Babylon
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OK guys, you know I'm writing an AU where Emily's in a rock band and she's being stalked. Well its called Babylon, after the name of Emily's band. I decided to post a piece, since I'm 15,000 words in and almost 40 pages. Its killing me cuz I have to make it a case fic but its also one I'm working hard on and wanna share. So I'm sharing. Here is Hotch and Prentiss, meeting for the first time. Hope you enjoy it...feedback is loverly.
“I didn’t call ahead so please don’t be afraid.” Jason fished the key from his pocket and unlocked Emily’s apartment door.
She lived in a second floor walkup on 23rd Street in the chic neighborhood of Chelsea. On the inside it was spacious, and a bit messy. Hotch walked into the living room, the kitchen was to the left, as Jason went down the hall toward the bedroom. Hotch admired the maroon overstuffed couches and back wood furniture like bookshelves and the entertainment center. The lamps and light fixtures were black as well, while the walls were a soft white.
There was photography on the walls in black frames…he wondered if Emily took the pictures herself. The one above the couch was Emily with Penelope Garcia done in the style of Andy Warhol. The metal God pose they were stroking made him smile. Since he had a few minutes alone, Hotch decided to go through her bookshelves. You surely didn’t have to be a profiler to know you could find out a lot about a person based on what they read.
Jason pushed the bedroom door open and walked in. He wasn’t overjoyed to see a naked Ashley Seaver curled under the sheets. Emily was sound asleep beside her. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Emily, you need to wake up. C'mon, it’s Jason.”
“Whuh?” she came around some but not much.
“Emily, wake up.”
Her eyes came open slowly, not happy that she forgot to close the curtains last night. Shielding her eyes, she frowned at Jason.
“Is the building on fire?” she mumbled.
“No.” he shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting you to have company.”
“Oh, um…I swear we didn’t do anything Jason. She just slept over.”
“She's naked.” Jason reasoned.
“Only from the waist up.”
“I need you to get out of bed Emily; Aaron Hotchner is here.”
“Oh my God,” Emily threw the sheets back but made sure not to disturb Ashley. “What time is it?”
“It’s just after ten.”
“Oh, well it’s still kinda early.”
“Not really it isn’t.”
Emily stuck her tongue out as she made her way over to the dresser.
“OK, you keep him company while I pull of some semblance of decent. And I will love you forever if you put on some coffee. I need some coffee like whoa. Brushing my teeth will ruin the coffee so please inform Agent Hotchner that my breath will probably smell.”
“Will do.” Jason smiled.
“Go, go, go.” Emily rushed out of the room and into the bathroom.
Jason went to the kitchen after closing the door on young Ashley. That was the last thing Hotch needed to see.
“She’ll be right out.” he said. “I woke her.”
“Alright.” Hotch nodded. “She has second edition Austens and Orwells. She has autographed Vonneguts.”
“Emily Prentiss defies logical definition.” Jason replied. “That’s why she's amazing. OK, that’s one of the many reasons that she's amazing.”
“You can't seem to find enough wonderful things to say about her. I know you Jason, you don’t feel that way about many people.”
“I count myself so lucky to know her.”
“Is she a reader or a book collector?” Hotch asked.
“She's both. She’s obsessed with Vonnegut.”
“He's good.” Hotch said.
“No, Philip Roth is good.” Emily replied, walking into the room. “Kurt Vonnegut is the voice of a disillusioned generation. Unfortunately it’s not my generation…that’s probably Dawson’s Creek. I'm Emily Prentiss.”
“Aaron Hotchner.” He shook her extended hand and liked her firm handshake.
He’d seen her in photographs, including the booklets that came with her band’s CDs. In real life though there was something softer about her. She was about 5’8”, making her 6” shorter than he was. She had beautiful cheekbones and an Anglo-Saxon nose that stood out but did nothing to diminish her beauty.
If anything it enhanced it…Emily Prentiss didn’t look like anyone else. She wore green army colored lounge pants and a black baby doll tee showing the cover of Patti Scialfa’s album 23rd Street Lullaby. Some of her torso was exposed so Hotch got a full view of the metal bar through her navel. Her hair, raven black like his own, was piled on her head and held there with mini-clips.
“It’s nice to meet you. I appreciate you coming.”
“Lets sit down.” Hotch nodded toward the couch.
“OK, but I should warn you…I'm almost useless in conversation without coffee.”
