Emily strapped herself into the bulletproof vest as Aaron drove to the Woodson house. They were both tense. There were definitely three girls at stake and though they had an idea of what they were getting themselves into, there was still that level of uncertainty that made them all uncomfortable. JJ had almost insisted that she and Aaron drive to the house in the same car. And without passengers.
But they hadn’t said anything since leaving the station. There were a million things running through her head that she wanted to say, a million things that they probably should, but she couldn’t bring herself to say any of them. She wanted to make sure they were okay going into this, not okay as in stable in their relationship, but okay in that they both had a job to do. Sure, there was a little more emotionally at stake for them, but it was still their job.
She felt like that was only the tip of the iceberg. She wasn’t fooling herself. She didn’t love him. Yet. That was the part that got her. She could see them building something solid and something good, but only if they could get past the hurdles. They were about to step into a really good one. There were going to be guns, there were going to be weapons, and there was going to be a guy who wasn’t exactly head over heels for the female gender. Her stomach curled.
“You okay?”
She must have made a funny expression for him to ask that. “Thinking,” she said honestly. “We’re going in there guns drawn, I’m strapping myself into a bullet proof vest. Are we okay?”
He looked over at her briefly as they stopped at a red light. “Of course we’re okay.”
“Aaron, that’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” he replied, and by the way his hands clenched the steering wheel it showed. He was worried, and logically so. He always worried when he was about to send his team into a potentially dangerous situation and worried more when he sent them into an actually dangerous situation. With Emily, it was a completely different story with completely different rules and now that they had taken their relationship beyond work and quite solidly beyond friendship, there was a new level of concern that made his heart rate double.
“This is our job,” she said uselessly, reattaching part of her vest. “We’ve been doing this for years.”
Even to Aaron it sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself more than him. They did this kind of stuff as part of their jobs all the time, but he was human and he knew that this was different. “We’re good at our jobs.”
“Exactly.” Nevertheless, she took a deep breath, trying to put herself in the right mind set to do this.
All three vehicles, the two Tahoes and the police car, pulled up to the Woodson house ahead of backup. They had enough agents to go in and it wasn’t going to help them to wait for anyone else. Cody Woodson was a loose cannon at best and they didn’t want to risk spooking him into just killing all of the women he still had. They made a circle, pulling out their weapons and checking bullets, guns and safeties.
“I don’t think I have to remind you that we have three lives at stake?” Aaron said. The grim looks of his team said it all. The last eyes he met were Emily’s and he could tell what she’d be saying by the look on her face. Don’t get hurt. “Morgan, take Prentiss, JJ and Reid, go in the front. Morrow, Officer Kian, you’re with me in the back. Let’s get this guy alive.”
Emily had to admit, she was a little surprised to hear that he wasn’t pairing them together, but another part of her was relieved. Without Aaron looking over her shoulder she could deal with her insecurities in peace. She’d passed her qualifications with flying colours, but that didn’t mean that she could immediately apply them in the field. There was a slight disconnect between the predictability of the evaluations and the unpredictability of reality. At the same time, she had the comfort of her team at her back. She trusted Morgan, JJ and Reid with her life so if she froze up, she was certain someone would be there.
She heard the countdown over her earpiece and the next thing she knew, she was bursting through the front door behind Morgan, thankful that Tim Woodson was at work “ they’d sent a unit to pick him up “ so they didn’t scare the living daylights out of the man. What was unfortunate was that they found nothing in the house. She sighed as she stepped outside, re-holstering her weapon and putting her hands on her hips. It annoyed her that they hadn’t found Cody in the house and annoyed her even more that they hadn’t found a trace of any of their victims.
“He’s keeping them somewhere else,” Morgan said unnecessarily, stepping out to stand beside her.
“The question is where,” Emily agreed, her eyes scanning the neighbourhood carefully. “Somewhere comfortable, somewhere isolated where no one could hear them scream.”
“But somewhere with access to the internet, or nearby access,” Morgan nodded.
“Like this?” The picture frame JJ passed to them showed the family in front of an older-looking home. “Grandparents house. They left it to the family when they passed away.”
Emily raised an eyebrow. “If he soundproofed the basement he could live there no problem, keep the girls downstairs.”
Morgan was already dialing Garcia. “I need those magic fingers of yours now more than ever, Sweetness.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Cody Woodson’s grandparents have a house they left to him.”
“On his father’s side. Mother’s side are still living.”
“Which means you’ve got an address.”
“Most definitely. Sent directions to your phone.”
“You’re a goddess.”
“Wait!” Emily exclaimed as they all started to move. She’d spotted someone coming down the street with a face she vaguely recognized. As the girl got closer, it was JJ that finally put a name to the face.
“That’s Madeline Ray.”
