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1
“Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problems: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ~
When Hotch tells Dave that they’re going to be coordinating with the still relatively new Preventers for the first time on their new terrorist case, Dave is more curious than eager. New agencies and task forces always seem to have a bone to pick, something to prove. Working with them tends to be a more delicate balancing act than liaising with normal locals.
There’s a knock on the conference room doorway, and an officer says, “Preventer agents for you, sir?” He almost looks confused.
“Yes, of course,” Hotch says as the officer moves out of the way, and the reason for the officer’s confusion becomes apparent as the young men become visible.
“Thanks for the escort, man,” one of the agents says, a large, disarming smile on his face as he pats the man’s back while his partner slides past without a word.
“Sure…” the officer says before leaving.
“Welcome. I’m SSA Aaron Hotchner. These are two of my team—Agent Rossi. Dr. Reid.” He motions to them each in turn.
“I’d say ‘nice to meet ya,’ but under the circumstances, it seems a little…” the gregarious, braided agent trails with a shrug, even as he crosses the room to give handshakes. “Agent Venus,” he introduces. “Forgive my partner, Mercury. His people skills go poof when he’s in mission mode.”
He’d heard that the Preventers did that—only used their call signs in the field, not their legal names. But Venus? For a young man? Dave wonders. He’s short, maybe 5’7” with a waist-length braid and bangs that look like they’re cut with a razor rather than professionally, but otherwise his hair is clean and well-kept. He has an impish, open face with striking purple eyes, and if he’s a day over twenty-four, Dave will eat his custom Italian shoes. His hand, when Dave shakes it, is rough and has gun calluses, so this is someone not afraid to get his hands dirty.
Mercury has already made his spot at the table and has pulled out two laptops. “I can get to coordinating with your tech analyst,” he says in a flat, uninflected tone that makes Dave sigh internally. One of those types. Penelope is going to love working with him, Dave can tell already. Small wonder he’s partnered with someone as gregarious as Venus. “We’re not here to socialize,” he adds.
Venus grins again, obviously unbothered by the sharp tone. “Aye aye, sir.” He gives a mock salute and turns his attention to the board. “So whatcha got on our little group of misfit toys?” He sounds careless and at ease, but his eyes as they move over the board are sharp and intelligent.
“Misfit toys?” Reid asks, sounding confused.
“Well sure,” Venus says, glancing at him as if surprised. “That’s what these types always recruit, right? The misfits and loners, the ones who don’t fit in and have a bucketload of insecurities because mommy didn’t love them enough or whatever.”
It’s not an inaccurate description of the types terrorist groups and fanatics tend to target, but it rubs at Dave the wrong way. It rubs Reid the wrong way too, judging by the way he frowns.
“We generally try to refrain from either minimizing the threat our unsubs present or sensationalizing them. That includes refraining from labeling them with epithets,” Hotch says.
The look Venus gets at that, a bemused, almost condescending smile, as if he thinks aww, isn’t that cute, starts running up a lot of Dave’s red flags. “Sure, boss-man,” is all he says in reply though.
Mercury’s typing stops for a moment, and he glances up at Venus’s back, watching him steadily until Venus looks over his shoulder and they meet gazes.
A hundred unsaid words pass between them, words that Dave can only guess at, but the smile Venus is wearing when he turns back to the board is softer, more real. “So, what do you have?” he asks, not subdued, exactly, but not as aggressively cheerful.
Reid begins to explain his map of the area, and Dave trades a look with Hotch.
We are going to have to watch these agents closely, Dave’s look says. He gets a bare nod of acknowledgment in reply.
Whoever these agents are, Dave isn’t sure that they’re running out of the same playbook that the BAU are. He sends off a quick text to Penelope to see if she can find anything on their new helpers if she has a few minutes, but he doesn’t expect much. They have terrorists in New York City; they have bigger problems on their hands than the odd agents.
2
They’re called out to a site that is believed to have been a safehouse for their targets. Duo is barely contained energy, the kind that is bouncing on his toes and he always gets when he’s on the hunt. Heero can see that it’s making the older agents a little nervous, a little uncomfortable. Duo’s cheerfulness and bright disposition seeming out of place with the gravity of their situation.