“I'm bringing it now.” Jason replied from the kitchen.
“Thank you Obi Wan; you're my only hope.” She said.
“Isn't it help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope?” Hotch asked.
“Yes but I like to play around with quotes. You're a Star Wars fan?”
“Isn't everyone?”
“Sadly, no. I like people more if they are.”
Emily smiled and Hotch thought she was quite beautiful. She wore no makeup but she still looked amazing.
“So you're in the FBI?” she asked.
“Yes.” Hotch nodded.
“And you specialize in stalkers?”
“Not exactly; I'm a profiler.”
“Oh my God, shut up…like Clarice Starling?” she took the big mug from Jason’s hands. Then she kissed his cheek. “You're a fuckin profiler?”
“I'm a fuckin profiler.” Hotch managed a smile. “My job is to try to determine what moves a criminal will make based on behavioral patterns or what kind of person would commit certain types of crimes. Obsession crimes are my specialty.”
“Is it weird to be surrounded by psychopaths all day?”
“We've been using the term antisocial personality disorder since the 1980s.”
“Mmm hmm,” Emily nodded, drinking her coffee. “Psychopath is sexier.”
“There's nothing sexy about Ms. Prentiss, believe me.”
“You just see it from the law enforcement point of view.”
“How do you see it?” Hotch asked.
“I see it from the artist’s point of view. Trust me, Agent Hotchner, I don’t think psychopaths or psychopathy is sexy. Is psychopathy a word? Anyway, I just know how many books, movie tickets and CDs it can sell. I mean, who you think the hero was in The Silence of the Lambs. It surely wasn’t Clarice; it was Hannibal.”
“We live in a twisted world, Ms Prentiss.”
“Believe me, I know how twisted the world is. You can call me Emily, or baby if you really want to.”
“Em…” Jason warned.
“I'm sorry.” She laughed. “I like to play but I also know when its time to get serious.”
“Its time to get serious.” Hotch replied, holding back his smile.
“I know, Agent Hotchner. I have a sense of humor and I like using it.” Emily leaned over, grabbing the box of Ziganov cloves from the coffee table. She pulled one out and lit it. Then she asked Jason for another cup of coffee. “What's happening right now really isn’t funny but I try to live by the creed of ‘burst into laughter or burst into tears’. I've done the latter far too many times in my life, you know?”
“I understand, and I don’t mind if you call me Hotch. Can you tell me the first weird thing you remember receiving in the mail?”
“Um, well its June now so it had to be in April. It was just a box of flowers. I was excited because I can be so ridiculously girly and love to get flowers. They were black roses covered in thorns. Jason told me not to touch them so I didn’t. The card inside had Sonnet #130 written on it. It’s my favorite sonnet, well tied with #116.”
“How many people know that?” Hotch asked.
“About the sonnet? I've probably mentioned it a billion different times.” Emily inhaled her clove. “I've said it in interviews and to so many friends and acquaintances. The night I met Ian he told me he heard a rumor that I would fuck him if he recited 116.”
“Is that true?” Hotch asked.
“There's a difference between reciting it and reciting it with all the feelings in the right place.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, the roses came first.”
“No more coffee.” Jason came back into the living room and handed her the cup.
“Did you know Hotch, that it’s the man who makes you the perfect cup of coffee who will never break your heart?”
“I’ll file that under strange facts learned on the job. What came after the flowers?”
“A card. It was just weird, talked about watching me, practicing my moves in the mirror. It didn’t make a lot of sense; I found it freaky but not dangerous.”
“How did you even know it was the same person?” Hotch asked.
“Oh thank God for coffee.”
The conversation was interrupted by the emergence of Ashley Seaver from the bedroom. She wore a pair of cheeky panties and a matching camisole. Emily just shook her head, stifling laughter. Jason looked mortified and Hotch looked slightly perplexed.
“Um…”
“Shit, I didn’t know you had company.” Ashley colored some, making her strawberry blonde hair even more strawberry. “Hey Gideon.”
“Good morning, Ashley.”
“Get yourself some coffee, kiddo.” Emily said. “We’re just talking business. Don’t worry about it.”
“OK, I’ll be quick.”
“That’s cool.”
“Who's that?” Hotch asked.
“That’s my friend Ashley; she stays over sometimes. She feels the same way that I do about coffee. Where were we?”
“How did you know the card and the flowers were from the same person?”
