Sometime in the past few hours of sleep, the clear night sky had given way to fat raindrops that splattered comfortingly against the floor of the balcony off our bedroom. It was the sound of those drops falling that woke me up. I blinked open my eyes and noticed Emily wasn't beside me in bed. I reached my hand out and found her side of the bed still warm.

I glanced at the bedside clock and saw it was a little after two o'clock in the morning. The last time I remembered looking at the clock, it was a little after ten and Emily was sprawled out half on top of me, her sweaty body pressed against my skin, her breath warm against my neck. I must have drifted off then.

I stretched and felt the ache in my muscles. Smiling, I sat up in bed and tried to remember the general direction my underwear had been flung hours before. I gave up on that quickly and just grabbed a new pair from the dresser drawer.

From the crack in the bedroom door, I could see light filtering up from the first floor of the rowhouse. I quietly made my way downstairs, wondering what Emily was up to. I found her standing in front of the window in the living room, staring out at the rainy street, the green space beyond that and the Potomac. There was one light on in the kitchen that gave enough of an illumination so that I could see her. She appeared to be wearing the dress shirt I'd been wearing the day before, the one I'd worn to work in the morning and worn to the doctor's office when we took our HIV tests.

I gazed at her back for a few seconds and was about to approach her when she raised her arms above her head and stretched. The first thing I noticed was that aside from my shirt, she appeared to be wearing nothing else; the hem of the shirt raised enough that I could see she hadn't bothered with underwear at least. The second thing I noticed was what was clutched in her right hand.

"That's mine," I said with a smirk.

She spun around, her eyes wide, a spoon in her mouth. Once she got over the shock of me surprising her, she removed the spoon from her lips and returned my smirk. Her hair was a rumpled mess and the street light illuminated her figure as she stood there, only one button around mid-chest fastened, my Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey in her hand.

I stepped towards her and wagged my finger. "When we were at the store on Sunday, I went for that and you chose some non-fat frozen yogurt thing that shouldn't even be on the same shelves as real ice cream."

She dipped the spoon in the container and took another bite. "Sex makes me hungry," she said with a raspy voice after swallowing. "Besides, I think I more than worked off the calories to allow me a little indulgence."

I stopped right in front of her. "So you're leaving me with that criminal case of ice cream substitute?"

She dug out another spoonful of ice cream and winked at me. "We can share," she whispered as she held the spoon out to me.

I took the spoon from her hand and turned it around, feeding her the ice cream. Then I chased after it with my lips and tongue. She moaned in my mouth as I went after my treat. When her mouth was clear of the sweet taste of ice cream, and there was only Essence of Emily left, I pulled away from her. With heavily-lidded eyes she took the spoon from me and fed me a bite of ice cream, then proceeded to press her lips against mine and return the favor of taking her bite of ice cream from my mouth.

I lifted her then, and carried her the few steps to the arm chair in the living room, sitting down and dragging her body over mine. My thigh muscles protested in a good way and warmth settled over me as I listened to her carefree laugh. She settled across my lap easily, her knees on either side of my hips, her forehead resting against mine, the ice cream still clutched possessively in her hand.

"We have to be up for work in less than four hours," she murmured, and her sweet breath washed across my face.

"Five," I responded. "I think we've worked out enough in the past twelve hours to forego running in the morning."

She tilted her head back and fed me a bite of ice cream. "Five, then." Contemplating my face in the soft glow of light, she smiled again. "I love you. I love how easy it is to be in love with you. I love how safe my heart feels with you."

I clutched her to me then, pulling her chest against mine, her arms holding spoon in one hand and ice cream in the other coming around my neck.

"The butterfly effect," she breathed across my cheek. "I keep trying to find the seemingly innocuous thing in our pasts that irrevocably changed our future to bring us to this point. It's strange to think that if I hadn't crossed paths with Clyde on a random case in Ohio when I was twenty-four years old, I likely would have never even met you."

That thought gave me pause. "If your father had never left, if my father hadn't been murdered, we wouldn't be here either. I have a hard time with Chaos Theory. I think it's just the way life goes. But I think you and I would have found each other somehow, no matter what."

