/

"Most women defend themselves. It is the female of the species-it is the tigress and lioness in you-which tends to defend when attacked."

-Margaret Thatcher

/

"Emily! Emily! Emily!"

Prentiss was just putting on her coat when the frantic whispers came from the back hallway. She turned to see the bright orange and purple blur of Penelope Garcia running her way.

Knowing what this was regarding, she gave a surreptitious gesture to Aaron-who had just stepped onto the catwalk-telling him that she'd need a moment. She led the other woman into the vacant conference room.

"What's going on?" She demanded as soon as the door was closed.

"Molly Prentiss has been very busy! If in fact this is being done by Molly Prentiss." Penelope still kept her voice hushed, in case a nosey onlooker from the bullpen decided to listen in. She placed her iPad on the table between them and began to scroll through case files. "On top of the two men you found, there are an additional four. One in North Dakota, one in Idaho, and two in California; one of which was discovered this morning."

Emily's jaw dropped as she looked at each case. All older me-two Irish, one Russian, and one Italian. They had to be Red Cards. She looked to Garcia, almost helplessly.

The tech took pity on her and rubbed her arm. "If it helps, these are all really bad guys. I mean like, super villains." She pulled up the most recent man's rap sheet. "This guy alone has nineteen murders under his belt, two of which were children. And the dude in North Dakota was a rapist. Molly was kind enough to amputate an extra appendage below the waist if you catch my drift."

At the moment, the humor of it all was in one ear and out the other. Prentiss shook her head, resisting the urge to start chewing her nails again. "How is it that no one has seen the connection?" She asked. "I mean, skilled criminals being dropped off with body pieces cut off isn't small news."

"It is when it happens in a small town." Garcia pulled up the list of cities. "She's been dropping them off in locations with very low populations and little foot-traffic."

Calculating once in her head and then again with her fingers, Emily looked around the room as she concluded, "About two a week. She's getting two a week."

"Yes exactly!" Garcia went to the US map on the far wall and gestured to the states as she spoke. "And it appears that she is working her way along the outer United States as of now. So the South West should be next."

Emily came to a decision. She had to do what was best for Molly at this point. She was obviously in a state of shock from Flynn's death and her actions could possibly end in her own demise. She needed help.

For some reason she checked her watch. It didn't matter what the time was, they needed to act fast. She hurried to the door and swung it open. Hotch was still leaning against the rail outside of his office, flipping through a case file, but he looked up when she stepped out.

"We need to call the team back in."

/

Magdalena, New Mexico

She smirked at the sight of the once beautiful woman making her way across the road only a few feet away from her car.

Sasha Tychkin was always so rude to her. She would look down on Molly, calling her names and threatening to steal Nick out from under her-as though that would have done her more harm than good. Sasha was nasty and cold. She killed men who so much as looked at her the wrong way.

As the only woman in The Red Card, she held a lot of power in her day.

But now, she was just another chubby middle-aged spinster getting by in a sweltering desert town. Her hair was bleached at the ends and dark near her scalp, as though she had run out of the funds to keep up with the flaxen look. Her skin was splotchy and she had tripled in size over the past decade.

"Oh, Sasha." She chuckled, watching the Russian woman enter her apartment building. "You look terrible."

/

"How have we not seen anything on this?" Morgan asked the obvious question after Prentiss and Garcia briefed them. "No news coverage, nothing."

"She's been lucky." Was Emily's simple response. In reality, it was the only thing that could explain the press' ignorance to what was happening across the country. "Or she knows exactly what she's doing. Dropping the criminals off in small towns with even smaller press circuits."

Reid set down the crime scene photos he had been studying carefully. "If this is Molly, she's using a lot more caution than she did with Gusev." He commented. "She's removing the limbs with a lot more precision, even tying tourniquets to ensure her victims don't bleed out."

"They're not victims." JJ was quick to correct. "They're killers, rapists."

Though no one could really disagree with her, Hotch still had to play the role of Unit Chief. "Be that as it may, we can't condone vigilante justice." He gave Emily an apologetic look before moving on. "It's not her responsibility to track these people down and it's definitely not her job to dismember them."

"No, it's her job to kill them." Prentiss said firmly.

Everyone, even JJ, gave her nearly identical incredulous looks.

"Revenge is not a job qualification." Rossi told her, keeping his voice empathetic. "I mean, we were able to write off Gusev's injuries as self defense for Molly's sake, but this is taking it a little far." He held up the man from North Dakota's photograph. All of the men winced at the sight of blood on his crotch.

Knocking the picture down, Emily sat up in her chair and rested her elbow on the table. "No, she's well within her jurisdiction." She insisted gesturing to Garcia. "Show them."

