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Watching the Watchers

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ~ Juvenal

Approximately, "Who watches over the watchers?"

Chapter One

The Right to Remain Silent

7:37 AM

David Rossi

His bath towel still slung over his shoulders, he examined the outline of his beard for stray stubble. Stray stubble, hell; these days the most depressing problem was the encroaching gray stubble.

Gray in the beard. Gray in the eyebrows. Gray in the hair.

Moira, his latest fling, said it made him look très distingué. Yeah, well, it also made him look like an aging beaver, but his ego would not permit him to depend on something like Grecian Formula or similar crap.

His doorbell rang.

He checked his wristwatch and frowned, then patted his freshly-shaven cheeks and headed out to the door.

Three agents stood on his doorstep. He knew two of them, solid, high-ranking, absolutely upright fellows. The third was unfamiliar, but, hell, the Bureau was huge. He couldn't know them all.

Ray Winters showed his credentials. So did the others, but Ray was the biggest surprise, because he and Rossi had worked closely together for several years, way back when. But there he was, flashing his creds like Dave was the stereotypical old broad in a polyester muumuu, answering the door with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Like I don't know you, Ray?

"David Rossi?"

Come off it. Like you don't know me?

Nothing good will come of this, he realized. "You know me, Ray," he said quietly. "What's up?"

"May we come in?"

He stepped back from the door, "Sure. Come on in."

Was it his imagination, or was Ray looking a little self-conscious? A little sheepish?

"David Rossi," Winters said – again with the full name crap, so very official – I have to ask for your weapon and your credentials."

Rossi took his time sliding the towel off his shoulders and draped it across the back of a leather armchair. "They're in the bedroom," he replied. "Since I suspect that I'm being taken into custody, would you care to accompany me there? I can finish dressing, too."

Winters's jaw worked. "That will be satisfactory," he said.

Rossi turned to face away from the men – with some guys, he might fear a bullet in the back, but he would trust Winters under any circumstances he could dream up. Whatever was going on, it looked serious enough on the surface that Ray was ready to do this. The corollary also held true: If Ray thought there was something fishy going on, he would be solidly in Dave's corner.

"Let's go," he said. All three agents trailed him to the bedroom.

7:43 AM

Penelope Garcia

Still sipping her raspberry-kiwi smoothie, she "watched the dawn come up" – watched all the monitors, in order, sparkle to life across the business end of her techie lair.

"Penelope Garcia?" a male voice said at her door.

She turned toward a familiar face. She couldn't quite tack a name on it, but she knew she had seen him around, up on the nosebleed floors of the Hoover Building in downtown DC. The other two men with him didn't look familiar at all.

"Can I help you?"

"Would you step out here?"

Confused, but ever helpful, she said, "Of course." She set down her drink and went to the door.

"Step outside," the man said, His creds – and why was he flashing them? – identified him as a guy named Rutherford.

I have a bad feeling about this.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. She had seen Prentiss, Reid, and Hotchner this morning but neither Morgan nor Rossi. And Kevin. She hadn't seen Kevin, but he was on loan to a White Collar Crime unit consulting in Phoenix. "Is everyone all right?"

"Yes, ma'am," Rutherford assured her. "If you'll step away from the door–"

Rutherford's two partners entered the Tech room – her Tech room – and emerged with her purse and her smoothie. One of them handed them to her. The other took a programming card from his pocket.

"Turn this way, please," Rutherford said.

Garcia stared in horror. "They're changing the lock on my office?" she managed to gasp. "What's going on?"

7:44

Emily Prentiss

The expression on Penelope's face sent chills through her body. Whatever was going on, it wasn't good. She hoped that Kevin was all right: White Collar sounded like a safe gig, an easy gig, but any UNSUB could turn mean on you, even the nerdiest.

A thick sheaf of papers fell out of one man's back pocket and onto the floor a foot or two from Emily. After a glance to ensure that nobody was looking her way, she bent and looked at the face sheet. As she did so, she could not repress a gasp.

All of them, the entire primary team, were being arrested.

Arrested!

She snapped her fingers softly to get Reid's attention. He looked up immediately from what he was doing. With two fingers, she indicated her eyes, then pointed the same two fingers at the stapled-together documents. Then she nudged them hard so they slid along the floor.

Reid snagged them with his own foot, glanced down, frowned deeply, and snapped the papers up.

