Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Cassidy Quinn was late.

It was something she hated, the young woman priding herself on being punctual and even arriving at places she needed to be earlier than the agreed-upon time because, in her line of work, being even a few seconds late was long enough that it could so easily cost someone their life.

Cassie was a profiler, and at twenty-seven-years-old had worked with the elite Behavioral Analysis Unit within the FBI for the last three years, the period taking up almost the entirety of her career within the Bureau, bar a few months after she graduated from the Academy where she'd been back home in Hawaii at the Honolulu Field Office. 

She'd been twenty-four when she'd been accepted into the Bureau as an agent, younger than most, and even though she saw some of the worst behaviors humankind was capable of almost daily, Cassie knew she wouldn't change her occupation for the world.

Now, though, she was looking for her partner.

Cassie had worked with Derek Morgan, a biracial former Chicago cop-turned-fellow profiler five years her senior, the entirety of her time in the BAU, and the two of them had joined the team on the same day.

Morgan had come to the BAU after a few years as an ATF agent following his short career at the Chicago PD, and with Cassie being flown from her tenure at the Honolulu Office, the two agents had brought the count of profilers on their team up, at the time, from just two to four. Three years later, the team was now up to seven (even though only five were "official" profilers). However, Cassie still preferred to bounce her ideas and theories off Morgan more often than not when no one else was available.

Agent Quinn also now considered Agent Morgan one of her closest friends, so when she pushed open the door of the bar where Morgan had said he'd be, she wasn't surprised in the slightest when, after straining her eyes to see through the bar's dim mood lighting, she saw her partner standing a whole head-and-shoulders above a trio of female FBI cadets around a circular bar table with a small crowd of shot glasses on the table between them.

Cassie wasn't short; she clocked in at a solid 5'8" (about 173 centimeters if you rounded), several inches above the national average, but Derek stood at 6'1" (185 cm) and, in fact, stood almost a full six inches taller than the younger woman when she wasn't wearing heels.

Her shorter stature and more slender build came in handy in tense situations, though, particularly when they had to duck behind something in order to avoid being seen by a suspect, and while Cassie usually managed perfectly well, Morgan generally had more trouble...those quarterback shoulders and all.

Morgan also seemed to be running his game of "Guess the Suspect" again, and Cassie wasn't surprised. It was something he did often, even with Cassie, when the two of them went out for drinks on the off-chance they had time away from their work with their fellow profilers.

"1940s," Derek was quizzing the three cadets as Cassie neared the table. "He put bombs in train stations and movie theaters,"

Cassie, having gotten her college degree in Criminology from the University of Maryland (along with double-majoring in Computer Science and a double minor in both Linguistics and Astronomy) and also having those three years in the BAU under her belt, instantly knew the answer to Derek's mini-interrogation, but it took each of the cadets a few moments of muttering in thought before one of them finally blurted out the answer.

"The Mad Bomber, George Metesky," one of the cadets, a woman who looked to be about Cassie's age, got the answer correct, and Cassie watched Morgan grin before holding up his own shot glass and gesturing with one hand to the other two cadets.

"Nice," he said. "Winner, sit. Losers, drink," Morgan clinked his shot glass against the other two cadets, but before any of them could down the alcohol, another one of the young women spoke up, making Derek pause with the shot glass halfway to his mouth.

"Hold on," she said. "Metesky wasn't a serial killer. None of his bombs ever killed anyone,"

"Not everything we do at the BAU is investigating serial killers," Cassie told the cadet, finally figuring it was time to announce her presence to Morgan since he had been the one to call her to meet him over an hour ago by this point.

If she had surprised her partner by her sudden appearance at his side after eavesdropping for the last thirty seconds, Morgan didn't show it. But the cadets certainly seemed surprised if the way all three of them jumped and snapped their heads around to stare at Cassie in shock was any indication.

Meanwhile, Derek just smiled before reaching out with one hand after setting his still undrunk shot glass back onto the table and gesturing for Cassie to join the four of them.

"Better late than never, Angel," he said, his smile highlighting how attractive he was.

Cassie wasn't blind; she knew her partner was a handsome man, and Derek's more or less revolving door of "lady friends" more than proved that. While relationships between Bureau employees weren't illegal, romantic relationships between agents in the same department, especially those who worked on the same team together, were, in fact, highly, highly discouraged.

Logically, of course, it made sense. In the field, split-second decisions were almost the most important, and in a tense situation, if one agent was more worried about their partner (in the romantic sense) rather than their partner (in the work sense), that diversion of focus is what got people killed.

Cassie's last serious relationship ended just before she left for college, and considering that relationship ended almost a decade ago by now, it was apparent she wasn't too keen on committing to anything long-term at that very moment.

It was alright, though. Cassie enjoyed her own company, and the long hours she worked at the BAU didn't exactly leave enough free time for her to go on more than a single casual date with a man who she didn't work with maybe once every other week.

The nickname Morgan had called her, 'Angel', had come up after a case the BAU had worked on ended badly six months after the two of them had joined the BAU, and even though Cassie knew her partner had a penchant for rotating nicknames between the various people that he knew, Derek had never called her anything different.

Aside from the brief instance of him trying out 'Princess' the very first time they met, which Cassie had instantly shot down, but that was a whole other story...

Cassie sometimes called him "Chicago" as well, but she had never really been someone partial to nicknames, not the way Derek was, so generally, she just stuck to people's names as they were.

"Ladies," Morgan's voice jerked Cassie from her thoughts as the older man turned back to the cadets still staring at both agents from their various spots across the bar table, the trio's gazes looking fairly awed. "May I introduce the lovely Supervisory Special Agent Cassidy Quinn, my partner?"

"You teach marksmanship at the Academy sometimes, don't you?" the third cadet asked, presumably having recognized her from one of her classes, and Cassie couldn't help but smile.

"When I have some free time," she conceded, but over the last six months, that free time had been few and far between.

The unit had been short-staffed for almost a year, and by now, it had been almost eight months since Cassie had been able to help with a marksmanship class at the Academy. She was more of a teaching assistant rather than an official instructor, anyway, even though she was still considered one of the most skilled sharpshooters in the entire agency. Her age, with Cassie not even thirty yet, generally barred her from ever teaching a class completely by herself, even when she was definitely a better shot than the actual teacher.

Profiling was also a specified skill set, and not just any prospective agent could just up and join the unit just because they wanted to try it out. More often than not, unless you were able to completely wow the superiors at the entrance interview (of which there were very few concerning new positions within the small team of profilers), you had to have had prior contact with a current member of the team who knew what you were capable of sometime previously, and who could vouch for you to everyone else.

Derek had been someone who'd aced the interview; Cassie had been hand-picked.

The arduous process of joining the team also explained why the team was still so small compared to other units within the Bureau. The BAU traveled all over the country trying to catch some of the worst monsters humankind had ever witnessed, and because the entire ordeal was so arduous, and local authorities more often than not at their wit's end when they finally ended up calling in the BAU, Cassie's brainpower was almost constantly being pulled in multiple different directions as she tried to focus on everything at once.

She had a cat, though, a long-haired calico she'd named Pōpoki. She'd adopted her about six months ago from the Humane Rescue Alliance in DC, and now Cassie enjoyed coming home to the furry companion, especially when cases had gone especially bad, and she needed a sign that there were still good things that existed in the world.

Pōpoki was a Hawaiian word that literally translated to "cat". Cassie generally called her Kiki instead and only broke out the government name whenever Kiki tried to jump out of their eighth-story apartment window, which was...more often than Cassie would've liked. Pet microchips had become Cassie's new favorite invention.

Cats were also scientifically proven to reduce stress, and given her job, Cassie would definitely classify herself as stressed at least 80% of the time. She was also sure she'd have gray hair by the time she actually turned thirty if she didn't already.

"Wait, wait, wait," one of the cadets butted into the conversation, waving her hands around as she gestured simultaneously to Cassie, her classmates, and Morgan. "Metesky wasn't a serial killer. None of his bombs ever killed anyone, right?"

"We don't just investigate serial killers," Cassie told the other woman, shifting her hands in her coat pockets. 

It was September in the District, so while it wasn't overtly chilly most days, evenings, like right now, got a bit brisk. Cassie preferred to dress in layers, anyway, especially since she was someone who got cold fairly easily. 

Her hair, such a dark brown it was practically black, and also usually tied back in a bun or ponytail when she was working, now hung loose down past her shoulders, mainly because Cassie hated the feeling of wind blowing against the back of her neck.

Growing up on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, even though she'd lived on the East Coast for the last three years of her life (almost eight if you added in her time at college), had made Cassie used to tropical temperatures, and really, summer had always been her favorite season even when she wasn't on O'ahu.

"She's right," Morgan agreed as he returned to the cadets. "Serial killers are definitely a specialty, but they're not all we do. We cover the whole spectrum of psychos. We profiled the D.C. sniper, the Unabomber. We do terrorists, arsonists..."

Morgan trailed off, leaving off the rest of whatever he was going to say, and in his brief pause, Cassie used her elbow to nudge her partner in the ribs.

"Supervisory agents that get their trainees drunk?" she murmured, and the three cadets all laughed as Morgan gave Cassie a deadpan look of his own. He acted irritated, but Cassie had known him long enough to know that he wasn't really mad at her.

"Ha ha," the older man muttered a moment later, and Cassie's grin widened. "Very funny,"

Cassie reached for one of the few untouched drinks on the table, one that she was sure Morgan had ordered for her before he'd realized that Cassie would be late. Cassie knew it was for her because Derek had stuck a purple paper umbrella toothpick into the glass, and even though this particular bar wasn't one that Cassie would've previously clocked as the type to serve umbrella drinks, she was sure that Morgan had pulled rank with the employees to get them to scrounge out the small umbrella from...somewhere.

Cassie wasn't one to drink alcohol often, and she had a thing about worrying about what was in her drinks, so whenever he ordered her a drink that Cassie wasn't present for, Derek had always had an employee put a purple umbrella in the drink so Cassie would know it was safe.

There was always the minute chance that the drink wasn't safe, but Cassie felt much safer with Derek than she did with most of the other men in her life, especially moreso than those few casual dates she went on once in a blue moon (which was also why she often opted to not drink anything at all on her dates). Cassie preferred to believe that any drink that Derek Morgan gave her with a purple umbrella was safe, and he hadn't steered her wrong yet.

The umbrella was also the same color as Cassie's birthstone, amethyst.

Morgan couldn't have ordered the drink that long ago, either, considering the glass was still cold, which meant that Derek had likely ordered Cassie's drink right after she had called him to say she was finally almost to the bar about ten minutes before she'd actually walked into the building.

Derek knew the types of alcoholic drinks that Cassie enjoyed when she did drink, so while he might've known what Cassie would've ordered herself had she been at the bar on time, since tonight was their night off, he still wouldn't have ordered anything for his partner until he knew she was on her way.

Unfortunately, though, just as Cassie was lifting her drink to her mouth, grabbing the umbrella out of the glass, and spinning the toothpick handle between two fingers, Morgan's cell phone rang from within one of the interior pockets of his jacket. 

He quickly excused himself from the cadets' whispered and giddy conversation at the bar table, though he only walked a few steps away to answer the call. It wasn't that busy in the bar, so that also meant Cassie could see the caller's I.D. on the small screen of Morgan's phone.

When she did see who was calling, Cassie sighed in resignation before setting her still-untouched drink back onto the table, twirling the purple umbrella around once more before setting it horizontally across the top of her glass. Undoubtedly, she would be getting a call within the next couple of minutes, too, unless Morgan told the caller she was already with him.

Duty calls.

"Wow," one of the cadets breathed out; the young woman had been staring over Cassie's shoulder at Morgan's phone, a gesture that made Cassie turn and stare at her with a raised eyebrow. "Behavioral Analysis Unit. You two work with Gideon? Were you with him in Boston?"

Boston. The capital city of Massachusetts and one of the most famous cities in the United States. The birthplace of the American Revolution (along with Dunkin' Donuts in one of its immediate suburbs) and its metropolitan area was home to two of the most famous colleges in the entire country, Harvard and MIT.

It was also why Cassie and Morgan's BAU team had been so short-handed these last six months, and as Cassie glanced at her partner again, the brunette couldn't stop herself from sighing as she turned back to look at the cadets.

"We were supposed to be," she said, clenching her jaw as all three cadets' mouths dropped open in simultaneous shock.

Supposed to be, indeed.

☆☆☆

F.B.I Training Academy
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

Cassie had met Jason Gideon when she was fifteen years old.

It was a long story, considering their first meeting had occurred over twelve years ago now, and it was not one that Cassidy particularly liked to dwell on either, considering parts of it were some of the worst memories she had in her life before her start at the BAU (and subsequent witness to the worst actions human beings were capable of) but Gideon, a man who was old enough that he could've been her father, had always been kind to her, bad memories notwithstanding. 

In fact, he had been the one who'd hand-picked her for the unit way back in April of 2002.

Cassie, as bad as it sounded, felt like she owed him.

She was sure there was some psychological reason for it, a philosophical concept that would be able to explain her need for validation from a male authority figure (aside from the obvious, commonly referred to as "Daddy Issues"), but the team wasn't supposed to profile each other, and Cassie already spent too much on her weekly therapy bills to even further introspect herself.

Gideon was the team's senior agent. He was not the Unit Chief (the agent in charge); that responsibility fell to Aaron Hotchner, a former prosecuting lawyer just shy of turning forty and ten years younger than Gideon. However, Gideon was one of the founders of the BAU, and as such, that came with a certain level of superiority, even if he wasn't technically the official SAIC.

Six months ago, in Boston, Gideon had been working a case involving a series of bombings eventually discovered to be the work of a man named Adrian Bale, and somehow, Bale had managed to trick Gideon enough that the bomber's final device blew up a building with seven people inside, the identities of which were six FBI agents and a civilian hostage.

Gideon had immediately been put on medical leave following the entire altercation, but it seemed that this most recent case—the case that had pulled both Cassie and Morgan from the bar and prompted them to meet up with Agent Hotchner (whom the team more often than not just called Hotch) at the FBI Academy—would bring Gideon off of his leave.

Cassie wasn't sure if saying she loved her job was actually a good description. She knew she wouldn't trade it for anything and enjoyed saving people when she could. But the part she hated, the part that made her almost fear every time she went out in public, and a big reason she always had Morgan give her a purple toothpick umbrella whenever she had alcohol...was simply because, as a woman, one in her late twenties, and someone who was at least moderately attractive in the eyes of the opposite sex, Cassie often perfectly fit the characteristics of the victim types of the people that the team hunted on an almost-daily basis.