There are three other BAU agents at the location, a large bald black man, and two women, one blonde, one brunette. They’re roughly the same build and their threat is probably not a physical one.
Then again, most people would think that about Duo. Duo gives him a quick grin and flashes a couple of quick, discrete hand signs at him. Dibs on the dude.
Heero gives him the affirmative response and indicates the blonde. Duo’s grin widens before he turns his attention back to the people in front of him.
Hotchner shows them over and introduces them. “These are agents Morgan, Jareau, and Prentiss. Preventer agents Mercury and Venus.”
Eyebrows raise slightly, as they often do at their introduction. The man speaks first. “Venus?” he asks. It’s not the sneering, contemptuous tone that Duo often gets, but the man asked, so Duo wins. It puts Duo in an even better mood, which is probably best for Agent Morgan’s sake since Duo usually takes any commentary on his call sign as an excuse to be an asshole to the asshole. The call sign came around because Une kept shooting down every overtly, and a few less overt, dark options Duo wanted, he eventually went with Venus, enjoying the reactions he gets from it. He calls it his built-in asshole detector, and it isn’t often wrong. They have started making bets on who they think will be the asshole though.
Duo wins those bets more often than not. Heero would complain, but it is helping him get better at judging people at a glance.
“Got a problem with that, cap?” Duo asks him, hands in his back pockets and rocking on his heels.
“Cap?” Morgan asks.
“Captain Morgan,” Duo says, giving him a sunny, harmless grin. It’s the one that he always pulls out before he’s going to do something people are really going to hate.
“He’s not a captain,” Hotchner says, interrupting him. “What do we have?”
Duo glances at him, catching Heero’s eye.
Killjoy, that look says.
The look that Heero replies with is Be professional.
Duo’s eyes crinkle, but his grin becomes a little smaller, a little more contained, and he turns back to the agents. Prentiss, the brunette, had been talking.
“We’re just waiting on the bomb squad to clear the place.”
This time Heero looks at Duo first. He raises an eyebrow in a silent question. Risk?
Duo looks over at the apparently abandoned house, his eyes moving around the exterior as if he can see inside. He can’t, Heero knows, but Duo has an innate sense of space and layouts that is eerie.
Waste of time, Duo says with a subtle roll of his eyes.
Apparently not subtle enough, or maybe the profilers are actually a little better than the average locals they have to deal with.
“Something to add?” the blonde, Jareau, asks him.
“I’m just gonna go take a little looksee,” Duo says. “You got this covered?” he asks Heero. Heero nods.
“I’ll go with you,” Prentiss offers.
A flicker of annoyance darts through Duo’s eyes, gone too fast to catch if you didn’t know Duo very well. “Sure,” he says, giving her a sunny smile. “Long as you can keep up in those heels,” he adds, then is moving before she can do anything other than give her boss an exasperated look before hurrying to follow him.
Rossi frowns at them as they move rapidly out of sight. Duo doesn’t look like he’s deliberately hurrying, but he can eat up ground with his light steps.
“A problem?” Heero asks.
“No…” Rossi replies, still looking in the direction they went, but he doesn’t sound like he believes it.
The team continues to bounce ideas off one another for several minutes before the bomb squad comes out and calls the house clear.
Heero doesn’t know how Duo is always right about that. It never gets less irritating.
3
They just got news that a school bus and the kids have gone missing. JJ is surprised to see Emily is flustered when she comes back, hours later. A hint of temper gives color to her cheeks, which particularly stands out considering her pale complexion.
“What is it?” JJ asks. “Is something wrong?”
“You mean aside from a bus full of missing kids?” Emily huffs but adds, “Nothing,” in the kind of tone that definitely is not nothing, but JJ doesn’t call her on it. “I just feel like I’ve followed Venus all over for at least a mile in every direction, talking to nearly every homeless person he could find—sometimes in languages I don’t know, and my feet are killing me. And now we have terrorists and missing kids.”
“Languages?” Reid asks, coming over to them.
“It sounded almost like English, but I couldn’t place it. Some sort of slang or creole…”
“Spacerspeak,” Mercury says, coming out of a hall, and startling JJ. She hadn’t heard him coming at all. “There are a lot of grounded Spacers in the area. They won’t talk to you, but they’ll talk to Venus.”
