Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Cassidy Quinn was late.

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

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

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

Now, though, she was looking for her partner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duty calls.

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

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

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

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

Supposed to be, indeed.

☆☆☆

F.B.I Training Academy
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plus, the name was stupid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then we'd better get started."

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

F.B.I Northwest Field Office
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Explorer with tinted windows,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"At the sight of the last murder,"

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Youthful arrogance,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn his eidetic memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We don't know exactly what--"

"Hotch, we don't know anything!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for the profile.

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes, the unsubs just fell into their profiles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She did know what she was doing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yoda,"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few seconds of silence later, Slessman finally spoke.

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

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

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

Ah, misogyny. Cassie never missed it.

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

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

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

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

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

As if Gideon would ever be able to forget it.

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

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

Cassie blinked again.

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

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

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

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

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

It meant Heather was still alive.

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

F.B.I Northwest Field Office
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

Well, okay, that wasn't entirely true. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And eighteen months later, here they were.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The medicine cabinet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, instead, the other unsub was Vogel.

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

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

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

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

All Gideon did was nod, and Cassie sighed again.

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

And really, what were the chances of that?

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because Heather was still alive.

☆☆☆

Patience had never been one of Cassie's virtues. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Now!"

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

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

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

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

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

Vogel had duped them.

And that was very, very bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

Vogel had put Heather Woodland in a cage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now though, they at least had a clue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To work me a little magic,"

☆☆☆

Hotch had come through in a totally major way. 

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

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

Because Vogel was already here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, Gideon wasn't done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

☆☆☆

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

Chapter Text

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

Even after over a decade of knowing the older profiler, Cassie never failed to be impressed by the sheer scale of Gideon's profiling skills.

The senior agent hadn't even been back from his medical leave for two weeks, but already, he had helped the team catch Timothy Vogel and Richard Slessman, putting a stop to the series of brutal crimes and murders committed by the sadistic Seattle Strangler duo.

Gideon had also managed to apprehend, alone, the Footpath Killer, another brutal killer who had been dumping bodies along the hiking trails of the nearby Prince William Forest Park for over a year, after, by pure chance and coincidence, the senior agent had stopped at the same gas station where the killer worked as an attendant.

Yes, Cassie never failed to be impressed by the man.

Thankfully, even though the Footpath Killer had taken Gideon hostage once he'd realized that Gideon knew who he was and what he'd done, and had been about this close to shooting him in the back with a shotgun, the older profiler had managed to survive.

The previously unidentified unsub was now in the custody of the Virginia State Police and waiting to stand trial for his crimes.

Cassie now hoped that, for at least a little while, Gideon would be a little more careful about putting himself in the direct line of fire for an unsub, but she also knew that, with this job and Gideon's self-sacrificing tendencies, the chance of that was practically negligible. It had been pure coincidence that Gideon had discovered where the Footpath Killer had been hiding the way he did, but the senior agent also made a career out of figuring out where serial killers were hiding, so Cassie, as much as she wanted to, didn't put much stock into Gideon not putting himself in mortal danger again before he turned 51.

On a happier note, though, Elle Greenaway, the Seattle agent who'd aided the small team of profilers during their Slessman/Vogel investigation, and who had voiced a desire to take the open position within the unit had ended up passing the interview that Hotch had given a mere twenty-four hours after the team had returned from the PNW (with flying colors, according to the unit chief; though Hotchner had said as much in...less words) and she had already managed to find an apartment near the BAU's headquarters at Quantico.

It was an action that Cassie was impressed by, since she had not been able to do that when she'd started as a profiler; she'd lived out of a hotel room her first three months on the job, and to this day, still lived further away from the office than she knew she should.

The twenty-seven-year-old also lived in an apartment way below what she could afford on her Bureau salary, but that was a different story...

Anyway, Elle had only been officially part of the profilers' team for a little over three days, but Cassie also knew that having already worked with the former Seattle agent on a previous case helped quite a bit with dispelling some of the usual awkwardness that came with integrating a newcomer into a team that had already worked well together for a long time.

Currently, Agent Quinn was at her desk in the bullpen of the BAU's offices on the sixth floor of one of the many buildings of the FBI Academy's campus, making her way through a pile of reports for one of her consultations while Derek and Reid were at their own desks nearby, even though the team's youngest member seemed to be moreso playing chess with himself than actually working, the mini-board sitting on top of the pile of files he should've been looking through, while Hotch and Gideon were up in their own respective offices on the raised level above the rest of the bullpen.

Movement from her periphery made Cassie glance up from her most recent case file to see Elle currently making her way up the small flight of stairs onto the bullpen's walkway towards Gideon's office, even though the senior agent was currently recounting (again) his encounter with the Footpath Killer to a small group of Academy cadets.

Gideon's encounter with the Footpath Killer had been one of the things Elle had been most curious about since she'd moved to Virginia and heard the recounts from other agents. For a federal agency that thrived on secrecy, gossip (and keeping workplace secrets to themselves) was something that Cassie had learned some other agents fell short on in her three years on the job. Elle had also been hovering around Gideon so much over the last seventy-two hours that Cassie was a little bit surprised that the senior agent hadn't yet asked her to stop.

The former Seattle agent was only in the doorway of Gideon's office for a minute or two, though, before the senior agent dismissed the younger cadets and sent the to-be agents on their way, him and Elle sharing a brief conversation that Cassie, unfortunately, wasn't able to overhear from where she was sitting at her desk, before Gideon walked out of his office and down the flight of stairs into the bullpen.

He made an instant beeline for Reid and his chessboard, moving a rook a few spaces and stealing one of Reid's pawns, before glancing at the youngest profiler, who looked utterly confused at the short series of actions and how he had lost another one of his chess pieces to the senior agent.

"Check," Gideon said, making Cassie glance up from the police report she was reading. Before now, she'd just been eavesdropping, and since her desk and Reid's were only blocked by a partition of six-inch-tall clouded glass, it wasn't exactly difficult. "Checkmate in three moves."

He walked away again, and Reid stared down at his chessboard, completely befuddled and wondering where his genius had gone wrong and how he was down yet another piece. As Gideon walked further away from the agents' small cluster of desks and towards the small counter on the far side of the room that held the fridge, sink, and coffee machine, Morgan looked around momentarily before turning towards Reid.

"You know," Cassie's partner began, making her turn towards him as Derek set down the folder he'd been flipping through to lean his chair back so he could better talk to Reid. "You'll beat him when you start learning."

"Learning what?" the younger agent retorted, sounding properly affronted, because what was there in the world that he didn't already know?

Before Morgan could answer him, though, Cassie scoffed, turning her chair around to face Morgan directly.

"Please," she said, causing her partner to quirk an eyebrow. "As if you would ever be able to beat Gideon in a chess game."

Derek was immature enough that he actually stuck his tongue out at her in retaliation, but Cassie just rolled her eyes, though she also knew she wasn't really one to talk about beating the team's senior agent at chess. The twenty-seven-year-old had only managed to beat Gideon in a game once since she'd joined the BAU, but she was also 95% sure it was because Gideon had let her win.

"All I'm saying," Morgan continued with an eye roll of his own. "Is that Boy Genius here-" he gestured to Reid. "Might start losing a little bit less if he were to start thinking outside the box."

Cassie pursed her lips at her partner's response, and poor Reid still looked confused as to how exactly Gideon had beaten him. Elle finally appeared out of Gideon's office before either of them could say anything in response to Morgan, and the team's newest member quickly made her way down the short flight of stairs towards them, looking every part like a woman on a mission.

"Question for you," Agent Greenaway began once she'd stepped down into the main bullpen, and Cassie spun her chair again to face toward the other woman as Derek turned away from his computer for a moment and straightened up.

"Shoot," Morgan said, and Elle launched into whatever spiel she had jumped Gideon with when she'd confronted him in his office earlier.

"The Footpath Killer," she began, and Cassie couldn't help but pat herself on the back for being correct about why she'd thought Agent Greenaway had first stepped into the senior agent's office that morning. "Why did he stutter?"

"Come on, Elle," Morgan began, leaning back in his chair again and lacing both hands behind his head. "We've all asked him, and he won't say,"

"I'm not surprised," Cassie spoke up, prompting Derek and Elle to turn and stare at her; Reid was still studying his chessboard and moving the pieces around. Under her colleagues' sudden scrutiny, Agent Quinn just shrugged. "Usually," she continued. "He likes letting us figure things like this out for ourselves."

"You sound like you know him well," Elle prompted, and Cassie felt her stomach suddenly go queasy.

But she kept her facial expression calm, cool, and collected, and finally shrugged again a couple of moments after Elle had questioned her, rolling her chair back near the edge of her desk.

"I've worked with him a long time," she admitted finally, which was not at all a lie, and thankfully, because she had no reason to think anything different, Elle accepted the younger agent's answer.

"Well," the new agent continued a moment later, straightening up and putting her hands on her hips in some sort of power pose as she gazed off into the distance. "If Gideon wants us to figure out why an unsub stuttered, then I'm up for the challenge."

"Good," The sudden appearance of a new voice made Cassie turn again as Special Agent Jennifer Jareau (JJ to anyone who was more than a passing acquaintance), the final member of their team, reached the small cluster of desks where Cassie was sitting with Derek, Elle, and Spencer, the younger blonde agent holding a stack of files that she immediately passed off to Agent Greenaway. "Because these go to you."

Elle may have only been a member of the BAU for a couple of days, but her backlog of cases was already growing rapidly in contrast to the normal consultations the team of profilers worked on when they weren't traveling around the country, so when JJ handed the huge pile of files to Elle, Agent Greenaway momentarily swayed under the weight of it all.

JJ, who was a few years younger than Cassie, but about a year older than Reid, then officially introduced herself to the newcomer, since the two hadn't yet met before Greenaway joined the unit (JJ hadn't come with on the Slessman/Vogel case), and the former Seattle agent perched herself on the edge of her desk as she shook the younger agent's hand and returned the blonde's introduction.

"Highest number of solved cases in Seattle three years running, specialty in sex offender cases," JJ said, as if clarifying Elle's accomplishments once she had recognized the other agent's name, who also looked momentarily stunned that Agent Jareau knew that much about her.

"Not bad," she said quietly, and the blonde smiled.

JJ made her way out of the small square of desks where they were all congregating and walked towards the steps that led up to the walkway that ringed the bullpen and ran in front of Hotch and Gideon's offices. However, she still looked over her shoulder to speak to Elle as she walked, which was nothing surprising in the almost two years that Cassie had worked with the other agent.

Jennifer Jareau was nothing if not skilled at multitasking.

"Well, I'm the unit liaison," the blonde explained. "My specialty is untangling bureaucratic knots. You'll probably be talking to me a lot. My door's always open, probably because I'm never in my office..." Her last sentence almost seemed to be an afterthought, but Cassie thought it amusing nonetheless as the blonde continued. "So just call me on my cell, okay? We'll talk."

JJ was good at her job and was one of the most capable and fully qualified federal agents that Cassie had ever met, even if she wasn't technically a profiler. She had been a unit member for almost two years now, joining at the tail-end of 2003, and her presence when dealing with the press was a welcome addition.

Having to talk to the press while the team tried to figure out the identity of an unsub before JJ had joined the team had just been another unneeded layer of stress for the already-stretched-thin profilers, and Cassie definitely did not miss it.

Agent Quinn wasn't exactly the most skilled at keeping her cool when she was confronted, especially by nosy press reporters searching for a scoop, and because she was also the BAU's liaison when it came to communication between the Bureau and local police departments, JJ was also the one who presented each of the team's cases, regardless of if they needed to travel or were consulting from Quantico.

And judging from the look on the younger blonde's face when she cornered Hotch as the unit chief exited his office, their next case would be presented within moments.

Cassie's theory was proven a second later when Hotch and JJ both paused outside Gideon's office and alerted the senior agent (who had recently returned from his mini-break at the coffee machine) before the unit chief turned to face the rest of the BAU's bullpen.

"BAU team," Hotch began, and Cassie finally set down the file she should've been working on but hadn't done anything with ever since Elle left Gideon's office almost five minutes earlier. "Can you meet me in the conference room, please? I need to show you something."

Hotch's voice was urgent enough, and JJ's expression when she'd met him had been grave enough, that Cassie wasted no time getting up from her chair and heading up the short flight of stairs, with Morgan, Elle, and Reid all following behind her. It was less than a minute before all seven agents sat down in their various seats at the round table, and Hotch, once everyone was seated, pulled up a video file on the TV monitor bolted to the wall, the file that no doubt contained what their next case would be.

"This is from the Phoenix office," the unit chief began once they had all taken their seats. "Bradshaw College in Tempe, six fires in seven months."

As he paused, Cassie couldn't stop her eyebrows from flying up her forehead. Now, she knew life in college could sometimes get a bit crazy, and even though she'd been one of those people who'd kept her head down and just focused on school, six fires at intervals of roughly one a month was quite a bit higher than the national average if it was enough to get on the FBI's radar, and even more peculiar to get the attention of the BAU.

"Who recorded it?" Gideon asked, and JJ answered him.

"A student with a digital camcorder," the liaison explained, and Cassie glanced down at the case file in front of her that detailed what they knew so far about this most recent case as JJ continued. "He was watching a fire in the building across from their dorm. The other person you'll see is his roommate, twenty-year-old Matthew Rowland."

She grabbed the remote and pressed a button, and Cassie turned around in her chair since she'd previously had her back to the TV in the conference room and sat back as the evidentiary video began to play.

The video opened with the camcorder facing what the twenty-seven-year-old assumed were the fires that had most recently occurred. Even though the captured footage was in black and white, the light emanating from the burning building was bright enough that it must have been quite a sight to witness in person.

Voices from off-camera showcased the filming college student's awe at actually witnessing such a blaze, and he called over his roommate, Matthew. The other student appeared from the left side of the frame and pointed out the dorm room's window, gesturing at the now multiple-floor fire in the building opposite the two young men's dorm.

"Is that the kid?" Gideon's voice was quiet, and even though she was still watching the video, Cassie heard Hotch confirm with the senior agent a moment later.

"Yeah," the unit chief said. "That's him,"

The two college students continued to converse, and something glaring that Cassie noticed was that neither of them seemed particularly concerned about how big the fire had gotten. Matthew's roommate seemed a bit more concerned than his friend, voicing a brief question as to why the fire was so big, but Matthew brushed him off quickly, only for his attention to get diverted a second later to their dorm room door.

Matthew walked over to the room's entrance, and the camera turned as his roommate did, just for Cassie's stomach to drop to her feet as she saw a large puddle of...something start to flow from underneath the door, coming from the hallway outside.

Then, to top everything else wrong with a big ribbony bow, Matthew Rowland stepped into the puddle to investigate, presumably to try and see if he could figure out what it might be.

Both college students seemed confused, and their befuddlement grew when the doorknob to their room started to shake, and one of them voiced the prospect that someone else might be trying to get into their room, even though they (the two occupants of the dorm room) were already in there, and neither seemed as if they had been expecting anyone.

Suddenly, a wave of whatever liquid was already in the puddle on the floor came from under the door, and Cassie clenched her jaw as she watched Matthew turn towards his roommate, eyes wide, as he said, finally with enough clues: "It smells like gas!"

A moment later, flames erupted from atop the puddle of gasoline, and, despite the terrible analogy, because he was already standing in it, Matthew Rowland went up like a struck match. He started to scream and thrash around, obviously trying to put out the fire suddenly ravaging his body, but he was also panicking too much to make any progress. His roommate dropped the camera almost instantly and ran over to help, grabbing a blanket from one of their beds and smacking it against Matthew's body, but before long, it was apparent the other college student was dead.

Cassie managed to stop herself from shuddering in disgust at what she had just watched, especially since Matthew's roommate wasn't able to stop his recording until after he had finally stopped trying to save his friend and had come to the grotesque realization that his roommate and fellow student was dead.

The BAU saw its fair share of horrors, obviously, Cassie knew that but believe it or not, fire as a murder weapon wasn't generally something they dealt with very often, since serial killers generally chose other methods to silence their victims, and burning a human body was much harder than the general civilian thought it was.

That wasn't to say, of course, that serial killers never used fire as a weapon; they did, and the BAU had developed several profiles over the years to help local law enforcement agencies across the country catch any arsonists they might have in their own towns and cities, and not to mention pyromania (obsessive fire-setting) was just a third of the Homicidal Triad, a tool the profilers sometimes used to connect deviant behaviors to criminals that eventually grew up to commit violent crimes, such as serial murder.

Regardless of whether Matthew Rowland was the first person this particular fire-setting unsub had ever killed, Cassie knew enough that once someone got a taste for the kill, they hardly ever stopped.

☆☆☆

Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world."

Since arsonists (and serial killers) weren't exactly known for being able to control their urges, Hotch wasted no time in getting the rest of the BAU team on the jet and having them all begin the journey to Arizona, because they had absolutely no time to waste.

As they began their briefing on the plane, Cassie brought out her laptop, wanting to create a timeline of when exactly the other fires at Bradshaw had been set, and if that had any correlation to the fires (and subsequent murder) that Matthew Rowland's roommate had filmed.

Over her shoulder, the brunette heard Reid fiddling with his chessboard again, moments before the young genius spoke.

"There are two common stressors for a serial arsonist," he began, and Elle piped up with her own knowledge when Spencer paused.

"Loss of job," the other female agent explained. "And loss of love."

Cassie had spread out parts of the case file on the small table in front of her and she shuffled through the papers once she'd had the calendar list opened on her laptop, but couldn't find the sheet with the exact dates of when the previous fires had been set, which was, of course, an integral component to her building of the timeline.

"When were the other fires set?" she asked, once she had spent more than fifteen seconds trying to find the list in the unmanageable mess on her table, and Hotch answered from his seat across the plane aisle, while Morgan, from where he was sitting in the chair on the other side of Cassie's cluttered table, chuckled under his breath at his partner's brief inconvenience at the presence of paper. Cassie sent him a glare, but her partner just grinned, undeterred.

"March," the unit chief answered the younger agent, ignoring Cassie and Derek's antics and instead focusing on the case at hand. "And the next was in May. But," he added a second later as Cassie added the first two dates to her spreadsheet. "The third fire was set in September, and two weeks after that, there were three in one night."

"He's speeding up," Gideon said. "The fires are closer together."

Cassie realized that she had misjudged the dates of each fire earlier at the BAU when Hotch had said there had been six fires in seven months, and she'd thought that was way above average for a college campus. That was true, but it was even further above average when you factored in that four of the fires had been set in just one month, three in one night.

Calling it an escalation was an understatement.

"Hey, Reid," Morgan spoke up, causing the team's youngest profiler to glance at him quizzically. "You got a statistic on arsonists?"

Reid did, in fact, have a statistic on arsonists, because, of course, he did.

"82%," the genius began as he started to reorganize his chessboard again. "Are white males between the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven. Female arsonists are far less likely, their motive typically being revenge."

"Sounds like our boy's a student," Morgan posited, and Cassie looked away from her laptop screen towards her partner just as Gideon set down the crime scene photos he had been flipping through, sliding his reading glasses down his nose as he did so.

"Oh, don't be so sure," the senior agent reprimanded him. Cassie quirked an eyebrow as Morgan turned towards Gideon, and the senior agent continued his thought. "If you rely too much on precedent, you never allow for the unexpected." Gideon then looked away from Cassie and Derek and towards the others on the plane. "If he went from setting one fire to three in two weeks' time..."

Gideon trailed off, but Cassie knew what the senior agent meant to say (but didn't) because she had been thinking the same thing since she'd started to construct the timeline of when each fire had been set.

"Rapid escalation," she stated, and Gideon nodded to confirm that she was correct.

"He's gone from the power to damage a building," he explained. "To something far more satisfying...the power over life and death."

Cassie barely managed to stop herself from shuddering again as she closed her folder and set the case file back onto the table once Gideon finished speaking.

An unsub, regardless of whether or not they were actually a serial killer, who thought they were the one who ultimately held the final decision in their hands about who lived and who died, inched dangerously close to characteristics of a God Complex.

People like that were also infinitely more difficult to deal with, not just because they were unpredictable and some of the most dangerous types of criminals, but because they thought they could get away with anything, regardless of who might be looking for them.

"Who are we talking to first?" Gideon asked Hotch the question after all of them had been silent for several moments, all lost in their own thoughts, and the unit chief opened his own file folder and pulled out an information packet about Bradshaw College, the university where all of the fires had been set so far.

"Dean of Students," Hotch answered as he turned the info packet around to show the other agents a photograph of their first contact at the college. "Ellen Turner."

☆☆☆

Bradshaw College
TEMPE, ARIZONA

Since Tempe was technically an inner suburb of Phoenix, the BAU's jet landed at the airport in the state's capital, and they were delivered their federal SUVs from the local field office before they made their way east from Phoenix Sky Harbor into Tempe proper.

When they pulled up in front of one of the administration buildings on Bradshaw's campus, the first thing Cassie noticed when she stepped out of the air-conditioned SUV into the dry Arizona air was just how crowded the college campus still seemed to be. It'd be one thing, she supposed, for the campus to have still so many students back when the fires had been several months apart, and even though Matthew Rowland's death had been almost two weeks ago by now, from what the case file had said, the campus hadn't been shut down for even a single day afterward.

There was always the chance that if the campus were evacuated, the arsonist would go with the students and faculty who were fleeing and just restart his fires somewhere else, but to not even close the campus for a day to allow the students a chance to grieve?

"No badges," Gideon's matter-of-fact voice caught Cassie's attention as Elle stepped out of the SUV behind her, with Morgan holding the door open for both of them as Hotch and Reid got out of the other vehicle, and the twenty-seven-year-old turned toward the senior agent as Gideon started to make his way towards the door of the administration building and threw his next words over his shoulder to the rest of them. "I don't want to satisfy the unsub's need for attention by letting him know he got the FBI here. Try not to look official."

Gideon then stopped in his tracks, turned, and looked at the agents behind him for only a moment before he turned back around and continued on his way.

"Try to look less official."

Cassie couldn't stop herself from laughing, though when she tried to cover it up with a cough, it came out sounding more like a snort, which in turn made Derek glance at her with a single raised eyebrow, his mouth twitching into a grin.

She wasn't exactly sure how well they'd all manage not to look like law enforcement, especially with Hotch and Morgan there. Gideon and Reid could both easily pass for a college professor and student, respectively. At the same time, Cassie was sure she could pull off the persona of a late-term grad student if she really tried, with her black jeggings, flat ankle boots, and violet-colored shirt that comprised most of her in-the-field attire.

Agent Quinn definitely dressed more formally when she wasn't in the field, generally leaning towards pencil skirts, silk blouses, and platform stilettos when she worked in the office at Quantico. However, if she needed to run to catch a suspect or save a victim, pants and lower-heeled shoes obviously let her move around much more easily.

Morgan and Hotch, on the other hand, each looked as if they had stepped out of a manual for "How to Look Like a Federal Agent 101" with their dark suits, ties, and mirrored sunglasses, and their style of dress hardly ever changed when they traveled for a case, especially when you were talking about the team's unit chief.

Elle, to her credit, fell somewhere between Cassie's outfit and Morgan's.

Gideon was a man on a mission to find the Dean's Office, so with nothing else to do, Derek and Elle both removed their blazers to appear "less official", while Morgan and Hotch also took off their sunglasses, even though the Arizona sun was still blaring down on them all like a raygun.

Eventually, they caught up to the team's senior agent just as Gideon introduced himself to Dean Turner. Once introductions had been made for Cassie and the rest of the small team of profilers, Ellen led them along one of the outside walkways of Bradshaw's campus towards the dorm where Matthew Rowland had previously lived, since that was the most recent arson scene that also had the most clues left behind for them to investigate.

"Obviously," Dean Turner said as they walked. "I'd rather be meeting you under different circumstances. This is Fire Inspector Zhang," she abruptly gestured to the Chinese man who had met up with them about a minute into their walk, and had been silent until now, even though Cassie had very much been wondering who he was.

"This morning," Zhang began. "The chemistry department reported several bottles of highly flammable chemicals missing."

"I'm prepared to evacuate this campus," Ellen said as their group reached a pair of doors, and as Hotch and Gideon each pulled one of the doors open, the unit chief glanced at the administrator as he walked through the doors beside her.

"That brings with it its own set of problems," Hotch began to explain, just for Gideon to finish the rest of what Hotch didn't manage to say.

"You might evacuate the arsonist as well," the senior agent said, and even though she was walking behind the three in front, Cassie was still able to guess at the expression on Dean Turner's face when she realized what Gideon and Hotch were saying, and it was in no way a good expression.

"If the unsub gets evacuated with the rest of the student body," Cassie spoke up, causing Ellen to turn over her shoulder to look at the younger agent with scrunched eyebrows. "Obviously, the fires will stop. But," she added a second later. "You won't know the real identity of the arsonist, and when the campus is reopened, the unsub could very well just restart his fires all over again, and then you'd be right back at square one."

Dean Turner didn't really look as if she appreciated Cassie's honesty, but before she could say anything in contradiction to Agent Quinn's words, Morgan piped up from where he was walking behind the rest of them, flipping through a print-out of the timeline Cassie had made on the plane.

"Hold on a second," Cassie's partner began, and they all paused, with Cassie turning towards Derek as he, in turn, looked towards Inspector Zhang. "You said the chemicals were missing today?" Once Zhang had given a confirming nod, Morgan continued. "It says here that one of the previous fires was set with diesel fuel that disappeared from the groundskeeping facility," he looked at Zhang again. "How long after it disappeared was the fire set?"

He'd asked the question to Inspector Zhang, but Dean Turner was the one who answered, and she did so with a look of realization on her face that told Cassie that it wouldn't be long at all before the unsub struck again, and her theory was proven when the Dean spoke.

"One day."

After she'd spoken, Hotch and Gideon stepped a ways away from the rest of them, probably to figure out what their next move would be concerning this particular case, but given the ridiculous escalation that the unsub had exhibited with the three fires that he'd set in one night, along with the murder of Matthew Rowland, no doubt the unsub would strike soon.

And they'd need to be there to catch him.

Once Hotch and Gideon finished their brief conversation away from the other agents and the college's faculty members, the BAU's unit chief said he wanted to check out the dorm room where Matthew Rowland had died, to see what physical evidence could be salvaged, if any, since fire was such a brutal force of nature, along with anything else they might be able to find that could point them towards the identity of their unsub.

Cassie and Reid went with him.

Agent Quinn was the first person inside the room, with Reid following right behind as Hotch leaned against the side of the open doorway. Obviously, after the fire, Matthew's roommate had moved to a different room, but even if Rowland hadn't died the way he had, the fire itself would've rendered the dorm unlivable for either young man, simply from the state the flames had left it in.

Everything was covered in a thick layer of soot and ash, with industrial-grade worklamps, the yellow ones with a cage around the bulb to illuminate the room, since electricity to this particular dorm room had been shut off after the fire and the windows had been covered with plywood so only a needle-thin line of sunlight could get through, and that wasn't enough to see by.

It was also why Hotch left the door open when the three agents had arrived, so the light from the hallway outside could help them see. He'd also done it to air out the room because even though it had already been aired out when Zhang had first investigated this particular arson scene, Cassie could still smell the burning traces.

It wasn't a very good smell.

"Door was locked," Hotch's voice made Cassie turn around as the unit chief spoke for the first time since the three of them had arrived at the dorm room.

"Matthew Rowland and his roommate watched," Reid added. "As the doorknob turned against the lock,"

"Did the unsub pour the accelerant in here—" Cassie piped up, gesturing to the room around her. "Because he couldn't get in? I thought arsonists liked watching the fires they set."

"He wouldn't have stayed for long," Hotch said. "He wouldn't have wanted to be spotted if the alarms went off right away. And arsonists do like watching their fires," he added a moment later, nodding towards Cassie. "That's what doesn't make sense about all of this,"

The unit chief suddenly straightened up from his spot, still leaning against the doorjamb, and finally walked into the dorm room itself to join Reid and Cassie as the youngest agent among them spouted off another fact he somehow had within the deep recesses of his mind.

"Pyromania as a mental disorder may just be a simple myth," Reid began. "But we do know from precedent that serial arsonists derive...pleasure from pathological fire-setting,"

"Sex and power," Hotch said quietly, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from narrowing her eyes as she thought over everything that didn't fit what they knew about this particular arsonist compared to others they had profiled in the past.

"An arsonist who's already set five fires before killing someone wouldn't just walk away," she told Hotch and Reid after thinking it over for a few moments, and both men looked as confused about it as she felt. "He needs to experience it. And an arsonist like this won't care if a dorm room door is locked,"

"So," Reid began, crossing his arms. "Why would he set a fire he couldn't watch?"

There wasn't much in the way of physical evidence that any of them could see, and behaviorally, they weren't getting very much, aside from the arsonist seemingly not fitting any of the profilic characteristics of arsonists that Cassie had investigated previously, so for now, she, Hotch, and Reid met back up with the others in another administrator's office on campus, where it turned out, even though the three of them hadn't found any physical evidence in Matthew Rowland's dorm room, Inspector Zhang had managed to find the remnants of a device the arsonist had used to set some of the other fires.

"He turned the water off just before the fire," the Inspector explained as he set a cardboard box on the table that the profilers had crowded themselves around and opened it to reveal something that Cassie was assuming were the fire-setting devices, but which now didn't look like much else other than clumps of melted plastic. "The last three fires were set with these. Two devices, simultaneous ignition,"

"There was no device used with Matthew Rowland," Gideon stated matter-of-factly from where he was leaning against another table away from the rest of his team, arms crossed. "Unsub set that one manually?"

Zhang nodded, and Gideon stood up, removing his reading glasses from the breast pocket of his button-down shirt as he walked over to the table where Cassie, the other profilers, Inspector Zhang, and Dean Turner were all standing around.

Cassie was standing in front of Morgan, and when Gideon walked over, he stepped in front of her. As she heard her partner speak from behind her, Cassie glanced at the senior agent as Gideon turned his head over his shoulder to look at the two of them.

"He wanted to be there," Derek began, shrugging. "To enjoy the kid's death,"

"But he didn't do that," Cassie corrected her partner. "The dorm room door was locked, and there's no way the unsub would've been able to witness Rowland's death, unless he just kept standing in front of the door, but that would just raise suspicion to anyone else who might be outside in the hallway,"

"That's if Rowland even was the target," Elle added, and this time, Agent Quinn glanced towards the other agent. "Why set the other two fires that night if you wanted to just kill one person?"

"Divert suspicion, maybe?" Cassie posited. "Make it look as if Rowland's death was an accident? The unsub couldn't possibly have known his roommate would be filming the other two fires,"

"Possibly..." Reid trailed off, and Cassie's attention was rerouted to him as the youngest profiler spoke his mind. "But, motives for arson are relatively simple. There's vandalism, crime concealment, political statement, profit..."

Spencer trailed off again, only for Hotch to say the final arsonist motive that Reid didn't have a chance to explain, and it was by far the most vicious of all five, at least in a place like this, with only one victim dead as far as they could tell, and also since nothing on Bradshaw's campus screamed "political target", no offense to the education prowess of the institution.

"And revenge," The unit chief's voice was grave, and Inspector Zhang looked over at him, eyebrows scrunched.

"We interviewed Matthew Rowland's roommate," the fire inspector told him a few moments later. "He said Matthew was very well-liked. No reason for revenge,"

"What about vandalism?" Dean Turner asked, but Cassie shook her head.

"No, these fires are way too sophisticated," she said, crossing her arms as she watched Elle lean over the box containing the burnt ignition devices as if the other woman wanted to study the two objects more closely. "And if the arsonist wants to make a political statement, he's being more than vague about what his so-called 'cause' might be, or what his endgame is, if he even has one."

"There's an underlying strategy in this case," Gideon added as he joined Elle at the box, reading glasses sliding halfway down his nose before the senior agent grabbed one of the half-melted ignition devices. "Matthew, firefighters, injured victims. To the unsub, they're not people, they're..."

"They're objects," Hotch murmured as Gideon trailed off, and the senior agent tilted his head to the side in a sort of so-so motion.

"More like—" Whatever he'd been about to say next was cut off as Reid snapped his head up, seemingly as if he had just realized something profound.

"Chess pieces," the youngest agent said suddenly, and though Cassie thought that was a strange analogy, Gideon nodded his head, silently saying Reid had gotten it right on the nose.

☆☆☆

There wasn't much else they could glean from the remains of the ignition devices at that time, so after they had examined them as best they could, the team of profilers diverged to investigate and follow other potential leads, of which there were few. It was also how Cassie found herself returning with Derek to the dormitory where Matthew Rowland had lived with his roommate before his death.

