CHAPTER 14
CE N'EST PAS MON NOM, MAIS APPELLE MOI LAUREN
On the way back to the campus, after that failed outdoors activity, trainees were quietly being instructed to go straight to their rooms and wait for callback in the morning.
Angie was not going to do any of that.
"Excuse me!" She said impatiently, walking over to a superior. "I need to know what happened to Amanda, she's my roommate."
The man she had approached looked her up and down in what was supposed to be an intimidating manner.
"You need to get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be quite the day for all of you." He replied vaguely.
"It is going to be one Hell of a day if you don't tell me what happened to my roommate!" Her brows furrowed and she quickly realized that she was making a scene in front of the very wrong person. "Sir." She added, to soften things up a bit.
"We are not at liberty to give out any information." He was like a brick wall – no matter how hard she kept on kicking different bricks, the wall was still standing.
"Ugh!" Angie said dramatically and went on to bug the next superior that she saw in her sight.
"Excuse me, I need to know what happe-…" She got interrupted immediately, as this person only pointed a finger towards the dorms.
Angie hated to admit it, but she was going to have no luck doing things this way. So, she walked back home and came up with a different plan of action.
Emily had gotten off the plane a couple of hours ago. She took a bus to the city center and walked right into a supermarket. As she exited it, she was carrying a big bag of things and a small basket.
She had to options: taking another bus, or walking for about a quarter of an hour. She chose the latter.
As her shoes started hitting the pavement, her eyes were glued to her surroundings. She loved this city. She also hated this city.
Soon, she reached the place she wanted to visit. Not many people were around and it made her feel so much more relaxed already. From the big bag she pulled out a beach towel, because that was what she had found at the clearance section of the supermarket, randomly; and she placed it on the ground. Next up was the tiny picnic basket, which she left empty, because it really was more for decoration purposes, than for commodity. After that, a bottle of wine and a paper tray with strawberries popped on the towel. She took her time to set everything right and, five minutes later, she kicked off her shoes and sat down with a smile.
That smile disappeared quickly.
Her mind started being flooded by a very specific flashback and, no matter how good it was to be back at that same spot where the flashback was from, it still hurt her. In a way, it made her heart skip a beat, and she wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
One wine glass later, on an empty stomach, and Emily Prentiss was a little less concerned about the flashbacks. They were still there - every time she blinked, she saw a face, she heard a voice, she felt sadness. But, luckily for her, soon she was also feeling the tipsiness from the alcohol and it felt quite good.
"Je vois une belle dame. Excusez-moi, mais je suis curieux de la rencontrer." A deep, very manly voice, came up from behind her.
It startled her. Egoistically, she knew the man was talking to her, so she turned around.
And he was gorgeous.
The most perfect vision of a man that she had ever seen.
His hair was parted sideways and it was dark and curly; slicked and yet a bit messy. His eyes were not afraid to explore what was in front of him and the smile on his face showed that he appreciated the view. When she had first laid eyes on him, he had made the tiniest, cutest bow of courtesy. He didn't approach her, as to not seem too direct, yet he stood immobile, waiting to figure out if this beautiful woman, as he had just called her, wanted to get to know him as well.
Emily did not register any of that. What she saw and understood from the whole situation was: a guy, standing in front of her. A male. That was it. And it was kind of enough, but it did help to know that he was so damn sexy, in his own French way.
She eyed him up and down as well with a certain hunger in her eyes. It was definitely a lot more forward than his approach, but he did not seem to mind. Not that she would have noticed. After almost finishing the bottle of wine on her own, there were just shadows and noises around her. It was awesome, as far as she was concerned.
"Ce n'est pas mon nom, mais appelle moi Lauren." She introduced herself, not even realizing she was speaking a foreign language.
"Je m'appelle Richard." The man smiled and extended his hand in a very formerly fashion, wanting to shake her hand or maybe even kiss the palm of her hand, as if he could get any more perfect.
Emily waved. Like a complete idiot.
"Comme le patisserie Ree-sha'hd?" She imitated the way he had pronounced his name.
"Oui, exactement." He nodded. In his whole entire life, he had never had a woman ask him if his name was like the famous pastry shops in France. Which, he had to give it to her, was exactly what it was.
"Hi." Emily said shyly. Not even the first boy she had ever tried to flirt with, had ever seen her so shy.
"Oh, you…you are American?" Richard switched to English, although he already knew that Emily's French was perfect.
"Oh, I could be anything you want me to be." She bit her bottom lip, but this time it wasn't out of confusion or anger. It was seduction.
"Huh?" He said in confusion.
"Yeah, you are definitely French, alright." Emily grinned. Her opinion of French men was that they were so incredibly slow. But so damn hot, as well.
