Emily walks into her office and sees a few things have been left in her inbox. She thumbs through them and sees nothing important. She gets her computer up and running and starts to review the things she wants to discuss on the conference call. She has just finished her coffee when a shadow falls across her desk.
"Morning, Leroy. Why are you here so early?"
He walks over and drops down in the chair in front of her desk. "Failure has me here."
She frowns. "What failure?"
"I followed that lead you gave me. Been at it all night, even at home. I keep hitting a brick wall. I've tried every type of search I can think of to figure out where that money came from but I just can't find it."
Emily sighs. "Damn it. Well, put it aside for now and we can go back to it if we need to. Or if you think of another way to attack it go for it. The thing is we can't spend too much time on it when we know the clock is ticking down to the attack. We can always track it after we stop the bastards and use it to hang more prison time on them."
He nods. "If you say so. I really am sorry, Boss."
Emily gives him a grin. "Uh, Leroy, why do you call me 'Boss' instead of Prentiss?"
He chuckles. "Had a girlfriend whose last name was Fentish. It kind of rhymes and we ended pretty badly. Truth is, she broke my heart and I thought she was 'the one', you know?"
Emily chuckles. "I see. Well, keep in mind there are plenty of fish in the sea. And sometimes that record swordfish turns out to be an ordinary tuna. Your swordfish will come when you least expect it."
"Maybe." He stands. "Going to go catch a nap somewhere. Have fun on the call."
Emily rolls her eyes. "Yeah, they are always so much fun. Good job tracking that lead, Leroy. I appreciate that you didn't give up until you were sure you looked everywhere."
He nods and heads out, still mad at himself for not bringing back a better resolution. Unknown to him, his failure is actually his passing grade.
"You're not the mole, Leroy. Otherwise you'd still be pretending to search that money trail or would have used it to set up another false trail. Good. I like you."
She opens her phone and makes a note to herself that Leroy is innocent. She taps the note app closed, glad the African-American man has proven clean. He reminds her of a young Derek Morgan: smart, eager, and a little bit of a maverick when it comes to rules according to his file. Hopefully he'll grow into as fine an agent as Morgan.
Emily squeezes the bridge of her nose as the agents in London and Kazakhstan argue with each other over who is right and who is wrong regarding a particular lead. When it looks like Harlan is going to just let the two men continue to snipe at each other, Emily slams her hand into the table.
"ENOUGH!"
Harlan jumps as the two agents on the computer monitor get blissfully quiet.
"Look, you two may enjoy these stupid little slaps at each other but can I just remind you that we have a very limited amount of time to keep innocent civilians, not to mention our country's lawmakers, alive? Stop fucking with each other and just give us the fucking information. We'll decide on this end if it's important or not. Just give us every damn bit you have. Grant, you start," she orders the man in Kazakhstan.
Grant clears his throat and starts to tell her the chatter they had heard on the radios as well as things their informants had imparted to them. By the time he finishes, Emily is nervous. It's Tuesday and from the sound of it the attack is set for Thursday. She looks at the other man.
"What do you have, LeMasters?"
"A potential target but it doesn't make a bloody bit of sense," he replies. "It seems like they are aiming to attack the Metro system in D.C. but another look suggests perhaps one of those open-topped tour buses."
Emily frowns. "We don't have those in D.C."
"Ah, right then. So maybe this is all a bunch of bollocks."
Emily thinks a moment. "Tell me why you think it's the Metro again."
"It seems like they are talking about best places along the rails to place the bomb for maximum destruction above and below ground. But then there's mention of the open-topped cars being not being detonated until they reach their destination in hopes of causing more problems at the station. Now unless you have some open-topped train cars it makes no sense," LeMasters finishes.
"Son of a bitch. It makes perfect sense." She turns and looks at Harlan. "The U.S. Capital Subway line. The cars on the House track are open-topped and so are the ones to the Senate Russell building."
Harlan swallows nervously. "Shit. If they set off explosives down there the concussion alone could kill everyone in the area."
"Plus it has the potential to cause a cave in, hurting even more people above ground," Emily points out.
"We need to find out when a vote is coming. The most Senator's and Reps will be in the tunnels at that time."
