Chapter 4

For a full twenty minutes after Hotch was taken away in handcuffs, his team stood and sat, unmoving, in the round table room thinking. Grant had taken the postcards with him; they never got to see or hear about what was on them that was so interesting. Garcia had given them, as she promised Hotch she would, the particulars of the chat room she had set up with Prentiss; so that was probably a dead angle now too. Cruz, who obviously knew something, had left when Watley and Grant took Hotch away, so the team couldn't ask him what he knew about what had just happened. He didn't seem like he knew much of anything though. The team would have to work it out on their own. Each of them was determined, fixated on a portion of what had just happened and what they had learned, trying to put it all together.

JJ was trying to place Richard Watley in her mind. He was State Department. During her cross appointment to the Department of Defense a few years back, she had worked with a lot of people from State. The name sounded vaguely familiar. He didn't look familiar though; she was almost certain they hadn't actually met before. He knew about her role in the Ian Doyle fiasco. But then again, since Emily had returned from protection and Doyle was killed, all of that was declassified thanks to the U.S. Senate. She'd have to make some calls to find out about Watley. The problem there, was any calls she made to find out about Watley would ultimately get back to Watley. State was too big for there to be no leaks and it was prone to gossip. JJ made a mental call sheet, just in case.

Watley and Grant seemed to focus some of their direct questions on JJ, though she dismissed them as likely to be window dressing, verbal subterfuge to make it seem like there weren't only focused on Hotch. JJ herself didn't answer the big questions she was asked. Furthermore, neither Watley nor Grant had said anything to or about her as they were taking Hotch away. Still. They did ask about the toy Emily sent Henry. She wondered if she should call Will; tell him to be on the lookout. Probably not. She'd wait and see on that one. What JJ wasn't worried about, was Emily. Maybe that was naïve, but JJ knew Emily. She knew her as a friend, a confidante, and as an agent. JJ knew that Emily would be able to work this out, whatever it was, before too much longer. And if she wasn't, JJ knew the team would step in. Besides, it sounded as if wherever Emily was, she was currently safe. Safe from the terrorists who had taken her before and safe from whatever "official" channels were trying to accuse her of something. There really wouldn't be anything to worry about anytime soon.

Morgan was fuming. How dare anyone walk into this room and declare Emily Prentiss a terrorist? How can anyone who works in Intelligence possibly not know who she is and what she has done for this country? Dimwits all around, Morgan decided. Especially these two. How dare they? How dare Watley and Grant say those things about Emily? They called her a whore; no one gets to do that. Ever. Morgan did, once, he remembered, during the Ian Doyle mess. Something he'll regret until the day he dies. As long as he lived, no one else would get to call her names like that and get away with it. They would regret it. And Cruz, these guys were brought in by one of theirs. How dare Matt Cruz walk them in here and allow it? Cruz said he 'agreed to a veiled interrogation.' What the hell? Veiled interrogation? Of his own team? Talk about a betrayal. Cruz has been here long enough to know this was not how things were done at the BAU. Christ, Prentiss even saved his ass once! He should know better.

Morgan's mind was jumping from one idea to the next. It totally pissed him off that the CIA knew about this before they did. The CIA! How dare they not loop him into whatever was going on? Okay, them. Them, not him, loop them in. This was not about him, Morgan knew that. But still. He hated the CIA. They left a bad taste in his mouth that just would never go away. In his mind, they'd already failed Emily. He hated that they now had a chance to do it again. He hated that she was working for them again. If she was. If that was true. Lying is a proven interrogation tactic; especially with the way Watley was baiting Hotch. It had to be a lie. She wouldn't. Not again. It wasn't clean; she said so once. How dare they put that thought in his head? How dare they? But most of all, how dare she? If Morgan was being honest with himself right now, it was Emily he was the most furious with.