This time, though, they weren't investigating the room where Matthew had died, and rather the building itself, to see what could've possibly made the arsonist choose this building to ignite, rather than any other of the numerous dormitories or different buildings on campus.

The dormitory itself was in the shape of a very tall cylinder, with each room surrounding an open, circular atrium that had chain-hung planters dangling from the railings of the upper floors. All in all, it was a nice-looking building, even though Cassie could still see the charred doorway that indicated the room Matthew Rowland had lived in before his death.

The building had also been completely evacuated after the fire, for both the health of the remaining students and their peace of mind, so Cassie and Morgan were alone as they walked along the outside corridor/walkway, and despite everything, the silence was almost...calming.

Almost, because they were still trying to catch an unsub who could set another fire at any moment, and that was more than enough to exacerbate the twenty-seven-year-old's anxiety.

"Alright," Morgan's voice drew the brunette from her thoughts, and Cassie glanced over at her partner as he lightly rapped his knuckles on the top of the railing that stopped the two of them from accidentally falling to the concrete ground two floors below them. "I want to set a dormitory on fire. Where would I start?"

Derek was role-playing again, putting himself into the shoes of the unsub to see if he could figure out what exactly it was that had made the arsonist do the things he had done, and Cassie had been witness to it several times over the last three years. She stood a few feet away from him now, holding the case file in her grasp as she let her partner do his thing.

"The basement, maybe?" she posited when Morgan had been silent for a little while, thinking. "Heat rises, so the higher floors of the building would be the fuel for the fire...literally,"

"But, he didn't do that," Derek said, and he took the case file for Matthew Rowland's death from Cassie. "He started on the third floor, not the basement. I mean," he added a second later. "Maybe the burning upper levels would damage the structural integrity of the building enough to bring the top down, but there are easier ways to bring it down than starting a fire halfway up."

"What if Matthew Rowland was a target the night he died?" Cassie asked, a sudden, sick feeling erupting in her gut. No more calmness for her, it seemed. "I mean, think about it," she continued when Morgan glanced at her quizzically. "Rowland and his roommate's room is the only room in this entire dormitory that was set on fire; you'd think if the unsub wanted the entire building to burn, he'd start more fires to make it quicker."

"Maybe Rowland wasn't as well-liked as Inspector Zhang said he was," Morgan said, crossing his arms over his chest before leaning his back against the railing.

If Cassie had been right in her assessment earlier, that the arsonist had set the other two fires the night Matthew Rowland had been killed as a way to divert suspicion from the college student's identity as a target for the unsub's wrath, that meant that, considering the other fires the arsonist had set before Matthew had been killed, this was only the beginning.

"That's not good," she said finally, unintentionally stating the obvious, and Derek let out a deep breath, gripping onto the railing.

"No," he agreed with her. "No, it's not."

For the sake of covering all of their bases, Cassie and Morgan went down to the basement of the dormitory building, just to see if there really wasn't anything relating to the arsonist down there, and if it proved their budding theory about Matthew Rowland and his third-floor dorm being the real target of that night's third fire.

As it turned out, the basement was unremarkable in terms of any evidence whatsoever, so the two agents took their leave after only twenty minutes underground, beginning the walk back up to the dry Arizona autumn, but as she walked ahead of Derek up the stairs that led out of the basement, Cassie froze in her tracks, sudden enough that Morgan bumped into her, when she heard the blaring noise of a fire alarm coming from somewhere nearby, and smelled the acrid tang of smoke.

She sprinted up the last couple of stairs towards the ground floor, spinning around to see that a building a few doors down the street from the dormitory where Matthew Rowland had lived was the one on fire this time, with students and faculty already streaming out in a panicked mass as a dark, choking black smoke billowed out the windows.

"Quinn, Morgan!" Cassie turned her head to see Elle jogging from the other direction. The other female agent looked panicked, which was already not a good sign. "Have you seen Gideon? He ran this way when we heard the alarms!"

Cassie's heart jumped into her throat, and before Derek could stop her, and ignoring his attempts to do so, she took off running, sprinting away from him and Elle and across the asphalt and grass towards the burning building, ignoring the burning sensation that came from the smoke getting in her eyes, and focusing instead on navigating her way past the terrified, fleeing college students and faculty.

Abruptly, Cassie realized that she didn't actually know where Gideon was, or even where the fire was, since the smoke was coming out of so many windows all at once, and the building was way too big, the students running away too hysterical, for her to pull one aside and ask them, but a sudden hand on her elbow made the brunette startle, only for her to turn and see Morgan, her partner obviously having followed her when she'd taken off.

Cassie didn't see Elle and hoped the new agent was back on the ground floor, directing students to safety and not where the two of them were, jumping into danger. How shitty would it be for the team's newest agent to die less than a week into her tenure with them?

"Third floor," the older man said through a cough, and the two of them ran up the stairs, Cassie's adrenaline jacked up too much for the twenty-seven-year-old to think too much about how much her calf muscles would hurt the next day. She was more in shape than the average person—you had to be to do this job—and had run track in high school and recreationally in college, but she wasn't a god.

The third floor, it seemed, was also where the fire was actually coming from, since the smoke was so much thicker up here that Cassie was practically running blind, her throat burning and eyes starting to water from the smoke in the air.

Cassie and Morgan finally found Gideon standing in front of the smashed window of an office, using a fire extinguisher to try and put out the flames, but the fire was already raging too high for the senior agent to do much good, and as Derek grabbed Gideon to try and drag him away and get him outside and to safety, Cassie could see a body slumped over the desk in the room, already burned so badly she knew whoever it had been was no longer alive.

Gideon struggled the entire way back to the building's stairwell, but the three of them managed to get off the burning floor before any of them got injured any further, but as soon as they were down a flight of stairs and away from the smoke, Gideon was throwing Morgan off and almost running back up the stairs.

Cassie managed to sidestep to block her mentor's way as Derek grabbed him again to hold him back, but the look on Gideon's face when Morgan pulled him back down the stairs would be enough to give the twenty-seven-year-old nightmares for days.

"It was a teacher!" he exclaimed, still struggling against Morgan, and this time, Derek turned around to brace his arm against Gideon's chest.

"Let it go!" he retorted, sharper than he would usually speak to an agent who outranked him in the Bureau, so Cassie knew that Derek was saying it in a way that would get into Gideon's head. "He's already dead! Let it go,"

Gideon's face fell, and he finally stopped struggling, slumping against the railing and allowing Morgan to step away.

Once she knew for sure that Gideon wasn't going to try and run back up the stairs to try and save the professor that had died in the fire this time, Cassie slumped back against the wall of the stairwell, coughing hard enough that her throat hurt more from that than the smoke actually affecting her.

Sirens from below alerted the young profiler to the arrival of campus police, paramedics, and the fire department, and the only good thing, Cassie supposed, about the arsonist's presence at Bradshaw would be emergency services and their stellar response time.

Obviously, though, even Gideon's efforts weren't enough to save the teacher.

As the three of them finally made their way to the ground floor with the rest of the fleeing students and surviving faculty, and the emergency crew, specifically the firefighters, began their own efforts to put out the blaze, Cassie thankfully saw Elle standing across the street with Hotch and Reid, and she also saw the team's unit chief say something to their newest agent, moments before Elle took out her digital camera and, as inconspicuously as possible, take as many pictures of the rapidly-growing crowd of onlookers as she could.

Right, Cassie realized as she coughed again. The arsonist could still be here. To watch.

The brunette felt Derek press a hand to her back as they paused against the outside wall of the burning building, far enough away from the smoke that the two of them were both finally able to try and catch their breath, though Cassie's throat was still scratched raw enough that she almost thought she should go to the hospital to get checked out by a medical professional, and make sure the smoke wasn't aggravating some worse health issue.

The arsonist had struck again, and he had killed again, and the BAU was still no closer to finding out his identity than they had been when they'd arrived in Arizona. Overall, not a very stellar work experience so far, and now another person was dead.

If the unsub continued on this trajectory, now that he'd gotten a taste of how it felt to kill two people, more people would die in his fires before this case was over.

☆☆☆

As the Arizona afternoon sank quickly into evening, and then later night, Cassie's adrenaline from running to the burning building hours earlier to save Gideon had effectively crashed, and the twenty-seven-year-old was, by now, absolutely exhausted.

The paramedics had checked out Morgan, Gideon, and Cassie herself as firefighters put out the fire, along with checking out the rest of the students and faculty who had fled from the building once it started to burn. Luckily, none of them had any lasting effects from the smoke inhalation, and aside from all three agents being covered in a thin layer of soot, they'd each been given a clean bill of health to continue the investigation at Bradshaw College.

Hotch, though, had sent them all back to the hotel to change first before he'd let them start working again. While refreshing, the shower Cassie had taken in her room hadn't quite been able to get the entirety of the burning building smell out of her hair. Even though she was wearing clean clothes, changing into a new pair of jeans and shoes and swapping her silk blouse for cotton, Cassie swore she could still smell smoke every time she moved.

And, she was moving now, walking through one of Bradshaw College's administrative buildings on her way to find Gideon, again, though this time, it wasn't with as much urgency as it'd been when Elle had told her the senior agent was one of the people inside the burning building.

She knew where he was now. He was talking to Dean Turner again, finding out the identity of the professor Gideon had tried to save, since it had been that man's office that had been set on fire, and if Matthew Rowland had been a target when he had died, maybe the professor had been one too. Dean Turner was sitting at her desk when Cassie finally reached her office, with Gideon sitting in a chair on the other side of the thick wooden desk, back against the wall.

"Gideon?" she asked quietly, so as not to spook the senior agent. He seemed fine, but it had only been a week since he'd returned from medical leave, and she didn't want to inadvertently send him into a spiral, especially given the day's recent events.

Thankfully, when Gideon turned to look at her, his gaze was clear, and he seemed engaged with the conversation, which was something on the positive side.

"Yes, Cassidy," he began. "What is it?"

"Campus police and security are working their way through interviews," she explained. "They're going to try and see if anyone who was in that building before and during the fire could remember anything that might lead us to the unsub."

Gideon nodded, as a way to show Cassie that he'd heard what she'd said and understood it, before the senior agent turned to Dean Turner, leaning forward in his seat and rubbing his hands together.

"How long will it take to finish evacuating the campus?" he asked her, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from looking at the school's dean as the older woman thought it over.

After the professor's death, Dean Turner had finally solidified on her decision to, as a way to keep anyone else from potentially dying at the hands of the arsonist, close Bradshaw's campus for good, at least until the case was solved or the unsub went dormant for long enough that they could reopen.

Cassie still thought that wasn't really the best course of action, since Cassie herself had said earlier that day that the arsonist could very well get evacuated with the other students and then just start setting fires again once the campus opened back up, but Gideon and Hotch had both agreed with the Dean in the end, and so the twenty-seven-year-old had been vetoed.

"Agent Gideon, Agent Quinn," Dean Turner said finally, glancing between both Gideon and Cassie before she continued. "This is a college of ten thousand students and faculty, and-"

"Size of the student body isn't your only problem," Cassie interrupted the older woman, crossing her arms and making both Gideon and Dean Turner turn and stare at her. "You could evacuate the arsonist, or the evacuation could accelerate his timeline, and he'll set more fires before everyone is gone, and someone else could die."

Dean Turner looked stricken, and while Cassie didn't mean to make the older woman more upset than she obviously already was, she'd needed to say it, because she didn't want the arsonist to get evacuated, stop his fires on-campus, and then have the dean call the BAU back in however many months it'd be when the campus reopened and the fires started up again.

She was just being realistic.

A heavy sigh from Gideon made the brunette flick her gaze to the senior agent, just as Gideon rubbed his palms over the top of his thighs before he stood to his feet and turned towards Cassie.

"Let's round everybody up," he told her firmly, and his voice was stern enough that Cassie didn't hesitate before she turned and left the Dean's office, with Gideon following.

She'd had to bypass another student on her way out of the office, but Cassie didn't pay much attention as she pushed open the door leading into the hallway. The other profilers in the BAU had been either recovering from the fire (in Morgan's case) or going through the pictures that Elle had taken and later printed out of the crowd who had surrounded the building as it burned.

The team had made their temporary HQ in one of Bradshaw's security rooms, taking up the half of the room that wasn't covered in screens showing the feed from the various security cameras around campus, and while the room was a bit cramped with all six of them in there, Cassie had been in worse conditions while working a case, so she couldn't really complain.

As it turned out, though, Morgan, Hotch, Reid, and Elle hadn't been having much luck in figuring out who could be the arsonist, just from judging their expressions in Elle's photos. Arsonists liked to watch their "handiwork", and Hotch had told Elle when she'd begun taking photos to focus on anyone who looked a bit too interested in the flames, but so far, nothing.

Morgan, it seemed, had reached his limit.

"We've been at this all night," Derek said as he tossed down a small stack of photos he'd been flipping through back onto the table, leaning back in his chair and stretching his arms out behind his head before continuing. "And we've got nothing. I mean, look at these expressions." Cassie's partner stood up from his chair and walked around the table, gesturing with one hand to the entire array of photographs that had been spread across the table. "We got fear, a touch of horror, even a little bit of panic. But...where's the guy getting off?"

"When asked about his motives," Reid piped up from where he was sitting in front of a boxy computer a few feet away from the photo table. "Peter Dinsdale said, 'I am devoted to fire. Fire is my master.'"

Creepy was the first word that came to Cassie's mind when she heard that, and she massaged the spot between her eyebrows as Morgan walked over to the bulletin board the BAU had poked with their scant evidence files when they'd taken over this room as their temporary HQ.

"Okay," he said slowly. "So, who's our boy's 'master'?" Derek took a lighter out of his pocket, and in the back of her mind, Cassie wondered where he'd gotten it, since as far as she knew, Derek Morgan didn't smoke.

He was about as thrilled about smoking as she was about drinking. That is to say, not at all.

"Ten-thousand-plus students," Morgan continued, his voice quieter than before as he flicked the lighter on for a moment before turning around to face Cassie and the rest of the profilers. "And one has a serious fascination with fire."

Elle was standing over at the whiteboard easel the team had set up, hurriedly scribbling down notes as the profilers spouted off ideas, and Cassie, who was currently trying to alleviate a burgeoning tension/exhaustion-induced headache, opened her eyes again as Morgan walked away from the bulletin board to stand behind her chair.

"Starting fires," the twenty-seven-year-old began, staring up at the tiled ceiling. "Is also a third of the homicidal triad, an early predictor of dissociative criminal behavior in adults. Given this guy's behavior," she crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, tilting her head again to look at her colleagues. "We'd probably find the other two, bed-wetting and cruelty to animals, if we started looking into this unsub's childhood,"

"Absent or abusive father," Gideon added as he pushed off from where he'd been leaning on the counter on the opposite side of the room. "Trouble with the opposite sex, chronic low self-esteem. The M.O. will be dynamic, evolving. Fire-setting escalates. They thrive on panic, fear...it's the standard profile of a serial arsonist,"

"Based on hundreds of interviews," Reid said.

"And based on precedent," Morgan added, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from throwing her head backward again, considering that was exactly what Gideon had not wanted them to focus on when they'd begun investigating this case.

And yet, here they were.

"Everything the unsub should be," Elle's voice made Cassie bring her head up to look at the team's newest agent, who looked a bit disconcerted in her spot over by the whiteboard. "According to research."

"We're off the mark," Hotch stated, and Gideon gave the unit chief a single nod of agreement.

"Because of two missing elements," the senior agent began, and Morgan tilted his head.

"Sex and power," Cassie's partner said, before glancing at the rest of them as he rested his hands on the back of Cassie's chair. "The two motives that drive a serial arsonist,"

"Without them," Gideon continued, his facial expression turning grave. "We do not have a profile."

☆☆☆

When Cassie and Gideon had left Dean Turner's office before the meeting in the security room, Agent Quinn had almost run into a student who had been coming into the Dean's office. At the time, the twenty-seven-year-old hadn't thought too much about it, she'd been too focused on getting back to the others.

As it turned out, that student had been one of the chemistry research students staying on campus, and allegedly, he and his research partners knew how Professor Wallace, the teacher who'd been killed in the most recent campus fire, had been set on fire by the unsub. Now, even though it was close to midnight, Cassie (still exhausted and with her headache progressively worsening) was in the chemistry lab with Hotch, Reid, and Inspector Zhang, waiting to see whatever Jeremy (the student) and his peers had found out.

They hadn't started interviewing the students yet, but they were due to start soon. Before they did, though, Hotch walked around the side of the lab station to where Reid was fiddling with a light bulb and lowered his voice to a whisper so the still-studying students wouldn't overhear.

"Since you're more their age," the unit chief began, and Reid glanced at him with his eyebrows scrunched. "Why don't you do the talking?"

Reid couldn't have looked more shocked if Hotch had slapped him, and to be honest, Cassie was feeling the same way.

She was leaning against the classroom wall near the door next to Inspector Zhang, but was still close enough to the lab station to overhear Hotch's words and was sufficiently shocked at what he'd said.

Reid was undoubtedly a qualified agent and probably the most intelligent person Cassie had ever met, and even though he was closest to the college students' age and definitely looked like one, he wasn't exactly what the brunette would call...socially competent. She'd worked with him for over a year now, and as far as she knew, without meaning to be rude, Cassie didn't know if Reid had any friends outside of their little team of profilers.

But, with Hotch having put him on the spot, and the clock ticking down before the unsub inevitably set his next fire, Reid couldn't exactly say no.

So, the young genius did as the unit chief had asked, and with a soft clearing of his throat, looked out over the lab station towards the college students who, by now, were all staring at the agent expectantly. As Hotch paused beside her, Cassie glanced at the older agent, arms crossed over her chest and a single eyebrow raised.

"You sure it was a good idea?" she asked, and Hotch turned towards her. "Throwing Reid to the wolves?"

"He'll be fine," Hotch answered firmly, and though Cassie was skeptical, it was too late to change the unit chief's plan, so instead, the twenty-seven-year-old leaned back against the wall again and watched as Reid introduced himself.

"H-Hi, guys," the twenty-three-year-old started off with a brief stutter, and Cassie couldn't help but mentally wince. "I'm Dr. Spencer Reid. I'm a, uh, an agent with the BAU—Behavioral Analysis Unit—of the FBI. Which, uh..." Reid trailed off as he walked around the side of the lab station to stand closer to the research students at their desks. He started gesturing with his hands, a sure sign he was nervous. "Used to be called the BSU—Behavioral Science Unit—but not anymore, they changed it to the BAU. Uh, it's part of the NCAVC, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which is also part of this thing called the CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group, and..."

Reid was starting to ramble, and while Cassie knew that Hotch probably wouldn't be exactly pleased with her cutting into Reid's presentation, poor Spencer would get eaten alive by the research students if any of them opened their mouths.

So, she interrupted him.

"What Dr. Reid is trying to say," she cut in once Reid had momentarily paused to breathe. "Is one of you told Dean Turner earlier today that you figured out how Professor Wallace died, and now we want to know what it is."

It was more curt than she should've said, but Cassie had already spoken, so it was too late to take her words back now. She could also feel Hotch's eyes burning into the back of her head, but she'd worked with the unit chief long enough that she hoped Hotch liked her well enough not to get too mad about her interrupting Reid, who, by the way, looked thrilled at not having to speak anymore.

For a few moments, the chemistry students just stared at her, and Cassie wondered if maybe she'd been a little bit too rude, but before she could psych herself out about it too much, Jeremy—the student who'd originally alerted Dean Turner to his and his peers' idea about how Professor Wallace had died—stood up from his lab station and walked over to the three federal agents.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing to Reid's light bulb, and the twenty-three-year-old handed it over without a word, even though he looked a bit confused. "See this?" he asked, holding up the light bulb, before pointing his index finger at one side of the bulging light bulb. "Drill a hole in the side, fill it with gasoline or whatever's good and flammable? Turn the light on, and boom,"

Cassie couldn't stop herself from glancing at Hotch and Reid once the college student had paused, only to see both men looking about as contemplative as she felt. Jeremy, on the other hand, seemed to be the type of guy who was smart, knew it, and acted like it, because he looked at the three of them again a moment later and tilted his head to the side.

"That is what went down, didn't it?" he asked, and maybe it was just Cassie's general annoyance about men and their egos, but what if Jeremy was the unsub?

A chemistry student would be able to figure out how to arm the ignition devices that had caused the first couple of fires, and obviously, he knew how to make a light bulb bomb like the one that had killed Professor Wallace. She had no proof, and the last thing they needed was to arrest the wrong person for the crimes, but he definitely went on the list of potential suspects, if only because sometimes, serial killers liked to inject themselves into the investigation to see how much the authorities really knew about their crimes, like Slessman and Vogel had in Seattle.

And, coming to the profilers with a significant lead concerning how one of the victims had died would definitely count as an injection into an investigation...that is, if Jeremy was the unsub.

"This stuff's all over the 'net," one of Jeremy's classmates spoke up from the back of the room, a diminutive girl with light brown hair who was one of the three female students in the room. "Want to know how to make a Molotov cocktail that sets itself on fire?" She began to count off the ingredients for said self-igniting cocktail as Cassie made her way over to the girl's lab station with Hotch, Reid, and Inspector Zhang. "Potassium, sulfur, and normal sugar. Sugar," she continued. "Sugar, which is--"

"Not exactly plutonium," Jeremy cut his classmate off, which in turn brought Cassie's attention back to him as the college student shrugged nonchalantly. "You could get this stuff anywhere."

"Sugar from the supermarket," his classmate piped up again, only for Hotch, who was standing between Cassie and Reid, to tilt his head.

"But," the unit chief began. "You don't need to be a chem major to know that."

Cassie rotated her shoulders as she realized that, yeah, if all the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail could be found on Google, that made their efforts into finding the unsub infinitely more difficult, because Hotch was right, you didn't have to be a chemistry student to use the internet.

Almost anyone could follow a list of directions.

Well, shit.

"Do you think it's a chemistry student?" Inspector Zhang asked the students, and again, Jeremy answered.

"You want to know what I think?" Jeremy asked, before walking back towards Reid with the light bulb still in his grasp. "I think--" he held the light bulb to his forehead, as if he had an idea before he finally gave the light bulb back to Reid. "It'd be a good time to take the semester off."

There wasn't much else Jeremy or his peers could tell Cassie and the other profilers that they didn't already know, and because it was now nearing 1 am, Hotch decided to call the night there, because even though all of the profilers were used to keeping long hours, they would be of no use to the remaining students and faculty at Bradshaw if they all passed out from exhaustion.

Cassie had no reason to argue with that logic.

As the four of them stepped into the elevator with Jeremy, who was also ending his day, Hotch pressed the button that would take them back to the ground floor, but even though the button buzzed, to show that Hotch had, in fact, pressed it, the elevator didn't start moving.

Cassie stared at the panel for a moment, wondering what was going on because a broken elevator was the absolute last thing she needed right now, on top of everything else, but before she could freak out, Jeremy pulled a key from his pocket and inserted it into a key hole that was located at the top of the button panel.

"You need a key to get it started after 10 pm," the college student explained smugly to Hotch as the elevator, thankfully, began to move, but the unit chief's facial expression remained stoic as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

"So what are you still doing here?" Hotch asked, and Jeremy tilted his head, looking downright offended.

"I can't leave," he scoffed, and Cassie, from where she was standing next to Reid behind Hotch and Jeremy, raised an eyebrow again. "We've all got projects. You know how to solve the Three Body Problem?"

Hotch just stared at Jeremy, but Cassie saw Reid start nodding his head from her peripheral vision as Jeremy continued.

"Computing the mutual gravitational interaction between the Earth, Sun, and Moon?"

Hotch continued to stare at Jeremy, while Cassie realized that Jeremy had to either be minoring or have a double major in something other than Chemistry, because she wasn't entirely sure how The Three Body Problem, a common component for advanced physics/astrodynamics and classical mechanics, had absolutely anything to do with Chemistry.

Three Body Problem aside, the twenty-seven-year-old Agent Quinn was now even more tired than she'd been before her, Hotch's, and Reid's conversation with Jeremy and his classmates, and once the elevator doors opened onto the ground floor of the Chemistry Building, the brunette was the first one out, eager to get back to the hotel (for the second time that day), and finally, finally get some much needed rest.

Hopefully, no more fires would be set before the sun came up.

☆☆☆

As well-rested as they could all be, given the situation, and thankfully, without anymore crime scenes, the BAU returned to Bradshaw's campus at first light, and the first thing Cassie did when she got there was sit down with her colleagues to listen to a very strange (in JJ and Garcia's words) tip that had come into the hotline the day before, though Garcia had only noticed it after the agents who were in Arizona had all gone to bed.

The first thing Cassie noticed when Garcia played the call recording was that...it was strange. Obviously, most FBI tip hotlines weren't only used for genuine tips on whatever incident they'd been set up for, and were often inundated with prank calls and bogus pieces of information from civilians with either too much free time or those who weren't huge fans of the federal government, and wanted agents chasing their tails.

But the entire reason the agents might end up chasing their tails from a potentially fake tip is that they had to treat each one as potentially real, and even then, this call was weirder than most.

"Karen..." the very obviously mechanically distorted voice echoed from the speakers as the profilers gathered around the computer to listen to it, and Cassie couldn't stop her eyes from narrowing in concentration. "I do this for Karen..."

"Is he saying Karen?" Cassie asked Morgan, who'd been the one to originally get the call from Garcia and JJ (who'd also stayed behind in Quantico) about this weird snippet on the tipline.

If the unsub was setting all of these fires and killing people, all to impress a girl...yeah, Cassie was sure she'd never truly understand people like them, even if it was her job to get inside their heads.

Derek, to his credit, just shrugged.

"I don't know," he answered. "But, this came from the office right next to Wallace's five minutes before the fire started."

"Well, then," Cassie added. "Either someone's playing a super sick and coincidental joke, or this has to be from the unsub."

Morgan tilted his head in a way to silently say that his younger partner might've gotten it right on the nose, but Gideon, who was sitting across the table from the two of them, just closed his eyes and tilted his head closer to the speakers.

"Play it again," he said, and Morgan clicked 'play' on the recording, just as the 'Karen, I do this for Karen' call came through the speakers once more.

As she listened to the call for a second time, Cassie narrowed her eyes. It sure sounded like whoever had made the call was saying "Karen", but the pronunciation on the name was just ever so slightly off, and with the mechanical distortion stopping any of the profilers from actually hearing if the caller had an accent, and was pronouncing the name differently, or if Karen wasn't what was being said at all.

Like she'd said, the call was strange.

"Again," Gideon repeated, slightly straightening in his chair. "Louder."

Cassie was the closest one out of her and Morgan to the speakers, and she leaned forward, spinning the dial for the volume before she actually turned the speakers around towards Gideon so the sound would go towards him instead of her and Derek.

The recording came through a third time, and Gideon grew a crease between his eyebrows, enough of a change in his facial expression that Hotch noticed it too from where the unit chief was leaning against the counter behind Cassie.

"What is it?" he asked, but Gideon shook his head.

"I'm not sure," the senior agent admitted finally. "Something about it,"

"I hear it too," Cassie added, twisting around in her seat to look at Hotch. "Something's off about the pronunciation of Karen, but other than that..." she trailed off for a moment. "I don't know,"

Hotch's face turned pensive before he turned to Morgan.

"Is this tape clean?" he asked, and judging from her partner's momentary facial twitch, Cassie didn't think Derek was actually sure about that.

So, he did what he always did when he had a technological problem Cassie couldn't solve. He called Garcia.

Cassie could generally do most of what the team's technical analyst could, and finding information online had been part of her job before Garcia had joined the team. Still, the brunette would be lying if she said she missed the double-duty of being both a profiler and the team's resident computer geek.

She was more than happy now to leave the hacking skills to Penelope unless there was no other option. She was stressed enough from this job as it was.

"I can put it through some audio filters," the perky blonde offered once Morgan had started the video call between him, the tech analyst, and Cassie. The rest of the BAU team had dispersed from the table they'd all been gathered around a few minutes before, if only to give Derek, Cassie, and Penelope space, but Agent Quinn could see Reid across the room in the section that held all the camera feeds, so it wasn't like anyone was too far away.

"Look," Morgan said, firmly, but not unkindly, because he was never unkind to Garcia. "We need as close to the real voice as you can get, and anything that might be in the background. Can you do it?"

Cassie, who was sitting sideways on another chair between Morgan and the wall, flicked her gaze to her partner at his comment and raised an eyebrow, and even Garcia looked a bit offended at the implication that she might not be able to do something.

"Okay," the technical analyst spoke up a moment later, once she'd gotten over her momentary shock. "You know how on Star Trek when Captain Kirk asks McCoy to do something totally impossible, and McCoy says 'Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a miracle worker.'?"

"You saying you can't do it?" Cassie asked, semi-rhetorically, as she leaned against the armrest of her chair and crossed her arms, and, if possible, Garcia looked even more offended than she had when Morgan had unintentionally implied she might not be good at her job.

"No," Penelope retorted, though her grin belayed any actual animosity she might've felt towards the two profilers. "I'm saying I'm not a doctor."

☆☆☆

Garcia was good at her job (obviously). However, it would still take her a while to clean up the hotline call enough for the team to find out whether or not the caller had really been saying "Karen" instead of something else, so in the meantime, with the others working other angles of the case, Cassie and Morgan had Dean Turner print out brief descriptions of every single Karen on campus, just in case that was what the arsonist had been saying on the call this entire time.

The list, which Ellen had printed out as individual sheets for each young woman, was...dreadfully long.

"These," the older woman said as she grabbed the final profile from her office printer and handed the entire stack to Cassie, which, much like Elle's stack of files from JJ back at Quantico, was a few inches high. "Are all the women on campus with the first name Karen."

Cassie momentarily flipped through the stack, briefly counting just how many students she and Derek would have to interview, but she lost count once she hit seventy-five.

"Who knew Karen was such a common name?" she asked, not actually expecting an answer as she handed the stack off to her partner, and Morgan glanced at her, the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smirk.

"For students born in the mid-to-late eighties?" he began. "I'd say Top 100."

Cassie reeled backward, genuinely shocked.

"How do you know that?" she asked, but Derek just laughed. "Why do you know that?"

He wouldn't give the twenty-seven-year-old a straight answer, which made Cassie very annoyed, but they did still have to figure out whether or not one particular Karen on campus had an ex- or current boyfriend who was a pyromanic murderer, so for the time being, the brunette dampened her curiosity about her partner's sudden vested interest into how popular baby names were for the last twenty years, and had Dean Turner send out a mass announcement asking all of the Karens on Bradshaw's campus to come into the administration building where the BAU had holed themselves up in order to be interviewed.

The first couple interviews, once all of the Karens had lined up outside the security room, went okay, in terms of the girls being eager to help, even if Cassie and Morgan didn't actually get anywhere in terms of who might have a connection to the arsonist, and the longer the interviews went on, the more Cassie's patience started to fray.

After the seventh Karen had left the room, and Cassie and Derek had already been interviewing the students for over an hour, Agent Quinn decided that she and her partner deserved a break, so she shut the door to the security office before allowing the next Karen to enter.

"That," she said as she plopped down into one of the folding chairs around the foldable card table she and Morgan had been using for the interviews, and threw her hands up in the air in frustration. "Was Karen #7!"

Morgan, thankfully, was getting just as annoyed by their lack of progress as Cassie was, so at least the younger agent knew she wasn't being that much of a buzzkill when it came to their lack of headway.

"You know, there's got to be a faster way to do this," Derek said as he rubbed the top of his head in frustration before tossing his pen and case file down onto the table. "How about we just change the first question to 'Have you recently dated a homicidal pyromaniac?'"

"Oh yeah," Cassie retorted good-naturedly. "Because I'm sure most college girls would just know that."

Morgan just shrugged before Cassie sighed again and leaned back to look at the room's ceiling. So far, the Karens had been more or less helpful, even if they hadn't known anything about any of their boyfriends setting a bunch of fires and who might be creepily obsessed with them, or any other students who were creepily obsessed with them.

There were two or three students that Cassie had interviewed who were a little too fascinated concerning the arsonist's motives, which was...concerning, but Morgan had noted down the girls' names and would be telling Dean Turner when the two profilers were finally done with all of the Karens, if only so the Dean could figure out a best course of action.

"Speaking of questions..." Cassie spoke up a minute later, causing Derek to glance at her questioningly as Agent Quinn fiddled with the corner of one of the multitude of remaining Karen profiles. "Have you figured out yet what Gideon knew about the Footpath Killer's stutter?"

It was something that had been tickling the back of Cassie's mind, really ever since Elle had questioned the rest of them about it back at Quantico, but the brunette had been so focused on the current case she hadn't actually had any time to ask her partner about it since they'd gotten to Arizona.

