CHAPTER EIGHT:
HUMAN NATURE
( aka 03x09: penelope )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS WAS READY AND waiting for a fight. Four days had passed since the night she would forever be trying to forget. Her nightmares had lessened in intensity, allowing her to come out of the woods with Garcia well into her recovery. Still, the team hadn't ceased their search for her shooter. Hotch wasn't joking when he said they wouldn't work another case until they knew he was no longer walking free. Every file that passed JJ's desk in the interlude was immediately rejected. Did it please the higher-ups? Of course not. Did they give a shit? No.

Dallis had thrown herself into the thick of it (that is, after she assured her frantic family who had gone out of their minds when she failed to return their calls.) On the fourth day, she was at the office bright and early. Her white button-down shirt was freshly ironed and tucked into the waist of a navy blue pencil skirt that hugged her hips. Her heels tapped against the floor like sharpened blades ready to strike James Colby Baylor to pieces. Her hair was tied back from her face in a half-up, half-down wave of curls that complimented the makeup she'd painted on to precision.

Gone was the woman drowning. Dallis Cohen was back.

"He knows enough to use legal terminology, but he's not actually a working lawyer," Reid and Morgan were in the middle of explaining to the team everything they'd been working through with Garcia.

Piece by piece, as the morphine faded, they had recovered more of her memory of James Colby Baylor, bringing them closer to discovering his real identity. He claimed he was a lawyer, he flashed around a fake Rolex and impressed her with his knowledge of wine, but he didn't truly understand the person he was embodying. He missed one key detail. City attorneys didn't try murder cases.

"I think we're looking at someone who failed out of law school or didn't pass the bar," Morgan added.

"Did Garcia say if he gave any details about the cases he was supposedly working on?"

Reid shook his head at JJ. "No specifics."

"If he failed out of the system, it could explain why he's got a working vocabulary and not much more," Hotch said from where he stood in front of their whiteboard.

It seemed strange putting Garcia's face up there surrounded by pictures of brutal crime scenes and a rough sketch of an attempted murderer. She looked out of place, but didn't every victim?

"It could also explain his anger," Emily said from the chair beside Dallis. "Even in his lie, he rails against other people's incompetence."

"Well, he's clearly a narcissist," Rossi scoffed, listing off one-by-one, "The clothes, the watch, the subtle hints at where he went to school. He's faking humility when he's saying New Haven and Cambridge instead of Yale and Harvard."

Hotch turned to JJ. "We need an analyst who can put our information through our legal databases."

"I'm on it," JJ rushed off.

It didn't take them long to find one, some guy from Internal Affairs named Kevin Lynch. Dallis caught a glimpse of him through the blinds in the conference room as Hotch and Rossi took him down to Garcia's office (or her lair, as she called it, but Dallis thought the Bat Cave was a better fit.) He was all shaky limbs and wide eyes, dressed in a plaid button-down with thick black glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. He was overshadowed by the commanding presences of Aaron Hotchner and David Rossi, who moved to stand on either side of him, but he seemed content to stand back and admire the BAU in its glory.

In a way, he reminded Dallis of Garcia.

With everything up-to-date, Morgan and Reid returned to the hospital while Dallis, Emily and JJ updated their whiteboard. They were gone for maybe fifteen minutes before Dallis' newly replaced phone lit up with a call from Reid.

"Hey, Boy Genius," she said as she put him on speaker. "Everything okay with Garcia?"

Reid's sigh was loud and alarming. Dallis had been in the middle of writing down everything Morgan had used to describe James Colby Baylor's persona, but she stopped and sat to attention when he hesitated to answer. "Physically, she's fine, but she's been suspended from work until further notice."

"What?" Emily exclaimed, coming to stand behind Dallis' chair. "Why, Reid?"

He gave them a quick summary -- the technical analyst found an encrypted file on Garcia's computer, alerting his buddies in Internal Affairs that something was amiss. They swooped in immediately -- it was a serious thing to be suspected of breaking the law while on the job -- and put Garcia's employment on hold until their investigations provided them with an outcome.

"What does this mean for our investigation?" Dallis asked, but Reid couldn't answer.

They were suddenly interrupted by a crisp knock on the door.

"I'll call you back, Reid," Dallis quickly hung up the phone and stood.