Agent Quinn could more than handle herself; she'd been taking self-defense classes since she was ten, and Morgan taught hand-to-hand combat classes at the Academy, so Cassie often sparred with him to keep her skills sharp, but there were times that even she would get caught off-guard.

Cassie also had a younger sister, Bridget, who'd just started med school at Johns Hopkins and was, incidentally, only a year older than this particular unsub's latest victim, so that particular detail was doing wonders for the twenty-seven-year-old's emotional state.

Unsub was an acronym for Unknown Subject, aka the killer. This particular bad guy had also been dubbed the "Seattle Strangler" by both the press and local authorities, an event that the BAU generally tried to avoid when working their cases because it, more often than not, just sensationalized the murders more than they already were, and that was usually the last thing the profilers needed when trying to catch a killer.

Plus, the name was stupid.

Cassie had been doing this job long enough, though, to know she couldn't let small details like her very existence as a woman and Bridget's age in connection to Heather Woodland (the most recent victim) get in the way of her ability to help solve the case.

So, as she, Morgan, and Hotch swiftly walked down the hall of the FBI Academy toward the office that Gideon had been using during his tenure as a professor/guest lecturer while on medical leave, Cassie snapped closed the case file to stop herself from reading anymore the horrifying and despicable things the unsub had done to his victims, her actions abrupt enough that it caused Derek to glance at her.

Cassie was saved from having to answer her partner's unasked question from the three of them arriving at Gideon's office, though the senior agent wasn't alone and was instead joined by the team's youngest member, Dr. Spencer Reid.

A certifiable genius, twenty-three-year-old Reid, who hailed from Las Vegas (Nevada), was an alum of Cal Tech and MIT, and held three doctorates in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering (hence the "doctor" title), had only been a member of the BAU for a little over a year but already was by far the smartest person that Cassie had ever met, and even though he was younger than Cassie by almost four years, was definitely smarter than she was, which was saying something, considering Cassie herself had gotten valedictorian in high school, graduated summa cum laude, and worked in one of the most prestigious departments in the entire Bureau. 

She was more than smart, too. You had to be to work this job. She just...wasn't as smart as Reid, though Cassie wasn't sure if anyone was quite as smart as Reid.

Reid was a genius in every possible sense of the word. A bit awkward, maybe, as well, but he was a valuable team member, nonetheless, and had been a big help while Gideon had been on leave.

Cassie lingered in the doorway of Gideon's office with Morgan and Hotch, and it was obvious that the senior agent didn't notice them right away as he looked over the case file that Reid had given him.

"I'll look the case file over," Gideon was saying as Cassie watched Reid glance over his skinny shoulder at the three other agents. "I'll get some thoughts to you ASAP,"

"You're going to be in Seattle with us ASAP," Hotch corrected as he stepped further into the office, Morgan and Cassie trailing behind him as Gideon looked up, his reading glasses still halfway down his nose as he stared at them.

"Twenty-three-year-old Heather Woodland," Morgan explained as he retrieved a photo of Heather from within the case folder and handed it to Gideon, Hotch shifting his own folder in his hands before he spoke.

"Before she left for lunch," the unit chief began. "She downloaded an email with a time-delayed virus attached. The killer's virus wiped her hard drive and left this on the screen..."

Hotch then gestured to Cassie, who retrieved another photo from her folder and held it out towards Gideon, who took it from her to look it over more closely.

The picture was an evidence photo sent over from the Seattle Field Office of the screen of Heather Woodland's work computer, the pop-up on the screen depicting a message in thick block letters over and over again: For heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more I cannot control myself.

Coincidentally (or not, this unsub could be smarter than usual), the message he had left on Heather Woodland's computer was the same message that the Lipstick Killer, a serial killer from way back in 1945 Chicago, had left in the apartment of one of his victims.

Gideon also had a photo of the same message framed on the wall of his office, and one of the prime suspects from those murders, William Heirens, was named as the killer in the same framed photo that belonged to Gideon.

"None of the victims are missing for more than a week before their bodies are found," Cassie spoke up as Gideon walked over with the photo she'd handed him to stare at the photo on his wall. "Which means," she added quickly. "We might only have less than a day-and-a-half left to find her,"

"They want you back in the saddle," Morgan added as Gideon turned back around to face the other agents. "You ready?"

"Looks like medical leave's over, boss," Reid piped up from where he sat on one of Gideon's side tables while the senior agent still looked a bit wary about the whole thing.

Cassie supposed she would be nervous, too, if she'd been out of the field for six months after a traumatic event and was thrust back into the line of duty without much of a choice in the matter.

"They sure they want me?" he asked, and Hotch, ever the solemn one, gave a single nod.

"The order came from the director," the unit chief said, and Gideon turned back around to glance once more at his photo on the wall.

"Then we'd better get started."

☆☆☆

Joseph Conrad said, "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

Cassie supposed that if you were on a team that needed to travel all over the country at practically a moment's notice to catch a human monster, flying commercially might not always be viable, so it'd make sense that the BAU had its own private jet.

With time against them concerning Heather's chances of survival, as soon as Gideon had agreed to come with them to Seattle, the team mobilized, heading to the airport where the jet was waiting, already fueled and ready to go. All five agents were itching to get to Washington state as quickly as they could so they could have as much time as possible to bring Heather Woodland home safely.

As Cassie speed-walked behind Morgan as they both headed out of the Bureau's designated SUV and towards the steps leading up into the plane, she supposed safe was a bit of a misnomer, considering what the unsub had done to all of his previous victims, and what he had likely been doing to Heather for the last five-and-a-half days.

Glancing over her shoulder as Derek began his climb the steps into the plane on Gideon's tail, Cassie looked past Reid to where Hotch had been trailing behind all of them, locked in what looked like a deep conversation with one of the higher-ups in the Bureau.

She was too far away to hear anything specific, but Cassie knew anyway what the severe-looking red-haired woman was muttering to Hotch.

Gideon had never been the Unit Chief, but he was one of the founders of the BAU and had been doing this job long enough to know what was out there in terms of humanity and its humanoid monsters, but he'd also been completely rattled by Bale's final bombing.

The FBI didn't just send an agent with superficial physical injuries on a half-year-long medical leave for no reason.

Gideon might not have been seriously physically injured by what Bale had done, but his mind had suffered, which Cassie supposed was another reason he had been so opposed at first to returning to his work at the unit.

The upper echelons of the Bureau wanted Hotch to monitor Gideon, report his mental state back to them, and determine whether or not Gideon was fit to remain within the Bureau at all.

Before long, though, Hotch had concluded his conversation with the other female agent and joined his colleagues within the jet's designated passenger cabin. However, Cassie knew enough about the BAU's unit chief that Hotchner wouldn't be telling any of them what his conversation was about.

Cassie definitely liked Agent Hotchner more than her last SAIC, though. 

Agent Maxwell Jorden, who was in charge of the Honolulu Field Office when Cassie had been stationed there and was still in charge as far as she knew, hadn't liked her much when she'd worked there for those three months after she'd graduated from the Academy, probably because she was over half his age and definitely smarter than he was, even with almost no law enforcement experience prior to her joining the Bureau. But, he also had been royally pissed when Gideon had swooped in at the end of March in '02 and all but stolen Cassie to the BAU from right under his nose.

Cassie had thought the entire altercation hilarious, especially once Jorden had called both Hotch and Gideon and demanded they "return her" (his own words) back to the Honolulu Office mere days after she had closed her first profiling case.

Obviously, that hadn't worked because Cassie was still with the BAU three years later.

Agent Max Jorden was definitely on her list of men she didn't trust, though, and it was a list that Derek, Hotch, Gideon, and Reid were all exempt from.

She didn't have time, though, to worry about what Hotch might be telling his bosses about Gideon or her lingering issues with Agent Jorden because, as stated already, Heather Woodland didn't have enough time left before the unsub silenced her for good. 

So, once the plane was in the air and flying towards Seattle, the team converged, running over what they knew already about the case and formulating new theories on what could be driving this particular unsub to kill at all.

"His first victim was twenty-six-year-old Melissa Kirsh," Reid read off his file from where the young genius was sitting on one of the couches that lined one side of the jet's cabin, Cassie and Hotch in two of the chairs across from him, while Morgan leaned over the back of Agent Quinn's seat and Gideon stood further back from all four of them. "Stab wounds, strangulation..."

"Wait, wait. Back up, back up," Derek cut off Reid's recitation and waved his hand to make the younger agent pause. At the same time, Cassie was more distracted by the fact that Melissa was even closer to her age than Heather was, equidistant between her and Bridget, who was twenty-four. Lovely. "He stabbed her and then strangled her to finish her off?"

"Other way around," Gideon corrected as he walked up to stand between Morgan and Reid, and Cassie glanced up at the older agent as Gideon looked at Reid. "Why do you think he started using the belt with the second murder?"

"Bare hand strangulation is harder to control," Cassie spoke up before Reid could answer, causing the four men on the plane to turn and look at her, prompting the younger woman to give a small shrug. "Maybe the unsub tried, but it took him too long--"

"So he stabbed her instead," Morgan finished the same thought Cassie had, nodding, while Hotch tilted his head across from the two of them.

"And probably realized it would be hours cleaning up the blood," the unit chief posited.

"So next time," Derek continued a moment later, staring over Cassie's shoulder at the case file the brunette had open on her lap. Cassie had needed to have the file open during the briefing, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy looking at the photos of the victims. "Our boy's got a method...the belt,"

"He's learning," Gideon declared, nodding in affirmation to what Morgan had already stated. "Perfecting his scenario. Becoming a better killer,"

The briefing continued, but for the moment, Cassie tuned out what her partner and colleagues were saying and stared down at the case file on her lap again, heaving a sigh.

She enjoyed her job, but over and over again, her career as a profiler proved again and again that the best thing that human beings were good at, the thing they excelled at more than anything else in the world...was hurting each other.

☆☆☆

F.B.I Northwest Field Office
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

It was morning by the time the BAU landed in Seattle, and by the time they arrived at the field office where the task force headquarters for the Strangler case had been set up, Cassie was both hungry and craving caffeine, and even though she'd eaten one of the emergency granola bars she kept in her go-bag for just this scenario, it hadn't helped much concerning sustenance.

But, they were kind of on a time crunch, so Cassie didn't exactly have much of a reason to ask if it was possible they could stop for a quick pit-stop for breakfast before arriving at the field office, and even if she had asked, Cassie would've felt terrible about it.

Their entrance into the field office didn't take long at all, and by the time she made it through the metal detector and grabbed her messenger bag holding her laptop and case files off the conveyor belt, Hotch had already gotten the location of the task force headquarters from the agent working the desk.

Cassie supposed, though, that the unit chief knew his way around this particular field office fairly well, considering he'd been a Seattle Agent years ago before joining the BAU.

As she passed by the desk where Hotch was standing, though, she was stopped when Morgan grabbed onto her arm, making both her and Reid pause when the younger agent's attention was caught as well a second later.

"He never stands with his back to a window," Derek hissed, and it took Cassie a moment to realize her partner was talking about Gideon, who was walking several paces in front of the rest of them. "When I was between him and a doorway, he asked me to move,"

Cassie couldn't stop herself from heaving a sigh as Hotch sidled up behind the three agents, his brief conversation with the front desk agent having now concluded.

"How would you feel if you got put on medical leave for six months following a super traumatic event?" she asked, and Morgan glanced at her, seemingly at a momentary loss for words.

"It's hypervigilance," Reid piped up, and Cassie turned to look at the younger agent. "It's not uncommon in post-traumatic stress disorder,"

"Just how much disorder are we talking about?" Derek continued, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from beginning to glare at her partner, but before she could say something that she might end up regretting later, Hotch spoke.

"Morgan," the unit chief said firmly. "It's been six months. Everything's okay,"

Cassie wasn't quite sure who Hotch was trying to convince with his statement, Morgan or himself, but Derek didn't argue with the unit chief again, so instead, the four of them (and Gideon--who had already reached the field office's bank of elevators) headed upstairs to the task force headquarters, and as she walked into the large room that made up the makeshift bullpen, Cassie could see a whole row of poster boards plastered with the various details of the unsub's crimes so far.

The various gathered Seattle agents turned and looked at the profilers as all five of them walked in, and Hotch, who had taken the lead into the task force headquarters in front of Gideon, paused in front of the amalgamation of desks and quickly started introductions.

"This is Special Agent Gideon," the unit chief began. "Special Agent Morgan, our expert on obsessional crimes; Special Agent Quinn, our interrogations expert; Special Agent Reid--"

"Dr. Reid," Gideon quickly corrected Hotch over his momentary slip-up of Reid's proper title, and as she paused in front of one of the case boards in between Morgan and Gideon, Cassie saw Hotch minutely wince.

"Dr. Reid," Hotch continued a second later. "Our expert on, well...everything. And, after two years busting my butt in this office, I hope you remember me,"

The gathered agents tittered for a moment at the brief spot of humor from the ever-stoic Agent Hotchner, but Cassie was no longer paying attention to the other agents and was instead focused on the case boards, along with thinking about the words Hotch had used to describe her to the various Seattle agents.

She was the team's interrogations "expert", for lack of a better word, because as long as she could remember, Cassie had always been able to tell when someone was lying to her. It was rare that someone could fool her, and the brunette could count on one hand with fingers to spare the number of times in her life it had happened. Even though she knew that profilers couldn't always rely on their "gut feeling", a term Gideon had used several times over the years to describe Cassie's almost-uncanny ability, Cassie had utilized it enough during her career as a profiler to know that it worked.

Gideon had always been someone who hadn't really bought into Cassie's whole Human Polygraph schtick, though, and Cassie hadn't even told him about it until months after she'd joined the unit.

"He's willing to travel with the body," Gideon, who'd been looking at a map of Seattle showcasing where the victims had gone missing versus where their bodies had been found, murmured softly, and his voice jerked Cassie out of her thoughts again.

The brunette physically shook herself, realizing that getting lost inside her own head again and again would do her no good if she couldn't help her colleagues find Heather Woodland, and she glanced over her shoulder again as Hotch turned towards Gideon.

"Then he drives a vehicle capable of concealing one," the unit chief posited, and Reid, ever-present with random facts, spun around.

"1 in 7.4 drivers in Seattle owns an SUV," the young genius explained and next, it was Morgan's turn to spout off an idea.

"Explorer with tinted windows,"

"Explorers rate higher with women," Reid corrected. Cassie wasn't sure how he knew that, but she had stopped being surprised by Reid's random knowledge months ago and instead glanced toward her colleagues.

