A/N - I'm going to try and navigate this one while staying within the "M" boundaries of this site. A new challenge for me! There is BDSM here, eventually, but it's not a deliberate choice. You'll probably figure out what I mean after reading this first chapter.

And...Lordy...I told my family I finished The Sun Chariot and didn't have a new story to work on yesterday morning. I went story-free for about 29 hours. LOL. Demily and my twisted mind...damn them! :)

PROLOGUE

Brooklyn, New York
August 3, 2015

I like New York fine in the spring and fall. Even winter is okay, when there is either no snow or fresh snow on the ground. But the smells that rise up from the ground in the humidity and sizzling furnace of an early August heat wave are something I can do without. I lean forward in the passenger seat of the Suburban and peel my sweaty t-shirt away from the skin on my back, hoping to get a little reprieve from the heat with a cold blast of air from the air conditioner, but despite the fact that the thing is pumping full blast, it's not doing much to cool the air inside the vehicle.

I'm in a foul mood, and neither the heat nor this case are improving my disposition. The team has sensed something is wrong with me the past few days; they're all treading carefully around me and trying not to pry.

Four days ago, when we returned from a case in Cleavland, I arrived home to an empty house. Savannah wasn't home, which wasn't surprising since it was the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday. What was shocking was that half the furniture was gone, her clothing was gone, her personal items were gone.

I'm feeling like the world's biggest fuck up right now; we couldn't even last a year living together. And I'm pissed, not because she left, which I can understand given the constant tension that's always been there regarding my job. I'm pissed because of how she left, without warning or saying a word.

She wouldn't answer my phone calls when I tried to contact her. I finally texted her to ask why she had to do it this way. Her response: Because you would have talked me into staying and trying again. I'm tired, Derek. I can't do it anymore.

That was the last communication we had with each other, and I've been stewing in self-pity and anger ever since. I notice the glances Hotch is throwing my way as he drives the car towards Borough Park, and finally sigh. I shift back against the passenger seat roughly and say, "Savannah left."

I watch his mouth open and close as he tries to come up with some response to that. "I'm sorry, Morgan" he finally says. "Do you need some time?"

My laugh is bitter. "No, I don't need time to wallow in a half-empty house. But, thank you."

Hotch pulls the car to a stop in front of a small, run-down apartment complex, and turns to fully face me. "We need to go up and talk to the parents now, but if you want to talk when this case is over, I'm here for you."

I nod. It's all I can do. I know Hotch and Rossi would understand exactly what I'm going through, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to talk about it yet. I step out of the vehicle and am blasted by a wall of heat; I look up to the fourth floor of the apartment complex, where there are black curtains hung over the windows, the likely residence of Mr. and Mrs. Bogorahz.

Ari Bogorahz is the third young boy to go missing in Borough Park, Brooklyn, a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. The ten year old Hasidic Jewish boy was walking home from the community center early this afternoon when eyewitnesses say he was approached by a police car. They say they watched him willingly enter the vehicle. And that was the last anyone has seen of him.

The Brooklyn PD unit that the eyewitnesses saw did not match any official police cars currently in possession of the department. The first two young boys from this neighborhood who went missing were found dead twenty-four hours later. Each had been beaten and sodomized. That's when we were called in, but right about the time our plane was landing in New York, Ari got into the police vehicle and never made it home.

The parents are little help when we talk to them. Their building might be rundown, but their apartment is neat and orderly; they clearly do the best they can with what they have. They confirm what we already know: Ari was a kind boy, a good student, a friend to all and trusting. He would never get into a vehicle with a stranger, but he might get into a vehicle with a police officer, if that officer's story hit home. Yes, they confirm, if the officer said something happened to his parents, they could see him getting into the car.

All I can imagine as they talk are the horrors happening to that innocent-looking boy right now. He's fresh-faced and young looking. He may be ten, but he could pass for seven or eight based on his pictures.

The other two victims were about his age, and just as innocent looking. Autopsy reports show that they put up a good fight; there was skin under their nails but no DNA matches in the system. There were bruises on wrists and ankles indicating that they pulled and fought. Their vocal cords were swollen and irritated, indicating that they screamed until they couldn't anymore.

I can't look at the parents and tell them the truth, but as I consider what we know so far, and what they are telling me about their son, I hope to hell he doesn't fight. Passivity might be Ari's best course to survival. I also can't tell them or even face the reality that if he's passive and just accepts what's happening to him, he might wish he was dead in the long run.

As we're leaving the apartment, Hotch is ahead of me on the stairs. I bend to tie my shoelaces on the landing and feel a hand on my back. When I turn, Mrs. Bogorahz is there with tears in her eyes. "Ari means everything to me, Agent Morgan. He's a good boy, a smart boy. He is kind and loving. Please, please, promise me you won't give up trying to find him."

She shoves a picture at me, a different picture than the ones I've seen so far, of a giggling Ari hugging his mother, his forehead tilted so it's resting against her cheek. I have a similar picture of myself at the age of nine in an album at home, me hugging my mother like this, looking so happy and carefree before my world fell apart.

I look at the picture and then back at her. There's a lump in my throat I manage to swallow past. "I won't give up," I promise her.

Tottenham, London
August 6, 2015

I'm never quite sure how I feel about Sam O'Brien whenever I meet up with him. The fourteen year old kid he was back in 2004, before I went in with Doyle, was someone I only had pity for. The young orphaned boy who had run away from his group home was kidnapped off the streets, sold several times, and repeatedly raped by his "owners" for five years before we happened upon him as part of a routine drug bust.

He opened our eyes to a whole new world, and a whole new line of investigation into a major sex trafficking ring that only lead to dead ends. I was getting close to opening up those dead ends when I was pulled out and Clyde Easter informed me that Ian Doyle had become Interpol's main focus.

