Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

F.B.I., Behavioral Analysis Unit
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

Cassie was a woman on a mission.

It was the first Monday after the team's resident young genius had his date with JJ at the Washington Redskins game, and while Agent Quinn would never purposefully classify herself as a gossip—in fact, she'd try and downright avoid it most of the time—she was still curious about what might've happened. But Reid had been very adamant about walking in the other direction every time the twenty-seven-year-old got near him, and by this point, she was getting annoyed.

She wasn't sure if the date hadn't gone well and Reid wasn't willing to discuss it, or if it had gone well, and the team's youngest profiler didn't want to share the nitty-gritty details of his romantic life with the rest of them, which...okay, fair.

Now, though, the brunette had resorted to alternate tactics.

"Why do I have to do this?" Morgan was grumbling as Cassie all but shoved her partner down the hallway and around the corner past Garcia's office, towards the old record room that Reid had disappeared into a few minutes before.

The brunette was definitely aware of how strange the two of them probably looked—her in her pencil skirt and stilettos, while Morgan was in his standard suit and tie—as she pushed the older man down the hallway, but JJ was currently briefing another one of the BAU's profiling teams, so it wasn't like Cassie could ask the liaison about the date.

Not to mention, they were due to start another case as soon as Hotch and Gideon received the forensically studied ransom note, so this might be the last chance she had to find out anything before they all got really busy.

"If I bought lunch, you said you'd owe me a favor," Cassie said as the two of them stopped in front of the door that led to the record room, and Derek turned to look at her with an almost agonized look on his face. Drama Queen. "Besides, you get along with Reid."

"I don't know that surviving one surveillance assignment with the kid classifies as 'getting along', Angel," Morgan retorted. "And when I said I'd owe you a favor, I meant, like, picking you up in the morning or something," he continued, actually digging in his heels to avoid going into the room. "Not giving Reid an interrogation about his love life because you're nosy."

"Don't pretend you're not just as involved in this as I am," Cassie shot back, finally letting up on the way she was pushing on Derek's back. "You're the one I had to convince not to buy last-minute tickets because you wanted to actually follow Reid and JJ to the game. Just because you specialize in obsessional crimes does not mean that you get to be a stalker too, Chicago."

Morgan scoffed a bit as he turned around to put his back to the door and faced the brunette in front of him, who now had her hands on her hips and was getting even more annoyed than she already had been when they'd started this whole endeavor.

"That's irrelevant," he told her, to the point where Cassie's right eye twitched, a sure sign she was getting really irritated, but by now, Derek was having too fun messing with her.

Abruptly, the door he was leaning against moved as someone opened it from the other side, and Morgan actually stumbled as he tried to keep his balance, which in turn made Cassie snicker.

"Can I help you guys?" Reid had been the one to open the door, staring at the other two profilers with a confused look on his face as he hefted the substantial pile of case files he was holding.

Morgan straightened up again and ignored the pinch to the ribcage that Cassie gave him as a way to signal that it was time for the thirty-two-year-old to talk to Reid about his date, even while she looked like the picture of innocence and said nothing.

When neither agent said anything for a couple of seconds, Reid, still with a confused expression and probably wondering why two of his colleagues had essentially been waiting to ambush him, scooted past Cassie's partner and re-entered the hallway, already flipping through the case files he was carrying since he was, you know, actually working.

"How'd it go with JJ at the Redskins game?" Morgan exclaimed eventually as the three of them rounded the corner back towards the bullpen, but Reid just shook his head, not looking at either Derek or Cassie.

"Top secret," the young genius said almost instantaneously, which only prompted Cassie to sigh and toss her head back.

"Oh, but Reid," she retorted, smiling so Spencer would know she wasn't actually trying to tease him. "That's boring!"

Reid stayed silent, though, as the three of them made their way down the hall with Cassie between her partner and Reid, before the younger of the two men sent her an exasperated look over the pile of case files he was carrying. But, in the depths of his exasperation, Agent Quinn was also able to see the minute way that the corner of Reid's mouth was starting to twitch up into the makings of a smile, so he at least found the entire thing a little bit funny.

Cassie was a little bit surprised that Reid hadn't actually mimed zipping his lips in order to keep the full details of what had happened at the football game totally under a metaphorical lock and key, but before she could say anything else about the youngest profiler's previous weekend activities (or lack thereof, maybe...Reid wasn't letting anything slip) a call of Morgan's name made all three of them turn around.

As soon as she saw who was walking up to them from behind, Cassie could barely restrain herself from rolling her eyes.

Agent Rush was good at her job; the twenty-seven-year-old would give the woman that much, but she was also one of the many, many other female agents of both the BAU and other departments in the Bureau that were absolutely infatuated with Derek Morgan.

Cassie didn't see the appeal. Sure, she wasn't blind, she knew that her partner was "objectively attractive", but he was also totally annoying, and how any one of the female sex would be able to spend enough time with him to spend the night together was beyond the scope of her brain.

Derek, though, basked in the praise because he was, after all, a man.

"I put the transcript from the last prison interview on your desk," Rush was saying as she walked between the three agents, brushing close enough to Morgan that Cassie had half a mind to file a sexual harassment claim on her partner's behalf, while she was shoved none too softly closer to Reid, knocking both of them against the wall.

"Sorry," the twenty-seven-year-old told Spencer as she caught a few of the files that had fallen out of the young man's grip when she'd been knocked into him, and after a quick and worried glance at his two colleagues to make sure they were okay, Morgan turned towards the newly arrived agent.

"That interview wasn't classified, Rush," he told her, sounding genuinely confused. "Why didn't you just send it inter-office?"

The other woman just shrugged in response, looking entirely too pleased with herself before she spoke up.

"I didn't want to."

With that, the other agent turned around and walked down the hallway, but Cassie was sure that she had put an extra ounce of sway into her hips as she moved. She almost yelled down the corridor to ask Agent Rush if she had gone through Morgan's desk drawers.

And, as if she wasn't already in a grumbly mood, two more agents, newer to the Bureau than Rush was, walked down the hallway in the opposite direction that Agent Quinn was going with Morgan and Reid, and they stopped and stared as well.

When the three of them were finally relatively alone again, Cassie turned and stared at Morgan, to which the older man avoided her gaze, and in turn, continued to walk down the hallway, almost hastening his pace in an effort to return to the bullpen before Cassie and Reid.

"Don't look at me like that," he said over his shoulder, but Cassie just shook her head.

"I didn't even say anything," she retorted, and this time, the expression shot over Derek's shoulder was a glare, but there was no real intensity behind it, so the brunette knew that he wasn't actually angry with her.

"You were thinking it."

Cassie rolled her eyes as she and Reid followed Morgan towards the glass doors that led into the bullpen, and once the three of them had gone a few steps down the hallway, with Derek still taking the lead ahead of the other two agents, Reid, of all people, spoke next.

"Isn't it tough?" the young genius asked, and Morgan turned to look at him, once more looking genuinely confused.

"Isn't what tough?" he asked, and with his free hand—after a little bit of difficulty shifting the case files into the crook of his elbow—gestured wildly to the entirety of the hallway.

"You're not even doing anything," Reid said, eyes wide. "And these women are practically throwing themselves at you,"

But, as the three of them finally (Cassie thought it had taken forever) made it through the open glass doors into the bullpen, Morgan just laughed, clapping one hand down onto Reid's shoulder.

"Sorry, kid," the former cop said as the trio neared the cluster of desks on the opposite side of the bullpen. "Strictly off-limits in my book. My code of survival says never mess with a woman who carries a gun."

"That's never stopped you before," Cassie piped up as she finally, finally was able to sit down in her desk chair, and the look that Morgan sent her as he leaned against the side of her desk, the brunette could only describe as annoyed.

"How's that, Angel?" he asked her, obviously not actually expecting Cassie to have receipts, but the twenty-seven-year-old was ready anyway.

"There was Sasha, the ATF agent you worked with while you worked there before you joined the BAU," she began, counting off on her fingers. "Fiona, the DEA agent, that girl from Counterterrorism, that detective in Los Angeles you hooked up with while we were working a case there in 2003..." she trailed off, but her account of only some of her partner's previous girlfriends had effectively wiped the smile off his face.

"I can keep going if you want," she added, but Derek held up a hand so quickly she almost laughed.

"No, I think we're good," he said, and past the clouded glass partition that separated their desks, Cassie was able to see the way that Reid was smiling, amused by the entire thing.

She was still wondering what exactly had happened between Spencer and JJ when they'd gone to the Redskins game, but if Reid really didn't want to talk about it, and judging from how uncomfortable he'd seemed ever since he'd realized Cassie and Morgan had followed him to the records room, he really didn't Cassie wasn't going to push him anymore.

The brunette knew, probably better than anyone, that she did not like talking about her personal life outside of the BAU even more than Reid didn't, and she also knew that if Morgan had been hounding her as hard as the two of them had been hounding Reid, she probably would've punched him.

For now, she'd shelve her efforts to get Reid to talk about his love life, but eventually, she would figure out what happened at that football game, because even though she'd sworn otherwise when Morgan had confronted her about it, Cassidy Quinn was nothing if not nosy.

Unfortunately, before the brunette was able to continue teasing her partner about his distinct lack of a steady long-term relationship, Hotch and Elle exited the unit chief's office behind Cassie's desk and both turned their heads towards where the other three profilers were sitting in the main bullpen.

"Reid, Cassie, Morgan," Hotch called out, making the trio turn around. "Document's up on the screen regarding the kidnapping of Trish Davenport,"

Ah, yes, the whole reason that Cassie had wanted Morgan to help her confront Reid about the Redskins game as soon as they'd returned from lunch.

Obviously, the BAU didn't just work on serial killings, considering the Bale copycat bombs in Florida had only ended with two out of the packages' four intended recipients dying, but the team also worked on kidnapping cases, like their current case, especially if the kidnapping victim was high profile enough to warrant getting the FBI involved immediately, the way Trish Davenport was.

Generally, it was imperative that investigations into kidnappings, regardless of the age of the victim, but especially when the victims were children, started the very moment that someone realized that their loved one was gone, because even moreso than when a serial killer was active, when investigating a kidnapping, time was your greatest enemy when hoping to get the person back alive.

Trish Davenport had already been missing since last night, so as she jogged up the steps towards the conference room in front of Morgan and Reid, Cassie knew that the team was already behind schedule. But Trish's father had also received a ransom note from the alleged kidnappers of his daughter, and it had taken the forensics team this long to analyze it for authenticity and other characteristics before handing it over to the BAU.

"Have you read them yet?" Reid asked, and Hotch gave a minuscule nod.

"I got a copy from the document examiner," the unit chief answered, and Cassie raised one eyebrow. 

"What does it say?" she asked, and from behind him, the twenty-seven-year-old saw the way Hotch's shoulders shifted in a sigh.

"That we've got until eight o'clock tonight," he said, and Cassie couldn't stop her mouth from dropping open as she saw Morgan's eyes widen as her partner walked next to her.

If the agents' lunch break had just ended, and the Davenport ransom note set a deadline for 8 P.M., that meant that the BAU had just under nine hours to create an accurate profile of who might've taken the girl and figure out a way to bring her home safe.

As she walked into the conference room, Cassie couldn't help but notice that, out of all of them, the team's unit chief seemed to be the most stressed, and Agent Quinn knew that not everything that was weighing down on Hotch had to do with Trish Davenport's kidnapping.

Haley, the unit chief's wife, who was also just under eight months pregnant with their first child, had been admitted to the hospital about a few days ago and had been put on bed rest by her doctors for the remainder of her pregnancy. There were no serious complications as of yet, as far as Cassie knew. Still, Hotch was even worse about talking about his personal life than she or Reid, so it wouldn't exactly be easy to talk to her boss about it. Hotchner was also notorious for leaving any personal issues he had outside the office the very second he stepped onto Quantico's grounds.

The electronic copies of the ransom note appeared on the TV screens as Hotch pressed the remote, and Cassie studied them for a moment before any of the other profilers said anything. The notes were obviously handwritten, which differed from the more infamous method some kidnappers leaned towards in using the cut-out newspaper letters that were also favored in Hollywood.

Reid was the one who started reading the ransom note's contents out loud first, and though all six of them crowded around the screens, the twenty-four-year-old was leaning close enough that Cassie thought it a wonder he didn't strain his eyes.

" 'You will follow instructions carefully'," Reid read. " 'You will do this to ensure the safety of your daughter. You will wait for the call. You will answer the call at 8 pm. You will write down the instructions and follow them to the letter.' "

The ransom note wasn't long, by any stretch of the imagination, and even though kidnappings weren't one of the most common types of cases that the BAU worked on, Cassie had investigated a few during her time with the unit, but even though only a couple of those cases had even contained ransom notes at all, she noticed that this particular one for the Davenport case was stranger than most.

"That gives us less than nine hours to get to Connecticut," Hotch began, causing Cassie to glance away from the screens towards the unit chief as he continued a moment later. "Work up victimology on Trish Davenport, and prepare her father for the ransom drop."

They were already behind schedule with investigating Trish's kidnapping compared to the standard timeline, but Cassie also knew that even less than twelve hours to work up a concrete enough profile of the person who'd taken her was practically asking for a miracle. Nine hours, less than that, even, was practically inconceivable.

But...it was what they had to work with, so she'd have to deal with it.

"How do we know the letter's real?" Gideon asked, and Hotch pressed another button on the remote, zooming in on one of the photos of the ransom note that had been sent to Trish Davenport's father. 

"The handwriting is a match for Trish's," the unit chief explained. "He dictated it to her, and they found saline on the paper."

The photo that Hotch had zoomed in on stopped in the bottom right corner of the ransom note's page, where the remnants of whatever liquid the saline had come from had left three distinct circular marks in the corner, and if Cassie hadn't been working at this job as long as she had been, she would've been confused as to where the saline had come from.

But she had been working at this job for a while now, and as such, didn't need to think much about what the saline might've come from, because she did know, and at the risk of sounding cliche, the realization made her heart hurt, at the same time that Gideon spoke, having come to the same conclusion that Cassie had.

"Her tears," the senior agent stated, and Cassie heaved a sigh, just as Morgan spoke up from behind her, prompting the brunette to turn and look at her partner as he nodded towards the screen and the digital copy of the ransom note that was still displayed on the screen.

"He never says 'I'," Morgan said, and Cassie returned her gaze to the screen, furrowing her brow as she realized he was right. "He doesn't say 'I will call', he says 'you will answer the call'. He's distancing himself from the kidnapping. If he said 'I', he'd be taking responsibility for it."

There were a few things that were strange about the ransom note aside from that particular detail, Cassie realized as she quickly reread the note to herself, as her colleagues conversed around her. Morgan was right, of course, and Cassie already knew that, but she didn't know why this particular unsub would seemingly not want to take responsibility for his crime, unless he was somehow wracked with remorse, but the twenty-seven-year-old doubted this case would be that easy, because she'd be out of a job if that were the case here.

Cassie knew there had to be more to Trish's disappearance because if her kidnapper was remorseful, why had he not allowed more communication? Why was this ransom note the only form of communication that Trish's father had received since his daughter had disappeared?

As she continued to stare at the screen and reread the ransom note again for the third time, another glaring difference between the Davenport case and other K&R (kidnapping & ransom) cases she'd worked over the years suddenly jumped out at Cassie with such obviousness that it was practically a neon sign in the middle of the roundtable room.

"He doesn't mention calling the authorities either," she piped up once Morgan had paused in his explanation about what he had found in his study of the ransom note, and the other profilers turned to glance at Agent Quinn for a moment before they all turned to look at the note on the screen. "How many cases have you worked—" Cassie directed this question towards Hotch and Gideon. "—where ransom notes haven't specifically mentioned not bringing in the cops?"

"It's a very rare occurrence, if it happens ever," Hotch was the one who answered first as Gideon said nothing, continuing to study the screen, and Cassie waved her hands for emphasis as the unit chief glanced at the BAU's senior agent. "Is he expecting law enforcement to get involved, then?"

For several seconds, Gideon said nothing, and in the back of her mind, Cassie almost, almost thought that the senior agent hadn't even been listening to what Hotch had said, but she knew better than that, because finally, once all of the gathered agents were looking at Gideon with varying degrees of expectancy on their faces, the older profiler finally spoke.

"Well," the senior agent began sternly. "If he's expecting us, let's not disappoint him."

☆☆☆

Euripides said, "When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him."

It wouldn't take long at all to fly from Quantico to New Haven, Connecticut, where Trish Davenport lived, but considering every minute they didn't have a suspect in custody was one more minute less that Trish may have to live, Cassie was antsy from almost the second she sat in her seat on the jet, and judging from the looks that Morgan kept flinging her way as the plane took off, she wasn't exactly being subtle about her nerves.

But it was past 1 in the afternoon now, and the deadline for when the unsub would call with instructions on how Trish's father could deliver the ransom money was getting closer and closer.

Speak of the devil, as Cassie took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down as her leg continued bouncing up and down as if it were motorized, Hotch, from his spot on the other end of the plane, glanced up from the case file he was flipping through to look around at the other profilers.

"Everyone familiar with the father?" the unit chief asked, and to absolutely nobody's surprise, Reid was the one who answered first.

"Evan Davenport, US Attorney, Executive Assistant, Southern District, New York," the twenty-four-year-old spouted off practically instantaneously, and as Morgan chuckled a bit from his seat across from her, Reid's habit of knowing practically everything almost instantly gave Cassie's anxiety a little bit of a reprieve as the twenty-four-year-old continued with his exposé where he was sitting across from Gideon. "Widower, assigned US Marshals three times over the last ten years due to death threats."

Cassie knew her job was dangerous as well, with the people she and the rest of the BAU hunted on a daily basis, but she didn't know how she'd be able to handle someone hovering over her shoulder 24/7 if she needed constant personal security the way Evan Davenport evidently did.

"Is the protective detail still current?" Derek asked, glancing at Hotch, and the unit chief gave a single nod.

