A/N: I don't own Criminal Minds! Just remember, all the stuff in italics are flashbacks!

Chapter 7

JJ POV

I sneaked into Penelope's lair before I had to get to the plane so that we could fly to the destination of our next case.

"Hey, PG," I said, causing her to jump.

"Jesus, Jayje!" She squealed. "What can I do for ya, pretty lady?"

I lowered my voice and went into serious mode. "What I am going to ask you is pretty damn unethical, and I'd totally be okay if you said no."

Penelope raised her eyebrows and grinned. "Now you have my full, undivided, attention. Want me to look into your southern beau?"

I shook my head. "No, actually, can we look into Emily's friend, Sasha Tyburczy? I got a weird feeling about her."

"You did?" Pen asked, sounding surprised. "She seemed professional to me. What is it about her that made your spidey senses all tingly?"

I shrugged. Deep down, I knew what it was. "Em has never talked about this woman but for some reason seems to trust her more than anyone? Does she have an obsession with Manson? Just seems off to me."

Pen didn't really believe my answer, but she started to type away anyway. "Sasha Tyburczy was raised by her single mother in California. She had good grades and went to Yale. She apparently lived with Emily in an apartment for their last two years of college. And then she worked in the LAPD. Nothing that seems out of the ordinary. No criminal record, or anything like that. I'm cross-referencing her with Emily in anything online or written and… Oh."

"Oh?" I asked her, trying to find where she was looking at the screen. "What does 'oh' mean?"

"Nothing bad or anything. These frat guys wrote this piece about her trying to 'ruin their lives.' And Emily is mentioned. As, and I quote, 'her dyke girlfriend.'"

Pen looked back at me to try to see my reaction. She was surprised that I didn't really have much of one. That was actually, what I totally suspected.

"So you knew?" Penelope asked me. "You knew that the beautifully mysterious Emily Prentiss was gay?"

I nodded silently. It wasn't like I could tell her how I knew. I couldn't tell her how I exactly found out.

"I can't believe everybody left, "I mumbled as I took another long sip of beer. "Thanks for staying with me. If you weren't here I might've gone home with some stranger."

Emily nodded and looked at her glass of vodka. She seemed upset. Like something was bothering her. "No problem."

I stared at her. Emily was beautiful. And freakishly smart. She could probably have anyone she wanted. "You seeing anyone? I feel like we don't talk about anything personal with you."

The brunette shook her head. "I don't date, really. Never been my kind of thing. Haven't been in a real committed relationship since like college."

I raised my eyebrows. No relationships? There must have been a reason for that. And I wanted to know them. All of them. I wanted to rip off that mask on her face. I wanted to know the real Emily Prentiss.

"So… what's your type? Are you into the Morgan type of guy or Reid. Nerdy, athletic, or… commanding…"

Emily snorted. "Are you referring to Hotch? Are you insane?"

I shrugged and took a swig of beer. "Just saying. You both have a lot of tension going on there."

"Ew, JJ. One, he's married and has a kid. Two, he's my boss. And three, the so-called tension comes from his lack of trust in me. He thinks I just want political gain."

"Do you?" I asked her gently. She glared at me and I changed my question. "I mean, why the BAU?"

"I was lost for a while. I was always quite the ambitious girl. And the BAU seemed to be everything I was looking for. I worked my ass off for it. But I guess that doesn't matter when none of you trust me."

I sighed. The mysterious new girl was right. "It's not your fault. The girl you replaced… her leaving hit us hard."

"You don't have to explain it to me. Really. It is how it is."

I felt guilty. But she didn't seem like she was in the mood to talk about it. "Let's change the subject. So you aren't into Hotch. Morgan or Reid?"

She chuckled and shook her head. She finished her glass of vodka. "Neither."

I rolled my eyes. "Why? Because it's inappropriate to talk about our colleagues like that? Pen and I talk about this all the time."

"No, it's not like that. Look, I don't do this. The girl talk. Sharing feelings. I'm a lone wolf, okay? And if you are really that interested, I wouldn't pick Morgan or Reid because there's a girl at the end of the bar that keeps checking me out and I think I'm going to sleep with her tonight."

I was utterly speechless by her bluntness. That was definitely one way to shut me up. "Oh."

"Yeah. Thanks for the fun, JJ. See you tomorrow." She put down a few dollars and headed toward the redhead that was making googly eyes at her.

I watched Emily whisper something in her ear and make the girl laugh. I watched it take less than two minutes for Emily to get the girl to follow her out. Faster than Morgan. Definitely faster than me.

I finished my beer and took off. I spent the rest of my night thinking about Emily Prentiss and the impression she left on me.

"Yeah," I told Penelope slowly. "She told me a couple months after she first joined. It wasn't a big deal."

"It makes sense. That's why she doesn't tell us anything. It sucks though. She could have told me. I wouldn't have judged." She frowned, looking sad.

"She knows that, Pen. She didn't mean to tell me, I think. She only talked about it once. And she was drunk. But she never told me about her."

Penelope nodded, looking less upset. "Yeah. It sounds serious. On record, it doesn't look like they communicated much at all after the end of their senior year."

"Weird. What kind of relationship ends suddenly like that, but doesn't end that bad enough for them to work professionally and have total trust in each other?" Something was off. I knew it. Something just wasn't adding up.

"Not sure, girl wonder. All I know is Emily Prentiss becomes more and more of an enigma every day."

I couldn't agree more.

Emily POV

"Those parents were horrible," Sasha commented as she drove us back to the precinct.

The parents didn't give us too much information. Each one of them had basically the same story (their kid was good but got into drugs or sex). And I agreed with Sasha. The parents did not seem like good ones.

They did seem to care about their children, but only to a certain degree. They never went out to look for the kids or the man who seduced them into the cult.

Typical stories for typical cults. Nothing sounded like Manson. And when we brought him up, everyone denied the connection. But who wouldn't? Would anyone like to be connected to the murdering sociopath?

"I can't believe we haven't heard about this sooner," Delmonico added thoughtfully. "All these kids have been lured away from their homes by this asshole. And we didn't even know this was happening."

"They didn't have parents to advocate for them," Sasha argued. "It's not our fault that we didn't know. Unfortunately, there are a lot of parents in this world that weren't made to be parents. And some are able to exploit that."

I nodded. My experience with parental figures was not very good. Though, I knew there were good parents out there. Hotch was a perfect example of that. But I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if I met someone like Manson. If someone offered me love when I was a teenager who didn't know that it was possible for anyone to care for me.

"Emily, want to see the crime scene?" Sasha asked me. "Olsen is checking with the M.E. about the bodies right now. He's going to figure out if there is more than one perp like I expect."

"That sounds good," I told her. "Tell me about the scene."

Hey guys! Thanks for reading! Reviews are welcome and super appreciated!