Emily shakes her head. "If there's a vote the access is restricted to voting members only. It would have to be when anyone could be down there. Busiest day of the week is always Wednesday. People are back from long weekends or haven't left for one."
"Shit…tomorrow? What the hell do we do?"
"We do what we've been doing since last week: we race the clock." She turns back to the computers. "Good work both of you. Keep your ear to the ground and call me directly if you hear anything else." She ends the session.
Harlan studies her. "What's going on with you? What do you know?"
"Harlan, someone on the team is the leak. I've been able to clear Leroy and I think Timothy. But the others are still question marks."
He gets angry. "You saying I don't know how to vet a team?"
"I'm not saying that. You know as well as I do anyone can bury a sleeper agent and activate them when they want."
Harlan considers what she's saying. "That's how the Baltimore location got cleared before we got there."
"Yes."
He glances at his watch. "Busiest time of the day on those three rail lines is between 10 and 2. If we assume that's when the attack will be we have less than 27 hours to confirm the players and stop them."
"I know. I need to make a few calls. And we need a team at our backs I know can be trusted."
"You want to bring your BAU team completely into the operation." She just raises an eyebrow. He chuckles humorlessly and shakes his head. "You already have."
"Easter taught me the hard way not to trust any of you. Damn right they are fully in. I know I can trust them to have my back."
And until she said it, Emily had no idea just how much she believed it. Bad decisions were made but nothing that was done was to further their career or to damage hers. It was just a twist of fate that Morgan reinjured his arm and there was no guaranteeing Rossi or Hotch wouldn't have been hurt by the spooked horse.
And she was the one that set herself up alone in the woods. She had gotten complacent, trusting the profile too implicitly and not allowing for the unsub to change his m.o. if a woman placed herself in front of him. Her anger at Hotch and Morgan over that should be anger at herself and only herself. Instead she had found reasons to blame the rest of the team.
"I'm a fucking ass," she whispers.
"Uh, why?" Harlan asks.
She had forgotten he was there. "Just a realization about something. I'll deal with it later with my shrink. Fuck!" She glances at her watch. "Gonna have to cancel my appointment today."
"You see a shrink?" Harlan blurts out in surprise.
Emily nods. "After all the shit I've seen and done, yeah. If I didn't I'd have probably eaten my gun a couple times the past year." She stands. "But that's a discussion for later. Right now we need to get with the team and weed out the mole."
"Patriot Act custody?"
"Hell yeah. We can't risk him or her letting the cell know we're on to them."
"Sounds good. Let's go." They start out the door but he stops. He turns and looks at her. "You investigated me, too, didn't you."
"Yes, I did."
He nods. "I guess after one of your old team members went rogue I don't blame you."
"I knew you wouldn't."
The two agents head to the conference room set up as their tactical center. Emily knows the first three conversations will be the ones that prove or disprove her hunch about the leak being internal. With less than 27 hours to go it is imperative they take the traitor into custody before they can warn their compatriots and send them underground or, worse, have them attack a secondary location. Emily glances at Harlan and opens the door to the room.
It was show time.
Hotch looks around the table. "Garcia, what do you have?"
"I have banking information that doesn't bode well for one Ken Farrelli. Lots of money going in then rerouting to another bank, then splitting and going to two other accounts where it is withdrawn and then a bank account in the Cayman Islands that is growing by those amounts each time."
Hotch raises an eyebrow. "You hacked his account in the Cayman Islands?"
"Do you really want me to answer that, sir?"
He slowly shakes his head. "No. We'll pretend for now you found it somewhere else. What else do you have?"
"I asked for Reid and JJ to help me with the phone search Emily requested."
Hotch turns to JJ. "What do you have?"
"I have two numbers that keep popping up in the same area. Neither is Farrelli's. The government phone is issued to Natalie Brent. The burn phone was bought in Baltimore and was used several times in the area around the house that was raided but it also is used quite a bit in Brent's neighborhood. It has even been used in the Secret Service HQ when she was shown to be working."
Garcia frowns and sits up. "What? But that doesn't make sense."
"Why not?" Hotch asks.
"Like Quantico, their HQ is shielded. The only reason our work or personal phones work is if special software is installed that allows them to connect. Otherwise it's no bar city," she explains.