Penelope giddily poked a few buttons on her tablet, sending them all of the documents she had discovered while they were waiting for the team to arrive. "You'll have to look at mine Reid." She said, sliding the iPad across the table. "Can't have a paper trail."

Spencer wrinkled his nose with a mixture of confusion and distaste as he picked up the tablet and began reading.

"You have to be kidding me." Derek was the first one to realize what they were looking at. "This isn't real."

"As real as you and me." Emily assured him.

"Molly, the Molly we all met." Morgan pointed to the picture on the big screen. It was one that had been taken when Molly was pregnant. Her red hair was longer then and her smile was almost carefree. "That Molly is an assassin?"

"She doesn't like that word." Prentiss cringed. "But yes. She was hired by the CIA straight out of the academy. She had a particular skill set that they found desirable."

"She was only nineteen." JJ gasped, lifting her eyes to her friend's. "She was a professional killer when she was still a teenager?"

"It needed to be done."

"Somehow I doubt that." Morgan didn't want to snap at Emily, but it was late. And it was Friday. Learning that they had spent days with someone who had been hired by their government to kill was almost maddening.

Hotchner, who had been quietly reading Molly's file finally looked up. "She's still under contract?" It was more of a statement than anything else, but he still looked to Emily for an answer. When she nodded, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "So we have no legal reason to intercede."

"Are you serious?" Morgan practically shouted. "Hotch we can't-"

Prentiss held up her hand before he could go on with his rant. "We do need to stop her." She said. "She's not well. She's mourning for her son and acting out of rage. The press not catching on has been a blessing, but it's only a matter of time. When this hits the papers, the people on her list are going to catch wise and be ready for her."

"Physically, she seems quite capable of defending herself." Reid said pointing to another photograph. "A few of the men she took down were nearly three times her weight."

"She won't be able to hold up against their guns." Emily reminded him. "If they team up and ambush her, she wouldn't stand a chance."

When she turned her pleading brown eyes his way, Hotch knew he was doomed. He had already been weighing their options, but the desperation in her gaze settled it. "Garcia, run all the names through the system and cross reference them with Gusev and Nick Prentiss. We should be able to find out who's on her list." He tried to summon up an apologetic look for his team, but it still came across as quite stoic. "Wheels up in twenty."

/

Three hours outside of Magdalena, she found a motel just off the interstate. It was the kind of seedy establishment that obviously didn't think twice about their patrons paying in only cash.

Her body was weary and her head ached but she would only allot a few hours for rest. There were a total of five targets in Texas, and possibly one in Mexico. It was going to be a long couple of weeks and she wouldn't waste time by getting to comfortable.

"Sleep when you're dead." Her father said it as though he had coined the phrase. And when she was a child, she believed he was a genius so she assumed it was his personal philosophy. But despite the saying being overused and worn-out, she still allowed herself to keep it in mind when she was on a mission.

The fact was, she would have time to sleep. And she wouldn't have to wait for the sweet release of death to get it. No, when this was all over-when she finished her job-she was going to buy a penthouse in Manhattan and sleep for 72 hours.

And the bed there was going to be a hell of a lot better than the one that greeted her in the seedy motel room right outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Maybe if she was any other worn out traveler, she would have been put off by the musky odor and dust layered furniture. But Molly Prentiss was exhausted.

Her black clothes did well to hide the blood that had soaked them after days of haphazard amputations performed in deserted rest stops and riverbeds in the deep woods. But she could feel the weight of the dried liquid against her flesh. She felt grimy enough having gone without a shower for three weeks, but the added factor of Red Card blood seeping into her pores made her toes curl and her gut clench.

When she peeled off the long-sleeved shirt she nearly vomited at the crimson and brown colors that coated the skin surrounding her bra. The removal of her pants and shoes revealed the same thing. She almost looked like she had gotten a terrible spray tan in New Jersey back alley.

She wrinkled her nose, balled up the soiled clothing, and sorted them into the two vanity sinks that sat outside the bathroom. Turning on each faucet with the red dot, she let the water turn hot before pulling up the drain stops to let the bowls fill up.

Maybe soaking them overnight would get most of the stink out. She had plenty of spare clothes for now, but her list was long. She didn't want to throw anything out unless she absolutely had to.

There was a bar of soap sitting between the sinks. Molly decided it was better than nothing. She unwrapped it, placed it in one of the plastic shower caps in the complimentary basket, and slammed the heal of her boot against it until the soap was crushed into a fine white powder. She divvied it out into each sink and mixed the clothes around in the scalding water until there was a layer of bubbles covering the surface.

"Becky Home-Ecky." She chuckled to herself, removing her undergarments as she walked towards the shower.

