Hi all readers! sorry about the wait, hopefully this is a little better than the last one… and just sp you know it may take me a couple more chapters to get to who her father is and to the 'Criminal Minds' parts. If you want to guess who her father is, he is one of the main characters. It's not hard to figure out if you consider that Emma is fourteen =]

Happy reading!

Shopping

As Emma walked onto the front porch she saw there was a note tapped to the door:

'Emma, gone to the supermarket, will be back late'

Thank god she thought; time left for relaxing after all. So she settled down in the computer room to do some homework and listen to music.

"Okay got the breakfast cereal, milk, bread and food for lunches, I think I am set" Grace muttered to herself. She made her way to the aisle and then walked out the store to put them in her car.

"Oh Shoot!" Grace exclaimed when she dropped a bag of shopping; the milk was all over the ground. As she bent down to pick the bag up she jumped when a man spoke from behind her:

"Well now, looks like we have a bit of a problem here don't we mam? Now don't trouble yourself, let me do that for you"

Grace smiled, and here she was thinking the days had passed when you could find a kind stranger willing to help… Cute strangers too, his blonde hair and green eyes were amazing she thought, but he did stare at her a bit too much, it was disconcerting. She quickly thanked the man and walked quickly to the front door and watched as the man walked to his deep blue truck. She didn't know why, but he had sent a shiver down her spine.

"The shopping's in the car Emma!"

In the middle of doing her homework with her iPod stuck in her ears Emma could not hear.

"Where is that girl?" said Grace wondered aloud. She found Emma listening to her iPod… again, that girl never went anywhere without it. So she pulled it out.

"What mom?" said Emma moodily, she never did like people interrupting her music time, and with her Mom wanting her to move again, she was not the happiest person on the planet.

"Shopping honey, would be great if you could help me"

Grace wondered when she should tell her the good news; well at least it would be good news to Emma.

Once the shopping was done, Grace could no longer hold it in; "We're not moving, I pulled some strings, got a permanent job, I start next week. You can stay at this school, you can begin to make friends sweetheart, real friends, not the temporary ones you have been having over these last years. I realise that you need to have a place to call home, and I haven't given you that."

Emma gave her Mom a hug, she was overjoyed, she had never expected to stay, it was always her mother who got her way, she was after all the parent, but one thing was bugging her. So Emma stepped back and said "Mom, I love that you're staying for me, but I just want you to know, you have given me a feeling of home, and it's with you; I could never call anywhere home without you in it"

Emma had never said anything like that to Grace since Emma's Godmothers death, though Grace reasoned, that was when all the moving started so could explain why.

Amidst this happy moment Grace saw something big and blue out of the corner of her eye. It was a blue truck that had just pulled up outside their house. She recognised it as the man's car from the supermarket earlier that day, Emma stared towards her again, she was about to become in view of the window when Grace took out Emma's legs from underneath her.

"What was that for Mom?" Emma yelled, massaging her sore legs. She looked up at her mother and saw a real fear in her eyes. "Mom, what's wrong, are you okay?"

"Emma, listen to me," Grace said quietly, "there is a man outside who I met in the supermarket today. He must have followed me home so he knows I'm here."

Emma started to panic. They heard a door slam shut. He was walking to the door.

"We got to get out of here Mom, or at least hide."

Grace sighed "Honey, he knows I'm here, and there is no time to get outside, where will we go, there's no where to go but out the front door, the fences are too high." Emma interrupted her, but Grace cut across "Honey, he knows I'm here, but he doesn't know you're here. If both of us hide he'll search the whole house, if one of us hides, he'll never know you exist. Now I want you to go into my room and hide, under the bed and pull the wooden side across so it looks like there's no gap, do it quickly now, and do not come out do you hear me, not for anything, no matter what happens, not until it is absolutely safe for you. Do not come even if I call you. If I am calling to you, only come out if I say 'it's time to go to school.' Okay Emma? Answer me, you promise?"

Emma replied that she did. She ran into her mother's bedroom, rolled under her mother's bed and pulled across the wooden slides that would conceal her.