** Please note when I write romance it's from 2 points of view intermingled in the same chapter, head hopping if you will. If you are confused, apologies in advance. I just like you to see the scene from both characters point of view. It's how I write romance :) 

This is also a first draft, so I am sure there are mistakes galore! Enjoy!!  **

***

SSA agent Jeremy Bradford, kept his FBI issued Glock 23 held steady as he and several swat team members moved down the hallway towered the unsub's apartment. One of the residents opened his door and Jeremy put a finger to his lips and shooed him back inside. Tonight was not a night for civilians to be out snooping.

The unsub was suspected of murdering at least a dozen women in all five Burroughs of New York City. If it hadn't been for all the media coverage, the detectives working the cases in each precinct may never have put it together. Thanks to the press and some very smart police work, they had linked the pattern killings.

They'd call in the behavioral analysis unit of the FBI because they needed help. After the initial profile was given, Jeremy had been asked by his boss to stay behind until the unsub was caught. This guy was a nasty piece of work, so he'd agreed.

And here he was now, slowly making his way toward the apartment of one Jeffrey Mitchell Powers. He was a thirty-three-year-old electrician who fit the profile to a T. Tall, glasses, and blonde hair. He had a smile that could put people at ease and was charming to a fault.

He checked his watch.

3am.

He nodded to Detective Jack Flynn, the lead detective in charge of the task force to find this sadistic son of a bitch. Flynn kissed the cross he wore around his neck and then pounded on the door. "NYPD! We have a warrant, open the door!"

They heard noises inside and both he and Flynn moved out of the way so that one of the swat officers could knock down the door. They went in one by one and he and Flynn headed toward the back of the apartment to the bedroom. The window was wide open and Jeremy looked out to see the unsub fleeing not down the fire escape where officers waited, but up the stairs to the roof.

"Mother of..." Jeremy holstered his weapon and started climbing shouting to Flynn to follow him. After six flights of stairs, he broke the rooftop and pulled his gun. There was no where to go up here. They'd done their homework. No connecting walkways between buildings and they'd made sure the door to the roof access was locked on the inside.

It was windy tonight, so Jeremy took extra care to creep along every shield he could. The roof was essentially a vast open space aside from a small area of picnic tables and a rooftop garden set up by the residents. A few stacks littered the surface, but otherwise nothing.

"Powers, there's no where to go," he called out. "You might as well make this easy and surrender yourself. No one has to get hurt."

Flynn finally huffed up the stairs and came to crouch beside him behind the small column he used as a shield in case Powers had a gun. "Any sign of him?"

Jeremy shook his head but didn't elaborate. Powers had nowhere to go and they both knew it. He wasn't getting off this roof. Two swat team members appeared in the open doorway and Jeremey waved them back. He wanted them there in case Powers managed to slip around them. He'd be met with force.

Flynn gestured to the officers behind them to stay put, in tune with Jeremy's thinking without him having to voice the thought. This was a man he wouldn't mind having for a partner even if the guy was a little overweight and slow. The real chase came into play with the mind games of the hunt and being in sync with your partner in that respect mattered as much if not more than the physicality of partnership.

Jeremy nodded at Flynn and pointed for him to go left and Jeremy would go right. There were a few tall beams up here, but not many and they were a good distance from each other.

Here's hoping he doesn't have a gun, Jeremy thought and dodged right, running as silently as he could to the next beam. He shifted once he was behind it so he could see around it. Still no sign of the unsab. Where the hell was he? There were only so many places to hide.

"Powers, we've got you surrounded!" Flynn shouted. "Come on out and make this easy on yourself."

As if that ever worked. Unsubs were not known for making anything easy.

A slight sound caught Jeremy's attention. He tilted his head listening. There, just to his left, he heard it again. He said a prayer and rushed the next beam, barely gaining cover before two shots rang out.

"Flynn!" He shouted and barely got the word out before another bullet whizzed by him, grazing his ear. He spat a curse and dived behind the beam for cover. "Shots fired!"