She was about to speed-dial Morgan, but he chose that moment to stroll in, gym bag over his shoulder. That was right; the hand-to-hand class he taught had just been moved to Monday mornings.

She tried to wave to him, but he made a sharp right and started up the steps to Rossi's and Hotchner's offices.

7:45

Spencer Reid

If he had thought about it, he might have reacted differently, but the combination of the traumatized looks on Garcia's and Prentiss's faces, and the impossibly baffling cover sheet of the document he was looking at sent him into fight-or-flight mode. Still holding the papers, he slid under a nearby work table and began desperately memorizing their contents.

He concentrated on blind memorization, not analysis, but some facts leaped out at him. There was apparently a vast body of evidence indicating that the team, his team, had falsified on a grand scale the evidence they had used two months previously to bring down a pedophile ring.

Like any of them would do such a thing!

Several pages in the middle were techie details, URLs and file names. They were a little harder to commit to memory, but not impossible. He just had to shut out extraneous things – like watching his back.

He would have to trust Prentiss to cover for him.

By the time he was finished, he was perspiring with tension and effort.

He glanced up carefully, and saw that Emily had moved to the other end of the room. She was standing there, arms folded, watching a woman and a pair of men approach her.

With the attention of everyone in the room fixed on other things and other people, he slid the documentation back across the floor to the approximate spot where it had fallen.

It did not occur to him for a second to wait around and let the system sort itself out.

Now all I have to do is get the hell out of here and get help.

7:51 AM

Penelope Garcia

"You'll have to come with us," Rutherford said, and although his tone was kindly, his eyes were hard.

She tried to keep the shivers out of her voice. "Where are we going?"

"To your residence," he replied. "We have a warrant here to search your apartment and to confiscate your electronics."

No! Without my machines, I hardly exist! You can't do this to me!

No.

"Of course I'll come along," she said, her voice suddenly deadly calm. This was combat. She would need every iota of her self control to figure out what was going on and how to fix it. Panic would just have to wait its turn in the queue.

The agent who had changed her key code patted somewhat nervously at his pockets, then he looked around – and sighed with relief. He picked up a sheaf of papers off the floor, re-folded them lengthwise, and shoved them into his back pocket.

7:53

Emily Prentiss

"Emily Prentiss?" an agent said.

Although Emily recognized three of the nine non-BAU agents now on their turf, this one was new to her. Yates, her name was. Maureen Yates.

"Yes?" she said, keeping a tight leash on her voice. "How can I help you?"

Over Yates's shoulder, Emily could see Spencer Reid creeping out from under the table and inching toward the door. She willed herself not to look at him, not to cause anyone else to look at him.

"I have to ask you for your weapon and creds," Yates said. "You're part of an ongoing investigation by Ethics and Internal Affairs."

She saw a blur of movement as Reid ducked into what had been JJ's office, then saw the reason why. Another three agents had just entered. These three swept the room with hard-eyed glances and ascended the steps toward Hotch's office.

Prentiss handed over her gun and her ID.

"On the record, just FYI, I have done nothing wrong," she told Yates. "I have nothing to fear from you."

"I hope not," Yates said, and she sounded sincere about it.

7:55 AM

Derek Morgan

"... The right to remain silent," the lead agent was intoning.

Derek just stared at him. This was a joke, right? He was never at his best on a Monday morning, and some little blonde titless wonder of a newbie agent had knocked him flat on his ass this morning, not once, but three frickin' times, in the hand-to-hand class he led, so he had no sense of humor whatsoever.

"... anything you say and and will be used against you in a court of law ..."

"And this is about kiddie porn?" he asked.

"This is about the ring of pedophiles operating out of Baton Rouge, agent," the lead dude, an embarrassment of an empty suit informed him. Dude would have been right at home fielding complaints about Ghostbusters or – wait, Hammer. The jerk in the latest Iron Man movie. Guy was almost the spitting image of him, smarmy and self-satisfied.

He tried to remember the last time he had been in Baton Rouge. Three years ago? Four?

"... cannot afford a lawyer one can be appointed for you ..."

I am being arrested. Here in the middle of the BAU, in front of all my brother and sister agents, like some kind of pervy freak ...

"... tell us where we might find Agent David Rossi?" the lead dude asked.

Morgan shrugged. "Like I'm supposed to know? He's usually late on Mondays. He likes his weekends, and–"

Another agent shut off his mobile. "Winters has Agent Rossi," he told the Hammer-clone. "Picked him up at his place of residence."