He begins to move past them, probably heading to find his partner, who JJ hadn’t seen return with Emily. “How can you be sure?” she asks him.
Mercury turns back to her and gives the barest raised eyebrow as a silent question.
“How can you be sure that what he was speaking was Spacerspeak? And that they’ll talk to him?” JJ clarifies.
He doesn’t roll his eyes, but she somehow gets the impression that he finds their apparent ignorance tiresome. “It’s Venus. That’s who he would have targeted speaking to.”
“Yeah, but he handed out his card left and right like he expected them to find something,” Emily says, the frustration of the afternoon in her voice.
“Spacers are insular but not oblivious. Even on Earth, there are few better information networks,” he explains in a flat, emotionless voice that somehow still conveys how obvious he thinks this information is.
“Even among homeless Spacers?” Emily asks. They’ve used the homeless as information networks before, but for tracking down specific terrorists? Why would they know that kind of information? “Why would they trust him that much?”
“Because he’s Venus,” Mercury repeats, and if he sounded like he was questioning their basic intelligence before, now he sounds downright condescending.
“Right,” Emily says, and Mercury takes it as a dismissal, moving away on cat-light feet. When he turns the corner, Emily rubs her arms as if chilled. “Venus does that too. I swear, he doesn’t make a damn sound when he walks.”
JJ risks rubbing her arm for a moment, more to comfort than to warm.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Reid begins. “In this case, with the secretive nature of the terrorists, it’s highly unlikely that the homeless network, Spacer or otherwise, will yield much information.”
“Hey! Kid!”
“Fuck you, mudsucker!” a young voice choruses, echoing through the house.
Without hesitating, they follow the voice and commotion.
“Hey, I got him,” Venus says, catching the kid who is all of maybe twelve, too skinny in oversized, ill-fitting clothing, but he looks clean. “Thanks, officer.” He waves off the uniform who had been chasing the kid, then says, “Talk to me.”
“The Spacers… they say you got connections. Say if you put in a good word, I can get a berth,” the boy says, staring defiantly up at Venus.
He raises an eyebrow, a smile pulling at his lips. “I can. You got information that’s good for it?” he asks.
“Venus,” Morgan steps in. “You can’t just promise him that. You don’t know if he’s missing or if he has a family—”
“I ain’t talking to you, mudsucker!” the boy snarls.
“Hey!” Venus snaps, with a definite tone of reprimand. “I know where you learned that language, but not all dirtsiders are mudsuckers, and he’s just concerned about you.”
“I ain’t helping you if you ain’t gonna get me off this rock,” the boy proclaims, crossing his arms, all bluster and bravado.
“Not gonna get a berth if the info’s not good,” Venus retorted, dropping into a lilting dialect for a moment. “So start talking, kid.”
“My name’s not ‘kid.’ It’s Sparky!”
Eyebrows go up all around, but something changes in Venus’s posture.
“Okay, Sparks. Whatcha got for me?”
“You said you were looking for somewhere people were holed up, real secret-like, but not like us secret-like. Like they’re hiding something. Like they look down on us, aren’t like us. Somewhere with lots of space.”
“I did,” Venus says, surprisingly patient considering the circumstances.
“I know where they are.”
Venus weighs him for a minute then says, “All right. Take us there.”
“Venus, we can’t just assume—” Hotch starts.
“You do what you gotta do. Merc and I’ll go with Sparky and take a look.” He begins to follow the kid, not waiting for any additional response, when Rossi grabs his arm.
“You can’t just trust a kid in these circumstances, and you can’t just promise him a berth off-planet,” he says.
Something changes in Venus, the almost out-of-place good humor and lazy good-nature seeming to drain from him, to be replaced with something a little darker, something colder. Something that starts setting off red flags in JJ.
“Remove your hand,” he begins, low and with sincere threat, “or I will.”
Rossi hesitates a moment, then let go, and Venus is smiling and bubbly again, as if the threat had never occurred.
“Thanks,” he says with a smile that’s all teeth and nothing friendly. “Just so you know, ‘Sparky’ might be what you name a dog dirtside, but it’s a common Spacer name. This kid is Spacer stock, and anyone he’s got ain’t worth having. So if he wants to get off this rock and go back to the black, I’m going to make sure he does it safely and not on a trafficker ship.”
