Emily was only half paying attention to her colleagues around the breakfast table. Like Gideon, who had clued her into the habit to begin with, she did a crossword with her coffee to try and wake up her mind. She felt him sit down in the empty chair beside her with his breakfast. She’d been stumped on the same clue for the past ten minutes and it was habit for her to hand it to him along with her pen.
“Eight down,” she said as she absently snatched a piece of fruit off of his plate. She’d done it so out of habit that the fruit was already in her mouth before she fully realized what had happened. She tried to keep down the blush as she locked eyes with Derek. “What happened with Tim Woodson?” She’d been dying to ask, but figured it would be better to get the information out when Aaron had arrived.
Aaron had forced himself not to react to their routine either. It was something she’d done while living with him. He filled in the boxes as he listened, as well as a few more words before handing it back to her and starting in on his meal.
“Garcia found a son, but both of them swear they’ve never heard of let alone met any of the girls,” Derek answered. “There’s no link between the Woodson’s and the victims either.”
Dead end.
“JJ if you could talk to Stephanie Lite’s family first thing? With the speculation of Madeline Ray’s disappearance, the more we could know the better.”
JJ nodded at Aaron’s request, then held up the front page. “I have to make some media calls, make sure this doesn’t go any further.”
“Take Morrow with you to talk to Stephanie’s parents,” Aaron said, watching JJ nod over the rim of his coffee cup.
“The autopsy report should be released this morning,” Reid spoke up raising his hand. “I’d like to get the medical examiner’s opinion.”
Aaron nodded his agreement. “Take Morgan.”
Derek agreed with a bob of his head. With the way Emily had reacted the previous night, it didn’t take a genius to see none of them really wanted her in the same situation again.
Emily knew it too and refrained from saying much. “Can we speak to the parents of the other missing girls? And friends or relatives. Stephanie Lite’s apartment too.” When she thought about it, it was a comically long list for the profilers.
“Anything from Garcia?”
“I’m checking in with her this morning,” Emily answered. “She went digging for newspaper articles, internet blogs…”
“Good,” Aaron agreed wiping his hands on his napkin. They rarely ate much in the morning, so breakfast was inevitably a speedy affair. He tossed back the rest off his coffee and looked around at his team. “We’ll check in around noon.”
Barring breakthroughs went unsaid.
They broke breakfast to head up and do last minute preparations in their rooms, though Emily was still puzzling over a riddle in the crossword and was determined to finish the puzzle before heading to the station. It didn’t surprise her much when Aaron didn’t move either, merely signaled their server for another cup of coffee. It left the two agents by themselves at the table. Emily actually jumped when his hand made contact with her arm.
“Everything okay?”
She tried for a placating smile. “I’m okay,” she promised.
Okay measured a cool medium on their scale of emotional turmoil. He withdrew her cell phone from his pocket and set it beside her hand. “You left that behind.” He watched her cheeks turn pink.
“Thank you.”
He shot a look over his shoulder, grateful that none of their team was present. “Regular nightmares?”
Emily sighed, turning her head to look at him. The look in his eyes told him he was going to talk to her about it. Really, she knew it would help, she just wasn’t sure she wanted to re-hash it all while they were still on the case. “Not really,” she said, setting down her pen and turning to face him. “My subconscious drew a picture of what it thought Stephanie Lite went through.”
He followed her lead, stamping down the spur of lust that shot through him when her knees absently made room for one of his. Everything they did these days was just natural. “Is it okay that you’re working with me? I know-”
“Yeah, its fine” she said immediately, before he could continue. In reality, it would probably be a huge help to have him close by, at least for a little while. It would be an interesting test of how well they could work together with the underlying current of tension.
He nodded. “And not in the field? You’re cleared but-“
Emily laughed. “Stop worrying,” she said, knocking his knee between hers. “I understand, Aaron. I do.”
He blew out a breath. “Let me run upstairs and grab my files. Back down here in five minutes?”
She nodded and looked up at him when he turned back to her.
“Oh, and call Garcia back.”
Emily blushed.
Damn it.
Emily had taken her time in getting back to the blond technical genius for two reasons. One, she wanted to put it off and two, she wanted to make sure it was just her and Penelope. Whatever she wanted to say she wanted to say to the blond alone without anyone, including Aaron, around to hear it. It was another day of people rushing in and out of the conference room, dropping off information and racing out to get more. They still only had one body.
Finally, Emily broke down and connected with Garcia.
“Do you want to go first or shall I?”
Emily had managed to find time when the rest of her team was out and about and had left almost simultaneously. It meant that she would be alone for a good hour, minimum and while she didn’t exactly relish that bit, it gave her a chance to iron things out with her friend.
