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Big thanks to Chiroho for the beta and his amazing knowledge about jaws and cars...

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Where the Blue of the Night

"I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player's personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing."

- Vladimir Kramnik

Chapter Eighteen

November 6th

She could see the stars.

They twinkled silver in the black sky, each a sun more than a hundred million miles away. For a moment the scene was something from a fairytale, a pretty picture, until she opened her eyes. Instinct told her to put her hand on her weapon, a millisecond of doubt making her wonder whether it would be there. It was; sitting in its holster, a cold piece of reassurance.

Pain jolted like lightning down her shoulder as she started to move. Her left arm was numb, the position she was lying in stopping the blood from circulating. She twisted again, trying to ignore the pain, but tears spilled silently out of her eyes. She gritted her teeth, and pushed against the passenger side door.

"Emily?"

She couldn't speak, not yet, she wasn't sure why.

"Prentiss?" Morgan's voice was drowsy, as if he had just woken up out of a lovely dream. "My phone's in the glove box."

She stretched out, realising that they were still in the car, and that it had rolled, stopping with the driver's side pinned to the ground. A recent memory pounded at her, an image of a car behind them, Morgan shouting.

The glove box opened, and she gripped the phone with the tips of her fingers, pulling it onto her thigh. The pain had either dulled, or her brain had become numb to it, she wasn't sure which.

"Call Hotch," Morgan said. "We're about five miles from the hotel, but we're off the main road."

Another flashback. Gunfire. A violent swerve. Their small car being driven off the road, down a bank. Rolling. Rolling.

"How did he know?" she said, finally finding her voice. "How did he know where we were?"

"We did something that gave us away," Morgan said. "Phone Hotch, Emily. We need to get out of here."

"But he could still be waiting. He had a gun..." she heard the first signs of hysteria in her voice, shock setting in. Panic.

"No," Morgan said. "He's gone. He won't have hung around. We need to get out of the car."

She made her fingers dial the number she had memorised, and hit the key to put the call on speaker. Morgan couldn't move, and she was jammed into her seat by the safety belt; she couldn't get enough leverage to kick at the door or the windscreen. She didn't do car crashes. There had been one when she was younger; a night out with a boy who had been drinking. She'd been seventeen. The car had kissed the tree and put Bryan in hospital for seven weeks and put his hopes of joining the marines in the morgue. It was still the cause of nightmares. Now she had more fuel for those dreams.

"Derek. Where are you?" His voice sounded desperate, agitated. How long had they been lying in the car? How long had he been trying to get in touch with them?

"Hotch," she said, almost shouted. "We've been run off the road. The car..."

"Where are you?"

She could tell he'd started walking.

"Just off the main road between Westonville and Keighley. I took a left to throw him off, but he seemed to anticipate it, and followed. He pushed us close to the shoulder and we ended up skidding over. I don't remember the finer points," Morgan said. "We're stuck in the vehicle, Hotch. We need an ambulance, and probably someone to cut us out."

"They're on their way," Hotch said, his voice quiet rather than distant. "Can you tell if you've been injured?"

"I'd guess we're both concussed, plus various cuts and bruises," Morgan's voice seemed kind of slurred she realised. "I'm pinned, but I can move my legs slightly and I have no neck or back pain."

"Prentiss?"

The use of her surname almost made her smile. He was distancing himself, not wanting to show emotion. "I feel like I've been in a car accident," she said, hoping a bit of humour would make Hotch feel less worried. "My seat belt's jammed and I'm sore all over, but nothing worrying." Things were making more sense now. "We don't know if he's still around though; if he's waiting for responders to arrive." She didn't agree with Morgan, although she thought it was likely that their UnSub had already gone, his message sent.

There was a pause, and Emily wondered if they'd lost contact. "None of the team are coming," Hotch said. "Garcia's been in touch with the local PD and they're on their way. You'll be taken to the nearest hospital, Westonville General, and you are to register under false names. The locals will stay with you until they can bring you back here."

"Hotch," Morgan said. "I don't think he was trying to kill us. If he was, he'd have pushed us over the other way so we'd have gone into the river. This attack wasn't meant to be fatal."

"He already warned us what he was going to do. A letter was sent to Strauss this morning, threatening to make sure Emily didn't interfere again. There was mention of the couple you spoke to yesterday. I suspect he tapped their phones, or somehow managed to pull their information, which wouldn't have been difficult, and found out the arrangements for today."

"But how would he know where we were coming from, Hotch? We could be staying anywhere," Morgan said, he words still sounding slower than usual.

There was another pause. "Did you fill the car with gas this morning?"

"Shit." Emily closed her eyes. "We had a virtually empty tank."

"What card did you use to pay?" Hotch said. "That's how he knew which direction you were coming from."

"It was the expenses one. I'm sorry Hotch – I just didn't think... bastard," Morgan said. "We were at the gas station on Trinity Road in Little Foreshaw, where we could have stopped had we been driving from the Quantico area. He couldn't have worked out where we actually came from."

The sound of sirens permeated the silence around them and Hotch hung up. Emily twisted her head to look at Morgan, whose eyes were closed. She tried to stretch out a leg once more, to kick against the passenger door, but the action was futile, the door jammed.

"Morgan," she said, trying to stay practical. "Derek – you need to stay awake."