Wait, they're arresting Rossi, too? What the hell is going on here?

"... Shouldn't think that cuffs would be necessary here," Hammer-clone said. His ID, Derek finally noticed, said SSA Morgan Mitchell.

You're an embarrassment to the name Morgan, butthole...

"I shouldn't think so, either," Morgan said, resisting the temptation to imitate the guy's Dudley Do-Right prissy tones as well as his words.

Morgan Mitchell nudged him toward the door, with the other two bringing up the rear, the better to make sure he cooperated. From there, they could draw handguns or jump him from behind or just keep him from breaking into a run. It wasn't cuffs, but it might as well have been cuffs.

He could see Emily Prentiss, in the center of the bullpen, engaged in intense conversation with three other agents.

Man, I do not like this one bit ...

7:59 AM

Aaron Hotchner

He had been aware for the last few minutes of unusual activity down in the bullpen, but Monday mornings often brought random requests and deliveries of forensic reports, so he had not yet become concerned.

When the three big shots from Hoover appeared at his door, he stood up. "Gentlemen?"

"Aaron Hotchner?"

OK, that isn't good. Avery has known me for at least ten years.

"Yes," he replied.

"Stewart Avery, Ethics and Internal Affairs. Please surrender your weapons and creds."

For things already to be at this level, there had to be at least one indictment already in play. Which sounded grim, but Hotchner knew the truth of the old saw that any decent prosecutor can get an indictment of a ham sandwich. It's the trial that matters.

Wordlessly, he placed his credentials and his weapons on the surface of the desk. Both of them. No silly tricks about forgetting the backup gun. If this was more than just him, if it threatened his team, then the only way for him to play it was absolutely aboveboard.

With Avery beside him and the other two agents behind them, he left the office. Prentiss was standing by her work station down in the bullpen, shutting down her terminal and collecting her purse.

A new trio of agents entered the BAU offices.

This place is getting crowded.

The lead guy looked around, then walked directly to Reid's station and looked around again.

"He isn't here yet," Prentiss called across to the new agents. "He isn't much of a Monday person."

And yet Hotch could see Spencer Reid, barely visible behind the tinted glass of JJ's office.

He froze in his tracks.

"Prentiss, he said, his voice raised.

She looked up at him.

"Have you seen Rossi?"

She took in his situation, saw it was like hers. "No, sir, not yet."

"Come on," Avery told him. "You don't need to talk to anyone."

Hotchner backed up a little further.

Avery turned toward him. "Come on, Aaron," he said quietly. "Don't make this hard. You know better than that."

He faced the railing and scanned the lower area as though in search of someone.

"We don't have to do this the hard way, do we?" Avery repeated.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hotchner saw Reid disappear and saw the door to the outer hallway close behind him.

He repressed a sigh of relief. About time, damn it.

"No, sorry," he said in a distracted voice. "I won't cause you any trouble, Stewie."

8:05 AM

Spencer Reid

Moving slowly, keeping out of the way but trying not to look furtive, he made his way through the halls. When he came to his target office, he knocked sharply on the door post.

"Come in, Agent Reid," the familiar voice said.

He did so, and without invitation closed the door behind himself.

"You know that this is a crock of shit," he said firmly. He was rarely so outspoken in the presence of authority, but this was his team, damn it. "I know that you and Hotch have had some issues, but the whole team deserved better than this–"

"Better than what?"

"Just taking everyone into custody. Shutting us down, locking Garcia out of her office."

"What on earth are you talking about?" Chief Strauss asked.

"We're all being taken into custody," he told her. "Arrested. Everyone who's here, anyway. Garcia, Hotchner, Morgan, and Prentiss. They came after me, but I slipped out." He glared at her, silently daring her to call in the troops to haul him away, too.

"But what's the charge?"

"Falsifying evidence for profit."

Erin Strauss's complexion paled and her eyes narrowed. "For profit!" she all but spat. "Go lock that door, Agent Reid, and quickly. Aaron and I may have our differences, but he is entirely honorable. All of you are entirely honorable. No order like that came from me or through me – which almost certainly means they think I may be involved, too. Otherwise, why cut me out of the loop?"

Reid nodded. "Then you're probably one of the two unindicted co-conspirators."

Sourly, Strauss said, "Wouldn't surprise me in the least."