Agent Adam Fuchs from Internal Affairs came barrelling into the room with an empty cardboard box in his arms. The mysterious (and infuriating) Kevin Lynch faithfully trailed after him like a lost puppy. He kept his head bowed as he shuffled past the three women, finding a quiet spot to stand in the corner of the room.

"What's going on?" Dallis frowned, approaching Fuchs, who had gone to stand right in front of their whiteboard. He spared her a brief glance over his shoulder before he started taking down photos and transferring them into his box. "Hey--"

"Agents, you've been officially taken off this case," he said without pausing. Dallis' heart sank. "We're going to need to remove everything you've got here."

Dallis forced her mouth to close, resisting the overwhelming urge to argue.

"Is this really necessary?" JJ let out a sigh.

"It's protocol."

The three women shared a look, Dallis rolling her eyes and turning away. Finally, Fuchs paid attention to the frustration written on their faces, in the thick cut of tension in the air. "Yes, it's necessary. Mr Lynch here will do an audit of her computer. I will oversee the investigation."

But this wasn't enough for JJ. "A federal employee was just gunned down and you make it seem like investigating her is more important than finding out who shot her."

"Well, that's not true," Fuchs disagreed. "The police have jurisdiction and, trust me, I will offer them the full force of the FBI to solve this case."

"I'm sorry, correct me if I'm wrong, Agent Fuchs," Dallis scowled. "But isn't the BAU a part of the FBI?"

"Look, I'm sorry, I realise how hard this must be."

"But?"

"But the first thing you look at is victimology," he pointed out. "The Bureau needs to know what she's involved in and whether it has to do with why she was shot."

"She's not involved in anything," JJ insisted.

Fuchs stood with a hand on his hip. "And you're certain of that?"

"Absolutely," Emily exclaimed.

Fuchs merely shook his head, pacing around to the other side of the table. "What do you know about how she was recruited to the FBI?"

Dallis racked her brain for the information she surely should've known but came up empty. The others seemed to do the same.

"The Bureau keeps track of computer hackers," Fuchs shared. "Ones who have the skill to be either extremely useful or a potential menace."

"So, Garcia was on a watch list?" Emily frowned.

"No, watch lists are long. I'm talking about only a handful of people on the planet."

"What did she do to get on that list?" JJ asked.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to answer that."

"Of course not," Dallis muttered.

Fuchs eyed her but said nothing, which Dallis wasn't sure was a good thing. Part of her was itching to lose it on someone, to defend Garcia's name to the ends of the Earth, but she knew that wasn't healthy. Fuchs, as frustrating as he was, had a point. Somewhat. She wouldn't give him too much credit.

They had no idea what Garcia's life was like before the BAU. Dallis only knew that her parents died when she was eighteen. Dallis couldn't begrudge this, though. It wasn't like they knew much about her family either, apart from the pieces she fed them when she felt the timing was right; stories of her mum and step-dad, her brother and his girlfriend, things that weren't overly intimate. They didn't know the intricacies of how the Cohens came to be. How her mother's life finally made sense when she married Anthony, how Dallis bore the Cohen name but sometimes felt like an imposter.

There were some things you only shared with yourself, and that was okay.

Fuchs left the room with all the information they had.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"FIRST ROUND IS ON Dallis," Austin exclaimed as he lead the way into the bar, his arm around a giggling Mei's shoulder. Her dark hair was pin straight tonight, gliding down the back of her corset top. Dallis trailed behind the two of them, eyes narrowed on her brother's head of sandy blonde curls. Sensing the weight of them as Dallis' silence lingered, he glanced around at her with a grin exposing his front teeth that were just a tiny bit crooked. "What? You owe me after you took, like, ten years off my life expectancy the other day."

Dallis scoffed, stepping aside as a particularly rowdy group shoved past to leave Maldini's for the next bar. Austin hooked his other arm around her shoulder, drawing her in with no escape as he shuffled them into the nearest empty booth. Dallis could smell the scent of cigarettes and cologne on his leather jacket and an amused smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You know I didn't do it on purpose, idiot. I don't owe you shit."

"Come on," he whined, sounding much younger than his big age of thirty-three. He even propped his chin on his hands and pouted. Brothers. Even now, Dallis had to wonder why her mother would punish her with him. "Just one beer."