She sat back on my legs then and contemplated me as she took a bite of ice cream. "You're turning me soft, making me believe in things like soul mates."

I watched her lick the sugary taste off her lips and followed my tongue with hers, completing the task for her, clutching her hips as she moaned.

"Do you believe?" I asked.

She fed me a bite of ice cream and blinked slowly at me. "I believe that people with simpler pasts probably have their pick of potential partners who could complete them. I believe that for people like us, happiness probably comes in the form of hiding a lot of ourselves inside instead of sharing it with someone else. Unless you find that one person, the who can reach inside and pull everything out, all the good and the bad, and love and understand the whole picture."

"And that's who I am to you?" I asked, my eyes burning slightly with the sting of tears I wouldn't let escape.

"That's who we are for each other," she whispered without hesitation while placing the ice cream container and spoon on the side table text to the chair. My eyes tracked her hands as she flicked open the single button holding my dress shirt on her body and skimmed it off her shoulders, letting it flutter to the floor at my feet…

"Derek," the voice says.

I startle from my memories at the voice that sounds like it's said my name several times. "Sorry," I respond.

Andrew Farley smiles at me sympathetically. He glances at the four containers of ice cream on the table. "So it's okay, then? For a treat for Leon this afternoon? I bought a few kinds because I didn't know what he liked."

I can't believe in this moment that I'm sitting in the kitchen of a mansion in Delaware having a conversation with Andrew Farley, the groundskeeper of this place and Chris's best friend from childhood, about ice cream.

My mother is missing, and Emily and JJ are hot on her trail at this moment. Penelope had found a few possibilities in terms of homes and rentals with the names Tatiana or Gavlan associated with them, but there was one that seemed the most likely: An old farm house that hugged the border between England and Scotland and was purchased by one Tatiana Craig eight years ago, approximately two months after four-hundred-thousand dollars had gone missing from Adrian Stancu's "family" bank account.

Three hours ago, a little after dawn in Delaware and late morning in London, Penelope found the house. Emily and JJ along with a man named Gil were off and running, trying to come up with a plan that none of us were privy to.

Two hours ago, a new picture of my mother arrived, this time of her naked and strapped to a table, fresh welts across her abdomen, and the message: Three million dollars. You have twenty-four hours to make the money available to move to an overseas account. Further instructions to follow.

Three million dollars. I didn't think the figure was random, which meant that the people behind this had more than just visual surveillance of us. In the past year we had granted college scholarships to four teenagers who were victims of sexual crimes, and three million dollars of Clyde Easter's money was approximately what we had left. It was spread far and wide in various investment accounts, and though I could have gathered it together and moved it around to make it available, I didn't bother. We were all in agreement on this point: Paying or not paying would not bring my mother back alive. Emily had to find her; that was my mother's only chance.

One hour ago, Andrew had left this property in Delaware to go to the store to buy some necessary supplies, like diapers for Rory. And, apparently, he'd raided the ice cream aisle as well.

Ten minutes ago, he arrived back at the house with bags. Rossi was dozing on a chair in the living room while Leon and Chris half-heartedly tried to play a game of chess near him. Rory was in my lap, munching on cereal and fruit.

My finger reaches out to trace the frost on the container of Chunky Monkey ice cream in front of me. "A treat is fine," I finally respond.

There was a level of sophistication with this case from the technology standpoint that didn't quite add up. The woman with the red, curly hair looked to be in her twenties. The man who helped Robert and Peter Daniels take me two years ago was also in his twenties. We deduced that they'd likely been children at some point who were kidnapped by Adrian's family. It was doubtful that any part of their childhoods had been spent becoming familiar with computers and hacking. And then there was Patrick Joyce, a man who had been in prison for the past twelve years. So who exactly had taught these people how to electronically send pictures that Penelope had no ability to track?

There has to be someone else helping them.

I am overtaken by the need to call Emily, to tell her to do this differently, to get my mother, but let law enforcement take it from there. I'm scared that they're going to be blindsided by more people than we're anticipating when they finally locate my mother.