"Around the clock," he explained succintly, before turning to his file again. "But Trish declined protection when she turned eighteen,"

"Too bad for the boyfriend," Morgan's next comment, while true, was still a bit callous, so Cassie nudged his shin with her foot anyway to get him to stop.

There hadn't just been Trish who'd been kidnapped the night before, and a bigger reason that the BAU had been called in, aside from the fact that Davenport's occupation as a prominent attorney made him a VIP in the eyes of the FBI. Jordan, Trish's boyfriend, had been driving the two of them home from a party when they'd been ambushed, and the entire altercation had ended with Trish missing and Jordan dead, his life being ended by the unsub when he got shot directly in the face.

Cassie could only hope he'd gone quickly in the end.

"But," Reid piped up, looking a bit confused, and Cassie glanced away from her partner towards the young genius. "Why kill him?"

"He probably needed Jordan out of the way to get to Trish," Cassie said, straightening the papers that made up her case file as she shifted in her seat for a moment. "It's much easier to kidnap someone if you don't have the person who's with them trying to fight you off and making everything more difficult."

Reid tilted his head to the side, seemingly accepting that as an answer, but before he could say anything more, Morgan spoke up again, looking at another piece of paper from the case file.

"It says here she's got a sister," Derek read off, and Cassie leaned around the small table between the two of them to see whatever it was her partner was looking at, and Morgan turned the folder slightly so she could see as Hotch nodded, idly tapping away at one of the Bureau laptops the unit chief had brought onto the plane.

"Cheryl," Hotch revealed the other woman's name, and as she stretched around the table between her and Morgan, Cassie turned to look over her shoulder at the unit chief.

"Are they close?" she asked, sitting down again a moment later. "Cheryl might be able to help us get some insight into who might have wanted to take her sister if they were."

"They should be," Reid's voice from down the plane made Cassie glance at him, just as the twenty-four-year-old twisted around in his seat, holding a photograph of both young women, and what she saw made Cassie's eyebrows fly up her forehead. "They're identical twins."

☆☆☆

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

It was less than two hours before the BAU's jet was touching down at the Tweed New Haven Airport, and once the local field office—coincidentally also located in New Haven—had delivered the profilers federal SUVs that they could use while they were working this case, the team diverged, with Hotch, Gideon, Elle, and Reid heading to the Davenport home to introduce themselves to Trish's father and see what command center had already been set up there, while Cassie and Morgan headed to the scene of Trish's kidnapping and Jordan's murder, where some local agent said Cheryl Davenport also was for...some reason.

The first thing that Cassie noticed when she and her partner arrived at the scene was that this stretch of rural road outside the main city, and in fact near West Rock State Park, was a perfect spot to abduct someone, regardless of it they were with their boyfriend or not.

It was isolated away from main streets, and if it had been dark, the State Park itself wouldn't have been open; the dozens of weeping willow branches arcing above the dirt road also gave the unsub even more of an opportunity to commit his crime without more witnesses. And well, it wasn't like this place had security cameras either that Cassie could go through the footage of.

Cassie also noticed a woman lying in the middle of the road, whom she assumed (based on not at all obvious context clues) was, in fact, Cheryl Davenport. And, judging from the look on his face as he turned the SUV off once they'd reached the edge of the perimeter that the local authorities had set up in the wake of Trish's kidnapping, Morgan was just as confused about what the other Davenport twin was doing as she was.

But, they still had a job to do, and so, with only a glance between them that silently asked what the hell were they getting into? Cassie and Morgan both got out of the car, with their first destination afterward being the two bodyguards, presumably the ones tasked with protecting Cheryl Davenport, who were standing beside a nearby parked sedan, just watching the younger blonde as she continued to lie in the road.

The male bodyguard was white and even taller than Morgan, which meant he absolutely towered over Cassie, while his female partner was Hispanic and maybe a couple of inches shorter than Agent Quinn, even though both women were wearing heels.

"What's she doing?" Morgan asked the male bodyguard as the other man approached the two profilers.

"Lying on the road," he said, which in turn made both Cassie and Derek turn and stare at him.

"Yeah, I can see that," Morgan spoke first, managing to sound remarkably more composed than Cassie would've been if she'd been the one to speak after Cheryl's male bodyguard had stated the obvious so eloquently the way he had, and could barely contain her eyeroll as Derek glanced at the man again. "But why?"

This time, as the male bodyguard just gave a helpless shrug, which in turn made Cassie pray (which she never did otherwise) that a federal agency of any sort didn't employ this guy, his female partner glanced over her shoulder at the BAU agents, seemingly more gracious with the lack of suitable context the profilers from Quantico lacked about Trish's sister.

"She's trying to get a feel for what happened to her sister," the woman explained, looking once at Cassie as the other female agent passed by her, with Agent Quinn not glancing her way, and instead focused on flipping through the case file again to see if there was any information in there about Cheryl that they could use as rapport.

Morgan, meanwhile, looked as if he thought he'd fallen into another dimension.

"By lying on the ground?" he asked, and both bodyguards glanced at him.

Cassie flicked her gaze between Cheryl, the faint tire tracks that had been left by Jordan's car after the unsub had killed him and kidnapped Trish, and the willow branches that were above her head, the trees seemingly trying to whisper their secrets with the wind.

The twenty-seven-year-old wished she spoke "tree".

"The girl spent her teenage years perfecting ways to ditch her other bodyguards," the male bodyguard spoke up, prompting Morgan to glance at him again, as the other woman beside him sighed, leaning against the side of the pair's car and crossing her arms. 

"We're just happy she's in our line of sight," the female bodyguard said, and Morgan raised an eyebrow for a moment before he walked away from the two and joined Cassie, where his partner was standing a few yards away from the rest of them.

Apparently, it wasn't just Trish who hadn't been pleased with the protection detail due to the work of the girls' father.

As it were, though, Cheryl hadn't moved since probably before Cassie and Morgan had arrived, and if he hadn't been working this job as long as he had, Derek probably would've thought the girl dead; she was lying so still.

Morgan glanced at Cassie for a moment as the two of them stopped a few feet away from where Cheryl was lying, and once the brunette had shrugged, the former Chicago cop looked towards the sister of their kidnapping victim.

"Cheryl Davenport?" he asked, if only to make sure that the woman was, actually, Cheryl, but almost before he finished speaking, the blonde lying on the road was actually shushing him, holding one hand up for a moment before she set it back down onto the ground.

Morgan was trying not to feel offended, but Cassie, apparently, found the interaction hilarious, considering the snort Derek heard come from his partner. When he glanced at her, the brunette was very obviously trying to hold in her laughter at his expense.

"Just a minute," Cheryl said a second later, as a soft nudge from Cassie's elbow reminded Morgan that maybe getting pissed off at the sister of the girl they were trying to find after she'd been kidnapped was maybe not the best course of action, and he digressed. "No, I'm not crazy. I'm lying here for a reason."

As they waited for Cheryl to explain whatever it was that she was doing, Morgan glanced once more over his shoulder at the two bodyguards, and the male one shrugged again, as if to say, "See? Told you so."

Eventually, Cheryl did sit up, rather abruptly, in Morgan's humble opinion, and stood up, dusting herself off with one hand as she gestured to the section of road around her with the other.

"He dragged her from the car," the blonde said firmly as she walked over to where Morgan and Cassie were standing, and as he watched the younger woman, Derek saw his partner glance down at the case file from the corner of his eye, as if to corroborate Cheryl's deduction as she pointed at one specific spot a foot or two away from Cassie's shoes. "This is where she fell. Trish is a fighter. She wouldn't have gone quietly, not even with a gun pointed at her,"

And probably not after her boyfriend had just gotten murdered in front of her either, but Morgan didn't say that last part out loud.

"She's right," Cassie's soft voice made Derek turn towards her, as his partner tilted the case file towards him. "Forensics found scratch marks on the car's seat."

"So," he added. "You believe your sister's still alive?"

"I know she's still alive," Cheryl answered Morgan's question almost instantaneously, and Cassie, ever the skeptic, raised an eyebrow.

"Because you're twins?" she asked, and even though Derek saw Cheryl roll her eyes a second later, he also knew that Cassie wasn't really one to believe in so-called 'twin-telepathy' either...at least not without having some way to test it out in a controlled environment.

"No," Cheryl added, seemingly getting annoyed now, and Morgan raised an eyebrow as the blonde in front of the two profilers shook her head adamantly. "Not the 'I can feel my twin's pain' crap. If you stick her with a needle, I don't cry out. But, if something is bothering her, if something is wrong—" she continued. "I can feel it. Even from a thousand miles away at college."

Based on what Cassie had read about Cheryl in the scant details provided by the case file, she'd discovered that the one Davenport twin who wasn't currently missing was also currently attending the University of California-Irvine, and had been halfway through her undergrad when her father had called her home to Connecticut.

"You're studying physics, right?" Cassie asked, momentarily probing to see if all the information she currently had about the Davenport family was correct, because the last thing the team needed was getting the profile of the unsub wrong, just because one particular detail about Trish's life so far was inaccurate.

Cheryl did, in fact, nod to show that the twenty-seven-year-old had her information right, but she didn't exactly look pleased about it either, considering she rolled her eyes again and crossed her arms before speaking again.

"If you're asking why a science student would believe in something non-scientific," she began, sounding a bit grouchy, but Cassie didn't blame her, given the circumstances. "I don't. I just know what I feel,"

"I'm not arguing with you," Cassie told her, giving Cheryl a small smile that she hoped was reassuring. "You're talking to someone who'd blame carbon monoxide poisoning for a spooky occurrence before ever thinking of a ghost."

While Cassie and Cheryl had been talking, Morgan had left the two of them to walk a bit further down the road before finally crouching in front of a small splatter puddle of blood, though whether that was from Trish's kidnapping or droplets from Jordan, Cassie wasn't entirely sure; the file didn't specify that much.

Jordan had been shot in the face, so there would undoubtedly be blood, and a lot of it, but the puddle that Derek was crouching in front of wasn't exactly substantial, and it could've also easily been from a superficial wound that Trish had sustained while the unsub had dragged her from the car.

Honestly, the New Haven forensics team really needed to step up its game. Life-or-death situations quite literally sometimes depended on the specifics of who a particular puddle of blood belonged to.

"My feeling—" Cheryl continued a moment later as Morgan straightened up again from his studying of the blood puddle. "—is that my sister is still alive."

Cassie wasn't that much of an optimist to not notice that Cheryl hadn't said she felt that her sister was okay.

The two profilers continued investigating the scene, though, because whatever they found here could potentially help them and the rest of the team with the creation of their kidnapper's profile, and get even more insight (potentially) into the life of Trish Davenport pre-kidnapping.

Eventually, Morgan left his blood splatter puddle and carefully made his way down into one of the ditches that ran on either side of the rural dirt road that Trish had been snatched from, pawing through the foliage at the bottom of the ditch and getting himself into the thought process of the unsub who had no doubt been waiting for the couple to pass by.

Cheryl, though, obviously wasn't at all familiar with Derek's way of working the crime scene as Cassie was, considering the three of them had only met less than half an hour ago, so after only five minutes of Cassie's partner pacing the length of the ditch, Trish's twin was turning towards Cassie with an expression that was equal parts skeptical and confused.

"What is he doing?" she asked, and Cassie glanced towards the younger woman.

"Role-playing," she answered simply, but Cheryl only became more confused.

"How does that work?" she asked another question, and Cassie tried to think of a good way to explain in layman's terms

what exactly her partner was doing without making it sound like Derek was completely out of his mind, because to someone who wasn't a trained profiler (like Cheryl), she supposed it would seem a bit weird.

"He's..." Cassie trailed off for a moment as she got all of her thoughts in order before finally settling on a particular explanation to give Cheryl that would help the blonde understand as much about the profilers' way of working as she could without proper training. "Trying to think like the kidnapper. How he committed the crime could give us a better understanding of why he committed it, and Derek specializes in getting into bad guys' heads like that,"

"You two have worked together for a long time?" Cheryl asked a lot of questions, which Cassie was beginning to realize, but she was pretty sure this particular question was more about getting to know the two FBI agents better than believing their entire occupation was bogus.

"My entire career in the Bureau," she offered in response, before Cheryl tilted her head again, looking back towards where Morgan was still standing in the ditch.

"Thinking like the monster who took my sister doesn't sound very scientific, does it?" the younger woman continued to question, prompting Cassie to glance at her again.

There it was.

Suddenly, Morgan heaved a sigh, and even though Cassie highly doubted her partner had been listening to her and Cheryl's conversation, he was probably too focused on the unsub's previous behavior to think of anything else right then. Either way, the brunette stayed quiet for a moment as Derek finally spoke.

"Okay," he began, his voice quiet, but still loud enough that Cassie and, by extension, Cheryl, were able to hear him from where they were standing by the hood of the profilers' SUV. "She was rarely without the boyfriend. Well, I know in order to get to her, I've got to take him out. He was collateral damage."

The conclusion was simple enough, Cassie figured, and it was one that the entire team had come to during the flight to Connecticut, but the twenty-seven-year-old also knew that a majority of her partner's roleplay investigations during previous cases usually started with Morgan going through prior discoveries before delving into new territory.

Today, of course, was no different.

Morgan had paused for a moment after he'd finished speaking initially and glanced over his shoulder, back towards the blood spatter puddle he'd been studying earlier, and in Cassie's mind, she was sure that he was sure the blood belonged to Jordan, a remnant of Trish's boyfriend's murder.

"Or was he?" Derek asked, obviously still in the zone and talking to himself. Then, he suddenly held two fingers to the side of his head, as if recreating the way Jordan had been killed. "The shot was to the face, that's personal."

Morgan started to walk across the ditch, periodically moving away from where Cassie and Cheryl were standing, and as he did so, Cheryl started to move away, walking parallel to the profiler on the road while Derek still stayed in the ditch.

She was totally focused on his work now, Cassie noticed, so as Cheryl moved, Agent Quinn watched, leaning against the SUV as she saw the way her partner was able to make even a total profiling skeptic like Cheryl interested in what he was saying, regardless of how "not scientific" the entire art of profiling was in Cheryl's eyes.

"Kill the boyfriend..." Morgan started again, his posture straightening in such a way that Cassie knew he had just realized something else. "Get him out of the way so that I can get her..."

He turned back towards them, suddenly enough that Cassie knew Cheryl hadn't been expecting it, judging from the way her eyes widened a heartbeat before Derek said the final thing he had realized about why the unsub had killed Jordan, not just because he was the biggest physical threat to the unsub at the time when he'd been trying to abduct Trish, but because of what Jordan had meant to Trish herself, versus her potential "relationship", if there even was any, with the kidnapper himself.

"Alone."

☆☆☆

As the afternoon turned quickly into evening, Cassie and Morgan left the scene of Jordan's murder and Trish's kidnapping and finally made their way to the Davenport home with Cheryl and her bodyguards, where Gideon, who had been there since the BAU had arrived in Connecticut, quickly made introductions for everyone who didn't know each other yet.

Cassie thought Davenport was nice enough, and he obviously loved his daughters very much, but the twenty-seven-year-old definitely did not envy the man whatsoever.

With the deadline for the ransom call quickly approaching, the BAU and the local New Haven agents set up the specialized phone that would be used when Davenport needed to speak to the unsub, with Reid explaining to the attorney how it worked compared to a regular old landline and what each of the buttons on the massive black box did.

Morgan, meanwhile, all but dragged Cassie into the house's kitchen, which was the room with the most privacy, even though there still wasn't a lot of it, considering that, aside from the small team of profilers, about a dozen New Haven agents were milling around the house as well.

Cassie, frankly, was feeling a bit cramped, and her mood didn't improve once her partner told her the reason he'd brought her into the kitchen in the first place.

"Hang on," she said once Morgan had paused to take a breath, and she used her free hand (both of them were leaning against the kitchen island as they talked) to cut the older man off. "You're saying Cheryl's crazy because she said she's able to feel her sister's anxiety?"

"I never said she was crazy," Morgan defended himself, before he nodded his head towards Cassie. "And besides, don't you also not believe in that 'shared pain' crap?"

"I never said I didn't believe in it," Cassie retorted, even though she knew Derek was more or less bang-on with his accusation. "I'm just someone who needs to see something to believe in it. And even then, some people don't even believe in my ability to tell when someone is lying."

Cassie didn't exactly publicize her lie-detecting abilities to the masses, and aside from Gideon, there weren't many people outside the team who both knew about it and didn't believe in it. That, though, didn't seem to sway Morgan.

"Well," he continued, waving one hand towards her. "I've seen your superpower in action; I haven't seen Cheryl's."

"Her lying in the middle of the road and knowing that Trish tried to fight off the unsub when neither of us told her wasn't enough for you?" Cassie asked, but Morgan just gave her a deadpan expression.

"Actually," the sudden appearance of Reid made both older profilers jump as the twenty-four-year-old walked into the kitchen with a surprising amount of stealth, considering his height and gangly build. "There could be a physiological basis for it."

Morgan and Cassie stared at him, which in turn made Reid blink.

"Not for Cassie's superpower," the young genius clarified, tilting his head. "Cheryl and Trish's. Reversed asymmetry monozygotic eggs split late, between nine and twelve days. The DNA matches down to the very last stranded code, and there's sporadic documentation of shared physiological pain."

"And you believe it?" Morgan asked, tone absolutely full of disbelief as Cassie looked between the two male profilers with a grin on her face.

"No, I'm just saying it's possible," Reid answered, sounding remarkably smug for someone who could barely shoot a gun as Hotch walked up to them, with the unit chief obviously having wondered where half of his team went. "I don't know everything. Despite the fact that you think that I do."

"I never said that. When have I ever said that?" Morgan retorted almost before Reid had finished speaking. Cassie didn't need to be able to tell automatically when someone was lying to know that her partner was totally and completely lying out of his ass.

"Every day since I met you." Reid offered.

"Today at lunch," Cassie added, remembering her partner's initial reaction when she'd told him what his 'favor' for her buying lunch would entail, which made Morgan glare at her, only for Hotch to go straight for the metaphorical kill.

