criminalxminds | Fic: E.P.

Title: E.P.

Author: Sara Nublas

Character: Emily Prentiss main, all team involved

Rating: FRM

Summary: Emily deals with her ghosts after being back in the field with the team on a challenging case.

Warning: SPOILERS to Lauren (6x18), this story is the third part of my post-Lauren series which is organized as follows 1-Asteriscus hierochunticus, 2-What’s left of me, 3- E.P. The stories are posted on my profile and on my website

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of the show ‘ Criminal Minds’, I’m just borrowing them. No infringement intended.

A/N: -thanks to miaa29 for poking my curiosity and setting my muse on this path
-No beta even for this story, but I'm always happy to read your comments
-Given that I’m not an expert in criminology or psychology, I profusely apologize if the profiling part in the following chapters is a mess. I tried to do my best to make it believable, so please, bear with me. Nonetheless I’m absolutely interested in any comment and suggestion you can provide :)

4.“The unsub chooses sophisticated, elegant and successful women, and turns them into grotesque, cheap dolls” Reid talks to the whole team back at the police station.

It’s a collection of tired and frustrated eyes that is looking at him and at the pictures of the crime scenes. Every time they try to ensemble the profile, there’s something out of place; they handled more complicated cases in the past, but looking at this helplessly incomplete puzzle, while all around bodies are falling like flies is getting unbearable. The tension is palpable and the detective in charge is starting to doubt the BAU can provide any real help.

“Still we don’t understand how breaking the mirrors and the light bulbs fits with the profile” Rossi objects “Is it a way to claim he’s invisible or is he ashamed of himself?”

“What if this is not something he does for himself, but a message he knows the victims would understand” Emily suggests.

“So you’re saying that this is personal; he’s getting even on something” Hotch intervenes.

“He’s exposing their true identity; under the façade of elegance and respectability, to him they are just a grotesque camouflage” Emily concludes.

“I’ll call Garcia,” Morgan resolves “See if there has been any murder with a similar MO in the last years.”

“Good job, Prentiss” Rossi congratulates “you might have just saved his next victim”

It’s a mild summer night when I walk through the door of the hotel in Washington. My name is Ellie Pierce, an elegant refined businesswoman; I walk with the self-confidence of who is used to play with power and is not afraid to show it, I make a good show of my elegant outfit and my posh manners as assumed for the clients in this highbrow atmosphere.

The waiter promptly gets my order; I repress the instinct to order a glass of Laphroaig and ask for a vodka Martini; then I sit in front of my contact, in the darkest corner of the almost deserted bar and smile politely, the way I would great an old friend I’m used to hang out with. Actually it’s been a long time since I saw her in Paris.

I should feel relieved to get out of the gutter for a change, but honestly I’ve never felt so filthy and hypocrite as now; the heroic agent comes back home to report the results of her brave actions, she wears a nice dress, puts on a smile and everything gets wiped away, all the ignoble subterfuges, all the ruthless women I’ve been, all of it is remitted. Other women, other names are responsible for those crimes, not me; my conscience is clean, free from sin and guilt.

I slide on the table the envelope with my report and stash in my bag the instruction JJ gives me.

“Did you get everything done?” she asks me with nonchalance.

“All of it” I answer unperturbed “Are they all fine?” I add trying to keep my voice stable at the thought of the team.

“They’re doing well” She nods with half smile and walks away.

I stare at my drink and wonder if she could see the shadow on my face, I wonder if she knows what I had to do in order to get ‘all of it’ done, I wonder if she cares, if anybody cares.

Where does the line between licit and illicit lays? Where is the boundary between justified and unforgivable? I wonder how many time I’ve crossed it so far and on which side of it I’m standing now. After all is there a real difference at this point?

Emily’s memories are interrupted by Garcia’s voice, briefing them on her latest discovery “So my brave friends, there are no crimes similar to the present ones, but there were a series of unsolved murders two years ago; three girls attacked at night in isolated areas inside the local campus. The unsub broke the light bulbs in isolated areas and waited in the darkness” she explains satisfied of the fruitful search.

“So they weren’t attacked in their own rooms?” Reid asks.

“Nope, the unsub attacked them on the way back from classes to the dorms…. All the girls were raped and strangled and their bodies dumped in plastic bags”

“Aside from the broken lamps the MO is completely different” Rossi objects “The killer in the campus was setting a trap and waiting for the opportunity. Our unsub chooses his victims and attacks them in their houses, staging the body afterward...”

