Silence fell at Emily’s declaration. That was a curveball they hadn’t been expecting. Emily’s eyes were hard as she tried to recall her memories of the case.
“The Scott murders happened after Chicago PD passed the case off to us,” she began. “Leah was curled up in her bedroom closet, unconscious, blood everywhere. We checked her pulse and got her out of there when we discovered she was alive. She fought us in the ambulance, but we got her to the hospital.
“She was in surgery for six hours. They weren’t sure she was going to make it, but Leah’s stubborn. It was two weeks before she woke up, but she did. We questioned her about it in the hospital, the attack, I mean. She remembered waking up at the feeling of intense pain and remembered seeing a guy standing over her. She’s a light sleeper.”
Emily missed the look that passed between her teammates at her intimate knowledge of their survivor.
“She was our best bet in identifying the guy. Then, the day after she was released into protective custody, they published an article about the cases saying Leah survived. Twenty-four hours later, we had a letter in our hot little hands addressed to Leah from our unsub. She was in Seattle a month later. I took her there myself.”
“You were her handler?” Hotch asked, eyes hard. Emily was their most objective agent, the one who could make calm sense of the most stressful situations and he’d come to rely on that about her. He’d come to rely on a lot of her personality points too, and not just during cases.
“I was the only person she’d talk to. Literally,” Emily responded. “I remember Agent Zeller calling me from the hospital saying she wasn’t saying a word. They figured they’d try a woman, but I think she recognized me as the person who pulled her out of the closet. She wouldn’t speak to anyone else.”
“Why?” Derek asked.
“Traumatized, I guess. I rode in the ambulance with her, went to visit her while she was out… They made an exception in transferring her. I guess they figured her life had already been completely destroyed so they’d give her this one little pleasure.”
“Have you stayed in contact?” Dave asked. He couldn’t fault her. He’d broken the rules too.
“E-mail mostly, anonymous accounts,” Emily answered, her eyes darting around the room to each of her colleagues. This was surprisingly difficult for her to talk about in her usual detached manner.
“Where is she now?” Hotch asked sharply.
“She flew into Reagan about three days ago, sir,” Emily responded, reverting back to her days as a new agent in the BAU and her back straightened reflexively. It was all in Hotch’s tone, a tone he only used on particularly stubborn suspects.
“And we’re just hearing about it now?”
“I had to sign a contract to be able to keep in touch with her,” Emily tried to explain. “Her existence was a strictly need-to-know piece of information. I contacted Agent Spring as soon as she was in my custody.”
Hotch had to give her credit. She was nothing if not thorough. “She’s staying with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
He hated it when she called him ‘sir’. “Bring her in. We need to know as much as we can about her and about the case.”
“Aunt Em, I can’t do this.”
Emily sighed and caught Leah as she tried to bowl past her. “Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t,” Leah tried again. “I can’t go into a room of strangers and detail what happened to my parents. I can’t.”
“You won’t have to do much,” Emily promised. “And if you get uncomfortable, you can sit at my desk, okay? We need your help, Le. We do.”
Leah found it somewhat frustrating when Emily appealed to her better character. “Promise?”
“I promise. I swear.”
Leah shot her ‘aunt’ a look. “You guys are really desperate, aren’t you?”
Emily sighed. She didn’t lie to Leah and that was what had bonded them so tightly. Leah didn’t like people who tried to coddle her. “I’m desperate,” she said. “I don’t think the team realizes how much is at stake here.”
“Emotionally invested. Didn’t you say that was a bad thing?”
“It is,” Emily agreed. “Compartmentalizing-“
“Is what you do best, I know,” Leah promised. “But you’re not perfect.”
Sometimes Emily forgot how nice it was to have someone to talk candidly with, even if she was a good half Emily’s age. Leah was a little sister to Emily and had always been. There were honest things she told Leah about her reactions to cases that she wouldn’t even confide in JJ or Derek. “Don’t tell my team,” Emily groused playfully, poking at Leah’s side.
Leah squealed and jumped away as the elevator dinged on the ground floor. “Not fair.”
“All’s fair in love and war, sweetie,” Emily quoted with a grin, pressing the button for the BAU. It was easy to be herself with Leah, if only because Leah knew her all too well. She enjoyed the moments of teasing before she’d have to sit by as Leah went through all of the gory details again for her friends and for her supervisior.
“Remind me who I’m meeting again?”
“Agent Hotchner,” Emily answered, sensing the younger woman’s discomfort. She reached out and took Leah’s hand, squeezing reassuringly. “He’s my superior.”