"Yesterday when he beat you at cards," the unit chief said, momentarily glancing at his watch before he returned his gaze to the profilers. "We've got one minute,"

The three profilers instantly sobered up in order to focus again at the case at hand (literally), but as Hotch led the rest of them back towards the parlor where the table and phone had been set up for Evan Davenport to answer the ransom call from the unsub, and where Gideon and Elle were waiting with the remaining members of the Davenport family, Morgan spoke up again.

"Anybody ever heard of sarcasm?" he asked, obviously now speaking rhetorically, but Cassie sent him a look anyway.

Gideon and Evan Davenport were sitting at the table when the rest of them walked in, while Elle was standing behind the BAU's senior agent, and Cheryl paced in front of the house's fireplace.

A majority of the New Haven agents had dispersed, and for now, the Davenports and BAU team were more or less alone.

Right now, though, Cassie didn't know who was more anxious, Cheryl or her father. Evan hid it well, but a majority of the parents Agent Quinn had met over the years, whenever she'd worked a case involving someone's missing child, regardless of whether or not they were already fully grown (which came out to pretty much all of her cases), she'd gotten good at noticing the signs of a nervous parental figure.

As the clock struck eight, Gideon turned slowly towards Davenport, and Cassie didn't know if the older agent's calm demeanor would help Evan by calming him down, or if it would just make the attorney more agitated, by his thinking that Gideon wasn't taking Trish's kidnapping seriously.

What Cassie did know, though, was that Gideon did care, and even though it may not work, the senior agent was trying to keep Davenport as calm as possible.

"Remember," Gideon began. "Keep your voice even and calm, and agree with everything he says,"

A small clock on the mantle chimed again, and Cassie saw the older Davenport's eyes stare at it as he very clearly struggled to maintain his composure. She wouldn't fault him if he broke, given the circumstances, but it would make their job that much harder, and could even jeopardize Trish's life if he accidentally blew up while on the phone with the unsub.

"He's late," Davenport said quietly as the minute hand on the clock ticked to 8:01, one minute after the time the unsub had designated for the ransom call, but for now, Cassie wasn't too worried, and neither were Gideon or Hotch.

Now, if it were 8:30 and they still hadn't heard from the kidnapper, Cassie knew they had a problem.

"He'll call," the unit chief spoke first, making Davenport's gaze snap to him as Hotch nodded in his direction. "Just try to relax. This is his strategy; he wants you on edge."

Davenport gave Hotch the barest semblance of a nod, but even Cassie could see that he didn't really believe what the unit chief told him. The attorney sighed, and ten seconds later, the phone began to ring, making both Evan and Cheryl jump.

As Davenport shifted in his chair, and Reid, Hotch, and Morgan all grabbed a pair of headphones from the table to better allow them to hear any background noise that may be in the unsub's call, and though Reid was the only one to fully put the headphones over his head, Gideon turned towards Evan again.

"Remember to repeat any important information he gives you to make sure you understand," the senior agent began. "You try to keep him talking to reveal something about Trish or himself."

Gideon reached forward then and firmly pressed the button that would answer the unsub's call. As he did so, Cassie, from where she was standing beside Derek, took a deep breath.

Go time.

"This is Evan Davenport," Davenport said once he (or rather, Gideon) had answered the call, and for a moment, no one spoke on the other end of the line.

Cassie was sure it was another scare tactic, to make Evan even more anxious about the welfare of his daughter than he already was, but just before Cassie thought Davenport would say something else, an unfamiliar voice finally came through.

"Hello, Mr. Davenport."

The first thing that Cassie noticed was, unless the unsub had disguised his voice somehow, their kidnapper and Jordan's murderer was obviously male, which didn't bode well, again, for how much of a chance Trish had of getting out of this okay.

"Are you the man who has my daughter Patricia?" Davenport asked, and even though Cassie heard his voice shake, she still thought he'd done well so far at staying calm the way Gideon and Hotch had told him to.

"I have your daughter," the unsub said firmly, and even though obviously it would've been ridiculously unlikely, at least this way, they knew the right person had called the house.

"Can I ask you—" Davenport went to ask a question, but the unsub cut him off before he could finish.

"You may ask me nothing." Cassie raised her eyebrow, and she exchanged a glance with Morgan beside her as the unsub continued. "This is not an interrogatory. You will listen only to my instructions."

"Okay," Davenport said once the unsub had paused, because what else could he say? Besides, Gideon had told him to agree with everything the unsub said.

"But," the unsub added a second later, making Cassie's eyebrow rise once again. "I will not give them to you,"

Cassie couldn't stop herself from glancing around at her colleagues, and all of them, including both Davenports, seemed about as confused as the twenty-seven-year-old Agent Quinn felt. None of them could say anything, though, without alerting the unsub to their presence, because the line was still open.

"I don't understand..." Evan began, but Trish's kidnapper cut him off almost immediately once more.

"I do not want to talk to you, Mr. Davenport," the unsub admitted, which only made Cassie more confused, but before her brain could entirely melt, the unsub continued. "I want to talk to her. I want to talk to Cheryl."

Almost immediately, Gideon reached over and pushed the Mute button on the phone box, silencing any way the unsub might be able to hear them talk while he was still on the line, and as soon as they were all able to talk freely, Evan whipped his head around to look at the gathered FBI agents.

"What's he doing?" the attorney asked, and Morgan was the one who answered first, leaning down to sit on the edge of the table as he lowered the headphones he had been listening to the call through.

"What most of the offenders we catch try to do," Derek began, causing Evan's eyebrows to furrow before the profiler clarified. "Establish dominance."

"How long can we keep this guy on hold?" Cassie asked, bracing both of her hands on the table as she leaned against it, so she was essentially facing the opposite direction from her partner. "Because there's no way we can let Cheryl talk to him, right?"

"Why not?" Cheryl asked, sounding indignant, and Cassie glanced at the younger blonde, who was standing beside Elle at the fireplace, as Cheryl continued. "I want to help. I'll talk to him,"

"You helping," Cassie continued, trying to get the message across to Cheryl how that was a bad idea, while also keeping her temper in check. "It's just going to give the man who has your sister more power over the situation, and the last thing we need right now is a bad guy on a power trip."

"Cassie's right," Morgan added as Hotch shook his head across the table from the rest of them, and Derek gestured with one hand towards Evan. "Cheryl doesn't have the authority that Davenport holds; he shouldn't want to talk to her."

The only semi-good thing Cassie could think of that might come out of this entire altercation is the fact that the unsub even wanted to talk to Cheryl at all could give the BAU some much-needed insight into more of the kidnapper's personality and the reasoning behind why he had taken Trish in the first place, though the brunette was willing to do that without potentially putting Trish's sister and Davenport's only remaining daughter in harm's way.

"I think she should speak to him," Elle spoke up, and this time, Cassie had to physically bite her tongue to avoid saying something that might get her fired.

"Do I need to repeat myself?" The brunette was suddenly reminded that even though their side of the phone line was muted, and Trish's kidnapper wasn't going to be able to hear any of what they were saying, he was still technically there. "I want to talk to Cheryl. Put her on the phone. Now."

"No." They were still muted, so Cassie knew Gideon was talking to the rest of them when he spoke, but even though she agreed with Gideon, Hotch, and Morgan (Elle was on thin ice), Cassie also didn't know how long they could hold the unsub off without doing something.

"I think she should speak to him," Elle repeated what she had said before, and though Cassie knew the other female agent was at the very least capable of being in the unit, she didn't know how many kidnapping cases the former Seattle agent had worked during her time at Sex Crimes, and doubted she had worked many at all, which explained her ignorance of how doing this was a very, very bad idea. "The more he speaks," Agent Greenaway continued a second later, with Cassie actually having to stand up and away from the table to stop herself from completely losing it. "The more he reveals."

...Cassie hated to admit what a good idea that was.

Morgan seemed to be on the same wavelength, because once Elle had paused, Cassie's partner, though he looked about as apprehensive as Cassie felt, turned to look at the team's senior agent.

"She is right, Gideon," he said quietly, just as Cheryl jerked forward.

"He has my sister!" the blonde exclaimed, and though Gideon turned to glance at her for a moment, when he turned back to look at Davenport, Cassie saw that his resolve hadn't wavered.

"No," he said, just as the unsub spoke through the phone again.

"I'm waiting." 

Cassie knew the unsub was very clearly losing his patience, and she really didn't want to find out what would happen once Trish's kidnapper fully got fed up with Davenport essentially leaving him in the lurch during their phone call, especially when his final request had been to speak with the other Davenport twin.

That realization, it seemed, also got to Gideon, who Cassie saw give the tiniest of sighs, before he reached forward to unmute the call, but not before calling over Agent Greenaway. Cassie didn't know if having Elle impersonate Cheryl was just another one of the senior agent's "field tests", to see how Elle did when faced with an unforeseen situation (like this one).

She didn't know if now was really the best time for a "test" like that, though, and not just because Elle had already been with the BAU for a month.

But, there wasn't time for her to say anything about it, because before Cassie knew it, Elle had walked around to the other side of the table and was standing in between Evan Davenport and Gideon, waiting again for the senior agent to press the mute button again in order to unmute their side of the conversation.

Elle nodded to signal Gideon that she was ready, and once the line was open again, Cassie saw the other female agent take a deep breath before she spoke.

"This is Cheryl," Elle said softly, trying her best to mimic the cadence of Trish's sister's voice, but when the unsub on the other end of the call didn't say anything for a moment, Cassie began to get a sinking feeling in her stomach. "Hello? This is Cheryl."

Cassie didn't know how much time Agent Greenaway had spent with the other Davenport twin in the hours between when Cheryl had returned to her home after meeting Agents Quinn and Morgan at the crime scene, and when the actual call with the kidnapper had begun, and she wasn't sure just how similar Elle's voice was to Cheryl's in terms of being able to convince the unsub.

In the end, though, it obviously hadn't been compelling enough, because moments after Elle had finished speaking, the kidnapper spoke for himself, and he did not sound pleased at the recipients of his call trying to trick him.

"I have Patricia by my side," the unsub began. "I know her voice, therefore I know her sister's. Get off the phone," Cassie saw Elle's face fall, and couldn't help but feel bad for the other profiler, though the kidnapper continued a moment later, catching the twenty-seven-year-old's attention again before she could think too much about how Elle was feeling right that second. "I want Cheryl. I'll give you sixty seconds. If you don't put her on the phone, I will hang up, and you will never hear from me or Patricia again."

Gideon pressed the mute button so fast he almost cut the unsub's final words off, the senior agent standing up from his chair as he directed Elle to sit in the seat he had just vacated, and instead pointed at Cassie.

"Prep her," he ordered.

The brunette instantly turned towards a still-stricken-looking Cheryl, lightly grabbing onto the younger woman's arm and leading her over to the spot where Elle had been standing a minute or two before when she'd been trying to impersonate the other Davenport Twin.

"Fifty seconds..."

"The man who took your sister and killed Jordan is arrogant," Cassie explained to Cheryl as the two of them paused in front of the table again, with the twenty-seven-year-old profiler trying to explain everything Cheryl would have to know in order to get as much information out of the unsub as possible in as little time as possible. "You'll have to let him know that he's the one in control of the situation. Have him guide the conversation—"

"Forty seconds..."

"Make sure to use your sister's name," Cassie continued, ignoring the way the unsub, counting down on the other end of the line, had unintentionally (or purposefully) cut off her previous sentence. "Say, 'my sister Trish', or 'her name's Patricia',"

"Thirty-five seconds..."

Cheryl gave a nervous nod, and Cassie felt a bit bad for her as well, throwing all of these instructions at her all at once, but they were kind of on a time crunch, and the last thing they needed was Cheryl accidentally pissing the unsub off by saying just one word out of line.

"Make sure to talk about your sister," Cassie added a second later, as both remaining Davenports stared at her. "The best way for the unsub to get to know Trish is through what you say about her, Cheryl. Make sure you don't veer off the topic of Trish's well-being. Agree with him," she continued, as Cheryl gave a more confident nod than a moment ago, and the brunette had a feeling the blonde was starting to understand what exactly was being asked of her.

"Twenty-five seconds..."

Evan Davenport rubbed his daughter's shoulder for a moment, comforting her as best he could with the circumstances, and Cassie continued with her instructions, because unfortunately, she wasn't done.

"You'll have to tell this guy that you understand him," she told Cheryl. "And, as crazy as it sounds, try to empathize with him."

It was Cassie's least favorite aspect of hostage negotiation and talking to kidnappers like the BAU's current unsub, because it was also one of the most difficult things to accomplish, and why she had never gone into hostage negotiation in the first place after she'd joined the FBI. The twenty-seven-year-old obviously had empathy; it would be a huge problem if she didn't.

But, she generally reserved her empathic tendencies for the victims and their families versus the monsters who had made them suffer in the first place.

"Twenty seconds..."

"Make sure to let him know that you know that he didn't mean to hurt your sister," Cassie said, before tilting her head slightly. "Or go this far. And that he can fix this. He has one final chance to show that, despite what he's done so far, he is a kind and forgiving person by letting Trish go."

"Ten seconds..."

Even saying all of that out loud made Cassie feel nauseous, and she hoped her sudden queasiness didn't show on her face too much. The other last thing they needed right then was for her inability to hold herself together to scare the Davenports off the ransom call.

Then, Trish really would end up dead.

"If you don't know what to say," the brunette said, exchanging a brief glance with Morgan as she finally reached the end of her instructions for how Cheryl needed to communicate with the kidnapper, reaching forward and squeezing the younger woman's hand in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. "Don't worry too much, I'll let you know."

"Three..." the unsub's voice sounded again, and Cassie didn't think she'd ever felt a minute feel so long and so short at the same time ever before in her life, but here she was, and with one final look at Cheryl to make sure she was ready, Cassie hovered her finger over the mute button. "Two...one..."

Agent Quinn pressed the button again to allow Cheryl to speak to her sister's kidnapper as freely as possible, and for a few seconds, Cheryl shifted in her chair, obviously needing to psych herself up before she said anything, and frankly, Cassie didn't blame her one bit.

"This is Cheryl," the blonde said finally, and for a few more seconds, the man on the other end of the phone call was silent. Cassie knew he hadn't hung up; they all would've heard the distinctive 'click' that signified a dropped call if he had, but he still wasn't speaking for a moment.

Until finally, he did.

"Hello, Cheryl," the unsub had stayed remarkably calm throughout the entirety of this conversation, and it was, quite frankly, so creepy that Cassie had to hold in a shudder every time he spoke. "How are you?"

It was a strange question, given what this phone call was meant to do, and Cheryl seemed to realize that as well, because she glanced at Cassie for a split-second, as if silently asking the older woman what she was supposed to do next, but the brunette gave her as comforting a smile as she could muster, and Cheryl turned back to the phone again.

"I'd be a lot better," Cheryl began, and Cassie had to applaud the younger woman who, despite everything she'd been through so far and who she was talking to, managed to keep her voice at least semi-steady. "If I knew that my sister...that Patricia is okay."

The line was silent for another moment before the kidnapper responded.

"I can tell you have a lot of empathy, Cheryl," he said. "You care about others."

Cassie's eyebrows about flew off her forehead, because what the hell were the chances of that being the word the unsub used to describe Cheryl, when she had just asked the younger woman to do the exact thing when talking to him? The entire sentence started an itch in the back of her mind that Agent Quinn was not a fan of.

"Yes, I do," Cheryl agreed with the unsub, but judging from the expression on her face, she had caught the same weird coincidence of words that Cassie had. "And," she added a second later. "It sounds like you understand."

"You mean that I empathize?" the kidnapper asked, and the fact that he had just repeated the word twice made Cassie's mental itch get even itchier.

"Yes," Cheryl said, and even though the unsub obviously wasn't physically in the room with them, and thus Cassie couldn't see him, she got a feeling that he nodded either way.

"I do," he said after Cheryl had finished speaking. "Very much. I empathize. I empathize with you, Cheryl. I know you want to be with your sister."

As fast as she could with the nearest Sharpie marker, Cassie scribbled down a couple of words on the large legal notepad that sat beside the phone box before showing the top sheet, where she'd written her note, to Cheryl.

YOU WANT TRISH BACK, the notepad read, and Cheryl gave Cassie a minuscule nod to signify that she understood before she spoke to the unsub again.

"Yes," Cheryl agreed again, sounding almost like a cuckoo clock, just from how much she'd been repeating the same word over the last two minutes. "I-I want Trish back."

"Good," the unsub responded, and the way he said it made Cassie want to shudder all over again, because this guy was just creepy. That feeling persisted as the kidnapper continued speaking a second later. "Tell me what you want, Cheryl. I'm very interested. Tell me all about yourself. What's your favorite color?"

This time, instead of Gideon, it was Cassie who kept pressing the mute button over and over again to give the Davenports instructions on how to converse with the unsub further. This time, she did it to tell Cheryl not to veer off-topic.

"Don't answer," Cassie said firmly. "Keep the conversation on your sister,"

She unmuted the call again, and Cheryl glanced at the agent for a half-second before she turned back to the phone box.

"If I tell you," Cheryl began. "Will you let me talk to my sister?"

Well, that wasn't exactly what Cassie would've done in terms of "keeping the topic on Trish", but them getting proof of life for Trish could actually prove to be fruitful in the long run, just so, when Evan Davenport did deliver the ransom money, it wouldn't just be a payday for the unsub without the return of Trish Davenport, if it turned out the kidnapper had already killed her.

The unsub, though, gave a low chuckle once Cheryl had finished speaking, and oh, Cassie hated it when these guys were smug.

"Maybe," he said finally, and the brunette saw Cheryl's eyebrows furrow. "Maybe not,"

It was as if Cheryl had realized that she didn't really have a choice in answering the unsub's question about her favorite color. If she didn't answer, he definitely wouldn't let her talk to Trish (if the other Davenport twin even was still alive), but if she did answer, he may not tell her anyway, just for shits and giggles.