"Uh oh," he grinned, and leaned back slightly in his chair as he folded his arms behind his head. "Elle's gotten into your head, Angel. And, by the way," Derek added. "I have not. What have you figured out?"

"Well," she began. "There's the obvious: embarrassment and other stressful emotions. But," Cassie continued, and Morgan's eyebrows rose higher and higher up his forehead. "When someone is flustered, it is notoriously harder to control the articulatory musculature of your face, which is how some people tell when others are lying."

For a few seconds, all Derek did was stare at his younger partner, and for a brief moment, Cassie thought that maybe she'd started to sound a bit too much like Reid with all the technical jargon, but finally he lowered his eyebrows from the shocked expression they had been in and sat up straight in his chair.

"Some people?" he reiterated, this time tilting his head slightly to the side. "But, not you?"

"Come on, Chicago," Cassie told him, finally standing up from her chair and returning to the door of the security room to let in the next Karen, since the two agents had been 'taking a break' for long enough. "You know that's my superpower."

She opened the door and gestured for Karen #8 to enter the room, and as the younger woman did so, Cassie shut the door behind her to give the three of them some privacy, and she also looked over the top of Karen #8's head (the student couldn't have been taller than 5'1"), back towards Morgan.

"Superpower or not," she said, and Derek glanced at her quizzically again as he got the interview notes ready for the most recent Karen. "I still don't know what causes a stutter."

It wasn't the absolute end of the world if none of them found out; the Footpath Killer was already in custody, so it wasn't like there were more victims out there they could save from the man if they knew what caused a stutter. However, it still would be nice to know, if only for future cases, if a profile indicated an unsub might possess one.

For now, though, until she knew more, Cassie would do what she'd been doing the entire time the BAU had been in Arizona; she'd focus on the case at hand and try to bring this unsub to justice before any more people got hurt.

And if that happened by interviewing the several dozen Karens that attended Bradshaw College, then so be it.

☆☆☆

It took almost four hours for Cassie to get through all of the Karens on campus, even with Morgan helping her, and a forty-five minute break in the middle to let the girls take a break who'd already been standing there for two hours, and, unfortunately, the entire ordeal had been for nothing.

Not a single Karen on campus was currently involved, or at one point in the past had been involved with anyone fitting into the standard profile of an arsonist, and even then, none of the girls' ex-boyfriends seemed obsessive or possessive enough to go to these extreme lengths for the attention of their former lover.

The one little snippet of good news, Cassie supposed, was that Garcia had finally finished her analysis of the tip call and her efforts into potentially identifying the caller, and she'd called Cassie with her findings, since Morgan was currently outside getting a breath of fresh air and trying not to lose his mind at the team's lack of progress in the case.

Cassie had called him to tell him Garcia had finally gotten back with her analysis, and he was on his way upstairs, but there was no time to waste, so Cassie answered her technical analyst friend's call before her partner returned to the security room.

"Ok, Sunshine," Penelope started the call by saying, since she had a different nickname for everybody, except for maybe Hotch and Gideon. "I've put this thing through every audio filter I've got. There's only one thing I can tell you for sure..."

"Which is what?" Cassie asked, a little bit surprised that Garcia hadn't found out more.

"This guy isn't saying Karen," Garcia explained. "It's more like Ka-rown,"

"Ka-rown?" Cassie echoed, not entirely sure what it meant but glad that her initial hunch was right; the pronunciation of Karen hadn't just been off, it wasn't what had been said in the call at all. "What language is that from?"

Cassie spoke four languages, and aside from the obvious English and Hawaiian Pidgin, a creole language that had flowed into her vocabulary ever since she was a toddler growing up on O'ahu, the twenty-seven-year-old was also fluent in Spanish and Japanese, the former of which she'd learned while attending college, the latter in high school.

Ka-rown, though, whatever it meant, she didn't recognize it from any of the languages she knew.

"No idea," Garcia answered a few seconds after Cassie had asked. "But," she added a moment later. "If I figure it out, does it earn me a night of passionate love-making with my hunky and absolutely delicious Derek Morgan?"

Cassie couldn't help but laugh because she knew Garcia was joking. The two of them had had a special bond ever since Garcia had joined the unit, and Derek had realized that the criminal hacker the team had captured in San Jose wasn't as criminal as some of her associates.

"I don't think so," Cassie told the tech analyst, inadvertently crushing Garcia's dreams. "But," she added a moment later, thinking of a funny prank to pull on Penelope as the twenty-seven-year-old noticed Reid across the room, fiddling with a paper clip. "But, maybe with Reid."

Poor Spencer snapped his head up so fast that Cassie almost felt bad for him when he heard his name. She didn't have her call with Garcia on speakerphone currently, so the twenty-three-year-old genius couldn't hear the technical analyst's side of the conversation, but Reid was smart enough to use context clues (and his knowledge of the blonde hacker's personality) to know the gist of what was being said about him.

Cassie ended the call with her friend and colleague a few moments later, snapping her cell phone shut. She was still confused about ka-rown but turned around all the same to tell Reid what she'd found out. But, before she spoke, Morgan finally walked back into the room, thankfully looking more refreshed than the stressful demeanor he'd had when he'd first gone outside for his breath of fresh air almost twenty minutes ago.

"Hey," she greeted him, opting to give Reid and Morgan her findings from the call with Garcia since they were both now here. "Garcia finished the tip call analysis, and she says the unsub wasn't saying Karen, it was more like--"

"Charown," Gideon, practically out of breath and acting as if he'd just gotten a major break in the case, burst into the security room before Cassie could finish her sentence and made a beeline for the whiteboard. "I do it because of Charown."

"Hebrew," Reid said, and after exchanging a semi-confused glance with her partner, Cassie and Morgan both walked across the room to where Gideon and Reid were standing by the whiteboard, Elle and Hotch also joining them a second later as the former walked into the room, carrying a few take-out boxes that contained the profilers' dinner for the night.

"It's God's burning anger," the senior agent explained, and Cassie couldn't help but notice that Elle looked about as confused as she felt as she paused to stand between Cassie and Reid.

"The motive is religious now?" the former Seattle agent asked, but Gideon was so far gone into theories that he didn't give the younger woman a straight answer, so when Agent Greenaway glanced questioningly at Cassie, silently asking if this was normal, the twenty-seven-year-old just shrugged.

"Well, you know," Reid began as Gideon scribbled on the whiteboard. "In a lot of religions, God is related to fire."

Cassie wasn't the most religious person to ever exist, and she hadn't stepped foot in a church to worship in years. Still, she knew enough about the historical features of religion to know that, yes, several different religions around the world held some sort of reverence for fire, to some degree or another.

"Agni is fire in Hinduism," Hotch listed as Gideon continuously wrote down each idea the profilers spouted off. "And the Jews see God as a pillar of fire, and Christians worship God as a consuming fire,"

"Ok," Morgan added. "So, we're looking for a theology major. Maybe he's punishing the other students for their sins,"

"What's the most sinful place on campus?" Elle asked, and Morgan gave her a look.

"Oh, come on, Elle," he retorted. "When I was in college, that was everywhere."

Cassie, not surprised at all but instead momentarily perturbed, glanced over her shoulder at her partner again and sent him a look.

"That does not surprise me whatsoever," she told him, and though Morgan sent her an annoyed look of his own in response, he was saved from actually voicing his thoughts to his partner about her comment when Hotch spoke up, as always getting the profilers back on task.

"A fraternity?" the unit chief asked, and Gideon added it to his list on the whiteboard before Elle glanced at the other profilers with her own idea of what the arsonist could target next.

"A campus bar?" she posited, but this time, Cassie, now focused again after her brief ribbing with Morgan, corrected the other female agent.

"That's not consistent, though," she told Elle. "Not with the rest of the targets so far."

"What about the idea of baptism by fire?" Derek asked. "Aren't we all supposed to be tested through fire in Revelations?"

"Look," Gideon cut in, seemingly disagreeing but adding Morgan's idea to the list on the whiteboard anyway. "It's good, it's good, but please, let's not jump to conclusions. Religion may be a part of it, but it's not necessarily the main compulsion."

"Then what is?" Cassie asked, momentarily breaking one of her self-imposed rules and actually confronting Gideon about something she didn't agree with. "Gideon, we are running out of time! The arsonist could strike again at any moment, and we're barely closer to finding out the aspects of the unsub's profile than we were when we got here. What are we supposed to do other than jump to conclusions?"

Cassie had been a profiler long enough to know that, despite her annoyances about the team's lack of progress in the case, jumping to conclusions was the absolute last thing they ever wanted to do, because if they did and got something wrong, that was when an innocent person could end up in prison, while the real bad guy was left free to continue their crimes elsewhere.

She knew that, and she knew she was frustrated, but since they had no other leads, her temper was starting to fray. So, before Cassie could end up getting herself even more trouble than she already had after yelling at a senior agent, she left the room, Hotch authorizing all of the profilers to take a break and get some food inside themselves before continuing their investigation, if only so none of the FBI agents ended up dead.

That was how Cassie found herself on one of the campus quads with Morgan, sitting with her back to the trunk of a tree as she stabbed at her chicken BLT salad with her fork, the food having been the contents of the bag Elle had delivered to the security room earlier before Cassie had lost her temper and she'd ended up outside.

"You okay?" Derek's voice was quiet, but considering it was just the two of them right now, Cassie obviously heard him perfectly fine.

"I'm fine," she said automatically, and even though she wasn't directly looking at her partner right that second, Agent Quinn could guess his expression, which was also why she twisted around to face him a second later, everything she'd feeling coming out all at once. "I'm just frustrated. Sometimes, it seems as if Gideon doesn't remember that we've all been doing this for years, and we do know what we're doing,"

Derek hummed for a moment as he glanced down at his own lunch, and it was another minute or two before he finally answered her, in which Cassie opted to look out across the quad, as the various students who attended Bradshaw began their evacuation by packing up their belongings, since now it was only a matter of time before the arsonist struck again.

"He has been out of the field for six months," Morgan said finally, and Cassie whipped her head around to stare at him, eyes wide as the thirty-two-year-old shrugged. "Maybe he really did forget how well we all work together."

"You're not still hung up on that, are you?" she asked, genuinely concerned, and when her partner looked momentarily confused, Cassie sighed again before she looked back out over the grassy quad. "It's not Gideon's mind that annoys me, it's..." she trailed off, because really, what could she say?

The first day she'd joined the unit, three years ago and mere minutes after she and Derek had met for the first time, Gideon had pulled her aside, out of sight of Cassie's future partner and told the then-twenty-four-year-old Agent Quinn that under no circumstances whatsoever would he give her any sort of special treatment, and would treat her just the same as he would any new agent that he'd never met previously.

Cassie had agreed, because honestly, she'd needed those three degrees of separation and was totally okay with the BAU's senior agent not acting as if he'd known her for almost ten years already prior to her start in the FBI, and to his credit, Gideon hadn't given her any special treatment. He was the one out of all the profilers who put the least value in her ability to tell when someone was lying, and even though he'd handpicked her for the unit, Gideon had given her no other leeway over the years when it came to her career, which was, in Cassie's mind anyway, appreciated.

She'd obviously earned his respect now, and she knew that Gideon valued her input as an agent, just like he did with Morgan, Hotch, Reid, or even Elle, but Cassie also knew that she and Gideon had enough history that, however selfish it sounded, she thought she deserved more.

A nudge against her knee jerked the twenty-seven-year-old from her thoughts, and she glanced up to see Morgan gazing at her expectantly. Obviously, she'd been silent for longer than deemed socially acceptable.

"It's nothing," she said finally, and even though Morgan's expression was an obvious look of disagreement, he didn't argue with her about it and sat back again. "This case is just getting in my head."

"I know we're supposed to 'think like an unsub'," Derek added a moment later, inadvertently quoting a line Gideon had said so many times when Cassie had been in the Academy that she could still recite his lectures in her sleep. "But, even profilers need a break sometimes. Don't think too hard, Angel. One of us has to be the smart one in this partnership, and obviously, I'm the handsome one."

Despite her earlier general gloominess, Cassie couldn't help but laugh, and when her partner grinned a second later at her reaction, the brunette realized that it had been Morgan's plan all along.

They continued their lunch after that, and by the time she'd finished eating, Cassie had more than calmed down from her burning annoyance at the team's lack of progress from earlier, and after sending Morgan off to meet up with Elle to see if the team's newest profiler and discovered anything new, Cassie returned to the security room, ready to face whatever music (read: scolding) that Gideon had in store for her.

But the senior agent and Hotch were the only two present in the room when Cassie arrived, and even though she knew she'd sent her partner off to find Agent Greenaway, Agent Quinn was a little bit surprised that Reid of all people wasn't there, since she was sure that Spencer would be the one out of all of them who'd be nose-deep in a book or article trying to find clues.

When she walked in, Hotch and Gideon both looked up from their respective piles of papers to stare at her, and Cassie stared back. The unit chief then turned to look at Gideon, as if Hotch was also wondering what the senior agent would do, since it was very rare, if ever, that Cassie ever got mad enough at any of them to yell.

She and Morgan had their constant ribbing, but that was good-natured teasing between a pair who had worked together for years, and she hardly ever actually got mad at him.

Instead of saying anything, though, Gideon just pulled out a third chair from the few empty ones that were sitting around the same table where the team's senior agent and unit chief had set up their work for the afternoon, and nodded at it, silently telling Cassie to sit.

She couldn't stop herself from letting out the tiniest inaudible sigh of relief before she sat down at the table, taking a few papers from one of the numerous piles to begin the next step in looking for the unsub. Cassie had known, obviously, that Gideon had been right when he'd said not to jump to conclusions about the arsonist's motive, and they needed to find out how, if at all, this particular unsub's behavior factored into the standard profile of an arsonist.

Now, they just had to figure out what that connection was.

☆☆☆

Again, it took hours after Cassie had rejoined Hotch and Gideon in the security room before any of them got any sort of lead, and again, long after the day had turned to night the finding of said lead came in the form of the gangly Dr. Spencer Reid who burst into the room with such a fervor that he actually startled Cassie, which was notoriously hard to do any other time.

"I know why the profiles never fit!" the twenty-three-year-old exclaimed as he shut the door behind him, and Cassie looked up from the autopsy reports of both Professor Wallace and Matthew Rowland that she had been reading, to see if there was possibly something in there she had missed. When he noticed all three agents staring at him, Reid suddenly looked a bit nervous, but he continued on anyway with what he'd discovered. "You were right," he added a second later to Gideon. "To tell Morgan and Cassie not to rely on precedent. No offense," Reid directed his last comment to Cassie herself, who just shrugged.

She knew she'd been out of line earlier that day when she'd yelled at Gideon, but her conversation with Morgan during lunch had calmed her down enough, obviously, that she was back to working like she should and acknowledging Gideon's status as the team's senior agent.

"The fires thus far," Reid continued once he realized Cassie wasn't actually mad at him for calling her out about her attitude from earlier. "Have been completely task oriented."

Cassie narrowed her eyes, not because she thought Reid was wrong, but because she wasn't entirely sure what the young genius meant by his findings, and Hotch, it seemed, was just as confused as she was.

"So once they're set," the unit chief began. "The unsub is done?"

Hotch didn't say as much, but Cassie could hear her boss's disbelief in his tone of voice, though Reid seemed too excited at actually discovering something to notice anything that might be off.

"Exactly," he agreed. "The unsub is not a classical serial arsonist. He's someone who uses fire because of a completely different disorder!"

"Which is?" Gideon asked, tilting his head, and this time, Reid was so excited he was talking almost too fast for Cassie to understand him.

"An extreme manifestation of OCD," the young genius explained, and Cassie's eyebrows went up her forehead again. "Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He does everything in threes, and if I'm right, he'll have to kill again."

"Because only two people have died so far," Cassie realized aloud, and Reid nodded grimly.

Agent Quinn had thought to herself early on in this case that most unsubs who hadn't killed much previously got such a taste for the thrill, the rush of adrenaline that came from the taking of another person's life that they often ended their crimes in a disorganzied spree of murder, and while this wasn't exactly the same thing, the thought still applied, and in a way, Cassie had been right all along.

To explain his findings further, Reid led Cassie, Hotch, and Gideon over to a laptop (not Cassie's) where Reid had pulled up the video Matthew Rowland's roommate had filmed of their fires across from their dorm, and later his friend's murder, and paused the video on the frame just before Rowland got set on fire, when he was still standing in the puddle of gasoline in front of the dorm room door.

"There's a form of OCD called scrupulosity," Reid began once the three other agents were gathered around him.

"Religious obsession and compulsion," Hotch recited, and Reid nodded in confirmation.

"An obsessive fear of committing sin," the twenty-three-year-old continued. "That creates so much anxiety he's...compelled to do something that eases that anxiety."

"Like...setting things on fire," Cassie said slowly, and Reid nodded again.

Gideon, meanwhile, seemed the most skeptical about Spencer's theory, and from where he was sitting on Cassie's other side (the brunette was sitting between him and Hotch), massaged another crease between his eyebrows, having removed his reading glasses earlier when Reid had begun his presentation.

"Where's the behavioral evidence?" the senior agent asked, and yeah, Cassie thought that was a pretty important aspect of their future arrest, if they did end up finding out who the unsub was and taking him into custody.

Reid, though, was ready for Gideon's skepticism.

"Right here," he said simply, before pressing play on the video in front of them. "Alright," he added. "Remember the night of the three fires? We saw the doorknob turning against the lock," Reid gestured to the video, and Cassie leaned forward a bit as Reid zoomed in on said doorknob and, lo and behold, the circular knob turned three times before Reid paused it again. "But, he's not trying to get in."

"That's the compulsion," Cassie said, and Reid glanced over at her again. "If the unsub is obsessed with everything about the number 3, then he must also be compelled to turn the doorknob three times, right?"

"Exactly," Reid agreed, only for Gideon to speak up again from behind him.

"Well, what about the fires?" the senior agent asked, still massaging his eyebrows and looking confused. "The first ones were single fires. If the unsub was OCD, shouldn't they have all been in threes?"

"What if..." Cassie trailed off for a moment as she thought over what she wanted to say, nibbling her bottom lip before she continued. "What if they were? I mean, think about it," she added when the three male agents turned towards her, now all three looking bemused. "The first fire was set in March, the third month out of the year, and on the third day."

Cassie had been the one to make the timeline of when all of the previous fires had been set, back on the jet as the BAU had made their way to Arizona, and now, all of the dates finally revealed their significance.

"3:00 pm," Gideon added. "Third day, third month,"

"It's that convergence of threes," Reid continued. "That causes the overwhelming anxiety. Obsessive-compulsives ease the anxiety by performing the compulsion."

"What about the other fires?" Hotch asked suddenly. "Professor Wallace?"

"Office number three," Reid said, and Cassie was suddenly reminded of another detail from the day before, from when she and Derek had run up to the floor holding Wallace's office to help Gideon.

"His office was on the third floor, too," she breathed out, genuinely shocked. The more they dug into just how obsessed with things in threes this unsub seemed to be, the weirder everything became.

It was kind of like when you saw a random object that you'd never noticed before, and then seemingly the object was everywhere soon after. Obviously, the object had always been there before its initial notice, but it was still strange.

"I checked for more patterns of threes," Reid continued. "His class was on Tuesdays..."

"Third day of the week," Hotch said, and Reid nodded again.

"Matthew Rowland was in that class," the young genius revealed. "It was his third class of the day. If we looked into each of the fires, we'd find a lot of patterns having to do with threes because our minds are incredibly adept at seeking out patterns. But, to the unsub, once that pattern hits, bam—" Reid snapped his fingers. "He sets a fire."

"But," Gideon cut in, and Cassie leaned back in her chair, stunned at just how much Reid had found out. She'd known, obviously, that Dr. Spencer Reid was a certifiable genius, but damn. "If the target was always people, why did no one die in the first few fires?"

"They were failures," Reid said, his words stated so formally that Cassie was stunned again, only for the twenty-three-year-old agent to continue a moment later. "Up until Matthew Rowland."

Finally finished with delivering his findings, Reid sat back in his chair, and Cassie blew out a breath, running one hand through her hair as she momentarily thought over everything she had found out from her younger colleague in such a short amount of time.

Her and Morgan, the day before when they'd been investigating the burnt dormitory just before Professor Wallace's death, had posited that maybe Matthew Rowland had been a target for one of the unsub's blazes, but at the time, they had both chalked it up to Rowland somehow crossing the unsub in some way and pissing the arsonist off enough for him to set the college student on fire, not for the entire reason that Matthew had died being something totally out of his own control.

Hotch, meanwhile, had stood up from his chair a few minutes earlier and started to pace the room. The behavior was so odd coming from the usually so stoic unit chief that obviously, the other profilers noticed it. Gideon, though, was the first one of them to say anything about it.

"What is it?" the senior agent asked, and Hotch turned around, the expression on his face detailing that he may have just figured something out as well.

"I think I know who it might be," the unit chief said, sounding almost as if he didn't quite believe it himself, and Cassie's eyebrows flew up her forehead. And, as if that wasn't shocking enough, Hotch continued a moment later. "And it's not a he. It's a she."

"Who?" Cassie asked because, related to OCD or not, fire-setting just wasn't something women typically gravitated to, and that was also part of the main arsonist profile the team had briefed each other about back on the jet.

Not that this was a standard arsonist case whatsoever, but still.

"Jeremy's classmate," Hotch continued. "The girl who explained how to create a self-igniting Molotov,"

Gideon called Dean Turner first, alerting her to the situation and that they finally had a viable suspect, and even though he didn't put the call on speaker, Cassie hoped that, even though she was still working on evacuating the campus, Ellen would understand the urgency of the situation, that taking the suspect into custody before anymore fires were set took precedent over getting all of the students out.

"First," Gideon said through his cell phone. "Get Campus Security out and find her. She could set her next fire within hours."

"Send Morgan and Elle to help search," Hotch spoke up, and Gideon relayed the order to Dean Turner before hanging up the call, now with the actual identity of their potential arsonist, rather than just the face that Hotch, Cassie, and Reid all remembered from their earlier conversation with the chemistry students.

Clara Hayes.

Cassie had been so focused the night before about Jeremy potentially being the arsonist, just from how self-absorbed and full of himself he seemed, and the fact that he'd known how to create the same sort of lightbulb bomb that had killed Professor Wallace, that she didn't even clock any strange behaviors from anyone else who'd been in the room.

Clara had been, of course, the meek-seeming girl in the chem lab with dusky brown hair who'd explained the concept of the self-igniting Molotov Cocktail, which in turn had been what made Hotch realize she was their man, so to speak.

Hotch called Morgan then, to tell Cassie's partner that he and Elle should meet up with Bradshaw's security team to find either Clara's dorm room or her apartment, and see if possibly, she was at her home, or if they could find any clues there that might point to where she might strike next.

Because both Reid and Gideon were right. The time between the settings of each fire was getting shorter and shorter, and in terms of how many people Clara had killed, Matthew Rowland and Professor Wallace only amounted to two, not the three Clara was so obsessed with.

"When we were talking to her and her classmates," Hotch began once he had ended his call with Morgan and sat down at the table again, to tell Cassie, Gideon, and Reid exactly how he had concluded that Clara was the unsub, rather than Jeremy or someone else on campus. "I noticed something—a ring on her finger. And she kept turning it..."

"At intervals?" Reid asked, and Hotch nodded.

"Of three."

"The ingredients for the Molotov, too," Cassie added, gesturing with her pen. "She said potassium and sulfur normally, but then she also repeated sugar multiple times. Jeremy had to interrupt Clara to get her to stop."

"It's Palilalia," Reid said, because of course he knew what it was. "The involuntary repetition of words. Howard Hughes had it when his OCD worsened,"

"Clara and her classmates were working on a project about gravitational pull," Hotch continued, and Gideon nodded, chuckling under his breath in a way that Cassie knew that, whatever the senior agent had just realized, had seemingly been obvious the entire time.

Her theory was proven a second later when her mentor spoke.

"The Three-Body Problem."

☆☆☆

Derek Morgan hadn't yet had much of a chance to work with Elle Greenaway since she'd joined the unit, considering it'd been less than a week since she'd moved to Virginia from Washington State, and he still much preferred to work with Cassie if he was given any sort of choice, but Elle seemed nice enough.

Cassie was busy with Hotch, Gideon, and Reid right now, though, so Derek would've gotten stuck with Elle regardless. But, whatever.

Clara's apartment was off-campus, but it didn't take long for the two federal agents, along with a couple of officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (State Police), to reach the building, and in turn, the apartment where Clara lived.

The apartment wasn't absolutely massive, Clara was a college student, after all, but the first thing Morgan noticed once he, Elle, and the local officers made their entry into the apartment was just how well Clara fit into the box of "is a religiously-obsessed serial arsonist".

The apartment was dim, the only light coming from the dozens of flickering candles that crowded the counters of shelves in the main room, and as the two state police officers cleared the other rooms, Derek saw that every single wall of the apartment was plastered with yellowed paper depicting various religious texts and art from all over the world.

In a word, it was crazy.

"You've got to be kidding me," Morgan murmured to himself as he and Elle were finally allowed entry into the apartment after the state police cleared it. "OCD? I'm thinking more like OMG,"

"OMG?" Elle echoed, and Derek glanced at her.

"Oh my God," he explained, and in a way, Morgan thought it was fitting, given Clara's relentless scrupulosity.

As he and Elle continued to investigate the apartment, Agent Greenaway paused in front of one of the many religious passages that Clara had scribbled on the wall at some point since she'd moved in, and pointed out the passage to Morgan.

" 'A fire is kindled in my anger and shall burn into the lowest hell.'," Elle recited, and Morgan paused behind her as she pointed to the wall. "Deuteronomy."

There were a few other religious passages that both he and Elle recited off of Clara's wall to each other, and Derek was reminded once again why he didn't like religion. This case wasn't the whole reason, of course, but it was definitely a factor.

Religion made people go a bit crazy. And for what? Some mythological "higher being" that may not even actually exist? Please.

Eventually, Elle found another printing of a historical art piece, and she pointed it out again.

"Charon," she spoke up, and Morgan made his way over to the former Seattle agent, only to see her pointing at what looked like a printing of a painting that depicted a skeletal figure cloaked in smoke gondoling a boat down a gray river. "That's what the tip line call said, wasn't it?" She turned towards Morgan, who shrugged. " 'I do this for Charon.' This is Charon. He's the Greek mythological ferryman of the dead."

So, Clara, when she'd made the call, hadn't been saying Charown in terms of the burning anger from her so-called "God", and she obviously hadn't been saying Karen, since Derek and Cassie had spent over four hours interviewing Bradshaw students with no progress to show for it to know that. She'd, instead, been saying Charon, as in, she'd be delivering her victims to this mythical ferryman for it to send their souls to the Underworld...or Hell, whatever you believed.

"It's also the name of Pluto's largest moon," Morgan spoke up a second later, continuing to peruse Clara's religious findings.

He might've said Cassie was the smart one in their partnership, which was true; his younger partner was by far smarter than he was, but Derek Morgan was not completely incompetent. He knew things, particularly about the solar system's ninth planet.

There was another passage Morgan found, voicing something about some religious being named Moloch, so in order to find out who this Moloch was and how it related to this case, he called Reid, who, of course, had the answer already primed and ready to go from somewhere in his brain.

"Moloch was the demon sun god of the Canaanites," the young genius said, and since Morgan could hear his partner murmuring something unintelligible in the background, he assumed Reid had put the call on speakerphone. "In order to keep from incurring his wrath, the people would sacrifice their children to him by burning them alive,"

"Oh," Morgan deadpanned once Reid had finished explaining. "How comforting."

The mechanical whirring sound of a fax machine or printer sounded in the background of Derek's call from Reid, and a few seconds later, Cassie's voice came through, reading off something else the three other profilers had found, and presumably whatever had just come through the printer/fax machine.

"Dean Turner sent over Clara's personnel file," she began. "So listen to this...'sixteen-year-old survives inferno. The mother, Ellen Hayes, called it a miracle. "My daughter was tested by God. He tested my child, and she came through blessed." That's from an old newspaper clipping," Morgan's partner explained for the profilers who weren't present in the team's makeshift HQ at the security room. "And, oh, would you look at that?" Cassie added a second later, catching Derek's attention again as Elle started to look around the apartment with one of the officers. "The house number was 333."

Morgan ended the call with his colleagues a few moments later, thoroughly convinced now that Clara was the unsub they were looking for, but since, as of right now, no one knew where she was, that meant it was up to Derek, along with Elle, to see if anything in the college student's apartment could possibly point them to her current location, or next target.

So far, though, aside from the weird religious scripture and printed-out papers plastered to the wall, and the dozens of still-burning candles around the apartment, which were undoubtedly a fire hazard (ironic), so far, the two profilers hadn't found much, and now Morgan was getting frustrated.

He'd already been frustrated before Hotch had realized Clara could be a viable suspect, but now he was getting annoyingly frustrated.

"Hey, Morgan," Elle's voice made the thirty-two-year-old look up from where he'd been staring at Clara's wall again and turn towards the new profiler. "You know magical thinking is?"

"Obsessive thoughts," he answered instantly. "It's like a superstition. It controls them."

"Kind of like..." Elle trailed off for a moment. "Step on a crack, break your mother's back?"

"Yeah," Derek agreed, walking away from the wall. "Except she actually believes it."

Now, Morgan knew neither he nor Cassie were the most superstitious people to ever exist, and his younger partner generally didn't trust psychics at all, even though the BAU had barely had any contact with them in the three years both Agents Morgan and Quinn had been working there. Though Derek wasn't sure if that was because of Cassie's innate skill to tell when people were lying or just her being mistrustful in general.

She also loved black cats, and before she'd adopted Kiki, Cassie had seriously considered adopting a black cat, instead of the calico-colored fluffball she had now. Eventually, Morgan was sure his partner would end up adopting another cat, but for now, especially with their ridiculous schedule and the long hours the BAU worked, Cassie was fine, for now, with just Pōpoki.

"God tested her with fire," Elle continued, perusing Clara's apartment a few seconds later, and gently pushed down a slightly peeling corner of one of the papers so she could read the contents better before she kept speaking. "And now, when three 3s show up around another person..."

Elle trailed off again, just as Morgan, who was looking through the contents that covered the top of Clara's desk, noticed a large, cylindrical, and clear plastic water bottle with a solid gray cap.

It wasn't really anything special at first glance, but when Derek lifted the water bottle up to better study whatever was inside, the ever so slightly too thick liquid inside that was an ever so slightly too blue to be regular water, signified to the former Chicago cop that whatever it was that was inside the water bottle was not anything anyone should be drinking.

"God tells her," he said, catching Elle's attention as Morgan snaked one finger through the loop on the side of the bottle's cap and lifted it in the air so Agent Greenaway could see. "To test them."

Clara obviously wasn't at her apartment, otherwise she would've already been taken into custody, because the apartment wasn't really that big, but aside from the glaring fact that their suspect/unsub was not present at the scene and, as far as Morgan knew, not in custody with Cassie or any of the other profilers, that left him and Greenaway with another big fat blank in their heads on what to do.

The contents plastered to the walls of Clara's apartment also made it increasingly difficult to find anything comprehensible that might lead them to either the college student's current location or next target, and Morgan's temper was quickly reaching its tipping point.

What did not help matters was Hotch calling less than half an hour after Derek had ended his call with Reid and Cassie, the unit chief "checking in" to see if anything concrete had been found so far, which obviously, there hadn't been.

"There must be something there," Hotch began, and Morgan tried not to grind his teeth together too much in frustration. "Anything you and Elle could find could mean life or death for someone else. Clara could strike again before morning,"

"Hey, Hotch, we're looking, man!" Derek was trying desperately not to snap too hard at the unit chief. Cassie had already lost her temper once back in the security room with Gideon, and Morgan didn't need to get mad at their other boss. "I don't think she would've left a day planner that says 'set next fire here' written in it."

"I understand," Hotch said, and Morgan almost rolled his eyes. Did he understand? Did he really? "But, Morgan, the times between fires are obviously shortening, and Clara could launch into a full-blown spree before this is all over,"

"I under—" Derek intentionally cut himself off. "Wait until you see this place!"

The former Chicago cop knew that if Hotch were here, the unit chief would understand just how much difficulty Morgan and Elle were having trying to find any clues Clara could've left behind, especially since, so far, in the over an hour long time they'd been in Clara's apartment, they'd discovered jack-shit.

"Uh, Morgan?" Elle's voice caught Derek's attention, and her tone was urgent enough that he "accidentally" hung up on Hotch before standing up from his seat at Clara's tiny dining table and walking in the general direction that Elle's voice had come from.

