might have used this place as a dumping ground over a decade ago. Personally, Emily's not that optimistic about results. It's been a long time, and there is a lot of ground to cover, and she knows that the main reason they're doing this is to assuage Hewitt's long-standing guilt. She admires his dedication at first; right up until the point that he decides the best course of action now is to look inside the mine itself.

It's not complete thoughtlessness she knows; after all, most law enforcement officers can attest to doing stupid things in the face of no other option.

'What the hell are you doing?' she asks him, trying to keep the anger out of her voice.

'Please,' he says, and there's a sheer desperateness that makes her pity him. 'I need to know.'

She briefly considers holding him back, but he's a good six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than her, and even all the close-combat training Morgan had been so intent on giving her isn't going to help. So, for lack of other options, she follows him in. If something goes wrong, she really doesn't want to leave him in there to die alone.

He pulls a flashlight from his pocket, and the beam flickers on in the darkness.

'He won't have taken them too far in,' breathes Hewitt softly. 'He might be intelligent, but he isn't trained to be exploring abandoned mines.'

Neither are we, Emily feels like saying, but she doesn't, because she's mostly concentrating on breathing right now. She's never been a fan of small spaces, and the thought that they might be breathing in carbon dioxide instead of oxygen really doesn't help.

They're almost a hundred feet in when she hears a thud, followed by a loud, 'Ouch!'

'Are you alright?' She wonders if he's just run into a skeleton – if their searching really hadn't been pointless after all.

'Just a rock,' he says, and she sees his grimace of pain in the torchlight. He's almost about to move forward, when Emily holds up a hand. She can hear something. It sounds like a distant rumbling, almost as though…

Oh, shit.

'We're leaving, now,' she says, grabbing him by the arm, as tiny chunks of rock start to fall around them.

She really doesn't want to die like this.