“I didn’t.” Emily replied. “Since they were a few weeks apart, Jason figured that out. He said the handwriting was the same. Since he's been in the CIA I decided he would know more about handwriting analysis than me.”
“The CIA?” Hotch raised his eyebrow.
“Its OK, I know you're supposed to play dumb. Gideon is a mystery wrapped in an enigma stuffed in a fortune cookie. Penelope’s a hacker and she can't even find anything on him. I love him to death but it has to special ops, Navy SEALS, or undercover with the CIA. What else could it be?”
Hotch laughed. This time he couldn’t help it. He looked at Jason, who he’d known for almost 20 years, and he laughed. Then he got himself together and back to the matter at hand. Emily Prentiss had received four letters and two gifts since April. Her manager thought the strangeness of them, if not the potential for danger, was escalating. Hotch happened to agree with his assessment.
“Who are the people you trust most in the world other than your parents?” Hotch asked.
“Oh God, you don’t think its one of my friends, do you?” Emily sighed. She rolled her eyes as she lit her second clove. “That’s rather cliché.”
“Sometimes real life is one big cliché.”
“What's with the chain smoking?” Jason asked. “It’s not good for your voice and you have a show tomorrow.”
“I know, I just…I'm a little jumpy. This is a head trip and it’s not the fun kind.”
“Who do you trust, Emily?”
“I trust Jason. Then there’s Penelope, Derek, Coop, and Sam…that’s about it. I have other people that I'm close to and too many people trying to get close to me but those are the people I trust with my life. Oh, and the boys don’t know about the weird stalker stuff. I told Sam but Morgan gets fiercely overprotective of the women he loves. I’d be wearing a Morgan jacket and I know that would drive me insane.”
“He's going to find out about it.” Hotch replied. “I’ll have to talk to them over the next week or so. What about Ashley, do you trust her?”
“She's wonderful and I adore her but…trust is something on another level altogether. There's something about me that the five people I've mentioned know. If a person knows that, whether I told them drunk or sober, then I trust them. Ashley doesn’t know it. But we are good friends.” Emily said.
“I’ll be talking to the people in your life. They may find out or figure out what's going on and I know your community is small so it may get around. I need to apologize for that before hand but I can never apologize for doing my job.”
“I understand.” Emily nodded, finishing her clove. She focused on her coffee because she knew Jason would be upset if she had another cigarette.
“What about Ian Doyle?” Hotch asked.
“He's my ex-boyfriend. I'm sure you and Jason have already had a lengthy conversation about him.”
“Do you think he could do something like this to scare you?”
“Honestly…maybe. Still, having said that aloud I don’t think its Ian. OK, I don’t want to think its Ian.”
“Was he ever physically, mentally, or sexually abusive toward you when you were in a relationship?” Hotch asked.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Emily, its part of…”
“I don’t care.” She replied shaking her head. “Personal stuff with Ian stays personal. I don’t want to be uncooperative but I put my foot down on that. If he wants to tell you something when you talk to him then that’s his prerogative. It wasn’t a good relationship, Agent Hotchner. I spent the first six months in bliss and the next 16 trying to figure out how to get off the roller coaster before I heaved up my guts.” She looked at Jason. “What time is it?”
Jason checked his watch. “Its twenty after eleven.”
“I told JJ I’d be at her place by 12:30.” Emily stood from the couch. “Would you excuse me, Hotch? I'm sure we’ll talk again but I don’t want to be late.”
“Who’s JJ?” Hotch asked. He stood as well.
“JJ is Jennifer Jareau. She's a fashion designer and she makes a lot of my clothes. I've got a pickup and a fitting at 12:30. We have a show tomorrow; I want to look my best.”
Emily turned and left the room. Jason went and opened the window so the sweet smell of cloves wouldn’t hang in the air. Emily’s cat George, a purebred Abyssinian and a gift from her mother, jumped up in the window sill. That was the first time Hotch had even seen him. Usually he could smell animals, especially in apartments. She must have been meticulous about cleaning up after him.
“I've seen women clam up like that when talking about exes.” Hotch said, his voice low.
“They weren't good together.” Jason replied. “Sid and Nancy come to mind. I think Ian is a classic borderline personality and Emily got pulled into his whirlwind. She's not perfect but I am so thankful that she is out of that relationship.”