He found the new profiler standing in front of an open doorway, though a 70s-style beaded curtain had acted as a door to the tiny closet/room, which Elle had moved slightly to the side with one hand so Morgan could see what she had discovered inside.

And what she had discovered was not, in any way, good.

The closet was tiny, and Morgan wasn't even sure he'd be able to stand inside and be comfortable, but four shelves were climbing the wall of the closet, and on the shelves were dozens of glass bottles with varying colors of liquid inside, though all of them also had what looked like a small rag stuck inside.

Now, it had been a while since Derek Morgan had done any sort of work with the ATF, but he'd been with the other agency for four years before joining the Bureau, and even then, he watched TV in his (scant) free time, so he obviously knew what a Molotov cocktail was when he saw one. These also had to be the self-igniting cocktails that Cassie had told him Clara described when the others had interviewed the Chemistry students the night before.

Morgan glanced at Elle, only to see the female agent already staring at him with a stricken look on her face.

Derek pulled out his phone again because with Clara's many homemade cocktails and her chemistry skills, she could do a lot of damage with even just one, but knowing the student's obsession with threes, she'd no doubt use more, which would cause even more damage.

This was not good. Not good at all.

☆☆☆

Cassie hated not having anything to do. Morgan and Elle were still trying to investigate Clara's apartment, while Gideon, Hotch, and Reid were currently going through all of the evidence photos that been collected from all of the previous crime scenes, to see if there was possibly something the profilers had missed from somewhere that could tell them where Clara Hayes could possibly strike next.

Agent Quinn was also worried about her partner.

Hotch had called Derek less than twenty minutes ago and asked him (very sternly) how his investigation was going, and even though the unit chief hadn't turned on his cell's speakerphone, so Cassie wasn't able to hear her partner's side of the conversation, she'd worked with Agent Hotchner long enough that she'd been able to tell from her boss's body language that it hadn't exactly gone well, and Morgan hung up very abruptly.

Cassie knew that it wasn't exactly likely, they had already shut down the Science Building in case Clara was there, that the arsonist went back to her apartment, but what if she had? What if Morgan and Elle had been ambushed?

That, of course, had sent the twenty-seven-year-old into an anxiety-induced panic, and though she kept her emotions relatively under wraps, she also knew that she worked with people who, if they looked at her for longer than twenty seconds at a time, would see how nervous she was.

Cassie had just taken her phone out to call Morgan, if only to see if he was still breathing, when it suddenly rang, genuinely startling her. When she looked at the Caller ID, the brunette let out an involuntary sigh of relief when she saw that it was Derek calling her.

"Hey," she greeted her partner after her phone had only rung a couple of times. "Everything good?"

"...not really," he answered after a moment, and Cassie couldn't help but clench her jaw. "You remember when you told me about those self-igniting Molotov cocktails Clara described when you interviewed her?"

"Yeah," she said slowly, wondering where exactly he was going with this, but also simultaneously not wanting the answer. "Why?"

"Because I'm looking at a closet full of these bottles," Morgan told her, and Cassie felt the blood drain from her face as Derek continued. "Angel, there's got to be at least thirty of those cocktails in here."

"Derek, you have to seal the building," she said, and Hotch, who'd already left the table he'd previously been working at when he'd seen her face turn white as a ghost, quickened his pace. "Get all of the other residents out and walk away. Call the bomb squad or fire department or something, just get out,"

"I'll be careful," was Derek's good-bye before he hung up, and as Hotch stopped in front of the desk that Cassie was sitting at, the brunette couldn't help but run both hands over her face.

Once she'd brought her hands away, she quickly explained to Hotch everything that Morgan and Elle had found, and Gideon, who'd also paused what he'd previously been doing to listen, gestured hurriedly to the various state police officers who'd also been in the room.

"We need to send our people into every building and have them start pulling fire alarms," he ordered the officers, who almost instantaneously got into gear. "Please go."

As the State Police ran out of the room, Gideon then turned to Reid, who was standing near Cassie's desk, flipping through some more evidence photos.

"Reid," the senior agent began, making the youngest profiler glance up. "Find a map of the campus. We need to find anything and everything having to do with the number 3."

Reid also immediately kicked himself into gear and began shuffling through the various papers and files cluttered around the table. But, with Gideon and Reid doing that, Morgan and Elle evacuating the other residents at Clara's apartment building, and the security officers and State Police pulling fire alarms in buildings across the rest of campus, that left Cassie, once again, with nothing to do.

She hated having nothing to do.

As Gideon turned away from the security feeds of campus, Hotch suddenly cornered him, startling the senior agent enough that he looked up from the sheet of paper his nose had been buried in to stare at the unit chief.

"Jason, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," Hotch began, and Cassie couldn't stop her eyes from widening because whatever he was about to say had to be important if he was calling Gideon by his first name. "Clara Hayes is very likely a good person. Someone who never wanted to do anyone any harm, like any other rational person..."

Cassie, who'd walked up next to the two older agents to see what they were talking about, suddenly interrupted Hotch, and both he and Gideon turned to look at her.

"But," she began. " OCD isn't rational." Cassie shrugged. "I mean, the behaviors obviously vary from person to person, but I doubt that Clara would be setting people on fire if she weren't seriously ill."

"Research suggests obsessive-compulsive disorder involves problems in communication," Reid added as he sidled up to the small cluster the three other profilers had made. "Between the frontal part of the brain and the orbital cortex. Plus deeper structures," he continued. "Like the basal ganglia, for example."

"You can't reason with her because you can't reason with a physiological problem," Hotch explained.

In the back of her mind, Cassie wondered where exactly the unit chief was going with this because his words seemed to be inching dangerously close to them and not being able to take Clara alive. As much as Clara needed to be stopped (she'd killed people after all), she wasn't killing her targets because she wanted to; her scrupulosity essentially told her she had to.

"What are you trying to say?" Gideon asked, seemingly coming to the same conclusion Cassie just had, but Hotch wasn't wavering in his conviction, but that also wasn't surprising.

"Don't try to convince her to stop," the unit chief said. "Because you won't be able to."

☆☆☆

With everyone else on their own assignments, that meant Cassie ended up with Hotch finishing up with the pulling of the fire alarms around campus, because even though the minutes were ticking closer and closer to morning, and the inevitable setting of Clara's next fire, so far, there was no evidence that a fire had been set anywhere on campus, and believe me, people had checked.

As the two of them quickly jogged down the wide front steps of one of Bradshaw's administrative buildings, Cassie watched as Hotch pulled out his cellphone and called Dean Turner, turning on the call's speakerphone so Cassie could also listen in to his conversation with Ellen.

"Security's sure they cleared the Science Building?" the unit chief asked once the college's Dean, because logically, with her academic background, the Science Building could be the only place Clara could be, but so far, nothing.

Then again, Cassie thought to herself. Nothing about this case has been logical so far.

"The guards made sure all of the floors are empty and no elevators are in service," Dean Turner answered after a moment of silence, and though she didn't come out and say anything in argument with the profilers, her tone definitely sounded more than a little bit condescending.

But that wasn't what made Cassie stop in her tracks, sudden enough that Hotch, who'd made it down a few more steps, turned to look at her in confusion, cell phone still held halfway to his ear, even with the speakerphone still on.

"What is it?" he asked, and Cassie turned towards her boss, eyes wide.

"The elevators," she said, but Hotch just looked confused. "Jeremy," she continued a second later, struggling to get all of her thoughts out at once. "He left with us after we interviewed him, Clara, and his classmates last night, and when we got in the elevator, he had to use a key to restart it because they stop working after 10 pm."

Cassie, because she was still facing him, saw the exact moment the dots connected inside Hotch's brain, and his eyes widened, before he turned and took off in the direction of the Science Building, Agent Quinn sprinting after him seconds later.

She could totally be wrong, of course, and she and Hotch might just be running across Bradshaw's campus for no reason, but Jeremy had also said he wouldn't be one of the students evacuating because of Clara's crimes, because he still had his project to work on...at the Science Building.

Hotch was taller than Cassie by several inches, and he obviously had longer legs than she did, so even still wearing his suit, the unit chief easily outran the younger agent. Still, Cassie pushed herself to try and catch up as they both neared the front doors of the Science Building, and studiously ignored the fact that yes, her calves were going to burn (no pun intended) by the time she got back to D.C.

The two of them managed to make it to the Science Building without incident, and thankfully, there wasn't any sign of a burning fire from outside that Cassie could see, but that didn't mean that Clara hadn't already set one either. It just might mean they weren't too late yet.

Obviously, the elevators were a no-go, so the side stairwell was where Hotch sprinted, slamming open the door with enough force that it almost smacked against the wall, Cassie having to slow down quite a bit to stop from being hit by it, before she managed to slip through and follow the unit chief up the stairs.

Using everything they'd figured out so far about Clara Hayes and her obsession with the number 3, Cassie was sure Hotch had figured out the same thing she had: if Clara was here in the Science Building, the third floor was likely where she was.

The first thing Cassie noticed when she and Hotch finally made it to the third floor was that it seemed to be either in the middle of remodeling, or under construction of some sort, because the corridor they entered at the top of the landing was almost completely gutted, the floor and walls covered with translucent plastic tarps that protected the flooring beneath from any hazardous materials or other damage, along with several pieces of equipment spaced along the walls of the hallway.

The second thing that Cassie noticed, and the thing that was vastly more important than the actual state of the corridor, was Clara Hayes kneeling on the ground about twenty yards from from Agents Quinn and Hotchner had stopped, the college student in front of a halfway-opened elevator door, holding a burning road flare in her hands.

Cassie could also hear panicked voices coming from the stuck elevator car, and she assumed Clara's next potential victims were Jeremy and his two other female classmates.

"Clara." Hotch was the one who spoke first, and the sudden appearance of both profilers made Clara whip her head in their direction, sufficiently startled.

"I have to do this," Clara said, and Cassie couldn't help but notice that she sounded genuinely apologetic.

It was also the reason the twenty-seven-year-old hadn't yet unholstered her weapon, despite Clara still holding the burning flare.

"You know it's not rational, Clara. You were trying to tell me," Hotch continued, and this time, Cassie flicked a very confused glance towards the unit chief, because hadn't Hotchner been the one to tell Gideon of all people, and Cassie quotes 'you can't reason with her because you can't reason with a physiological problem'?

The unit chief may need to take his own advice.

"God chose me to be tested," Clara said, before raising the flare above her head. "And now He's chosen them. If I don't do this," she continued, and this time, Cassie did unholster her gun, raising her weapon a bit but not quite pointing it at Clara, not yet. "Something terrible will happen."

"What's going to happen, Clara? A flood? An earthquake?" Hotch asked, walking forward a few steps, and though she still wasn't sure what he thought he would achieve by trying to talk Clara down, Cassie followed, her weapon held at the ready as the older profiler continued. "You know this isn't rational!"

Clara, though, actually leaned backward from where she'd been steadily tilting towards the open elevator doors, and clenched her eyes shut, genuinely looking as if she wanted to stop what she was doing, but physically couldn't.

"I know," she began. "I know, I know."

"Then resist," Hotch told her, but Clara just shook her head, beginning to rock back and forth from where she was still kneeling halfway down the hallway.

"I can't," she told them. "They must be tested! God's wrath..."

Cassie raised her gun higher as Hotch continued to try and reason with Clara, and the other young woman was very obviously trying to stop herself from committing another murder (this time, a potential triple homicide), but her OCD was so severe that she genuinely believed the world could end if she didn't continue with her "mission".

Clara's rocking got more severe, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Hotch, even with his background in hostage negotiation, was no longer capable of breaking through the arsonist's obsessive-compulsive-induced delusion, and as Clara raised the flare over her head one more time, this time very obviously getting ready to throw the burning object into the elevator, Cassie pointed her gun at the student and pulled the trigger, the shot echoing through the abandoned hallway.

A moment later, Clara fell to the side, still alive, because instead of going for a kill shot, Cassie had purposefully pointed her gun at the younger woman's leg, because even though Clara definitely deserved prosecution and consequences for her crimes, it was very likely that she'd end up institutionalized and hopefully getting help for a way to manage her OCD, rather than just ending up in prison.

But when Clara fell to the ground, that also meant that she dropped the flare, and Cassie was too far away to put it out herself.

Movement from the end of the hallway made the brunette look up, just as Gideon, of all people, pushed his way through the plastic hanging in front of the doorway, stopping the flare from rolling by itself into the elevator by stepping on it and extinguishing it with his shoe.

As Cassie holstered her weapon and walked forward again, this time with Hotch, to make sure Jeremy and his classmates were really unharmed, Gideon glanced at the unit chief from where the senior agent now stood over Clara's sideways-laying form.

"I thought you said not to reason with her." Gideon said, and Cassie glanced at Hotch.

In the end, she may have needed to shoot Clara, but the injury was, in the long run, minor, and Clara would survive.

That also meant that, with Clara now in custody, the reign of terror that Bradshaw Campus had been under for months, and especially over the last couple of weeks, had finally come to an end, and the BAU's presence in Tempe was no longer needed.

They could finally go home.

☆☆☆

Considering it had been the middle of the night when Clara Hayes had finally been taken into authoritative custody and Jeremy and his classmates were deemed out of harm's way (but not before Clara had been sent to the hospital because of her gunshot wound), Hotch had authorized the rest of the profilers to not leave until the next morning, and for the team to actually get a good night's rest.

Cassie, though, had always been a morning person and woke up a whole hour before her alarm was set to go off, and as such, was one of the first people on the jet when the BAU was finally about to leave.

She said one of the first, because Gideon was there too, and since the twenty-seven-year-old finally didn't have an investigation hanging over her head, that meant she could talk to Gideon about his encounter with the Footpath Killer, and whether or not the senior agent had really found out the reason for the captured killer's stutter.

"I figured it out," Cassie said as she dropped both her go-bag and messenger bag on the couch of the jet, Gideon following behind her. "The stutter, I mean,"

"Really?" Gideon asked as he paused in front of Cassie, who'd just sat down on the couch and pulled out The Password to Larkspur Lane, her current read. "You know why the Footpath Killer stuttered?"

"You and Hotch were talking before we went to the hotel last night," Cassie started to explain. "And he told you that he'd just been trying to stall Clara back at the Science Building."

Gideon nodded, though Cassie couldn't help but notice he looked a bit bemused.

"Correct," he said finally, and Cassie narrowed her eyes.

"That's the reason, right?" she asked, and Gideon sat down in one of the seats at the table that sat across from Cassie's couch. "Stalling. If you told the Footpath Killer that you knew the real reason he stuttered, he would've been caught so off-guard that it could've given you a chance to overpower him,"

"You think I don't know the real reason?" Gideon asked, and Cassie nodded as she laid her book on her lap.

"There's no conceivable way someone could know the genuine cause of a stutter," she said, and Gideon raised an eyebrow. "There are factors that could aggravate a stutter, of course, but no one knows what actually causes them."

"There are some theories about a neurological basis," Gideon began, to which Cassie just shrugged again.

"Those are just theories, though," she said. "They haven't been tested sufficiently to say whether or not they have enough genuine credibility."

Gideon just stared at her, and Cassie tightened her grip on her book at his direct attention. She'd known Gideon for almost thirteen years and liked to think they had a good enough rapport to talk openly with each other.

"You obviously survived," she finally said, and Gideon tilted his head as Cassie nibbled her lip again. "But," she continued, a bit nervous about how to broach the subject, before deciding just to bite the bullet (ha) and speak her mind all at once. "How did you do it? Especially," she added a second later, as she finally heard the others outside begin to make their way up the stairs. "With a shotgun at your back?"

"I'll tell you what I do know about a stutter," Gideon said eventually, and Cassie opted not to comment on the fact that that wasn't what she'd asked him. "I know how to provoke one."

☆☆☆

Faulkner once said, "Don't bother to just be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

Chapter Text

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

Cassie hated bombing cases. As jaded and cynical as it might have sounded, she much preferred hunting serial killers all over the country than figuring out the behavioral aspects of someone who thought blowing people up was a good way to get their message out. And after what had happened with Gideon and Adrian Bale in Boston six months ago, she hated them even more.

As it were, the BAU also worked on instances of bombings when they were asked, and that was the particular case they were beginning to investigate that day, the governor of Florida having asked for the unit's help personally after two bombings had already occurred in Palm Beach in less than a day, the most recent being Gil Clurman, less than an hour ago.

"Clurman's was the second bombing this morning," Hotch explained to Gideon as the two of them, plus Cassie, walked through the hallways of the BAU offices on the sixth floor of the Virginian Federal Building, heading towards the primary bullpen where they'd meet up with the rest of the team and see what it was they could do to help. "Both in residential areas in Palm Beach,"

"Has Homeland Security been notified?" Gideon asked, and Cassie nodded.

"ATF, too," she said. "In addition to our usual profile, they also want a threat assessment to see if this could turn into something worse,"

But, considering there had already been two bombings that morning, one that had ended up with someone dead and the other in critical condition, Cassie was 90% sure that this would turn worse before the unit was able to catch the unsub responsible.

"Is the media onto it?" Gideon continued, and Cassie let out a scoff as Hotch turned to look at the both of them.

"Of course," the unit chief said, sounding slightly exasperated at the fact that the BAU could only keep tabs on the incident after the news crews got wind of it. "JJ's keeping tabs on that,"

"What do we know about the bombs?" Gideon asked as the three agents entered the bullpen, Hotch pulling open the door for them as Cassie once more turned to answer the senior agent's question.

"Derek's already talked to A.T.F. about it," she said. "They're going to be sending pictures over of the bomb fragments they've recovered so far. We've already gotten a few."

The three of them quickly headed up the stairs into the round table room, where Reid, Elle, and Morgan were waiting. Cassie's partner had already spread the photos of the bomb fragments the Bureau had received all across the table so he could study them better.

"Pipe bombs," Gideon murmured once he had looked over a few of the pictures, tossing one photo back onto the table in front of Reid as Morgan handed another to him.

"Packed into cardboard boxes," Morgan explained, and Hotch nodded.

"Package bombs,"

"Sent through the mail?" Gideon asked, turning away, but all Morgan did was shake his head in response.

"No," he answered before pointing towards the second photo that Gideon was holding. "The other picture in your hand is of the switch ATF found,"

"The same mechanism was used for both bombs," Cassie added, glancing sparingly at the photo of the switch. The small device looked as if it had been made of glass, but now, since the bomb had obviously exploded, the switch was shattered and almost unrecognizable. "And the switch was mercury-activated,"

"What does that mean?" Elle asked, and again, Cassie was reminded just how new Agent Greenaway was to the unit. Before she'd joined the B.A.U., Elle had been in Sex Crimes and likely hadn't dealt with many bombings before she'd transferred to Quantico.

Luckily, Reid, as always, was ready with a quick explanation as to why the mercury switches that had been found within the bomb fragments were so important and, thus, so dangerous.

"There are contacts to a detonator on either end of a bent tube full of mercury," the young genius explained, gesturing with his pen to the points on the photo where the detonator contacts would've been as if to give Elle a visual example.

"All you'd have to do to make the bomb blow up," Cassie added since Reid's explanation didn't exactly put everything into layman's terms. "Would just be to accidentally tilt the box just a bit too far to the side. Far enough that the mercury hits the detonator, and then: boom,"

"So they couldn't have been sent through the mail. The bomber had to deliver them himself," Elle realized, and Cassie and Morgan both nodded.

Cassie didn't have a background in ATF like her partner did (which he'd done before he'd joined the BAU), but she had learned enough over the three years she'd been with the team to know a little bit of how bombs worked.

"Strange way to commit an act of terrorism," Hotch spoke up, and Cassie tilted her head to the side as she realized that the unit chief had a point. "I mean, why go through all this trouble just to kill a few people?"

"Let's recommend not raising the terror alert level for now," Gideon said, and the rest of the agents turned to stare at him. "No reason to spread panic,"

It was a good plan, at least for the time being, but a moment later, JJ burst into the roundtable room, already pulling out the remote and turning on the TV to what looked like a newscast out of Florida.

"We've got news," the young press liaison said sternly as the news anchor began her report, standing in front of what looked like the burnt shell of Gil Clurman's car before JJ turned to the others. "This is just a local channel, but the coverage is everywhere now--CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, you name it,"

"So much for not spreading any hysteria," Cassie muttered because now that anyone who watched the news knew about the bombings in Florida, everyone was about to start thinking they might be the next target.

JJ quickly raised the volume on the TV so the team could hear what the news anchor was saying better, and it seemed as if the woman was reporting live on Clurman's condition.

"According to doctors, he's badly injured," the reporter, Rosalie Escobar, was saying. "But in stable condition in the ICU. Now neighbors say they heard a blast at about 10:30 this morning, and police arrived..."

Escobar continued her report, but Cassie stopped listening as she heard Gideon sigh and pinch a crease between his eyebrows. 

"If DHS doesn't raise the terror alert now," the senior agent began. "They'll look weak,"

Hotch, meanwhile, once Gideon had finished speaking, turned towards JJ.

"Make sure Homeland Security knows that this is everywhere," Hotch said, and JJ nodded, turning to leave and do as the unit chief had said. 

But just as the press liaison turned to leave the round-table room, there was another explosion live on TV, a ways back from where Escobar was reporting. It was about half a block away from Clurman's crime scene but close enough that Cassie knew it had come from another house on Clurman's street.

The twenty-seven-year-old could barely contain her gasp as the live news feed turned into chaos, and everyone at the scene started to understandably panic, with Cassie glancing over at Hotch as the unit chief heaved a sigh of his own.

"Looks like we're going to Palm Beach," Hotch said. "Let's meet at the airstrip in twenty,"

Cassie sighed again. She really hated bombing cases, but she enjoyed the part of her job that allowed her to imprison the bad guys so she couldn't complain.

Her partner, on the other hand, it seemed, could, since five minutes later, as the brunette was at her desk, making the final preparations and grabbing her go-bag to make it to the jet in time to go to Palm Beach, Cassie noticed Morgan practically riding Hotch's ass as the unit chief exited the roundtable room.

Cassie didn't try to eavesdrop on her coworkers habitually, but it wasn't her fault if Derek and Hotch were all but arguing right in front of her desk. What was she supposed to do, not listen in?

"Hotch, listen," Morgan was saying, and Cassie braced herself for what her partner would say. She had seen Derek's face when Hotch said they would be heading to Palm Beach, and he hadn't exactly looked pleased. "They're gonna be sending us bomb fragments by this afternoon. I'm the only one with an ATF background, so if you'd like me to supervise the bomb profile, I'm on that,"

On the off-chance either of the men would turn and look at her, Cassie made sure to make it look as if she were doing work instead of just blatantly eavesdropping on Hotch and Morgan as the unit chief turned towards the younger man, sounding almost humorous with what he said next.

"Morgan," Hotch began. "You wouldn't be scared to be out in the field with a bomber, would you?"

Cassie had known Derek Morgan for over three years; they had worked together for over three years, and he was probably the one person that she knew best out of everyone in the unit, but that didn't mean that she agreed with everything he did.

Morgan wasn't scared or nervous about being in the field with the Palm Beach bomber; it was Gideon with whom he was nervous.

Gideon had been out of the field for six months after the bombing in Boston, and though the higher-ups in the Bureau had been nervous about returning him to work to help with the Seattle Strangler case, he had more than proven himself to be capable again to help lead the team in the field, and at the end of that case, Heather Woodland had been found alive and safe.

Morgan wasn't as convinced yet of Gideon's capability to think critically in the field because a moment later, Cassie's partner answered Hotch's criticism, confirming about himself what Cassie had already posited.

"Maybe it's not the bomber I'm worried about," he said quietly, and Hotch, much like Cassie, seemed less than impressed by what Derek was insinuating.

"I thought we were past all that," Hotch said, but Morgan wasn't giving up that easily.

"Hotch," he began. "Boston sent Gideon into a posttraumatic tailspin. How do we know that won't happen again?"

While Cassie could admit to herself that Morgan had a little bit of a point--this was, after all, the first bombing the team had worked on since Gideon had been back--the higher-ups in the Bureau wouldn't have let Gideon stay on the team after the Seattle Strangler case if they weren't sure that he was capable enough to help lead the team in the field.

"Morgan, tell you what?" Hotch continued quickly since the time the team had to get to the airstrip to get on the plane to Palm Beach was running out, and now Cassie was trying to get the last things she needed together in time to get to the jet. "Why don't we concentrate on profiling the bomber and not Gideon?"

With that, Hotch turned his back on Morgan and walked over to his office while Morgan, still looking slightly perturbed, walked down the small flight of stairs into the main bullpen.

"Copy that," Cassie heard him mutter as Derek walked past her desk, and as she grabbed the strap of her go-bag and hefted it over her shoulder, she used her free hand to lightly tap Morgan's shoulder, grabbing his attention.

"Hey," she told him once Morgan had turned around to look at her, but Cassie wasn't entirely sure how well she'd be able to get through to him if Hotch hadn't been able to sway Derek into trusting Gideon in the field again. "Gideon's been cleared. You know he has. So, what's the problem?"

"It's nothing," Morgan answered, but Cassie just raised an eyebrow, both at the fact that her partner thought he'd be able to lie to her and that, obviously, it was something. "Just..." 

Morgan trailed off for a moment, and as Cassie waited to hear what he would say, she saw that behind Derek and through the glass doors that led out of the bullpen, Hotch was waiting near the elevators. When the unit chief caught Cassie's eye, he tapped his watch, signifying it was time to go.

"Be careful," was what Morgan finally said after a good forty-five seconds of silence, and all Cassie could do was send her partner a smile in return.

"Come on, Chicago," she told him. "You know 'danger' is my middle name,"

It wasn't. Technically, her middle name, which was Briana, meant high, noble, or exalted, and judging from the look on Morgan's face, he wasn't impressed at her attempt at humor.

"Yes, Derek," Cassie said again once she realized Morgan wasn't about to laugh. "I promise I'll be careful," 

With that, Cassie turned around, leaving Morgan standing by her desk, his knuckles rapping against the surface, and walked out of the bullpen to join Hotch at the elevator, both already with thoughts running through their head of theories about the unsub.

Theories about who he was, what the bombs were made of, what made him start attacking today out of every other day in the year, and probably the most important one: how many more bombs would be set off before he'd stop?

☆☆☆

Samuel Johnson wrote, "Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble."

On the plane, the agents, minus Morgan, who had stayed at Quantico to profile the bomb fragments once the police sent them over, started reading over the case file for the Palm Beach bombings, and even though the information they had so far was scarce, it was better than nothing.

"Bombings occurred within three miles of each other," Hotch was saying as he paced the aisle of the BAU's jet, and Cassie flipped through some of the pages of her file, skimming the information contained within as Hotch continued. "First victim was a 74-year-old widow, Barbara Keller," the unit chief set a picture of Keller down on the table, and Cassie spun it around so she'd be able to see it better. "Two hours after that, Clurman got hit in his driveway, and forty-five minutes later..." Hotch trailed off momentarily as Cassie glanced up at him, and the older man tilted his head to the side before sitting on Agent Quinn's other side. "Well, we all saw that," he said, the most recent bombing having been the one that had been on the news.

"Jill Swenson," Cassie spoke up as she looked down at her file again, at the photo of the dark-haired woman only a few years older than herself. "Thirty-four years old, she was a stay-at-home mom who lived only a few doors down from Clurman,"

"Of the three victims," Hotch added. "Only Clurman survived,"

"Is there any connection between the victims?" Reid asked, and after another glance at the case file, Hotch had an answer ready for the young genius.

"One," he said, twisting around in his seat to be able to look at Reid. "Clurman was a partner in a $10-million condo development deal in which Keller was an investor. A few weeks ago, the whole deal went bust,"

"Went bust, how?" Elle asked.

"Geologists discovered that the land was on methane," Hotch explained. "The condos never got built, the land became worthless, and Clurman lost a lot of people a lot of money,"

"So maybe one of them was mad enough to take aim at Clurman?" Reid asked, and though she could see the train of thought that Spencer was following, Cassie pointed her pen at him before Reid could say anything more.

"That doesn't explain why the unsub would target Keller or Mrs. Swenson, though," she said. "As far as we know so far, Jill Swenson wasn't connected at all to Clurman or the condo development aside from simply being Clurman's neighbor, and if Barbara Keller was an investor, she'd have lost money too when the project went under,"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Gideon spoke up for the first time since the team had started brainstorming, and Cassie turned to look at the older agent as Gideon held photos of the three victims in his hands. "It's a little too early to theorize about motive,"

"Then, where do we start?" Elle asked, and Gideon just shrugged.

"From the beginning," he told her. "What do we know about bombers?"

"Mostly male," Reid answered instantly, always one of the first to have a definition ready whenever someone asked for it. "Loners with a history of criminal activity. About fifty percent of all bombings," the twenty-three-year-old added. "Are actually the product of vandalism,"

"Not to mention how dangerous it is," Cassie continued. "Ninety percent of the time, the bombers end up moving something wrong in the device, or they set a timer wrong and blow themselves up instead,"

"Which is why the first suspects you look for in bombing cases are the victims," Hotch said.

"Clurman was the only male," Elle posited. "Losing a large business deal like that...it could be a powerful stressor,"

Gideon gave another small shrug, his expression not revealing one way or the other which side of the theorizing he was on, be it Clurman was the unsub or if he was just another victim, but a moment later, Cassie watched as he moved the photos out of the way to reveal the pictures that the Bureau had been sent of the street in front of Clurman's house, the charred shell of Clurman's car the only thing that remained after the package bomb had exploded.

"And then there's the crime scene," Gideon continued a moment later, holding the picture up. "Clurman was the only victim who didn't get hit at his door. Why? What was different about this one?"

Cassie thought that, as she settled back against her seat again, and Gideon continued to stare at the crime scene photo, was what they needed to figure out.

☆☆☆

Once the BAU had landed in Florida, they diverged, with JJ going to set up what they needed at the precinct to have that act as their home base away from home, while Cassie, Elle, Reid, Hotch, and Gideon headed to Clurman's house, to see what they would be able to discover from there.

It was Florida at the beginning of October, so though the temperatures were a balmy eighty degrees, the humidity was absolutely brutal. Once the agents emerged from the government-issued SUV and stepped out onto the street in front of Clurman's house, Cassie shrugged off her blazer and slung it over one arm as she followed behind Hotch.

"Before Clurman passed out," the unit chief was saying. "What he told cops at the time was that he saw the package sitting on the stoop outside his kitchen door,"

"He must've carried the box pretty carefully then," Cassie said, tilting her head at the rather convenient aspect of the events leading up to Clurman's attack. "If he isn't the unsub and didn't know that he was holding a bomb with mercury switches, it's a miracle he didn't blow up as he was walking to his car,"

"There's fifty feet between the stoop and here," Reid added, the young genius standing right by where the passenger door of Clurman's car used to be—quite a way for someone to carry a package holding a bomb and not manage to explode.

"Joe Reese, one of Clurman's investors," Hotch spoke up a second later. "Was here before the bomb went off. Cops have ruled him out as a suspect, but he said he saw Clurman get in the car with the package,"

"So maybe Clurman wasn't receiving a bomb at all," Elle posited. "Maybe he was on his way to delivering one,"

"But, he drops it or tilts it," Reid continued. "And it goes off by accident,"

"I want to talk to Clurman," Gideon said suddenly. "In the meantime, let's get a warrant to search his house,"

Regardless of whether or not it seemed as if Clurman had simply been the second victim of the bomber, the team needed to rule him out as a suspect completely, and considering he was the only one of the three victims so far who fit the standard profile of a bomber (gender, recent stressor, etc.) they needed to search his house.

With the looming threat of another attack over their heads, especially with how close together the bombings that had already occurred that morning were, the warrant took significantly less time to clear with a judge than it usually would have, so while Gideon and Reid went to the hospital to talk to Clurman, to find out for sure if the man was genuinely a victim, or if he was the unsub, Cassie stayed at the house with Elle and Hotch to wait for the detective leading the case to show them around.

Since they weren't being held liable for being on the premises without a warrant anymore, ATF was currently going through the Clurmans' things, trying to find anything that, if Clurman wasn't a victim, might explain why he felt the need to build the bombs in the first place.

"Where's your team now?" Hotch asked one of the ATF agents as Cassie and Elle lingered on the porch.

"Down in the garage," the other agent answered, and Hotch gave a single nod of confirmation before he continued.

"After they finish in the garage, make sure they check the attic," the unit chief said, just as Cassie noticed a man walking up the sidewalk from the street, a cop shield hanging around his neck.

Obviously, the local detective had arrived.

"Agent Hotchner?" the man asked as the ATF agent moved away to resume his search in the Clurman's garage, and Hotch turned around, already extending his hand for a shake.

