A/N: Thank you for the four nominations I got in the 2012 Profiler's Choice Fan Fic awards! I'm honored and touched. There are so many great stories and authors out there that I'm thrilled some of you have found my works worthy. If you go to the Forum's section, the ballot is up to vote. I also want to apologize for the length of time it's taking me to post updates. Work has been beyond insane and it's cutting into all of my time for things like, you know, sleep. Anyway, I hope folks enjoy this installment and thank you again for the nominations!
"After checking with Beth's doctors and looking at past x-rays, the ME and Ducky agree that the body found in the burning car is definitely Beth Clemmons."
Gibbs' grim announcement was met with stunned silence. The BAU team could only blink and stare at the NCIS agent. Gibbs himself only had eyes for Emily as he carefully watched her reactions. He saw her blink, her lips parted but no sound came out. Then she slowly closed her lips and stared back at him with wide, dark eyes.
Morgan found his voice first. "There has to be some mistake."
"Ducky doesn't make mistakes and he's gone over it multiple times," Gibbs informed him.
"What about the possibility of a hacker switching medical records or altering them?" Reid chimed in.
"When Beth Clemmons was sixteen, she broke her arm in a skiing accident. Her pediatrician actually treated her for it. He retired fifteen years ago but still kept all his records. He never computerized his old files. The original x-ray is what Ducky and the ME used to confirm it was Beth. The Doctor remembered the broken arm clearly so no chance the x-rays were mislabeled or switched."
"So," Rossi cleared his throat, rallying from this devastating development. "We look at this case differently. Maybe Beth was the intended victim all along and not Hotch."
"Or it's someone who is after Hotch and Beth was merely a means to hurt him," JJ suggested.
"Aaron? What do you think?" Dave asked his friend quietly. Aside from Emily, the Unit Leader was the only other person who hadn't spoken.
Hotch's mind whirled in confusion. Beth was actually dead. Yes, he had broken up with her, but he had liked her at some point so he couldn't help feel some sadness that she was gone. But more importantly, their main suspect was dead. Was this yet another nightmare from his past coming to haunt him?
"It could be someone we came across in one of our cases," Hotch finally said.
"At least Emily isn't in any danger," JJ replied.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Gibbs stated in a grim tone.
Emily turned wide, troubled eyes towards the former Marine, knowing the other shoe was about to drop now. "Gibbs? What else is there?"
He pulled out a small chip from his pocket and held it up for everyone to see. "I found one of those memory flashy doo dads at Hotchner's apartment when I went to go pick up his clothes. Clothes that didn't give us anything. Just when I was leaving, I saw this lying almost underneath the couch. If the light hadn't hit it in a certain way, I would have missed it."
"What's on it?" Hotch asked sharply, knowing in the pit of his stomach he was not going to like the answer.
Gibbs merely handed it over to JJ who was sitting next to the laptop that was connected to Rossi's TV. She placed it in a reader and a series of image files appeared on the larger screen. She clicked on one and a picture of Emily came up.
All the files were pictures of Emily. As they clicked through the files, they saw each of them were photos of the brunette taken at least over a period of a few weeks, if not more.
"Damn," Morgan breathed out softly. "Em was being closely watched."
"That isn't the only problem," Gibbs noted in a voice heavily laced with worry. He had been staring at the photos for half the night, fear filling him with each one he clicked on. He may not be a profiler, but his gut was better than any book education and he knew these were more than just simple surveillance photos. He looked over at Hotch and Rossi and saw the two older men had spotted the problem immediately.
Morgan frowned and tilted his head to the side. He took over clicking through the photos from JJ. Slowly, the frown faded from his face to be replaced with panic and fear. He glanced over at Emily, concern etched on every feature.
"What? What is it?" JJ asked as she picked upon the anxiety of the older men. She looked around the room and saw some realization dawn on Reid's face too. "What is it? We knew Em was being watched by Beth, so what's the big deal with these photos?"
"Study how the photos are shot, JJ," Emily murmured. Her face didn't betray anything, but her comment told Gibbs she had seen it too.
JJ sighed and took control of scrolling through the pictures. She wasn't certain what she should be looking for or what had caught everyone's attention. "They're pictures of Emily going through her everyday life." JJ titled her head to the side and frowned. "They're all centered. Like the person who took them took great care in taking the picture." She clicked on another picture and it struck a familiar chord with her. She saw herself in the background wearing a blue blazer. JJ's frown deepened. She hated that blazer. It was an impulse buy and it was on sale, but it wasn't the most comfortable thing to wear. The one time she wore it was when they were in Chicago on a case four weeks ago. "That was taken in Chicago," JJ replied slowly. "If this was just about surveillance photos taken by Beth, would she follow Emily on a case out of town?"