“I’ll be talking to him first.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
***
OK guys, you know I'm writing an AU where Emily's in a rock band and she's being stalked. Well its called Babylon, after the name of Emily's band. I decided to post a piece, since I'm 15,000 words in and almost 40 pages. Its killing me cuz I have to make it a case fic but its also one I'm working hard on and wanna share. So I'm sharing. Here is Hotch and Prentiss, meeting for the first time. Hope you enjoy it...feedback is loverly.
“I didn’t call ahead so please don’t be afraid.” Jason fished the key from his pocket and unlocked Emily’s apartment door.
She lived in a second floor walkup on 23rd Street in the chic neighborhood of Chelsea. On the inside it was spacious, and a bit messy. Hotch walked into the living room, the kitchen was to the left, as Jason went down the hall toward the bedroom. Hotch admired the maroon overstuffed couches and back wood furniture like bookshelves and the entertainment center. The lamps and light fixtures were black as well, while the walls were a soft white.
There was photography on the walls in black frames…he wondered if Emily took the pictures herself. The one above the couch was Emily with Penelope Garcia done in the style of Andy Warhol. The metal God pose they were stroking made him smile. Since he had a few minutes alone, Hotch decided to go through her bookshelves. You surely didn’t have to be a profiler to know you could find out a lot about a person based on what they read.
Jason pushed the bedroom door open and walked in. He wasn’t overjoyed to see a naked Ashley Seaver curled under the sheets. Emily was sound asleep beside her. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Emily, you need to wake up. C'mon, it’s Jason.”
“Whuh?” she came around some but not much.
“Emily, wake up.”
Her eyes came open slowly, not happy that she forgot to close the curtains last night. Shielding her eyes, she frowned at Jason.
“Is the building on fire?” she mumbled.
“No.” he shook his head. “I wasn’t expecting you to have company.”
“Oh, um…I swear we didn’t do anything Jason. She just slept over.”
“She's naked.” Jason reasoned.
“Only from the waist up.”
“I need you to get out of bed Emily; Aaron Hotchner is here.”
“Oh my God,” Emily threw the sheets back but made sure not to disturb Ashley. “What time is it?”
“It’s just after ten.”
“Oh, well it’s still kinda early.”
“Not really it isn’t.”
Emily stuck her tongue out as she made her way over to the dresser.
“OK, you keep him company while I pull of some semblance of decent. And I will love you forever if you put on some coffee. I need some coffee like whoa. Brushing my teeth will ruin the coffee so please inform Agent Hotchner that my breath will probably smell.”
“Will do.” Jason smiled.
“Go, go, go.” Emily rushed out of the room and into the bathroom.
Jason went to the kitchen after closing the door on young Ashley. That was the last thing Hotch needed to see.
“She’ll be right out.” he said. “I woke her.”
“Alright.” Hotch nodded. “She has second edition Austens and Orwells. She has autographed Vonneguts.”
“Emily Prentiss defies logical definition.” Jason replied. “That’s why she's amazing. OK, that’s one of the many reasons that she's amazing.”
“You can't seem to find enough wonderful things to say about her. I know you Jason, you don’t feel that way about many people.”
“I count myself so lucky to know her.”
“Is she a reader or a book collector?” Hotch asked.
“She's both. She’s obsessed with Vonnegut.”
“He's good.” Hotch said.
“No, Philip Roth is good.” Emily replied, walking into the room. “Kurt Vonnegut is the voice of a disillusioned generation. Unfortunately it’s not my generation…that’s probably Dawson’s Creek. I'm Emily Prentiss.”
“Aaron Hotchner.” He shook her extended hand and liked her firm handshake.
He’d seen her in photographs, including the booklets that came with her band’s CDs. In real life though there was something softer about her. She was about 5’8”, making her 6” shorter than he was. She had beautiful cheekbones and an Anglo-Saxon nose that stood out but did nothing to diminish her beauty.
If anything it enhanced it…Emily Prentiss didn’t look like anyone else. She wore green army colored lounge pants and a black baby doll tee showing the cover of Patti Scialfa’s album 23rd Street Lullaby. Some of her torso was exposed so Hotch got a full view of the metal bar through her navel. Her hair, raven black like his own, was piled on her head and held there with mini-clips.
“It’s nice to meet you. I appreciate you coming.”
“Lets sit down.” Hotch nodded toward the couch.
“OK, but I should warn you…I'm almost useless in conversation without coffee.”
