Hotch's Niece | Criminal Minds

Barbie

The door dinged softly as Emily opened it, and I hustled to follow her. The boutique had about seven women in it, plus three clerks. Being short and all, I had to take an extra little skip step every two or so regular ones on order to keep up with Emily. She giggles gently under her breath as I nearly trip over my own feet. I may be clumsy sometimes, but the second the situation calls for a perfect headshot or 3 mile sprint, I'm your girl. The day I turned thirteen, Uncle Hotch started taking me to the shooting range. So yeah, I'm a pretty good shot. In fact, since I'm now "on trial" with the FBI--apparently Hotch had warned Strauss that I might join the team out of the blue some day-- I have been given an FBI-issue pistol and my very own badge.

"Can I help you ladies?" One of the clerks asked. Emily and I hold up our badges in perfect sync.

"Where's the owner?" Emily asks politely, and I let my eyes wander as the woman scurries off. Out of the seven women browsing the shops, two look like possible targets. One woman with well done hair, nails, and seemingly brand-name tailored clothes, but then I notice she's wearing mock Prada heels.

Another who's got an amazing looking purse, but then pulls out a drugstore compact mirror, and then I see that the purse is fake snakeskin(I hate snakeskin in any shape or form, but I like to know everything about everything, so I can identify real snakeskin from easily thirty feet away).

A woman who looks like she is just begging to be mugged walks up to us, presumably the owner. She has massive gold hoop earrings, a diamond bigger than my face on her finger, and super duper expensive clothing worth more than my college tuition. "Hello, I'm Tiana, how may I help you?" she has one of those high-pitched nasally voices that would make any sane person want to put a gun to their head.

But I mean, her name is Tiana, she has blonde hair, blue eyes, long, skinny legs, big boobs, a big butt, and fake lips. She's literally Barbie if Barbie was a person. Did I mention the suicide-inducing voice?

I thought I saw Emily cringe when Tiana walked up, but the amazing agent retained her cool and smiled at the woman. "Hello. I'm Agent Prentiss with the FBI, this is Junior Agent Avery," Emily says.

"What can I help you ladies with today? Is something the matter?" Tiana inquired. My phone dinged and I excused myself as Emily graciously detailed the facts of the murders linked to Barbie's Boutique. Her gasps were heard from the other side of the shop. The text that I had received was from Garcia, who'd received my number from JJ.

Hello, little Hotch! Attached is the file on Tiana Rogers.

I clicked on the file and read it very quickly, not seeing anything that might hint that Tiana was a serial killer, and she didn't fit the profile. She wasn't faking being rich, didn't hate women who were, and also wasn't smart enough to pretend like that was why she was killing them.

Again I swept the store for newcomers, and saw no one I hadn't seen before. Shaking off an underlying feel of paranoia, I made my way back over to Emily and Tiana.

"Oh my lord, this is just horrible, what's been happening to all these women! How, exactly, is it connected to my perfectly legal establishment?" Tiana asks.

"Each of these women who our Unsub has killed was renting a dress from you, which they were wearing when their bodies were discovered." Emily explains.

"I'm sorry, renting? I don't rent dresses here," she replies, sticking her nose up in the air like just the word renting was covered in filth.

"Not renting in the traditional sense, renting where they buy the dress the night of an event and return it the next morning, probably claims it didn't quite fit right or the zipper was too pinchy," I explain, trying to conceal my taking pride in me being smarter than she was. But really, who wasn't? And yes, I fully understand that blondes are not stupid and most are highly intelligent, like JJ.