Two more shots rang out. He saw Flynn moving toward his position carefully and he knew without looking the other officers were now moving out onto the roof. Jeremy just hoped they didn't all flood the roof, leaving the doorway unprotected.

He heard Flynn's radio, but he was far enough away he couldn't understand the man's instructions, but he'd bet all he owned Flynn was barking at them not to leave the doorway unprotected.

Good man.

Jeremy craned his head around the corner and saw Powers crouched in the corner, a small divider protecting him, but not very well. His head was zig-zagging back and forth, trying to see a way out of this.

But there wasn't one.

He knew it as well as Jeremy did.

"Powers, there's only two ways out of this." Jeremy kept his voice even when he called to the panicked man. "The decision as to how that happens is solely yours."

He let that sink in. Powers was smart, but he'd been devolving over the last week, getting sloppy. It was how they'd found him. He'd left behind a partial fingerprint in the last victim's apartment. As an electrician, he had to be fingerprinted for his job and that's how they'd found him. The profile led them to a man in a position to get into these women's homes. That usually translated to a repairman of some sort. Jeremy was banking on a cable technician, but an electrician fit the profile just as well.

Powers muttered something Jeremy couldn't make out and he risked a glance around the pillar. The man looked more than panicked, he looked ready to do something stupid. His face was flushed, his nostril's flared, and he was breathing heavily. The gun in his left hand shook.

Jeremy caught Flynn's attention and motioned to Powers, letting his concern show on his face. Flynn nodded grimly.

Two seconds later, the man burst toward Jeremy, his gunned aimed right at his head. Jeremy rolled and fired off two rounds, one hit the man in his knee, the other in his shoulder. More shots rang out and he shouted to cease fire.

Powers lay on the ground, unmoving.

Had they killed him?

That pissed him off. He wanted the man to pay for what he'd done in a court of law so the families could get some closure. Cursing, he stood and approached the unsub, his gun held at the ready. He'd had more than one unsub come up shooting when they thought he was down.

What he didn't expect was the bullet that ripped through his shoulder from behind. He dropped. He heard orders shouted as he crawled back behind the pillar he'd been using as cover. His shoulder hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but he put that aside, his eyes scanning the rooftops around him as well as the buildings that were taller. Did they screw up the profile? Were there two unsubs?

It didn't fit.

More shots rang out and a police helicopter could be heard coming. It had been on standby, but not wanting to spook Powers, they'd made the decision to keep it on the down low. Flynn probably radioed for it the minute the first bullet ripped into him.

Feet pounded over to where he hugged the pillar. Flynn dropped down beside him. "Did we fuck up?"

"I don't think so, but I don't know." He nodded to Powers, who still lay unmoving. "He dead?"

"No. He's still breathing. I have paramedics on the way. Police are scouring the rooftops around us as we speak. How bad is it?" Flynn took off his jacket and placed it over the wound in Jeremy's shoulder.

"Hurts like a bitch."

The big Irish lug grinned. "Getting shot will do that to you."

Jeremy gritted his teeth as teams swept the surrounding buildings looking for the shooter. Despite the pressure Flynn held on the wound, he could feel his blood seeping out. Another officer had dragged Powers behind cover and was presumably doing the same for him. He had at least two gunshot wounds that Jeremy knew of. The man might bleed out before they got him to the hospital.

When the all clear came, he was hustled off the roof and into an ambulance while Powers was loaded into another. He only hoped the bastard survived so he'd have to face the families of his victims.

***

Jeremy found himself hurried into a helicopter and taken straight to the FBI field office in Chicago as soon as the doctor cleared him. It had been a simple through and through. The bullet missed any vital veins and bones. It was going to hurt like hell for a bit and he'd have to wear a sling until it healed, but with some PT, he hoped it would be back good as new.

Marshall Thomas, the director of the Chicago field office, met him when the chopper landed. Highly unusual. He was escorted inside along with the two armed guards that had been waiting on the roof.