"Can I maybe offer you dinner? Maybe at Pur' - Jean-François Rouquette?" Really, he had her at dinner, but dropping the name of the coolest fine dining place in Paris was not a bad addition to his offer.
"Oh, oui." She giggled, because a drunk Emily Prentiss giggles. She also accepts random offers from complete strangers. And she flirts mercilessly. Although, a sane and sober Emily Prentiss would probably do the same.
He helped her stand up and chuckled at her choice of wine. Those American tourists would never really know when to drink certain alcohols and what canapé to accompany them with.
To his question where she was staying, she improvised and said the name of the first hotel that came to her mind. He offered her a ride there, so she could sober up and get ready for the evening.
Angie didn't know when she had fallen asleep, but she knew that when the clock would hit 5:30 am, she would awake by the sound of her alarm. And, unfortunately, Amanda wouldn't be there to get annoyed by it.
At 5:41 she was already knocking at the door of Bryan and Jack's room.
"Woman, are you crazy?" Bryan scolded her as he opened the door.
"Completely." She said truthfully. "Now, if Dan calls us at 7 for the usual 7:30 training session, that only gives us two hours to do this."
"Do what?" Jack was now fully awake, thanks to her chipper voice.
"We are going back to the woods to figure out what happened." She informed them and they had no choice but to get dressed and follow her.
"Wait, we were right here." Bryan commented as they walked past something he remembered. "But it's not on the map. What the Hell is that map, anyways?"
Now that they could actually see it, since it was already twilight, it made no sense. That was a random piece of paper that did not correspond to their surroundings, at all. Angie was convinced this was part of the training.
"Okay, here is where my fairy lights went off. I just found the battery holder cap on the ground. It must have fell off yesterday, as I tried to fix them." She pointed out and tried to think of where everyone was when Jack and Amanda started bickering.
"If I'm right, she went in that direction." Her finger pointed to one direction and Bryan started to walk.
"Oh shit!" He exclaimed a couple of minutes later.
"Angie, don't!" He was first in the line, as they explored, and he took a few steps back, holding Angie back so that she wouldn't see what he had just seen.
That only made her want to see it even more.
She shrugged away from his hands and walked over to where he was standing when he first spoke.
"Oh my God!" She gulped, her eyes almost popping out of their sockets from the gruesome discovery.
There was a thick tree log on the ground. It must have fallen previously, as it looked like it had been there for a while. And then, on the other side of it, there was the steep hill they had suspected that Amanda must have fallen off. They hadn't been able to see it last night, in the dark. And then there was blood all the way down to where Angie could see markings, surely placed there just hours ago, by the supervisory agents who had, presumably, found Amanda.
She rubbed her eyes a few times, hoping that it would have been just a bad nightmare, a vision, an illusion.
It was not.
Bryan came up from behind her and wrapped his hands around her slim frame. She tried to shrug him off, but he pulled her in even closer and squeezed her body a little tighter. He wasn't sure how it was possible that she wasn't bawling her eyes out already, but he decided to give the top of her head a little kiss anyway, just for support.
Jack paced around, waiting for the two of them to put the blame on him. And yet, they didn't. They were all grown-ups and it had been Amanda's choice to wander off on her own.
"I don't want this to be true." Angie whined, her hot breath lingering on Bryan's bare shoulder. "I'm sick of people dying on me all the time."
"Hey, did you guys receive it?" Matt was the first one to send a text in the group chat.
"Yeah. Bummer." Garcia replied while making herself a cup of tea and stroking her cat with her free hand.
"Not my type of a vacation." Luke was not happy when people commanded him to take a vacation.
"At least it's paid." JJ put her two cents in. She would have been pissed if it were the opposite.
"Hey, don't get ahead of yourself, JJ. The e-mail never specified that." Rossi sent a short audio to the chat, as he was cooking pasta for lunch and he needed both hands and all sensory organs in his body to focus on one thing and one thing only – the sauce.
"Wait, get what? What are you guys talking about? Can someone explain?" It was a miracle Spencer even replied to the texts, since he clearly was not reading his e-mails.
Luke took it upon himself to help a friend out, since he was the one who started the conversation after all. He copied the mail to the chat.
"Dear BAU members,
After careful consideration, the Section Chief and supervisory personnel have come to the conclusion that your presence on the premises is not of urgent matter. As we have already informed your Unit Chief, SSA Prentiss, we kindly suggest that you all to take the week off.
We expect you to finally start bringing the Bureau results, as soon as you come back and we are sure of your kind collaboration.
Sincerely,
Section Chief Meredith Fowler"
"Ha-ha-ha. Sincerely, my ass." JJ couldn't help but comment as she had the opportunity to read this ridiculous thing one more time.
"Really, though. The fact that our Section is being headed by someone who managed to make at least three grammar mistakes in three sentences alone, is preoccupying." Reid had a thing for formal documents that were written badly.