"Are we sure the SUV is even his car?" Cassie asked, the 'he' in question obviously referring to the unsub. "It could belong to a relative or someone else he knows. I mean, Ted Bundy drove a Volkswagen Bug, of all vehicles,"

"What about a Jeep Cherokee?" Hotch asked, and again, Reid had a statistic ready.

"Jeeps are more masculine," the young genius admitted, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from letting out a scoffing laugh.

"We all know how much unsubs like this guy like to prove they're the most masculine one in the room," she muttered, not loud enough for some of the agents further away to hear, but from the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Morgan crack a smile as Hotch walked over to the case boards.

"When did the Bureau become involved in the case?" he asked, and the ASAC (Assistant Special Agent in Charge--the Seattle Agent in charge of the task force) nodded towards the board depicting the profile and evidence photos from the murder of Sondra Watts.

"After the fourth body," the ASAC explained, nodding towards Sondra's case board again. "He dumped that one out of state,"

"On purpose, probably," Cassie said, and she watched Reid shrug from where the twenty-three-year-old was standing behind Gideon.

"If so," Reid began. "Knowledge of law enforcement does suggest a criminal record,"

"Or that he watches television," Morgan added, grinning, before turning to one of the Seattle agents and holding out his hand. "May I?"

The ASAC handed Derek one of the case files, and he began to flip through it, but before Cassie could look over her partner's shoulder and read through the case notes too, another one of the Seattle agents turned towards Hotch with his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

"So, you want to see our suspect list?" the agent asked, but Hotch just shook his head as Cassie turned back to Morgan and the case file.

"No," the unit chief said firmly, but not unkindly since it was likely some of the local agents who hadn't worked with the profilers before didn't know exactly how their process of finding out the identity of the unsub worked. "We won't look at a suspect list until after we come up with a profile.  It keeps our perspective unbiased,"

"When do we sit down with your task force?" Gideon asked, and the agent almost seemed to grimace before he answered a moment later.

"4 o'clock," he said, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from whipping her head up to stare at the agents, with Morgan having almost an identical expression of disbelief on his face from where he stood beside Cassie.

"An accurate profile by 4 o'clock today?" Derek asked, trying to clarify that he and Cassie had heard the agent correctly, and Cassie blew out a breath.

She knew they were on a time crunch, obviously, if they wanted to find Heather Woodland before the unsub killed her (Cassie refused to call him the "Seattle Strangler"), so the team of profilers didn't exactly have the luxury of taking as long to develop a profile as they usually would, but less than six hours before they had to deliver the profile to the agents and Seattle PD officers was just ridiculous.

Sure, they could make a profile in less than six hours, but Cassie wasn't sure if the profile would be accurate, and that was what they needed right now if they had any hope of finding the unsub and, in turn, Heather before Heather ended up dead.

Accuracy, in this line of work, was always crucial.

"That's not a problem," Gideon, apparently, didn't share Cassie's sudden apprehension because he just walked past Agents Quinn and Morgan, who were both staring at the senior agent with barely-disguised shock, with nary a glance before he reached another one of the case boards.

"Agent Gideon," Hotch began, straightening up as Gideon began to study the board in front of him. "Where would you like to start?"

For a few seconds, Gideon said nothing, just looking silently over his shoulder at the gathered Seattle agents, the officers from the Seattle Police Department, and his fellow profilers before pointing to one photo on the board.

"At the sight of the last murder,"

☆☆☆

That was how Cassie found herself standing under a bridge with Derek, Gideon, and an officer from the Seattle Police Department, watching with her partner and the cop as Gideon perused the former crime scene silently.

The crime scene tape was still there, though it had since fallen off of the bridge's support beams it had previously been tied to, likely since it had been several days since the victim's body had been found. The Bureau and Police Department had finished their sweep of this particular scene, so now, the tape just about blended in with all of the other trash and gross unmentionables that were littered (no pun intended) throughout the area underneath the bridge.

Cassie wasn't as germaphobic as Reid was, but she stuck close to Morgan either way. She had no extensive desire to get poked with an abandoned needle that someone had left on the ground and end up in the hospital with tetanus or something else equally as capable of taking her off the case.

"So that's Gideon?" The voice of the Seattle officer made Cassie turn her head, and she couldn't help but notice how the man, who couldn't have been more than thirty, seemed almost giddy. "The Gideon? The one who caught that guy, Adrian Bale, in Boston?"

"Yep, that's him," Morgan answered. However, Cassie caught enough emphasis in her partner's voice to know he was tired of people associating the capture of Adrian Bale with Gideon's career, especially given everything else that had happened in Boston, proven a moment later when Derek turned towards the police officer again. "But, catching him cost us six agents,"

The officer's expression changed from the giddiness he'd previously had at witnessing Gideon's skills in action to embarrassment after being scolded by Morgan. Still, Cassie didn't feel sympathy for the officer.

It wasn't as if the deaths of the seven final victims of Adrian Bale weren't common knowledge; they'd been reported on in the same articles across the national newspapers that showcased Gideon's capture of Bale, but, like so many other instances over the years that Cassie had witnessed during her time at Bureau, civilians were, more often than not, only focused on the crimes of the killer, or in Gideon's case, the profiler who had ended up catching him, not the victims whose lives had been ended, or the relatives of the victims whose lives would never be the same following the death of their loved ones.

As Gideon continued perusing the crime scene, Cassie left her partner and the Seattle officer behind and walked across the uneven ground toward the senior agent, even though Derek followed her a second later once he realized Cassie was no longer standing next to him.

"Twenty-two-year-old Anne Cushing was found right..." Cassie trailed off momentarily as she glanced down at the case file she had taken from the field office. She turned for a second before finding the area depicted in one of the crime scene photos. "Here. The unsub had her nails clipped neatly, just like he did with all of the others,"

"He wants them to fight back," Morgan added, and Cassie could barely hold back a shudder at the implications as Gideon took the photo of Anne Cushing's body from her and stared at it for a couple of moments before the senior agent finally said anything.

"But," Gideon began. "Not enough to hurt him. And he left the belt around her neck. He's probably in his early twenties,"

That was enough of a jump that Cassie narrowed her eyes, exchanging a confused glance with Morgan before Derek gave Gideon a bemused look of his own.

"What's your reasoning?" he asked, but Gideon just turned around to gaze at their current area before he answered.

"Youthful arrogance,"

The tone of Gideon's voice implied that what he said was almost a joke, and in turn, Cassie almost cracked a smile. But, the situation was dire, and so she stayed stoic, though Morgan heaved a sigh from beside her.

"He clothed the body before dumping it," he reminded the older man, but Gideon just turned around and walked over to the two younger agents.

"That's a sign of remorse," Gideon said, but Morgan just shook his head, and Cassie knew her partner was gearing up for a counter-argument, which was proven a second later.

"That's not consistent," Derek retorted before gesturing with his hands to the three agents' surroundings, to the rubble, trash, and general grossness that surrounded them on all sides. "Look where we are. His opinion of women is pretty clear, don't you think?"

"He's right," Cassie added a moment later, prompting Gideon to turn towards her and stare at Agent Quinn in such a way that, three years ago, the young woman would've squirmed under the scrutiny. "If the unsub really feels remorse for what he's done, why dump his victims out here and in places like this as if they are the trash?"

"They're disposable to him," Gideon murmured, but Cassie only frowned again as she turned back to the case file.

Derek was right; that wasn't consistent. The women being disposable, sure, that made sense, classic misogynistic tendencies; Cassie had seen them dozens of times before, but the remorseful aspect only came through when the unsub was dumping his victims, not the actual murder (the killings were way too brutal for that). 

So if the unsub really did feel remorse, like what she had asked Gideon, why would the unsub dress his victims back in their previous clothes but still dump them, literally, in a place that would make them seem as if the women didn't matter to him at all?

☆☆☆

While Cassie, Gideon, and Morgan had been investigating the dump site where Anne Cushing's body had been found, Hotch had taken Reid to interview Heather Woodland's brother, David, to see if the brother could think of any information relating to his sister's disappearance that he hadn't already revealed to the authorities when Heather had first gone missing.

Reid, of course, had discovered a catalog of Datsun Zs currently for sale that Heather had on one of her side tables. In turn, he and Hotch had deduced that if Heather was in the market for a new car, and if the unsub drove the same model of said car, all he would've needed to do in order to get Heather alone would be to offer her a test drive (likely on her lunch break, the same day she'd accidentally downloaded the virus to her work computer) and then just...not let her out of the car.

The fact that Heather had been looking to buy the exact same car the unsub likely already owned was a ridiculous coincidence, but Cassie would take anything she could get at this point because the clock was ticking ever closer to the week-long mark, and considering the unsub had never kept any of his victims longer than seven days, Cassie was beginning to get even more worried than she already had been.

Now, though, the five profilers were back in the Seattle Field Office, locked away in a conference room that gave them at least a little bit of privacy away from the other agents and various Seattle cops who were still milling around, and they were trying to come up with at least some semblance of an accurate profile before they had to recite it to the task force.

The key word was "trying" because by now, it was 3:15, and with forty-five minutes left before the profile deadline, Cassie had already been stuck in the conference room for over an hour and a half. She was so stressed out she was beginning to get a headache.

Morgan, apparently, wasn't faring much better because, at this point, Derek was pacing, periodically tossing the baseball he usually kept in his go-bag up in the air, catching it at regular intervals as he thought out loud.

"Okay," Cassie's partner began, causing the younger brunette to glance up at him from where she was sitting in one of the chairs at the long conference table. "Then how 'bout the fact that on one hand, we have paranoid psychosis...but the autopsy protocol says what?"

He turned towards Cassie, and she quickly shuffled through the pile of papers that had overtaken the table since the BAU had descended upon the room and quickly located the report that, well, reported the characteristics of the various states of the bodies after they had been discovered.

Cassie opened her mouth to read off the bullet points, but before she could say anything, Reid, who was sitting in a chair beside her and also spinning around so fast Cassie didn't know how he hadn't gotten dizzy, instantly started reciting verbatim the same points Agent Quinn had been about to read off.

Damn his eidetic memory.

"Adhesive residue shows he put layer after layer of duct tape over his victim's eyes," the young genius explained, and Cassie could barely stop herself from shuddering again as she turned to look at Morgan, Reid, and Hotch, who was sitting across the table from the other three.

"If he knows these women are going to end up dead, and he's going to be the one to kill them," she began, suddenly confused. "Why cover their eyes? He obviously wants them to fight back; the clipped nails were proof enough of that, but he apparently doesn't want them to look at him either? Who are they going to tell if they're dead?"

"It doesn't make sense," Morgan ricocheted off of the same train of thought Cassie had going; that was how well the two of them worked together. "If he then just goes and dumps them right out in the open, murder weapon nearby,"

"It's not the M.O of a paranoid convinced he's being watched or surveilled," Reid said quietly, finally stopping his chair spinning and turning around so he was facing the conference table again.

"Paranoid psychosis," Derek began again. "But behavior that's not paranoid,"

"Maybe he's schizophrenic?" Hotch asked, but by this point, Morgan was too stressed to think of details.

"Maybe," he retorted once Hotch had paused to take a breath. "We just don't have enough for a complete profile,"

"We have enough to narrow our lists of suspects," Hotch corrected, and Cassie and Reid, who'd been watching the two older men argue with each other with about the same amount of interest as if they were watching a tennis match, exchanged a glance with each other as Derek shot another retort to the team's Unit Chief.

"You know, we're looking at less than twelve hours to find this woman," he said, but Hotch just raised his hands.

"We don't know exactly what--"

"Hotch, we don't know anything!"

"Alright, enough," Gideon's voice made Derek stop his yelling in his tracks, and all four profilers turned to where the senior agent had been standing at the far end of the room, staring at the various maps of Seattle that were pinned to the corkboard. "Hotch, tell them we're ready,"

Without another word and seemingly completely oblivious to his colleagues' shocked expressions, save Hotch, who seemed only mildly surprised, Gideon turned and walked out of the conference room.

"We're ready?" By this point, Derek's voice was almost shrill, but the door to the conference room closed behind Gideon before Morgan could confront the senior agent further.

As Hotch stood up to go and inform the task force agents of their completed profile (though Cassie still wasn't entirely sure what that profile even entailed), Derek turned to his partner, who was trying to organize the various papers that were strewn about on the table, Reid studiously ignoring all of them.

"Angel, you good with this?" he asked, and Cassie paused what she was doing, straightening out the top papers in one pile before she sighed, turning around in her chair to face Morgan as he continued, gesturing to the various papers still on the conference table. "We've got a woman who's only got a few hours left to live, an incomplete profile, and a senior agent on the verge of a nervous breakdown,"

Gideon re-entering the room saved Cassie from having to answer Derek's question, but the senior agent in question spoke to her partner anyway on his way back out of the room, having just popped in again to grab a pen.

"They don't call them nervous breakdowns anymore," Gideon was gone again about as fast as he'd reappeared, and as he disappeared back out the door, Reid spoke, though the young genius didn't look up from where he was quickly scratching some notes onto a legal pad.

"It's called a major depressive episode," Reid began, but Morgan just turned around, his expression one of minor irritation.

"I know, Reid," he said, and no more than two minutes later, Cassie and Morgan were alone in the conference room. Reid had chased after Gideon, and Hotch was going to notify the task force.

Cassie had stayed back on purpose, wanting to make sure that Derek heard her answer to his question about whether or not she was okay with Gideon amid...everything. Judging from the way Morgan was lingering by the closed conference room door, he wanted to know her answer, too.

"Gideon's been doing this a long time," she said after several seconds of silence between the two of them, and Morgan turned to look at her directly. "He knows what he's doing. If he thinks we have enough of a profile to present it, then I trust him,"

Derek didn't know the extent to which Cassidy Quinn knew Jason Gideon, and given his recent attitude, Cassie wasn't exactly planning on telling him anytime soon, either. However, she had known him long enough that Cassie was hoping Morgan trusted her enough to back off, at least for a little while.

"We don't have time, Cassidy," he began, keeping his voice quiet, even as Cassie stood from her chair to stand in front of him. "For a profile that may not even be complete. If even a single detail is off, Heather could end up dead,"

"I know that," Cassie retorted, sharper than she'd intended and beginning to get frustrated again. "But Gideon knows what he's doing; you know he does. Trust him, please. We don't have many options left right now,"

Really, that was Derek's whole point, the fact that the clock ticking closer and closer to Heather Woodland's likely death was getting dangerously close to the end, and an incomplete profile would probably only exacerbate the timeframe if the profilers and local authorities started looking in the wrong direction. But Cassie was also right...they didn't have enough time to do anything different.

So, with a heaving sigh, Morgan gave a small nod of resignation, and in return, Cassie smiled at him, a small smile that was not nearly as glorious as it usually was, but given the situation (and their rapidly dwindling timeframe), that was to be expected.