He stirred, moving slightly, his actions impeded by the way he was lying.

Emily noticed the broken window, shattered during the impact of the car rolling. If they had been in one of their usual vehicles they would have managed to stay on the road without an issue, they wouldn't have skidded. It's possible the UnSub's car would have come off worse. She tried to force herself to remember each detail, but the scenes seemed murky and her head was beginning to ache. A soft groan came from Derek, and she focused on him, hearing voices calling as footsteps came towards them.

"Can you hear me?" she heard someone say. "We're going to get you out."

"I can hear you," she said. "But my partner's drifting in and out of consciousness – he was speaking a few minutes ago though." She could feel panic welling up inside, and she tried to subdue it, staying rational. The car began to move slightly with the force of someone trying to pull open the passenger door. "What's your name?"

"Peter McLeod," the voice said. "I'm with the fire department. We should get you out of here in a couple of minutes."

The couple of minutes had turned into twenty five and a very complicated operation involving the jaws of life during which time Emily had felt as if she was being subjected to punishment on a torture rack. Morgan had drifted in and out of consciousness, and she almost envied the times when he hadn't felt the sharp aches that were ransacking her legs and head.

Once in the ambulance, painkillers being administered and the reassurance of the paramedic that there was no serious damage done, she allowed herself to begin to relax, hoping that it would help the recollections of what had happened come to the surface, and they could find out more about the man who was doing his best to terrify them, or possibly worse.

Hotch sat down in the kitchen, the atmosphere tense and silent. JJ was making coffee, her back to the rest of them, and he wondered what expression was on her face. Rossi was uncharacteristically quiet, deep in thought, scribbling in his notebook. Reid was staring out of the window, his hands in his pockets, and that dreadful coat flung across the back of one of the dining chairs.

Agent Boyd had gone to the crime scene, taking his two colleagues with him. He'd said little when he'd heard about the incident, and Hotch had recognised a personal battle going on behind his eyes. It was personal for them all, but Boyd's reaction each time something happened seemed to be carrying him further to the dark side.

"Guys," the silence was split by Kevin entering the room. He'd heard about Emily and Morgan, expressed his dismay, then continued with whatever it was he was searching on his laptop. Hotch had envied him the ability to stick his head in the sand of the other case. "I think I may have identified the people you interviewed in the park were talking about."

There was a slight change in the weight of the atmosphere as both Reid and Rossi turned towards Kevin.

"There was a campaign in Cale Green Park five months ago encouraging people to use the outdoor fitness centre that had just been completed. Why anyone would want one of those I don't understand; however, I digress. The local newspaper covered the event and included photographs of some of the people who went to see the equipment, and I believe that a couple of the shots are of the people your families were talking about."

They moved towards him as if they were somehow under Kevin's control, Reid tipping his head to one side to look at the newspaper archive that Kevin had found.

"That's got to be the man in a wheelchair that was mentioned. John Price, aged thirty nine, injured during a land mine explosion in Iraq when he was twenty-one," Reid said.

"And the couple – the caption says she's Martha Moore, a school teacher at Cale Green Elementary. Her husband's John Moore – we have a lead, Hotch. This could be the breakthrough we're looking for, and if previous abductions are anything to go by, Alfie could well still be alive," Rossi said, his voice containing a lilt of optimism.

Hotch remained expressionless. "I can't send you out to interview them," he said. "Not after what's just happened. I'll have to speak to Strauss and discuss what to do."

"Can't we have them brought in to a local station – not aggressively – and then transported locally to where we can meet them?" Reid said. Hotch could sense the urgency in him. "There's no way our UnSub could have worked out who we would be interviewing, and if we don't use Quantico in this it'll be virtually impossible for him to track what we're doing."

Hotch remained unmoved. He had two injured agents; he had to look after his team and prevent any further opportunities for their UnSub to attack them. Garcia was presently narrowing down their suspect pool, looking for people who hadn't been logged entering the building that morning. Although it was a Sunday, a fair number of agents and support staff would have still gone in for one reason or another. "I'll speak with Strauss. In the meantime, find out everything you can about John Price, and the Moores."

He left the kitchen filled with more noise now than it had been since they had lost contact with Prentiss and Morgan. He needed a few minutes alone, a few minutes to deal with the tumult of emotions that were whipping through his body. He'd had situations before when he'd not been able to get in touch with one or another of his agents; the compound in Colorado; Reid when he'd been taken hostage by Henkle – it was something he'd dealt with. But the panic he'd felt today when he'd read the letter and hadn't been able to get in touch with Emily had been very different.

No one knew, of course. Being a state prosecutor and an interrogator with the BAU for many years meant he was adept at concealing emotions, something he considered to be a real strength. Now those emotions included anger, desperation and frustration. He wanted to go to the hospital, to check with his own eyes that she was okay, but for the moment they were house bound.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea; continuing this emotional involvement with a colleague. It hadn't impeded his rational thought; he was still a professional, but it would only become more difficult.

Maybe he should sleep in one of the single rooms. Maybe they shouldn't have started this.

He pushed thoughts of Emily to one side and walked into the office room where Garcia was working and sat down next to her, pouring over the list of names that hadn't been at Quantico that morning.

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Sarah x