"Yes, sir," he admitted, and the other man gave him a welcoming smile, though it was also a bit grim, given the circumstances of why the BAU was here in the first place.

"Detective Morrison, Palm Beach PD," the man--Morrison--introduced himself, and Cassie shook his hand as soon as Hotch had retreated, Elle following after she finished her phone call. "I'm lead on the case,"

"Nice to meet you," Hotch said before gesturing to Cassie and Elle, respectively. "These are Agents Quinn and Greenaway. Agents Reid and Gideon are at the hospital, and I think you met Agent Jareau at the station house,"

Detective Morrison let out a small chuckle, which Cassie took to mean that, yes, he had met JJ at the precinct.

"Oh, yeah," he said in response a few seconds later, shoving his hands into his pockets. "She's really taken over the place,"

"She tends to do that," Cassie told him. Not a bad thing, by any stretch of the imagination, but after two years of working with the young media liaison, Cassie had learned that, generally, Jennifer Jareau wasn't one to take no for an answer, especially if it meant helping the people who needed it.

As it were, Hotch, ever the one to get the team back on track whenever conversation diverged, led Morrison, Cassie, and Elle all into the Clurman house, where ATF agents were still going over almost anything and everything they could get their hands on.

So far, though, they hadn't found much. Depending on how you looked at it, that could be on the good or bad sides of things.

"ATF hasn't found any hard evidence yet," Hotch told Morrison as the three agents and detective stepped inside the Clurmans' living room. "Just some kitchen timers, tape recorders, and electrical switches,"

"Which isn't exactly surprising," Cassie added. "Package bombs with mercury switches are pretty sophisticated, but a lot of more amateur bombs can be made with any number of regular household items,"

Over the years, Cassie had more or less learned all of her bombing knowledge from Derek through mental osmosis, soaking up the random facts like a sponge.

As it were, things were about to get a whole lot more complicated since, almost as soon as Morrison had closed the door behind him, Cassie heard another door across the house slam shut just as an unfamiliar woman with short red hair appeared from beyond the kitchen.

"Hello?" she asked, sounding less than pleased at all the random people pawing through her things, and tossed her bag onto a nearby table. "Excuse me!"

"Mrs. Clurman," Cassie heard Morrison whisper to Hotch just as Mrs. Clurman stopped a few feet away from the agents and detective, still looking quite upset.

"What's going on here?" she asked, and Cassie and Hotch, the two most senior BAU agents in the room, instantly pulled out their credentials to show Mrs. Clurman that they were legit and allowed to be there.

"Mrs. Clurman," Hotch began. "My name is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner. This is Special Agent Cassidy Quinn. We're with the FBI,"

"What are you doing in my house?" Mrs. Clurman asked, and this time, Cassie answered.

"We do have a warrant, Mrs. Clurman," the twenty-seven-year-old began, noticing from the corner of her eye how Elle jerked her head to the side, gesturing for Morrison to grab the warrant as proof. "All we want to do is make sure that your husband wasn't, in any way, involved in what happened to him this morning,"

"Involved?" Mrs. Clurman snapped back, scoffing as she continued to look around at the ATF agents who were still investigating. "My husband's in the hospital with his leg blown off. What are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Clurman," Elle said next, sounding remarkably calm, given that the four agents were being berated for doing their job, which was, unfortunately, nothing new. Frankly, Cassie was impressed. "There are some questions that your husband needs to answer, and the sooner that we talk to him and clear him, the sooner we can find whoever's responsible,"

Just as Elle finished speaking and Cassie began to see Mrs. Clurman's face start to relax, her exasperation beginning to dissipate, an ATF agent appeared from behind them, bringing everything, including Mrs. Clurman's stress level, to a head all over again.

"Agent Hotchner?" the other agent asked, and Cassie turned around with Hotch to see what it was the ATF wanted to say. "We've got something,"

If ATF had found something, maybe Clurman hadn't been as innocent as Mrs. Clurman thought. Judging from the shocked look on the older woman's face, though, she had no idea what the ATF agent was talking about. If Gil Clurman really was the unsub, obviously, his wife hadn't realized it.

The ATF agent led Cassie, Hotch, Elle, and Detective Morrison through the Clurmans' house and into their garage. There, he grabbed a toolbox and set it on the floor, lifting off the top portion and setting it aside.

Cassie leaned forward so she could see whatever evidence ATF seemed to have found, and when she did, her eyes widened.

In the bottom portion of the toolbox, hidden from view unless someone was specifically looking for it or knew it was already there from prior experience, was a collection of different-colored wires, pipe caps, a small cylinder of what looked like buckshot, and a hot glue gun.

In short, the toolkit's contents were whatever you could think of to build a bomb. Including a copy of The Anarchist's Companion stuffed into the bottom of the toolbox and underneath everything else.

"We found this buried on the back of that shelf," the ATF agent explained, gesturing with one hand to the shelf in question.

Movement from the doorway made Cassie look up, and she saw Mrs. Clurman, who had trailed after their little group when the BAU agents had been brought to the garage, staring wide-eyed at the toolbox that still sat on the floor.

"Mrs. Clurman," Cassie said, stern but not unkind, getting to her feet and gesturing to the toolbox. "Do you know anything about this?"

Judging from the look on the older woman's face, Clurman's wife was as shocked about the toolbox discovery as the agents were, but this also bumped Clurman up several spaces in the metaphorical suspect list, and though he was still in the hospital, likely getting questioned by Gideon and Reid, Hotch, Elle, and Cassie, along with the rest of the ATF agents, started to search the rest of the Clurmans' house to see if, in case Clurman did turn out to be the unsub, he had any evidence or clue to where the next bomb, if there was one, might've been left.

In the end, Cassie found herself in the kitchen with Hotch, already thoroughly exhausted from the case (and they hadn't even been in Florida for twelve hours yet!) when the unit chief got a call from Gideon at the hospital.

"Yeah," Hotch said quickly, flipping his cell phone open and turning the call on speaker so he and Cassie were both able to hear whatever it was that Gideon had found out from Clurman and Gideon, like always, got straight to the point as soon as Hotch answered the phone.

"This isn't our guy," Gideon said, sounding quite sure of himself, and though Cassie knew that Gideon, being one of the founders of the BAU itself, knew what he was doing, he had been fooled before. 

"Are you sure?" She asked, leaning over Hotch's phone so Gideon could hear her, but Gideon answered her what seemed like less than a second later.

"Yes," he said firmly. "His answers were coherent even while he was sedated. He's got a sense of humor, displays empathy..." Gideon trailed off momentarily, and in the background, Cassie could hear Reid begin to speak.

"Not to mention," the young genius added. "He has a hobby unrelated to bomb-making,"

"This is nothing like a typical bomber profile," Gideon explained, and at that, Cassie glanced up at Hotch. 

She believed Gideon when he said that Clurman wasn't the unsub once he had explained how exactly he knew that, but it didn't explain why the Clurmans had a toolbox full of bomb-making materials in their garage, especially since Mrs. Clurman didn't fit the standard bomber profile at all.

"That doesn't explain, though," Cassie began again a moment later. "Why the Clurmans have a bomb-making kit in their house if Gil Clurman isn't the unsub,"

"We'll see if the fragments match to the bomb scene," Gideon said. "But I doubt they will,"

There wasn't anything else Cassie or Hotch could say to that, so Hotch hung up the call moments before Elle walked up to the two other agents, holding a framed picture in her hand that she showed to Hotch and Cassie as soon as she reached them.

"Look at this," the other woman said, gesturing to the photograph, and Cassie stared at it, the photo in question being of Gil Clurman and a younger boy standing in front of this very house. Judging from the body language of both males, they were pretty close. "This is their nephew in Texas. And according to Mrs. Clurman, he was staying with them for a month and left last week."

"Good thing he wasn't here for all this," Cassie murmured, half to herself, as she continued to look at the photo. 

The nephew looked to be about the same age as her younger sister, Nisha, maybe thirteen or fourteen at the oldest. It was a very good thing that the nephew hadn't been here to see his uncle's leg get blown up. 

Even though it seemed as if Clurman wasn't the unsub, the entire ordeal would still be traumatic for anyone who would've witnessed it, adult and child alike.

"Aren't mercury switches a little sophisticated for a twelve-year-old?" Hotch asked as Cassie handed the photo back to Elle, and the twenty-seven-year-old couldn't help but agree. 

There was little chance at all that, even if Clurman wasn't the one behind it, his nephew was the one leaving package bombs on people's porches. Sometimes, their profiles were off, but not that off.

"I'm not saying he's the unsub," Elle retorted, tilting her head to the side. "But, boys his age like to blow stuff up,"

Cassie grew up with two sisters, and she hadn't spent enough time around twelve-year-old boys when she was twelve to know whether or not they liked to make things explode in their free time, but it would explain the toolkit of bomb ingredients in the Clurman's garage.

Judging from the look on Hotch's face when Cassie glanced at him, the unit chief was thinking a similar thing.

"We'll talk to Morrison," Hotch told Elle, referring to him and Cassie. "He'll contact local PD in Texas who'll pick up the kid and talk to him,"

Relatively satisfied, Elle walked away from the other two agents to return the photograph to where she had found it as Cassie turned towards Hotch again.

"You don't think Clurman's nephew is the unsub, do you?" she asked as the unit chief retrieved his cell phone to call Morrison. Hotch glanced at the younger woman before he shook his head.

"No," he answered. "I don't. But," he added a moment later before voicing Cassie's thoughts from earlier. "Since it seems like Clurman's not the unsub, it would explain the toolkit. We better hope the bomb fragments got to Quantico okay and Morgan can piece the device back together. Because, without that, we got nothing,"

"Let's hope the unsub doesn't decide to deliver another package in the meantime," Cassie said quietly, and judging from the grim look on Hotch's face, he agreed.

☆☆☆

Weirdly enough, given her choice of work, Cassie never got much sleep whenever she was away from home, and this case was no different.

They could only wait to see if the police in Texas would discover something worthwhile when questioning Clurman's nephew, to see if the bombing kit in the Clurman's garage belonged to him, but until then, all they could do was wait.

The agents also hadn't found anything else at the Clurman house, so eventually, they needed to leave and return Mrs. Clurman to her home. Cassie had stayed at the Palm Beach police precinct as late as she could before finally Hotch sent her to the hotel where the team was staying for their current stay in Florida to get some much-needed rest.

She had managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before needing to be back in the precinct the next morning, and the showers she'd taken both after returning to her room the night before and before leaving that morning had been nice, being able to wash off the first day's wear and tear.

However, Cassie's good mood was unfortunately trampled almost as soon as she walked into the precinct that morning when Hotch quickly gathered the BAU team and Detective Morrison into an empty conference room with news from Morgan.

And, unfortunately, it wasn't good news.

"Morgan emailed these over," Hotch began, pointing to the screen of an open laptop as Cassie gathered around the table with Gideon, Reid, Elle, and Morrison.

It seemed as if Morgan had managed to reassemble the bombs used in the attacks in Palm Beach, but the fact that there were four photos on the screen when so far there had only been three attacks didn't bode well at all.

"The three on the left are the bombs from yesterday," Hotch explained as he gestured to the screen, and Cassie felt her stomach drop. "The one on the right's from the evidence room at Quantico,"

"They're all identical," Reid said, voicing what Cassie was thinking. "Made with steel reinforcement rods," 

As Cassie continued to stare at the photos, Gideon leaned across the table to spin the laptop around towards him.

"Adrian Bale," Gideon's voice was abrupt, straight, and to the point as always, and Cassie was a little bit stupefied at how calm the senior agent seemed, given the situation.

"Who?" Detective Morrison had no idea why the maker of the bombs was suddenly so important, but Hotch was quick to explain.

"He held our agents in a standoff in Boston last year," the unit chief told him. "He took out six agents and a hostage with one of his bombs,"

"You're thinking he's behind this?" Elle asked, and Cassie glanced at her. 

"The fact that the bombs are identical," she began. "Is suspect. But," Cassie added a moment later, glancing towards Hotch as Gideon rounded the side of the conference table and began to pace. "He's in prison. No way he could be sending the package bombs through the mail from behind bars,"

"He does have a cult following, though," Reid posited. "Like Charles Manson. It could just be a copycat,"

A very skilled copycat, Cassie thought to herself, but this time, she didn't voice her thoughts to the others. Whether or not the bomber from today was a sick and twisted fan of Adrian Bale's or if Bale had somehow managed to pull some elaborate plan from behind bars remained to be seen, but they still needed to find out what Bale knew, if anything at all.

"There's one way to find out," Morrison piped up, his voice gruff. "Let's put the screws to this guy,"

"No, no, no," Gideon interrupted as he took a swift drink out of a bottle of water at the other end of the table. "Bale's too smart. If we want information from him, we have to handle him carefully. Even then, you have to assume that road will lead nowhere,"

"You're saying the connection to Bale doesn't help us at all?" Morrison asked, obviously displeased that the BAU couldn't just hand him the bomber, but Gideon wasn't done.

"No," the senior agent added a moment later. "I'm just saying let us handle Bale,"

"Look," Morrison said, and judging from the way he suddenly tensed up and gripped the back of his chair with his hands, Cassie could see that Morrison was beginning to lose patience. "We just heard from local Texas PD, you were right about Clurman's nephew. He admitted the bomb stuff was his, which is great for the Clurmans, but it leaves us with zero suspects. So what do you suggest my men do now?"

Morrison shifted his gaze between Hotch and Gideon, obviously waiting for an answer, and it took a few more moments before Gideon said anything else.

"Proceed from the profile," Gideon told Morrison, and this time, Morrison's body language turned confused instead of irritable, and the police detective narrowed his eyes.

"I didn't know we had a profile," Morrison said slowly as if he halfway believed Gideon was lying to him.

But Gideon hardly ever lied to anyone except an unsub he was trying to get a confession out of, so after the fifteen minutes it took for Morrison to gather all the other police officers and detectives who were working the bombing case into the main bullpen of the Palm Beach Police Department, Cassie found herself standing by the chalkboards with Hotch as Gideon started explaining the profile to the cops.

Reid and Elle were sitting beside each other on an unoccupied desk in the middle of the bullpen, and Cassie figured that if the two newer agents had been less new, they would've been helping to give the profile as well. But, Elle had been with the unit for less than a month, while Reid had just over a year under his belt, so relegated to observing they had been, while Cassie, who had joined the BAU in early 2002 after being plucked from her three-month stint at the Honolulu Field Office by Gideon, was considered an "experienced" agent in terms of team hierarchy, and thus was able to help give the profile.

"We're talking about someone who's non-confrontational," Gideon explained as he walked up to join Hotch and Cassie at the chalkboards. "If you bumped into him at a cafe, he'd apologize even if it wasn't his fault,"

"We would classify this bomber as highly organized," Hotch added. "Based on the meticulous design of his bombs. It means above-average intelligence. He probably has a skilled job, a trade, one that allows him to work alone. That's how he was able to make a sophisticated device without raising suspicion. Furniture, jeweler, et cetera,"

"Background in explosives?" Morrison piped up from where he was leaning against his desk, and this time, Cassie was the one who shook her head to dissuade the detective's idea.

"Not at all," the brunette told him. "That type of bomber is one who just likes to make things blow up for the fun of it all or to get an emotional or sexual release. To bombers like that, death is simply secondary,"

"So what's this guy doing?" another police officer asked halfway across the room, and Gideon continued the profile in Cassie's place.

"Murdering," he said simply, and Cassie glanced at the senior agent from the corner of her eye. "Bombs--just weapons. And these attacks," Gideon added before he revealed the smoking gun, which made this particular unsub so different from the others. "Are not random,"

"Well, how do you know that?" one cop asked, and Hotch glanced over.

"By process of elimination," the unit chief explained. "We know bombers fall into a discreet number of categories based on motive,"

"The terrorist," Cassie started. "Whose motive is to spread fear and panic through civilians because of his bombs. They usually strike in highly-populated or highly-traveled areas, like downtown cities or subway stations. The politically-motivated bomber, who makes a statement by choosing symbolic targets, such as an abortion clinic."

"Then, there's our unsub," Hotch said. "He made bombs designed to kill, and he chose his victims specifically by placing the bombs at their stoops. That tells us he has a direct motive. Statistically, he bombs for profit or to conceal a crime. And," Hotch continued when it looked as if all of the gathered Palm Beach police officers looked about as confused as Morgan did whenever Reid tried to explain a physics problem to him. "It tells us how we are going to find him--through the people he killed,"

"Somewhere among the three victims," Gideon explained. "There is a direct motive. Keep digging,"

"If you have any questions, we'll be around. Thanks," Hotch added as the police officers started to disperse. The profile giving had concluded, and the cops had their next objective, but as Cassie went to stand over Reid and Elle, Gideon's purposeful stride towards the chair his jacket was lying on caught her attention.

"You'll be around," the senior agent corrected Hotch, and Cassie could see that Hotch had the same bemused expression on his face as she probably did, which became even stronger when Gideon continued. "I'll be in prison. Somebody's gotta talk to Bale,"

Cassie was about eighty-five percent sure that having Gideon, of all people, go to interview the man responsible for kicking him out of the field for six months and killing half a dozen other agents was an absolutely terrible idea, but her three years with the unit had nothing on Gideon's almost thirty, hell, he was one of the founders, and even though she liked to think that Gideon valued her input, it looked as if even Hotch wasn't going to try and sway Gideon away from his ill-thought-out plan.

"You want me to come with you?" she asked before Gideon left, and the senior agent glanced at her as he shrugged his jacket over his shoulders. "I can try and read him, figure out if he's lying if he says he's not involved,"

"No," Gideon said simply before nodding towards the conference room the BAU had effectively commandeered away from the Palm Beach PD. "Stay on the connection between the victims with Hotch and Elle. There has to be something that gives us a motive as to why these people, why these bombs. I'll take Reid with me,"

The genius in question snapped his head to stare at Gideon from where he had been fiddling with an unfolded paper clip. Elle also turned to stare at Reid, but with Gideon already halfway out the door, all Spencer could do was follow him.

That left Cassie, Hotch, Elle, and JJ to start digging into whatever aspect of the victims' lives might be the connection to the unsub. Still, even after grabbing the files on each victim and beginning to dig into their lives, an hour later, Cassie couldn't see anything even remotely connecting the three victims so far, aside from the investment that Barbara Keller had in Clurman's ill-fated real estate development. But, considering the agents had already discovered that on their flight from Quantico, and with Clurman now officially ruled out as a suspect, that didn't leave them with many options.

"How are we doing?" JJ asked as she walked into the conference room, and from where she was halfway buried beneath a mound of paper detailing almost every aspect of the three victims' lives, Cassie glanced at the press liaison with narrowed eyes.

"I've been thwarted by the mundane," the brunette grumbled, and JJ smiled the tiniest bit as Cassie saw Hotch raise an eyebrow from her peripheral just before Elle smacked down the sheaf of paper she was currently flipping through to glare at the laptop screen.

Agent Greenaway wasn't getting any headway into potential victim connections either.

"I just can't see why anyone would want to kill a little old lady who collects cats," the BAU's newest member began before gesturing to another passage on the sheet of paper she was reading. "And coins,"

"Unless somebody wanted the coins," Hotch posited. "I spent a good chunk of my childhood looking for a 1944 penny worth thousands,"

Cassie had known Hotch for a few years, and she knew enough about the unit chief that he wasn't prone to sharing personal details. She knew he was married and his wife Haley was about eight months pregnant, but she hadn't known that Hotch had spent his youth collecting old pennies.

Her collection hobby of choice was original editions of the Nancy Drew series from the 1930s, and she had been collecting them for over a decade at this point, starting when she had begun college. It wasn't easy, especially since the books by this point were over seventy years old, but Cassie had always loved mystery stories. Once she had begun at the FBI, she'd bought newer editions of the series to actually read rather than keep them for display on her bookshelf like the original copies and try to guess who the bad guy was before the end of the story.

Most of the Nancy books' endings were easy enough to guess, but Cassie had always loved the mystery genre in general, and the bookshelves she had at home that weren't designated for her Nancy books were chocked full of them.

Back in the present, Hotch noticed that all three of his colleagues were continuing to stare at him. After a few seconds, the unit chief glanced up at them, looking a bit sheepish.

"Yes," he said finally, sighing a bit as he did so. "I was a little bit of a nerd. Is that so surprising?"

"Not to me," Elle told him, and Cassie saw her and JJ exchange an amused glance, with the press liaison trying not to laugh as Cassie waved her pen in Hotch's direction.

"Yeah," Cassie added, making Hotch turn to look at her. "You've seen my shelves, Hotch. Obviously, you're not the only one who likes to collect things on this team,"

The corner of Hotch's mouth quirked up, the closest to a smile Cassie was going to get out of the unit chief while the team was still working on a case, and the four of them returned to flipping through the various papers detailing the victims' lives, with Cassie now organizing the papers into piles differentiated between the ones she'd already looked through and found nothing, and the ones she still needed to study. A minute later, though, the phone on the table rang, and Hotch had to dig it out from beneath another pile of papers before he could answer.

"Morgan?" the unit chief asked, and Cassie's partner spoke from the other end of the line.

"Yeah, I just got the lab results from the powder residues on the bombs," he began before listing off the findings of the lab's analysis. "Ammonia nitrate, potassium chloride, and aluminum powder,"

"That's identical to Bale's bomb makeup," Cassie said, remembering the ingredients from when the B.A.U. had first investigated Adrian Bale's crimes.

"Exactly," Morgan agreed. "And the closer I look at these things, the more they're the same. Same weld pattern, same switch assembly, same thread sizing. It's weird. This guy's not building bombs; he's forging them. That's the other reason I'm calling you guys," Derek added a second later. "Bale wrote addresses on his packages in block letters with blue ink. I'm thinking our guy's doing the same,"

"Okay," JJ said, already typing on her cell phone's keyboard. "I'll set up a press conference and make sure the public knows."

"Thanks, Morgan," Hotch said before hanging up the call. As JJ left the conference room to begin setting up for her press conference, Cassie, Elle, and Hotch returned to their papers again. However, moments later, Hotch's cell phone rang, and the unit chief only glanced at the caller I.D. for an instant before quickly excusing himself from the table as well.

He stayed in the room, and as Hotch listened to the beginnings of whoever was on the other end of his phone call, Cassie noticed that he started to pace, which was never a good sign whenever Hotch was on the phone.

"Well, I think that's premature," he said, giving Cassie a swift glance as he turned around, a look that told the younger woman to stop profiling him, one of the only abject rules he and Gideon had for the other members of the team (no profiling each other).

Cassie jerked her gaze back down to her papers, but that didn't mean she stopped listening.

"We don't even know if Bale's involved yet," Hotch continued, and Cassie idly flipped through another sheaf of papers if only to give the illusion that she was actually doing work. "You're sure you want to deal with a guy who took out six of our agents?" The use of 'our' in this particular sentence signified that Hotch was probably talking to someone else in the Bureau, and judging from the way his attitude was shifting, the caller had to be someone higher up on the payroll than any of the team members themselves. Hotch was silent for a few more moments before he spoke again. "Well, there has to be,"

He hung up the phone again, and Cassie knew that Hotch hadn't been pleased to hear the specifics of the call, whatever they had been.

Cassie also knew that, from context clues, whoever had called Hotch, if they really were someone higher up on the Bureau's ladder, it seemed as if the brass wanted to make a deal with Bale, to see if the man who was already behind bars would be willing to help the FBI try and catch the man on the outside who was impersonating him.

It was a horrible idea, and Bale was bound to have some sort of escape plan if he was let out by the Bureau to "help" them. Thankfully, though, it seemed as if, for now, Hotch seemed to have bought the team some time to figure out the real identity of the unsub before he could kill anyone else.

☆☆☆

Cassie thought to herself that JJ's press conference had worked in the worst possible way as she jumped out of the Bureau SUV after Hotch and Detective Morrison in another residential neighborhood in Palm Beach, only this time, it wasn't an adult who had grabbed the package bomb off the porch, it had been a child, no more than seven years old.

Thankfully, the mother of the young girl who'd grabbed the box, obviously not knowing how dangerous the package itself was, had actually been watching JJ's press conference at the exact same time and had managed to steady her daughter's hands before the little girl could tip the box over and make the bomb go off.

But, now, the two of them were stuck, the mother kneeling down and making sure her daughter didn't let go of the box, and also making sure the little girl stayed calm, and even though the Palm Beach PD, ATF, and Hotch and Cassie had gotten to the house as fast as they could, it had been almost twenty minutes now since the girl had found the box and, like any girl her age, the child was starting to get antsy.

"The first thing we have to do is get the mother out of there," Hotch told the two ATF agents who were waiting at the curb when the SUV stopped, and the two men instantly left to do as the unit chief asked while Cassie turned to her boss with wide eyes.

"You know it's not going to be easy to get her away, right?" she asked, and she saw Hotch sigh before he answered.

"I know," he said heavily as the ATF agents ducked under the caution tape surrounding the house and got up to the porch as fast as they could without startling either of the people holding the bomb. "But we can't risk losing two more people,"

"We can't risk losing anyone else," Cassie shot back.

She saw Hotch clench his jaw, but instead of saying something else to her boss that could potentially get her reprimanded, regardless of how long she had known the unit chief, Cassie turned back around to watch as Dan Tracy, one of the two ATF agents who had gone to the front porch of the house to try and get the box out safely before it exploded, extended the pole beneath the platform that he could use to steady the box holding the bomb.

Cassie couldn't help but hold her breath as she watched Tracy extend the platform towards the bottom of the box. Even though she and Hotch were standing several yards away from the front porch of the house on the street, she could see the young girl holding the box starting to shake, both from having to hold the box as steady as she was able to for such a long period of time and also from fear.

Thankfully, though, Tracy managed to get the platform underneath the box without the mercury hitting the switches within the package, and as soon as the box was out of her hands, the young girl ran forward to hug her mother, sobbing as she did so. Cassie let out the breath she'd been holding, leaning back against the hood of the SUV as another ATF agent swiftly led the mother and her daughter off the porch and past the caution tape barricade.

They were safe.

☆☆☆

With the most recently delivered bomb safely deactivated and in the hands of ATF and the mother and daughter safe, Cassie and Hotch headed back to the police precinct. As they walked in the door, Hotch got a call from Gideon, and the unit chief put the phone on speaker so Cassie could also listen in.

"Bale may be part of this," Gideon was saying. "But, he's not in control. If he were, he would've taunted me with specifics,"

"So what's our next move?" Hotch asked as he opened the door leading onto the floor where the BAU had set up their case boards, and Cassie saw Elle leaning against one of the officers' desks, obviously having been waiting for them.

"I'll let Bale know the unsub's using his designs," Gideon told them, and Cassie tilted her head towards Hotch's cell phone.

"You mean like bait?" she asked, assuming Gideon nodded on the other end.

"Yeah, exactly," he said. "If Bale wasn't part of it before, he'll sure want to be part of it now,"

With that, Gideon hung up, and a few moments later, Cassie and Hotch reached the desk Elle had been sitting on, with Agent Greenaway handing Cassie an open notepad that the other agent had scribbled a few notes on while Cassie and Hotch had been at the fourth bomb site.

"I might have something," Elle began as Cassie started to flip through the pages of the notepad. "Barbara Keller was having trouble insuring some coins she bought. The insurance company thought they might be fake,"

"So an insurance company's blowing up annoying clients?" Hotch asked in obvious disbelief, and Cassie couldn't help but snort at the unintentional dry humor of how the unit chief had spoken.

"Someone else could've been the one to sell Keller the fake coins," Cassie said, finally closing the notepad and handing it back to Elle. "When she found out the coins could've been fake and started to look into things, the unsub could've silenced her instead,"

"Were these coins valuable enough to kill over?" Hotch asked, and Elle shrugged.

"She told the insurance company she thought they might be worth twelve thousand dollars," the newer agent said calmly, and Cassie glanced at her again, eyes widening.

"Do we know who sold Keller the coins?" she asked, seeing Elle wince a second later.

"No," she said slowly before grabbing her notepad again and flipping to a page further along than Cassie had gotten to when she'd been looking through it. "But, she had an appointment with a coin dealer scheduled...I'm guessing it was to challenge the insurance company's appraisal, maybe? A guy named David Walker."

"So maybe he can help us figure out who sold her the coins," Hotch posited before he nodded between Cassie and Elle. "You two go to Walker's house and talk to him, see if he knows anything," Cassie nodded, and Elle grabbed her purse before the two of them headed towards Walker's house.

Elle had gotten the address when she'd discovered his connection to Keller earlier that afternoon. When they knocked on the door, Walker's wife answered and was actually very personable and welcoming compared to other family members or people of interest that Cassie had talked to over the years.

"Your husband's deals in coins and other antiques, right?" Cassie asked as Mrs. Walker led the two of them through one of her home's side doors, back out onto the driveway, and towards the garage, where Mrs. Walker had told the two agents earlier that her husband was currently holed up, working.

"Yeah," Mrs. Walker answered. "But, let me tell you, personally, I can't think of anything more boring than coins and old papers,"

Cassie gave a small and polite smile of acknowledgment before Mrs. Walker continued, turning towards Cassie and Elle again with a question that momentarily caught Agent Quinn off-guard.

"Are either of you single?" she asked, and the question was personal enough that all Cassie could do was stare at her, blinking. Meanwhile, Elle laughed in such a way that Cassie knew it to be one that a person used when they didn't want to seem rude.

"Yes, we both are," the other woman said, referencing a throwaway comment Cassie had made when Elle had first joined the BAU, in that Cassidy definitely did not have a boyfriend of either a casual or serious nature.

She was perfectly content staying inside on any of the few weekend nights she had free from a case to curl up on her couch with one of her Nancy books and read, thank you very much. Not to mention, since her last "serious" relationship had ended with the same sort of fiery explosion as one of Bale's bombs, Cassie wasn't really inclined to get back into a relationship with a man anytime soon. And that particular "serious" relationship had ended almost a decade ago.

But that was a story for another time, and as Mrs. Walker glanced at Elle one more time, the twenty-seven-year-old finally managed to bring herself out of her thoughts long enough to start paying attention again.

"I have a word of advice," Mrs. Walker said when Cassie turned towards her. "Don't marry the first guy who proposes." There was probably a multitude of psychological things Cassie could dissect from that statement, but Mrs. Walker continued before the brunette could say anything, wagging her finger toward the detached garage. "I wanted a pool table in there, but David insisted on making it his workshop,"

As they got closer to the garage, Cassie heard a car engine start within the small building just as her cell phone started to ring, and as she fished her phone out of the pocket of her pants, Mrs. Walker spoke up again.

"Oh, what's he up to now?" the older woman asked, and Elle glanced at her, looking a little confused.

"Sounds like a car," she said, and Cassie heard Mrs. Walker sigh.

"I hope he's not committing suicide," the comment was off-handed enough that Cassie could only stare in shock at Mrs. Walker for a moment or two before turning back to her cell phone, only to see that Hotch was the one who was trying to call her. "I won't be able to collect life insurance,"

Mrs. Walker seemed to be in a very unhappy marriage, Cassie couldn't help but notice as she raised an eyebrow at another of the woman's comments before finally flipping her phone open and answering Hotch's call.

"Hello?" she asked as Elle and Mrs. Walker continued their walk towards the Walkers' garage, and as soon as she had answered his call, Hotch had started talking, but he was speaking so fast it took Cassie a moment to realize what the unit chief was saying.

"Cassie, it's him," Hotch said, and from the end of the driveway, Cassie saw the Walkers' garage door begin to open, revealing David Walker's car within. "It's Walker!"

Cassie instantly hung up her call with Hotch as Walker revved his car's engine before speeding as fast as he could toward the three women standing in his driveway. Cassie could only let out an exclamation of warning towards Elle and Mrs. Walker before she dodged to the side of the driveway closer to the Walkers' house, onto the grass, and out of the way of Walker's car.

Elle managed to get out of the way, too, before she got hit, but poor Mrs. Walker was too surprised to do anything other than freeze on the concrete, and even though she was his wife, David Walker didn't even try and slow down before he hit her, the older woman rolling over the hood of the car and staying there for a moment before Walker screeched to a stop, allowing his wife to roll off the front of his car and fall onto the grass of their front yard before he gunned the engine again, tires squealing.

With a cursory glance at Elle to ensure the other agent was unharmed (unlike Mrs. Walker), Cassie took her gun from its holster and shot at the back of Walker's car, but the twenty-seven-year-old couldn't get more than two shots off (one of which shattered the back windshield) before Walker hung a hard left out of his driveway and sped away down the street.

He was gone.