With Morgan now temporarily placated, the older agent pulled open the conference room door and held it open so Cassie could exit the room first, the two of them now having to go find the rest of their colleagues.

Time for the profile.

☆☆☆

The room where the profile presentation was being given was a bigger conference room within the Seattle Field Office than the one the BAU profilers had been in. This was simply because the old conference room wasn't big enough for the entirety of the task force that had been working on the Seattle Strangler case.

With Gideon on medical leave, Hotch, Morgan, and Cassie had been the ones to usually deliver their profiles to local authorities because Reid didn't have quite as much experience, but now, with Gideon back, the senior agent was about to give the entirety of the profile presentation all by himself, which hardly ever happened, even before the case in Boston.

Cassie had been momentarily confused when Gideon said he'd be presenting the profile by himself because she had gotten used to presenting the team's findings to local authorities with Hotch and Morgan. Now, she was standing, quite literally, on the sidelines again as Gideon ran point.

The task force agents were sitting at several folding tables that were formed in a sharp U-shape in the center of the room, with Gideon pacing the opening between the two sides, a projector screen lighting up the wall behind him, while the rest of the BAU profilers were stuck in a shadowed corner of the room, out of the way, an action that was sure to make Derek thrilled.

But, dutifully, Cassie's partner stayed silent about whatever irritation he currently had brewing inside and instead stood silently with the other profilers as Gideon rubbed his hands together for a moment before he officially started the presentation.

"The unidentified subject is white and in his late twenties," Gideon began. "He's someone you wouldn't notice at first. He's someone who'd blend into any crowd..."

A big reason Cassie was sure that local authorities hadn't actually caught this particular unsub and why they had called the BAU in at all. But that was the requisite for most of their cases. Profilers would be out of a job if serial killers were easy to find.

"The violent nature of the crimes," Gideon continued, and Cassie shifted her weight in the corner, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her blazer as she leaned against the wall. "Suggests a previous criminal record--petty crimes," Gideon clarified a second later when some of the task force agents stared at him with confused looks. "Maybe auto theft. We've classified him as an organized killer--careful. Psychopathic as opposed to psychotic. He follows the news and has good hygiene. He's smart. Because he's smart, the only physical evidence you'll find is what he wants you to find,"

Cassie really, really hated it when the bad guys were smart.

"He's mobile," Gideon added. "Car in good condition. Our guess? Jeep Cherokee, tinted windows. The murders have all involved rapes, but rape without penetration is a form of piquerism, and that tells us he's sexually inadequate,"

In other words, the very definition of a man who overcompensates for something he can't do. In this case...sex.

"Psychiatric evaluations will show a history of paranoia stemming from a childhood trauma, such as the death of a parent or family member," Gideon explained. "And now he feels persecuted and watched. Murder gives him a sense of power," As he spoke, Gideon made a circuit of the interior of the table circle, and Cassie watched as his eyes flicked over her and the rest of the team for barely a moment before he spoke again. "Organized killers have a fascination with law enforcement. They will inject themselves into the investigation. They will even come forward as witnesses to see just how much the police really know. That makes them feel powerful and in control. Which is why I also think..." 

Gideon trailed off for a moment before he dropped the biggest clue the BAU (and, by extension, the task force itself) had toward finding out the identity of their unsub. 

"In fact," he added. "I know that you have already interviewed him."

☆☆☆

Emerson said, "All is riddle, and the key to a riddle...is another riddle."

The task force's list of potential witnesses who had seen something concerning the unsub's (or, as the local agents called him, the "Seattle Strangler"—still a dumb name in Cassie's opinion) case was almost ridiculously extensive. By the time Cassie and her coworkers had studied the list, found one who fit the profile, and set up a sting operation to get him into custody, the afternoon in Seattle had long since turned into evening.

And because of the unsub's paranoia, it wasn't as if they could just show up at the man's house and ask if he had anything to do with the killings; the guy would bolt long before they even got to the door, so instead, one of the local agents, had posited sending in an undercover to lead the suspect out of his own house and into a neutral location.

The agent who suggested luring the suspect (Richard Slessman) in the first place was also the one who ended up going undercover, and Cassie was frankly impressed at how quickly Elle Greenaway (the agent) managed to get Slessman out of his house and into the empty one down the block that the FBI had chosen as their "neutral location."

All in all, Slessman was taken into custody without incident, which Cassie always appreciated. Before long, she was entering Slessman's house with Hotch and Gideon, the unit chief almost instantly jogging up the stairs towards the house's second floor, where Cassie assumed Slessman's bedroom was.

"There's no sign of the girl here," Reid said quickly as the young genius sidled up to walk beside Cassie and Gideon, the other two agents heading towards the kitchen, where Elle was interviewing both an elderly woman and a woman who looked about Cassie's age, holding a baby in her arms. Slessman's only living relatives, probably. "We can arrest him with probable cause," Spencer added. "But we won't be able to hold him,"

"Local agents said that Slessman's been one of their top suspects this entire case," Cassie admitted as Gideon paused a few yards away from the entrance to the kitchen. Agent Greenaway noticed the three of them and handed over her interview of Slessman's family members to another Seattle agent.

"Is that the mother?" Gideon asked, nodding his head towards the elderly woman as Greenaway neared him, but the former undercover agent just shook her head.

"Grandmother," Elle corrected before shrugging one shoulder. "The mother died in a fire when he was thirteen,"

Cassie couldn't stop herself from scoffing as she followed Gideon through the house, the senior agent turning away from the kitchen and into the dining room, where Morgan was flipping through a file on the table.

Sometimes, the unsubs just fell into their profiles.

"Probably not the only fire in his childhood," Gideon murmured, and of course, Reid had another statistic at the ready.

"Before his Son of Sam murders," Reid began as all five agents made their way through the dining room and into the living room of the Slessman house. "David Berkowitz set a multitude of fires,"

"Exactly how much is a multitude?" Morgan asked, and Reid turned back towards him.

"According to his diary, 1400 and..." Reid trailed off, and for a second, Cassie was surprised that the young genius didn't seem to remember the remainder of the fact, but to Agent Quinn's shock, Elle had the answer ready.

"88," she said, and even Reid looked surprised that someone knew something else that he knew.

Gideon seemed oblivious to the minute way Reid had just been admonished because the senior agent just turned towards Elle with an expectant look and got right back to talking about the case, as he so often did.

"Luring him out was your idea?" he asked. "Greenaway?"

"Elle," the younger woman corrected before she continued with a shake of her head. "I don't send a SWAT team into a house with children,"

From where she was standing in the entrance to the living room with Morgan, Cassie poked her head out into the corridor and looked towards the kitchen where Slessman's grandmother, sister, and nephew were still getting interviewed.

The kid couldn't have been more than three and looked unharmed, an aspect Cassie was sure was due to Elle's insistence that the team take Slessman's arrest to a neutral location rather than right at his front door.

"Hotch says your background is in sex offender cases?" Gideon continued, and Cassie recognized the senior agent's attempt at probing for information about an agent he wasn't entirely familiar with. "What can you tell us?"

To her credit, Elle just gave a single nod before she launched into an explanation.

"The last four murders," the female agent began. "Shows he's an anger-excitation rapist. He'll keep a victim for a couple of days and probably records or videotapes them so he can keep reliving the fantasy,"

That information tracked with what the BAU had already uncovered about their unsub, whether or not he actually turned out to be Slessman (even though the sleazebag looked totally good for it), and that just reinforced Cassie's inner belief that Elle Greenaway knew what she was doing.

"Are you okay with Agent Quinn here being in on the interview?" Gideon nodded his head towards Cassie, who just sent Elle a small smile of acknowledgment, which Agent Greenaway returned before she looked at Gideon again.

"I'd like her to lead, actually," she said, and Gideon gave a small nod.

"Fine," the senior agent said before holding up a placating hand to stop whatever Elle had been about to say next. "But, hold off. Slessman's done time, and he knows the process. And all you will get now is a demand for a lawyer,"

With that, Gideon turned away from the three agents, heading back towards the front door, but not before he paused at the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to the top floor.

"Hotch!" the senior agent called out. "Let's check the garage, then show me what you got!"

Then, Cassie, Derek, and Elle were left by themselves, with Morgan turning towards Agent Greenaway with a wide smirk on his face that always made Cassie roll her eyes.

"Next time," her partner began. "Show a little leg,"

Cassie didn't hesitate before she smacked him, though because Morgan had turned away from her to head upstairs to start looking through the spaces Hotch had vacated, Agent Quinn only managed to hit the back of Derek's shoulders instead of his chest where she'd been aiming.

"Don't be gross," she scolded him as Morgan let out a squawk of surprise, but Cassie followed him up the stairs anyway, and a few seconds later, Elle was trailing after the both of them.

"Morgan!" Elle half-called up the stairs to Derek, who paused when he reached the landing, effectively barring Cassie from moving any further up the stairs as the older agent turned towards Elle as the Seattle agent continued. "The only time you're gonna see 'a little leg' from me is when I'm about to kick your ass,"

Morgan was a black belt in several different martial arts, so he definitely knew what he was doing when it came to hand-to-hand combat, but Cassie also had a feeling that Elle would be able to kick her partner's ass if she really tried.

Cassie couldn't help but let out one of the first laughs she'd given during the entirety of their investigation into this case at the mental image, and while Elle smiled at her, Morgan just turned around with another one of those I'm-acting-irritated-but-I'm-really-not-mad-at-you looks he so regularly sent Cassie.

"It's like you enjoy seeing me be tortured," he told the younger woman, but Cassie's grin just grew wider.

"Oh, Chicago," she retorted good-naturedly. "You know I do,"

Morgan scoffed in response, but it was the type of scoff he always did when he was trying not to laugh, so Cassie just smiled again before turning to Elle as the Seattle agent spoke up again, breaking into the two profilers' banter.

"Seriously..." Elle trailed off for a moment as Cassie and Derek both turned towards her. "I want that opening at BAU. Either of you got any advice?"

Cassie knew she wasn't exactly the best person to come to with advice about wanting to join the unit, especially considering Hotch and Gideon were running interviews this time around so that left Morgan, who had interviewed and ended up in the unit.

"Just trust your instincts," Derek told Elle after a second of thought, and even though Elle didn't exactly look as if her worries had been sated, Morgan walked away before Agent Greenaway could say anything else.

With a shrug to Elle, Cassie followed her partner down the second-floor hallway, her mind filling with thoughts and theories about the case again.

Slessman fit several characteristics that Gideon had depicted in the BAU's profile, but the thing that kept bothering Cassie was the defensive wounds that had been found on all of the victims.

The unsub had clipped each victim's nails so the women couldn't seriously hurt him as he attacked them, and even though Cassie had only gotten a few passing glances at Richard Slessman before she'd followed Morgan upstairs, the skinny sleazebag didn't even look as if he had any minor injuries either.

Those doubts were made even clearer as she and Morgan paused in the doorway to what Cassie assumed was Slessman's bedroom, and the twenty-seven-year-old saw first-hand just how Slessman decorated his bedroom too, with decor always being an unconscious decision on a person's part to the inner workings of their personality.

The walls of the room were covered with the same pale green-and-white paisley wallpaper that covered every other room in the house that Cassie had seen, and obviously, that had been Mrs. Slessman's (the grandmother) choice if she'd lived in this house for years and years. It wasn't a wallpaper that Cassie would've ever chosen for herself, but then again, she wasn't eighty years old.

The bed was made with almost military precision, sharp corners, and all that, but the shelves behind his bed and around the room were messy, all stuffed full of books and a metal solar system model on the shelf above his bed. There was even a huge model plane tacked up on Slessman's wall and a stereo almost completely covered in CD cases on a shelf against the wall to Cassie's right.

Overall, the entire bedroom and how it was decorated reminded Cassie of her high school boyfriend's bedroom, which was...gross.

"Something's not right about this," Morgan's voice made Cassie turn and look at him, only for Derek to gesture with one of his hands to the room again. "This is a boy's room. Not a man's,"

Cassie had come to the same conclusion, and she told Morgan as much. However, that also meant that Slessman didn't fit every characteristic of the profile Gideon had presented, and that was very, very bad.

There had been two Seattle Police officers inside the bedroom when Cassie and Derek had walked in, who'd been sitting at a makeshift desk in the corner with Richard Slessman's laptop open in front of them, and as she nibbled on her bottom lip and thought over what exactly they'd gotten wrong, from the corner of her eye Cassie saw one of the local cops hold up a small piece of paper.

"Log-in password," he told his colleague, and Cassie whipped her head around fast enough that she startled Morgan as the other officer started to type in the password Slessman had given them.

"Wait!" she exclaimed, shooting forward to try and stop the two officers, but it was too late.

As soon as the officer finished typing and hit 'enter', the entire screen of Slessman's laptop glitched before it turned black, and all they could see on the screen now were their own reflections.

"It's not turning back on," the officer said, sounding confused, and Cassie took a deep breath to keep herself from completely losing her cool on the poor local officer.

"And it won't," she told him, making both of the local cops turn and look at her with varying degrees of bemusement on their faces, to which Cassie felt bad, and then explained a second later. "Slessman gave you a false password. You're not getting in unless he wants you to get in, and he doesn't want you to get in,"

"Can you get in?" Morgan's voice was quiet as Cassie turned back towards her partner. The two officers stared at each other, realizing what they had accidentally done, and Cassie started nibbling on her bottom lip again.

"I can try," she admitted before straightening her shoulders. "But I left my laptop back in the SUV. Can you get it for me?"

Derek just gave a nod before he turned around and headed back out towards the hallway, bypassing Elle as she reappeared from wherever she had gone after her, Cassie, and Morgan's brief conversation at the top of the stairs, and the Seattle agent gave her a semi-confused look of her own.

"Where's Morgan going?" she asked, and Cassie sighed for a moment before she answered.

"To get my laptop," she said before gesturing to the table where Slessman's computer and the two local officers still sat. "Hopefully, I can break into Slessman's and find out if he documented his crimes and stored them on there or something,"

That's if Slessman was the unsub, of course.

"You think you can?" Elle asked, and Cassie glanced at her again as Agent Greenaway continued. "You're good with computers?"

"I should hope so," she said as she heard Morgan coming back up the stairs, presumably with her laptop bag, and Cassie quickly shooed the two local officers out of the way so she'd be able to work without the cops hovering behind her back. "Computer Science was one of my majors in college,"

Elle looked as if she wanted to ask how many other college majors Cassie'd had, but Derek walked back into the bedroom a second later before Agent Greenaway could ask anything, and he was indeed carrying Cassie's bag. 