/

"I told Strauss that we discovered the links to the crimes due to an anonymous tip." Hotch began briefing the team when the jet was somewhere near Alabama. "I told her it was an interstate spree, making it our jurisdiction. She gave us the go ahead because of the lull we're having. I did not tell her that Molly was involved. We'll just be surprised when she turns up."

The group nodded their assent. The Section Chief had been a little more than livid after the events with Gusev, but considering what they had gone through, she was merciful for the most part. She even granted Emily a week's bereavement for the loss of the nephew she never knew. Prentiss ended up coming in three days into the leave. Her time would be better spent catching people like Gusev and protect children. Like Flynn.

They would land in Arkansas. The men that would be next on her list would be scattered between Little Rock and Mexico, so the team was going to split up and follow those paths.

Garcia had joined them for this particular venture. Her skills at finding the UN-findable would definitely come in handy when searching for the elusive woman. And also, she was dying for the opportunity to meet a real-live CIA Assassin. As much as she hated the death and depravity that they dealt with on a day-to-day basis, the idea of someone being paid to kill the bad guys-no questions asked-was pretty wicked cool.

At the moment though, Penelope was more than a little miffed. She was a woman who prided herself on uncovering even the most reclusive human beings' dirty little secrets. But searching through the history of one Molly Prentiss (nee Briggs), was proving to be one of the more trying tasks in ten plus years of working for the BAU.

"She didn't exist! She didn't exist!" She insisted, pushing her laptop away from herself on the tabletop. The group all looked up from their respective files and conversations as she continued to rant. "This woman was created in a lab when she was eighteen. That's the only explanation for it. When we find her, I will lift up her shirt and show you that she does not have a belly button, because she was never born!"

If they hadn't been searching for her endangered sister-in-law, Emily would have laughed at the outburst. Penelope Garcia rarely got this flustered, but when it happened it was certainly a sight to behold.

"There has to be something Baby Girl." Derek leaned over from the seat beside Garcia's and pulled the computer in between them so he could watch her search.

"There isn't! I'm sorry but there isn't!"

Hotch looked to Prentiss and felt his brow furrow when he saw the serious contemplation in her blank stare. "What can you tell us?"

He had asked it quietly, but everyone's attention was drawn to their seats. Reid even stood from the couch and wandered over to them with his hands shoved in his pockets. The young man was obviously trying to act casual, but Emily knew that his purpose was to profile. If there was anyone she would allow to study her though, it was Spencer.

She nibbled on her lip before sighing and holding her arm out across the aisle. Derek understood the gesture and quickly passed the laptop over to her.

Aaron peered over her shoulder as she pulled up a files from not only the CIA but also from The Pentagon, The Department of Homeland Security, and The Department of Defense. Her fingers flew over the keys in speed that could only rival Garcia's. Before he could even see where she was getting the files from, she had at least twenty tabs opened and when she was finished, a birth certificate was in the first window.

"You stumbled upon this by mistake." She said evenly, handing the computer back to the Morgan.

Penelope's mouth opened in question, but when her eyes drifted back to the screen, her jaw dropped entirely. Spencer climbed on his knees in the seat behind the analyst and read over her shoulder, absorbing the information with a pensive stare.

After only a few minutes, the practically unflappable Reid sat up and turned to Emily with wide eyes. "Why didn't you tell us?"

His tone wasn't accusing or even hurt. It was just stunned.

Emily bit the corner of her lower lip before winding her jaw as she tried to think of an appropriate answer. It wasn't her intention to keep these things from her team, but the matters of Molly's past had always been dicey. For the younger woman's protection, she never said a word about her occupation and what led to it. Even after she'd wedded Nicholas and went on a self-prescribed sabbatical, she kept quiet. It was about keeping Flynn safe from harm as well at that point.

Before she could put these sentiments in words, Derek spoke up. He had read the over enough of the documents to get a general idea by that point. "This goes a lot deeper than the CIA." He said in disbelief. "This is international."

"To a certain degree." Emily dropped her shoulders and sighed.

Hotch, knowing that he'd get the full story-or most of it at least-when he was alone with Emily, looked to his team. JJ and Rossi had moved from their respective seats in the back to try to get a peak at Penelope's computer, so he didn't have to speak too loudly.

"You all know as well as I do that we don't want any CIA involvement in this case. And that goes for other agencies also, international or otherwise." He said, keeping his voice calm. The last thing he wanted to do was put his people (Emily in particular) at disease. "So we need to handle this as calmly as possible. Our priority is getting Molly and bringing her in. We'll worry about the rest later."

He eyed the computer warily. He could have ordered to see it right then and there, but bit his tongue. This was one of the rare cases where it seemed that the less he knew the better. No matter what Emily had just revealed, his objective going out was retrieving Molly and that wasn't going to change.

Clutching Prentiss' hand under the table in quiet support, he swallowed hard.

Please don't let this be a mistake.