Dallis sighed, jabbing his elbow so his arm would slip. His pout thinned into a glare. "Fine, but only one or I'll tell mum about your newfound love for smoking. Following in my footsteps, I see. You sure you're not trying to knock ten years off her life expectancy? Mei, what do you want?"

"Unlike someone," Mei -- who was used to sometimes blending into the background when it came to the never-ending banter of her boyfriend and his sister -- merely shook her head and held up her purse. "I can buy my own drink. But thank you, Dallis."

"I could buy my own drink too," Austin muttered, but Dallis and Mei both knew for a fact he wouldn't for the sake of making Dallis' pockets hurt.

What a nice, loving brother she had.

"Come on, Mei, let's try and fight our way to the bar together," Dallis linked her arm through Mei's, leading the charge through the Friday-night chaos.

The bar Austin had picked following their dinner at a pizza place down the road was always packed when live music was scheduled. Maldini's was a must-visit venue for a night on the town. Tonight's choice of entertainment was some alternative-rock band that Dallis didn't recognise but they had a crowd of all ages around their stage that rivalled the one by the bar. Pink and yellow neon signs, dark leather booths, heavy wood floors that creaked beneath the weight of hundreds of shoes. Dallis kind of loved it.

"How's work going, Mei?" Dallis asked as they waited for the bartender to finish with the group of girls in front of them.

"The usual," Mei sighed, more focused on the beers available on tap than she was on her job. "Exhausting. Mentally draining. I'm counting down the days until my annual leave."

"Annual leave. What's that again?" Dallis snorted.

Mei was a year older than Dallis and she'd been in the police force nearly as long as Dallis had haunted the hallways of the BAU. Dallis had asked her when she first started dating Austin several months back why she hadn't thought of joining the FBI. Mei's self-motivation rivalled only Hotch's in Dallis' opinion. She worked six days a week, whatever hours she was needed, wearing her badge with a sense of urgency. She sought to catch every bad guy she could, striving to improve herself with every successful case.

Dallis admired her. Mei brought a side out of Austin that Dallis had thought she'd never see. Someone who wanted to pull himself out of the gutter. At thirty-three, Austin had plateaud in life. By day, he played the drums in a garage band with two of his friends from high school. By night, he controlled the traffic coming and going around local roadwork. He never graduated college or showed an interest in a career-dominant life. In truth, Austin had never figured out what he wanted, but Mei gave him (and, by extension, his family) a whole lot of hope.

On paper, they were opposites.

In reality, they adored each other.

Austin taught Mei to let loose.

Mei taught Austin that responsibility wasn't a burden.

Dallis longed for that kind of love, one where they learned and grew together as a team. She'd had her fair share of boyfriends but none of them lasted longer than a year or two at most. She used to think she'd be married with her first child by the age of twenty-five, but ten years later her life couldn't be more different. It didn't upset her, though sometimes she feared it would always be like this, and everything she had to give would be wasted.

Once they had their drinks, they battled their way back to Austin and spent the rest of the night washing away their respective pains with alcohol. Austin and Mei disappeared into the dancing crowd midway through the band's set but Dallis was content to hold the fort at the booth, watching Austin dance with his two left feet. By the time the crowd cleared and they decided it was time to head out, the sky was pitch black and Dallis was nearly sober.

Austin was half-asleep on her shoulder when she lugged him into the back of a taxi, a bleary-eyed Mei crawling in beside him. Dallis was just about to join them when her phone started to ring.

"JJ?" Dallis answered with a frown. "Something wrong?"

"Hey, Dallis. Hotch has called. We're needed at Garcia's apartment asap."

Dallis didn't need to know the details. She was already calculating how long it would take her to add another stop to their taxi-trip. "I'm on my way."

Ten minutes later, she was parting from Mei and Austin with the promise Mei would text Dallis when they got back to Austin's apartment. Dallis flashed her FBI badge at the police guarding the road-block, ducking beneath the yellow tape that separated her from Rossi, Hotch and Emily.

Emily was the first to see her. "You're dressed up."

"I was out with Austin and Mei," Dallis said, feeling the pinprick of the cold wind on her exposed arms. She hadn't been thinking of work when she chose to wear a pair of thigh-hugging leather jeans and a low-cut white vest stop.

"When was your last drink?" Hotch eyed her.

"Two hours ago," she said, then added, "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't up to it."