The brunette quickly thanked her partner and pulled her computer out from its bag, re-organizing the desk and moving Slessman's computer out of the way so Cassie would be able to fit her own laptop on the table.

As she worked, Reid and Gideon came into the bedroom as well, and Cassie suddenly felt as if she were being viewed under a microscope. The room was beginning to get stuffy with almost all of the profilers in one place.

But, Cassie had to be good at working under a ridiculous amount of pressure in this line of work, so for the next forty-five seconds, she ignored her colleagues, pulling out a cord from her bag to plug into one of the USB ports in Slessman's laptop, and managed to remotely re-access the power function of their suspect's computer.

Cassie could feel the others watching her as she worked, but it didn't take her long at all to break into Slessman's laptop, and the brunette gave a small cheer when she saw the screen of Slessman's laptop blink on again, only to cut herself off almost as soon as she'd started to celebrate when she saw exactly what was on the screen of Slessman's screen.

"Shit," she said quietly, and Morgan quickly made his way over to her, with Elle trailing behind him as Gideon and Reid started to peruse the shelves of books and CDs situated around Slessman's room.

"What is it?" Derek asked her, and Cassie could barely hold in her wince.

"It's a defense program," she told him as Elle started to peer around Morgan's shoulder. "The fake log-in he gave the cops must've activated it, and then it opened when I restarted his computer. Even if Slessman's not our unsub, there is definitely something on here that he doesn't want us to see,"

"What's the number 6 at the bottom of the screen?" Elle asked, nodding towards the computer, and Cassie sighed.

"The number of attempts I have before the program completely wipes Slessman's hard drive and destroys everything on his computer," she admitted, and Elle pursed her lips for a moment before continuing.

"There could be an email or a journal in the computer," the other woman began, and Cassie stared, wondering if Elle realized that she did actually know what she was doing. "Something that tells us where Heather is,"

Cassie had realized as much and knew they were on a time crunch, even if the half-dozen log-in attempts she had before the entirety of Slessman's computer hard drive potentially getting wiped wasn't hanging over her head, but she also didn't respond well to criticism.

She did know what she was doing.

"Can you get in?" Derek asked her as he braced one hand against the back of Cassie's chair, and Cassie glanced up at him.

"I can try," she admitted before turning to Elle. "When's Slessman's birthday?"

Agent Greenaway had been the one who'd initially interviewed Richard Slessman's relatives after the younger man had first been arrested, so it would stand to reason that the sister or grandmother had told the Seattle agent at least some basic characteristics about Slessman's life.

Elle told her the date, and Cassie typed it into the password field. 

"Would Slessman really be dumb enough to use his own birthday as his password?" Morgan asked, but Cassie just shrugged as her finger hovered over the 'enter' key.

She hit the button, hoped, and promptly felt her mood deflate again when the glaring 6 in the bottom corner of the screen turned to a 5.

"No," she said, narrowing her eyes in both thought and blooming frustration for a moment before she turned back to Elle. "Grandma's name?"

That didn't work either, and the 5 was now a 4.

Cassie was about to smack her forehead into the table, but she figured that wouldn't be very professional, so she opted to glare daggers at the laptop screen instead.

She was flexing her fingers, too, running through everything they knew about Slessman in her head to see if there was something she'd missed about what the man's computer password might be.

Cassie didn't want to risk trying a third time right away, so she stayed silent, thoughts running wild. Gideon, on the other hand, did not stay quiet, and his voice made Cassie turn and stare at the senior agent.

"Try again. Fail again," Gideon said. "Fail better."

Cassie blinked. Elle and Morgan stared. Reid just continued reading one of the books he'd taken from Slessman's shelf. The young genius had started reading it about ten seconds ago, and already he was about two-thirds of the way through.

Gideon had always had a habit, as long as Cassie had known him, of blurting out quotes from random scholars that he thought held prevalence in whatever situation called for it, but Cassie was too frustrated with herself right now to appreciate the quote or whoever had originally spoken it.

"Samuel Beckett," Reid hadn't even looked up from his book, but his brief words made Cassie, Morgan, and Elle all turn and look at him.

Morgan must've seen something on his partner's face that screamed she was dangerously close to losing it (or it was the eyebrow twitch, another of Cassie's tells other than biting her lip, only the twitch usually came when she was irritated, rather than just thinking) because Derek just straightened up from where he had still been leaning over Cassie's chair and turned towards Gideon.

"Try not," he said. "Do or do not,"

Gideon's eyes narrowed; obviously, he didn't recognize the quote Morgan had just spouted off, but Cassie let out a brief wheeze, the kind that happened when she was trying not to laugh, and Reid turned back to the team's senior agent with the identity of Morgan's quote-speaker at the ready as well.

"Yoda,"

This time, Gideon didn't say anything else and just turned back to the shelves. Cassie turned back to the laptop, tapping her fingers together and staring at her reflection in the dark background of the Deadbolt Defense login page.

She couldn't have been staring at herself for that long; Cassie wasn't that vain, but Gideon's sudden voice startled her enough that Cassie snapped her head up fast enough she almost broke Derek's nose.

"Cassie, you're coming with me to talk to him," Gideon was already out of the bedroom and in the hallway before Agent Quinn really knew what was going on. Cassie had to scramble out of the chair and push past Morgan and Elle before finally stopping in the doorway of the bedroom.

"Shouldn't I keep trying to find out his real password?" she asked, but Gideon didn't even look over his shoulder at her as he reached the top of the stairs leading back down to the ground floor of the Slessman house.

"Now!" he exclaimed sternly, and Cassie, never really one to ignore a direct order from one of her bosses, looked back to where Morgan was still standing with Elle at the laptop table for only a second before she was speed-walking out into the hallway after Gideon.

She caught up with Gideon about halfway down the stairs, and without even looking at her again, Gideon slapped a large flat paperback into Cassie's hands.

The brunette looked down at it, only to recognize the book as the Journal of Applied Criminal Psychology, a science journal that Cassie herself owned. Among other authors, several articles written by Gideon were included.

Flipping through the pages, Cassie eventually found what she was assuming was the reason Gideon even wanted to talk to Slessman in the first place: a newspaper clipping from the Boston Sentinel of one of the most infamous articles that had come out after Gideon had arrested Adrian Bale, the one with the photo of a shell-shocked Gideon being led out of the ruins of the exploded warehouse after Bale's final device had gone off.

That article was the one most people who knew at least the basics of the bombing in Boston associated with the case, and its presence in Slessman's copy of Applied Criminal Psychology didn't exactly bode well for Cassie's earlier assessment of Slessman being an idiotic sleazebag.

He was still a sleazebag, of course, but if he was a fan of Gideon's work, and Gideon wanted Cassie to be the one to help question him, maybe the younger man was smarter than everyone else thought he was.

The two agents reached the ground floor quickly enough, and Cassie followed Gideon into the Slessman house's kitchen, where Richard had been sitting, handcuffed to the back of a chair, for the last forty-five minutes as the BAU and other local authorities looked through the entirety of the suspect's life to see if anything connected Slessman to Heather or the other murdered women.

There was only one open chair at the table across from Slessman, and Gideon indicated for Cassie to sit, which the brunette did, while the senior agent leaned against the corner of the wall next to her an instant before he tossed the science journal onto the tabletop decorated with what Cassie liked to call "Elderly Woman Chic", just like everything else in this house.

"You read my paper," Gideon stated once Slessman's eyes flicked to the cover of the journal as the book slid to a stop an inch or two away from the edge of the table. "Learn anything?"

Slessman blinked, looking remarkably calm, considering he had a small army of FBI agents and cops sifting through everything he owned, and over the years, Cassie had learned that a calm suspect never boded well.

A few seconds of silence later, Slessman finally spoke.

"Heirens said a man living inside his head was the one who committed the murders," he began, and Cassie could barely stop herself from rolling her eyes. Now, Slessman was quoting William Heirens, the main suspect for the identity of The Lipstick Killer, but before she could say anything to get the interview back on track, Slessman continued with a nod towards Gideon. "You said he was lying. That there'd never been an actual case of multiple personalities,"

"Is that what you're planning on telling your lawyer is your defense?" Cassie asked before tilting her head. "Or do you actually have a scholarly interest in Dissociative Identity Disorder?"

Slessman said nothing, only running his eyes over Cassie in such a way that the twenty-seven-year-old was unfortunately used to before he turned back to look at Gideon.

Ah, misogyny. Cassie never missed it.

She saw Gideon glance at her, but Cassie just shrugged. Gideon picked up Criminal Psychology again and flipped through it until he got to the page where Slessman had hidden the Sentinel article and opened the folded-up paper until it was spread out fully on the table in front of Slessman.

"You a fan of Adrian Bale's work?" Gideon asked, but this time, Slessman just shook his head.

He answered Gideon's question because, of course, he did.

"No," Slessman said, and even from that single word, as Slessman flicked his eyes up to look at Gideon again, a small smile twitching on his lips, Cassie knew he was telling the truth. "I'm a fan of yours. You know," he added a second later, leaning forward in the chair as far as his handcuffed hands allowed. "They never give you the real facts about CPR...that outside of a hospital, it's only effective 7% of the time. Your friend had a 93% certainty of dying, but you kept trying, Agent Gideon. Even after you'd broken his ribs, even after his blood was all over your hands..."

"Where's Heather Woodland, Richard?" Cassie asked the suspect again, ignoring the fact that Slessman was undoubtedly just trying to get under Gideon's skin by reminding him of everything that had happened in Boston.

As if Gideon would ever be able to forget it.

This time, Slessman did look at her for longer than a fifteen-second leering once-over, leaning back in his chair and shifting his weight in such a way that could've been either him trying to get more comfortable in a chair he was handcuffed to or nervousness because he did have something to do Heather's disappearance and the other murders.

"Woodland..." he said finally, trailing off for a moment. He glanced off to the side as if thinking over what he wanted to say next before he continued. "Isn't she the girl who went missing a couple of days ago?"

Cassie blinked again.

Slessman, in pretending his naïveté, had just unknowingly revealed more about Heather's disappearance and his involvement in it than the BAU had known previously. It also reinforced Cassie's belief that he was involved and knew something about where she was and how long the profilers had to find her.

Before Cassie could confront Slessman about it, Gideon jerked his head in acknowledgment to the Seattle police officer who'd been standing watch over Slessman the entire time Cassie and Gideon had been interviewing the young man.

"Get him out of here," the senior agent said firmly, and Cassie could barely stare at her former mentor in shock as he abruptly stood straight from his spot, leaning against the wall, and walked out of the kitchen.

Cassie followed him a moment later, only barely registering the fact that Hotch had been standing just outside the kitchen, likely listening in on their entire conversation. She wasn't sure how much the unit chief had overheard, but hopefully, he had heard enough to know what Slessman had revealed.

When Agent Quinn asked him where Heather was, and Slessman pretended to know nothing about the entire case, he'd said, "Isn't she the girl?" instead of "Wasn't she the girl?". If he'd already killed her and dumped the body, he would've said: "wasn't".

It meant Heather was still alive.

With her interview with Slessman now done and her renewed vigor to investigate, Cassie headed back up the stairs to help Morgan, Reid, and Elle delve more into Slessman's background to see if they could guess the real password to his computer before the four remaining tries ran out.

Gideon all but stormed outside, and Cassie had a feeling that Slessman's comments about Bale had rattled the senior agent more than he'd outwardly revealed, and Hotch followed after him a moment later.

After a little while, though, both Hotch and Gideon came back inside, with possibly the most significant break in the entire case. An answer to why, even though Slessman was obviously involved, his bedroom depicted someone stuck in the throes of childhood, and thus didn't fit every aspect of the profile that Gideon had presented to the agency task force.

Because they didn't have just one unsub...they had two.

☆☆☆

F.B.I Northwest Field Office
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Cassie did not stay at the Slessman house to try to figure out the password for Slessman's computer. Instead, even though Derek had stayed behind, Gideon had asked Cassie to return with him, Elle, and Hotch to the field office to help interview Slessman.

Well...that, or Gideon wanted Cassie to tag along because he wanted Elle to have another female presence, and Cassie was the only other woman with authority who was investigating the case.

"A second unsub?" Elle asked as the four agents quickly made their way down the stairs within the field office, and Gideon gave a shrug.

Hotch and Gideon had somehow figured out that Slessman had a partner, or was at least working with someone who also did some of the killings, because there had been too many inconsistencies in the profile when the BAU had arrested Slessman not to mean something.

"It's not unusual," the senior agent explained to the Seattle agent. "Remember Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris?"

"1979," Cassie spouted off the fact before Elle was able to say anything. "They tricked out a van to rape and murder girls across California,"

The so-called Toolbox Killer team had only killed five young women a year after Cassie had been born, but their crimes had been almost ridiculously brutal, and that wasn't even talking about the other people whose lives Bittaker and Norris had destroyed: the family members of their victims, the one who'd escaped, and the woman who'd been assaulted but not murdered before the two teamed up.

"We're looking for someone who fits a similar relationship?" Hotch asked from where he was walking a few steps behind the other agents, and Gideon let out a scoffing laugh.

"They're not equals," the senior agent explained. "Slessman's smart, but he is a submissive personality,"

"So," Elle added. "Number Two is the dominant?"

"He's probably about as arrogant as Slessman," Cassie posited. "Commanding too, but not as smart as Slessman is,"

"He's like the schoolyard bully recruiting a good underling--" Gideon said. "He'll be protective of Richard. He'll make him feel like he owes him,"

Cassie thought that making someone help you rape and kill half a dozen women was one hell of a favor to call in, and Hotch's voice caught her attention from over her shoulder.

"If Slessman's been up in the attic fantasizing about being an extreme aggressor," the unit chief began, referring to the game of Go that he, Reid, and Gideon had discovered back in the Slessman house. "This guy showed him how to do it,"

"Helped him take the first step and everything," Cassie murmured, though loud enough for her colleagues to hear.

"I think we should interview him," Elle piped up, gesturing with her hands. "Use this as leverage,"

"No, no," Gideon almost instantly cut Agent Greenaway off and stopped in the middle of the corridor in order to confront her, an action that made Cassie need to sidestep closer to Hotch in order to stop from getting run over by another agent. "We need leverage," the senior agent clarified. "A name,"

"From the list of previous suspects?" Cassie asked, but Gideon just shook his head.

"That'll take too long," he said. "There's got to be a faster way,"

"There is," Hotch answered, and Cassie, Gideon, and Elle all turned to stare at him, bemused.

Hotch's idea was to interview the grandmother, who, along with Slessman's sister and nephew, had been brought to the field office, so they were out of Morgan's way at the house.