"Agent Bradford." The director motioned for him to take a seat and he pulled out a bottle of gin and two glasses. "We have a situation."

"Sir?" He accepted the tumbler half full of amber liquid.

"Do you remember David Sloan?"

"Of course." David Sloan had been a man on a mission to clean up Congress by taking out as many politicians as he could. He'd killed over thirty members of the House and fifteen senators when Jeremy's team had been asked to replace the BAU team currently on the ground. He and Kade Kincaid, his then partner, along with the other three members of his team had worked a solid two weeks before they managed to create a working profile that led to the identity and capture of Sloan. They'd also lost two more senators during that time.

"He escaped."

"From a maximum-security prison? I thought he was in isolation."

"He was. We're still not sure what happened. We found a dead guard in his cell. Right now, it looks like he just walked right out of the place."

"That's not possible."

"Possible or not, he did it and the casualties have begun."

"Casualties?"

Director Thomas nodded grimly. "Three of the five members of your team are dead, the judge, the DA, two witnesses, and four of the jurors have been murdered as well."

Fuck.

"Who..."

"You and Kincaid are the last two alive. He's fine, though. Kincaid is surrounded by an entire security force made up of mostly ex-special forces hand-picked by him and his brother. He's been warned and is taking the necessary precautions."

Kade had wanted more time to spend with his family and being an agent on the BAU team did not translate well. They were gone more than they were home. Jeremy hadn't begrudged him when he decided to retire from the Bureau and joined his brother's security firm.

"Your uncle is insisting you receive the same type of security. He called in a few favors."

"Of course he did." Jeremy rubbed a hand over his face. Ben Bradford was not only the man who raised him, but the governor of Michigan who also had designs on the white house one day. He'd hoped Jeremy would follow him into politics, but Jeremy hated politics. He'd rather actually help people than argue over every single little thing and be forced to make compromises that didn't really help anyone in the end.

But he loved his uncle and applauded the good he tried to do. The man and his wife had taken him in as a child when his own father had decided he needed to go "find" himself after his third wife left him. Jeremy had never met his mother. He had a picture of her, but trying to seek her out never crossed his mind. His aunt and uncle were all the parents he needed.

"He didn't need to do that. I'm more than capable of..."

"Your profile wasn't wrong," Thomas cut him off. "There was only one unsub."

"Then who shot me?"

"Ballistics are a match to the bullets we pulled out of Sloan's victims."

"Sloan is one of the best marksmen to come out of the Marines. He wouldn't have missed."

"No, he wouldn't. I think it was a warning shot. You are the one who initially identified him and you and Kincaid caught him in the act. I think he has special plans for you two."

That wouldn't surprise Jeremy. Sloan had sent him plenty of hate mail over the years describing in explicit detail what he was going to do to him when he got out. Jeremy never gave it any thought. The prison they'd been holding the serial killer in had never been breached. Not one prisoner escaped those walls. The fact Sloan managed it defied logic.

"As I said, your uncle called in some favors and arranged the best operative employed by the US government. He's earned his reputation as well as his nickname."

"His nickname?"

"The Executioner."

"Which agency does he work for?"

"No agency. He was in the Marines special forces, but was recruited into the service of the white house. He does jobs that are deemed too dangerous for even our Navy Seals. One person going undercover can slip into areas a team can't."

"It sounds like his time is better spent doing that then babysitting me."

"I did point that out, but your uncle is having none of it. He wants only the best for you."

"Uncle Ben and the president are good friends. He probably guilted the man into it."

"Well, you're stuck with him until further notice. Your duties are also being suspended until Sloan is recaptured."

Jeremy went to argue but froze when the Director's phone rang.

"Director Thomas." The man paused then nodded. "Yes, we're expecting him. You can send him in, Denise."

Well, that argument would have to wait. He'd call his own director back in Quantico. Having a babysitter was one thing, being told he couldn't work? It wasn't going to happen. At least not on his watch.

He only hoped his babysitter would agree.