Hotch must've decided to take her word for it, turning back to the situation at hand. As they made their way into the courtyard of Garcia's apartment, Emily grabbed Dallis' hand and held on tight. There was only a faint stain on the steps now but Emily was careful to guide Dallis to the opposite side of it, only releasing her once Dallis had resumed her regular pattern of breathing in the creaky old elevator.

On the way up to Garcia's floor, they filled her in on what she'd missed. Morgan had decided to crash on Garcia's couch and was woken by gunshots. He chased down Baylor but the bastard had managed to escape, though not before he shot dead the police officer on duty. He was getting bold.

"Hey, did you get a look at him?" Emily asked Morgan, who was standing guard by the window in Garcia's apartment.

"Nothing solid," he shook his head.

The living room looked like colour had thrown up everywhere. Purple walls, crystals on every surface, mismatched curtains and rainbow rugs. A sheet of glimmering disc-shaped baubles partially shielded the corner where Garcia's double bed stood. The sheets were baby pink and strewn everywhere from a fitful sleep. Garcia was curled up on the yellow couch being consoled by JJ and Reid. Dallis and Emily rushed over to her, each taking hold of a trembling hand.

"Garcia, we need to get you back to the hospital," Hotch insisted.

"No," she exclaimed.

Emily wasn't ready to let it go. "We need to get her someplace safe."

"I feel safe with all of you!"

Hotch stared at her for a long moment. Messy hair parted in twin pig-tails, maroon plaid pyjama pants and an oversized shirt with a thickly wrapped bandage peeking out. Glasses with lenses foggy from tears. This determined his decision. "We could take you to the BAU."

"Good idea," Dallis squeezed her hand. "Pen?"

But Garcia was no longer listening. Her gaze had slid past Hotch and Rossi to the doorway. She spoke through the haze of a memory. "When we were at dinner, they wanted to seat us by a window but he insisted on sitting at the worst table in the place and he sat with his back to the corner."

Before they could dissect this, the detective assigned to the case stepped into the apartment with two police officers. They were deep in discussion, overlooking the group of agents clearly doing more than comforting a friend, but Hotch stepped in their way and asked for another minute's privacy. Maybe it was his reputation or the urgency in his voice, or the expression of a deer in the headlights on Garcia's face, but they eventually agreed and cleared out.

Reid sat forward the second the door was pulled to. "Tell us about the car."

"Why?"

"Just go with him," Morgan said, gesturing for Reid to continue.

"You said it was white, four-door, American. But what else?"

"That's it. It was just a car." With some more prompting, they coaxed another memory forward. "His seatbelt was buckled behind his back... why does that matter?"

"So it wasn't a rental," Dallis remarked. "It was for surveillance. Could he have been watching you?"

"What? I, uh -- I don't..."

"Agents don't wear seat belts," Emily explained. "They need to get out in a hurry."

"Alright, let's cut the crap," Rossi suddenly snapped. His voice cut through the quiet tension of the room. With unrelenting footsteps, he closed the distance between himself and Garcia, kneeling right in her line of vision. "You need to be straight with us, right now. Look at me, not them."

"I'm not hiding anything..."

"You got shot. Most people get shot for a reason -- hey, eyes here!"

"Ease up, Rossi," Dallis warned and a familiar reaction echoed through the others.

She bit her tongue, infuriated when he held a hand up in her direction, his voice rising to match hers but still directed at Garcia. "You've got a room full of people here willing to believe that an FBI agent is trying to kill you. We need to know everything you do on company time that we don't know about." Garcia's throat bobbed in a visible swallow. "What?"

"Come on, man," Morgan frowned.

"Spit it out!"

"Enough, Rossi, she isn't a fucking unsub for you to interrogate," Dallis lurched out of her seat but Garcia had finally caved.

"It's nothing bad. I counsel victims' families and they know where I work, so sometimes they ask me to look into cases for them."

"What does that mean?" Rossi pressed.

"It just means that the cases, the unsolved ones... well, I tag them so whoever's investigating them knows that the FBI considers them a priority."

Finally, Rossi seemed content enough to get up and walk away. Dallis took a step in his direction then froze, resisting the burning feeling in her chest threatening to overflow. She couldn't figure it out. How could he wash her hands of blood one second then yell in the face of the person whose blood she bore?

"You're not authorised to do that," Hotch told Garcia sternly.