“He needs to be—”
“What? Turned over to social services? You think they can do better by that kid than a Spacer ship? Fuck you.”
“As a member of law enforcement—” Morgan starts, but Venus waves him off.
“Show me where we’re going, Sparks,” he says, turning his back on them and clearly dismissing them from his thoughts.
Sparky shoots a glare at the BAU agents but he nods at Venus and begins to lead them out.
“Prentiss, Morgan, go with them. Everyone else, back to the precinct.”
Emily spared her a longsuffering look before she followed Morgan to catch up to the Preventers.
4
The boy takes them down alleys and backways, through shortcuts and side routes. Heero and Duo keep easy pace with the boy, with Agents Morgan and Prentiss keeping up admirably. Even if Prentiss isn’t wearing the best shoes for this exercise.
Duo nearly skips as he follows the boy over two miles from where they had been by Heero’s reckoning.
“Shouldn’t we have taken a car?” Morgan asks, having to pause to give Prentiss a leg up over another fence.
“Sparky wouldn’t know how to get there on the main roads,” Duo tells them. He meets Heero’s eyes and Heero can read his exasperation with the agents there as Morgan heaves himself over.
“We’re almost there,” the boy says, sounding impatient.
Ready? Duo’s eyes ask.
Heero nods.
“Lead the way, then,” Duo tells the boy. They head down another alley.
“I have no idea where we are,” Morgan says. “I lost track—”
Heero rattles off the address as they come out across the street from a rather mundane-looking house. From where they are, it’d be difficult to see them. The boy has good instincts.
“Merc,” Duo says, but Heero is already pulling out a heat-sensing array that he and Duo programmed a couple years ago. It only takes a moment to get it up and running and let Heero scan the house.
“We’ve got heat signatures consistent with children, along with over a dozen adults,” Heero reports, frowning at the odd spread of the signatures.
Duo apparently reads his confusion on his face, but before he can ask, Morgan’s phone goes off. “What’s up, Hotch?” he asks. “Hold on,” he says, turning the phone on speaker and holding it out.
“We got a manifesto,” Agent Hotchner’s voice comes from the phone. “They’re holding the children hostage with suicide bombers with dead man’s switches.”
Oh, Heero thinks. Well, now the distribution makes sense.
“Do we have the right place?” Morgan asks Heero. He nods in confirmation. “Yeah, the kid got us to the right place. We just got here,” he tells his boss, then repeats the address Heero had given him.
“You cannot go near that house. If they see you, the children are at risk. This needs to be a careful negotiation,” Agent Hotchner dictates. Duo leans down and murmurs something in the boy’s ear, and he goes running off.
“Hey!” Prentiss snaps, but the kid is gone, as slippery and smart as Heero is sure Duo once was. “You can’t just let him go!” she tells Duo, who barely spares her an eyeroll before leaning into Heero’s space to look at the layout.
“This is—” Duo points out a couple of the heat signatures.
Heero knows what he’s seeing. “Think you can—?”
Duo tilts his head side to side. “It’s tight,” he says, but a grin is pulling at the corners of his lips. “Dead man’s switches, huh?”
It’s not the first time they’ve dealt with these circumstances, and there’s a fierce anticipation in his eyes. Duo loves a challenge almost as much as he loves Heero himself.
“Backup?” Heero asks, even as Duo sets his Preventer’s jacket aside and is making short work of his button-down.
“What are you doing?” Prentiss asks, something like alarm in her voice.
“What’s going on?” Agent Hotchner asks.
Shirts tossed over Heero’s shoulder as he continues isolating the signatures to give Duo the best information, Duo bends down to start digging his spare knives out of Heero’s bag.
“Why are you pulling out knives?” Morgan asks, but Heero can’t be bothered to look at him.
“Rescue,” Duo tells him.
“We need backup,” Morgan says, starting to sound nervous.
“No,” Duo says with a bit of derision in his voice. “Hostage situation like this? More hands is not what we need.”
“They have dead man switches. What do you think you’re going to do?” Morgan sounds stressed.
“I’m going to rescue the kids?” Duo asks like he thinks it should be obvious.
“You can’t,” Prentiss says.
“Three, three, four, six.”
“That six is going to be the biggest problem,” Duo says frowning.