Sam fell off the map for several years, and only resurfaced about a year ago, a little over two years after I started running London Interpol.

The Sam O'Brien I met back then, at the age fourteen, is far different from the Sam O'Brien I know now. Back then, he was a hopelessly damaged kid, a young boy I sheltered in my arms as we made our way out of the run-down flat after arresting his current owners.

Sam had stories to tell back then; his last owners bought him for cheap because he was already used up in the eyes of pedophiles. But in a cloudy story that involved drugs and incredibly wealthy people, he told the tale of being sold as a nine-year old boy for nearly six-hundred-thousand pounds. He told stories about the Minotaur, an anonymous entity who calls himself that, who paralleled his sex trafficking after Dante's Inferno, with seven layers. The first three were easy to penetrate; they involved BDSM shows, swinging, and participation in group sex, very often rough sex. The fourth layer involved the purchasing of adults, and required an invitation by an inner member. It only got worse after that, with the final layer offered up to the most exclusive and trusted members, to purchase children.

I tried to help Sam after I initially met him, but he disappeared into the streets, and then I became Lauren and went in after Doyle.

When Sam showed back up at our offices in the summer of 2014, he asked after me. It turns out Sam went back to the underground life he knew, but he remembered me, asking for Emily Prentiss at the front desk. And he was willing to be our informant. The web he wove was so intricate that it was almost impossible to believe, but his stories have panned out so far. He's penetrated to the fourth layer, where kidnapped adults are up for auction, but hasn't been able to get any further.

Still, we pay him to be our informant, and he does share information willingly, but he'll only talk directly to me. He's also been unable to get into the deeper, inner workings of the human trafficking ring, the part that involves the selling of innocent minors. It's an exclusive club, he says, and there are only a few ways to get in, most of them involving a certain layer of absolute trust and far more money than we're willing to pay him.

I'm not willing to hand over the money because I'm not sure he can pull it off; I think he'd blow it far before he got an invitation to attend the auction that involved children. But we're getting closer to the end of August, the time the Minotaur sells the seven young males and seven young females he's been given by various associates around the globe, and we need to get in there if we have any hope of saving those kids.

The reason I have a difficult time reconciling myself with our association with Sam is because I believe there's a certain part of him that enjoys the debasement and illegal activity that goes on in the club he's part of, even if he's not trusted enough to know the details of all the inner workings. And I have a difficult time reconciling myself with the whole concept of letting the little fish go in order to get to the big fish. Real people are being damaged, are being victimized, and they are pawns. We could go in and get them now, but we're waiting because we want to be able to get to the children, and the Minotaur, before they disappear.

I lean against the wall in an alley and wait for Sam to show up, which he does, right on time. He's wiping his nose obsessively, and I know he's been using cocaine, but he has pictures in his hands. "New shipment. Adult auction a week from today. They gave a preview tonight."

I take the three pictures from his hand. The first one shows a middle-aged Caucasian woman, the second a twenty-something year old Asian man. But the third picture causes my legs to fall out from underneath me, literally. I sink into a crouch against the brick wall and stare.

"They're very excited about that one. You should have heard the crowd when they announced he was an FBI agent."

I can't catch my breath. I can't utter a word. If I do, I know I'll start screaming, or I'll start crying. I'll probably throw up, because I feel my stomach churning as I squat there. I am looking at a picture of Derek Morgan, with a blackened eye, collar around his neck and chains attached to his wrists and ankles. He's completely naked.

The blood is rushing in my ears and my heart is beating at an inhuman rate. I stand again on shaky legs and tell Sam to stay posted for our instructions. I take the pictures with me. I don't make the drive back to my office, and head to the airfield instead. I don't know how in the ever loving fuck this happened, how Derek Morgan was taken, but I feel like a stone has been thrust into my gut and it's weighing me down.

Derek is in there with those terrible people. I don't know what's been done to him, but if Sam's information is correct, probably nothing more than manhandling and a few good punches. They don't do anything to you, as an adult up for auction - that's up to the people who buy you.

Which means I need to get in there and buy Derek Morgan back, somehow. I have a week to do it, and I'm going to face a mountain of resistance because Interpol is counting on us getting into the child auction at the end of August. Already my mind is formulating a plan that they'll accept.

I call a pilot and drive towards our jet. I need to figure out how they got Derek and where the team is now, but at this moment it's just crucial that I get into the air heading towards the United States, so I can talk to Hotch and the rest of the team. I need know whether Derek is in there willing, under a different undercover operation, or if he's been taken. I don't trust the airwaves to have this conversation over the phone or via a computer, because all signs point to the fact that there are people involved in law enforcement who are also part of the Minotaur's trafficking ring.

I'll call Clyde when I'm on my way, and I'll tell him my plan when I'm safely at the BAU, where Penelope can monitor the conversation and make sure we're not being overheard.

There's only one option here if Morgan's been unwillingly taken: I'm going in after the man who was my friend far more than I'd ever let anyone be my friend in the past. I'm going to get him out, and, in exchange, I'm going to have to volunteer to stay in there and stay undercover until we can close this case and catch the people in charge.

It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make; I was already on my path there as an undercover agent, a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman in my mid thirties, back in 2004, before they pulled me out and told me to focus on Doyle.

Just like riding a bicycle, I tell myself as I approach the jet. I ignore the blind fear inside of me.

I'd probably do this for any member of the BAU, but Derek Morgan is different, he always has been. He's my partner even if I've been gone for more than three years now. He always had my back without discretion, and forgave me for keeping things from him even when he shouldn't have.

I owe him this.