☆☆☆

It didn't take long for Elle to call Hotch and emergency services, and the unit chief was at the Walker residence within twenty minutes. Mrs. Walker, thank God, was going to live, though she had at least a broken wrist and some cracked ribs, and EMTs had also needed to stabilize her neck before they could load her into the ambulance, but all in all, the woman had been extremely lucky.

Cassie had sat down on the steps next to the Walkers' side door while she and Elle waited for Hotch, with Agent Greenaway standing and leaning against the steel railing beside her, which was where the unit chief found them when he walked up.

"Are you guys okay?" he asked, and Cassie sighed as she looked at the older man, stood up off the step she'd been sitting on, and brushed off her pants.

"We're fine," Elle said before tilting her head to look over Hotch's shoulder at the ambulance where the EMTs were getting ready to hoist the gurney holding Mrs. Walker inside. "But, Mrs. Walker..."

"Guy seems like a real peach," Hotch murmured as he also turned to look at Mrs. Walker, sighing before he continued. "Morrison's got a county-wide search out for the car, and it shouldn't be hard to find it with a shot-out windshield. Uniforms are going to try and find out where his haunts are, and ATF should be here any minute," Hotch paused again as he looked more directly at Cassie and Elle, Agent Quinn in particular. "You sure you're okay?" he asked, and Cassie sighed again.

Elle was the newer agent out of the two of them, but it had been a while since someone had been hurt as Mrs. Walker had directly in front of Cassie the way everything had gone down. She was no stranger to death that was for sure; the years under her belt at the BAU were proof enough of that, but it was still jarring, to say the least...which Cassie supposed was a good thing, considering she'd be extremely worried about her own psyche if she stopped caring about people.

In the end, she nodded at Hotch to show that she really was okay, but whether or not the unit chief believed her remained to be seen. As the ambulance carrying Mrs. Walker finally drove away, Elle crossed her arms and looked at Hotch.

"Mrs. Walker told us her husband spent most of his time in the garage," Agent Greenaway said, nodding towards the garage door that had remained open ever since David Walker had made his daring escape, and Hotch gave a nod of agreement.

"Let's check it out," the unit chief said, and the three agents made the short walk across the Walkers' driveway to the garage. Next to the garage, there was a small connected shed, and while the main door to the garage had been left wide open when Walker had bolted, the connecting door between the garage and the shed, which also seemed to be the only entrance to the other building that Cassie was able to see, was still locked and dead-bolted. 

Obviously, Walker hadn't wanted anyone to figure out what he was working on.

The agents had one of the local police officers break open the door using a small crowbar. As the wooden frame broke and the door swung open, Cassie couldn't help but think that if Morgan had been here, he would've used his foot instead of the crowbar.

As she stepped inside the shed, though, Cassie saw that everything in it, from the tool pegboard on one wall to the various equipment pieces Walker had used in his work as a coin dealer and appraiser, seemed to have a place. The entire interior of the shed was almost obsessively organized, a tidbit of information Hotch also noticed, considering what he said a moment later as he, Cassie, and Elle all stared at the shed's interior.

"Well, we got the organized part, right," the unit chief murmured before Elle turned to a side table and pointed at a blocky machine that was sitting on the top of the table, two prongs holding a nickel above a small glass container.

"What is this?" she asked, gesturing to the machine and the nickel, and Hotch turned towards it as well, studying the entire contraption for a moment before he spoke again.

"I've seen these,"' he said, and Cassie glanced at the unit chief, one eyebrow raised in question. "They're for electroplating. And look at the date on the coin," Quickly pulling on a pair of gloves so he wouldn't further contaminate any of the potential evidence in the shed, Hotch grabbed the handle of the prongs holding the nickel and held it up so Cassie and Elle could get a better look at it.

"Has it been scraped off?" Cassie asked as she leaned past Hotch's shoulder to look at the coin, and from the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Hotch nod.

"He was using this," Hotch continued, this time nodding towards the electroplating machine. "To build up the metal so he could change the dates on the coins,"

"If he makes the coins seem older," Cassie added. "The coins look as if they're more valuable,"

"That's what he did with Barbara Keller's coins," Elle said, and Hotch nodded again.

"Exactly," he agreed, just as the same officer who had let the three agents into the shed called for their attention from the opposite end of the small building.

"Look over here," the officer said, gesturing to a bulletin board on one wall, the contents of which made her breath catch when Cassie looked at it.

Pinned to the board were several clipped newspaper articles, all about Adrian Bale and his crimes. One of the headlines even had 'the best' written in permanent marker underneath the incarcerated bomber's name. Walker wasn't just using Bale's bombs; he was obsessed with the man.

"So this is why he chose to use Bale's designs," Hotch murmured as he stared at the bulletin board.

Cassie turned her gaze to the table in front of her, Hotch, and Elle and to the canvas tarp covering whatever Walker had been doing before Cassie and Elle, along with Mrs. Walker, had surprised the man earlier. Grabbing the tarp, Cassie whipped the fabric away from the table's surface, revealing the individual pieces that made up the bombs Walker had built. Thankfully, these pieces were far enough apart on the table to not pose a danger.

Hotch stared at the bombing fragments on the table for a long moment before he said anything more, and when he did, he turned to the police officer who had let the federal agents into the shed, his face grave.

"Make sure Morrison tells your officers," Hotch began, leaning towards the cop. "That this guy is smart, dangerous, and has absolutely nothing to lose,"

☆☆☆

By the time Cassie returned to the precinct from the Walkers' home with Hotch and Elle, Gideon had returned at about the same time from his excursion to the prison with Reid to visit and interview Bale, even though the senior agent had returned to Florida notably without the team's resident genius.

Gideon had told them, though, that Reid had decided to stay at the prison for a little while longer to see if there was anything else he could learn about Bale that might help the team find Walker, especially after the latter had escaped.

As the four agents entered the bullpen, they were met by Morrison, who seemed less than thrilled, but Cassie could relate; she was also pissed off that Walker had escaped and was currently in the wind.

"So far," Morrison told them. "Nothing from the search,"

"Well, what do we know about Walker?" Gideon asked, and Morrison glanced over at him.

"He's a quiet career criminal," the detective explained as the five of them paused by Morrison's desk. "Spent four years in prison for a series of forged checks when he was in his early twenties. He's now forty-six. For the past eighteen years, he's owned a store that sold coins, maps, and historical documents. We raided the place as soon as you gave us Walker's name," Morrison added with a glance toward Cassie, Elle, and Hotch, shaking his head. "Most of his inventory was fake, forgeries valued in the millions,"

Cassie's eyes widened at that little tidbit of information. It certainly explained what had caused Walker to want to shut up Barbara Keller for good once the old lady had gotten an inkling about the sketchy authenticity of her own coins, and it also helped explain why the cops or FBI couldn't find him now.

"But, the walls started to close in on him," Hotch spoke up once Morrison had paused his debrief for a moment, the unit chief echoing Cassie's own thoughts as the brunette turned to look at him. "We talked to some of his clients, and he was in debt up to his ears and promising stuff he didn't have time to forge,"

"Then, Barbara Keller found out that the coins she had gotten from Walker were fake," Cassie continued, shrugging as she leaned against an abandoned desk. "She threatened to go to the authorities,"

"If Keller had gone to the police," Hotch added. "All of Walker's forgeries would've been discovered, and he would've easily done twenty years,"

"So, he had to shut her up?" Gideon asked, looking very confused, and Cassie could understand the senior agent's bemusement. It was definitely a gross overreaction, finding out someone wanted to send you to prison for one forged transaction and deciding to commit murder. "He planted all those bombs just to kill one little old lady?"

"Yeah," Hotch said. "And to throw us off, he made it look like it was much bigger than it was,"

A commotion from the entrance to the precinct's bullpen caught Cassie's attention, and she turned, along with Hotch, Elle, Gideon, and Detective Morrison, to see a very scared-looking man standing near the door. He had a strange-looking collar around his neck that Cassie was pretty sure wasn't a fashion statement.

"Please..." the man whispered as most of the cops in the room turned to stare at him, probably wondering what exactly the man thought he was doing. "Help me,"

The man then opened his jacket, revealing what looked like another one of Walker's/Bale's bombs strapped to his chest, and judging from the way this newcomer looked as if he was about to have a heart attack, Cassie was pretty sure he didn't strap the bomb to himself willingly.

Morrison and the rest of the Palm Beach cops unholstered their weapons and pointed their guns at the man in an instant, but Cassie stayed standing with Elle, Hotch, and Gideon without pulling out her gun.

"Everyone back, now!" Morrison exclaimed from where he was standing in between Cassie and Gideon as he pointed his gun at Walker's most recent victim. "We need Bomb Squad in here!"

"Please," the man said, holding out his hands as if he wanted to placate Morrison and the other police officers, but he also moved carefully, as if any sudden movement would be what set the bomb off and killed everyone in the room. "It's not me,"

Morrison, as it were, wasn't placated.

"Stop," the detective said sharply as the other man walked a few steps closer, holding his gun slightly higher and readjusting his grip. "Put your hands up and walk slowly back out,"

Cassie was sure that wouldn't go the way Morrison wanted it to. If this man really wasn't in league with Walker, and aside from the man taking inspiration from Adrian Bale, they hadn't found any other indication that he might have a partner in his "work," it was likely that Walker would just detonate the bomb anyway if the hostage didn't do whatever Walker had sent him in here for, and while there was probably over two dozen cops in the room right now, plus Cassie and the rest of the BAU team, detonating the bomb outside had the potential for even more casualties.

"I can't," the hostage explained, his voice shaking as he did half of what Morrison had told him, holding his hands up in surrender, but he also didn't move out of the room either. "He'll kill me,"

"Who will?" Gideon asked, and Cassie glanced at the older agent.

"I don't know," the hostage said shakily. "He held a gun to me. Put this on me," he gestured to both the collar and the actual bomb that was still strapped to him. "He said..." The hostage trailed off for a moment, needing to choke down a sob of fear before he continued. "You'll know who he is,"

The hostage obviously meant Walker because, and Cassie didn't mean to sound like Reid, the chances of two bombers with identical MOs operating in the same city at the exact same time were next to nothing.

"What does he want?" Gideon asked, sounding remarkably calm, given the current situation. The senior agent walked a few steps forward. Hence, he was closer to the hostage, which Cassie thought was more than a little bit injudicious, considering Walker could very well probably detonate the bomb remotely anyway. Still, if the bomb did detonate remotely, Cassie figured they were all going to be dead anyway, so any of Gideon's actions between then and now were moot.

"A helicopter," the hostage said hurriedly in response to Gideon's inquiry, and Cassie narrowed her eyes. Talk about a strange request. "And a passport. He's watching," at this, the hostage jerked his head to the side in the direction of one of the police department's windows. "Once he gets what he wants, he's got instructions to defuse the bomb,"

Instead of saying anything more to the hostage, Gideon turned to Cassie and the others, keeping his voice low.

"Walker's close by," he whispered, and Cassie nodded in agreement. There was no way Walker would've somehow been able to get a camera in here without someone seeing it, so he had to be able to see the entire situation going down from a building nearby. Otherwise, how else would he know his hostage was following orders?

"Let's get snipers around the perimeter!" Morrison shouted, sending several of his officers into action almost instantaneously, but he also didn't lower his weapon, even though Cassie was pretty sure a bullet to the hostage was going to stop the bomb from exploding if Walker wanted it to.

"We understand," Gideon told the hostage a moment later, holding his hands up placatingly again. "And we are not going to leave you,"

"Please," the hostage sobbed, his hands starting to shake all over again. "Take it off,"

"We need to figure out how the bomb's put together first," Gideon explained, and from the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Morrison nod to one of the ATF agents who'd been inside the room when the hostage had walked in.

The ATF agent, Dan Tracy, quickly walked forward and took out a camera so he'd be able to take enough pictures of the device strapped to the hostage to hopefully get an idea of how similar or different this bomb was compared to the other bombs Walker had set off already.

Once Tracy had gotten as many pictures as he was able to, he showed them to Cassie, Elle, Hotch, and Morrison inside the conference room where the BAU had set up shop before, while Gideon stayed out with the hostage, who had told them his name was Chicu Reddy, and Cassie had an inkling that Tracy had gone into the conference room partly so it was quieter as he explained the makings of the bomb, but also not to freak Reddy out even more than he already was.

And, as it turned out, Tracy's findings weren't exactly stellar if one were to use them while thinking about ATF's future efforts to get Reddy disconnected from the device.

"This is a really sophisticated device," Tracy explained as he showed the photos to Cassie, the other agents, and Morrison. "It looks like it was probably made by a master bomb-maker. Which means," he added a moment later, face grim. "Tampering with any part of it could set it off,"

"So there's no way to just cut the whole thing off him?" Hotch asked, but all Tracy did was shake his head, flipping through the camera's gallery before landing on another photo of the device.

"Not without cutting these wires," the ATF agent gestured to the photo, which showed the twisted cord of red, black, and blue wires that hung around Reddy's neck, connecting the explosive collar to the device on the captive man's chest. "See how they're threaded all around the collar? They could be booby-trapped," Tracy explained. "Or there could be a hidden secondary trigger,"

"How do we find out?" Morrison asked, and Tracy glanced at him, giving the local detective a small shrug.

"Without knowing how this thing's put together, it's going to take a while," he began. "I'll have to x-ray it, try to figure out which are the real triggers, but..." Again, Tracy trailed off as he explained, and this time, Cassie knew the ATF agent was holding something back before Tracy continued. "I don't think there's enough time,"

"What do you mean?" Cassie asked, and Tracy held out his camera. 

"There's a timer," the ATF agent said matter-of-factly, and Cassie felt her heart jump into her throat. "We've only got about three hours left,"

Apparently, Walker was counting on the Bureau and police to meet his demands as quickly as possible and obviously didn't care who he took out in the process as collateral damage, considering he had tried to run down his wife earlier that day just as a way for him to escape being taken into custody.

Hotch, meanwhile, looked out of the conference room window towards Gideon, who was still standing beside Reddy and gave a minute shake of his head, signifying that they and Tracy hadn't been able to find a way to get the bomb off of Reddy without endangering him or anyone else, at least not without proper protection.

Cassie could see Reddy starting to panic as Gideon explained what was going on, but unless they found Walker himself and somehow convinced him to deactivate the device before the timer ran or some other sort of miracle solution fell into the agents' laps, Cassie wasn't sure what else they could do.

In the interim, though, as she and the others tried to think of a plan of what to do next, Gideon helped the Palm Beach bomb squad erect a makeshift blast chamber around Reddy inside the police department's bullpen on the chance they didn't deactivate the device in time. Cassie wasn't really sure how well the structure would hold if the bomb attached to Reddy really did end up going off, and she didn't really want to find out, so hopefully, they'd take Walker into custody before she'd have to find out.

"I don't get it," Elle said as she, Cassie, and Hotch walked out of the conference room once the blast chamber had been put up, and Tracy was inside, x-raying the device to see if there was possibly some other way for him to deactivate it. So far, though, the ATF agent hadn't found anything. "If this guy," Elle gestured to Reddy. "Is a hostage, why hasn't Walker tried to negotiate with us?"

Cassie had thought that was strange, too, but Hotch spoke before the younger agent could express her agreement.

"Maybe he's scared," the unit chief posited. "Or maybe he hasn't figured out what his next move is yet,"

Sending a man strapped to a bomb into a crowded police department was bold regardless of who the unsub was, and if the latter option was the reason Walker hadn't tried to contact the officers or agents since Reddy's arrival, it probably meant that Walker hadn't actually thought he'd get as far as even getting his hostage inside the building.

Morrison, who had been conversing with his SWAT officers and the snipers he had situated outside once Reddy's testimony had revealed that Walker was nearby, jerked his head to gain the attention of the three FBI agents, and Cassie followed Elle and Hotch over to the detective.

"We got a bead on Walker," the older man said when they reached him at his desk, pointing to a map of the immediate area around the precinct that could be the area where Walker was hiding out. "He's sitting in an office building across the street. It looks like a storage room with a small window facing us,"

As Morrison continued his explanation, Gideon walked up to the desk, and Cassie glanced at the senior agent for only a moment before she turned back to the map.

"What if we surprised him?" she asked and straightened up when the others turned to stare at her, "Walker, I mean. If he feels cornered, he might give himself up,"

"Good idea," Hotch said quietly before he glanced at Gideon. "You coming?" he asked, but the other senior agent just shook his head.

"No," he said. "I'll stay with Tracy and Reddy and make sure everything's going okay. Let me know when you get him,"

With that, Gideon walked away from the desk, back over to the makeshift blast chamber where Tracy was still x-raying the device connected to Reddy, but while Gideon seemed to be at least somewhat confident in the abilities of the agents he worked with daily, Morrison was definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum in regards to his trust in the BAU.

"Wait, wait, wait," the detective spoke up once Gideon had walked away, prompting Cassie to turn towards him, a little confused as to why only now, after two days of having the Bureau help with his investigation, was Morrison getting skeptical about the BAU's methods. "How do you even know that Walker's even going to give himself up?"

"Well," Cassie began. "Bombers are, more often than not, cowards when confronted with law enforcement. We," she glanced at Hotch and pointed to the map on Morrison's desk, to the building where Walker was hiding. "Could take a team into the building, but go through the back so Walker doesn't see us coming, and maybe we get him to surrender without too many more explosions,"

☆☆☆

With Gideon staying behind at the precinct and Reid still at the prison investigating Bale, that left Cassie to go with Hotch and Elle to try to apprehend Walker, but as the three of them made their way across the street to the office building where Walker had stashed himself, Elle began to voice the many suspicions she had regarding the entire operation.

"This feels wrong to me," the other brunette began as the three agents quickly and quietly made their way across the building's parking lot. "Why would Walker let himself be found so easily,"

"He's not exactly trying very hard to hide himself," Cassie retorted. "He wants to be found,"

"Why?" Elle asked, and this time, Hotch was the one who answered her.

"To negotiate," the unit chief explained, an answer that Cassie found perfectly reasonable, but Elle, on the other hand, wasn't as placated. 

"But why?" Elle continued to press. "Because if we do that, then we lose the element of surprise,"

"Hopefully, we'll still be able to catch him by surprise," Cassie said. "In a perfect world, Walker might just give himself up immediately,"

"If that's not what happens," Hotch added when Cassie paused momentarily, the unit chief turning to look over his shoulder at the police officers who had come with the three agents to help apprehend Walker. "We take a hard line and make him feel like he's got no way out. Remember," he continued. "We have to take him alive; Walker's the only one who can defuse the necklace bomb. Everybody ready,"

Hotch glanced around at the officers in front of him, along with Cassie and Elle, and when everyone had given him either a nod or vocal confirmation, the unit chief held up his sleeve to speak into the comlink connected to it.

"We're entering the building," he said, speaking to Gideon, who was watching the beginnings of the infiltration from within the police precinct across the street.

"Be careful," Cassie heard Gideon's voice come through her own earpiece as she and Elle entered the building first, with Hotch and the other officers just behind them. "At the very least, we know he's got a gun,"

Morrison had said before they'd left the precinct that the entire office building had been abandoned for weeks. The only thing still in relative use was the storage room where Walker had holed himself, but they still needed to clear the building on the off-chance that Walker had taken more hostages and stashed them somewhere other than the storage room.

But, with three agents and about half a dozen other officers, that didn't take very long, and before Cassie knew it, they were nearing the storage room door. As they got closer, Hotch lifted his sleeve again to speak to Gideon.

"We're approaching the door now," he said quietly, likely so as not to alert Walker to their presence before Hotch meant for it. Morrison's voice was affirmative over the comlink, and they moved forward with the plan.

The storage room door was at the end of a short hallway with no other doors around it, so Hotch and Cassie situated themselves on either side of the doorjamb, even though Cassie had to press herself against the wall since the gap between the edge of the doorjamb was only about a foot-and-a-half wide. Elle and the police officer stood just behind Hotch's shoulder, guns out and ready.

Hotch glanced at Cassie for only a moment to make sure that she was as ready as he was, and when Cassie gave a single nod, Hotch reached forward as carefully as he could and turned the doorknob, pushing the door open so they were all able to see inside the storage room.

For several seconds after he opened the door, nothing happened, but they couldn't exactly move in and apprehend Walker either in such an enclosed space without knowing how he was armed. With a glance at Hotch, Cassie gave a small shrug before the unit chief reached into one of the interior pockets of his suit jacket and grabbed a long-handled hand mirror, like the ones dentists used, only with an extendable handle, and pulled the mirror to its full length before reaching it in front of the doorway between him and Cassie.

From where she was standing, Cassie couldn't get a good look inside the storage room, even with Hotch's mirror, so all she was really able to do was wait and see what her unit chief did next, and a few moments later, she saw Hotch's jaw clench, and figured, whatever he saw in the mirror, if anything at all, he didn't like. Hotch collapsed the mirror again and returned it to his coat pocket, shifting his weight for another second before tilting his head towards the doorway.

"David Walker," he began, making his voice loud enough that Walker could hear him. "Federal agents," Nothing happened, and nothing moved inside the storage room, so Hotch tried again, this time louder. "Federal agents!"

When, several seconds after Hotch had spoken for the second time, nothing happened, and Walker showed no signs of getting out of the room, Cassie looked at the unit chief and shook her head. They couldn't wait forever; the collar around Reddy's neck was getting closer and closer to detonating with each passing second, and if they had any hope of getting Reddy free, they needed Walker.

Cassie saw Hotch clench his jaw one more time before he looked around at the others and silently counted to three. On 'three,' they entered the storage room, and while obviously, the room, with its metal shelves full of forgotten office files and supplies, was still too cramped for the eight of them to move through it without having to worry about someone accidentally getting shot with friendly fire, so Cassie, Elle, and Hotch stood just inside the entrance to the storage room, while the officers stayed waiting outside.

Jurisdiction was sometimes a bitch of a thing.

As she sidestepped around the doorway and into the room beside Hotch, Cassie saw Walker see her between the metal shelving, freeze for a moment, and then duck down so he was almost out of Agent Quinn's sightline again.

"Waler!" she exclaimed, pointing her gun towards the bomber. "Freeze!"

"Okay," the older man said a second later, sounding scared as he ducked behind a shelf full of cardboard boxes. "Don't shoot,"

Cassie barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the man before she spoke to him again.

"I won't if you show yourself," she told him, but when Walker didn't show himself, Cassie began to get even more impatient than she'd been when they'd arrived at the office building. Reddy had little time left before the bomb on his chest detonated, and Walker, if he fit the standard bomber profile of being a coward, was definitely not helping by not giving himself up. "Walker," she shouted again, and Cassie saw a box shift from the general area where Walker seemed to be cowering. "I will pull this trigger and shoot you if you don't get up right now and surrender,"

It took another moment or two, but after a brief intermission of silence, Cassie saw the top of Walker's head appear over the top of one of the cardboard boxes, his eyes betraying how cornered the man felt.

"Okay," he said quietly, but Cassie didn't waver in her stance.

"Hands up," she told him, but Walker quickly shook his head.

"I can't do that," he said, voice shaky.

"Then I'll shoot," Cassie declared.

"My hand's on the remote," Walker added a moment later, and Cassie felt her breath catch in her throat. "I told you what I want! The passport, the helicopter, the flight!" Walker's voice got more and more emotional the longer he spoke, and by the time he finally paused to take a breath, Cassie knew he was practically spitting out the words.

"Walker, listen to me." This time, Hotch spoke to Walker, trying to get him to surrender before anyone else got hurt. "You're at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted List. I think you're smart enough," the unit chief added. "To realize that there's no way we're letting you go,"

"Our counter-offer," Cassie continued. "Is that you get out of this room alive. Give yourself up, slide the gun across the floor, and we can leave,"

"You have until the count of three," Hotch cut in. "1..."

"You wouldn't let the hostage die!" Walker suddenly exclaimed, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from glancing from the corner of her eye at Hotch.

"You want to find out?" Hotch retorted. "Don't give yourself up then! 2..."

"Ok," Walker said quickly, an instant before Hotch made it to '3', and from where she was standing, Cassie saw the man set the gun he was holding onto the floor before sliding it in the direction of the agents and police officers. "Ok. I'm coming out. Don't shoot,"

Cassie sidestepped as fast as she could while keeping Walker within her line of sight. As she reached the end of the metal shelving she, Elle, and Hotch had been standing behind, Cassie saw Walker crouch down again, out of her line of sight, and start to fiddle with something near his feet.

"Walk slowly towards us," she said to him, beginning to get a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach the longer Walker stayed crouched low to the ground. "I need to see your hands, Walker, or you will get nothing!"

Suddenly, just as Cassie saw Walker start to stand up again, Gideon's voice blasted through her earpiece, and the senior agent sounded scared enough that Cassie knew he had found out something horrible.

"Get out of there! Now!" Gideon shouted. "Now!"

As Gideon screamed in her ear, the points of the profile of a bomber that she and Hotch had attributed to Walker suddenly fizzled out in Cassie's mind, and she realized what it was that she and the unit chief had missed when they'd talked to Detective Morrison. 

Walker wasn't a bomber, not really. Yes, he'd used the same bombs Bale did when he'd attacked Boston, but that was the thing. Walker had completely copied Bale's methods down to the same type of label written on the boxes. He'd forged them.

Hotch had seemingly come to the same conclusion about their failure to correctly profile Walker the same instant Cassie had because the unit chief dropped his gun from where he'd had it trained on Walker and spun around, grabbing Cassie and Elle's shoulders and pushing both women out the doorway of the storage room before he ran out after them, hurriedly gesturing to the police officers who'd been standing in the corridor beyond.

"Go! Go! Everybody out!" Hotch shouted as he pushed Cassie and Elle into the hallway. "Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!"

Cassie ran as fast as she could, and just as she rounded the corner with Hotch and Elle, she heard the explosion from the bomb Walker had somehow been hiding in the storage room go off, a blast of heat buffeting her back as Cassie dove into the alcove just off the side of the corridor, a bunch of cardboard boxes and papers, now severely singed and charred, getting thrown out of the room by the explosion as well.

When the blast had dissipated, Cassie was finally able to catch her breath, and she peeked her head around the corner carefully, so on the off-chance Walker survived, she didn't get shot in the face, but Cassie didn't think anyone could've survived being right by a bomb when it had gone off.

"You think he's dead?" Elle asked as she walked up behind Cassie's shoulder and looked down the hallway at the storage room, and as she turned back around to look at her colleagues, Cassie saw Hotch glance at Elle.

"I would be," he said dryly, and Cassie bent down, bracing her arms against her knees as she took a deep breath again, a sinister realization entering her mind.

With Walker dead, they had another problem: the only person who knew how to disarm the necklace bomb around Chicu Reddy's neck was now dead, and there were less than two-and-a-half hours left on the timer.

☆☆☆

Cassidy Quinn would like to state, for the record, that taking Adrian Bale out of prison and having him be the person who deactivated the bomb around Reddy's neck was probably one of the absolute last courses of action she would ever take if she had been in Gideon's position. 

And yet, here she was, standing behind the exact table a smug Bale was sitting at within the Palm Beach precinct, leaning against the wall as Gideon paced the length of the room and Hotch sat in the chair across from Bale, with Gideon outlining the new benefits of the deal Bale would get if he successfully managed to shut down the device before it went off.

But considering it had taken them over two hours to manage to even get Bale out of prison and transferred from Georgia to the precinct in Florida, they were now running down the clock and had less than ten minutes left before the bomb in Reddy's macabre necklace/collar detonated.

The way Bale was sitting across from Gideon, though, head in his hands, reminded Cassie of a petulant toddler, and she knew that if she didn't need to worry about being arrested for assault of an unarmed man, and they didn't have a death-clock on their hands, she would've punched him in the face.

"We'll start with a transfer," Gideon was saying, and Cassie shifted her feet as she started listening to what the senior agent was saying again. "You're in a high-security facility now, we can get you medium,"

"No," Bale instantly shook his head, and Cassie straightened up, narrowing her eyes at Bale and wondering who exactly he thought he was, being the one to make demands when he was the one still technically incarcerated. "I want out of prison. A mental facility,"

The idea was so ridiculous and out-of-touch that Cassie couldn't stop herself from scoffing, prompting both Bale and his lawyer, who was sitting next to him, to turn and look at her, both of them looking less than pleased.

"Get real, Bale," she said, arms still crossed across her chest as she leaned against the wall again. "Those conditions aren't even ones we'd offer to a bank robber, much less a bomber who killed seven people. Pick something else. Minimum security or--"

"I don't care," Bale whined, interrupting Cassie before she could finish her counteroffer and doing nothing to help the young agent's temper. "I want to be able to talk to people who aren't prisoners. I want to have access..." Bale trailed off for a moment and glanced momentarily at each of the FBI agents standing in front of him. "To people, things, the world. I want to connect again,"

Bale gestured as if what he was asking for was one of the easiest things in the world, but Cassie was sure that, if given the chance, Adrian Bale would blow up the world. But they were also running out of time.

Gideon looked as if the last thing he wanted to do was agree to any of Bale's terms, but with less than ten minutes on the clock, he didn't have much of any other choice, so after a brief moment of thought, the senior agent gave a small nod, though it was obvious he was not happy about it.

"All right," he said quietly, an instant before Bale glanced at him again, tapping his thumbs together.

"One more thing," the bomber said quickly, and Cassie tilted her head, wondering what else Bale could've possibly thought up on his flight from Georgia. "Without which there is no deal."

"What is it?" Gideon asked, and Bale glanced again at the three agents in front of him before continuing, staring straight at Gideon as he spoke.

"I want you to confess," Bale said, and Cassie saw Gideon stop his pacing to stare at Bale himself. "I want you to admit that I beat you in Boston. That I outsmarted you. I want you to apologize to the families of those six victims that you got killed. And I want it all in writing,"

"Jason, that's enough," Hotch said abruptly as Bale finished his spiel, and Cassie turned to the two older agents.

She and Morgan had told the FBI cadets at the bar before the Seattle Strangler case that the two of them, plus Hotch, were all supposed to have been in Boston working the case that would turn out to be Adrian Bale's, but they had gotten stuck working a different case in New Haven, Connecticut and were catching another unsub the same night Bale's final bomb went off in Boston.

Cassie had seen first-hand how that whole experience had affected Gideon; the six months he had been on medical leave was proof enough, and it was the entire reason that Derek was still nervous to be in the field with the older agent now.

She knew how much losing those agents and the hostage wore down on Gideon; even now, weeks after he had returned to work, she was good at her job, but now, for Bale to ask Gideon to vocalize it in writing...it was cruel, which Cassie supposed was the whole point.

Hotch shook his head at Gideon, trying to tell him silently that he didn't have to do this, that this was a bad idea, but they had very little time left, and as much as she hated it, Cassie knew that Gideon would do what he had to to get everyone out safe, especially since he wasn't able to do that the first time he had come across Bale's work.

"If I do this," Gideon began bracing his hands on the table in front of Bale as he turned away from Hotch, and Cassie could see how the unit chief's eyes narrowed at the dismissal. "You'll tell me how to defuse the bomb?"

"Only," Bale corrected. "If you do this,"

"How do I know you won't lie to me?" Gideon asked, and this time, Bale's gaze turned to Cassie, to which the young brunette met his gaze directly. They may have gotten the bomber profile wrong with David Walker, but they hadn't gotten it wrong with Bale. He was a coward, and Cassie was going to give him as much direct eye contact as she wanted.

"Have the lovely Agent Quinn profile me," he said, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from curling her lip in disgust as Hotch stepped slightly in front of her, a display of protectiveness that wasn't entirely needed but nevertheless minutely appreciated. Bale's lawyer, meanwhile, held up a hand to stop whatever it was her client would've said next and turned to Gideon.

"It's all in writing, Agent Gideon," the prim-looking woman said sternly. "If my client refuses to give you the information or if he gives you information he knows to be untruthful, the deal is void,"

There wasn't really anything else Gideon could do other than write out his "confession", Cassie figured, after the statement from Bale's lawyer, and so, with time running out, Gideon sat down at the table across from Bale and quickly scratched out the words Bale wanted him to write.

A confession, saying exactly what Adrian Bale had specified minutes before. That Gideon had been beaten, outsmarted, and now seven people were dead because of him. Because Bale had won. Cassie hated it on so many levels, but she knew that Gideon would try his best to save everyone this time around, and if feeding into Bale's ego was what he had to do to achieve that, then so be it.

Gideon signed the paper when he'd finished writing, then slid both it and the pen back across the table to Bale and his lawyer, but Bale didn't even deign to look at the sheet of yellow notebook paper before he was making another demand.

"I want to hear it," Bale's words were quiet but still easy to hear in the small room, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes and scoffing. Unbelievable.