He also made Cassie do it, so within ten minutes of the unit chief voicing his idea, the twenty-seven-year-old brunette was handing a steaming mug of tea to the elderly woman sitting in one of the armchairs situated around the large sitting area on this particular floor of the field office before she sat down herself in the chair beside her.

"Careful," she said softly as she handed the mug to Mrs. Slessman. "It's still hot. I would've gotten you coffee, but I figured a nice chamomile tea will help you relax,"

"Oh, thank you," Mrs. Slessman took the mug with a small smile, though it was strained, and Cassie had a feeling she'd be feeling the same way if her grandson got arrested for being a serial killer. "I didn't know the FBI had chamomile tea,"

"They don't, not really," Cassie admitted, flexing her hands for a moment. "It's from my own personal stash,"

"Thank you, sweetheart," Mrs. Slessman said again, her smile turning warmer than it'd been a second ago, and Cassie found herself returning it. "That's so kind of you,"

"It's my pleasure," Cassie told her before looking down at her hands as Mrs. Slessman sipped her tea and prepared to lie her ass off. "Mrs. Slessman, I don't think we arrested the right man for these crimes. The real killer could be a friend of Richard's instead. Do you know anyone that we might be able to talk to?"

"Oh, I don't know," Mrs. Slessman said wearily as she lifted her FBI mug of tea. "Richard never had many friends,"

Cassie could tell she was being genuine, but that didn't exactly help her right that second, so she began to press.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "There isn't anyone you can think of who might have hung out with Richard before? Not even if they weren't at the house?"

Mrs. Slessman paused for a moment, and her already wrinkled face clenched together even more as she thought over everything she knew (or, at least, thought she knew) about her grandson before, after a few moments of deep thought, her rheumy eyes brightening.

"Well, there was..." Mrs. Slessman began before taking one more sip of her tea. "There was this one young man. I think his name was Charlie,"

"Do you, by chance," Cassie asked the elderly woman. "Remember Charlie's last name? It could really help us find him and clear Richard's name,"

But, this time, Mrs. Slessman just shook her head.

"No, I'm sorry," she said quietly, and Cassie gave her as reassuring a smile she could muster as Mrs. Slessman set down her mug of tea. "I don't remember; it's been such a long time since Richard's spoken about Charlie,"

"It's okay," Cassie told her. "You did good just remembering his first name. This information could help a lot,"

"Really?" Mrs. Slessman asked, looking a bit nervous, and Cassie gave her another nod.

It would help more if Mrs. Slessman had remembered at least a surname, but Cassie would take what she could get.

As it were, as Mrs. Slessman picked up her mug again and leaned back in her chair, Cassie saw Hotch exit out of the small viewing room on the other side of the sitting area where he, Elle, and Gideon had holed up while Cassie had interviewed Mrs. Slessman, and considering there was a microphone inside the room, Cassie was assuming her colleagues had been listening to the entirety of her interview.

Judging from the look on Agent Hotchner's face, hopefully, the three other agents had discovered something.

Her feeling was proven as Hotch reached the two of them, gesturing with only his head for Cassie to stand. The brunette did so, and Hotch lowered his voice so Mrs. Slessman wouldn't overhear, though given the other woman's age, Cassie was sure that wasn't going to be an issue.

"We're pretty sure 'Charlie'," Hotch began. "Is Charles Linder, Slessman's cellmate from when he was in prison. Both were holed up in the Cascadia Corrections Center, which is less than a mile from the field office. Elle and Gideon are going to talk to him, and I want you to go, too. I can watch over Mrs. Slessman,"

"Okay," Cassie said before she turned back to Mrs. Slessman and crouched down in front of the elderly woman. "Mrs. Slessman?" she asked before gesturing to her unit chief. "This is Agent Hotchner, one of my bosses. We have a new lead, so I have to go, but he'll stay with you and answer any more questions you might have. Is that okay?"

Mrs. Slessman nodded, and Hotch took the seat across from the old woman that Cassie had been sitting in just a moment ago, giving the twenty-seven-year-old a chance to make her way over to where Elle and Gideon were waiting. 

With one more glance towards Hotch and Mrs. Slessman, Cassie headed out with Elle and Gideon to visit the prison where Slessman had been previously incarcerated. Hopefully, they'd be able to find a stronger lead before it was too late to save Heather Woodland.

☆☆☆

Derek Morgan was out of his element. A decade-long career in law enforcement, and the thirty-two-year-old had always been a lot more comfortable kicking down doors and arresting the bad guys than he ever had been when it came to breaking into a bad guy's computer.

Well, okay, that wasn't entirely true. 

He could obviously work a computer and wasn't completely inept when it came to investigating one, but he was significantly less skilled at breaking into laptops and criminals' technology than his partner was, which was why he usually left that part of the job to Cassie whenever he was able to.

As it were, he wasn't able to do that now, considering Agent Quinn had gone with the rest of the BAU back to the field office to interview Richard Slessman and his relatives and to run down any other leads they might discover, so Morgan had been left at the Slessman house by himself.

Reid was due back at the house soon, too, to help Derek look for more clues as to what the password to Slessman's laptop might be, considering Cassie hadn't been able to break in before she left, but for now, Morgan was on his own, and since the number of tries he had to guess the password was down to 3 after some wise-ass local cop tried to input an obviously-wrong password, Morgan was quickly running out of options.

He had also kicked the offending officer out of the house after the cop tried to guess Slessman's password and failed, because what was the point in having him there if he was just going to get in the way?

So, instead, Derek opted to call the team's official tech guru, who had taken over the technological aspects of investigating from Cassie so that the brunette could focus more on the profiling part of her job.

Penelope Garcia, a hacker even better than Cassie who'd bounced around the San Jose and San Francisco area before joining the FBI, had also been on the less-than-legal side of the law when the BAU (at the time consisting of just Cassie, Morgan, Hotch, and Reid, with Spencer having joined just a few weeks before, and Gideon being on special assignment) had found her while working another case in the area. However, her cyber crimes had a morality that prompted Hotch to offer the woman a job rather than send her to prison.

And eighteen months later, here they were.

Morgan's friendship with Garcia was...unconventional, to say the least. The two of them no doubt toed the line of professionalism with constant phone flirting and a rapport that would probably send the Bureau's poor Human Resources department into a whole tizzy, but Derek had never had any inclination at all to further his relationship with Penelope, regardless of how he spoke and interacted with her on the daily.

He valued Garcia's friendship, which was the complete extent of his feelings for her, platonic with a capital 'P'.

But Garcia was good at her job, so with Cassie off at the field office, Morgan called the perky blonde to see if she might have any insight into some of Deadbolt Defense's technological weaknesses.

Once Morgan began to call, it only took Garcia a few seconds to answer her office's phone, and the analyst answered in the same self-confident, joking manner she always did.

"You've reached Penelope Garcia in the FBI's Office of Supreme Genius," she greeted, and Derek couldn't help but smile at the younger woman's antics.

"Hey," he said once Garcia paused to breathe. "It's Morgan. Need you to work me some magic here. I got a program called Deadbolt Defense and a girl with only a couple of hours to live. Cassie couldn't get into it, so what do you know?"

It was silent for a couple more seconds as Garcia thought over her answer before finally responding to Morgan with what was precisely the opposite of what he'd been expecting to hear.

"Well," Garcia began. "Then you've got a problem. Deadbolt's the #1 password crack-resistant software out there. I'm not surprised Cassie wasn't able to get into it. You're going to have to get into this guy's head to get the password,"

Morgan had guessed as much, and getting into Slessman's head had been what he'd been trying to do for the last hour, but it was pretty tricky to do when you were the only profiler in the house, and Reid hadn't arrived back yet.

"I thought I was calling the 'Office of Supreme Genius'?" he asked, fishing for anything that Garcia could give him, but to no such luck.

"Well, gorgeous," the technical analyst retorted good-naturedly. "You've been rerouted to the Office of Too-Friggin'-Bad,"

"Thanks anyway," Morgan said, holding back a wince as he hung up the call, and once Garcia's voice had disappeared from the speaker of his cell phone, Derek turned to look at Slessman's laptop, still sitting almost mockingly on the table beside him.

Get into his head, Garcia had said. Sure, Morgan could do that. It was his whole job, getting into an unsub's head and trying to figure out the motive for the heinous crimes that had been committed, and he did his job well.

So, to "get into Slessman's head", Derek opted to investigate one of the only places in a house where you were almost guaranteed to see the inner workings of someone's brain, regardless of whether they meant it or not...

The medicine cabinet.

There were several pill bottles scattered on the shelves in the cabinet in the bathroom, but only a few were meds prescribed to Slessman, and only one was a drug that piqued Morgan's interest.

Ambien, the brand name for the drug zolpidem, was a commonly prescribed medication as treatment for insomnia, and considering the bottle had only been refilled a month ago and was already halfway empty, it meant that Slessman either was abusing his medication (which was another side effect of the use of the drug anyway) or he really needed the medication.

"My name is Richard Slessman, and I have trouble sleeping," Morgan whispered to himself as he stared down at the pill bottle in his hand.

Then, he made his way out of the bathroom and back into Slessman's bedroom to lay down on the bed covers because if you had trouble sleeping, keeping things close to the bed that would help you sleep was practically a no-brainer.

This action was something Morgan often did, role-playing as a way to retrace the steps of a victim or the unsub themselves, and it helped him understand why someone did the things they did in a way that normal profiling just filled in the vague generalities.

Usually, the agent worked things out with Cassie and/or Gideon, but considering neither of them was present, Morgan was left to act out Slessman's actions all by himself, which Derek was, of course, more than capable of.

"Okay," Morgan whispered as he exhaled and closed his eyes on top of the bed, hands over his stomach as he tried to metaphorically get inside Slessman's head. "What do I do when I'm trying to get to sleep?"

A couple of seconds of silently thinking and rhythmically tapping his fingers was all it took before a thought suddenly shot into Morgan's brain, and he twisted around in the bed, reaching into the headboard's shelf behind his head and grabbing a handful of the CDs Slessman had stacked against the wall.

Music. 

Music was a common method of helping anyone get to sleep, and Derek even knew that Cassie used a CD of ocean waves on a continuous loop to help her sleep, considering the house she'd grown up in had been right on the beach. Ocean waves weren't exactly music, but the sentiment was still there.

Looking over his other shoulder, Morgan grabbed the small portable CD player that he'd seen when the team of profilers had all been in the bedroom earlier, hoping that, by some ridiculous stroke of luck, the CD Slessman listened to most would be in there, and the password would just...appear inside Derek's head. Unfortunately, he wasn't that lucky because it turned out that the CD player was empty, and all of the CD cases Morgan had grabbed off the shelf had their respective discs inside.

So, instead, Morgan pushed himself off the bed and walked over to the chest-high CD tree stand that stood against one other wall of the room, yelling out the doorway as he made his way across the room.

"Guys, a little help!" he called out, and a pair of FBI crime scene techs almost instantly stepped into the room. "We're going through every one of these CDs," he explained once the techs had paused inside the room and gestured to the CD stand. "Scratches, wear and tear. I want to know which CD he plays the most. Let's go,"

The techs took over looking through the CD stand once Morgan had stepped away, and the profiler shuffled through the discs he'd taken off the shelf of Slessman's bed. All of those cases had their discs, and after a brief look, none of them seemed to be scratched enough that Slessman listened to them more than a few times each, nowhere near as often as the disk that would likely have the connection to his computer password.

Hopefully, Morgan thought to himself as he opened up another CD case and glanced at the disk inside, closing it again a moment later when he noticed that the disk was practically brand new and had no wear and tear to speak of at all. Because we're running out of time.

☆☆☆

Winston Churchill said, "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see."

Cassie didn't like prisons. In fact, she downright hated them; they were one of her least favorite places in the world to be for a whole variety of reasons, but she was never one to break the rules, so when Gideon had asked Hotch to tell her to come along with him and Elle to Cascadia (the prison where Slessman and "Charlie" had previously been incarcerated together), Cassie hadn't refused.

It also made her feel even worse because she knew that Gideon knew that she hated prisons, and even worse than that, the senior agent knew the reason why, too.

But Cassie also knew that her personal issues couldn't jeopardize any part of her investigating a case, so even though she was probably quieter than usual as she, Elle, and Gideon questioned the prison warden about Slessman's time at the correctional facility, she was still listening closely to the warden's response.

"Anyone who can tell us more about Slessman?" Gideon was asking the warden as the four of them exited one of the prison's hallways into an indoor yard that was equal parts rec room and exercise yard, though the only thing constituting anything recreational about the room were the half dozen circular metal tables bolted to the floor.

"Tim Vogel was the security guard covering Slessman's block," the warden said before pointing across the room to a muscular blond man standing at the bottom of the cement stairway, looking gruff as he surveyed the crowd of prisoners before him. "That's him over there. I'll get him for you,"

The warden walked around the upper catwalk, around the yard, and towards the stairway where Vogel was standing.  Elle, who'd been on the phone since they'd entered the yard, finally ended her call and walked over to Cassie and Gideon.

"That was Hotch," the Seattle agent began. "Linder's name came up on a police report,"

"That can't be good," Cassie murmured as she turned to face Elle fully. "What happened?"

"He's dead," Elle said bluntly, causing Cassie's eyebrows to fly up her forehead. "Car accident two months ago. Linder is dead,"

"Well," Cassie began once she'd started to process that particular bombshell of information. "That means he can't be our second unsub, can he?"

She'd directed the last question to Gideon, who'd been staring over the railing for several seconds ever since Elle had admitted that the whole reason the three of them had even come to Cascadia in the first place was dead and cold, but the senior agent said nothing.

Before long, though, the warden returned with Timothy Vogel, and Cassie and Elle, considering Gideon was still stone-cold silent beside them, both had to explain to the man that Linder had been dead for months and their trip to the prison had sort of ended up being a fool's errand.

"Well, I'm sorry about that," the warden murmured, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he shrugged, and Cassie could see that the older man was genuine. "But, Vogel," he gestured to the guard standing just past his shoulder, and Cassie turned towards the blond man. "Can show you out and answer any questions any of you might have about when Slessman and Linder were incarcerated here,"

"Thank you for your help," Elle said as the warden began to walk away, and he gave her a nod before he disappeared back down the corridor the three agents had come out of just a couple of minutes before.

Cassie found herself staring at Vogel in the interim, narrowing her eyes as she tilted her neck back slightly to look at him. Vogel had to be at least Morgan's height, maybe even taller, and he had the standard buff build most people would associate with prison guards if they'd seen any prison movie ever, and an itch began to appear in the back of Cassie's brain.