"I know," she sighed, but she was desperate for him to understand her. She wasn't being nefarious, her heart just had too much compassion to give. "I was just trying to help."

"But whoever's working those cases thinks you're watching them," Emily pointed out.

"I just want to put the pressure on them so that they don't slide!"

"How many cases are we talking about?" Hotch asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Seven, eight maybe? I'd need to get into my system."

"You can't," he reminded her. "You're suspended."

Dallis threw her hands up. "She's already being investigated and we have already broken about a billion rules. Is that really a priority?"

"Wait a minute," Morgan cut in before Hotch could shut her down. "Garcia, on your date, you said this guy was pressing you to find out if you were working murder cases. Then Dallis is right. We've got to look at those files."

Hotch turned to Rossi, waiting for his opinion. Whatever anger Rossi had held towards Garcia now shifted towards their unsub. Garcia had been honest, something that Rossi evidently valued. "I told you, I'm sick of this jagoff being in front of us."

"Dave's right," Hotch said then. "We'll go back to the BAU. Morgan, Reid, Prentiss, you stay here and make sure no one forgets to log out of the system. Garcia should not have access."

"Understood."

He'd played his part, but his deliberate absence from her apartment would mean he couldn't watch her around the clock. If something happened... well, it wouldn't be on him.

This time, the walk through the courtyard seemed to last only a second. Feeling suffocated by the police surrounding them, they were quick to settle inside their SUV where Dallis leaned between the front seats to address Rossi.

"What's a jagoff?" she asked, hearing JJ chuckle beside her.

"A jerk," came his reply as Hotch put the car in reverse.

"So... you just now, then?"

Rossi barely batted an eye. "I have had that word used to describe me before."

Dallis merely hummed and leaned back in her seat.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the BAU, Rossi and Hotch retreated to their respective offices, leaving Dallis and JJ to their own devices. Neither of them were particularly keen to be alone and, feeling the last effects of the alcohol wearing off, Dallis made herself a tea, grabbed her files and made herself at home on the couch in JJ's office.

"You got a spare jacket by any chance?" Dallis rubbed the goosebumps on her arms. "Seriously, Jayj. You keep your office at morgue temperature?"

"Not on purpose," JJ rolled her eyes as she slid her blazer off the back of her chair and threw it at her. "The AC is broken."

Dallis mockingly tutted. "Budget cuts, huh?"

Comfortable now, she got to work sorting through her stack of files. She'd managed to get through a decent portion of them when JJ's phone started to buzz.

"Hey, Morgan--"

Dallis glanced up at her then back at her work, only to double-take once JJ's breath suddenly hitched and she pushed her chair back. She didn't question whether or not to follow her, grabbing her gun when she saw JJ doing the same.

"Is he here?"

Somehow, she knew.

James Colby Baylor was here, or whatever his name was.

If Dallis had her way, he wouldn't be leaving alive.

Through the glass door, the two women took in the scene. Baylor had his back to them. He wore a deputy's uniform and he held his gun up to Fuchs' temple. Hotch and Rossi were closing in on him, but the odds of them taking the shot without harming Fuchs or Kevin -- who was stuck in the middle at one of the desks -- were slim and stacked against them.

Dallis didn't think. With her own gun raised, she swung open the glass door with as much force as she could muster, letting it ricochet in a loud slam that made Baylor spin around. Distracted, he let Fuchs flee from his grasp, and he was met by a bullet in the head from JJ.

His blood soaked the carpet in seconds, another stain to linger.

As Hotch and Rossi took over, Dallis lead JJ to sit down by the kitchenette.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Not yet," JJ said. "I don't know how I feel yet."

The rest of the team showed up in a panic but were quick to settle when they found Baylor -- or Jason Clark Battle, which turned out to be his real name -- being covered by a yellow sheet.

"It's really over?" Garcia gave a watery smile.

"It's really over," Morgan confirmed. "Now can we please get you back to the hospital?"

Garcia had noticed Fuchs sobbing in the corner with an impatient Hotch forced to console him. Emily followed her gaze, smirking. "Oh, don't worry about your reinstatement papers. He'll sign them as soon as his hands stop shaking."

"I'm surprised he didn't piss his pants," Dallis remarked. "If nobody needs me, I'm going home before I start dancing on Baylor's body."

Emily laughed. "Come on, you. I can drop you home."