Madeline Ray was a striking young woman. She was the only redhead of the bunch with brown eyes and freckles across her nose. She was thin and stylish, but sitting in an interrogation room at the station, she looked like a little girl, fearful of what was to come.
Emily stood with Reid behind the one-way mirror, both of them watching her. The rest of the team had headed to Cody Woodson’s grandparents’ to see if he was there and if that was where he was hiding the other women. Emily’s gut said yes. What she didn’t know was Madeline’s involvement in it all.
“Are you going in?” Reid asked, eyeing her warily.
“She’s, what? 120? I’ll be fine.”
Reid cracked a tiny smile. “It’s odd, isn’t it? That she would let her parents think she was kidnapped by a murderer just to get out from under their thumb?”
“We’re assuming that’s all there is to it,” Emily answered softly. “Cody offered those other girls a way out, maybe Madeline just wanted the same escape.”
“To the point where she allowed him to stab women? Katrina Stark had twenty-four stab wounds when the medical examiner finished counting.”
Emily smiled up at Reid. “I guess we’ll just have to ask and find out.”
Her paperwork was in hand as she entered the room, pictures of all of the girls and the crime scenes tucked safely in a file. She didn’t see Madeline Ray as a threat and it wasn’t her they were accusing of murdering two young women and holding three others hostage. “SSA Prentiss and this is Dr Reid,” Emily introduced as she sat down.
“SSA?” Madeline asked.
“We’re with the FBI,” Emily answered softly, soothingly. “We have a few questions.”
“Look, I ran away, okay? I just, I couldn’t stand my parents,” Madeline confessed immediately. “There was this guy who was kidnapping girls like me so I went for it. Annie and Katy said they’d found a way out.”
“Who?”
Madeline shrugged. “A couple of girls on the site, girls I worked with.”
Emily pulled out the five pictures of the other women. “Any of these?”
“That’s Annie,” Madeline said, pointing to Stephanie Lite. Katrina Stark was Katy. “Those were the names they used on the site.”
“So you’ve met these girls?”
Madeline nodded.
Reid cocked his head to the side. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Madeline said defensively.
Emily took back the live pictures of Katrina and Stephanie and replaced them with the ones taken on the autopsy tables for identification purposes. “Two of those girls are dead, Madeline,” she said softly. “We think Cody knows about it.”
“Cody?”
“We know he’s your boyfriend, Madeline. We’ve seen the pictures on MySpace,” Reid told her quietly.
“What happened, Madeline? Did you see him kidnap one of those girls? Did he threaten you at all? Was he ever violent towards you or another woman you knew?”
Madeline’s hands were shaking as she flattened them on the table. “It was once and it was my fault.”
If they had a penny for every time an abuse victim said ‘it was my fault’ Emily was sure the law enforcement profession wouldn’t have funding problems. “Madeline, three girls are still missing. Two fo them are dead. You posted on your blog about something being wrong with Cody.”
Madeline looked like she was considering something before taking a deep breath. “We’ve been staying at his mom’s parents’ old place, but he hates it there. He says it reminds him too much of his cheating whore of a mother, his words not mine.”
Reid and Emily exchanged a look. It was a significant part of their profile.
“He spends a lot of time in the basement, but he works with computers so I just assumed that it was cooler down there so he could work better, you know?” Her shoulders lifted and dropped with an exaggerated breath. “I was on his laptop upstairs, doing some work when I came across the video.”
“What video?” Emily asked.
“The one that I posted on our site, through his screen name. The one of him…” she swallowed. “Killing Katy.”
“Why didn’t you report it?” Reid asked.
“Because he’s my boyfriend. You don’t understand Dr Reid, Cody is everything I have. He’s my only escape from my parents, who, if they had their way, would literally lock me in my room. And I had no idea it was him in the movie, I just figured it was something he’d found somewhere.”
“Did you figure out the connection between the girls? Did you know they all worked for the same company you do?” Emily asked.
Madeline was nodding before the first question was finished. “We’ve all cross paths from time to time. I’ve worked with almost all of the girls who went missing.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“I saw it as an opportunity,” she said honestly. “I love my parents, but I’m sick of being under their thumb all the time. I just wanted a little bit of freedom. Cody offered, I took it.”
“Madeline is he there now? Do you know if any of the other girls are alive?” Emily tried to keep enough urgency in her voice to impress upon the young woman how important her answer was without sounding panicked.
“He’s there now, yeah. I was stopping by his dad’s house to pick up a few things for him from his room.”
Emily looked down as her phone rang. “Prentiss.”
“We’ve got him.”
Emily relaxed marginally, both at Aaron’s voice and his news. “The girl?” His sigh said she wasn’t going to like the news.
“Two. Chloe Floam didn’t make it.”