Heero points at the screen. “Here and here, you can—”
“Oh, that’ll work.”
“What are you two talking about?” Prentiss demands.
Duo’s head pops up, and Heero sees what he sees, looking across the way—a signal. He must have sent the kid on ahead.
Their eyes meet.
Ready? Heero asks silently.
Duo gives him a nod, reaching out to cup Heero’s face for a moment, the only intimacy they allow themselves in the field, as he tucks a comm in his ear.
Clouds move to cover the sun, and in that shift between daylight and shadow, Duo is gone before Morgan and Prentiss can react.
“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?” Derek demands as Venus vanishes.
“Getting the kids out as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Mercury responds dryly, still focused on his screen.
“There are over a dozen terrorists in that building and more than a dozen kids,” Derek snaps.
“We have a handle on it. You won’t be able to talk them down.”
“There are kids,” Derek says, just managing not to yell, but it’s a close thing.
Mercury glances up at him, expressionless. “We are the best. Trust Venus to secure the kids.”
“Those men have dead man’s switches!” Prentiss backs him up.
“Prentiss? Morgan?” Hotch asks, still on speakerphone. “What is going on?”
“The Preventers are running rogue. We need backup here, and we need it now, Hotch. SWAT—”
“You’re overreacting. We have it under control.”
Derek glares. “I’d send ambulances, fire response, and the bomb squad too.”
“Tell them to come with no sirens and park out of sight of the house. If you cause too much commotion, Venus won’t be able to do what he needs to,” Mercury says, cold.
“And what exactly is he doing?” Derek demands again.
Hard, deep blue eyes meet his own. “I told you. He’s saving the kids.”
Prentiss asks, “At what cost?” as Derek gets a good look at the head-sensing monitor Mercury is using. Smaller signatures are making their way steadily out, and larger heat signatures are falling, though there’s no exterior sign of it.
“Six down,” Mercury reports. “One investigating, five meters ahead.”
There’s no audible response, but a smallish heat signature moves, combining with a second one on the screen, then they both go down. One stands up, leaning over the other. “Down,” Venus’s voice comes, sounding almost excited.
“Eight registering. Two rooms,” Mercury says. “Two and six.”
“Sparky got the kids so far?” Venus asks.
“Affirmative.”
The next five minutes are terrifying as Venus’s signature moves through the rooms, interacting with other heat signatures.
“How do you know it’s him?” Prentiss asks, leaning over.
Mercury snorts. “No one moves like Venus does.”
Three in the final room go down, smaller shapes running out, getting away to safety, then suddenly two bodies go flying out one of the second-story windows, exploding midair.
“We clear?” Venus asks at the same time the waiting authorities have finally had enough and sirens come on.
“All targets down,” Mercury says, grabbing his bag and making his way across the street with urgency, meeting the frightened third graders that Sparky has rounded up.
They’re counting heads and consoling kids when the ambulances, SWAT and firetrucks arrive. It hasn’t even been ten minutes since they asked for them.
When Venus walks out the front door, he’s splattered liberally with blood, hands coated in it, face smeared where he’s rubbed. There’s something about him that seems settled and satisfied, languid and almost lazy.
Derek can’t help but watch the way Mercury looks his partner over, not surprised or upset. A tiny bit of tension goes out of Mercury’s shoulders as Venus approaches with a loping, predatory stride.
For a long moment, they have eyes only for one another, and although they don’t touch, the intimacy and connection between them is obvious.
SWAT visibly startles when he sees Venus, but Venus simply tells him that there are another nearly dozen suicide bombs that they can either disarm or blow. “Get your bomb squad geared up, and I’ll help disarm.”
The local officers look uneasy, and Derek can’t blame them. Venus isn’t wearing his uniform, is visibly armed to the teeth, and apparently completely comfortable with copious amounts of literal blood on his hands. He does use a knife to clean some from beneath his nails while the techs gather their gear.
“Where’s Sparky?” Derek asks, realizing the kids are all secured, but Sparky’s taller form is missing. He looks demandingly at Venus, who shrugs.
“Why would I know?”
“You put him in danger—”
Venus rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t that—”
“He’s a kid and you used him as your backup!”
“The kids would trust another kid more under the circumstances. He agreed to do it.”