"That's the problem," Rossi said grimly as he moved closer to the TV. "She wouldn't. If she was trying to get Emily's routine down, there would be no need to follow her out of town on a case. She would be studying her habits locally; what stores Emily shopped at, where she had her dry cleaning done, that type of thing."
"And look at the photos," Morgan continued. "Centered, focus, whoever took the photos cared about the subject. Cares about Emily."
"Which means this might have been about Emily all along, not about Hotchner," Gibbs finished. He turned to look at the brunette who sat silently by. "Emily, you are the target."
All eyes turned towards the brunette who stared at various pictures of herself. Finally, she said in a low voice, "That last photo, it was taken just last week." She bit her lip the only physical sign of her anxiety. This person had been stalking her for so long and she was completely unaware of it. He had been in her home, watching her, following her hundreds of miles out of town and she had been blissfully blind to it all.
"Hey," Gibbs said to her softly as he sat down next to her on the couch. "I promise you, no one is going to come near you."
"I'll make certain of it," Hotch replied as he sat down on the other side of Emily. He looked sharply at Gibbs. "Thank you for your assistance, Agent Gibbs, but we can handle it from here."
"You've done a bang up job of it so far," was the older man's sarcastic reply. "I think you'd be safer at my place," he told Emily. All his distrust and lack of faith in the abilities of Hotch's BAU team came roaring back. Gibbs had lost too many people in his life and he wasn't about to lose another, not while he can do something about it.
"She's perfectly fine here!" Hotch snapped. "I won't let anyone near her."
"You're the reason this whack job has focused in on Emily!" Gibbs shouted. "If you had used your brain and seen Beth for the psycho she really was, she wouldn't have even met Emily, let alone bring this other stalker into her life."
"How do you know this all stemmed from my relationship with Beth?"
"Where else could it have come from?" snarled Gibbs as he stood up. "Obviously Beth hooked up with someone who could help her with some of the more difficult things like setting up the video cameras in Emily's apartment, doing surveillance on her. This psycho found Emily because your nut job girlfriend got jealous of her! She got this guy to help her and he became obsessed with Emily and now she's in his sights."
Hotch stood up slowly and stepped into Gibbs' personal space. The FBI agent's face was mere inches from the other man's. His voice was a low growl, but everyone in the still room heard it as clearly as if he had been shouting. "Let's get this straight, Gibbs, Emily Prentiss is not one of yours, she's one of mine and we in the BAU take care of our own and we don't need NCIS' help."
"Stop it!"
Emily stood up, stepping between the two men and creating a buffer between them. "I do not need either of you to 'protect' me. You both seem to forget I'm a trained agent who can probably beat both your sorry asses." She pushed the two men aside, muttering under her breath, but still loud enough for everyone to hear, "Chauvinistic assholes."
The others stared at her in shock, though a smirk lurked around Rossi's lips. When Hotch glared at him Dave looked down and moved his hand to his mouth.
Emily went up to the TV screen and stared at the photo, the last one on the memory card. She looked at herself standing on a street corner, a paper coffee cup in her hand, staring at something off to her right. It was taken a week ago; she remembered when she last wore those clothes. From the lighting it looked to be at around lunchtime.
"Why kill Beth and frame Hotch?" she mused aloud. Emily turned to look at the others. "Beth, if really did have a partner and this is who's watching me, makes sense. If this person thought Beth might do me harm, he may have killed her to protect me. But why frame Hotch?"
"If he worked with Beth, he might believe what she did, that you two were involved," Reid replied.
"But he's been following me," Emily argued, "He must have seen that I'm not involved with Hotch."
"Doesn't matter with these obsessional types," Morgan replied as he moved towards the TV screen himself. "If he believes Hotch is competition, it's not going to matter if Hotch has never been over to your place."
"Well…" Hotch began.
Emily glanced at him over her shoulder while everyone looked at them in surprise or in Gibbs' case, a frown. "He dropped me off at my place once or twice after a case." She looked pointedly at Hotch, not wanting the others to know of the one night he spent at her home. It was perfectly innocent, he slept in the guest room, but she didn't need anyone to hear about it. It wasn't their business.
"We have anything on this computer partner?" Rossi asked.
"Garcia is still working on it," Morgan reported. "She's having a hard time tracking this guy's signal. He's good, good enough to give Baby Girl fits."
"Well, that's our best hope of finding this guy," Hotch began.
"There is another way…" Emily interrupted.
"Like Hell!"
"Absolutely not!"
Hotch and Gibbs spoke simultaneously, knowing exactly what Emily was thinking of doing.
"What?" the brunette asked in an irritated voice.
"You are not going to be bait," Hotch snarled, furious that the idea even crossed her mind.