I'd already reached inside Emily and found all the broken pieces, and we'd put them back together. She'd done the same for me.

The idea of another broken piece, like my mother being murdered. Or the piece that comes from Emily murdering the people who did this to our family, makes my heart seize up. I'm not sure how we recover from something like that. But I can't call her. Both she and JJ are radio silent for us right now, for their own protection as well as ours.

It's not until I feel Andrew try to remove it from the table that I realize I'm clutching that small container of Ben and Jerry's ice cream in a death grip.

The water was so hot, it was nearly scalding me. I wished I could make it hotter as I used ample soap and the washcloth to scrub the night's activities from my skin. I'd gotten into the private club with an invitation to meet up with Patrick again the next night. It was an accomplishment I should be proud of, and the desire to find the people who were taking, selling and raping children like Sam O'Brien was overwhelming.

Still, giving my body away to a group of people in a sex club repulsed me. My stomach lurched in the hotel shower and I threw up bile over the drain. I pressed my face into the hot spray after and let the pinpricks of water burn my skin.

I shut off the shower and dried enough to throw on my robe. I just wanted to sleep. To sleep and forget and get myself ready for round two.

I emerged from the steamy bathroom to find Clyde sitting on my bed. "Change of plans," he said, almost apologetically.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Clyde held up the box of hair dye, dye that would take my currently white-blonde head to very light brown with frosted highlights. "Tsia got into the weapon's group. Interpol is ready to send someone in with Doyle, and you're it."

Real fear settled in me, far more fear than what I felt about the idea of screwing random men in a sex club. This was a long-term assignment, and I'd heard enough about Ian Doyle to know that extraction or death were my only two options once I went in.

"I just got into the private club tonight. I'm close. I can feel it. Why are you pulling me?"

"It's not my call. Interpol wants Ian Doyle more, and you're the best person to go in."

There was something off with his voice, something that made me think he wasn't being completely honest with me. "What aren't you telling me?" I asked.

He stood from the bed and stepped towards me. His hand rose and he gently fingered my blond, wet hair. "Nothing. I just wanted you to get a break, but there's no time. I don't like pulling you from this case and giving up on getting these people, and I don't like you having to switch identities so quickly. I've got forty-eight hours to prep you, and then we're sending you to Boston, where you are to dazzle Doyle and get inside enough for him to bring you back to Europe with him. Lauren Reynolds. That's your name now. Time to let Katarina go, Emily."

I stared into his eyes. He seemed genuine. I nodded slightly. "Let me get dressed and we can get out of this hotel."

Gil's castle-like house has a safe room, which isn't surprising. That there is another door within that safe room that leads to a large, windowless supply room isn't really surprising either. The massive amount of supplies he has there did surprise me, though. He could wage a war against a small city and have supplies left over when all was said and done.

"What sort of people do you typically help?" I asked him cautiously this morning while I surveyed the space. A numbness had settled over me during the few hours I slept the night before; it was a feeling I was familiar with from my past. We had a direction to go, an address, and a plan in motion. There was no space in me for panic, fear or sadness; there was only a goal.

Gil smiled at me; he didn't seem to be put off by any question I threw his way, and didn't seem to mind me in his secret rooms. "I have a very small list of clients, people like Clyde. Most of the other people on your list will supply anyone with anything for the right price. I don't do it for the money because I don't need the money, so I can afford to be discriminating in my client list. I help people I trust to be doing the right things with the supplies I give them."

I fingered the guns on a display case. "Clyde came here. When we were in Theydon Garnon and I said we needed weapons and other supplies, I was surprised with how quickly he was able to get everything we needed without tapping out our money completely."

Gil nodded while he stood at a table and surveyed a selection of what looked like drones. "Clyde was the only other person who knew the codes to get in here. He called me to let me know he was taking supplies."

I closed my eyes briefly and sighed. Clyde. He was everywhere around me it seemed, and I missed him to the point that I ached. I thought I knew him best, but he lived his life with secrets. Gil was obviously one of his biggest secrets - a man who could and would get Clyde anything he needed without question. And now that loyalty had transferred to me.