Without a word to any of the federal agents, Vogel turned his back to them and walked across the balcony walkway towards a side stairwell that would take all four of them back down to the ground level; that way, they wouldn't have to worry about going through the boisterous crowd of prisoners. There was nothing Cassie, Elle, and Gideon could do except follow, though this time, Cassie did let Gideon take the lead, slowing her pace to walk beside Agent Greenaway as Gideon sidled closer to Vogel.

"Too bad you guys came here for nothing," Vogel spoke up as the four of them made their way through the corridor, and the guard shuffled for his key ring to open the door that would eventually let the three FBI agents back out into civilization. "I mean, talk about scum," Vogel added. "I can't remember how many times I put Linder in solitary for causing trouble with us,"

A prison guard had to have a lot of keys in a prison like this, one that hadn't exactly gotten with the technological advances of the times quite yet, but Cassie couldn't even see the ring that all of Vogel's keys were connected to, there were so many keys.

She did, however, see the guard's keychain.

"You'd think the inmates would try to stay on our good side, right?" Vogel continued, and Cassie exchanged a glance with Elle.

"Not Linder?" Cassie asked, causing Vogel to glance at her, and in response, the guard just shrugged as he retrieved his key ring again to unlock another door.

"Half of our job is protecting the inmates from each other, Agent," he said, and this time, Gideon spoke up, tilting his head back so he'd be able to look Vogel in the eye.

"You protect them?" he asked, and Vogel, oblivious to the profilers' respective observations, glanced over his shoulder at all three of them before he answered.

"If you're a little white guy?" he said finally, and Cassie blinked as Vogel jerked his head in a derisive nod back toward the main yard. "Especially in a prison like this?"

Slessman classified as a "little white guy", a detail Gideon also seemingly picked up on, because from the corner of her eye, because Cassie refused to take her gaze off of Vogel, she saw Gideon's eyes narrow.

"Linder's 6'4"," the senior agent murmured. "You talking about Slessman?"

Vogel nodded before he turned to unlock the door, and this time, Cassie was glancing between Elle and Gideon, wondering if her colleagues realized the same thing she had.

Linder wasn't their other unsub--obvious now, considering he was dead.

No, instead, the other unsub was Vogel.

"Thanks for your help," Gideon, always remarkably calm under pressure, was so much more at ease than Cassie was right that moment, and it was a quality that Agent Quinn had always admired about the senior agent. 

The brunette put on a good show, too, and didn't release the breath she was holding until the three of them were walking out the prison's front gate and back towards the visitor parking lot where Gideon had parked the car.

"He befriended Richard," Gideon was seething as the three of them made their way back towards the car, and Elle and Cassie had to speed-walk to keep pace with him. "Protected him. Made him feel like he owed him,"

"He fits the profile almost to a T," Cassie said as Gideon finally slowed enough for her and Elle to stand next to him, and she couldn't stop herself from turning towards Gideon. "And did you see his keys?"

All Gideon did was nod, and Cassie sighed again.

Heather Woodland had been looking to buy a Datsun Z when she'd been taken. It was a specific type of car with a very specific logo, and that particular logo was exactly the type of logo Cassie had seen as a cast-iron keychain hanging from Vogel's cramped key ring.

And really, what were the chances of that?

And so, the three agents returned to the car, which was a normal sedan they'd procured from the field office rather than a usual FBI SUV, and waited.

It was likely, Cassie thought to herself, that their brief conversation with Vogel, their investigation into Slessman and Linder, and the fact that Slessman had been arrested in connection to the string of murders had spooked Vogel enough that he'd bolt from the prison and lead them to wherever he was keeping Heather.

Cassie's judgment was proven soon after she, Elle, and Gideon had returned to the car, with Elle driving since she was the local agent out of the three of them, when an orange Datsun Z sped out of the employee parking lot of the prison, just as Gideon was calling Hotch as well to update the unit chief about what they'd found.

"Hotch, I just found your leverage," the senior agent was saying as Elle started the car to follow the Z. "His name is Timothy Vogel,"

☆☆☆

Morgan swore he was about to lose his mind. Reid had long since returned to the Slessman house to help Derek look through all of Richard Slessman's CDs to see if they might be able to find the one he listened to the most to find out what the password to his laptop might be, but so far, no such luck.

Derek had just gotten off the phone with Hotch, as well, who'd updated the agents at the house with what Cassie, Gideon, and Elle had discovered while at the prison Slessman had previously been incarcerated at and while the three of them were currently on Vogel's trail, Morgan felt as if he were this close to gouging out his own eyeballs from sheer frustration.

He and Reid had gone through almost every single CD case in Slessman's possession, and while there were a few discs that had enough wear and tear that they could be the disc to hold the password clue, Morgan wanted to be completely sure he had the right disc because he only had three more chances to guess the password, and getting it wrong on the fourth try meant the entire hard drive would be wiped.

Now, though, Morgan was upstairs in the attic of the Slessman house, if only so he'd be able to get away from the noise of the crime scene techs still poking around and actually get some peace and quiet to think.

As it were, his brain seemed to not be working.

"What could I possibly be looking for?" he murmured to himself, thinking out loud as he paced the length of the attic room, only to pause as Reid appeared at the top of the stairs.

"I've been thinking about the CDs," the team's youngest member began, and Morgan, who'd just plopped down onto one of Slessman's beanbag chairs in front of the small coffee table upon which sat Slessman's laptop. and was currently contemplating his future in law enforcement, just scoffed.

"Oh, Reid, come on," he said. "We tried the CDs. We searched, sifted, and sorted through every one of this guy's head-banging heavy metal collection. We got to find something, or this girl is dead,"

As Morgan began to rant, Reid had just crouched down beside the low table and started to fiddle with something on the side of the computer.

"Think we may have missed the obvious," Reid's voice made Morgan turn towards the younger agent, in time to notice that the specific part of Slessman's laptop that Spencer was tinkering with was the computer's disc drive.

"What are you doing?" Derek asked, just as, with the unfolded paper clip Reid'd been flipping between his fingers ever since he'd arrived in the attic, Spencer poked at the door of the disc drive, and the tray slid out, a faded Metallica CD sitting within. "Reid," Morgan began, shocked almost completely still before getting enough control of himself to take the CD off the tray. "What made you think of this?"

"It was the only empty case," Reid answered simply, handing over the case to Morgan, who quickly skimmed the tracklist that was printed on the back.

"Alright," Morgan began, stepping back into the role-play 'role' he'd been doing earlier when he'd originally tried to get into Slessman's head. "I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to go to sleep at night. What song could possibly speak to me?"

Morgan's question had been halfway rhetorical; he'd really just been thinking out loud again, considering he didn't actually listen to Metallica himself. But, of course, Reid knew the answer, as he always did.

"Enter Sandman," the young genius's idea was so genius Morgan could almost feel his head spin.

Morgan didn't say anything for several seconds as he typed the song title into the password field, and was halfway to not breathing as he waited for the computer to read the guess, and even though the chance that Reid was wrong was practically nil, there was still that inkling in the back of Morgan's head, but the sigh of relief he let out when the password was accepted caused almost the entirety of the adrenaline that had been coursing through his veins since this case had started.

Heather Woodland wasn't home safe yet, but the team was closer to finding her.

And even with Vogel probably currently on his way from the prison to wherever he had stashed Heather, the BAU still had a chance of finding the young woman alive, because as soon as Morgan saw what popped up on the first screen that appeared after he and Reid were allowed into Slessman's computer, all of Derek's adrenaline came rushing back all at once.

Because Heather was still alive.

☆☆☆

Patience had never been one of Cassie's virtues. 

A bit of a dramatic irony, considering her line of work, but Cassie had lasted this long already. Either way, as Elle sped along the road behind Vogel's Datsun Z, Cassie, who sat in the backseat as Elle drove with Gideon in the passenger seat, was continuously bouncing her leg from the sheer amount of nervous energy running through her body.

There was no doubt in the young profiler's mind that her, Gideon, and Elle's conversation with Vogel had rattled the prison guard enough to send him running back to whatever hole he had (hopefully metaphorically) stashed Heather in, but you would think that, if Vogel were speeding back to his hideout as quickly as possible to dispose of his most recent victim, he'd, at the very least, break a traffic law or two.

But, so far, if she was a normal police officer in charge of pulling someone over for a traffic violation, she'd end up driving right by Vogel and moving on, he was driving that studiously.

"There's something wrong," Elle's voice broke the twenty-seven-year-old from her thoughts and Cassie leaned over so she could see between the two front seats of the car, wondering if Agent Greenaway had the same weird feeling she did, a feeling which was proven when Elle continued a moment later. "We gotta pull him over, I can feel it,"

Okay, weird feeling: check. Gideon, though, wasn't going to be swayed that easily, because the senior agent didn't even move from his position in the passenger seat as he responded to Elle.

"You know the word repeated more than any other in your file?" the older man asked, but the question turned out to be rhetorical since he answered his own question before Elle could say anything. "Impatient. You want to stop him; you give me a reason,"

"His behavior," Elle answered instantly, fast enough that Cassie was beginning to understand why Agent Greenaway wanted to make the move to Quantico to join the BAU as their newest agent. "When we left him, he was nervous, unsettled. But, now he's stopping at every stop sign, he's using his blinker at every turn, he's slowing at yellow lights..."

"She's right," Cassie spoke up once Elle had paused, brisk enough that it made Gideon flick his gaze over to her. "Right now, he's not exactly acting as if he's running to kill Heather and dump her body,"

For a few seconds, Gideon said nothing, and Cassie found herself exchanging an almost nervous glance with Elle and beginning to hold her breath as the senior agent gathered his thoughts.

Finally, Gideon gave a single jerk of his head that was about halfway to a nod, and it was as close to a nod from him as either female agent would get.

"Okay," he said, and Cassie let out the breath she was holding as she leaned against the backseat again. "Do it,"

Elle said nothing and instead just pressed her foot down harder on the car's gas pedal, speeding up and flipping down the sun visor so she'd be able to turn on the rental car's flashing alarm lights without completely blinding all three of them who were in the car.

Agent Greenaway turned on the car's siren too, and Cassie's weird feeling about Vogel's driving habits amped up even further when it didn't even take a minute or two before the Datsun Z in front of them was slowing down, pulling over to the side of the dark and deserted rural road with an abruptness that was, quite frankly, strange, given everything Cassie had observed about Timothy Vogel thus far.

Cassie was out of the car and had her gun drawn almost before Elle had pulled the car to a complete stop, but given the circumstances, she was sure that Gideon wouldn't fault her for a safety violation right that second.

Her continuously growing weird feeling persisted as, when Cassie, Elle, and Gideon all made their slowly towards Vogel's car from behind, the driver of the car didn't even move. Obviously the car did have a driver, but they were so still that if Cassie hadn't been looking, she wouldn't have known anyone was inside at all.

"This is the FBI!" Cassie was the first out of the three federal agents to announce their obvious presence to the driver, considering she was also the one out of the three of them closest to the car, even if she was only a few steps in front of Gideon and Elle. "Put your hands outside the window where we can see them!" 

For several seconds after she had spoken, there was still no movement within the car, and so Cassie started to press.

"Now!"

There was still a moment or two of nothing happening, before a pair of shaky-looking arms appeared out of the open car window, and Cassie slowed down her approach, if only so that if Vogel was armed, he wouldn't lunge for a gun and shoot her as soon as she stood next to the drivers' side door.

"With your left hand," she began. "Open the door from the outside. Slowly,"

The driver did so, and as soon as the door was open, Elle jerked forward and grabbed the driver to slam him onto his stomach on the road.

That was also the moment that Cassie realized, under the glare from the borrowed undercover car's headlights, that the driver of Vogel's Datsun Z was not Vogel.

They looked similar, both blond and relatively the same height, but with even a cursory glance, this man obviously wasn't who Cassie, Elle, and Gideon thought they'd been tailing the entire time.

Vogel had duped them.

And that was very, very bad.

"It's not him," Cassie breathed out, not even bothering to disguise her shock at this sudden turn of events, but Gideon was more worried about Vogel's current location than the fact that he wasn't even here.

"Where is he?" the senior agent asked the man who'd been driving Vogel's car. He had to have been another guard at Cascadia, because there was no other way Vogel would've been able to get away. "Where is he?"

"Who?" the man asked, and Cassie composed herself again and shook her head.

"Vogel!" she exclaimed, gesturing back in the direction of the Z. "You're driving his car, so obviously he talked to you at some point. Where is he?"

"I don't know where he is!" the other guard exclaimed. "He came up to me in the garage after out shift ended. He asked if he could borrow my truck,"

"He's dumping the body," Elle stated the obvious, but Gideon and Cassie kept their focus on the guard that Agent Greenaway still had pinned to the ground.

"What's the make of your truck?" Cassie asked, but when the guard didn't answer right away, Gideon repeated the younger agent's question, only much more forcefully.

"What's the make?" he exclaimed, and the guard practically babbled out his answer.

"Dodge!" the man yelled out finally, and Cassie holstered her weapon, running her hand through her hair. "Dodge Dakota!"

There wasn't much else they could do right then with the other prison guard, he had nothing to do with Vogel's crimes other than driving the car away from the prison while Vogel made his escape another way, so they let the prison guard go, though only if he promised to drive Vogel's Z to the field office and turn it over to the Bureau as evidence.

Elle was driving again, and this time, Cassie was sure the Seattle Agent was breaking several traffic laws as the federal agents sped down the road again.

Suddenly, Cassie's cell phone rang, and the brunette dug it out of her jacket pocket only to see that it was Morgan calling.

Knowing that, given the situation and their general occupational characteristics, Derek would only be calling her if it was drastically important, Cassie instantly answered as soon as she read the Caller ID.

She also turned up the volume on her phone so Elle and Gideon would be able to hear as well, rather than Cassie having to repeat everything her partner said for her colleagues like a long game of Telephone.

"Did you find something?" Cassie neglected to actually give Morgan a standard greeting, but they were kind of on a time crunch, so she doubted her partner would mind.

"Heather's alive," Morgan didn't bother with pleasantries either, but his revelation still managed to knock Cassie's breath from her lungs.

It sufficiently startled Gideon and Elle, as well, considering Gideon's head whipped around so fast Cassie worried the senior agent gave himself whiplash, while Elle very briefly put the three of them in serious danger as she took her eyes off the road to stare at the cell phone in Cassie's hand.

"How do you know?" Gideon asked, raising his voice a bit so Morgan would be able to hear him, and it only took a second before Cassie's partner answered.

"Because we're looking at her right now," he said, and Cassie exchanged a glance with Elle, this time through the car's rearview mirror. 