"I like blue," the college student admitted eventually, but Cassie could see that Cheryl was in no way pleased about it, and why would she be? Her father rubbed her shoulder as the two of them waited for the unsub to speak again, and at the very least, Cassie was glad the two of them had each other.

"How ordinary," the kidnapper said after a few more moments of silence, before his questions entered a whole new level of weird. "Do you like chocolate, Cheryl?" Cassie didn't know who was more surprised about that particular question, her or Cheryl, but when the other Davenport twin didn't say anything for a while, the unsub repeated himself, enunciating each word to the point where they were almost their own sentences. "Do. You. Like. Chocolate?"

"Yes," Cheryl answered eventually, and Cassie had a feeling the kidnapper was actually grinning on the other end of the line.

"I do as well," he said, and by now, a muscle was starting to tick in the base of Cheryl's jaw.

"Please," she began, practically begging the kidnapper at this point. "Let me talk to my sister. All I want to do is hear her voice, please."

For several moments, the unsub didn't speak, but even though he wasn't saying anything, it didn't mean that Cassie wasn't able to hear other noises in the background of the call...noises from wherever it was that the unsub had set up his "evil lair".

There was a creak that came through the speakers on the phone box, and Cassie supposed it could be the creak that came from opening a door with unoiled hinges. Her thought was, in fact, proven a second later when a faint female voice came through on the call, and judging from the reactions of the Davenports, the woman the voice belonged to was Trish.

"Ch-Cheryl?" The other Davenport twin sounded almost delirious, but Cassie wasn't sure if that was just because Trish was tired and exhausted (unlikely but not impossible) or if it meant the unsub had been keeping her drugged and more or less compliant since he'd taken her (a much more likely possibility). "Is...that...you?"

"Trish," Cheryl began, letting out a relieved breath as her father clenched his eyes shut beside her, both of them overcome with relief that, at the very least, Trish was breathing. "It's me. I'm here. Are you okay?"

Trish mumbled something else, but her voice was so muffled that Cassie wasn't able to make it out, and either way, she wasn't even sure Trish herself finished what she was trying to say. If she really was as drugged as the twenty-seven-year-old thought she was, there was no way she was thinking clearly.

"Where are you?" Cheryl exclaimed again, her worry for her sister overriding any instructions the BAU had previously given her in the 'staying calm' department. "What do you see?"

"I..." Trish trailed off for another moment, and Cassie noticed Cheryl's hands were practically white-knuckling the table; her fingers were clenched so tightly against the wood as her sister continued. "I see the moon..."

Agent Quinn suddenly tried very, very hard not to let the Davenports see the thoughts that had abruptly appeared in her mind show on her face after Trish had finished speaking again. Once she'd exchanged a glance with her partner, though, Cassie knew that Morgan had come to the same conclusion she had.

And it was not, in any way, a good conclusion.

The sound of the creaking door came through the phone line again, and as Cheryl called out her sister's name one last time, the unsub finally spoke again, and even though he'd already sounded upset earlier after Elle had tried to impersonate the non-kidnapped Davenport Twin, Cassie knew that there was no way they'd be getting another chance to talk to Trish before the ransom drop.

Or ever again, for that matter, if Cassie's thought about what Trish's comment about "seeing the moon" was correct.

"Have five hundred thousand ready," the kidnapper said gruffly, just as Cheryl slammed her hand down on the table, inadvertently cutting him off.

"Let me talk to her!" she exclaimed, but the unsub was barely deterred, not even by the blonde's interruption.

"Five hundred thousand dollars is what I'm owed," he said. "The Davenports will wait by the phone. You will receive a call with precise instructions in exactly fifteen minutes."

Before Cheryl or Evan could say anything else, there was a very distinctive 'click' from the phone as the unsub hung up. As soon as he was gone, Cheryl's face completely crumpled, and she bolted from the table, running into the kitchen with her father at her heels.

Once the Davenports had disappeared into the other area of the house, Cassie pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling another stress headache coming on as Morgan and Reid lowered their headsets, and Gideon shifted from where he'd been standing behind Evan Davenport's seat during the call with Trish's kidnapper. 

"Were you able to trace it?" the senior agent asked, but Reid just shook his head, and Cassie lowered her head again until her forehead was almost pressed against the wood itself.

Fuck.

"No," the twenty-four-year-old said apologetically. "He's probably using a disposable cell phone. They're impossible to trace."

Gideon nodded in understanding for a moment, because it wasn't as if it were Reid's fault they hadn't been able to trace the call if the unsub had called from an untraceable phone in the first place. Cassie didn't think this was like the Graney case, where the unsub actually worked with a phone company, and was instead just an unsub who knew how to cover his tracks.

"She said she could see the moon," Elle piped up, for the first time since the former Seattle agent had failed at tricking the unsub with her impersonation of Cheryl, and Cassie turned from Reid to the other female profiler as Agent Greenaway stared at a random spot on the table, confused.

"She sounded delirious," Gideon added, as Reid tilted his head.

"She was sedated," the young genius corrected the older man, and Gideon shrugged.

"It could've been a light she'd seen," he murmured, sounding as if he were talking half to himself.  Cassie leaned back in her chair, then stretched her neck out for a moment before she spoke, looking at each of her colleagues in turn.

"Maybe he's not an imposing guy," she said, before giving a shrug of her own. "I mean, Cheryl can't be more than what? Five-four? It stands to reason, then, that if Trish is the same height, and the unsub is keeping her drugged..."

She purposefully trailed off without completely finishing her thought, but Morgan had obviously hopped on the same train, because he wagged his finger at her from where he was still halfway sitting on the table at the other end.

"He might not be very strong, either," Derek began, and Cassie nodded to show her partner had hit what she'd been trying to say right on the nose. "He might need to keep Trish weak just so he can assert his dominance over her."

That was an icky, icky thought, and it was a thought that Cassie hated, but it was an important characteristic to this particular unsub, nonetheless, no matter how much it made the brunette squirm.

"Or," Elle added. "He's keeping her quiet,"

That meant that Trish might be being held in a place where it would be easy for someone to hear her if she screamed, and all of the hypotheses they'd posited over the last two minutes were possible; they just needed to be sure. 

If they weren't sure...well, that just made it easier for the unsub to silence Trish Davenport permanently before the BAU could find her.

"Has Davenport told us everything about his staff?" Gideon asked suddenly, and Hotch glanced at the senior agent, keeping his voice hushed since there were still New Haven agents in the house, and the last thing the team needed was the others in the house knowing they were looking into one of them potentially being the kidnapper.

"Uh, yeah," the unit chief said quietly. "We have detailed reports, but we should probably revisit background on household staff, aides, and current docket."

They now had less than fifteen minutes before the unsub would call back with the instructions Davenport needed to deliver the half-million ransom for his daughter's return. But, there was still one detail from those final words of the call that the BAU needed to address.

"Guys," Morgan said after another thirty seconds of the six agents staying there gathered around the table, each lost in their own thoughts. "She wasn't blindfolded..."

It was the first thing Cassie had noticed when Trish had mentioned being able to see the "moon", and even though the unsub might be keeping her drugged, the other Davenport Twin's subconscious might still be able to recall the details of her kidnapper's face if anyone ever asked her about it once she was safe.

In short, that made Trish a liability.

"No," Gideon agreed, hand clenching around the back of his chair. "She wasn't."

"If she's seen his face," Derek continued. "As soon as he gets that money..."

Morgan trailed off again, but he didn't even need to continue, because they all knew what he meant to say anyway. Cassie, though, was the one who finished her partner's sentence, and the twenty-seven-year-old did so by starting to scratch a divot into the Davenport's table.

"He'll kill her."

☆☆☆

With an even shorter timeline now before the unsub was due to call again for how specifically the $500,000 ransom would be paid for Trish's hopefully safe return, Morgan leaned against the wall in Evan Davenport's study with Hotch, Gideon, Reid, and Evan himself, who had returned to the rest of them after having comforted his other daughter as best he could, given the circumstances.

Cassie had gone to find Cheryl once Davenport had returned to their little posse, and Elle was running down other potential leads on the phone with Garcia before the next call came through.

Derek was tired.

He'd known that his partner had realized the same thing he did earlier in the night, that the fact that the unsub hadn't blindfolded Trish when he'd taken her, regardless of how drugged up he was keeping her...did not bode well for how likely the agents now were to get the other Davenport Twin back safely, but Morgan also did not want to be the one who had to tell the Davenports that.

The four profilers were currently looking over the printed out transcripts from the first call with the unsub, to see if there had been something in what had been said that they hadn't managed to catch the first time around, and also to give a closer analysis of what they had heard the first time around.

Davenport, meanwhile, was pacing in the doorway of his study, obviously itching for the agents to find something, and it took all of the self-control Morgan possessed not to physically stop the man in his tracks and tell him they were moving as fast as they could.

"He said owed," Gideon said first, adjusting his reading glasses as he set down one of the transcript sheets onto the table, and from where he was standing beside the senior agent, Reid nodded in agreement, since he had been the one to transcribe the call in its entirety.

"Five hundred thousand dollars," the twenty-four-year-old began, before he looked up at the rest of them. "His demands sounded scripted, like he was reading them to us."

"But," Morgan cut in. "The rest of the phone call wasn't. He was at his most relaxed just talking to Cheryl,"

"What does that mean?" Davenport asked, and Morgan glanced at the attorney, giving a small shrug before he answered the other man.

"Maybe he already knew her," he said finally, and even though Davenport looked as if the agent had just slapped him, it was a possibility.

The road that Trish had been taken from and where Jordan had been murdered was rural and isolated, and even though Davenport was also a prominent public figure and this entire situation could just as easily have been blowback from a case he'd previously worked on, Derek also knew it'd be incumbent on the BAU to not exhaust every possible motive for why Trish had even been taken in the first place.

Not to mention, the fact that the unsub had been insistent on speaking to Cheryl only during the first ransom call, even threatening to end their line of communication after Elle had tried to impersonate her...it was starting to leave a bad taste in Derek's mouth.

"How much time we got?" he asked a couple of seconds later, and though both Reid and Hotch glanced at their watches, the team's resident genius was the one who answered.

"Six minutes."

For a few more seconds, none of them said anything, before finally, Gideon turned towards Davenport.

"How fast can you get the money together?" he asked, and as the attorney glanced at each of the agents in his study, eyes wide and fearful, Morgan knew they had no other option.

When they'd started this case, the BAU had obviously been hoping that they'd be able to get a good enough preliminary profile together about Trish's kidnapper that the ransom would almost end up being obsolete, but after what they had just witnessed with that first ransom call, it was becoming increasingly apparent that they would need to prepare the ransom money just to get more behavioral characteristics understood about their unsub.

In short, this entire case was just a whole-ass mess, and they were no closer to finding Trish Davenport than they'd been when they'd been in Quantico.

Cassie, meanwhile, had tracked the other Davenport Twin down in her home's kitchen, which was where the blonde had originally disappeared to with her father after the first ransom call had ended, and as the clock on the microwave ticked closer and close to the fifteen-minute mark after the end of that first call, Cheryl was obviously spiraling, considering she'd opened a bottle of wine between when her father had rejoined the BAU in his study and when Cassie had found her there.

Before Cheryl could even take a sip, though, Agent Quinn was taking both the open bottle and the full wineglass out of the college student's hands and setting them out of Cheryl's reach on the kitchen counter, since the younger woman was currently standing at the same kitchen island where Cassie and Morgan had talked about her so-called "superpower" earlier in the evening.

Cheryl, though, was not very pleased with her liquid courage getting taken away from her.

"Look," the blonde said once Cassie had turned around again after setting the wine on the counter. "I know I shouldn't drink, but under the circumstances, you think you could let this one slide?"

Cassie stared at her for a moment.

"That first call wasn't the only one this guy is going to make," the brunette said finally. "The next call will be the ransom instructions, and the last thing we need is for you not to be paying attention because you're drunk."

Her words might have been a little harsher than common courtesy recommended, but Cassie didn't care because she knew she was right. Luckily, Cheryl seemed to grasp the severity of the situation even moreso than she had earlier, because even though she sighed again, it was with less of an annoyed undertone than when Cassie had first arrived in the kitchen and taken away the wine.

"Have you..." the blonde trailed off for a moment, and Cassie waited for her to continue, leaning against the kitchen counter opposite the island where Cheryl was still standing. "Have you worked many cases like this one?"

"Every abduction I've worked," Cassie answered, glancing down for a moment as every single kidnapping she'd worked since she'd started at the BAU flashed through her mind all at once. "Has been one too many."

"I don't know how you do it," Cheryl continued, shrugging helplessly as her sobs threatened to escape her throat again. "This job. How do you stomach it?"

It was a question that Agent Quinn had been asked many times ever since she'd first nursed the idea of potentially joining the Bureau, by both her family, childhood friends, and acquaintances alike, once they realized where she worked. Her youngest sister, Nisha, had only been three when Cassie had left for college, and since the oldest Quinn daughter had more or less stayed on the East Coast ever since, their relationship was...strained, for lack of a better word. A big reason for that, Cassie knew, was that she generally used her excuse of having a hectic work schedule for why she'd never visited.

Her parents had actually adopted a little boy, Jacob, about a year ago, and he'd just turned five in August, but Cassie had never met him. Derek had never met her family either, and they'd been working together for three years, with Morgan bringing Cassie with him to Chicago every year when he'd go to celebrate his mom's birthday.

Cassie still talked to her mom and step-father semi-regularly, sending birthday cards and Christmas cards and a gift every year for their anniversary, but once she'd graduated from college and jumped right into joining the Academy, Cassie had only been to see them twice, even when she'd been working at the Honolulu Field Office. 

But...she didn't think the BAU's lack of free time was what Cheryl meant when she'd asked how the twenty-seven-year-old had been able to handle doing this job for so long, and Cassie wasn't about to air out all of her dirty laundry to a woman she'd known for less than twelve hours.

"The people we hunt," she said finally, electing to explain to Cheryl the other reason she'd joined the Bureau, aside from just needing a change of scenery. "Are spineless cowards, and because they don't feel complete, for whatever goddamn reason, their method is deciding to hurt some of the most helpless members of humanity, women and children. There is absolutely nothing," Cassie added a second later. "That I wouldn't do in order to see them get put away."

Cheryl was silent for a couple of seconds after Cassie finished, but the blonde still scoffed, and that was when the brunette profiler realized that she hadn't gotten as through to the other Davenport as she'd thought she had.

"I just wish you could get them before they snatch anyone else," Cheryl muttered, but now, Cassie was determined to make the younger woman understand why exactly the BAU was even here helping her family in the first place.

"Trish is alive," she told her as firmly as possible, without being rude. "You heard your sister's voice on that call, Cheryl, and you've trusted your feelings about her well-being this far already. That's what you need to focus on right now, nothing else."

Cheryl still didn't seem totally convinced, but she was at least a bit more placated than she'd been when she'd first opened the bottle of wine. Unfortunately, there wasn't any more time for her and Cassie to talk, because they had less than a minute now before Trish's kidnapper was due to call back with specific ransom instructions.

This time, the unsub called exactly fifteen minutes after the end of his last call, as opposed to when he'd been intentionally late calling the first time. However, Cassie was worried less about the kidnapper's timing and more about how strange his ransom drop instructions were, as if this entire case hadn't already been strange enough.

"Everything will be done by Cheryl," the unsub explained once Evan Davenport had answered his call, and even though Cassie could see the way that Cheryl and Trish's father was itching to ask his other daughter's kidnapper why, the unsub continued before the attorney could even speak. "Cheryl will gather the money packets. Only she will touch the money. Cheryl will make the drop. If she is wired, if you use a look-a-like, Patricia dies. Cheryl will get in her car. No one is to be in the car with her, no one is to follow her, no air surveillance, no car surveillance of any kind will be tolerated. I will give directions over a cell phone as Cheryl drives. She must make the drop at exactly three a.m. She will follow each instruction to the letter."

Cassie doubted the unsub even realized he was doing it, but she'd noticed the oddity during the first ransom call when he had insisted that Cheryl speak to him, and had gotten so angry after Elle had tried to impersonate her. And now, he had emphasized that Cheryl be the only one, out of either her or her father, who would prepare the cash for the ransom and be the one to deliver it, even though when the ransom note itself had first been delivered, it had been addressed to Evan.

There wasn't much else to the second call after that, except for the kidnapper all but insisting that the ransom drop occur in the middle of the night. It was already getting late, inching closer and closer to nine pm, but Cassie didn't like it one bit that the unsub was waiting even longer (over six hours) for his money to actually be delivered.

It didn't exactly spell out good news for Trish that the unsub was willing to wait that long to get his money.

"We can't let her go alone," Hotch said firmly as soon as Gideon had ended the call with Trish's kidnapper, but Evan Davenport just looked as if the unit chief had slapped him.

"He said if he sees anyone—" the attorney began, his voice steadily getting faster the harder it became to maintain his composure, but Hotch himself just stayed calm, the rock against which the rough waves of Davenport's anxiety for his children's well-being crashed.

"I know," he said, nodding his head. "One car, unmarked. Tinted windows,"

Davenport still looked apprehensive, and Cassie in no way blamed him. Still, there was also no way that any members of the BAU were just going to let Cheryl travel by herself to some random, unknown location in order to meet with the man who'd kidnapped her twin sister and murdered Trish's boyfriend, with absolutely no backup, regardless of what the kidnapper had said over the phone. Cassie was sure that, in the small part of his brain that was still thinking clearly through this entire situation, Davenport agreed with them.

"If he sees one of you," the man sighed heavily, seemingly drooping back into his chair as he glanced between Hotch and Gideon, the two agents with the most "pull" among all of the other profilers and local New Haven agents that were gathered to work Trish's case. "And Trish dies...if my daughter dies..."

Davenport wasn't able to finish his sentence, but he didn't need to, because even though Cassie thought that sending Cheryl alone to the ransom drop was totally stupid, and the BAU never would've let her do it, regardless of what the unsub's instructions had been, they all knew what the risks were with deliberately disobeying the instructions themselves.