I opened my eyes and fingered what looked like a typical sport's watch. "What's this?"

"GPS unit," Gil said without looking up from the table as he fitted what looked like a camera on a drone. "And a recording device, microphone and camera." He stopped what he was doing and walked towards me, picking up the watch. I stood quietly while he fastened it on my wrist. I half listened as he pointed out the mechanics of the watch. "I can find you anywhere in the world with this on," he said. "You keep it."

"Did you make this?" I asked.

Gil nodded and went back to the drone he was working on. "I have plenty of hours alone here."

I surveyed the room quietly while he worked. "Do you have the ability to make fake passports?"

Gil smiled slightly. "It's already done, Emily. Last night. For you and your family. I like to be prepared and look at all possible ends to an operation. If this goes south, which I'll do my damnedest to make sure doesn't happen, you'll need to disappear."

He nodded with his chin towards a backpack on the table across the room. Inside I found passports with fake names for me, Derek, Rory, Leon, my father and Fran. And what looked to be about fifty thousand dollars in cash.

I had to shut my eyes against the fake names and faces on those passport photos to keep my feelings in check. I felt like I'd been away from them for months when it had only been a couple of days. That life and my home seemed like a distant memory. "Where did you get the pictures?"

"Your cloud-based storage," he replied easily.

I stared at the back of his head. "We won't be using that anymore," I said as I put the passports back in the backpack.

"That's probably wise," Gil replied simply.

"Why are you doing this for me?" I asked him. I'd asked him several times, and his answer was always the same, simple, Because you called.

But he turned then to look at me then and gave me the real answer. "Clyde made me swear that if you ever needed help, I would help you. He told me he felt like he'd ruined your life because of a decision he made back in 2004."

Gil paused, the inner struggle evident in his voice at sharing a secret of Clyde's with me. I raised my eyebrows at him. Gil turned away from me again, but kept speaking. "It was Clyde's decision to pull you from the case in 2004 and send you in after Doyle instead. He hated the idea that you were involved in a case where sex with so many people was your only way in. He said he couldn't stand the thought. He decided to pull you and send you after Doyle instead, because he thought it was the lesser of two evils. Turned out, he was wrong. He said he'd never forgiven himself for Doyle. He told me you were like family to him in a way that no one had ever felt like family, stronger than blood. And then he made me promise that if anything happened to him, that I would be there for you. It was an easy promise to make."

I blinked back tears, trying to absorb what he'd just told me. I couldn't believe Clyde never told me, and I reasoned shame had a lot to do with it. Clyde didn't do shame or mistakes well. Still, if Clyde hadn't made that decision, there likely would never have been the BAU, never Derek, never Leon and never Rory. I probably would have never found my father.

"You knew all about me, but he never mentioned you to me," I said softly to Gil.

He had no response to that except for a small nod. "Two weeks after I made that promise, right before I left for Russia, Clyde came to me with all of his medals and awards. He told me he was dying and that he'd be giving my number to you when the time came."

I had a list of questions a mile long in my head, but didn't get a chance to ask them. My burn phone rang and I saw it was JJ. She told me she and Nick had procured the helicopter we needed.

"We need to go so we can get in position before it gets dark," I told Gil.

He nodded and picked up the drone and an iPad. He grabbed one of the duffel bags on the ground by the door and I grabbed the other. There was no adrenaline rush in me, not like when I went after Doyle; Doyle had been pure rage and vengeance and this was more like simple resolve, like an instruction manual in my head, a manual that told me how to get my life back.

Find all the people responsible, kill them, get Fran, set the trap for the scapegoat, go home, resume life.

Two hours later, still strangely calm with that mantra running through my head, I look through the binoculars at a two story house in the countryside. It's quite possible that my body is in Scotland right now, but the house sits firmly on the England side of the border. There's smoke coming from the chimney on this foggy, cold fall day. The Kevlar vest I'm wearing feels far heavier on my frame than I remember it feeling in the past.