“The Agent In Charge,” Leah said slowly, nodding. “What’s he like?”
“That’s not fair,” Emily said quietly. True, her opinion of her boss had changed in the last six months or so, but that didn’t mean she didn’t think he was a little too cold and aloof. She understood some of it. They all guarded personal parts of themselves with as much power as possible, but even the greatest walls had to give sometime.
“He’s the one in the suit? In the picture?”
Emily could remember the picture Leah was referring to. It was one of her favourites, one of the entire team not a month before at some sort of retirement party or other Bureau extravaganza. They’d all actually done a spectacular job of looking happy. Even Reid, who hated pictures with a blinding passion.
“Yeah,” Emily agreed.
Leah gave an exaggerated shiver. “He’s terrifying.”
“He’s not that bad,” Emily contradicted elbowing her young charge.
Leah arched an eyebrow at her ‘aunt’.
Emily blew out a breath. “Maybe to people who are seeing him for the first time. It comes in handy.”
The younger woman snorted out a laugh. “Scare the witnesses, I get it.”
“Scare the suspects,” Emily retorted, a low note of defensiveness in her voice. “Spencer Reid.”
“The genius.”
“Yes.”
“And the socially awkward one.”
“Leah!”
“What? I can tell by the picture.”
Emily sighed. “Don’t call him that, okay?”
“As if I would,” Leah said with a roll of her eyes.
“Jennifer Jareau.”
“JJ. The media lady.”
“Yup. You probably won’t meet her, but there’s Penelope Garcia.”
“The tech. The light in everyone’s day.”
Emily smiled at the description. She’d talked about her colleagues in her e-mails to Leah before so it wasn’t a surprise that she could shoot the information back. “David Rossi.”
“The legend.”
“Hotch is a legend too.”
“David Rossi’s published books. I’ve read them.”
“Leah! You’re sixteen!”
“Exactly. And look at it this way, it’s research.”
“You’re not doing this.”
Leah was surprised by the adamant tone of Emily’s voice. Emily had always been the one to encourage her to go for whatever she wanted. “I thought I could do whatever I wanted to.”
“Le… You know what? We’re going to talk about this later, okay?”
Leah knew Emily was under enough stress with the case coming back. She knew the feeling. The only difference was that Emily was going to have to be right in the middle of everything. And Leah only wanted to be. “We’re missing one.”
It took Emily a moment to go through her team members again. “Derek Morgan.”
“Yummy.”
A dark eyebrow arched.
“You’re a red-blooded woman. You have to see how smokin’ hot he is.”
Emily smiled inwardly, glad to have diverted Leah’s attention, at least for a second. But that second passed quickly when the elevator doors opened on the BAU floor. Emily felt Leah take her hand and hold on tight. Emily squeezed the sixteen-year-old’s hand reassuringly. “This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition,” she said softly as they headed through the glass doors. “You can do this.”
It looked as if Derek was waiting for them. “Hey Em.”
“Hey,” she answered absently. Hotch was waving at her from his office, Dave already seated in front of his desk. “Derek, this is Leah.”
The two shook hands. Derek glanced at Emily, raising his head at Hotch’s office. Emily nodded. “You going to be okay here for a minute?” she asked her young charge. Leah looked so nervous when she turned her eyes back to Emily, she almost took her home right then and there. “Hotch wants to see me.”
Leah nodded slowly.
“My desk,” Emily said, waving at the surface. “And my laptop. Play solitaire, go online, whatever you want to do, okay?” She leaned over to kiss Leah’s hair. “You’ll be fine.” Emily glanced at Derek who nodded. He’d watch Leah. It wasn’t that they were afraid she was going to run, per se, but Leah’s extreme discomfort was something that Emily most definitely did not like.
She made her way up the stairs with trepidation. There were two ways this little meeting could turn out. Either he’d take her off the case, questioning her objectivity “ which would annoy her to no end “ or he wanted her opinion on how to proceed with Leah. Her gut was telling her this wasn’t going to end well. “Hotch?”
“That’s her?”
Emily nodded, glancing back out the door to where Derek was striking up a conversation with Leah. Reid watched, eyes wide. Emily smiled affectionately at the whole scene. “That’s Leah. Or, Annabelle, depending on who you talk to, I guess.”
“Annabelle is the WPP name?” Dave asked. He and Hotch had been deep in conversation not only about what to do about the interview with Leah but what to do with Emily. Dave was a huge believer in having her on the case. She already knew it like the back of her hand, so it made sense, especially since she’d seen the crime scenes. If there was anyone who would know the details of the case, it would be Emily.