And so, they waited.

Hotch pulled rank with the bank and allowed them to make an exception in order for Davenport to pull the half a million needed for the ransom, and even though the bank managed who'd been pulled from bed by the FBI had obviously needed to put the stacks of cash into the box so Hotch and Davenport could return with it to the house, after that, the BAU honored (blegh) the unsub's orders for only having Cheryl touch the money from this point forward.

Cheryl's father had found an old red and black duffel bag he'd used on a camping trip when the girls were young, to transport the cash, rather than the regular cardboard box the bank had given them.

Cassie and Elle supervised Cheryl while she moved the money from the box into the duffel bag, if only so the younger woman would have a hopefully comforting presence around if she broke down. She didn't, though, which frankly, impressed Cassie quite a bit.

Then, they waited. It was only eleven by now, which meant that even though Cheryl would undoubtedly leave her house before the designated three a.m. deadline, they still had over three hours before she'd need to leave.

Cassie had also noticed that her partner had been more than a little bit antsy ever since they'd all heard the instructions in the ransom call, and even though Cassie herself thought the call had been more than a little bit strange, she didn't know when there'd would be a good time to pull Derek aside and ask him what he thought about it before the ransom drop, since he and Hotch would be the team that would be following Cheryl, and they were all so busy trying to figure out what else they might be able to do in order to keep Cheryl safe.

Not to mention, Gideon also drew Cassie in to have the twenty-seven-year-old help him with going over the transcripts from this most recent phone call, so it wasn't as if Cassie was just standing around either.

As she sat down across from the BAU's senior agent and started to flip through the sheets of paper that Reid had printed out, all Cassie was hoping was that, even though the odds were starting to be stacked against them, the ransom drop would go off uninterrupted and they'd be able to get Cheryl and Trish home safe.

Unfortunately, though, nothing like that ever went according to plan.

☆☆☆

By the time three a.m. rolled around, Morgan swore he was about to start bouncing off the walls of the Davenport home, not just from sheer antsiness, but also because he had chugged a coffee twenty minutes before Cheryl left her house with the money, much to the amusement of Cassie, who'd thought it hilarious that Derek hadn't been able to manage waiting five minutes for his coffee to cool just enough to be tolerable, and had instead burnt the entirety of his tongue.

Now, though, half of what was in Morgan's vein he was sure was caffeine, and he and Hotch were getting into an unmarked SUV just as Cheryl brought the duffel bag of ransom money outside as well and got into her yellow VW Bug.

One good thing about the caffeine, Morgan supposed, was that now his awareness would be super heightened, and if anything happened while Cheryl was doing the ransom drop, he'd be ready for it instantaneously.

As he looked out the passenger side window of the SUV into the driver's side window of Cheryl's car, Morgan saw her put her cell phone to her ear, and assumed that meant the unsub had just called her with instructions for the next steps of the ransom drop.

Hotch waited about thirty seconds after Cheryl had pulled out of her driveway before he unstuck the SUV from 'park' and followed her, and once the two of them were a good way away from the Davenport home, Morgan took out his own cell phone to call Cassie, who'd be helping Reid track Cheryl's car from the house. Or, rather, Reid was helping her track Cheryl's car, but Derek didn't really think specifics mattered much in this instance.

"It shouldn't be too hard to track Cheryl's car," Cassie said over the phone as Hotch focused more on keeping Cheryl, in the very least, in their line of sight, because even though it was nighttime, there wasn't too much traffic, making their SUV even more obvious. "It was remarkably easy to get the GPS information."

Cassie was never really one to flaunt her own skills, unless someone specifically thought she wasn't able to do something, and right now, Morgan hated to crush her good mood, especially given how annoyed she'd been getting while working this case already.

"I'm sure the first thing this guy's going to do is have her switch cars," Derek said quietly as Hotch followed Cheryl around the next corner. "Where are we headed?"

It was silent for a couple of seconds as Cassie looked through the GPS locator for Cheryl's car, but when she did speak again, it began with a muffled curse, and Morgan was sure he'd hit the nail right on the head.

"It's the parking lot of a car rental place," the younger agent said finally, and Derek could hear how annoyed his partner was. "Dammit,"

Cassie hung up soon after that, and Hotch and Morgan continued to follow Cheryl towards the car lot. Along the way, the team's unit chief managed to find a different route that would get the two profilers to the lot before Cheryl, so he'd taken it, allowing Hotch and Morgan to find a good vantage point to park the SUV along the far edge of the parking lot and watch as Cheryl finally pulled her Bug in off the street.

They were also near the same Tweed New Haven airport that the BAU had landed at almost over twelve hours ago, and while there was no real indication that the unsub would actually make Cheryl get on a plane, the airport itself, while small, would still have been a good spot for the ransom drop itself, if Trish's kidnapper hadn't been making her switch vehicles.

An airplane took off above them as the two agents waited for whatever Cheryl's next move might be, but as he saw the younger blonde woman pull into an empty parking space about halfway across the lot from where he was currently sitting with Hotch, Morgan grabbed onto one of the SUV's grab handles and tsked.

"You want to know my guess?" he asked, semi-rhetorically, but when Hotch glanced at him, the former cop continued, flicking his gaze to the dozen rows of empty cars that took up the lot. "One of these cars has a set of keys already in the ignition...with a disposable cell phone sitting right in it,"

It had been pure luck that Evan Davenport had remembered that he'd had the GPS installed inside Cheryl's car at all, but even though the cars for the rental company no doubt had GPS as well, in order for the company itself to track its inventory, the unsub undoubtedly would've disabled or erased the history, and if Cheryl was also given a disposable phone for the next phase of the ransom drop, there would be no way for them to follow the other Davenport Twin then.

"So she switches cars and phones?" Hotch asked, and Morgan nodded in confirmation.

Derek glanced at his watch a couple of seconds later, before sighing and leaning back against his seat.

"Five minutes," he said quietly, and after three minutes of the two of them not saying anything, and instead waiting for Cheryl to do something, Morgan spoke up again. "He's probably going to have her drive around for over an hour just to make sure no one's following her."

"And then the ransom drop," Hotch posited, and Morgan nodded again. Frankly, he was impressed they had actually managed to tail Cheryl the entire way from the house to this lot without getting totally made.

This entire case was just a mess, and Morgan knew that, even though she wasn't in the car with him, Cassie felt the exact same way. The entire second phone call had obviously bothered her more than the twenty-seven-year-old would ever say, but Derek hadn't had a single chance to actually talk to his partner since the end of that call, since all of them had been so busy with getting the money together for the ransom drop itself.

Something about how bothered he was must've shown on Morgan's face, or maybe he sighed louder than he intended or something, but the next thing Derek knew, Hotch was staring at him, actually looking semi-worried.

"What is it?" the unit chief asked, sounding almost hurried in the way he spoke. "What's the matter?"

"Hotch," Morgan said a second later, gesturing with one hand towards the rental lot. "Something's not right about this. What if he was watching us? Or listening to us?"

"Local office did a bug sweep..." Hotch reminded him, but Morgan just shook his head.

"Come on," he retorted, struggling to keep his voice even. "You heard that ransom call. It was way too simple."

"Alright," Hotch continued, this time slower, and Morgan knew he was beginning to see what Morgan had already started trying to figure out. "You're the unsub. What would you have done differently?"

"Well, first," Derek began, counting off his fingers. "I would've said don't involve the police or the media. $500,000? No consecutive serial numbers on the bills, no marked bills, no new bills. No tracking devices in the money bag, no explosive dyes in the money bag, no tracking devices in the car—"

"Why didn't he say any of this?" Hotch asked, cutting Morgan off before he could continue listing off the many, many things the unsub probably should have used during his instructions for the ransom drop in order to make sure he actually got away with his crime, but, for some reason, hadn't.

Derek just shook his head, though, in response to the unit chief's question, because honestly, he had no idea.

Obviously, a majority of the cases the BAU worked on fell on the other side of the line concerning the weird and macabre, and even some of the kidnapping cases Morgan had worked back when he'd been a police officer hadn't ended up being solved because the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping had just been too convoluted to be solved, but this case, the Davenport case, blew all those past cases out of the water.

Derek didn't think he had ever worked a kidnapping case—as a cop, ATF agent, or profiler—where the ransom instructions were this simple. Either the man who'd kidnapped Trish Davenport and killed Jordan was a total novice at his so-called "craft", or...

Or...

Morgan suddenly sat up, ramrod straight, in his seat as he realized what it was their entire team had missed when analyzing both previous transcripts for the ransom calls, and as he whipped around to stare at Hotch, the expression on the unit chief's face silently told Derek that his boss had just realized the exact same thing he had.

"Hotch," he began. "This was never about the money,"

"It's not a ransom drop..." Hotch trailed off, just as Morgan hurried to open his door and get to Cheryl, who was currently walking down the lane of the parking lot closest to the two agents, trying to find the car the unsub had doubt indicated for her to take in order to complete the ransom and get her sister back.

If only it were a ransom drop.

"It's a second kidnapping!" Morgan exclaimed as he finally managed to get out of the SUV, uncaring as he slammed the door to the car, because at least this way, Cheryl would also be alerted to the two agents' presence.

As they ran towards the younger woman, though, the sudden appearance of Morgan and Hotch obviously startled Cheryl, since that had not been a part of the plan, but the plan was out the window now, since, as Cheryl dropped to the ground once Hotch had told her to, another car just a few vehicles down from where the college student had been mere moments before peeled out of the parking lot with the screech of his tires grinding against the asphalt and the stench of burnt rubber from the tires themselves.

Morgan and Hotch each fired off a shot from their guns, since there wasn't a chance of hitting Cheryl now, but by the time they were able to, the unsub was already speeding out of the parking lot and onto the street, whipping a hard right and disappearing before the profilers were even able to get back to the car.

Derek knew that he and Hotch had managed to keep Cheryl safe, even though it was by the skin of their teeth, but the unsub had also gotten away again.

And they still didn't know where Trish Davenport was being held.

☆☆☆

On their way back to the Davenport home (obviously with Cheryl), Hotch called Gideon and informed the rest of the BAU team what had happened, and when they did eventually get back to the house, Evan Davenport was the first one to meet them at the door.

Before he could say anything, though, Morgan held up his hand to placate the obviously worried attorney.

"Cheryl's alright," he said simply, before stepping aside so Evan could go to his daughter, who had walked in with Hotch.

The first thing Cassie noticed when her partner walked into the living room of the Davenport house, where the rest of them had been waiting restlessly for the two other profilers to return with Cheryl ever since Hotch had called to report what had happened, was that Derek looked tired.

Not just the physical exhaustion that came from it being almost four in the morning and the sixteenth hour of them all working this case, with nary a break to show for it, but obviously, given what he'd just went through with Hotch trying to keep Cheryl safe once again, Morgan was no doubt emotionally drained now as well, and frankly, Cassie didn't blame him.

She knew she'd be feeling the exact same way, perhaps even worse, if their roles had been reversed.

"You okay?" she whispered as Morgan came to stand beside her, leaning against the mantle of the fireplace.

He shrugged, arms crossed, and though that was probably an answer in and of itself, Cassie knew he'd need to talk. Before either of them could say anything, though, the phone rang again, and the unsub's timing was nothing if not dreadfully impeccable.

Neither Davenport looked as if they wanted to speak to Trish's kidnapper anymore. Still, they had to if they had any hope of potentially discovering where the man might be holding Trish, so even though both Evan and Cheryl looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else. Even Hotch looked as if he were getting fed up with the unsub's antics, but Gideon pushed the button again to answer the call anyway.

"That was fun, wasn't it?" the unsub asked, and Cassie could barely control the scoff that threatened to escape. "A little running around? Getting our pulses racing?" the kidnapper started to breathe harder the more he spoke, and Cassie didn't know if he was even upset about the fact that he hadn't been able to grab Cheryl the way he'd taken her sister; he was too excited about the sheer adrenaline rush to care whether or not he had failed. "Are you there, Cheryl?" he asked once nobody had spoken for a minute or two, but before Cheryl could say anything, Morgan held up his hand again to stop the blonde from speaking. "Are you there? Tell me you didn't feel a slight tingle. A-a thrill up your spine. Huh?"

This guy wasn't just weird for getting the adrenaline rush from Morgan and Hotch foiling his plan to kidnap Cheryl, Cassie realized, he might actually be the scientific definition of crazy. 

"But those clever and cunning FBI agents deduced my little plan just in time," the unsub continued, sounding equal parts gleeful and disparaging. "They figured it out. If they hadn't, I would've had you both. The whole set...a matching pair..."

Cassie straightened up a bit as the kidnapper trailed off for a moment, sounding almost wistful, which was even more strange and frankly? Very creepy. The way he was talking, even if the girls hadn't known him personally before Trish had been taken, he still might've thought that the girls knew him, even if either or both twins had looked at him for more than a few seconds in passing.

God, she hated stalkers.

"Why are you doing this?" Cheryl's voice actually startled Cassie, and as the younger woman spoke, the twenty-seven-year-old snapped her head up to stare at Cheryl, just as Morgan waved his hand to dissuade her from speaking any further.

Unfortunately, Cheryl's simple question had already set off the unsub.

"Because you asked me to, Cheryl," he said, voice almost unnervingly calm, as if he were explaining his thought process to a disobedient child, and also unintentionally proving Cassie's theory about the twins unintentionally catching their stalker's attention, however long ago this whole thing had started. "You asked me with your glances. The way you talk, those little gestures..."

Cheryl went to open her mouth again, but before she could say anything, Morgan quickly hit the phone box's 'mute' button.

"What are you doing?" the remaining Davenport twin asked, but Derek just stared at her, unflinching.

"Do not," he told her. "Answer this man."

"You asked for this!" the unsub continued, obviously unknowing to the fact that he would no longer be able to hear Cheryl speak if she did say anything, and his words also made Cassie's heart jump into her throat. "You asked for it, Cheryl."

Before Cassie, or any of the other agents, could stop her, Cheryl had slapped Morgan's hand away from where it had been covering the 'mute' button and purposefully unmuting the call, her worry for her sister and irritation with this whole situation outweighing any advice the BAU might give her about why this was a bad idea.

"What do you want?" Cheryl exclaimed, almost yelling, but her heightened emotion only angered the unsub even more.

"What do I want?" he retorted. "You. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but I promise you, we will be together!"

The distinctive 'click' from the phone line signified that the unsub had hung up once more, and even though Cassie hadn't wanted Cheryl to be as emotionally shaken as she obviously seemed to be now, this short call had indeed given the BAU valuable information about how their unsub thought, and why, exactly, he seemed to be so obsessed with the Davenport twins.

Cheryl, obviously, wouldn't be allowed to talk to the kidnapper again if he ever called back, and even though the agreement within the BAU about that particular detail was more or less unanimous, they all let Gideon talk to the Davenports about that particular course of action. Reid helped him with the scientific explanation surrounding de Clérambault's Syndrome that the unsub suffered from, also known as erotomania, a delusional disorder that made Trish's kidnapper believe that both Cheryl and Trish had "asked" to be kidnapped by silently sending signals to the unsub by just interacting with him in innocuous day-to-day situations.

The unsub had mentioned in his call that Cheryl "asked him with her glances", and Cassie knew that if either twin had even, well, glanced at him for any reason, even just as a passerby, that singular interaction might've been what had started the unsub on this disastrous journey.

Cheryl and Trish hadn't known they were doing anything, but the chance that the unsub was someone the twins, or even Davenport himself, actually knew, had just rocketed up several percentages.

They still needed to find the stressor for the kidnapping itself, though, the singular event that made the unsub realize that now was the best chance he had to take the girls for himself. While they were talking to the Davenports again, Gideon and Reid were told by Cheryl that Trish and her boyfriend, Jordan, were actually getting engaged, and their impending nuptials had no doubt spooked the unsub just enough to take action.

Obviously, none of this were Cheryl, Trish, or Jordan's fault, but it did explain how things had ended up playing out.

Now, though, the six BAU agents were standing in various spots in the Davenports' kitchen, talking over everything they knew about this case so far and what their next move could be. Cassie leaned beside her partner with their backs against the stove, while Hotch stood at the kitchen island, Gideon near a side counter, systematically peeling an orange, with Elle and Reid near the door.

"Obsessional Crime," Hotch said quietly, keeping his voice hushed so neither Davenport would overhear, nodding his head towards Derek. "Your specialty, your lead, Morgan."

"I think we should recheck everyone on Davenport's staff against the profile of a stalker," the former cop said after a few seconds of thought, and Cassie couldn't help but glance at him.

"You really think one of them is the unsub?" she asked, and Morgan turned to glance at her himself, giving a small shrug.

"Working closely with Davenport would—" he began. "—give them the most access to the girls. Erotomanics don't usually spend a lot of time with the targets of their 'affection', but even having the girls in orbit around Davenport would be enough for this guy to get obsessed."

"Aren't stalking behaviors pretty diverse?" Elle asked, and this time, Morgan turned towards her.

"There's overlap," he explained to the team's newest profiler, before listing off specific characteristics. "Narcissistic, inflated sense of self-worth, history of bad relationships..."

"What do we know so far?" Hotch asked, as Elle nodded to herself, seemingly accepting that explanation. This time, though, Morgan sighed, shifting for a moment before he crossed his arms.

"He's probably white," Cassie's partner said after a moment or two to actually think over everything the team knew about this particular unsub. "Obviously male. Sophisticated speech pattern."

"Sophisticated," Gideon agreed as he walked over to the rest of them with the orange slices in one palm. "Yet bizarre. He rarely uses contractions. It's not you're, it's you are."

"He's obviously also pretentious," Cassie added, making the other profiler turn their attention to her. "Contrary to what he makes himself sound like, this guy isn't as smart as he thinks he is, and he knows people know it too, but he doesn't want them to know."

"Cassie's right," Derek agreed with him, glancing back to Hotch. "Whatever position of authority or level of success this guy has...he had to struggle for it,"

"We also have to face the possibility at this point..." Hotch continued, lowering his voice even more, and Cassie was abruptly reminded of what she very clearly had not been letting herself think about, ever since the BAU's unit chief and Morgan had returned from Cheryl's failed ransom drop.