“I'm bringing it now.” Jason replied from the kitchen.
“Thank you Obi Wan; you're my only hope.” She said.
“Isn't it help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope?” Hotch asked.
“Yes but I like to play around with quotes. You're a Star Wars fan?”
“Isn't everyone?”
“Sadly, no. I like people more if they are.”
Emily smiled and Hotch thought she was quite beautiful. She wore no makeup but she still looked amazing.
“So you're in the FBI?” she asked.
“Yes.” Hotch nodded.
“And you specialize in stalkers?”
“Not exactly; I'm a profiler.”
“Oh my God, shut up…like Clarice Starling?” she took the big mug from Jason’s hands. Then she kissed his cheek. “You're a fuckin profiler?”
“I'm a fuckin profiler.” Hotch managed a smile. “My job is to try to determine what moves a criminal will make based on behavioral patterns or what kind of person would commit certain types of crimes. Obsession crimes are my specialty.”
“Is it weird to be surrounded by psychopaths all day?”
“We've been using the term antisocial personality disorder since the 1980s.”
“Mmm hmm,” Emily nodded, drinking her coffee. “Psychopath is sexier.”
“There's nothing sexy about Ms. Prentiss, believe me.”
“You just see it from the law enforcement point of view.”
“How do you see it?” Hotch asked.
“I see it from the artist’s point of view. Trust me, Agent Hotchner, I don’t think psychopaths or psychopathy is sexy. Is psychopathy a word? Anyway, I just know how many books, movie tickets and CDs it can sell. I mean, who you think the hero was in The Silence of the Lambs. It surely wasn’t Clarice; it was Hannibal.”
“We live in a twisted world, Ms Prentiss.”
“Believe me, I know how twisted the world is. You can call me Emily, or baby if you really want to.”
“Em…” Jason warned.
“I'm sorry.” She laughed. “I like to play but I also know when its time to get serious.”
“Its time to get serious.” Hotch replied, holding back his smile.
“I know, Agent Hotchner. I have a sense of humor and I like using it.” Emily leaned over, grabbing the box of Ziganov cloves from the coffee table. She pulled one out and lit it. Then she asked Jason for another cup of coffee. “What's happening right now really isn’t funny but I try to live by the creed of ‘burst into laughter or burst into tears’. I've done the latter far too many times in my life, you know?”
“I understand, and I don’t mind if you call me Hotch. Can you tell me the first weird thing you remember receiving in the mail?”
“Um, well its June now so it had to be in April. It was just a box of flowers. I was excited because I can be so ridiculously girly and love to get flowers. They were black roses covered in thorns. Jason told me not to touch them so I didn’t. The card inside had Sonnet #130 written on it. It’s my favorite sonnet, well tied with #116.”
“How many people know that?” Hotch asked.
“About the sonnet? I've probably mentioned it a billion different times.” Emily inhaled her clove. “I've said it in interviews and to so many friends and acquaintances. The night I met Ian he told me he heard a rumor that I would fuck him if he recited 116.”
“Is that true?” Hotch asked.
“There's a difference between reciting it and reciting it with all the feelings in the right place.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, the roses came first.”
“No more coffee.” Jason came back into the living room and handed her the cup.
“Did you know Hotch, that it’s the man who makes you the perfect cup of coffee who will never break your heart?”
“I’ll file that under strange facts learned on the job. What came after the flowers?”
“A card. It was just weird, talked about watching me, practicing my moves in the mirror. It didn’t make a lot of sense; I found it freaky but not dangerous.”
“How did you even know it was the same person?” Hotch asked.
“Oh thank God for coffee.”
The conversation was interrupted by the emergence of Ashley Seaver from the bedroom. She wore a pair of cheeky panties and a matching camisole. Emily just shook her head, stifling laughter. Jason looked mortified and Hotch looked slightly perplexed.
“Um…”
“Shit, I didn’t know you had company.” Ashley colored some, making her strawberry blonde hair even more strawberry. “Hey Gideon.”
“Good morning, Ashley.”
“Get yourself some coffee, kiddo.” Emily said. “We’re just talking business. Don’t worry about it.”
“OK, I’ll be quick.”
“That’s cool.”
“Who's that?” Hotch asked.
“That’s my friend Ashley; she stays over sometimes. She feels the same way that I do about coffee. Where were we?”