Morgan's anger at Emily was nearly clouding out everything else that happened today. She got herself embroiled into something way too dangerous. Again. She got herself taken. Again. She was tortured. Again. She didn't tell them. Again. More to the point, she didn't tell him. Again. She was in trouble and she didn't ask for help; she kept it a secret. Morgan hated her a little for that. He brushed right past the fact that the secrecy is clearly a part of her job description now. Past the fact that they no longer worked on the same team and weren't partners anymore. And certainly past the fact there was an ocean between them. An ocean was nothing when it came to family. She should've know that. And he'll tell her that, he promised himself. After he kills her. After he saves her. Because that's what you do for family.

Reid was sitting still, perfectly still, but his mind was making quick work of the four possibilities that Watley and Grant had laid out. 1. Emily was on a covert mission. 2. Emily went rogue on her own mission. 3. Emily went crazy and disappeared (Reid dismissed this one on general principle). And 4. Emily became an unsub (he refused to even think the word "terrorist"). Unfortunately, Reid couldn't immediately rule out any of the other three, even the last one. Emily on a covert mission was the easiest to believe. Her job now was all about missions. Reid thought her current (or recent, he corrected himself) position was more in the planning, strategizing, and supervising role, rather than the active agent role. But then again, maybe not. Interpol was a giant agency, spanning continents. They dealt with terrorists and, though he had joked about it before, international intrigue. Secrecy was key. If Interpol had Prentiss on an active mission, they wouldn't necessarily want to tell anyone else about it. Watley had mentioned MI-6 and the CIA as well. Prentiss's covert mission didn't have to be for Interpol. For the intelligence community, Reid knew, there were multiple levels of covert secrecy. There was the type of mission where you had full backing, funding, and sanctioned authority. This came with a pretty solid guarantee of your agency rescuing you if you got in to too much trouble. Then there was the type of mission that was off-book. A black bag mission, it was called here in the states. This kind of covert operation usually didn't come with a chain of command or a promise of protection. Prentiss had, Reid knew, worked under both conditions before. There were probably various degrees of each. Covert agencies tended to keep their policies and procedures secret as well. That limited his knowledge. The point was, though, that Emily working a covert op wasn't remotely hard to imagine. It wouldn't be difficult for the US government to understand either though. And they, it seemed, weren't buying it.

The second theory, the rogue op, was also quite possible. If Prentiss thought the threat wasn't gone, that it would likely come back and get personal; if there was any possibility that other people would be hurt more than she would, she would definitely consider going on the offensive first. Emily Prentiss was the epitome of an international citizen. She grew up all over the world, speaks more than a few languages fluently, and has worked in intelligence with a multi-national emphasis for years, more than bookending her time with the BAU. Prentiss was not an American Agent hiding out in a foreign country. She was a woman who could be at home anywhere. Given the collected life experiences that Prentiss likely had, Reid reasoned, she wouldn't be working this op alone. Reid didn't know for sure, but he imagined Prentiss had many friends, who did what she did, who would be willing to help. A shadow network, possibly. Reid just hope she knew that the BAU was part of that network.

There were two problems, though, that Reid could see with this very plausible rogue op theory. There were unknowns. Reid hated unknowns. In the abstract, he liked the puzzle. But this was Emily's life; it was entirely concrete and real. No abstraction at all; the unknown was an enemy in this instance. Prentiss was hurt. Reid didn't know how much. Watley and Grant had alluded to significant torture, but they didn't go into details. Reid knew from personal experience, the physical hurt brought on by torture healed first. It took time, but it was relatively easy. The psychological torture, however, was harder and more insidious. It took longer because it lingered; there were twists and turns in the psychological effects that the straightforwardness of the physical body just didn't approach. Emily was tough, Reid knew that. She was quite possibly the toughest individual he had ever met. But everyone, everyone, had a breaking point. Emily would reach hers at some point. Reid just hoped that point was far off in the future.

The second problem, was that they didn't know where Emily was right now. Reid knew, well assumed; he hoped she had a network of people around her, an army of help. But her last rogue op (that they knew about) was the Ian Doyle mess. Prentiss did that almost on her own; with only minimal logistical help from her former team. Spencer also knew that when she was hurting, she chose to sequester herself into a cocoon of her own making till she worked it out. That was troubling. Reid seriously hoped that wasn't happening here. Going it alone might seem noble, but more often than not, it was just stupid. Everybody needed help. The BAU's philosophy was that profiling was a team sport. Emily needed to remember that. No matter what else she was doing now, that didn't change. Once a profiler, always a profiler.