Cassie had no desire to talk about it, but Elle held no such qualms.

"That Trish..." the former Seattle agent began. "May already be dead,"

It was possible, maybe even likely (though Cassie was definitely hoping that wasn't the case) that after he had failed to kidnap Cheryl as well at the rental car lot due to the efforts of Hotch and Morgan, the unsub had gotten so angry at his failure, regardless of what adrenaline rush he might've gotten from the situation, and returned to his lair to kill Trish Davenport, angry that he'd only gotten one twin, not the "matching pair" he was so dead(bad joke)-set on.

Gideon started to pass around the orange slices then, and while Cassie hadn't really eaten much since the light dinner she and Morgan had shared before the first ransom call, the twenty-seven-year-old wasn't very hungry anymore.

She ate the orange slice anyway because, at the very least, it gave her energy.

"So far," Morgan piped up again as Cassie handed him an orange slice as well, though Derek didn't eat it right away. "He's called every play. I say we apply some pressure, make him sweat."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Cassie asked, grabbing another orange slice from Gideon, who'd know beforehand that, even though the brunette would more or less refuse to eat, she would still need the little sustenance she would gain from the orange itself in order to help close this case. "If Trish is still alive, this might be the thing that finally makes him angry enough to really kill her,"

"You have a better idea?" Derek asked her, and even though she knew that he wasn't being snappy with her, Cassie couldn't really think of a better idea; she just didn't think that making the unsub even angrier than he already seemed to be was a good idea.

"No..." she answered finally, crossing her arms, and even though Hotch glanced around at the rest of them, seemingly silently asking if anyone else had an idea that didn't constitute further pissing the unsub off, but neither Elle nor Reid seemed to have anything to say.

Finally, Gideon set down the knife he'd been using to cut open the orange, and the sound of the utensil clattering onto the counter shattered the silence that lurked around the small team of profilers.

"Well," the senior agent began, sounding remarkably calm, given what Morgan's plan was. "There's only one way to do that..."

☆☆☆

Cassie still thought this was a bad idea.

She's stopped voicing her arguments about her partner's plan out loud, especially once the profilers had returned to the table with the phone box and started to wait for the unsub to call again, but she was definitely still thinking about it.

Since the agents weren't allowing Cheryl to talk to the unsub anymore for her own safety, and their plan for putting pressure on the kidnapper required him to get really, really angry, Evan Davenport wouldn't be talking on the phone either.

That left Gideon to run point, and as the phone finally began to ring again, Cassie couldn't help but start nibbling her lip again, wondering yet again if this was really their best course of action. But, like she'd told Morgan back in the kitchen when he'd asked her if she had a better idea for mounting the pressure against this unsub, she didn't really know what would be a better plan, so really, this one was the only one they had.

Gideon purposefully let the phone continue to ring long after they had answered it earlier in the night, and only when Davenport got impatient and went to press the button himself did the senior agent say anything.

"Hold on," Gideon said simply, thankfully making the attorney pause before he'd actually answered the call. "Hold on, hold on."

The phone continued to ring, and once the ringing had continued for almost an entire minute, Gideon finally pressed the flashing green button to answer, only to press it again almost instantly in order to hang up again, so fast that the unsub wouldn't have even been able to say anything before the senior agent hung up on him. 

"What are you doing?" Davenport asked, because even though he'd known that the BAU's next plan consisted of "applying pressure", he didn't entirely know what that entailed, and the profilers weren't about to tell him.

They all stayed silent then, and even though Cassie's eyes flicked between Gideon and Davenport for a moment, her attention stayed on the team's senior agent, especially when, thirty seconds after Gideon had hung up on the unsub, he called again, causing the phone box to ring again.

And again, Davenport turned to Gideon, face full of confusion.

"Agent Gideon..." he began, but Gideon ignored him, letting the phone ring for about ten more seconds before he pressed the button to answer it.

"Hello?" he asked, feigning innocence about who might be calling. When the unsub spoke, he didn't sound pleased, but then again, the kidnapper hadn't sounded pleased any of the times the Davenports had talked to him tonight so far.

"Tell me there was a technical issue with the line," the unsub began. "Because if you actually just hung up on—"

Whatever he'd been about to say next was cut off, as Gideon hung up again, and Davenport turned towards the other man, eyes wide.

"What are you doing?" the attorney asked again, but again, Gideon ignored him.

This time, when the unsub tried to call back, Gideon's mouth twitched into the beginnings of a proud smile (their plan was starting to work), but the two Davenports were getting increasingly agitated, and frankly, Cassie didn't blame him. She knew she'd probably be losing her mind if she were ever in their shoes.

"Why isn't he answering it?" Cheryl asked from where she was standing beside Elle on the other side of the table, near the mantle.

At the same time, the older Davenport stammered out another question of why exactly Gideon was doing this. Though Hotch tried his best to answer without giving too much away, Evan was talking over the unit chief too much to retain any useful information.

"Quiet," Gideon said finally, his own voice staying soft as he held up one hand to essentially shush Evan Davenport. "Please, quiet."

The attorney, thankfully, did so, but he listened with a scoff, and Cassie knew there was only so much more that either Davenport could take before one of them eventually broke.

Cheryl, it seemed, broke first, which Cassie had kind of expected, considering it took Elle having to physically hold the younger woman back as the remaining Davenport twin shouted that one of them "needed to answer the phone!".

After his daughter moved, so did Davenport, the attorney accidentally (or on purpose) shoving Cassie out of the way since the brunette had been standing in between him and Morga, and it took Gideon slapping his hand away and Morgan and Hotch grabbing onto his arms in order to stop Davenport from answering the phone too early.

"Don't touch it!" Gideon exclaimed as Cassie regained her balance again, and she turned towards Davenport.

"Gideon knows what he's doing," she told him, trying not to seem too upset that he had almost pushed her to the floor. "Take a breath."

Evan looked as if that was the absolute last thing he wanted to do, but a sharp look from Morgan made the attorney swallow whatever words he'd been gearing up to say, just as, as soon as everyone was silent again, Gideon finally answered the unsub's call.

"Davenport Residence," the senior agent said, mock-bright, and if this had been any other situation, Cassie might've laughed at the way Gideon was messing with him.

She didn't laugh now, though.

"Are you out of your mind?" the unsub asked, sounding almost breathless at the fact that he was essentially being ignored. And he hated it. "You do realize...You do understand I'll kill her! Do you—"

Gideon hung up again, and Cassie sucked in a breath, hoping that this entire plan hadn't been a terrible idea. Even though she obviously still thought it was, it was too late to go back now, but Agent Quinn was just hoping it wasn't too late for Trish.

Less than twenty seconds after the senior agent had hung up this time, the unsub called back, just for Gideon's grin to widen, an instant before Evan Davenport jerked forward. Cassie, this time, had the forethought to step out of the attorney's way as Morgan and Hotch struggled to hold him back from getting in Gideon's way.

The senior agent, however, remained calm, even though Cassie didn't know how he did it.

"Mr. Davenport," Gideon began as Morgan and Hotch finally managed to wrestle the attorney into a nearby chair, just as the senior agent held up a single finger to silence the distraught father. "Get a hold of yourself." Davenport continued to scream, and the senior agent gave Morgan and Hotch a singular look that bordered on annoyed. "Quiet him," he told them sternly.

Davenport did eventually soften his cries, but as Cassie flicked her gaze between him and Cheryl, who was currently quietly sobbing in Elle's arms, the twenty-seven-year-old was thinking that maybe they should have told the Davenports what their plan was, because if neither of them were going to be talking to the unsub anymore—Cheryl for her own safety and Evan Davenport because it was dreadfully apparent the kidnapper didn't even want to talk to him—what would've been the harm in just looping them in?

It was too late now, of course, because Gideon pressed the button to answer the call again.

"She is dead! You hang up on me again, and I rip her open!" the unsub was screaming now, royally pissed off, but as Cheryl let out a muffled shriek from across the room, and Davenport crumpled deeper into the chair that Hotch and Morgan had desposited the attorney into, Cassie stared at the speaker on the phone box where the kidnapper's voice had erupted from.

Obviously, she couldn't see him. The brunette wasn't currently face-to-face with the man who had kidnapped (and maybe killed) Trish, but her superpower to tell when someone might be lying didn't just rely on her having to actually see a person's face to decipher whether or not they were telling the truth.

And now, right now, as both Davenports all but mourned the sister and daughter they were so sure they had lost, Cassie was sure that, despite what the profile might've alluded to, and the fact that even Cassie herself had posited that using this method of pressuring the unsub would piss him off just enough for him to kill Trish...she was sure in the depths of her soul that the unsub was lying.

When she looked up again, the twenty-seven-year-old found Gideon staring at her with an expectant look on his face, and Cassie realized that this had been part of his plan all along. Using her to decode the unsub's vocal patterns when no one else would be able to, even though Gideon was one of the last people who'd put stock in Cassie's abilities, he still knew something she did worked.

She just wished he'd told her he was planning on doing that.

Cassie, though, didn't say any of that, and instead just gave the BAU's senior agent a tiny nod before Gideon turned back to the phone.

"I'm sorry," he said, kind of sounding like the secretary at an office firm. "You must have the wrong number."

Gideon hung up again, and this time, as she looked around at her colleagues, Cassie could see that their resolve and trust in the senior agent at this particular moment might be wavering. Morgan, in particular, was starting to look increasingly skeptical, even though it had been his idea in the first place to pressure the unsub and finally get them a step ahead.

"You killed her..." Davenport was almost hyperventilating, and it took all of Cassie's self-control not to break down herself, just from the way Evan and Cheryl had reacted to this most recent call, but Gideon just looked at the two of them, calm as ever.

"No, sir," he told the attorney, but Davenport just scoffed, and frankly, Cassie didn't blame his skepticism.

"Oh yeah?" Davenport retorted, tears choking up most of what he was saying. "Then what...what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Gideon looked at him.

"I'm saving your daughter, Mr. Davenport," he explained, but that did little to alleviate any of Davenport's persistent anxiety. Before the attorney could say anything, though, the phone rang again, and all of their gazes snapped right to it. Gideon straightened up again and gave another small, proud smile before he spoke. "Have a little faith."

Gideon let the phone ring maybe half a dozen times before he answered, and this time, though the unsub wasn't actually screaming, his tone was the sort of rageful calm that terrified Cassie to her core.

"Put Cheryl on the phone," he ordered, but Gideon just shook his head, even though the unsub wasn't obviously able to see him.

"No," the senior agent said calmly, though Cassie didn't think she'd ever fully understand how he managed to stay calm through any of this. "You're finished talking to Cheryl."

The unsub scoffed.

"Listen to that tone of authority," he spoke sarcastically, and Cassie almost wished he was yelling now; it would freak her out less. "Just like your published work, Agent Gideon! It's fascinating to hear the same arrogant quality in your own voice. You are a bit of a pedant, Jason," the unsub added, and the fact that he knew Gideon's name at all practically threw Cassie to the floor. Metaphorically, of course. "A bit didactic?"

"Well," Gideon said in response to the unsub's initial introduction. "That's a very interesting conclusion. You sound..." he trailed off for a few seconds, running one hand over the bottom half of his face and feigning deep thought before he continued. "Intelligent, and you certainly sound educated. We both know that's not true."

"Oh," the unsub retorted, still sounding terrifyingly calm. "I know all about all of you. The ambitious Agent Hotchner? Do you want to be Director of the FBI someday, Agent Hotchner? Would you step on Jason Gideon to get there? I think you would. Post-traumatic stress is a very good excuse. Even your sick, pregnant wife can't get you to leave your post."

Cassie, meanwhile, was reeling from the fact that her initial itch about the potential for the unsub being someone either close to Davenport, like Morgan had posited in the kitchen, or someone actually in law enforcement, was proving to be correct, because who else would know that about Haley?

"Jason Gideon," the unsub continued, ranting now and practically unable to be stopped. "Expert in the criminal psyche and yet unable to diagnose the autistic leanings of the very insecure Dr. Reid. Well, maybe he can make money counting cards in Las Vegas instead."

Poor Reid just looked confused as to how he had been dragged into this.

"The lovely Elle," Trish's kidnapper added. "Was promoted too soon. She doesn't have what it takes to make it in the BAU Boys' Club. Token Derek Morgan wants to be taken seriously, but he is just a pumped-up side of beef! And Supervisory Special Agent Cassidy Quinn..."

The unsub trailed off, and this time, the man they were hunting had Morgan's rapt attention. He couldn't care less about what the unsub had started his tirade with, simply because a majority of what he'd said about the other profilers was just plain wrong, but unless the unsub was going to go the misogynistic route again, the way he had with Elle, Derek didn't know what the unsub might say about Cassie.

Objectively, Morgan knew, of course, that his partner wasn't perfect, but really, what could the unsub say about her to rile them all up that Derek didn't already know?

Her hatred of red roses? The fact that Cassie hated the standard coffee provided in the BAU break room and had her mother mail Kona coffee beans across an ocean and the entire country to her, keeping them in a cupboard with her name taped to the bag? Her love of tacos and mystery stories? The purple umbrella thing?

Unfortunately, nothing the former Chicago cop imagined even came close to what the unsub said a moment later.

"You pride yourself on finding the truth out about people, don't you, Agent Quinn?" Trish's kidnapper said, and when Morgan glanced at his partner, she had gone completely still. "The truth is what you love most, isn't it? The ability to decipher if someone is lying or telling the truth? Tell me, Cassidy, have you told your partner the truth about Catherine?"

Even Hotch looked shocked at that last sentence, and though the unit chief schooled his face again almost immediately, Morgan still caught it, and even though he wasn't sure that the unsub was even expecting  Cassie to give him a response, Derek turned to look at his partner anyway, if only to also see how she had responded to whatever the unsub was talking about.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he'd seen.

Cassie had gone completely white. Now, she was already White (in the Caucasian sense), but now she had gone pale, and almost looked as if she were about to pass out. Which was weird, because even though they had known each other for so long—it'd be four years of them working together come April—Morgan had never heard Cassie even mention a Catherine, of any sort, to him ever.

And nothing that would make her react like this.

He was pretty sure it wasn't a relative. Cassie only had two sisters, Bridget and Nisha, and her mom was named Sophie, so obviously, Catherine wasn't related to her.

Derek saw his partner sway for a moment, and before she could actually fall over, he pressed a hand to her back, just to keep her upright in case she actually did fall, but Cassie jerked away from him, eyes wild, the instant he touched her.

He dropped his hand instantly, shocked, but before anyone could say anything (Morgan could see Hotch staring at them from the corner of his eye), the unsub, who was actually still on the line—Derek had actually momentarily forgotten about that part, he'd been so worried about Cassie—continued ranting about the fact that he was so much better than the team of profilers currently trying to track him.

"You're no threat to me, Agent Quinn!" the unsub was screaming across the line, and when he said Cassie's name, the brunette startled again, as if physically jerked from whatever thought plane she'd been lost in ever since Trish's kidnapper had called her out. "I know who you are! I know how you think! And, I know what to do next! Do you?"

When the unsub hung up this time, Morgan imagined him slamming the phone back down onto the base station, had the call been coming from a landline; it ended that abruptly.

"What the hell was that?" Davenport's voice was quiet, but it caught Morgan's attention anyway, drawing his gaze away from Cassie, who had wrapped her arms around herself by now and was practically shaking like a leaf, to the attorney, who also looked as if all the fight he'd had earlier when Morgan and Hotch had been trying to calm him down had just...drained out of him. "Why did he say that he knows what to do next?" Davenport inhaled for a moment, and Derek would be a pretty bad profiler if he didn't notice how shaky the older man's breathing was. "I-Is he going to hurt my daughter?"

Gideon, though, who had turned to look at Cassie once since the unsub's call had ended, just shook his head.

"He was grandstanding," the senior agent said succintly, but Davenport, fed up with the lack of progress in finding Trish alive, just scoffed again.

"You don't know that!" he shot back, before shooting up to his feet and starting to make his way towards Gideon. Morgan, though, stopped him before he could make it very far, the former cop stopping the attorney in his tracks with one hand against his chest. "You can't possibly know that..."

"Mr. Davenport," Gideon began, ever the calming force, and frankly, whatever issues he still harbored towards the other man following his medical leave, Derek admired the senior agent's tenacity. "I have learned more in the last five minutes than in the last twenty-four hours."

"Oh, really?" Davenport retorted. "Well, what I don't understand is why he is focused on you?"

"Because we—" Morgan added, giving one glance to Cassie to make sure she was secure enough on her feet before he continued. "—are interfering with his relationship with the girls."

"He said he knows all about you." Davenport continued, leaning around Morgan to glare at Cassie, who hadn't said anything for a while and was now staring at a random spot on the Davenports' table.

Derek immediately stepped between the two of them and briefly wondered how much trouble he'd get in if he decked the attorney. He may not have a clue right then what the unsub had been talking about when he'd mentioned this mysterious "Catherine", even when he'd been sure he'd known everything about Cassie, but it still didn't give Davenport the right to be a jackass to her.

Davenport, thankfully, stepped half a step back.

"Yes," Hotch cut in next, which in turn brought Evan Davenport's attention away from Cassie as the attorney then turned towards the BAU's unit chief. "Apparently, he does,"

"He profiled us, Mr. Davenport," Morgan explained, just as Cheryl, who still looked as if she were one more ransom call away from bursting completely into tears, looked at all of them.

"Why would he do that?" the blonde asked quietly, and this time, Cassie did look up from her staring at the table.

"To make us think he's smarter than we are," the brunette muttered, her voice sounding the sort of tired that she did after a weeks-long case, rather than one that hadn't even been a full forty-eight hours yet.

"Oftentimes," Reid piped up from where he'd been typing up the transcript for the unsub's call once more. "The best profilers are the unsubs themselves. They're the ones who are able to walk into an arcade full of children and pinpoint the boy or girl that can be led out quietly."