“You. Professional, then personal.”
“Well, Sugar, I don’t think I’ve got anything here that’ll crack your case,” Penelope said with sincere apology. “The girls share a prestigious scholarship, but all from different years. None of them took that scholarship to the same university, none of them applied in the same year… nothing.”
Emily sighed. “What about the board? Any names jump out at you?”
“Nine,” Penelope replied. “They’re alternated every year.”
“Actually?” It wouldn’t be the first scholarship that said it rotated it’s selection board members and didn’t follow through.
“So to speak,” Penelope agreed. “Three change every year. They serve three year terms.”
“From a pool of?”
Penelope sighed. “Look, hon, they’re not here.”
Emily blew out a breath. “Any connection to the victims? The victim’s families?”
“Quick search says nothing,” Penelope responded. “How can these girls hold the jobs they did, go to the schools they did and not be on anyone’s radar?”
“I don’t know,” Emily answered, flipping through Madeline Ray’s journal. Her train of thought shattered at the chirp of her cell phone.
“This is the not-so-secret boyfriend?” Penelope asked coyly as she watched Emily’s smile blossom.
News?
It was stupid. It was small. It was theoretically work. It made her insides warm. No, she typed back. They shared a scholarship. She turned curious eyes back to Penelope. “Something like that.”
“Something like that? Did your dear white knight not pass on my message? And I know that look on your face, it’s the same one you had when the two of you were texting back when you were still on leave.”
Emily could feel the blush creeping up in her cheeks. “So what?”
“So that blush and the fact that your phone was in his hotel room tells me that there’s something you’re holding in on us.”
Emily could hear typing in the background and her respect for the woman on her laptop screen grew. “Would you believe me if I told you I had a nightmare?”
“It would lead to another set of questions,” Penelope responded. “Like, even if you had a nightmare, why were you in your dream hunk’s bedroom?”
“Hotel room,” Emily corrected automatically and tried for a shrug.
“Nuh uh, Sugar Plum, not so easy. Nightmares are understandable, but seriously, Doll, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Emily mumbled her response.
“Speak up,” Penelope ordered.
The other woman winced. “He makes me feel better.”
Penelope’s eyebrow arched high. “He what now?’
“Makes me feel better when I’ve had a nightmare,” Emily responded quickly, snatching up her phone when it started vibrating again.
Scholarship is a dead end?
With a brick wall and everything, Emily typed back. Garcia’s still looking.
“And how long has that been going on? And what kind of comfort are we talking about? Oh, and what about- Oh my God.”
Emily’s head snapped up. “What is it.”
“Uh… I think I found exactly how our girls are seriously connected.” Penelope tilted her head at an odd angle. “I didn’t even know that was possible!”
“Garcia, what did you find?” Meanwhile, her fingers flew over the keys of her phone. Hold that thought.
“Looks like our girls were into sharing a little bit more than we’d bargained for.”
“Oh?”
Emily waited. A link popped up on her screen. She looked to Garcia. “Should I be looking at this on company time?”
Suddenly, Penelope’s face changed, hardened. “Oh yeah, Peaches. You’re going to want to see this.”
Emily didn’t waste time.
“It feels almost predictable,” Derek said when he returned. The team was huddled around the conference room table assimilating the latest information into their profile. “Straight laced girls go dirty by porn? Seriously?”
“The sleezeball who runs the site is a board member for that scholarship,” Penelope’s disembodied voice came through Emily’s computer. “The board holds a gala every year to salute their scholarship winners.”
“He met them there, offered them a more lucrative job,” Emily suggested. “Even with a scholarship, student loans can be brutal.”
“And this is really only one step down from professional modeling,” Derek agreed looking at the pictures clinically. “But even if this is the connection there are hundreds of people that probably visit this site every day.”
“Internet pornography is a 2.84 billion dollar industry,” Reid rattled off. “About a quarter of the daily searches on search engines is for pornography and about 43 percent of internet users view pornography.”
“We’re assuming these girls got into the industry because they were invited,” Aaron started slowly. “There must be other users, people who maintain the site, who get to see all of this before it goes online?”
“Of course, sir,” Penelope responded. “Unfortunately, there are ways to get around the usual posting process. Someone with enough skill could get on there and post something that wasn’t supposed to be part of the site.”
“Which is how our unsub got that video up.”
The link Penelope had sent Emily had indeed taken her to a porn site, but as Emily had watched, what was supposed to be sex turned into something much more dangerous. “The question is, is our unsub the guy in the movie, or is he someone else entirely.”
“Like a user or a crew member,” Derek picked up. “Our suspect pool is going to be massive.”
“But we have a better starting point,” Aaron replied. “I think we’re ready to give our profile.”