Reid's overly analytical mind took him finally down the last path, the Prentiss as an unsub path. He tried hard to rule this theory out on general principle. Emily Prentiss had a strong ethically-driven moral compass. Reid had learned that about her through their years working together. She would never attack or kill without cause, strong cause and reason. Those things were subjective, cause and reason. In the immediate aftermath of torture, Reid knew from personal experience, cause and reason looked different. Still, no one compartmentalized better than Emily Prentiss. Unfortunately, that was also a mark against her here. Reid learned, they had all learned, during the Doyle mess that those compartmentalization skills also allowed her an ethical flexibility. That was intelligence work. Prentiss had always said she preferred the BAU and its serial killers because they were cleaner than anything she'd done in intelligence. Her ease with unclean could tip her over into what some people would call unsub territory (or, on the international stage, terrorism, Reid allowed himself to think grudgingly). Watley and Grant said that people were dying. More specifically, people involved in the captivity and torture of Emily Prentiss were dying. That was troubling; that was why people were saying she was a terrorist. But. Wait. It was all just a matter of degree, wasn't it? One person's rogue op was another's criminal action. A rogue op, in another context, was a covert op. Intelligence, as Emily had always said, was messy. It was very, very messy. They didn't have all the information; they may never have all the information. Spencer Reid hated that. It was like something was being held out of his reach, being used to taunt him. Reid shook his head and delved back into reason; trying to fortify them all, including Emily, against the rising tide of the unknown.

Kate Callahan didn't know Emily Prentiss, and so therefore was able to be more objective. She was flicking through the same possibilities as Reid. Kate had never worked in intelligence, but she came from the FBI's Child Exploitation Task Force, so she knew messy work, she knew undercover work. She had come to pretty much the same conclusions as Reid, just without the emotional impact. Kate quickly moved on to analyzing Hotch's current situation. Kate didn't think Hotch was in that much actual trouble here. It was somewhat concerning that they took him in at all. True, Hotch had slugged Watley, but… Grant had arrested him on the charge of "assaulting a federal agent." Technically, Richard Watley was not an agent. He was State Department. No one in the room seemed to actually know who he was, so Kate reasoned, he couldn't be that high up on the org chart. He must be a mid-level attaché, or some kind of assistant to an under-secretary maybe. The charge wasn't going to stick. Watley and Grant had to know that when they arrested him. That meant they wanted him off BAU turf, and alone, for some other reason. That was concerning. Especially with the way Watley had been baiting Hotch since the moment he stepped into the room. There was something underneath all of that. Was it personal in some way? It had to be, but how? And for whom? They needed to know, and they didn't yet.

Rossi looked around at his team. They all looked disheartened. The type of disheartened that came with the sudden realization of being behind in a game they didn't yet know they were playing. Rossi sighed. He was concerned for Emily. The last time he had talked to her must have been just after she was rescued from the failed undercover. If the timeline given to them by Watley and Grant was correct. Rossi was reserving his judgment on that one just yet. She had sounded like something was off, but never gave him even the slightest hint of the enormity of what she'd been through. Damn it kid, Rossi thought. When would she learn? She had people who loved her and would be there for her no matter what. He hated to think of her going through any of this by herself. He hoped, wherever she was, that she wasn't alone.