"But, he made a mistake," Elle added, shaking her head as she continued holding Cheryl. "Because he gave us something he didn't expect..."

"Which is?" Davenport asked, glancing at each profiler in turn before finally, Gideon answered him.

"He told us how to find him."

☆☆☆

Cassie was currently bracing herself against the Davenports' bathroom sink, trying not to have a complete mental breakdown.

Catherine, while a common enough name for babies, was a name that, inadvertently, when the unsub had said it as a way to prove how much smarter he was than the BAU, brought back over a decade of trauma that Cassie had been pushing down inside herself and made it all crash over her like a tidal wave.

She didn't know how Trish's kidnapper even knew about it, since the case itself had been locked under ten thousand layers of security (a bit hyperbolic) for over ten years, and the only people who would know about it were either Hotch and Gideon (obviously neither of them were the unsub) or already in prison, and this particular case just didn't seem like it fit that man's profile.

Cassie also couldn't stop shaking.

It was the entire reason she'd gone into the bathroom in the first place, to try and get a hold of herself out of sight of her colleagues, a majority of whom didn't have a clue what the unsub had been talking about when he'd even mentioned "Catherine" in the first place.

Morgan didn't have a clue who "Catherine" was, and Cassie had done that very much on purpose.

On her first day at the BAU, before the twenty-four-year-old rookie Agent Quinn had even met Hotch for real, Gideon had pulled her aside and explained to her that the BAU's unit chief did know about "Catherine", for security's sake, but it was her choice whether or not she wanted to tell Morgan.

Cassie had chosen not to, and it was too late now to explain things. What would she even tell him? How would she even tell him?

She trusted Derek, God, she trusted him more than probably anyone she'd ever met, but this? She didn't know what (or even how) to explain to him about this.

A soft knock on the closed bathroom door made the twenty-seven-year-old jump, and for about ten seconds, she just stared at the wooden door blocking her from the rest of the house, from the clueless Davenports, and from her fellow profilers.

Please don't be Derek. Please, don't be Derek.

"Cassie?" A low voice came through the door, a bit muffled, but the recognition of it made Agent Quinn marginally relax. "It's me,"

Hotch. Thank God.

She didn't know if she would be able to handle Gideon's "lack of special treatment" at that moment, especially since "Catherine" was the whole reason he wouldn't give her special treatment in the first place, and she very much did not want to be confronted by Morgan and his questions, either.

"Can you open the door?" Hotch's question was calm, but Cassie also knew that there was the barest glimpse of the actual Unit Chief in his voice, rather than just a worried colleague. 

She'd known she'd been in the bathroom for a while before Hotch had knocked on the door, but there wasn't a clock inside the bathroom itself, so it was only when she slowly opened the door, revealing the taller form of Agent Hotchner waiting patiently on the other side, that the clock on the wall behind him silently told the brunette that she'd been in the bathroom for almost ten minutes.

"Sorry," she said softly as she opened the door about halfway, though she still stood halfway behind the door, hiding herself. "I just...needed a moment,"

"Apparently," Hotch deadpanned, and Cassie blinked as the unit chief twisted around to glance at the clock before turning back to look at her. "Several moments."

"Sorry," Cassie said again, looking down for a moment, missing the way Hotch's face fell.

"It was a joke," he told her hurriedly a second later, as if trying to make up for his failed attempt at humor. "I was trying to make you laugh. Make you feel better,"

"Your stand-up needs work." Cassie told him, and when Hotch stared at her, Cassie made sure to make her mouth twitch halfway into a smile, to let her boss know she wasn't actually being mean to him.

Thankfully, it seemed to work, because Hotch's face smoothed out, calming himself down, before the unit chief tilted his head, eyes narrowing.

"I'll find out how the unsub knew about it," he said firmly, and Cassie didn't need to ask what it was. She knew. "There's no possible way someone from the general public should know about that case, and even then, if it was in connection with the case, you have no connection to the Davenports, so killing Jordan and kidnapping Trish in order to get to you is frankly, dumb."

Hotch was right. Evan Davenport was a high-ranking attorney, and while Cassie had met a number of lawyers and attorneys in both her regular life and her line of work in the FBI, and while Davenport himself was nice enough, Cassie hated the attorney/lawyer profession as a whole, and she'd never even heard of Davenport before she started working this case.

It was a bit ironic, she supposed, that Morgan had graduated from Northwestern Law, and Cassie definitely did not hate him, but maybe that was also because her partner wasn't actually a practicing lawyer and had instead gone into law enforcement after college, rather than staying to pass the Bar.

"How did he know about it, though?" Cassie asked, suddenly feeling as if she were about to cry, which was annoying. "He shouldn't know about it. Hotch, no one who wasn't connected to that case personally should know about it..."

Hotch, though, just shook his head.

"I don't know," he said, which did absolutely nothing to make Cassie feel better, and made her tears get closer and closer to escaping, just as the unit chief held up a placating hand a second later. "But," he added. "We'll figure it out. When was the last time you got a call?"

Cassie blinked again.

She and Morgan always joked that none of the profilers on their team made enough money doing this job to offset the emotional toll it took on them, which was true, but Cassie also lived way below her means, so she had more than enough money just sitting around that she wasn't using. She lived below her means enough that when she'd first moved into her most recent apartment (the eighth-floor one that Kiki regularly tried to leap out the window of) six months ago, two weeks before the first Adrian Bale case, Morgan had been genuinely worried for her safety.

It was on purpose, though, Cassie living where she did, and even though Morgan obviously didn't understand, and Cassie wasn't about to tell him, where she was living now was probably the last place someone would look for her if they came looking.

"January," she told Hotch finally, and even though Cassie would still need to check her landline when they finally (hopefully) closed this case, there hadn't been any unwanted messages waiting for her before they'd left, so hopefully that mention of the first month of the year still held up.

It was about halfway through October now, and Cassie didn't think she'd felt this calm about not getting a hang-up call in years.

Hotch nodded.

"Then we should be fine for now." He said, before looking at Cassie again. "But, the second you get a new one, you need to tell me, or you need to tell Gideon, or Morgan—"

Cassie was already shaking her head.

"I can't tell Derek," she said resolutely, finally opening the bathroom door the entire way, only for Hotch to heave a sigh. "Hotch!" she exclaimed, remembering at the last second that yelling at her boss about one case while they were currently working another one wasn't maybe the best idea she'd ever had. Or, you know, yelling at her boss in general. "What would I even tell him? How would I explain things to him?"

"You could start with the truth," Cassie applauded the unit chief for staying calm, because she was most definitely not. "Come on, Cassie," he continued a second later. "You can't keep this hidden forever. It will come out eventually, and you know that. It's better that Morgan finds everything out from you, rather than someone else."

"What?" she retorted. "Like you?"

Hotch just shook his head.

"I won't tell him," the unit chief said, and Cassie couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief before Hotch continued. "And neither will Gideon. But you should. Not today, obviously, but soon. Before he finds out for himself,"

Cassie hated the fact that she knew Hotch had a point, but she wasn't about to tell him that either.

Suddenly, footsteps from the end of the hallway nearest the staircase made Cassie jump about a foot in the air, and Hotch's head snapped about ninety degrees on his neck to see who was approaching them, only for it to be revealed that it was Morgan himself.

Of course.

Derek looked like a deer in headlights as the other two profilers stared at him, and even though Cassie knew that being stealthy was part of their job description, to walk as quietly as possible so an unsub wouldn't notice them, but Cassie hoped, really hoped, that that wasn't what her partner had been doing now, that he hadn't been eavesdropping on them for the last five minutes and purposefully put the twenty-seven-year-old in a situation she had no desire to be in.

"What is it?" Hotch asked, voice gruff, and Morgan blinked.

"Gideon wants us all downstairs," he said eventually, eyes flicking between Hotch and Cassie fast enough that Agent Quinn knew he had questions about...well, everything.

Cassie, though, had no desire to answer them.

"Fine," Hotch said, before glancing at the woman in front of him one final time. "Can you still work this case?"

Cassie tried not to feel insulted.

"I'm fine," she all but grumbled, though the minuscule raising of the unit chief's eyebrows signified that he did not believe her. Cassie, frankly, didn't care. "Let's go bring Trish home."

She brushed past Hotch back into the upper-floor hallway of the Davenports' home and past Morgan before her partner could say anything. Derek followed her instantly, but he must've noticed how not jazzed Cassie was about talking about anything right that second, because he didn't speak, which the brunette, in the back of her mind, appreciated. Hotch took up the rear, also staying silent, and before long, the three agents returned to the living room that had kind of become their "home base" throughout the entirety of this case.

Gideon was standing there still, along with Reid and Elle, and all three of them looked up as the other three profilers rejoined them. However, while Reid and Elle continued to stare at Cassie as she stayed near Hotch, Gideon's gaze dropped quickly, as if the senior agent didn't even care what had happened.

Just another part of his "no special treatment", Cassie supposed.

Reid and Elle's gazes, too, dropped a second later, when Hotch glared at them.

Suddenly, Evan Davenport came storming out of his study, where he had likely been taking a break post-phone call as well, though maybe not with as much potential mental breakdown as Cassie had. The fact that the attorney was looking absolutely pissed as he got all up in Cassie's face was not lost on the brunette either.

"You guys said that you knew how to find him!" Davenport all but screamed, and as Cassie leaned back so he wasn't as close to her as he'd been a second ago, Davenport just followed, making her anxiety rise even more than it already had been. "You said you were going to save my daughter! Get out there and do something! Stop standing around in here!"

Cassie blinked, and within that split second, Morgan had moved from where he'd been standing behind Cassie, so he was now standing between his partner and the seething attorney. From the way tension seemed to pulse from every point on Derek's body, Cassie had a feeling he wasn't too pleased either.

Not at her, though. At Davenport.

"We are trying, Mr. Davenport," he retorted sharply, using those two inches of height he had on Davenport to his advantage. "You yelling at a federal agent is not helping."

"Do not—" Davenport retorted, flinging up a finger to wave between him and Morgan, though Cassie had a feeling that wouldn't help calm down Morgan's temper. "Condescend to me. Don't patronize me, Agent!"

Morgan opened his mouth again to shoot back another retort at the attorney, but before he could say anything, one of the other agents, Vincent Shyer, pushed his way between the two of them, accidentally knocking Morgan back against Cassie.

"Evan," the other agent cut in, not even apologizing to Cassie and Morgan, which Agent Quinn thought was ridiculously rude, regardless of whether Shyer was trying to help them or not. "Everyone is doing the best they can. Come on, let's take a break."

Shyer led Davenport, who was still muttering under his breath about "patronization" and the like, away, and once again, the BAU were left to their own devices. None of them were happy so far with the direction this case had taken, least of all Cassie and Morgan, for varying reasons, which caused Derek to sigh once they were all alone again.

"For the suspect to know that much about us," he began, hands on his hips. "He has to be one of us."

It was something Cassie herself had thought of earlier in the night, long before the unsub had called each of them out. One of the most glaring details was the fact that, in the original ransom note, and something all of them had thought of as strange back when they'd been analyzing the initial note at Quantico, was the fact that, differing from every other ransom note Cassie had ever seen, this particular ransom note hadn't specified not getting authorities involved.

Why would the unsub make things harder for himself by saying no federal agents get involved when he himself was a federal agent?

Hotch nodded.

"I'm going to have Garcia do a search of the New Haven FBI Field Office," the unit chief said firmly. "The guy we're looking for knows this house, he knows the family..."

Hotch trailed off, but all of them knew what he'd meant to say.

"There's seven hundred agents in New Haven," Reid added. "And another seventy in satellite offices. Davenport knows quite a few of them."

"Cheryl can't stay here," Cassie said suddenly, catching everyone's attention and making the others turn and look at her as the twenty-seven-year-old crossed her arms, nodding her head towards the opposite end of the house, where Shyer had brought Davenport after he'd blown up at her and Morgan and a majority of the other New Haven agents were congregating. "If the unsub really is—" Cassie cut herself off for a moment to quiet her voice, because the last thing they needed was the unsub to overhear them if he really was in the house. "—another agent, keeping Cheryl here just continuously gives him chances to grab her if she's unsupervised."

"So who can we trust?" Morgan asked, and Cassie glanced at him, only to find her partner already staring at her.

She really, really hoped he wasn't currently trying to subliminally message her to ask about who the hell "Catherine" was, because now was not the time. Cassie didn't know if there would ever be a good time, or if she even wanted one to exist, but she was self-aware enough to know that now definitely wasn't a good time, either.

"No one," Hotch's response made both Cassie and Derek turn towards the unit chief. "We need to get Cheryl to a safe house."

"And limit the amount of agent she comes in contact with," Morgan added, and Hotch nodded.

Cassie, though, heaved a sigh. Obviously, "Catherine"-issue aside, she knew that she could trust the other members of the BAU team, but there were over a dozen New Haven agents in the house as well, and she knew none of them would be happy about being pushed aside, even if they weren't the unsub, especially if Hotch or Gideon didn't tell them the real reason they were closing ranks.

This...wouldn't be easy.

☆☆☆

Getting Cheryl to agree to come with them to the safe house was easy enough. Even though Morgan had suggested it would be a good idea to limit the number of other agents the other Davenport twin interacted with during her transport to the safe house, Cassie hadn't realized that meant it would only be her and Morgan from the BAU transporting the college student.

It also wouldn't be conceivable to have Cassie and Derek be the only agents in general helping protect Cheryl, either, so, despite the fact that they were sure one of the New Haven agents was the unsub, they'd needed to bring a few with along to the safehouse. Which meant, aside from Cassie and her partner, Agent Shyer, the New Haven agent who'd calmed Davenport down after he'd blown up at Cassie and Morgan earlier, also came along.

The safe house was also technically outside the city limits of New Haven and was instead closer to Hartford, the state's capital, so as they drove the forty minutes it was between the two cities, Cassie settled into her seat in the front passenger seat of the federal SUV as Morgan drove, Cheryl in the backseat, while Shyer and the other New Haven agent coming with them followed in another SUV.

The car ride was silent, and for that, Cassie was grateful. Now really wasn't the time for Derek to ask her about "Catherine", even though she could see her partner glancing at her every couple of seconds, obviously wanting to say something.

The safe house Hotch had found was off the beaten path quite a bit, which Cassie assumed was the point, because the house, which on the inside looked as if it were halfway through renovation, was the absolute last place someone might look for Cheryl.

Cassie led Cheryl, who was dressed as inconspicuously as possible in an FBI windbreaker and baseball cap, into one of the only habitable bedrooms in the house, which was saying something, considering the door wasn't even a real door, and was instead just a giant sheet of plastic.

"You're going to be okay in here?" the brunette asked as Cheryl sat down on the small cot in the corner of the room, and though the blonde didn't exactly look pleased, she nodded anyway.

Cassie wasn't sure she believed her, but she didn't know what to say to the younger woman, either, in order to make her feel better, so she just gave a small nod of her own, before leaving Cheryl to her own devices and slipping through the plastic curtain to rejoin Morgan in the front room of the house, where the only furniture to speak of was a gray folding table with a single lamp sitting on it, along with two red Solo cups crumpled on the top of the table as well.

"We'll walk the perimeter," Shyer told the two profilers from where he was still standing at the front door, slipping through the door before either of them could say anything else.

Cassie blinked.

She didn't know much about Agent Shyer; he hadn't been one of the New Haven agents continuously stationed at the Davenport house during this case, and instead an agent from the New York field office who helping on this case so Cassie hadn't seen him much before now, considering he'd been telling Davenport he'd needed to go back and forth to the Field Office throughout the night.

What were the chances the unsub was one of the non-BAU agents who had come to the safehouse? What if he were here with them right now?

Something about the thoughts currently running rampant through Cassie's head must've shown on her face, because the next thing she knew, Morgan was standing in front of her, causing the twenty-seven-year-old to tilt her head back slightly to look him in the eye.

"What is it?" Derek asked her. "You have that look on your face again."

Cassie, for the first time in her career in the FBI, for the first time since she had met Morgan three years ago, hesitated. It could be nothing, Lord knows Gideon had never put much stock in her abilities to tell when someone was lying, but Derek had never been Gideon.

But, if he was still upset about her not telling him about "Catherine", and he was thinking that maybe her trust in him (the fact that she hadn't told him about "Catherine" at all) had waned, it made the brunette pause.

Her trust in him hadn't waned whatsoever, of course, but still.

"I'm just tired," she said finally, and even though Derek's face did that whole facial twitch thing it always did when he definitely did not believe her, he didn't say anything. "It's been a long night."

That part wasn't actually a lie. They'd only been working on this case since yesterday morning, almost afternoon, and already, Cassie felt the way she did usually after a week-long case, rather than one they'd been working on for less than twenty-four hours.

Morgan, though, obviously recognized that Cassie didn't want to talk about what they probably should talk about, so he didn't say anything, and instead the two profilers stood in the foyer of the safehouse in silence.

Now, all they could do was wait.

Eventually, after they had been there for over an hour with nothing happening (Cassie didn't know whether or not that was a good thing), Morgan, who was practically falling asleep where he stood, went into the kitchen to splash some water on his face. At the same time, Cassie suddenly got a call from Elle and Reid.

Well, Elle was the one who actually called her; Reid was just sitting beside the former Seattle agent back at the Davenport house and inserted himself into the conversation.

Agent Greenaway's main reason for calling was to ask the other female profiler about the fact that the unsub was likely another FBI agent, and how close exactly the agent was to the investigation itself. Cassie was still banking on it being Shyer, at the very least; he gave her weird vibes. However, Cassie also got strange vibes from one of the reception agents at Quantico, so that might just be her issue with men.

"They did a bug sweep, didn't they?" Elle asked as Cassie paced the interior of one of the other empty rooms of the safehouse. Morgan hadn't returned yet from the kitchen, so she would just loop him in once the call was done. 

"Wasn't it right when you guys got there?" Agent Quinn asked, a bit unsure, since the rest of the BAU had arrived at the Davenport house at the same time she and Morgan had gone to the scene of Trish's kidnapping and met Cheryl.