While Gideon had been writing, she and Hotch had both sat down in chairs on either side of Gideon and now, both of them watched as the senior agent slid the notebook paper back over to their side of the table and looked down at it, running his hand over his mouth for a moment before he started to read off what he had written.

" 'It was a hostage situation'-" he began, but Bale instantly cut him off.

"No," the prisoner said. "Don't read it. Say it,"

Gideon stared at Bale for a moment more before once again sliding the sheet of paper over to Bale and rubbing his hands together before he started to speak again.

"There was a hostage situation," he began again. "I negotiated with Bale. He agreed to give himself up. He came out of the warehouse peacefully. I gave the 'ok' to send six of my agents in, and they never came out,"

Cassie, of course, had known what had happened in Boston; as soon as she and the team had heard about it and the fact that Gideon had also been caught in the explosion, they had raced from Connecticut to Boston, and she had read the case file in the days after the attack after Gideon had been put on medical leave, but she hadn't asked Gideon himself about it at all in the days since he'd returned to the unit, and she figured he just hadn't wanted to talk about it.

Obviously, she'd been correct.

"It was a mistake," Gideon continued. "It was my mistake. I was..." he trailed off for a moment, and Cassie could see he was struggling with what he had to say next. "I was outfoxed by Mr. Bale," Gideon turned his gaze on Bale, and Cassie watched as Bale slowly met it. "By you. I sincerely regret having made the decision to send those agents in that day. And I sincerely regret and apologize to the families of all those who died that day,"

Gideon paused for a moment, and from the corner of her eye, Cassie saw Hotch glance at his watch before the unit chief looked up again.

"Four more minutes,"

Thankfully, no matter how emotionally painful Gideon's confession had been, it had apparently been enough for Bale because the bomber agreed to help them deactivate the device. With the bomb squad technician now actually knowing what he had to do in order to make the collar bomb inoperable, a majority of the deactivation went on without incident.

"Ok," the technician said over the handheld radio they were using as a communication line, and he gestured to the device still unfortunately locked around Reddy's neck. "I've isolated the wires connected to the actual device. We've got one shot at this. It's either the blue wire or the red wire,"

When Reddy had first entered the precinct, Detective Morrison had evacuated everyone off of the floor who didn't need to be there, so now it was only him, the BAU agents, Bale and his lawyer, and the bomb technician with Reddy on this particular floor in the building, with everyone except Reddy and the bomb squad technician being in the conference room, somewhat safely behind the brick wall.

Though Cassie supposed the huge glass window looking out onto the main floor wouldn't protect them much if Bale's help turned out to be shit. Which, with forty-five seconds left on the timer, could very well be the case.

"Which do we cut, Bale?" Gideon asked. "Red or blue?"

Cassie saw Bale heave a sigh before he said anything as if he were purposefully trying to run down the clock, but a second later (now thirty seconds left on the timer), he spoke.

"Red," Bale said, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from whipping her head around to stare at him.

It could just be nothing; the thought could totally just be her grasping at straws inside her mind, but Cassie had long ago learned to trust the intuition Garcia liked to call her "superpower", the way she was able to tell whenever someone was lying. It wasn't exactly the most scientific skill, especially when she herself was a profiler used to looking at facts and behavior when trying to catch an unsub, but even before she'd joined the Bureau, the feeling had never steered her wrong before, and now it was the reason that somehow, she knew that Bale was lying.

Gideon, it seemed, noticed her reaction because Cassie saw him flick his eyes toward her for the smallest moment before speaking to Bale again.

"You know, if you're lying," Gideon began. "And this thing goes 'boom', you get nothing, right?"

Bale, the conniving little shit, just nodded again, his expression turning tired as if this whole situation was beneath him.

"Yes," he said simply, and Gideon turned towards him again.

"If we cut the red, it's over?" Gideon asked, and Cassie tried to grab his attention, to tell him that he was wrong, that Bale was lying about this whole thing, but Gideon actually shushed her, waving his hand in such a way Cassie was verily offended, as he continued to speak to Bale. "You get to spend your time in a cushy asylum with bushes, trees, visits, nurses, and we get this man," Gideon gestured to Reddy, who was sitting and shaking in the makeshift blast chamber. "Out of here alive,"

"I don't see how I could be any clearer," Bale continued, and Cassie was tempted to force him to deactivate the bomb, too-good-for-him deal or no, as Morrison piped up from behind that there were only seventeen seconds left on the timer.

"Red wire, right?" Gideon asked again, and Bale once more nodded just before Gideon raised the radio to his mouth to give the order to the bomb squad technician. "Cut the blue,"

This time, Cassie swiftly cut her gaze to Gideon, a little bit shocked, actually, that he hadn't gone along with Bale's suggestion, even though it was obviously the suggestion that was going to get all of them killed, but Gideon knew what he was doing, so he had to have a reason.

"Are you sure?" the bomb squad technician asked, and even though he couldn't see him, Gideon nodded, staring at Bale as he spoke into the radio again.

"Do it,"

Cassie knew she was right about Bale lying about the red wire being the kill switch, but she still found herself holding her breath as she watched the bomb squad technician reach forward with his small pair of wire cutters and snip the blue wire in two.

With only three seconds left on the timer, the device deactivated, and Cassie let out the breath she'd been holding just as the bomb squad technician's voice came over the radio: "Alright," he said. "Shouldn't take long to cut this thing off now,"

Hotch grabbed Bale by the shoulders almost instantly was dragging him out of the room and away to be brought back to his high-security prison, not his cushy asylum with the trees and pretty nurses, since his so-called "information" had turned out to be untruthful, thus rendering his new deal void and inoperable.

As Bale's lawyer all but ran after Hotch, Elle walked up so she was standing in front of the window beside Cassie and Gideon, the other brunette having a quizzical look on her face.

"How'd you know?" she asked, and Gideon was the first of them to turn and look at her.

"He told me," Gideon answered. "He said given the opportunity of pressing that button, he'd have no choice. All I did was take his word for it,"

"And you?" Elle turned towards Cassie, and the twenty-seven-year-old couldn't help but send the newer agent a smile.

"It's my superpower," she said, and Elle made such a face that Cassie was sure she thought she was joking.

But, it was the truth. Maybe it was just that her intuition was more fine-tuned than everyone else's, but Cassie had honed her skills enough over the years to know when she was right, and she liked to believe that that was a superpower.

Chapter Text

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

The twenty-fourth birthday celebration of Dr. Spencer Reid was a welcome moment of light in the usually so dark world that Cassie made her career in. The young doctor had joined the BAU near the end of 2004, and Reid had been 22-about-to-turn-23 when Cassie first met him.

Now, it had been just over a year since he'd become a profiler, and the team was celebrating Reid's birthday again. Cassie hated celebrating her own birthday, the entire occasion just brought back too many bad memories from her childhood, but she liked celebrating other people, so when Reid had mentioned in a throaway comment a week ago that his birthday was coming up, Cassie, along with Elle, JJ, and Morgan, planned the best celebration they could with their meager amount of free time, ignoring the fact that Reid had said he didn't want any of them to worry about it too much.

Even though it was always difficult to plan any celebration around the BAU's hectic work schedule, they weren't actually on a case quite yet the morning of Reid's birthday, so, to avoid any unnecessary hassle, the profilers held the small celebration in the bullpen itself, congregating around Reid's desk as the team's resident genius readied himself to blow out the candles on the large chocolate sheet cake that JJ had gotten for the small party.

Cassie had tasked her partner with finding the candles for the cake, which had been her first mistake, because, of course, Derek would buy trick candles instead of the regular ones, and opted not to tell his partner that particular little detail until after Reid had just tried to blow out his twenty-four cake candles twice, the candles relighting themselves every time.

"You're a jackass," she hissed out of the side of her mouth to Morgan as Reid tried for the third time to blow out his candles, to no avail, but Derek just grinned, obviously having way too much fun to care that his younger partner was currently very irritated with him.

"What? It's funny," he said, before turning away from the brunette beside him and back to Reid, who also had a huge felted birthday cake party hat on his head that he and Elle had bought from a dollar store that was near the Bureau headquarters.

To say the thing looked garish would be an understatement.

"Come on, man!" Morgan exclaimed to the young genius, to which Cassie just rolled her eyes again and leaned back against the back edge of Reid's desk. "Blow, baby, blow!"

"I thought you were full of hot air, Reid?" Elle added, because of course, she was in on the joke as well. Agents Greenaway and Morgan were having a grand old time pulling on the youngest profiler's leg, but Cassie and JJ, on the other hand, at least had some semblance of decency to feel bad for Spencer concerning the entire thing.

Agent Jareau, though, was the one out of all of them who eventually took enough pity on Reid to try and get the other agent to pause and at least take a breath for a moment when, after the next time Reid tried to blow out his candles (which he did manage to do, but they re-lit themselves right away again anyway) his face almost turned blue from his huffing and puffing.

"They're trick candles, Spence," the press liaison finally admitted to Reid. "They're going to come back on every time."

The previously-aforementioned-birthday-boy looked a bit irked once he realized what was going on concerning his candles and their mysterious relighting capabilities, but, and it was as if Reid almost wanted to prove JJ wrong, he still tried to blow out his candles one more time, but, again, mere seconds later all twenty-four of them were filled with tiny flickering flames and it was as if he hadn't blown them out at all.

"Aww," Derek crooned, and Cassie, by this point, swore her eyes were going to roll out of her head from sheer annoyance. "Mommy to the rescue..."

"Mommy?" Reid retorted, sounding about as disgusted as Cassie felt, and this time, she didn't hesitate to poke her partner as hard as she could right in between his ribs, which in turn, caused Morgan to jerk away from her and ram his other hip into the opposite table.

"Ow! Rude!" he cried out, though it wasn't loud enough to alert Hotch and Gideon—the two older agents standing guard a few yards away from Reid's desk and leaning against the bullpen's railing—and whipped around to stare indignantly at Cassie, who just glared at him.

"If you keep being a dick," the twenty-seven-year-old murmured as JJ grabbed the cake shovel off a nearby paper plate and got ready to cut slices for everybody. "I will," the brunette promised. "Smush your face into Reid's cake."

"Will you lick the frosting off me then, Angel?" Morgan asked, his smirk so wide that Agent Quinn knew he was joking, but instead, she tilted her head to the side and smirked right back at him.

"I'd rather choke."

As JJ divvied up the slices of cake onto a small plate for each of them, one of the other agents who was working around the bullpen, Agent Anderson, called Hotch over to his desk, and the unit chief brushed past Cassie on his way. Then, Reid pushed his way between Agents Quinn and Morgan on his way to talk to Gideon, still wearing that obnoxious cake hat on his head, and Derek's attention was diverted to the cake itself.

The older man bent down a ways to peer at the cake itself, eyebrows furrowed, and even though Cassie had absolutely no idea what was making him so focused on the cake now, her unasked questions were, in fact, answered a minute later when Morgan sighed heavily, as if his life were personally ending, which was ironic, given their job.

"Reid blew wax all over the cake," he grumbled, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from heaving a sigh.

"Oh, good grief," she muttered. "It's just a tiny bit of candle wax, Derek; hardly enough to kill you. You're more likely to die from suffocation from Reid's hat than from the candles themselves. And," she added a second later. "If you and Elle hadn't bought trick candles instead of the regular ones like I told you to, we wouldn't even be in this mess."

"Excuse you," Morgan retorted, even as he took the plate of cake that JJ handed him anyway. "The trick candles were funny. Not my fault you don't have a sense of humor, Angel."

The twenty-seven-year-old wasn't entirely sure when this had turned into a bickering match, but here they were. Unfortunately, before Cassie could say anything back to her partner that would undoubtedly end up having Hotch and Gideon involved, which was the absolute last thing she wanted right then, JJ had grabbed another plate with a cake slice and turned around, effectively pushing her way in between the two squabbling agents and holding the plate out towards Reid, who was still standing near the railing that encircled the bullpen beside the team's senior agent.

"Spence!" the blonde called out, causing both Reid and Gideon to turn and look at her as she continued holding out the piece of cake. "First piece for the birthday boy!"

Cassie's attention was now effectively distracted away from her partner and his antics, and toward JJ and Reid, which the twenty-seven-year-old assumed had been the team's press liaison's plan all along, and she was loath to admit how well the scheme had worked.

Obviously, given who the brunette was regularly paired with on cases and in the office, Agent Quinn was no stranger to nicknames. But, much like the way Morgan was the only person she'd ever met who called her "Angel", JJ was the only agent out of their small team of profilers who called their youngest member "Spence".

It wasn't anything too scandalous, obviously, and Cassie actually thought it was quite sweet. JJ and Reid had both joined the team at around the same time, and even though the two of them were similar in age to Cassie, they were much closer to each other than the older profiler, mainly because Agent Quinn already had two years' worth of experience on them and already held a solid rapport with Morgan by the time the other two joined the unit.

She wasn't entirely sure whether or not their closeness translated to anything outside their general working relationship, though she highly doubted it. JJ and Reid were two agents who, if they did start a romantic relationship, would probably get less of an administrative reprimand than, say, if Cassie and Morgan were to get together—God forbid.

Cassie would also rather die than confront them about it, on the off-chance she was right about them being just work colleagues.

It was obvious that JJ held a soft spot for the young genius, and Reid almost assuredly had a crush on the press liaison already, but whether or not that crush would actually evolve into a bona fide relationship remained to be seen. But, given Spencer's lack of confidence regarding anything to do with his life outside of the BAU, Cassie would lick cake frosting off her partner's face if Reid and JJ did get together.

With one last comment to Gideon that Cassie wasn't able to overhear, the now-twenty-four-year-old Reid returned to the little gathering around his desk, and he took the small plate of cake from JJ as Agent Quinn leaned against the office table that barred the back of Reid's desk area from the rest of the bullpen and finally took a bite of her own slice of cake that Elle had passed her a couple of minutes ago.

The brunette had barely swallowed that first bite when Hotch, who'd been on the phone since Anderson had called him away from Gideon, finally lowered the phone from his ear and turned towards the rest of his team, and the expression on his face made the cake suddenly sit like a stone in Cassie's throat.

"Sorry, guys," the unit chief called out to them, sounding genuinely apologetic. "Party's over."

JJ was the first to leave the group, immediately heading to Hotch to gather any information she could about their new case before she needed to present it to everyone else. At the same time, Elle and Cassie boxed up the remainder of Reid's cake and shelved it in the bullpen's break room fridge.

In the end, it was about half an hour between the shelving of the cake and Cassie, Elle, Morgan, Reid, and Gideon heading into the conference room and taking their respective seats at the roundtable before Hotch and JJ walked in, with the press liaison carrying a stack of thick plastic folders under one arm.

The unit chief was speaking almost before he walked in the door.

"We're going to San Diego," Hotch explained shortly, and Morgan glanced over his shoulder at the other man.

"Not for the surfing, huh?" he asked, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from flicking her gaze at her partner before rolling her eyes.

"Please," she retorted, in turn causing Derek to glance at her quizzically. "The North Shore is leagues better than San Diego. Sunset Beach over Blacks Beach any day of the week, thank you,"

It had been years, actually, since Cassie had been home on O'ahu. She hadn't had a chance at all recently—they'd all been so busy with the workload at the BAU and being down an agent while Gideon was on medical leave—to even think about surfing, which was more than a little bit annoying, considering Assateague Island and Virginia Beach were both within a four-hour drive from DC. 

Neither location was the North Shore, obviously, but it was something. Surfing had been a sport she'd always enjoyed, and she was good at it too, considering she'd practically lived in the water since before she could walk, and had competed professionally from middle school up until her senior year of high school.

Ironic, now, that her biggest fear was drowning, but whatever.

"They're calling him the Tommy Killer," JJ brought them all back to the case at hand (literally) by distributing the pile of clear file folders she'd been carrying down on the table in front of each agent.

"Six women raped and murdered in their homes in the last three weeks," Hotch added gruffly, and Cassie felt her heart drop to her feet again as she stared down at the folder in front of her, the contents of which had to be the case file itself.

Luckily, the others were all shocked enough themselves that none of them seemed to notice whether or not the brunette was being a bit quieter than usual.

"Six in three weeks?" Elle questioned Hotch's facts first, and the former Seattle agent's eyebrows were halfway up her forehead.

"That's a short fuse," Gideon added as he untied the string holding his folder shut and pulled out the file.

"And getting shorter," Hotch continued, since he was one of the only ones who actually knew anything about the case itself right that moment. "The first two were eight days apart, then the next four in two weeks."

That ratio for the latest murder came out to about one killing every four days, and Gideon had been right, Cassie realized as she stared at her folder, still not having opened it. Short fuse. It was practically a spree at this point.

Oh, the joys of being a woman.

"That's a ridiculously fast escalation," the brunette said eventually, voicing the conclusion she'd just come to, as she finally untied the string holding her folder closed and retrieved the file inside. "Is this going to turn into a spree before we're done?"

"Maybe," Hotch murmured from Cassie's left, and she shifted in her chair to glance at the unit chief, just as he shook his head. "But, I think this guy's too controlled for that." The older man paused for a moment before he stood from his chair and made his way back towards the door of the conference room. "See you on the plane."

Before he could completely exit the conference room, though, Morgan was lifting his case file towards his face and calling over his shoulder to the unit chief.

"Why the Tommy Killer?" Cassie's partner asked, and as she quickly returned the file to the plastic folder JJ had delivered it in, the twenty-seven-year-old realized that she had been thinking the same thing.

The media most of the time, and local authorities some of the time, tended to sensationalize the killers they were hunting, and it was the BAU's job to make sure the unsubs weren't deified, but calling this guy the "Tommy Killer" was just strange without context.

Hotch, though, had the context, and just as he stood in the doorway to the conference room, the unit chief paused before turning slightly to face the rest of them.

"You know the rock opera?" he asked, and even though Cassie didn't, and didn't really know what her boss was talking about, Agent Hotchner continued a moment later without waiting for any of them to answer his initial question. "Well, this guy glues his victims' eyes wide open."

With that, the unit chief finally left the conference room completely, leaving the rest of the profilers to sit with the information he'd just revealed, and Cassie felt as if she might actually throw up the one bite of cake she'd managed to eat.

It always sucked to be a woman in this line of work, seeing first-hand the amount of violence that people (often men) were able to inflict on people of Cassie's same gender, and while she always felt accomplished when the unsubs that the BAU hunted ended up getting the comeuppance they deserved, it was a wonder she'd managed to last this long without completely losing her mind.

Reid, though, was the first one to say anything once Hotch had left the room.

"He wants them to see him," the young genius murmured, and Cassie glanced over at her colleague, finally managing to drag her gaze away from the stare of the Tommy Killer's latest victim, forever memorialized as a forensic evidence photograph.

Gideon, meanwhile, didn't stop his staring, but the senior agent was instead studying a spot on the wall in between Reid and Cassie, and when he spoke up a few seconds after Spencer had paused, it was with another realization that did absolutely nothing to reassure Cassie that this case wouldn't bother her for weeks once they finally did close it.

"...and feel him."

☆☆☆

French poet Jacques Rigaut said, "Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror."

The flight from Quantico to San Diego was long (almost seven hours) but the extended time in the air also gave Cassie and the other profilers who made up the team a chance to go over what they knew about this particular case once more, to make sure that all of them knew as many details as accurately as possible, so they would be able to do the best job they could once they got to California.

Morgan had explained to Cassie on the way from the main BAU offices to the tarmac where the jet was waiting about the specific context for why this particular unsub had been nicknamed the "Tommy Killer", and apparently it was due to the lyrics of an old song by the band, The Who, from an album that had been released almost a decade before she'd been born.

Obviously, the band itself had nothing to do with this modern-day killer's crimes aside from unintentionally giving "Tommy" his name. Still, the similarities had just stopped Cassie from ever listening to any of The Who's music without thinking of this particular case.

JJ was also coming with them to San Diego as well, a stark difference from their last two cases in Seattle and Tempe, respectively, and currently, the press liaison was sitting on one end of the couch on the far end of the jet, talking on the phone, while Cassie sat in one of four chairs at the other end, with an empty seat across the small table from her, Morgan to her right, with Gideon across from him, while Ellie and Reid were sitting beside each other at the larger table across the aisle from JJ.

They'd been on this particular flight for long enough by now that it was safe to stand and walk around if one of them needed to, which was what Hotch was doing right that second; pacing the length of the jet's aisle with a case file in one hand as he spouted off the details contained within.

"Brenda Samms—" the unit chief began. "—was found yesterday by her children when they got home from school. She had been strangled by a thin ligature, possibly a wire,"

"I'm assuming," Cassie cut in once Hotch had paused in his oration and sat down in the seat across from her. "That by saying possibly, there wasn't a wire actually left at the scene?"

Their jobs could never be that easy, though, because Hotch just shook his head.

The brunette was also studiously ignoring how traumatic it must've been for Brenda's children to come home at the end of the school day and find their mother violated and brutally murdered the way she had been...it wasn't something you ever recovered from.

"Reisdue on the wrists and mouths indicate that duct tape was used and removed," Reid piped up from his spot just over Gideon's shoulder, and Hotch looked up at Cassie again. 

"Also not found at the scene," the older agent clarified, and Agent Quinn heard Elle scoff.

"Brought it with him," the former Seattle agent said. "Took it with him."

"He also started leaving messages at the fourth scene," Hotch continued, reading from the file.

Despite herself, Cassie narrowed her eyes, wondering why exactly it had taken four murders before the unsub started trying to 'send his message', whatever the hell his message was.

The unit chief, meanwhile, grabbed another crime scene photo and turned it around so Cassie and Morgan could see, and the twenty-seven-year-old saw that the message was written in block letters with what seemed to be the victim's lipstick on one of her mirrors.

"This was written on the mirror." Hotch then turned the photo back towards himself and started to read off the message that the unsub had sent. " 'Fair lady, throw those costly robes aside, no longer may you glory in your pride. Take leave of all your carnal, vain delight—' "

He went to continue, but before the unit chief could, Reid interrupted him, coincidentally with what sounded like the remainder of the poem that the unsub had written on the mirror, even though the young genius didn't have another copy of the message photo in his hand, and the picture Hotch was holding was too far away for him to see clearly.

" 'I've come to summon you away this night.' " Reid paused for a moment when he realized everyone was staring at him with varying degrees of awe and relative gobsmacked-ness on their faces, but frankly, even though it was obviously a niche piece of poetry, Cassie wasn't at all surprised that the twenty-four-year-old knew the origins of it, which Spencer started to explain after his momentary pause. "It's a ballad from the late 1600s," he said. "A dialogue betwixt Death and a Lady..."

"A seventeenth-century ballad?" Elle asked, sounding as if she thought Reid were full of shit, but then again, Agent Greenaway hadn't been around the team's youngest profiler for long enough yet to realize just how vast the man's knowledge actually was.

"Yes," Spencer confirmed for his colleague, before giving a small shrug. "Essentially..." he trailed off for a moment. "It's a woman begging Death to live."

Cassie thought that was a morbidly fitting piece of literature for this particular unsub's crimes, but Elle still had more questions.

"What kind of person knows this ballad?" the other brunette asked, a question Cassie had also pondered, but hadn't yet voiced aloud. "Are we looking for a literature professor?"

"Anyone with an internet connection, actually," Reid clarified, making the other profilers glance over at the young genius again as he gave a nervous chuckle. "You should see what comes in when you type the word 'death' into a search engine,"

"Reid," Morgan added, speaking up for the first time since the team had begun this particular case review, chuckling a bit himself as he shifted the file into just one hand. "No wonder you can't get a date,"

Cassie didn't hesitate before she jerked her foot out across the aisle of the jet to kick her partner in the calf, which in turn caused Derek to jerk in his seat a bit before he whipped around to glare at her, a glare that Agent Quinn returned instantly. 

She'd never seen Spencer with a partner of any sort since he'd started at the BAU last year—romantic or otherwise—and neither, it seemed, had Morgan, but whether or not that actually meant that Reid wasn't dating anyone at all, or he just kept his out-of-office life inherently private, that didn't give her partner a reason to be rude.

Cassie still had no idea if Reid's friendship with JJ went any further than the two of them just being colleagues.

If Spencer were single, some women liked a guy who was a bit of a nerd. Now, Reid was kind of a super nerd—he was a certifiable genius, after all—but his habit of spouting off facts about seemingly random subjects at almost every waking moment was endearing. Cassie knew that if Reid was her type (he most definitely was not), she'd probably be one of the women mentioned above who found his nerdage cute.

The twenty-seven-year-old, though, was also single, and was currently very happy to stay that way, but she had also made a personal rule for herself when she'd joined the FBI never to date another agent, because she'd already gone through enough in her early days in the Bureau in order to make other agents, namely the male ones, take her seriously that she was not about to throw that all away just for a relationship that may end up going nowhere.

She had Pōpoki, though, and Kiki was more than enough company. Besides, Cassie knew for a fact that she had too much personal baggage to make any man stay for long enough to actually classify it as a serious relationship.

Gideon, meanwhile, ignored the antics of the two grown adults in front of him and spoke over his shoulder to Spencer, the senior agent still scribbling away at the yellow notepad he'd been writing on pretty much since the jet had taken off.

"Reid," he began as Morgan actually stuck his tongue out at his partner because he was nothing if not a child at thirty-two, and Cassie retorted by just rolling her eyes as Gideon continued. "Stay on the messages. See if there's a deeper meaning,"

"It definitely looks like he ransacked the crime scene pretty well," Morgan piped up a few seconds later, having recovered from his so-called 'leg injury' and grabbing another one of the crime scene photos.

The photo he had grabbed had been taken in another area of Brenda Samms' bedroom, and depicted what looked like a bunch of the murdered woman's decorative silverware that had been thrown down and smashed to pieces on the floor; the point of which, Cassie still wasn't sure, aside from just pure rage.

"A lot of damage," Hotch confirmed. "Nothing taken."

"Well, then, his signature must be about the eyes," Cassie said, grabbing the crime scene photo that depicted Brenda's face, her jaw slack in death, and her hazel eyes wide open from the glue that the unsub had somehow needed to use during his crime. "He doesn't need to glue the eyes open in order to actually commit the murder, but he does it anyway because it's something that he needs to do to get an emotional release."

It was strange, and it was gross, and Cassie was sure that she'd never really understand the reasoning behind why, but she'd been at this job long enough to know that every unsub the team hunted was different, and they all had their...quirks.

"The eyes," Gideon added. "Are what he's there for."

A creepy thought, to be sure, but Reid piping up with yet another fact successfully diverted Cassie's attention away from the BAU's senior agent.

"There used to be a widely held belief," the young genius began. "That the eyes record a-a snapshot of the last thing a person sees before they die,"

"That's right," Morgan agreed as Cassie stamped down the shudder that threatened to creep up her spine at Reid's words. "People used to write poems about talking to Death."

"Ballads." Reid corrected instantly, and Derek sent him a deadpan expression.

"Whatever."

"Do you think unsubs will ever run out of ways to hurt their victims?" Cassie asked once everyone had been silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts, and the brunette leaned back slightly in her chair, bracing her cheek against one hand as her other hand held the crime scene photo of Brenda Samms's face again.

Agent Quinn had lost count, really, of the number of cases she'd worked on since joining the BAU three years ago, and even though the team spent weeks sometimes hunting one particular unsub, she also knew that there were countless others that even local authorities didn't know about, and countless people who were suffering because these unsubs were always thinking of different ways to make their victims suffer.

Not to mention, the team didn't travel to every location for the cases they worked on. They had to be invited in, and sometimes the locals didn't want to rely on the federal agencies for assistance, which sometimes was a detriment to themselves, and more people died because of it. 

Her very first case after she'd become an agent, even before she'd moved to D.C., had been a murder case in Waimānalo that, to this day, remained unsolved because the gun used to commit the crime had disappeared, and even though she regularly asked for updates on the case from some of the agents (not Agent Jorden) that she still got along with at the Honolulu office, it had been years now since there had been a viable lead, and the case had effectively gone cold, the killer of Cleo Akana getting away.

Gideon had called and asked her to join the BAU four days after that final lead had gone nowhere.

That was one of the parts of her job that Cassie hated the most. The knowing that, no matter how many bad guys she put away, there were always about half a dozen more that were still on the hunt, popping up like the heads of a Hydra from mythology. There was always more to replace the one that had fallen.

It was annoying.

"Finding new ways to hurt each other," Gideon's voice made Cassie glance up, meeting the calm gaze of the senior agent as he sat diagonally across from her. "Is exactly what we're good at..." 

Her mentor's comment did absolutely nothing to make Cassie feel better, and from the corner of her eye, she saw her partner staring at the senior agent, Derek's eyes wide enough that the twenty-seven-year-old was sure that he agreed with her, however silently, that Gideon's words, while accurate, weren't exactly pleasant.

But he was right. Hurting each other was one of humanity's most defining characteristics.

☆☆☆

Task Force Headquarters
SAN DIEGO POLICE DEPARTMENT

By the time they landed in California, it was inching closer to late afternoon, evening on the East Coast, and the San Diego field office, which was the closest Bureau field office to their current case, sent over a pair of unmarked Crown Vics for the BAU team to use while they were in town, rather than the standard FBI black Suburban SUVs.

A bit more cramped than Cassie was used to, but the cars did their job, which was really the whole reason they had them in the first place.

The headquarters for the task force that was spearheading the Tommy Killer case was located on an upper level of a San Diego Police Department precinct, and once the six profilers (plus JJ), stepped out of the elevator onto the very crowded floor, Morgan, Elle, Gideon, and Reid almost instantly diverged from the rest of the group, making a beeline for what looked like the case's main set up on the far side of the room, where a series of bulletin boards had been erected with details of each of the previous murders pinned to their surface.

Cassie, Hotch, and JJ, on the other hand, at least had the decency to wait and introduce themselves to the lead detective, the one who had asked the FBI to come to California in the first place, because the last thing the brunette knew the team needed was to alienate the locals and pull rank.

This just made people irritated, and aside from undoubtedly making their job more difficult, it just wasn't what the BAU did.

The man who eventually came to welcome them, having noticed, probably, that the three federal agents weren't exactly familiar faces, looked to be a bit older than Gideon, which would've made him in his mid-50s, with close-shaven and graying curly black hair, a couple inches taller than Cassie and JJ, and a demeanor that instantly alerted Agent Quinn to the fact that this was a man who had always been a cop and had always been meant to be a cop.

There wasn't anything innately visible, obviously, but it was just a feeling Cassie had that, even without seeing any of the general characteristics that identified someone as a cop, she knew that this was a person who lived and breathed for their career in law enforcement.

It was a feeling the twenty-seven-year-old was familiar with, since she'd witnessed it every day with Derek Morgan from the moment she met him three years ago.

"Captain Griffith," the man introduced himself, reaching out to shake the agents' hands. "Task force commander."

"Sorry," Hotch shook Griffith's hand first before the captain turned towards JJ and Cassie, and the unit chief gave a small nod in the direction the rest of the team had headed in. "We all get tunnel vision. I'm Special Agent Hotchner. This is Special Agent Quinn," he then nodded towards Cassie, who gave Griffith a small smile as the captain shook her hand, and JJ. "And this is Agent Jareau, our liaison."

"I appreciate you guys coming out here," Griffith said, a bit breathless, once the introductions had been made, and Cassie could only imagine how stressed the older man must be, with the number of murders that had occurred in his jurisdiction over the last couple of weeks, with seemingly no end in sight.

"We just hope we can help," Hotch told him.

Introductions over, Cassie left the small group that consisted of her, Captain Griffith, Hotch, and JJ, and went over to where Morgan and Elle were standing near the map of San Diego with small pushpins to indicate where each murder had occurred. Derek was seemingly tracing the route the unsub might've taken to commit each murder while Elle was flipping through a few of the evidence bags from the previous murders.

Cassie had only been lingering for a couple of seconds before Morgan, with a glance down at the case file he was holding, as if confirming that the locations of each murder were accurate, made his way over to where Gideon was still standing by the boards depicting the crime scene photos of the murders, staring at the pictures in front of him.

Agent Quinn followed her partner.

"He strikes during the day in upper-middle-class neighborhoods," Morgan spoke up as he flipped through the case file, and Gideon spoke himself without even turning away from the boards.

"Extremely high-risk victims at a high-risk time," the senior agent began, before tilting his head slightly to the side. "He's confident in his ability."

"Arrogant, too," Cassie added, crossing her arms. "He's probably getting off on the fact that he's been able to commit each of his murders during the day without anyone noticing him."

"The murders look as if they occurred within a five-square-mile radius," Morgan continued, and Gideon gave another slight head tilt.

"He probably has a vehicle." his voice was quiet, almost pensive, and he was standing so close to the Brenda Samms case board that he was nearly pressed against it.