“It’s not the same unsub” Hotch concludes.

“Oh, so I wasn’t useful” Garcia moans in disappointment.

“You were, baby girl. These episodes are definitely linked, we just don’t know how” Morgan reassures her.

“Garcia, did they suspect someone back in time?” Prentiss asks.

“Yep. An assistant… Edward Portman… nine students reported inappropriate behavior… but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Turned out they were trying to get back at him for being expelled from his class after stealing a test. Naughty kids… his career was ruined, he lost his job, his wife divorced him and she got full custody of their daughter… he recently came back to town” Garcia confirms.

“Were the victims linked to this assistant?” Reid carries on.

“Yes, my genius! They were among the students who accused him” Garcia counters promptly, her hands moving on the keyboard faster than ever.

“How many of them are still in town?” Hotch asks.

“Three. Two girls, still studying in the same campus and a guy who dropped out of college”

“Morgan, Reid you go to warn one girl, Dave you are with me to check on the other. He never targeted males so there’s no reason to start now” Hotch states “Prentiss you stay here and try to get a hold of the guy, just to be sure”

Hotch’s glare is stern enough to discourage her from objecting his decision.

As soon as the rest of the team leaves and she boils down her frustration a thought starts morphing into her head. Emily Prentiss would follow the logical clues but something tells her this time she needs to think outside the box, to follow her instinct because so far nothing has been logical and consequential in this case.

She calls back Garcia while she looks again at the reports of the four victims; bills, phone calls, pictures of the scenes, god knows how much she could use Reid’s eidetic memory in this moment.

“Right here, my friend” Garcia greets her with a sweet voice.

“Hei Garcia, how many guys accused Portman back then?”

“Ehm, just that one. Sean Caine” she answers perplexed.

“What does this guy do now?”

“Emily?”

“Just asking Pen”

“He was expelled from college when they discovered he organized the whole set up against Portman…”

“How did they find out?”

“Four girls turned him in … oh god”

“Let me guess, our victims?” Emily asks not surprised. She doesn’t need a reply and carries on with the theory shaping into her mind “Portman had no reason to kill the women who tried to rehabilitate him, but it’s a hell of a motive for Caine to get even with them and ruin Portman once for all. I guess I don’t need to ask you for the address”

“Em, why do I think this isn’t a good idea at all?”

“I’ll call Hotch from the car and wait for back up, I promise. But I can’t sit around while Caine kills someone else. Please” Emily insists.

***

She stops the car in front of the house, and runs toward the window to check the situation.

Hotch gave her clear orders, ‘do not to make a move until the back up is there’.

She gets close to the house to get a visual of the inside. A man is tied to a chair into the living room and his nose is bleeding; a tall guy, pale as hell is frantically walking back and forth, screaming at something in a corner and waving his gun in the hair. It doesn’t look good at all she thinks, while she looks around searching for any SUV approaching on the road.

At first she thinks the unsub is talking to Portman, then a slim figure comes into visual, her profile partially hidden, but familiar. Where did she see that face already?

The girl comes to stand in front of the unsub, she wipers something to his ear and he seems to calm down; then she turns and walk toward the window with a grin, she take a deep breath and closes her eyes, she’s smiling with relief when she says something. That’s it, now Emily remembers her, she’s one of the two girls that the team went to warn. Caine did the dirty work but she’s been calling the shots. Emily can’t hear her talking, but it’s not difficult to read her lips forming two unmistakable words ‘kill him’.

Emily looks around again, the street is desert and empty; Hotch is going to be seriously pissed off.

There are no memories of her previous alias kicking in and providing some alternative point of views on the case. It’s just her, Emily Prentiss, here and now. She walks through the unlocked entrance and creeps toward the room where the unsub is about to kill his last victim; her breath is heavy and labored, thin lines of sweat and framing her forehead. She steadies her hand and thinks the time has come to prove herself, to see if Emily Prentiss is still good for this job, if she can handle the tension and catch the bad guy.

All these doubts are whirling around her head, and yet she’s hyperaware of everything around her, all her senses on alert. She doesn’t flinch when she comes to face the unsub, standing few meters away with his gun leveled to her chest.

She has time just for a thought before everything comes down. Game over.

Bang.