Hotch had argued about her emotional investment in the case. From an FBI perspective, Dave understood where the younger man was coming from. Nevertheless, Dave liked to believe he knew Emily well. Even if she was emotionally invested in the case, he was sure she’d be able to put her subjectivity aside with the dangling carrot of ending the case in front of her. Though it had been an interesting look into Hotch himself. In fact, Dave would have probably sworn in a court of law that Hotch’s concern about Emily’s objectivity had nothing to do with the Bureau and more to do with his worry about her as a person. That was the juiciest tidbit of behavioural information Dave had probably ever seen.
“Annabelle White,” Emily responded. “Adopted daughter of Elizabeth and David White.”
‘What about them?” Hotch asked.
“Bob said he’d keep an eye on them.” Emily sighed. “I almost suggested protective custody.”
“How is she?” Dave asked, nodding to the young woman in the other room. “Ready for this?”
“Would you be?” Emily answered wryly. “She knew why we needed her. She’s a smart kid. I think she’s always known it would come to this eventually.”
“The BAU?” Hotch inquired. He wanted to make sure Emily would be able to handle the case without jeopardizing it.
Emily shook her head. “She knew the case would come back. Leah’s perceptive, Hotch. She’s read all of Dave’s books.”
Dave noticed how affectionate her smile was and how her attention was on Leah. It disturbed him a little bit, the sadness in her voice, the protectiveness in the way her arms wrapped around her stomach. Was he right in defending her ability to do this case? “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Talking to her.” Dave had always valued Emily’s opinion. He’d grown to respect her over his time back with the Bureau and respect her immensely. She always seemed to have an alternate way of looking at the world.
“She’s scared. She’s nervous. I don’t know if she’s ready to talk to anyone about it, quite frankly,” Emily said honestly. She’d almost deliberately pushed Hotch out of her mind. While they had opened up to each other more, this was a level of emotion she shared with no one. Dave had an uncanny ability of wheedling it out of her, but she’d never shared anything remotely like this with Hotch. So she kept her eyes on Dave.
“She has no idea what to expect. She doesn’t know if he’s going to find her. I can tell she’s worried about me, about doing this case. She doesn’t want anyone to get hurt because of her. I think she already knows that he’s chasing her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she already blames herself for the deaths that have happened. I’d hate to see her if she ever found out the sheer number of people he’s killed to find her.”
He looked back at her through the entire speech. “So?”
“I want to be there.”
“You know that’s a bad idea,” Hotch said immediately.
Dave noticed the wrinkle in the other man’s brow, but Emily’s attention had turned back to Leah. It was an interesting expression for Hotch, a man that rarely showed emotion in the office.
“I know,” Emily agreed. “I want to be there.”
“No.”
“Do you want her to talk?”
Dave almost winced. The one time she was going to be stubborn about something. “You don’t think she’ll talk to us?”
Emily knew she sounded juvenile and, more importantly, knew she was probably crossing a line, but the thought of Leah going through those details again by herself broke her heart. She’d spent the better part of eight years protecting her, watching over her from Chicago and then the BAU. The last thing she was willing to do was step back now. She shrugged. “It took her years to open up to David and Liz.”
“We’re your colleagues,” Dave pointed out. “You couldn’t put in a good word for us?”
Hotch had never seen Emily’s body crumple in on itself so fast. He tried to keep his expression neutral when all he wanted to do was reach out and reassure her, to take that pained look off of her face. And it wasn’t the first time he’d felt that either. Since he’d opened up to her about Haley and Jack, he’d found himself drawn to her, found his eyes lingering on her just a little bit too long a little bit too often. It was disconcerting for him, to say the least. Then Dave had made him see that Emily didn’t just tolerate him. She cared, and that was why she stayed late in the office when he did. It had become harder not to pay attention to her, not to react to her.
Emily’s eyes were pleading when she turn them on both me. “I know it’s against regulation to let me in there while you talk to her and I know you’re worried about how truthful her answers will be with me in there… Hotch, I’ve been with her through everything in her life since she was eight. I have to be in there.” She didn’t want to pull the questioning a minor card, but she would if she had to.
Hotch exchanged a look with Dave. They could use it to see how she was going to react, to see whether she was prepared to do this case while so emotionally involved. “Okay.”
Relief was more than obvious in Emily’s posture and facial expressions. “Where do you want her?”
“Conference room,” Hotch answered, standing. “Let’s go. I want wheels up in three hours.”