Undercover | a. hotchner |

Chapter 12

I was woken when the smell of pancakes filled my nose. I opened my eyes and Aaron was sitting at the table.

Trying to make my way over to him, I take one step and stumble. He heard and he turned around.

"Baby are you okay?" He kneeled down holding onto my upper arm helping me stand.

"Yeah, let's just say you definitely did some damage last night." We both laughed at the comment and he helped me to the table.

He gave me a box, when I opened it there were peanut butter pancakes; my favorite.

In the middle of breakfast Aaron and I were talking and his phone went off. Picking up the phone he answered.

"Hotchner." Aaron put the phone on speaker when he heard Rossi's voice and resumed with the meal in front of him.

"Last night I got a call from Reid." He let out a sigh, "He's taking a longer leave, probably a month I don't know."

"Why didn't he call me?" I gave Aaron a glance and he quickly remembered why that wasn't even a question.

"He tried but you didn't answer, anyway that's all I wanted to call you about." I finished and threw my trash away.

I slipped out of the room and went to mine.

Dave bringing up Reid reminded me that I needed to call him, I wanna see how he's holding up. He had been through a lot within the past few years and I wanted to help him anyway I could.

Before I got into the shower I gave him a call. I waited a few rings...

No answer.

I'll call him back later

I got ready fairly quickly and was about to head out, closing the door behind me when Morgan was about to knock.

"Hey, do you know if Hotch is still in his room?" I made my way down the hallway, getting further away from Morgan.

"Yeah he is. I think he's almost done though, I'll meet you guys at the station." With that I left Morgan, he was knocking on Hotch's door.

Arriving at the police station almost everyone was there minus Morgan and Hotch. We gathered around the table tossing small ideas around before we could actually start.

Ten minutes later, I heard the very familiar footsteps and we started working.

"Okay so let's say this unsub is protecting the child. He has to know what goes on at home and if they are even being abused", JJ says.

I continue, "So if they have to work at a school or hospital someone the child can confide in."

Emily starts, "A school counselor maybe, but would they be required by the school to report abuse or suspected abuse."

She was right, the only thing that made sense was a doctor and nurse at least in this particular situation.

Someone that didn't need to report anything because all they saw were broken bones and not too many questions.

Even easier if the person getting abused is lying about how the fracture occurred in fear that they would end up somewhere else or hurt by the abuser even more.

With information waiting to be discovered Morgan called Garcia and put her on speaker, "Did any of the victims go to the same hospital?"

The sound of her fingers on the keyboard rang through the speaker, "Two went to the same one but the other three went to separate hospitals."