“How did you know the card and the flowers were from the same person?”
“I didn’t.” Emily replied. “Since they were a few weeks apart, Jason figured that out. He said the handwriting was the same. Since he's been in the CIA I decided he would know more about handwriting analysis than me.”
“The CIA?” Hotch raised his eyebrow.
“Its OK, I know you're supposed to play dumb. Gideon is a mystery wrapped in an enigma stuffed in a fortune cookie. Penelope’s a hacker and she can't even find anything on him. I love him to death but it has to special ops, Navy SEALS, or undercover with the CIA. What else could it be?”
Hotch laughed. This time he couldn’t help it. He looked at Jason, who he’d known for almost 20 years, and he laughed. Then he got himself together and back to the matter at hand. Emily Prentiss had received four letters and two gifts since April. Her manager thought the strangeness of them, if not the potential for danger, was escalating. Hotch happened to agree with his assessment.
“Who are the people you trust most in the world other than your parents?” Hotch asked.
“Oh God, you don’t think its one of my friends, do you?” Emily sighed. She rolled her eyes as she lit her second clove. “That’s rather cliché.”
“Sometimes real life is one big cliché.”
“What's with the chain smoking?” Jason asked. “It’s not good for your voice and you have a show tomorrow.”
“I know, I just…I'm a little jumpy. This is a head trip and it’s not the fun kind.”
“Who do you trust, Emily?”
“I trust Jason. Then there’s Penelope, Derek, Coop, and Sam…that’s about it. I have other people that I'm close to and too many people trying to get close to me but those are the people I trust with my life. Oh, and the boys don’t know about the weird stalker stuff. I told Sam but Morgan gets fiercely overprotective of the women he loves. I’d be wearing a Morgan jacket and I know that would drive me insane.”
“He's going to find out about it.” Hotch replied. “I’ll have to talk to them over the next week or so. What about Ashley, do you trust her?”
“She's wonderful and I adore her but…trust is something on another level altogether. There's something about me that the five people I've mentioned know. If a person knows that, whether I told them drunk or sober, then I trust them. Ashley doesn’t know it. But we are good friends.” Emily said.
“I’ll be talking to the people in your life. They may find out or figure out what's going on and I know your community is small so it may get around. I need to apologize for that before hand but I can never apologize for doing my job.”
“I understand.” Emily nodded, finishing her clove. She focused on her coffee because she knew Jason would be upset if she had another cigarette.
“What about Ian Doyle?” Hotch asked.
“He's my ex-boyfriend. I'm sure you and Jason have already had a lengthy conversation about him.”
“Do you think he could do something like this to scare you?”
“Honestly…maybe. Still, having said that aloud I don’t think its Ian. OK, I don’t want to think its Ian.”
“Was he ever physically, mentally, or sexually abusive toward you when you were in a relationship?” Hotch asked.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Emily, its part of…”
“I don’t care.” She replied shaking her head. “Personal stuff with Ian stays personal. I don’t want to be uncooperative but I put my foot down on that. If he wants to tell you something when you talk to him then that’s his prerogative. It wasn’t a good relationship, Agent Hotchner. I spent the first six months in bliss and the next 16 trying to figure out how to get off the roller coaster before I heaved up my guts.” She looked at Jason. “What time is it?”
Jason checked his watch. “Its twenty after eleven.”
“I told JJ I’d be at her place by 12:30.” Emily stood from the couch. “Would you excuse me, Hotch? I'm sure we’ll talk again but I don’t want to be late.”
“Who’s JJ?” Hotch asked. He stood as well.
“JJ is Jennifer Jareau. She's a fashion designer and she makes a lot of my clothes. I've got a pickup and a fitting at 12:30. We have a show tomorrow; I want to look my best.”
Emily turned and left the room. Jason went and opened the window so the sweet smell of cloves wouldn’t hang in the air. Emily’s cat George, a purebred Abyssinian and a gift from her mother, jumped up in the window sill. That was the first time Hotch had even seen him. Usually he could smell animals, especially in apartments. She must have been meticulous about cleaning up after him.
“I've seen women clam up like that when talking about exes.” Hotch said, his voice low.
“They weren't good together.” Jason replied. “Sid and Nancy come to mind. I think Ian is a classic borderline personality and Emily got pulled into his whirlwind. She's not perfect but I am so thankful that she is out of that relationship.”
“I’ll be talking to him first.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
***