Obviously, that meant that Morgan and Reid had managed to break into Slessman's laptop, and that also meant that Vogel hadn't yet reached wherever it was he had stashed Heather.

But Vogel also had a huge headstart, considering he had sent Cassie, Elle, and Gideon running after the other prison guard driving Vogel's Z, so while Heather might be alive now, she wouldn't be for long.

Since the other prison guard had only been given Vogel's car and not where Vogel was going when he'd asked to borrow the man's Dodge Dakota, the federal agents had no idea where Vogel was.

Cassie ended the call with Morgan as Gideon placed a call to Hotch, who was back at the field office, still trying to flip Slessman, and so far not having much luck. 

The unit chief had revealed to the younger man after Cassie, Elle, and Gideon had first talked to Vogel at the prison that the BAU had identified Vogel as the Seattle Strangler, but with the prison guard in the wind, Slessman was the only one who might know where the suspect's hideout was, so Hotch really, really needed to get it out of him.

"Hotch, he's going to kill her," Apparently, no one was bothering with phone call etiquette tonight since that was the first thing Gideon said to Hotch once the unit chief answered the senior agent's call. "He's heading there now. We need a location," Gideon neglected to turn up the volume on his phone so Cassie and Elle could listen in, so Agent Quinn wasn't able to hear what Hotch said in response to Gideon's demands, but whatever it was, it didn't make Gideon very happy. 

"Find something, Hotch," the senior agent said once Hotchner had finished whatever it was he was saying. "Or that girl is dead,"

☆☆☆

Vogel had put Heather Woodland in a cage.

The feed from Slessman's laptop, transported from whatever camera Vogel had in his hideout, was in black and white, so Morgan wasn't able to see any blaring clues as to where the room might be located, and the feed was instead a slideshow of real-time photos coming in every couple of seconds rather than a continuous video, but he saw the cage, considering that was what took up almost the entirety of the room Heather was trapped in.

The duct tape that all of the rest of Vogel's victims had over their eyes had made a reappearance with Heather, as well, and the young woman was gagged with a rag as well and even chained to the base of the cage.

In a word, it was horrific, and Morgan was sincerely hoping that Vogel would be the one to end up rotting in a cage by the end of all this rather than Heather.

"Morgan," the suddenness of Reid's voice almost made Derek jump, he was so startled, but he didn't, and instead, the former police officer turned towards the younger genius as Spencer walked across the room towards him, still spinning the unfolded paperclip between his fingers. "Can you show me the last twelve images lined up next to each other?"

Morgan glanced at Reid for only a moment, not entirely sure where he was going with this particular train of thought, but nonetheless, Morgan did as he was asked, typing a few keys before the pictures all appeared on the screen, one after the other.

Since the photos were grayscale, Derek couldn't see whatever it was that Reid had noticed to prompt him to ask Morgan to group all the photos together, but he didn't have to wait long before Reid was pointing to one of the pictures on the laptop screen.

"Right there," Reid said, still pointing. "Right there. You see that? The lightbulb hanging from the wire?" he asked, and Morgan squinted as he followed Reid's finger as Spencer moved it to point at another photo.

"Yeah," Morgan answered, still confused. "What about it?"

"It's shifting positions," Reid said, and as he studied the array of photos, Morgan realized that Reid was right, only for Spencer to add something else to his explanation a moment later. "Like it's swaying, like the Earth is tilting..."

"Not the Earth, Doc..." Derek murmured as the answer came to him in a flash. "The ocean,"

The first call Morgan made was to Hotch, since the unit chief was the only one of them currently capable of finding anything pertaining to a specific location of where Heather might be. The team's identification of Timothy Vogel as the dominant killing partner had definitely rattled the submissive partner, but Slessman still hadn't told Hotch where Vogel had been keeping Heather, or where the prison guard was going.

Now though, they at least had a clue.

"She's on a boat?" Hotch asked once Derek had explained what he and Reid had found, and even though the unit chief couldn't see him, Morgan nodded.

"It's a pier or a dock," he answered. "He wouldn't be able to transmit the webcam footage from the middle of the ocean,"

"You're sure about this?" Hotch questioned him, and this time, Morgan sighed.

"It's the best we got, Hotch," he responded. "But, even if we're right, getting the exact location is on you, my friend,"

Cassie, Elle, and Gideon hadn't gotten anything from Vogel's coworker aside from the vehicle he was driving, and even though Morgan and Reid had been the ones to finally get into Slessman's computer and find out the general location of Heather's cage (somewhere on the ocean rather than a warehouse in town), Seattle had almost 60 miles of saltwater shoreline, plus almost 150 for freshwater, and Vogel could have his hideout anywhere, so it would have to be Hotch who finally got through to Slessman and got the specific location of Vogel's foxhole from him.

"What is it you always ask Garcia?" Hotch asked, and Morgan couldn't help but crack a small smile before he answered.

"To work me a little magic,"

☆☆☆

Hotch had come through in a totally major way. 

Cassie supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, it was Hotch, after all, the former prosecutor and now-profiler had broken down criminals and Unsubs far worse than Slessman, and several while Cassie had been with the BAU, but nonetheless, the relief she felt when Hotch had called them and said Slessman had given up the location where Vogel kept his victims before killing them.

As Elle pulled the car into an open space beside a truck that Cassie recognized as a Dodge Dakota, the license plate matching the one the other prison guard had given as the one belonging to the truck he'd borrowed to Vogel, her relief at Hotch discovering the specific location from Slessman quickly started to dissipate.

Because Vogel was already here.

That meant they really had no time to waste, so Cassie followed Gideon silently across a gangplank with Elle bringing up the rear, and the three of them began to investigate the deserted shipyard as best they could.

The shipyard was massive, though, and unfortunately, Slessman hadn't revealed precisely which boat Vogel had kept Heather and the others on, so in a way, Cassie and the others were walking in blind.

Cassie knew they were running out of time to get Heather home alive, especially if Vogel was already here, but she was so tense that, just after clearing a side alcove and finding nothing, she felt her cell phone vibrate in the jacket and jumped, almost kicking the side of a metal barrel.

Luckily, she didn't and thus didn't give up her position, but her heart was in her throat now, and the bad feeling didn't dissipate once Cassie read the Caller ID on her phone and saw that it was Morgan calling again.

"What?" she said as a greeting once she'd answered, bracing her phone between her ear and shoulder as she continued following several meters behind Gideon and keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

"He's inside, Cassie," Derek wasted no time telling his partner what he and Reid had just discovered, and Cassie almost dropped her phone in the ocean. "Angel, Vogel's there,"

"We saw his truck when we pulled in," Cassie said as soon as she regained enough of her composure to start walking again, speeding up a bit so she could follow Gideon more closely as the senior agent darted through a gate with a No Trespassing sign taped to it, while also keeping her voice still hushed. Gideon was moving so fast, though, that he quickly pulled ahead of her as Cassie herself made her way through the gate. "Gideon's running point, he has this handled,"

"No, he doesn't, Cassie," Morgan retorted, and if this had been any other situation, Cassie would've rolled her eyes. "Gideon's medical leave may be over, but you guys need to wait for the backup to get there,"

"If we wait," Cassie shot back, beginning to get irritated. "Vogel will kill Heather and probably dump her body in the ocean. Derek, you know that,"

"And if we had waited in Boston--" Cassie cut her partner off before he could continue, recognizing that Derek was worried, but time was of the essence, so she interrupted him.

"This isn't Boston," she told him, before sighing. "At the Slessman house, you told Elle to trust her instincts. Now, I want you to trust me. Do you?" she asked a second later, once Morgan hadn't responded for a bit. "Trust me?"

"Cassidy, you know I do," he said, and despite everything, Cassie cracked a smile.

"Then trust that Gideon knows what he's doing," she said. "Trust that I know what I'm doing. Please,"

Morgan didn't really have a response to that, and so Cassie hung up, returning her phone to the pocket of her jacket just as she saw Vogel, holding a gun to a struggling (but alive) Heather Woodland's head, appeared at the end of another gangplank a ways away from where Gideon was standing.

Cassie had fallen behind the senior agent as she'd talked to Morgan and now wasn't in Vogel's immediate line of sight, so she crouched down behind a stack of old oil drums so Vogel definitely couldn't see her, but she still had a clear line of sight in order to take the shot if she needed to.

"Stop!" Gideon's voice made Vogel freeze in his tracks, and the sudden appearance of the federal agent as Vogel tried to make his escape didn't make the killer very happy.

"Get back!" Vogel yelled, and from the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Elle crouch down a few feet away. "I'll shoot her,"

"I wouldn't," Gideon responded, instantly taking on the role of the one who had to talk down the murderous serial killer. "If I were you, I'd aim the gun at me,"

Cassie couldn't stop herself from snapping her gaze to Gideon, wondering what exactly had gotten the senior agent to just...offer himself up to Vogel without a second thought.

"You shoot the girl," Gideon continued, keeping his gaze and his gun steady on Vogel. "You got nothing,"

"Get...back," Vogel was practically spitting as he growled his next words at Gideon, but the senior agent didn't move backward or forward from his current position and instead just kept his arms steady and his weapon trained on Vogel.

Cassie, meanwhile, clicked off her safety. She knew that Gideon knew what he was doing, but if things went from bad to the worst-case scenario, she didn't want to be caught off-guard.

"Come on," Gideon continued to taunt Vogel, and Cassie felt the pit of dread in her stomach begin to deepen. "What are you? A lousy shot?" the senior agent asked, and to make Cassie's anxiety spike even further, he actually turned his gun away from Vogel and held his arms out in such a way that there were about six different spots where Vogel could shoot and kill the FBI agent immediately. "Fifty feet away," Gideon added. "You've got a perfect shot. Shoot me,"

"You think I'm stupid?" Vogel spat at him, and even though Cassie couldn't see Gideon's expression from where she was still crouched behind the oil drums, she could hazard an educated guess, and her guess was proven when Gideon spoke next.

"I think you're an absolute moron," the senior agent retorted. "I know all about you, Tim. You're at the gym five times a week, you drive a flashy car, you stink of cologne, and you can't get it up. Not even Viagra's working for you. You know what that tells me, Tim?" Gideon asked, but the question was obviously rhetorical. "That tells me you are hopelessly compensating. It's not just in your head. It is physical. What'd the girls call you in high school? What'd they come up with when you fumbled your way into some girl's pants and she started laughing when she got a good look at just how little you had to offer?"

"Shut up!" Vogel's shout was loud enough that it echoed through what sounded like the entirety of the shipyard, and Heather, from where she was still held captive in the unsub's grip, whimpered even more.

But, Gideon wasn't done.

"Short Stack?" he started spouting off nicknames that, had the situation not been as grossly dire as it was, Cassie probably would've snickered at. "Very Little Vogel? I got it," Gideon added, as if the idea had just instantaneously sprouted in his head. "Tiny Tim!"

Vogel moved so fast, Cassie almost wasn't able to catch it. But she did, and when Vogel pushed Heather away from himself to train his gun on Gideon, Cassie instantly fired off three shots, and all three hit the serial killer in his chest, dropping him to the ground in the milliseconds that constituted his final heartbeat.

Unfortunately, Cassie hadn't been able to stop Vogel from firing one single shot, and the bullet from Vogel had torn across the topside of Gideon's bicep, knocking the senior agent back against the thick rope that acted as a railing for the gangplank where he had confronted Vogel.

"Gideon!" Cassie exclaimed as she and Elle ducked out from behind their respective stacks of oil drums and ran over to the gangplank, with Cassie going to the older federal agent while Elle ran over to where Vogel had fallen, to make sure that the killer was dead and to also check on Heather. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Gideon answered after a moment, and though he was obviously breathing and coherent, Cassie could see blood beginning to...well, bleed through the fabric of the arm of Gideon's jacket. "Elle's checking on Heather?"

"Yeah," Cassie answered, hearing sirens in the distance rapidly growing closer as she turned towards where Elle had helped Heather Woodland stand, the kidnapped young woman sobbing uncontrollably. "She's checking on her. Vogel's dead,"

"Good," Gideon said, heaving a sigh that had Cassie start to worry all over again for her boss's well-being. "That's good."

☆☆☆

By the time the paramedics, local federal agents, and the rest of the BAU got to the shipyard to get everything squared away, the sky had lightened from the darkness of night, and was now a pale dove-gray that, although a mopey color, was one that Cassie was glad to see, because it meant that she could put this particular brutal case behind her.

Heather was going to live, but Cassie was sure that the psychological and physical scars that Vogel and Slessman had no doubt inflicted on her would take several years to fade, if they even did at all.

Right now, though, Cassie was standing with Morgan and Hotch, watching as Gideon first check in on Heather as the young woman was loaded into the ambulance, gauze wrapped around his injured bicep, before the senior agent went to check and make sure everything else was getting appropriately gathered and investigated.

Vogel might be dead, and Slessman might've cut a deal by telling Hotch the location of the shipyard, but Richard was still going to prison, and they needed an airtight case to make that happen.

As Gideon bypassed the three of them on his way around the crime scene, Cassie heard Morgan heave a sigh, before her partner turned towards Hotch.

"So what kind of report do they want on him?" he asked, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from turning to glance at Hotch and see what the unit chief would use as his answer.

She had wondered much the same when she'd seen Hotch and the Brass agent have their conversation at the airstrip back when the team had first been starting their journey to Seattle, but Cassie had never voiced her questions to Hotchner about the entire thing, and was now more than curious what the explanation was.

For several moments, Hotch didn't say anything, and for a minute, Cassie didn't think the former prosecutor would answer at all, but when he saw both Agents Morgan and Quinn staring at him expectantly, the usually-so-unflappable unit chief was swayed.

"I suppose," Hotch sighed. "Whether he's fit to be a field agent. You know," Hotch added after another moment of silence. "Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what 'Gideon' means in Hebrew,"

"Mighty warrior," Reid popped up out what seemed like nowhere with the answer, and Cassie snorted out a laugh as the young genius walked away again, and the brunette glanced at Hotch again.

"It's fitting," she said, before giving Hotch a grin. "What will you tell them?"

Hotch's arms had been crossed across his chest the entirety of their conversation, and they tensed, just as the unit chief turned to Cassie and Derek again.

"What would you two tell them?" he asked, and Cassie glanced at Morgan, deferring to her partner to answer first.

Morgan didn't exactly look as if he was thrilled to be thrown under the bus and forced to answer Hotch's question before Cassie, but he did anyway, sighing as he looked towards where the senior agent in question was conversing and directing some local agents towards Vogel's boat before turning back to Cassie and Hotch.

"Gideon saved her life," Derek said simply. "That's good enough for me."

☆☆☆

Nietzsche once said, "When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you."