"So they bought a disposable phone and installed that software on it. How would they do that?" Hotch asks.
"They'd either have to have someone in the IT department do it or they would have to somehow get access to their systems and do it illegally. And no tech would do it with a burn phone because so many of those get tossed. We wouldn't want the tech to fall into the wrong hands. That's why you all have to bring your demolished phones back to Quantico with you," Garcia states.
"Any chance the terrorists could have done it remotely? Hacked the system and done it from somewhere else?" Morgan asks.
"No. You actually have to place the phones in a cradle to do it and it takes a while to download the program. That's why I take care of it for you all when you get new phones. It takes time and it gives me a chance to touch base with the techs upstairs just to keep aware of what's going on since I'm so removed from that department most of the time."
"Does Brent have a tech background?" Rossi asks.
Morgan shakes his head. "I helped check them out. Nothing says techie."
"But Timothy Noth has a tech background. And he's CIA," Reid points out.
"You think he could set her up?" Morgan asks.
"I wouldn't put it past them," Reid answers, his dislike of the CIA understandable after his run-ins with Reginald Cervantes.
"So can we at least definitively say that someone on her team is a traitor?" Hotch asks.
The agents slowly look at each other. They all nod.
"I thought so," Hotch said. "But we still don't know who. We need to figure it out soon. Emily called me a few minutes ago. They believe the attack is tomorrow on the Congressional subway system during the lunch hours."
"Tomorrow?!" Garcia screeches. "I'm still running…I need more…SHIT!"
She gets up and hurries out of the room to try to speed up some of the searches she has running. Hotch turns back to the rest of the team.
"Additionally, Emily wants us fully involved. She trusts us to have her back."
"Really?" Reid voices everyone's surprise.
"Really. She knows there were mistakes made in Winslow but her own actions were to blame as much as anyone else's. She wants us to talk it all out after this is over. For now, let's focus on what she's looking for from us. She wants us to spread out with her team and profile the crowds. We'll have full access to the tunnels and we'll be backed by a small contingent of Secret Service agents. Vests will be under shirts."
"Why the secrecy? Wouldn't it be better to let them know the police are on to them?" JJ asks.
"If they see us they could call off the attack and either go underground or hit a secondary target," Hotch explains. "They are mission-based and they probably have more than one contingency plan in place. We cannot afford to let them get away or let them set off the explosives. People above and below ground will be injured and killed."
"When do we go to D.C.?" Rossi asks.
"We don't. Emily's having the investigation moved here. It will be easier to detain the traitor and keep it from leaking if we do it here. There's a chance if we can't confidently identify the traitor we will take her entire team into custody until the threat has passed."
"What did she tell them about the move?" Rossi asks.
"She said they confirmed the target site is in Virginia and it will be easier to move in from Quantico rather than having to fight D.C. traffic. JJ, get the numbers you tagged to Garcia. She can track any calls that try to come into them. We're going to block those phones and make sure no calls can get out on either line."
"Yes, sir," she responds.
Hotch stares at each team member in turn. "I know the personal shit with Emily is still there. We're mad, she's mad but I know I can count on you to ignore that for the good of the nation. I have faith that we will stop these men together as a team as we've done in the past. When it's over, then the personal can be dealt with."
The agents all nod. They know their job trumps their emotions.
Emily studies each member of her team carefully. They are cleared to use lights and sirens to Quantico. That should get them there in 45 minutes. During that time one of them could try to notify the other members of their terror cell. She steps into the hallway and sends a text.
Garcia, I need you to trap and trace any call or text sent from my team's phones starting now. We've just told them about the move to Quantico and I need to know what they are saying and who they are saying it to. And I think it goes without saying, figure out where the person on the other end of the line is located.
As she steps back into the conference room her phone vibrates. She opens the text and sees an affirmative from Garcia.
"Good girl. I'll buy you something pretty," she whispers to the phone with a smile.
She looks back at her team. Her conversations with Noth, Brent and Farrelli had not gone as planned. All are still working on the false leads she gave them. Only Allen had given up. She was starting to doubt her conclusion he was innocent. She was starting to doubt her whole team. She had less than 24 hours to stop the right one. The consequences would be deadly if she failed.