Lauren

A pictures worth 1,000 words (30)

<Emily's POV>

-The next day-

I bit my lip as I stepped into the offices. Spencer was watching Lauren and Declan, but I hadn't told the rest of the team I was coming back. I approached the round table room quietly. JJ, Garcia, and Rossi were scattered around the room working on a case when they all noticed me and turned slowly.

"What are you working on?"

"Emily!" Garcia exclaimed, running to give me a hug. She was a light I wish everyone had in their life. "How's Lauren? How's your arm? Do you need any food? Can I send over more stuff for the kids?"

I laughed, "My arm is healing and we're good on food but thank you. Can I help you guys?"

They looked around at each other, stumped. "We're just finishing the paperwork from our last case so..." Rossi started to say when JJ cut him off.

"Actually, I have something to show you."

I followed JJ to my office where a pile of evidence boxes was stacked in the corner of the room. JJ had taken over as unit chief while I was gone, but she was also the lead on the Doyle case.

"He gave up all of his aliases. We found every house Laurens ever lived in. You don't have to go through those boxes, but I wanted to give you the chance before someone else did."

I nodded and grabbed the box on the top of the stack and placed it on my desk.

"Emily, are you sure about this? I've seen some of what's in there and it's not pretty."

I didn't have words to describe my need to know what I had put my child through. I felt like it was my fault and it was my responsibility to hold some of that pain. I just nodded and removed the top of the first box. It was stacked to the top with composition notebooks and hard drives. I picked up the book on the top and flipped it to a random page.

'I can't do this anymore. I want to die,' The first line read. I choked and my heart fell the pit of my stomach.

"Those were found hidden in the walls, floors, and mattresses," JJ stated but awkwardly paused, "They also found a few that had been torn up and burnt in the fireplace."

"If he did that to the books I can't imagine what he did to her." I felt JJ's hand on my back in an attempt to comfort me as I read. As I neared the end of the page I picked up one of the hard drives from the more recent years and plugged it into the computer on my desk.

"Emily, I really don't think you should look at that. I don't know what's on there," JJ stressed.

I had already suppressed the feelings I just had from reading Lauren's diary and had begun to dissociate from all of my emotions to prepare. "JJ the stuff I saw when he took us..." I took a deep breath, " I just need to know if she was really pregnant. I can't bring it up to her or start investigating if I don't have proof."

Disappointment fell across JJ's face as I opened the first folder.

The first photo featured Lauren sitting Crisscross at the end of a bed wearing an oversized black t-shirt that fell over her thighs. She stared down at the bed where a few cards sat. Her and Ian playing a card game in bed was a new image for me. She never talked about the average everyday aspects of her life with him but I could assume this was one of them. Most of the other photos were similar. Ian's perspective was so different from how Lauren told stories. Suddenly I felt something. I couldn't believe my eyes and it made my heart sink. Lauren was lying in a bed with puffy eyes and tears on her face. Her lip was cut and there was a big bruise on her neck but the most noticeable thing was her stomach. She definitely wasn't full term but it was clear she was pregnant. The whole photo was painful to look at. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to preserve a moment like this.