Gil is clutching the iPad in his hand, controlling the drone that he sent flying in the air. I glance at the screen and see five red dots appear on the screen, images created by the heat sensors on the drone.

"Five bodies," Gil says.

"And not one of them is Fran's," I say disappointedly.

Gil glances at me. "They look like they're sitting around a room or a table. No one is moving. Fran wouldn't just be there hanging out with them," I explain.

"Maybe this isn't the house," Gil says.

But it is; I can feel it. Garcia had found enough information to make me believe we were in exactly the right place. Adrian had his own private plane, and he'd followed the rules for the most part in using it, filing a flight plan, and making far too many flights between Italy and the small airstrip in Scotland that was about fifteen miles from this house in the past eight years. Many of those flights had stops in Ireland first, which was perplexing. As far as we knew, no one in the family permanently lived in Ireland and they owned no property there. It lead us all to believe that if the people who took Fran had help, the likely place to start looking for that person or people was Ireland.

"I'm going to drop the mics by the doors," Gil says.

The little devices are small, so small I can't see them as they drop from the drone. Small, but strong enough that if someone comes out on the front or back porch and talks, we should be able to hear them. Gil then glides the drone back towards us as we hear the faint sound of helicopter blades. "Let's see if we can draw someone we recognize out from the house," Gil murmurs.

With my binoculars, I can make out Nick and JJ in the front of the helicopter as it crests the treeline behind the house. JJ's hair is now dyed brown and pulled back in a ponytail, and the sunglasses she's wearing are covering the brown contact lenses on her eyes. If they had my family under surveillance, they'd probably seen JJ countless times at our house.

The helicopter turns and circles the property, flying low, lurching and twisting, making it look like there are mechanical issues. UK AERIAL TOURS stands out in blue against both sides of the helicopter.

The front door opens and Patrick Joyce steps out of the house, looking into the air. I suck in deep breath. We're at the right place.

"It looks like it's having mechanical issues," I hear Patrick say into my earpiece as I watch him talk into the open doorway. The last time I'd heard that voice was in 2004, and it was telling me I was the best fuck he'd had in a long time. A little adrenaline surges inside me, a little rage towards these people instead of just numb resolve.

A woman emerges. A woman with red curly hair. A young, blond teenager is standing beside her holding a toddler with red curly hair. I suck in another breath. "Fuck," I murmur. When I'd imagined this, I never considered a small child in the picture.

Gil touches my hand. "We can't back down now. That's four. The fifth is probably the other man. I can just see his shadow behind the woman in the doorway. Fran must be on the property somewhere, but not in the main house."

I close my eyes and my heart jolts, refocusing me on my mission. This is Fran Morgan, and I want her back.

"Set it down hard, Nick," I say into my speaker.

I watch the helicopter as it soars nearly straight up in the air about three hundred feet. Then I hear and watch as the motor turns off and starts again, turns off and starts, stutters and stops and drifts towards the ground. About fifty yards above the side field on the property, it shuts off completely. I watch as it hits the ground hard.

Patrick is the first to move, running towards the helicopter.

"What are you doing?" the red-haired woman shrieks.

"They could be hurt, Marietta!" Patrick shouts back. "If we don't help them and let them call in, the tour company will send people looking."

"Fuck," Marietta yells. Then she's running after Patrick. "Embry, stay with Holly and Adrian," she shouts.

Adrian. The baby's name is Adrian. My stomach rolls as I stand. I grab a black backpack and sling a machine gun over my shoulder. Gil stands with me in unison and gathers his supplies. We run towards the house from the opposite direction of the helicopter.

I glance to my side and think about how many times I ran into a situation similar to this with Clyde or Derek or any member of the BAU, situations where I never felt too much fear because I knew we'd have each other's backs.

Gil fills me with the same sense of confidence.

Embry is the other man's name. Embry, a teenager and a toddler. We'll have them subdued before Patrick and Marietta return to the house, hopefully with JJ and Nick.

And somewhere on this property is Fran Morgan. I can feel it.