"Yeah, it was," Reid said, his voice slightly muffled since he wasn't directly next to Elle's cell phone the way Agent Greenaway obviously was. "I remember. It was right when we walked into the house. They were still setting up when we got there."

"Then how does the unsub know everything we're doing from pretty much the second we do it?" Cassie asked, keeping her voice hushed just in case the unsub was actually here at the safehouse right now. A second later, the answer appeared inside her brain. "A listening device,"

Elle and Reid were both silent on the other end.

"If the unsub is really a New Haven agent," Cassie continued, and at this point, she was practically sure he was. "Then, what if he put his own listening device inside the equipment the local office brought in? If it were a remote device too, he wouldn't even need to be in the house to listen."

Then, Cassie suddenly swore, colorfully and probably louder than she should have if she was trying not to let the unsub, if he really were in the house, know she was onto him, because the brunette had just realized she was right about who the unsub was, and definitely should've told Morgan earlier when she'd first realized it.

"It's Shyer," she said, to Elle and Reid's abject shock on the other end of their phone call. "He kept telling Davenport that he couldn't be at the house all night because he needed to go back and forth to the New Haven field office, but what if he was really leaving—"

"To go and check on Trish." Elle's voice was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that was pensive, as the former Seattle agent realized as well that Cassie was right.

"He's here with me right now," Cassie hissed. "He helped us bring Cheryl to the safehouse."

"So he could finally get her alone," Reid's voice was grim, and Cassie felt all the blood drain from her face.

She hung up on Reid and Elle after that, with the other two profilers promising to loop in Hotch and Gideon with what the three of them had discovered. Then, Cassie went to find Morgan, because now it had definitely been way too long since her partner had left to splash water on his face. Now that she knew Shyer was actually here and prowling around, Cassie needed to warn Derek before Shyer found him and took him out.

But, as the twenty-seven-year-old stepped into the doorway of the kitchen, she realized she was already too late.

The sink was still running, but Morgan wasn't standing in front of it anymore and was instead splayed out across the linoleum floor of the kitchen, eyes closed and completely unmoving.

Cassie felt her heart drop to her feet, and for a brief, torturous, heartbreaking second, she thought he was dead, but as she fell to her knees beside him, if only to check for a pulse, she saw Derek's chest move slightly, once...twice...a third time, before Cassie's fear switched very abruptly to relief.

He wasn't dead, thank God, but Morgan was still knocked out cold, and even though he was still alive, his unconsciousness also meant Shyer had tried to take him out, and Cassie didn't want to think what the unsub might've done to the other agent he'd been with outside.

Derek would be fine for now (Cassie was promising herself that), and it didn't look as if he had hit his head at all when he'd fallen, so, knowing she was running out of time before Shyer inevitably tried to get Cheryl for himself, the brunette left her partner there in the kitchen, and instead drew her weapon, sneaking down the hallway as quickly and quietly as she could to the bedroom she had stashed Cheryl in when they'd first arrived at the safehouse.

Unfortunately, Shyer was already there, brandishing a knife as he cornered a trembling Cheryl against one wall of the bedroom.

Through the plastic curtain that blocked Cassie from entering the room itself, she could see the featureless, taller form of Shyer looming over the trembling, smaller form that had to be Cheryl, and Cassie knew that if she didn't act fast, there would be only one Davenport twin left for them to save, and that was only if Shyer hadn't killed Trish already.

Shyer was speaking, too, as Cassie neared the edge of the plastic curtain where she'd be able to push through in order to enter the room, and momentarily, the brunette paused in order to fully make out what the man was saying.

"I don't need to do that," was the first thing Cassie managed to overhear as she slowly moved the plastic curtain out of the way. As Shyer got even closer to Cheryl with his switchblade, the man seemed almost wistful with his words. "I've known you both for so long...loved you for so long..."

"Please don't do this," Cheryl pleaded with the man she'd known as a friend as Shyer lowered himself so he was practically crouching in front of her. Cassie moved further into the bedroom, raising her gun just that tiny bit higher so it was pointing straight at the back of Shyer's head as the man spoke again.

"But this is how it should have been all along," Shyer said, his tone shifting in such a way it sounded as if he were reminding an obstinate child of something they'd forgotten, rather than threatening the grown college student he'd been stalking for who knows how long. "The three of us...together..."

"Shyer." Cassie finally spoke up before Shyer could move any closer to Cheryl, and even though her sudden presence had to have startled him, since Cheryl had also jumped when she'd noticed the profiler standing behind the soon-to-be-fired agent from the New York Field Office, but Shyer turned around slowly, still looking almost too calm for what the situation itself called for. "Put the knife down," Cassie continued once he was facing her, but Shyer just shook his head.

"You don't understand," Shyer began, but Cassie didn't waver. "You don't understand my relationship with the gir—"

"Put the knife down," Cassie repeated herself, but that only made Shyer more upset.

"You don't understand!"

"I said put. it. down." Cassie kept her gaze squarely on Shyer, because the second she looked away, the brunette knew he would try and strike, but from the corner of her eye, Cassie was able to see Cheryl sneak out the corner where Shyer had, well, cornered her, and get herself close to the plastic curtain that was her escape.

The moment he saw that his so-called prize was getting away, though, Shyer's entire demeanor changed. It was like a switch flipped inside him, turning him from the mildly placating kidnapping suspect to full-tilt murderer, because one second he was staring over Cassie's shoulder at Cheryl's retreating form, and the next he was charging towards Cassie, knife raised high. Then, Agent Quinn did something that Morgan would probably kill her for (maybe) when this whole thing was over and done with.

She dropped her gun.

Cassie heard her weapon clatter to the bedroom floor, at the same time that she heard Cheryl's footsteps retreat down the hallway, the remaining Davenport twin running for safety. The profiler instead grabbed onto Shyer's wrist, which was connected to the hand holding the knife, and managed to stop the man in his tracks before he could stab her.

She was pretty sure Shyer was momentarily shocked she had actually managed to do it, too, considering he hardly put up a fight when Cassie dug her nails into the pressure point at the base of his wrist, causing his fingers to spasm and relinquish their grip on the blade, letting it also clatter to the floor beside Cassie's gun.

As Shyer stood there, utterly befuddled, Cassie made her next move, which constituted the brunette ramming her knee up and smashing it into Shyer's nose, effectively breaking it and dazing the unsub even more, before she hooked her other leg around his ankle and yanked, knocking the man off-balance and making him tumble to the floor.

Shyer hit the ground, and Cassie grabbed her gun, using one hand to hold her weapon (not the best grip she'd ever had on it) while using her other hand to grab onto the base of Shyer's neck, squeezing just enough to let Trish's kidnapper know she was the one in control now.

Cassie knew the man was still dazed from getting his nose smashed, and the blood dripping down his chin and staining the front of his suit was practically delightful, but that wasn't what she was here for, not right then.

"You said you knew about Catherine," the twenty-seven-year-old all but sneered at Shyer, and in the distance, she could hear sirens approaching the safehouse.

It was most definitely Hotch and/or Gideon, on their way as reinforcements after Elle and Reid had no doubt told them Cassie had realized Shyer was the unsub and that he was here at the safehouse with her, Morgan, and Cheryl. Now, though, Agent Quinn was more focused on her hostage.

"If you know about her," Cassie added. "Then, you know what my hand at your throat means."

Shyer gulped, both of his hands held up in the air as placatingly as he could manage. He did have a broken nose, after all.

"You are going to tell me where you're holding Trish Davenport," she continued, and she felt almost disgustingly giddy at the fear she saw creep in Shyer's eyes. "Or we are going to have a very, very rough time. Do you understand me?"

Shyer stayed silent, even though Cassie knew he was going to agree, but when he didn't say anything, she stood up, releasing her grip around Shyer's throat and instead pressing one boot against his crotch because he was, after all, still a man, and there was one place even the most secure male was terrified of getting injured.

This particular man, though, was not the most secure Cassie had ever met.

"Use your words, Shyer," she said, as she raised her gun again and pointed it lower than his waistband. "Do you understand?"

He did.

☆☆☆

Euripides said, "When love is in excess, it brings a man no honor nor worthiness."

F.B.I., Behavioral Analysis Unit
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

Cassie felt as if she were going to be sick. Again.

This was different, though, than when she'd panicked back at the Davenport house after Shyer had first mentioned "Catherine" over the phone to her as a way to get under her skin, and Cassie was loath to admit the unsub's tactic had worked.

His words had gotten under her skin, but it also might've been the fact that, before Shyer's call, it had been years since anyone had mentioned "Catherine" to her with any specifics, and now, Cassie had no desire to go home, on the off-chance there was an unwanted message on her answering machine.

No, this time, Cassie felt as if she were going to be sick because of how she'd gotten Shyer to give up Trish's location. It had worked, and the kidnapped Davenport twin had been found alive, thank God, and had been reunited with her sister and father, but Cassie still felt as if she were about to puke.

They'd flown back to Quantico once Trish was on her way to the hospital, and Cassie didn't think she had said ten words since. To anybody.

She was back in the BAU's offices right now, and even though almost everyone else had gone home, Cassie couldn't bring herself to leave yet. Her excuse was that she needed to fill out the case report, which technically was true, but Hotch had even said that he'd pull strings with the Section Chief and give each profiler a couple of days to get their reports in, given how stressful this case had been.

Frankly, Cassie had no reason to still be in the office. Which was maybe why Gideon looked so surprised to see her as the elevator doors opened on the sixth floor, letting the twenty-seven-year-old off just as the senior agent was about to get on.

"You're still here," he said, and Cassie blinked at him, wondering why he sounded so shocked.

"I do still work here," she told him, hefting her go-bag higher on her shoulder as a way to signify to the senior agent that she was, in fact, totally fine. "I'm allowed to burn the midnight oil, aren't I?"

Gideon, though, had been a profiler for longer than Cassie had been alive, so he wasn't fooled in the slightest.

"If you say so," he told her, shrugging and so nonchalant that Cassie knew he had to be messing with her. A second later, though, he jerked his head back towards the direction of the bullpen. "Your partner's still here. Bandaging himself up,"

Cassie's breath caught in her throat again. The way Shyer—the coward—had overpowered Morgan at the safehouse had been with a taser, and even though Derek wouldn't have any lasting damage from both the taser hit itself and him hitting the floor, it was still an in-field injury, and honestly, he should've been at his own home right then, resting.

"That idiot," Cassie muttered to herself, totally missing the minuscule smirk that flicked across Gideon's face, but by the time she turned towards the senior agent again, his face was calm.

"Well, then," Gideon said, stepping past Cassie into the elevator and pushing the button for the ground floor. "Have a good night, Cassidy."

Cassie gave the senior agent a good night of her own, but as the doors closed between them, she knew she'd be chalking that up as one of the strangest conversations with the senior agent she'd ever had, and she'd known Gideon a long time.

Now, though, it was time for Cassie to face the music. The music, in this case, being Morgan.

It was so late that aside from the two of them, the only other person in the bullpen was one of the FBI janitors, vacuuming the carpet by the stairs that led up to the roundtable room. As Cassie slowly pushed open one of the glass doors that led into the bullpen, she could see her partner sitting on the edge of his desk, twisting halfway around as he tried to replace the bandage over the two ugly-looking taser marks on his back, actually using his teeth to hold the edge of his shirt up while he tried to apply the bandage with his hands.

To be frank, he was struggling, and if it had been any other situation, Cassie probably would've made a joke about it. She wasn't joking now, though.

"Having trouble?" she asked instead as she walked up to him, and Morgan glanced up at her, finally dropping the bandage he'd been trying to apply for who knows how long, and twisted back around so he was facing the right way.

"Obviously not," he grumbled, though Cassie just raised an eyebrow.

"Do you need some help?" she asked, and this time, Derek was the one raising his eyebrow.

"My motor's running on 50,000 volts, Cassidy. Are you willing to talk?" he retorted, and Cassie inhaled sharply.

She'd known, of course, that Morgan would corner her eventually, because he definitely had questions about, well, everything, but Cassie didn't know if she even wanted to tell him. If she was ever going to be ready to tell him everything.

"You get one question," she told him finally, dropping her go-bag by her desk directly across the aisle from Morgan's and grabbing a fresh bandage from the open first-aid kit on Derek's desk, ripping it halfway open. The sound of the tearing paper was almost deafening in the almost-silent bullpen. "But, I can't promise I'm going to answer."

Even the janitor had left by now, it was that late, so Cassie and Morgan were well and truly alone.

Morgan, though, just hummed as he held the hem of his shirt out of the way, and Cassie, instead of putting the bandage on her partner's wound, grabbed the small bottle of antiseptic from the first-aid kit and sprayed it a few times on the two taser prong marks, making Derek hiss and lurch away.

"Don't be a baby," Cassie told him, glancing up at the older man. "Ask your question, or I'm leaving you to do this by yourself."

She wouldn't really do that, but Morgan didn't have to know that.

"Fine," Derek said as Cassie grabbed the bandage again and hovered it over the wound so she'd know it was on straight. "Are you okay?"

Cassie, who had only just pressed the bandage to her partner's back, froze, completely gobsmacked. A million thoughts ran about a million miles per hour through her head all at once, but what she finally settled on was:

"I don't like choking people,"

Derek stared at her, eyebrow raised.

"Well, I should hope not," he said, chuckling a bit, because he obviously thought Cassie was making a joke. She wasn't. "Angel," he added a second later, once Cassie didn't say anything for a moment, and the brunette looked up at him. "You beat Shyer. We found Trish alive; she's home now, safe and sound. That's a win in my book, regardless of how we got there."

Cassie was very much thinking of the so-called regard, especially since Derek could've very well ended the night gutted like a fish if Shyer had wanted to, but she instead stayed silent for a few heartbeats more, before all of the emotions she'd been holding back all night erupted from her all at once, and she burst into tears.

"It's just..." she trailed off, and couldn't help but notice the fact that Morgan looked a little freaked out by the fact that she was actually crying. "You getting hurt was my fault! If I had just told you that I was sure Shyer was the unsub as soon as we got to the safehouse, none of this would've happened, and we would've gotten Trish back sooner, and..."

"Maybe," Morgan abruptly cut her off, and Cassie swallowed down her next sob, instead sitting heavily down in her chair as Derek stayed perched on the edge of his desk, finally settling his shirt back into place. "But, this case was hard for you, Cassie, I know that. None of us could've possibly known Shyer was involved, and there were only so many agents we could have picked to help accompany us to the safehouse, especially since everyone aside from the six of us was a suspect."

Cassie braced her elbow against the armrest of her chair as she placed her chin against her palm and remembered again that her partner had been in law enforcement years longer than she had and had likely had many a case just like this one where he'd blamed himself for the outcome, regardless of whether or not the outcome ended in his favor.

"I thought I was supposed to be the smart and philosophical one in our partnership," she said softly as Derek finally sat down in his chair again, twisting a bit to make sure he had a full range of motion, just for the former Chicago cop to smirk at her.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," he retorted, causing Cassie to roll her eyes at the other nickname. "I still have my moments."

He turned away from her then and grabbed a folder from the tall pile of files on his desk, which no doubt contained case notes from their most recent case, and started flipping through it, making his own notes on a blank sheet of paper nearby every couple of seconds.

Cassie, though, just stared, a bit confused.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" she asked, and Morgan glanced at her over his shoulder. "About Catherine?"

This time, Morgan sighed, turning his chair around to face her.

"Would you have told me?" he asked, and Cassie looked down at the floor.

Hadn't that been what she'd been doing ever since Shyer had first mentioned "Catherine" during his call, all but purposefully avoiding her partner and his many questions, because she very much did not want to talk about it?

"No," she said finally, and Morgan turned around again.

"Okay, then," he said simply, though Cassie, even if she weren't a profiler, would've been able to hear how upset he was.

"It's not—" she cut herself off for a second, and Morgan turned his chair halfway towards her. "It's not because I don't trust you. I do. I trust you more than I do a lot of people, Derek. But," Cassie added, avoiding her partner's gaze as he continued to stare at her. "I need you to trust me now when I say I can't tell you what you really want to know. Not..." she trailed off, before heaving another sigh. "Not yet."

"Someday?" Morgan asked, and Cassie finally looked up at him again, giving a small nod.

"Someday," she agreed, and Morgan cracked a small smile before he grabbed a handful of files from the pile on his desk and held them out towards her.

"I'll hold you to it," he promised, as Cassie stared at the files, wondering what exactly he wanted her to do with those. "Help me finish these, and I won't ask you about Catherine again,"

Cassie snapped her gaze to his, totally scandalized.

"That's blackmail," she reminded him, but the way her partner was grinning told her he wasn't going to actually do that...probably.

"Your choice, Angel," he told her, and Cassie narrowed her eyes as Morgan slowly waved the smaller pile of files between them.

Eventually, her tenacity wore out, and the twenty-seven-year-old snatched the files from her partner's grip, causing Derek to chuckle again as he turned around to face his desk and return to his own work.

"You're a jackass," Cassie grumbled under her breath, but this time Morgan laughed even louder, which in turn made Cassie crack a smile, maybe the first real one she'd had since they'd started this case.

"Takes one to know one, Agent Quinn," he retorted, and this time, Cassie gasped, spinning around in her chair and lightly kicking the back of Morgan's, though she was careful not to kick the area where his injury was, knocking her partner into his desk and causing him to bang his knee against the bottom of it.

"Keep talking like that," she shot back. "And I'll never tell you,"

"Oh, be still my aching heart," Morgan was practically giggling by this point, which very well couldn't be good for his back, and Cassie knew that if they continued ribbing with each other the way they were currently, they'd never finish their work for the night.

But, as she turned back around to start looking through the first case file that Morgan had handed to her, only to get hit in the head with the crumple up paper ball Derek had chucked at her across the aisle between their desks, Cassie, who spun around again fast enough she almost missed her partner turning himself into the paragon of innocence, found that she was okay with that.

She was okay with this.