"Forget the grammar, Spence. She practically called us out on the lack of results lately. And we are forced to stay at home. And Rossi, you were right – nowhere does it say what kind of a leave this is." JJ hadn't slept all night, worried about where her friendship with Emily stood. To top it all, she had to wake up to that e-mail. She was pissed.
"Wow, guys. I'm late to the party here. LOL! I just caught up with all the texts. We can't really say this was surprising. I mean, we have been sitting on our asses for two weeks now. We don't bring results, simply because we are not assigned new cases anymore. I don't know. It sucks, but maybe it could be a good thing. We could all blow off some steam." Tara managed to type out her reply, while still being halfway underneath her luxury vintage car, the one that she had been repairing for a while now.
"Emily?" Matt called for her, but she did not reply.
"Yeah, why is she not replying?" Luke typed in.
"I already checked that out. You are welcome. And the answer is – because her phone is not where she is. It pinged from her house, but I bet she left it there and is now somewhere on an exotic beach, sipping cocktails with a really hot foreign guy and getting over the fact that we let her down." Garcia replied once again.
"Well, I guess I will see you guys in a week. And just by the way, thanks for keeping me out of a decision that had to be taken as a team." With that passive aggressive text JJ put her phone on the table and tended to her family. She had been slacking for the past couple of days, so she wanted to make sure her husband and kids had her undivided attention, at least for the following seven days.
Emily woke up next to a towel and in a bed that she did not recognize. The good news was that she had finally been able to sleep for a few hours, without interruption. Yet, where was she?
Her bare feet stomped on the ground and, she noticed, the rug was quite fancy. She looked around and everything was white.
"Am I dead again?" A splitting headache made it easier to believe that all this brightness and white around her was a bad sign.
"Bonjour Lauren,
We met by the Fountain and I find you enchanting. I would love to know more about you, but I did not want it to seem like I was taking advantage of your state of ébriété. I will be waiting for you in the hotel lobby at 8 o'clock ce soir in hopes of being granted the pleasure of enjoying your beautiful company for dinner.
Richard, comme le patisserie."
It took her a while to focus on every word of the handwritten note that she found under the door.
After a minute, she started recalling the stranger from earlier. Had he driven her to the hotel and left her there with the note? Why did she wake up next to a towel?
She didn't remember it, but when he had dropped her off, he had also checked her in since her name was not on the guest list of the hotel. Clearly. After that, he had instructed one of the employees to make sure the woman would be accompanied to her room and that the letter would be placed under the door.
If she knew any of that, the man would be even more amazing in her eyes.
However, the little that she knew was more than good enough for her. A pissed off Emily Prentiss usually didn't aim high, when it came to men.
She hopped under the shower, alternating between hot and cold water. It had been a long flight and she was exhausted, the jet lag was a real pain and her feet were hurting from the new office shoes she had on her feet since Garcia drugged her, all through her recent hospital experience, and then during the flight.
The next thing she found to be a challenge, after she was done with the shower, was the fact that she had no clothes. And not in the cute girly way where a female would open the wardrobe and stand there while repeating that she had no clothes. No. She actually had none. The one object she had taken on this trip with her was her wallet, with her Lauren Reynolds passport and credit card inside.
She had forgotten what time was indicated on the note, so she walked back to the door to pick it up, but then something else caught her attention.
A white paper box, white ribbon all around it, with nothing else written on it, but DIOR.
"Okay, screw anything else, I'm going fancy tonight!" She said to herself, her mood definitely much better than what it used to be. She blamed the French air…and the wine.
Opening the box, she gasped, finding a red, form-fitting dress, with subtle glitter rims on the bottom part and on the décolleté. Underneath the dress, a pair of shoes from the same brand – black shoes with a red ornament on top.
"Jesus, I guess it's true that I'm hot when I'm pissed." She shook her head, referring to a statement that she had heard from a lot of men in her life. Apparently, a pissed off version of her was a catch for every man with specific taste. And by that, it is to be understood: kinky.
She was still missing a few crucial things, so her strategy was to put on the clothes from earlier and to make a run down the street. An hour later she had successfully returned to the hotel with a face, full of make-up, courtesy of Sephora across the street; and freshly painted nails and blown out hair, courtesy of the only hair salon that had a free chair for her – the little Chinese place two blocks away.
When she finally put the dress and shoes on, she started laughing at her own reflection in the mirror.
"Since when is this my life?" This time she was giggling at the irony of life, not so much from the hungover. That was gone after the shower and the nice refreshing walk outside.
At 7:57 she paced around the hallway, contemplating whether she should be on time, or fashionably late. Because the option to skip out on a dinner date with a hot French guy was nonexistent.