“For you to vouch for him,” Derek accuses.
“I would have done that anyway just for getting us here. He’s a good kid. He wanted to help and he was more damn help than you were.” He straightens, changing his grip on his knife in an automatic movement as the Bomb Squad techs stand ready. “I have some bombs to disarm.”
“We aren’t done,” Derek tells him.
“You need protective gear, sir,” one of the techs tells him.
Venus just waves his hand without looking back. “If one of these go, that crap ain’t gonna save me. I’d rather die quick, if it’s all the same to you.”
Behind their face shields, the techs are stone-faced, but they don’t argue, following where he’d disappeared back into the house.
As much as he can, Derek keeps an eye on Venus for the rest of the cleanup. The bombs are disarmed, though the techs, when they pass, seem unnerved. It’s not a comforting sign.
When they’re finally ready to head back and clean up, he pulls Hotch aside.
“Hotch, Venus is—”
“I know,” Hotch interrupts, grim. “I’ll set up time with their director. She’s in town for a conference.”
“Fourteen terrorists.”
“I know.”
“No survivors.”
“Morgan,” Hotch says putting a hand on Derek’s shoulder and meeting his eyes. “I know.”
Fourteen dead men and a languid, relaxed, smiling Preventer covered in blood. Of course Hotch knows. For the first time in hours, Derek feels like he can breathe. They can trust Hotch to handle it.
But it’s not everyday even the BAU get to see a serial killer this up close and personal.
5
Hotch welcomes Director Une into the conference room that they have been treating as an office. It puts them on a nice even playing field as it lets them sit around a table without establishing sides.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us,” Hotch says, putting his hand out to shake.
“Of course, Agent Hotchner.” She takes Hotch’s hand, then Dave’s with a strong grip. “Agent Rossi.”
She’s… young, in person. Her back is military straight, which is no surprise, every hair precisely in his place, but she’s not even thirty, so being the director of a group like the Preventers is not a small accomplishment. By all accounts, she’s done a spectacular job, but she is still young. Dave’s been at this game for longer than this woman has been alive.
“We wanted to discuss your agents with you.”
“I always welcome feedback on my agents,” she says, sitting at the table as if she owns it. It’s a subtle thing, a quiet power, but this is a woman who is used to being in command and is not shy about making it known. “Were there any problems with their performance?”
“’Problems’ isn’t really the word I think we’d use,” Hotch begins.
“Please, Agent Hotchner. Save the civilities for someone with sensitivities to preserve. What is the issue with my agents? You didn’t ask to speak with me in private because everything went off without a hitch, though, from Mercury’s preliminary report, it seems that was the case.”
She laces her fingers together and sets her elbows and hands on the table, her body language radiating expectation.
Dave exchanges a glance with Hotch, who gives him the go-ahead. “Madam Director, we believe that one of your agents is a serial killer. Further, we believe he is using your assignments as a cover in order to murder.”
Director Une has an exceptional poker face. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t seem surprised or concerned. There’s a beat before she asks, “Is that all?”
His heart sinks in his chest and he looks at Hotch again. “That seems like it’s cause for concern,” Dave says carefully. “But you don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m trying to decide if I admire your integrity in bringing this matter to me directly and giving my ignorance the benefit of the doubt, or if I’m insulted that you think I’m that unaware of what is going on in my organization.” Judging by the hardness her tone took, Dave is betting on her leaning on the side of insulted.
Dave and Hotch trade another look.
“You know that one of your agents is a serial killer?” Dave asks because he has to be sure.
“How many of your team has had to kill a suspect in the line of duty?” she asks rather than answering the question.
“That’s not the point—”
“On the contrary, that’s exactly the point.”
“Your agent murdered more than a dozen men!” Dave snaps, voice rising.
“In the course of saving twice that many hostages. I understand the suspects were all wired with dead man’s switches? I am not a profiler, but my understanding is that taking those types of suicide bombers alive is almost impossible.”
“That’s true—” Hotch starts, but Une interrupts him.
“Would you honestly prefer your agents were the ones at risk or forced to fire?” she asks.
“We’d rather have taken them alive,” Hotch says, voice getting firmer.
“But you yourself just conceded that these types are simply not taken alive. So I ask you again, Agent Hotchner, would you prefer to put your agents in the line of fire?”
