Chapter Text
“What’s the matter with you today?” Hotch asked, sliding into the diner booth and pushing a cup of coffee at Emily Prentiss. The brunette gave a heavy sigh and accepted the cup.
“Nothing,” she lied.
“Nothing, my ass,” Hotch growled.
Prentiss hung low over her cup, fiddled with the handle, glanced up and down at Hotch, and sighed again.
“Do I need to get the thumbscrews?” Hotch asked.
“Do you have thumbscrews?” Prentiss wondered.
“I keep a vast array of torture devices in my desk at all times. The beauty of it is, I can write them off as work- related supplies,” Hotch said. “What’s wrong?”
“You.”
“What about me?”
“Reid.”
“What about him?”
“Hotch, he makes you insanely protective.”
“I don’t think that’s a bad thing, do you?”
“I’ll be honest. There are times when I’m afraid you two are one bitter, lukewarm latte away from an interstate killing spree.”
“I don’t believe we’re quite that bad, are we?”
“You almost shot a woman two days ago.”
“I would not have shot Korsakova.”
“You would have if I hadn’t stopped you, and if JJ hadn’t called at the most opportune moment. Think about that for a second. You almost shot Korsakova in broad daylight, in a public restaurant full of people, in front of her daughter. Don’t tell me you weren’t angry for no reason.”
“I was very angry, with good reason. But, it’s okay now. She’s there, and we’re here, and it’s okay now.”
“You can’t keep Reid in Dallas indefinitely.”
“No, but I can keep him busy and away from that evil, manipulative shrew until I figure out….”
His voice trailed off.
“Figure out how to get rid of Korsakova, or figure out if Ekatarina is Reid’s daughter?”
Hotch met Prentiss’s gaze and shrugged both shoulders. “Yes.”
“I asked Garcia to do some digging,” Prentiss whispered.
“Oh no,” Hotch groaned. “You shouldn’t have. It’s Reid’s private business. We should not be meddling this way.”
“Like how you didn’t meddle in the private business between him and Dr. Forni?”
“That was different.”
“It was different all right,” Prentiss agreed. “You didn’t think I was going to leave this alone, did you? I want to protect Reid as much as you do. So does Morgan. So does everyone else.”
“What did Garcia find out?” Hotch hated himself for asking.
“Viktor Davydov is not listed as Ekatarina’s father on her birth certificate. But then neither is Spencer Reid.”
“How did you get Moscow to give you that?”
“The girl wasn’t born in Moscow. She was born in Maine.” Hotch sat back, blinked, stared.
“Come again?”
“Ekatarina was born in Presque Isle, Maine in March 2000. She’s an American citizen.”
“So?”
“When were you in Oxford with Reid and Gideon? 1999. Normal human gestation is nine months.”
“It can last as long as ten months.”
“Yes, but not as long as a year. How old was Ekatarina when you saw her and her mother in Rotterdam?” Prentiss asked. Hotch gasped. “Yes, Reid told me about that.”
“Maybe a year.”
“Okay. Let’s start in March 1999.”
“April.”
“April 1999. You believe that Korsakova seduced Reid in London. Ten months forward for gestation time? That would be January 2000. Ekatarina was born in March 2000. There’s too much of a time delay for that theory to work, Hotch.”
“You’re saying I’m wrong? You saw the girl too, Prentiss. What did you think?”
“She looks an awful lot like Reid.”
“Yes, she bloody well does.”
“But she also looks like Davydov.”
“You’re splitting hairs,” Hotch accused. “Korsakova must have up a name to put on her daughter’s birth certificate to deflect attention from either Davydov or Reid.”
“Based on your own timeline, starting in April 1999, it is a temporal impossibility for Reid to be Ekatarina’s father, because she wasn’t born until 2000.”
“Are you sure about the date?”
“I asked Garcia to check Ekatarina’s medical records for any abnormalities.”
“If Korsakova finds out you’re snooping around her kid, she’s going to hunt us all down. I told you, she’s exceptionally efficient with firearms,” Hotch warned.
“There is nothing out of the ordinary about the girl.”
“Good to know.”
“She broke her arm when she was five, climbing trees at their house in London. Other than that, nothing serious has ever happened to her.”
“Why do we need to know this? What does it prove?”
“She doesn’t have any signs of schizophrenia, or Asperger’s Syndrome, or autism, or any of Reid’s other genetic curiosities. She does well in school, but she’s not phenomenally bright like Reid is. She likes science and botany. She’s been enrolled in martial arts since she could walk. She plays ice hockey. She climbs trees. She likes ponies. She’s perfectly normal.”
“Which doesn’t mean she’s not his child. It merely means that she doesn’t share some of his more eccentric personality traits. Maybe she takes after her mother. I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you that I don’t think growing up with Diana Reid as a mother did Spencer any favors. No matter how much she loves her son, she was not the world’s best parent.”
“I would probably agree with you on that, but I would never tell him so. Ekatarina travels with Korsakova when plausible. Other times she stays with family, mostly with a cousin in California. Korsakova never leaves her daughter home alone with husbands or ex-husbands or fathers or step- fathers. If Viktor Davydov was the girl’s father, he was not an active part of her life. That tells me Yulia must have had a bad relationship with her father.”
“Her father died when she was very young.”
“Then she must had a bad relationship with her step-father, and she doesn’t want to risk the cycle repeating with her own daughter. She sends her daughter to the best schools. She takes time to be an involved parent in spite of the fact she travels a lot for work. She’s very protective of both her children.”
“Good to know,” Hotch repeated grimly.
“I have to say, she seemed pretty protective of Reid too, come to that.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying….I’m saying I think in her own special way that Korsakova might actually care about Reid. I’m saying that I don’t think Reid could be the girl’s father if he slept with Yulia in London 1999. I don’t trust that quote-unquote linguist any further than you do, but you need to cut the wicked manipulative shrew some slack. Stop being such a jealous boyfriend. That’s what I’m saying.”
Hotch slurped back his coffee, wishing it was a whisky sour.
“Prentiss? You and the horse you rode in on,” he muttered. She shook her head and rolled her eyes at him.
“You see? This is why we can’t have heart-to-heart conversations,” she replied.