"Garcia might be having a hard time tracing this guy's signal because I've gone sort of underground the past 48 hours. If he sees me, he might fire up the surveillance again," Emily argued.
Hotch stepped towards her and this time invaded her personal space. "Put that idea out of your head right now, Prentiss," he snapped, cold dread clutching at his heart at the prospect that this unknown man could get close to Emily, has been close to her without her being aware. "You are not going to be bait and that's final. I'm making it an order."
"For once I agree with Hotchner," Gibbs said in a cool voice. "We don't know what we're dealing with, no clue who this guy could be or where he is now. Too many unknowns to guard against. We can find him without you trying to lure him out."
"We?" Hotch arched an eyebrow at Gibbs. "This is not an NCIS case, Agent Gibbs."
"And it's not a Bureau one either," the NCIS man shot back. "But you guys need me now because I can get information you can't, like having McGee dump Beth's home, office and cell number. Her emails, every contact she may have had to try to figure out where she dug this guy up and who he is."
Hotch's lips thinned into a single line. Gibbs was right; they were still in the same situation they were yesterday, with no resources. Now, the stakes were even higher as there was a clear danger to Emily.
"How soon can McGee have that information?" Hotch asked in a heavy voice.
Gibbs was already pulling his cell phone out of his suit jacket. "If he's smart, he'll have it for me by the morning."
Hotch turned towards his team as Gibbs made his call. "Morgan, go back and check on how Garcia is doing. We need to know where that signal on those cameras is coming from."
"I'm on it," Morgan replied. He gave Emily's arm a quick, comforting squeeze as he walked past her to go back to Mrs. Mundy's house.
"Reid, go back to Beth's job and see if that's where she made the computer connection. She had to have found the guy somewhere and I remember her talking about how the gallery kept switching contractors for their IT services. See what you can get out from that chatty woman you talked to earlier. Rossi and JJ, I need you to get traffic footage and the security footage from my apartment building. Either I made my way back to my apartment and someone came by later to drug me or someone helped me back there. Either way, we know someone was in my apartment and they must have been caught on my building's security cameras and maybe some traffic ones."
"Someone hacked into Beth's apartment building's security cameras, what if the same happened with the traffic ones and Hotch's building?" Reid queried.
"I can't vouch for the traffic cameras, but my building is old school in that it's a closed system. Physical sabotage would have to happen to disarm the cameras and there are a lot of them, in very discrete and hidden places throughout the building. It's part of the reason I picked it," Hotch informed them. After what happened with Foyet, he made certain he and Jack were in the most secure building he could find, short of moving them into Quantico itself.
His team nodded, but Emily was eyeing him sharply, her name left off the list of assignments. "And what am I supposed to be doing, Hotch?" she asked waspishly, not happy with how her supervisor felt she needed to be packed away in cotton wool and put into a glass case.
"I'm going to need your help here, Prentiss," Hotch replied. "You have your assignments." It was more than hint he wanted the others gone.
"Come on, guys," Rossi said, pushing JJ and Reid towards the door. "We need to get ahead of this fast. We don't know when Kramer will be back looking to arrest Hotch."
"So what special project do you need me to help you with, Hotch?" Emily asked as soon as the others were gone. Gibbs was in another room finishing up his call to NCIS and they were alone. She didn't believe Hotch really needed her to work on anything here with him. She was certain he was just being high-handed again.
He almost smiled at her expression which clearly told him she didn't believe he really needed her for anything. But he actually did. "It's becoming more obvious that I was drugged, but there's a chance I might remember something. I've been getting occasional flashes, but nothing that makes sense. I need you to do a cognitive interview with me."
Emily blinked at him in surprise. She wasn't expecting that. "Are you sure? We may not get anything and…"
Hotch nodded, knowing why she was hesitating. What he might reveal could be embarrassing, especially in front of a subordinate.
"Maybe Rossi is the better person for this job," she began.
"No, you're actually the best cognitive interviewer we have," Hotch shook his head and she was. Emily's calm demeanor and her personality relaxed the interviewee, allowing them to remember details they wouldn't when questioned in a typical manner. She knew how to lead the person through potential traumatic moments and created a bond of trust between them. And it was this trust that made Hotch, while not entirely comfortable; comfortable enough to have her do it.
She peered intently into Hotch's face and saw he was completely serious about this. If he was willing to do this, she would have to agree. She nodded her head sharply. "Let's get to it."
A/N 2: They're getting closer, but what will the cognitive interview review? For those who are looking for the Profiler's Choice nominees and how to vote, you can find it at:
topic/ 74868/73609377/1/ 2012-Profiler-s-Choice-CM-Awards-FINAL-VOTING-BALLOT-HERE
Just remove the spaces. There are a lot of very good authors/stories nominated so show your support by voting!