It was interesting to Rossi that Watley and Grant had settled on Hotch's and JJ's last communications with Emily as significant, but not his. He'd been in touch with her right around the same time as Hotch had. Hotch, it seemed, had only received a text message while he, Rossi, had had a full phone conversation. Yet the focus was on Hotch, pretty much completely. Even JJ was just a lead-in and a footnote. Interesting. Watley and Grant clearly were focused on the relationship between Hotch and Emily as something important. What relationship? As far as Rossi knew, they were friends. Though, he might have to adjust his thinking. It certainly seemed as if that friendship might have been tightening over the past year. One thing made sense now, at least. Hotch had let it slip, about six months ago, that he had broken up with Beth. The distance plus cooling feelings had not done good things for the two of them. Rossi gave it a couple of weeks, then started badgering Hotch to accept a few of his blind date offers. After a month or so of Hotch turning him down, Rossi gave up. If his friend wanted to be a hermit for a little while, he'd let him. But perhaps it wasn't hermit-hood that Hotch wanted. That thought made Rossi smile. David Rossi was a romantic; who else would get married three times and still believe in the possibility of a lasting love. He hoped his two best friends could it together. You know, after everyone was safe and back home. Rossi was imagining that future when he heard a frustrated sound to his left. Garcia.

Garcia, after a few minutes of overwhelmed panic, had reached for her laptop and began furiously tapping the keys. The chat room she had given State and Homeland was to be discarded, definitely. Pen had other, more covert, means of contacting Emily though. About a year ago, Emily had reached out to Garcia for help with one of her cases. It was off the books help and Emily didn't want it going through any official channels. They had set up a series of protocols, should they ever need to get in touch this way again. They rarely used them, but still. Garcia was frustrated because she wasn't getting a response to any of them now. It was the little bit of anarchist hacker still left in her soul that made her keep this information from Watley and Grant just now, but also from her team. She had felt guilt about that before. Right now, though, that guilt was reforming as gratitude.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, another thought began to take over her mental space. The video. It showed Emily possibly, probably, being hurt. Tortured. Garcia definitely did not want to lay her eyes on it. But. Grant had said that it also showed some of the men responsible for hurting Emily. The team would need that so she'd have to find it. On second thought, Emily wouldn't want them to see it. She'd be adamant, if she were here right now, that none of them look at it. She'd be mortified. Even though it wasn't her fault, even though she'd done nothing wrong. She'd be mortified. Penelope was torn; she let out a strangled sob and closed her eyes. She didn't know what to do right now. She felt someone cover her hand and squeeze. She opened her eyes. Rossi was smiling kindly at her. She smiled back. This was Emily and Garcia would be as strong as she needed.

"Well. It's nice to see you lot are doing absolutely nothing."

The team looked up at the unexpected new voice. There was a hint of sarcasm in it that they all recognized, but upon seeing the owner of the voice. Not one of them recognized the man now standing in the doorway to the round table room. He was tall, at least six feet. Athletically built with short cropped dirty blonde hair and crystal clear blue eyes. Those eyes, beautiful as they were, were surveying the room in a cold as steel manner.

Rossi released Pen's hand and stood up. "Who are you?" he demanded. The team had enough of unwanted and unannounced visitors today.

"You are David Rossi?" the handsome stranger queried.

"I am," Rossi spit out, "who the hell are you?"

The man gave a small chuckle, as if placating a petulant child, "I am Alastair Endicott Thorne." "The Third," he added when no recognition dawned.

What? The remains of the BAU team stared at him. He spoke with a British accent. Given everything that had happened today, that probably meant MI-6. Excellent. Just what they needed.

"I'm looking for Aaron Hotchner," Thorne continued, more businesslike, when nobody responded to his introduction.

Morgan stood up to join Rossi, "Sorry man, you just missed him. A few of your stateside cronies already got him. He was arrested about half an hour ago."

Thorne narrowed his eyes at Morgan, then shifted his gaze upward. "Blast!" he swore. "Excuse me for just a second," he said as he took a step away and pulled out his phone. Thorne tapped out the numbers of his call as he shook his head. He waited for whoever was on the other end of the phone to pick up. He seemed frustrated when it took longer than he wanted for the call to be picked up; eventually, though, the call was answered.

"I'm too late. Hotchner's been arrested already." Thorne pressed his lips together, as if he was in pain from whatever the other person was saying. "Biscuit. Biscuit, calm down," he soothed. "What do you want me to do?"

The team looked at each other, confused. What the hell was going on now?

TBC