“Of course not—”
“Venus and Mercury are my best agents, gentlemen. Not ‘one of my best’ or ‘some of my best.’ They are my very best.”
“And one of your very best agents is a serial killer.”
“In an occupation that requires he kill people regularly. I fail to see the problem.”
“You don’t see a problem with allowing a serial killer to use your organization as a cover for his murders?” Hotch asks, sounding as shocked as Dave feels.
Une frowns, looking as if they’re misunderstanding, but it’s a patronizing look, as if they’re really that obtuse. “Would you prefer your agents have to make those kills? Have to live with those? Or would you rather Venus was one of your—what do you call them? Unsubs?”
“We’d prefer he’s in prison—where murderers belong,” Dave says, getting angry.
“Allow me to explain something,” she says as if she thinks this is stupid and unnecessary, but she’ll humor them. “If you try to arrest him, Venus will go on the run, and he will take Mercury with him because where one goes, the other follows. They are my best. Right now, Venus kills only as the job requires it. If he goes on the run, he will kill as he sees fit. He will be one of your… unsubs? Is the term?” She obviously knows it’s the right one, but she clearly thinks the terminology is quaint.
The tone irritates Dave, and he snaps, “No one is irreplaceable.”
“They are as close as you get. I would need a battalion to replace those agents and their skills. If they went rogue, I don’t want to think about how many lives it would require to bring them in. There is no prison on this planet I would trust to hold them for any length of time. Not to mention that putting Venus in a prison is akin to letting a fox into the henhouse.”
“That’s what solitary confinement is for,” Dave tells her, throat tight with held temper.
The look she gives him is condescending. “You saw them in the field, yet you don’t understand.” She shakes her head and stands. “Thank you very much for bringing your concerns to me.”
“Even if he’s a justice hunter, he will eventually escalate,” Hotch warns. “He’ll turn on someone. He’ll make his own decision about who should be killed, or proactively kill people who might be saved.”
“Saved for what?” Une asks, and this time her confusion appears genuine. “To live the rest of their lives in a prison that taxpayers have to fund, being nothing but a burden on society?”
“We don’t get to decide who lives and who dies,” Dave says, feeling helpless because this should be obvious.
“Yet you and your agents do so every time you prioritize your victims over their killers. Over their tormentors. If having to make that call, put down the ones too dangerous to risk bringing in, the ones that can’t safely be brought in, satisfies some darkness inside Venus, I don’t see why those two needs can’t dovetail.”
“He will escalate,” Hotch says again. “He will need it more and more. He will start making calls you don’t agree with.”
“Perhaps,” she says with a shrug.
“That’s your only reaction? Perhaps?” Dave asks, incredulous.
“This is your area of expertise. But if anyone can break the mold, it’s Venus.” She reaches for the doorknob, clearly dismissing them and ending the conversation.
“We could report him,” Hotch says. “And you. If he kills anyone outside of an assignment, or even in any way that is questionable, and you knew that was a possibility…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.
Une gives him a long, steady look before she says, “You won’t do that. Not because you can’t, but because you know what I do—it’s better to use him as he is being used than to lock him up at the costs of dozens, probably hundreds of innocent lives.” She inclines her head. “Thank you for your concern.”
Before they can say anything else, she opens the door and leaves. Dave looks at Hotch, feeling helpless, while Hotch just looks grim.
“Is she right?” Dave asks. “Are we going to let him continue to do this? Continue to kill like this?”
The lines in Hotch’s brow deep further, and he says, “What choice do we have? We have a profile and an off-the-record confirmation. She’s right—if she’s right and every kill he’s made on the job has been cleared, we have less than circumstantial evidence. Without unsanctioned kill, we have correlation, not causation.”
Dave knows Hotch is right, but it doesn’t make it sit any better in his stomach.
“So our hands are tied,” he says, suddenly tired.
Hotch nods slowly, as if reluctant to acknowledge it. “Until he escalates, I’m afraid so.”
Dave sighs and slouches in his chair. After a moment, he turns and looks at the board, looks at all the pictures of the victims hung up there. The victims that are alive because Agent Venus murdered their captors to free them.
“Welcome to the valley of the shadow of death… thank God grace reigns here.”
~ Tullian Tchividjian ~