With anyone else, Cassie would've thought it more than a little bit strange, Cassie had known Gideon for so long at this point that she knew the senior agent tended to get lost inside his own head while working a case, focusing so much on the different aspects and details of the case that he tended to forget if he was working with anyone else.

Sudden footsteps from close behind her made Cassie turn, in time to see another detective walking up to her and Morgan. He was African-American, an inch or two shorter than Morgan, and bald, though there was a well-trimmed mustache framing his upper lip.

Her abrupt movement had alerted her partner, and Derek turned around as well to glance at the newcomer, just as the detective spoke.

"You want to see that crime scene?" he asked, and the sound of fabric rustling from over her shoulder alerted Cassie to the fact that Gideon had probably shifted, too, to face the detective. At the various expectant looks on each of the profilers' faces, the detective shrugged. "It's still taped off. The husband won't go back inside."

Cassie didn't think that she'd be able to go back to her house if her spouse had been murdered the way Brenda Samms had been, but the presence of an almost-pristine crime scene was almost too good to pass up, so she glanced at Gideon, just as the senior agent nodded.

"Let's go."

The detective, who introduced himself to the three profilers as Cornelius Martin, led Cassie and her two male colleagues down to the parking garage of the SDPD and to his department-issued unmarked.

Detective Martin was obviously the one who stepped into the driver's seat of his own car, while Morgan took the passenger seat in the front, which in turn, left Cassie and Gideon to both sit in the back seat of the small sedan, even though Agent Quinn much preferred Martin's unmarked to the standard police cruiser, since this one both had the rear door's locks enabled, so Cassie would be able to get out of the car on her own without needing to rely on either her partner or Detective Martin himself to open the door for her, and there wasn't a grate separating the front seats from the back, which had always made her feel more like a prisoner than an FBI agent in the past whenever the standard police cruisers had been the only cars available.

All in all, she wasn't too upset about the seating arrangement and settled in for the ride to the most recent crime scene as Detective Martin started up the engine.

Cassie had finally made it to San Diego with the rest of the team to start investigating the series of murders committed by this so-called "Tommy Killer", but she had been doing this job for long enough by now that she knew it was going to be a long, long road before this case was closed.

She was just hoping they caught the unsub before anyone else died.

☆☆☆

As Detective Martin drove them from the station to the most recent crime scene, Cassie found herself staring out the window of the local cop's car, lost in thought, as their guide focused on, well, driving, and Morgan and Gideon both reacquainted themselves with some of the case details from the growing file authorities had compiled so far on this particular unsub.

After a while, though, Martin spoke up, and since he was sitting directly in front of Cassie, his voice made the brunette turn her attention away from the window.

"This profiling..." the detective began, and Cassie almost scoffed at the skepticism she heard decorating his tone as the man glanced to his right towards Morgan. "It really works?"

Derek glanced up from his papers for a moment, looking over his shoulder at Cassie, who just shrugged, before the thirty-two-year-old turned back to the case file.

"It's a tool," he clarified finally, and Detective Martin glanced at him again, which Agent Quinn wasn't sure was really a good idea since he was, you know, driving. The absolute last thing they needed right then was to get into a car accident while working a murder case.

"So," Martin continued once he thankfully turned his eyes back to the road, giving Cassie a chance to breathe. "You can tell all that about a guy just from looking at the scene?"

Cornelius's skepticism was something else that Cassie had seen often over the last three years, and even when she'd first met Gideon at fifteen, the brunette hadn't really understood the nuances of profiling and how the BAU's job worked until she was in the Academy, training to be an agent and learning the skills herself. So, she didn't really fault Detective Martin too much for not immediately believing how good his new colleagues were at their jobs.

He'd learn soon enough.

"The scene's only part of it," Derek corrected the detective as they continued down the street, Cassie's partner continuing to flip through some of the crime scene photos. "We also use victimology, precedent. We can usually get a pretty clear picture of the guy."

"Our guys went over it pretty well," Martin admitted, and Cassie let out a small scoff under her breath that she knew Gideon overheard, from the sparing glance he sent her out of sight of both Morgan and Detective Martin himself.

Derek, meanwhile, just chuckled as he grabbed another photo.

"I'm sure they did," he said, the tone of his voice changing ever so slightly that Cassie knew the detective hadn't noticed, but it was her job to notice things like this, and the change in tone meant that Morgan, at this point, was placating the detective as Gideon straightened up a bit in his spot beside Cassie.

"Local officers aren't trained to look for the things we look for," the senior agent explained, much more understanding than Cassie would've been, admittedly, and again, Detective Martin decided to raise Agent Quinn's blood pressure by glancing at the older profiler in the rear-view mirror.

"What's that?" he asked, and for the first time since the four of them had left the task force headquarters at the precinct, Cassie spoke up, leaning to the side so she could look more directly between the driver and passenger seats at the front of the car.

"Mainly," she began. "Any emotions the unsub might've been feeling when he'd committed the crime. Insecurity, anger, fear, hate. You'd be surprised at how much your emotions come through in your actions when you're not aware of it."

And, considering the way that the Samms crime scene had been absolutely ransacked, this particular murderer had been, at the bare minimum, very, very upset by whatever it was that he thought Brenda had been guilty of, the same thing that had caused him to assault her before ending her life.

Detective Martin, though, still seemed to be skeptical.

"That's all at the scene?" he asked, glancing again in the mirror, and Morgan finally closed the case file he'd been flipping through since they'd begun their journey across the city, and looked at Martin directly.

"It's all in his behavior," he said firmly, and the detective nodded, seemingly running the explanation over in his head before he glanced to the side again, and Cassie was really wishing he'd stop doing that.

"You know anything about our guy yet?" he asked, and Gideon let out a laugh that was in no way related to anything humorous.

"Yeah," the senior agent said gruffly. "He isn't going to stop until he's caught."

Gideon's comment effectively ended any further conversation that might've happened between the four law enforcement officers before they arrived at the crime scene, since Detective Martin looked as if the senior agent had just admitted to kicking his dog, but luckily, it was less than twenty minutes before he was pulling to a stop in front of the house.

One of Cassie's least favorite things (added to the list of all her other least favorite things) about cases like these was the fact that, even after the brutal, brutal murder that had been committed on this street, the neighborhood still looked normal. It was the middle of the day, so most of the adults who lived on the street were probably at work while their children were in school, so it was relatively deserted, but aside from the black-and-white police cruiser that, well, cruised to a stop at the intersection nearest the Samms's house, it looked like any other relatively well-off neighborhood in California.

It was kind of creepy, actually.

As Detective Martin led the three agents up the driveway, another police cruiser came from the other direction, and the two cop cars passed each other as they continued on their patrols. Gideon, meanwhile, who'd turned around to watch them once he'd gotten out of the car, turned back towards their local guide once the cruisers had driven off.

"You increased patrols in this neighborhood when the pattern was identified?" he asked, and Martin nodded.

"After the fourth victim," he explained, talking with his hands as the four of them made their way towards the two large front doors of the house, which were still stuck closed with the 'Property of SDPD' sign. "Bosses cancelled days off, vacations..."

Gideon's cell phone rang, and as the senior agent went to grab it off his belt, Morgan spoke up.

"Neighborhood full of cruisers," Derek began, sounding almost resigned. "And he still struck two more times,"

"He must blend in," Cassie added as she glanced around at the quiet neighborhood around her. "No way he wouldn't already be caught if he didn't seem suspicious to anyone else who lives around here."

A hum from Morgan told the twenty-seven-year-old he agreed, just as Gideon's voice caught both agents, plus Detective Martin's attention.

"Attempt?" the senior agent was saying, and Cassie felt her heart drop to her feet again. She didn't know who had called Gideon, but she assumed it was either Hotch, Reid, or Elle. She was also too far away to hear anything more than Gideon's side of the conversation, since she and Morgan stood almost on the front porch of the large house. "Well, we're already at the last crime scene," Gideon continued. "Let us know if you identify a suspect."

He hung up then and turned back to continue heading towards the front door. Detective Martin practically ambushed him before the senior agent had gone more than a few steps.

"Suspect?" the detective asked, and Cassie knew both she and Morgan were pretending they weren't as curious about what Gideon had just discovered as Martin was.

The senior agent, meanwhile, seemed remarkably unconcerned and just shrugged.

"There might have been another attack not far from your station," he explained, and Cassie tried her hardest not to gasp, but judging from the way she saw Derek glance at her from the corner of her eye, she didn't accomplish it very well.

Detective Martin almost instantly turned on his heel and started to speed-walk back to his car, but Morgan held out a hand to stop him.

"Hey, hey, hey," the former Chicago cop called out, making the San Diego officer look over his shoulder at him. "Where are you going?"

As he flicked his gaze between the three agents, Cassie noticed that Detective Martin looked almost confused, before he hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

"Over there," he explained, as if it were obvious, but Gideon just shrugged.

"Well," the senior agent began. "Units are already heading that way. We can get more accomplished here."

Cassie was as worried about this new potential victim as she knew that Morgan, Gideon, and even Detective Martin were, but she also knew that the BAU's senior agent had a point. Along with the local San Diego officers that were most definitely rocketing towards the newest crime scene, Hotch, Elle, and maybe even Reid were no doubt on their way as well, and Agent Greenaway did have a background in Sex Crimes, so if anyone were qualified to help this newest victim, it was Elle.

Detective Martin, on the other hand, did not have as much faith in Gideon as Cassie did.

"You're kidding me," the detective began, sounding almost irritated by this point. "Right?"

"If a suspect gets arrested at the new crime scene," Cassie began, nodding her head towards the house. "Anything we find here could help you build a more solid case."

That is, if this new attack was connected to the unsub's crimes. It would be a huge coincidence if it wasn't an attack committed by the so-called "Tommy Killer", but sexual assault, of any form, was still the most underreported crime of any type, so who knows?

"The scene won't be pristine forever," Gideon added, but Detective Martin was unswayed, and he shook his head.

"Knock yourselves out," he said grimly, fishing the keys to the house out of his pocket and dropping them into Gideon's hand. But, as he went to continue towards his car, Cassie felt her partner brush past her as Derek stepped down the few stairs that made up the front walk of the house and walked closer to Detective Martin.

"Wait a minute," he called out to the detective, who turned around with an expression that Cassie knew Martin was upset at being interrupted again. "The unsub," Morgan added. "He went through the back, right?"

"The family room," Martin admitted, at this point walking backward towards his car as he used his hand for emphasis. "It's the window full of print dust."

The detective turned around and jogged back down the driveway towards his car, and even though Cassie wasn't sure if he knew that he was effectively abandoning the rest of them here, considering his car was their ride back to the station, Morgan calling out to her stopped Agent Quinn from asking either of her colleagues about it.

"Cassie!" She turned towards Morgan as he jerked his head towards the side yard of the house, which in turn would lead them to the back, where the unsub had broken in before the murder. "You want to go around back with me?"

The twenty-seven-year-old didn't really see a reason why she shouldn't, so with a glance at Gideon, who just gave a small shrug, essentially allowing Cassie to do what she wanted, Agent Quinn followed her partner around the side of the house, leaving the BAU's senior agent to go through the front door.

It wasn't until the two profilers arrived at the same window that the unsub had used to gain access to the house (which Cassie knew from all the small sticker indicators stuck at various spots around the border of the window where the crime scene techs had found fingerprints) that Morgan said anything.

"Hey, are you okay?" he asked quietly as Cassie, who wasn't really paying attention to him, tried to figure out the best way for her to climb through the window. The bottom of the sill was about an inch or two above Morgan's waist, but the height difference between him and Cassie meant that the sill came up to just underneath her chest, and Cassie knew she'd have a lot more trouble getting through than Derek would.

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked, bracing her hands on either side of the window and preparing to jump up.

"I know these types of cases are always hard for you." Her partner's voice was still quiet, with a soft tinge as Cassie felt him hover his hands on either side of her waist, to catch her in case she fell, as the brunette bounced off her feet in order to crouch in the window itself. "Besides, I heard you gasp when Gideon got the call about the new victim."

"I'm fine," Cassie said firmly, ignoring how well she knew Morgan knew her as she stepped carefully off the windowsill and onto the burgundy-colored plush armchair that sat in the corner right next to the window, balancing on the armrest for a moment before she hopped down onto the floor.

Morgan was silent for a couple of seconds as he climbed through the window himself, and while he admittedly had less trouble getting through than Cassie had, especially considering he hadn't actually needed to jump to get up on the sill, it was still obviously not an easy feat, which also revealed quite a few details about their unsub's physicality and athletic prowess, if he'd gotten into the other victims's houses the same way.

When he thumped both feet down onto the thick rug that covered most of the family room's floor, Morgan turned towards her with an expectant look on his face.

"Come on, Angel," he said, and despite his concern, Agent Quinn found herself frowning. "It's me. I think we've known each other long enough to know when we're not at our A-game."

Cassie's frown deepened, and she abruptly turned away from her partner.

"I can still do my job, Morgan," she spoke a bit sharper than she intended, but the use of his last name alone should've been enough to alert Derek to the fact that she wasn't very happy with him. "I'm not an invalid,"

"I didn't say you were," the older man told her, still in that annoyingly calm and understanding tone of voice. "I'm just...worried,"

"Well," she retorted. "Be less worried. The unsub might've just struck again less than half an hour ago, and we're here because we need as much behavioral evidence as possible to ensure he goes to prison once we catch him. Be less worried about me, and more worried about the fact that we might find nothing of note, and have to go back to the station empty-handed."

It wasn't often that the two of them ever actually argued, and Cassie knew that her partner's worry was coming from a good place, despite how shitty it made her feel. She didn't do well with cases like these, which sucked, because a majority of the cases they worked included some form or another of sexual assault, the victims of every case they worked were predominantly women, and while the victims in this particular case with the Tommy Killer were each at least five years older than her, Cassie, more often than not, did fit into the nice little box that was most unsubs' target type.

She was usually good at keeping her head on straight during the workday, but perhaps the sudden transition from celebrating Reid's birthday at the BAU to investigating this twisted case had thrown her for a loop, given the metaphorical whiplash between the two circumstances.

"It wasn't easy getting through the window," Cassie turned around again once her partner spoke up, grateful that he'd finally seemed to drop the subject of her mental state in favor of returning to the case (heh) at hand. "Means our guy is at least a little bit athletic,"

"Definitely," she agreed, falling back into the rapport she and Derek usually had when they weren't talking about anything personal, bouncing ideas off each other with the ease that came from working together for so long.

The two of them were both in great shape—you kind of had to be in order to be a field agent, and Cassie enjoyed exercise—but if even they had had trouble getting through the same window the unsub had used to get into the house, he was definitely in great shape as well, which didn't exactly bode well for having to catch him if any of them needed to give phsyical chase.

After investigating the entirety of the family room, in which they didn't find much of anything, Cassie and Morgan started to retrace the steps that the unsub might've taken when he'd killed Brenda Samms, to see if they would be able to discover something that local authorities had missed the first time around, and made their way into the kitchen.

"What'd I mess with in here?" Morgan's voice was quiet again, but it was the type of quiet Cassie knew came on when her partner was trying to get into the head of their unsub, and she stood back for a couple of seconds and watched him do his thing.

"He smashed the cappuccino machine pretty good," she spoke up after a few moments, glancing down at the case file Derek had handed her to carry once the two of them had left the family room, and flipping to the appropriate photograph. "Left the pieces unrecognizable upstairs,"

"But why? Why would I take the time?" Morgan asked, sounding fairly confused about the entire thing, and Cassie, to an extent, felt the same way.

Smashing the appliances obviously wasn't something the unsub had needed to do; it was practically redundant, considering he had already committed his assault and murder...why break the Samms's coffee machine to?

"All the breaking he did," Cassie added, as she continued to flip through the crime scene photos from when Captain Griffith had been here earlier, because the cappuccino machine hadn't been the only device the unsub had broken. "None of it was necessary, so what was the point?"

After the kitchen and more informal dining room, the two profilers' next destination in the house was the formal dining room, because yes, the Samms family was wealthy enough to have two. Inside the dining room and beside the large table sat two glass-doored hutch cabinets, which, after Cassie had looked through her photos, she saw had previously held the "fancy" dishes—the china, crystal glass, etc. On the table beside them sat an open case that used to be the home of the family's genuine silverware, both of which were now empty.

"Here's where I got the china," Morgan muttered, half to himself, as he gestured with one hand to the wide-open cabinet doors, and then to the case on the table. "And the silver. But I didn't take it; I broke it. Why wouldn't she hear me?"

"She definitely would've heard someone crashing around downstairs," Cassie said as she closed the case file and hugged it to her chest after Morgan had paused for a moment, lost in thought, before the brunette tilted her head to the side when her partner glanced at her. "Unless she was already dead when he broke everything."

Morgan blinked a couple of times, stunned, and Cassie saw the moment he came to the same conclusion she had.

There was absolutely no way that Brenda Samms wouldn't have heard someone else in her house making as much noise as the unsub had to have been when he'd been smashing everything to pieces, so the only logical explanation had to be that the Tommy Killer had killed her, written his next message on her mirror, and then destroying all the stuff the initial investigators had found smashed.

By the time Cassie and Derek made their way upstairs, Gideon was already in the master bedroom where Brenda had been assaulted and murdered, and the senior agent was standing equidistant between the bed and the block TV, the mirror with the unsub's "message" sitting unassuming to his left.

"She had a workout video on," Gideon said once the other two profilers had stepped inside the bedroom, with Morgan leaving the door open behind him. "Step aerobics,"

"Step aerobics?" Morgan echoed, sounding a bit bemused as his gaze flicked periodically between Gideon, the TV, and Cassie. "With the platforms? Step up, step down, step up, step down?"

As she flicked through the case file again, Cassie figured that might've been one way that Brenda Samms hadn't realized the unsub was inside her house until it was too late. Obviously, the killer hadn't smashed everything the way he had until after the woman was dead, and the house was big enough that if Brenda'd had the volume on her workout video turned up in order to focus, no wonder she was caught off guard and overpowered so easily.

Now, step aerobics had never particularly been Cassie's thing; she was more partial to pilates and a good, regular running routine when she was back in DC, but exercise was exercise at the end of the day, and if Brenda had also been in good shape, the fact that the unsub had been able to gain the upper hand when he'd broken in to the house also spoke to his own physicality again, even before you added in how difficult it was to get through the family room window downstairs.

"Where's the platform?" Gideon asked, his glasses dangling down from his mouth as he held one arm of the pair of glasses in his teeth, and Cassie glanced around at the bedroom floor.

When the SDPD had been here originally, they'd obviously cleaned up the smashed appliances that the unsub had destroyed after bringing up from the ground floor, but as she looked around, Agent Quinn realized that the senior agent was right, there weren't currently any step aerobics platforms anywhere to be seen, and if they'd been out on the floor when Captain Griffith and the other local authorities investigated initially, they would've been logged as evidence.

The sheets from the bed had also been stripped, and they had been logged as evidence, both since that was where Brenda Samms had been found post-murder and other...icky reasons, so now, there wasn't anything blocking them from seeing what was underneath the bed. As she flicked the case file closed, and under Morgan and Gideon's quizzical gazes, Cassie swung her head down so she could look under the bed, and lo and behold, three step aerobic platforms were stacked on top each other about a foot from the edge.

So, either Brenda Samms had finished her workout by the time the unsub arrived, which was unlikely, since the video was still playing when her body was found. That meant the unsub had been the one to put the platforms away for...some reason.

"He spent a lot of time here," Gideon said once Cassie had stood up again, but Morgan only furrowed his brows.

"What?" the former cop asked, taking the case file from his partner and flipping through it. "So he vacuumed? There are no marks from the platforms."

Gideon just nodded.

"A lot of time."

"He broke a bunch of stuff too," Cassie added, leaning against one of the bed's end posts because she wasn't about to sit on that mattress, no way. She then told Gideon one of the conclusions that she and Derek had come to in the dining room. "There's no way Brenda wouldn't have heard him smashing everything unless she was already dead. Not to mention, everything was broken up here."

"Exactly," Morgan agreed. "Dishes, vases, broken jewelry, they're all—"

"Symbols," Gideon cut off the younger profiler, which in turn made both Morgan and Cassie turn and stare at him as he sat down on the mattress, causing Cassie to barely contain her shudder. " 'Your riches.' " Agent Quinn raised an eyebrow, but the senior agent wasn't finished, and it took the brunette a moment to realize that her mentor was quoting the same message that was currently written on the standing mirror a few feet away from the three of them. " 'Gold, garments, jewels bright'. Your house and land must on new owner's light'..."

"Her riches," Morgan mused as he walked over to stand in front of the mirror, gesturing to it with the file folder. This message was different than the ones left at previous murders, and read as follows:

You may as well be mute...
There is no time at all for vain dispute...
Your riches, gold and garments, jewels bright...
Your house and land, must on new owner's light...

It was a strange message, to be sure, and Cassie knew that it was a wonder that Reid had even recognized part of the original text at all when they'd briefed each other about the case earlier on the jet, but she would take any advantage to get one over on this unsub that they were able to get.

"Right," the senior agent nodded to confirm that Morgan had come to the correct conclusion about the potential motive for Brenda's murder, a heartbeat before Gideon shook his head, and glanced again at his two younger colleagues. "You ever feel like there's something obvious right in front of you, but you just can't see it?"

"Happens to Derek all the time," Cassie said, crossing her ankles and glancing at her partner with a smirk. "Usually, right before one of his girlfriends dumps him,"

Morgan, meanwhile, scoffed, annoyed that the younger woman was just admitting all of his secrets to one of their bosses like that, but the twenty-seven-year-old was having too much fun teasing him to care if he was angry with her or not.

Besides, she thought he deserved it after he had ambushed her about her mental state downstairs.

Fair's fair, after all.

☆☆☆

There wasn't much else the three agents could discover at the Samms crime scene that hadn't already been put into the case file, so once they'd exhausted all their abilities at the house, Cassie had returned to the task force's headquarters with Morgan and Gideon, though only after the BAU's senior agent had put in a call to the San Diego Field Office for the local agents to send a car for them, since Detective Martin had left the profilers in the driveway earlier in the afternoon.

The first person they ran into once they'd returned to the precinct was Reid, and he almost instantly held out a sheet of paper to Gideon, essentially stopping the senior agent in his tracks.

"The verses," the twenty-four-year-old explained succintly as Gideon took the paper from him, and Cassie peered at it as she stood between the two of them, with Morgan hovering behind her right shoulder.

"You found something?" Gideon asked, but Reid gave both a small shrug and shake of his head in the negative.

"Not an answer," he began. "A question. I found the full text, and he's pretty much following it to a T. Or at least, the Death side of the conversation..." Reid trailed off, and for several moments, the other three agents just stared at him, waiting for the genius to continue, before finally, Gideon tilted his head towards him. 

"But..." he prompted, and Reid's eyebrows scrunched together.

"Why didn't he leave them at the first three murders?" he asked, and Cassie tilted her own head to the side as she realized that Spencer had a point.

Most killers, when they had a message as specific to their methodology as the one that "Tommy" seemed to have, usually started with their message from the beginning, not after their fourth kill.

"This ballad is also ten verses long just on the Death side," Reid added, which in turn made Agent Quinn's eyebrows fly up her forehead. "He's got plenty to work with. But if it's not part of his signature...if it isn't something he has to do for an emotional reason, then—"

"Why start at all?" Cassie unintentionally cut Reid off when the genius decided to take a breath, and she glanced between her colleagues, hands on her hips, and nibbling on her bottom lip as she thought over everything Reid had revealed since he'd walked up to them.

Derek and Spencer didn't say anything, but all three of them turned towards Gideon, who had the sort of expression on his face that told Cassie he'd just come to a stunning conclusion. But before the senior agent said anything to them, he looked towards the team's press liaison, who was sitting at a desk nearby, working on something else.

"JJ," he began, and blonde turned at the sound of her name. "Find out when the press ran the first story on this unsub."

"When?" the young woman asked, and Gideon gave a small, conspiratorial smile.

"After which victim," he clarified, and though she looked a bit confused, JJ turned around again and picked up the phone closest to her to do as he'd asked, as Cassie turned towards her mentor.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, but Gideon just shook his head.

"He wasn't getting enough attention," the senior agent spoke as if it was obvious, and Cassie raised an eyebrow again.

"It is difficult sometimes," she began, speaking half to herself, even though she was still standing with her partner, Reid, and Gideon himself. "For local departments to even realize they have a serial killer among them, especially if they don't recognize a pattern between the crimes."

"Not until someone tells them there's a pattern," Morgan muttered, and Cassie glanced over her shoulder at her partner, just as JJ called out to the four of them again.

"The first story ran the morning after the fourth victim was found," the liaison told them, just as Morgan glanced down at the case file again, dots starting to connect inside his head.

"Increased patrols didn't begin until after the fourth victim, either," he realized out loud, and Gideon nodded, seemingly pleased that they'd all come to the same conclusion he already had.

"Yeah," he agreed, talking with his hands. "The police didn't realize what was happening, he writes his verse—"

"And everyone knows that he was there," Reid finished Gideon's thought, and the senior agent nodded, just as Hotch and Elle walked up to them.

The other two agents must've finally finished interviewing this newest victim. Even though the woman had survived, Cassie knew it wouldn't be as easy as thinking Hotchner and Greenaway would've arrested somebody and they could all close this case and go home.

That particular notion got squashed as soon as the BAU's unit chief explained what he and Elle had discovered.

"The offender in this new attempt is a Black male," Hotch said, and Cassie physically reeled back from the shock of that admission, because what?

Morgan, it seemed, was as shocked as his partner, because he turned to look at both Hotch and Elle, gaze flicking between the two agents with equal parts irritation and confusion on his face.

"A Black male?" he asked, disbelieving, and when Elle gave a small nod, Derek continued. "That's cross-racial, that doesn't happen."

"What about Herbert Mullin?" Reid asked, spouting off a statistic about a serial killer from the early 1970s. "He killed fourteen different people of completely varying ages, races, and creeds,"

"Mullin had no sexual motivation or component in his crimes, though," Cassie corrected the young genius, which wasn't something that happened often. "His methodology doesn't apply here."

"And," Elle added, poking her head between the small crowd of profilers and catching all of their attention. "He wore a ski mask. This attacker wore a ski mask."

For the most part throughout this entire conversation, Gideon had been silent, listening instead to the other agents speak, while also continuing to stare at the case boards depicting details from the previous murders.

After several seconds, though, the senior agent finally spoke up.

"Tell them we're ready," he said, not speaking specifically to any one agent, but Morgan was the one who confronted Gideon first, not to Cassie's surprise.

"For the profile?" her partner asked, but Gideon didn't nod or shake his head before he spoke again.

"For how to make Tommy contact us."

☆☆☆

It took almost twenty minutes for the entirety of the task force working this case to be gathered in chairs and at the desks that made up this floor of the San Diego Police Department's precinct, but eventually, Cassie found herself standing between Morgan and Reid as the entire team got ready to deliver the profile.

The only one not present was Elle, and Gideon, of course, took point first.

"The unsub brought his weapons with him," the senior agent began as he looked around at the other detectives and local officers who had congregated around the case boards. "Tape, glue, wire. He did not leave them at the scene. He took them when he left. He has a kind of...killing kit that he carries."

"Organized killers usually have a skilled job," Hotch added, arms crossed as he stood at the far end of the line of evidence boards. "Likely technology-related, which may involve the use of the hands. The crime scenes are far enough apart that he needs a vehicle. This will be well-kept, obsessively clean, as will be his home. He's diurnal; these attacks occurred during the day, so the vehicle may be related to his work. Possibly a company car or truck."

"We believe he watches the victims for a time," Morgan continued. "Learns the rhythms of the home, knows his time frame,"

"This isn't going to be a case where the culprit is caught accidentally," Cassie spoke up from her spot leaning against the wall, and the way about half a dozen detectives turned their heads towards her in practical unison was almost creepy. "This guy is smart enough that we need to be the ones who get ahead, not the other way around, if we want the victim count to end at six."

"He destroys symbols of wealth in the victims' homes," Gideon said as he walked forward to stand in the middle of the group again. "He harbors envy of and hatred towards people of a higher social class. He feels invisible around them."

"Class," Reid piped up. "Is the theme of the poem, which he left at the various crime scenes. At one point in the poem, the woman attempts to bribe Death, but he doesn't accept it. He says this is the one moment when riches mean nothing. When Death comes, the poor and the rich are exactly alike."

"So he's poor?" Captain Griffith's voice came from about halfway back in the crowd, and Hotch was the one who answered him. 

"Probably middle-class," the unit chief clarified. "A decidedly lower-class person would stick out in a highly patrolled neighborhood. This guy appears to belong there. He blends in,"

Detective Martin, who was standing a few people past Captain Griffith at the back of the small crowd, lifted his arm and pointed in the general direction of the crime scene photos, and particularly, the one of Brenda Samms's face.

"Why does he glue the eyes open?" he asked, and this time, Elle was the one who answered him, the newest profiler having joined the rest of the team about a minute before, after she had finished elsewhere in the precinct.

"The unsub is an exploitative rapist," the former Seattle agent explained. "Most rape victims close their eyes during the attack, turn their heads. For some rapists, this ruins the fantasy. For this type of rapist, the goal is more related to the victim watching him than the act itself."

"The verses of the poem that the unsub left at previous crime scenes," Cassie continued, tilting her head and trying to ignore how much Elle's explanation about the standard profile and characteristics of an exploitative rapist bothered her. "The way he staged the entire scene and used increasingly aggressive language at each successive crime scene, and the fact that this killer has continuously compared himself to the personification of Death, reveal to us that, while the 'Tommy Killer'—" the twenty-seven-year-old used her fingers as quotation marks when she described the name the local authorities and press had given their most recent unsub, to signify how much she did not like it. "—has almost complete and utter control over his victims and the crime scenes, in his everyday life, he feels horribly insuffcient."

"That's why he couldn't wait for you to figure out what he'd done," Gideon added once Agent Quinn had paused in her part of the profile, and the senior agent turned around in his seat to look at the local detectives. "And why he needed to make sure that all of his crimes were counted. His victims represent whatever it is that's controlling him, and he wants that control back. He is under the thumb of a powerful woman who frightens him."

Cassie knew that, from prior experience, while every unsub was different and no two pathologies were entirely identical when it came to what made a person commit the serious sort of crimes that the BAU investigated, more often than not, the "powerful woman" that Gideon had described the unsub to be living with would most likely be his mother, grandmother, or other such relative.

It was possible, of course, that the woman could be a wife or girlfriend, but given the unsub's apparent complete and total disdain for the female gender, Cassie highly doubted that was the case in this particular instance.

"And a final point..." Gideon spoke up again once he and the other agents noticed a few officers near the back of the crowd start to walk away, thinking the profilers were done, which, if she hadn't been a profiler, Agent Quinn probably would've thought they were finished as well. But, Gideon hadn't explained yet one of their most important details about the Tommy Killer unsub, and it was imperative that everyone stayed to listen. "He is white."

The reaction was instantaneous.

Both Captain Griffith and Detective Martin, who'd investigated the reports of Mrs. Gordon's assault after the latter had abandoned Cassie, Gideon, and Morgan at Brenda Samms's house, stared at the FBI agents with almost identical expressions of equal parts disbelief and irritation.

Griffith, though, was the one to voice his thoughts first.

"We have witnesses that describe him as a Black male," the police captain retorted, his voice sharp enough that Cassie knew his opinion of profiling had just dropped several levels.

Gideon, though, had the patience of a saint and just nodded in agreement because, technically, Griffith was correct.

"The attacker was Black," the senior agent said, before he shook his head again. "He is not the Tommy Killer."

"Mrs. Gordon's husband came home at the same time that he always does," Hotch explained as a majority of the officers gathered at the task force's headquarters looked almost hilariously confused. "The Tommy Killer would've known that."

"And," Elle added. "Mrs. Gordon's attacker wore a ski mask. The unsub knows when he walks into a house, he's going to kill the woman who lives there. If you're not leaving any witnesses—" the former Seattle agent continued, shaking her head in disbelief. "Why wear a ski mask?"

That particular detail, when Elle had revealed it earlier to the rest of the team after she and Hotch had returned from the Gordons' house, had been one of the first clues to Cassie that, aside from leaving the victim alive, the including of a disguise in Marcia Gordon's sexual assault, meant that the attack might instead be an unconnected incident committed by someone else.

The unsub they were hunting had not been so meticulous in his own hunting thus far that getting caught by Mrs. Gordon's husband when he came home at the same time that he did every other day wasn't consistent with the rest of his crimes.

"And he wants the victims to see him anyway," Morgan's voice drew Cassie from her thoughts and made her turn towards her partner, just as he crossed his arms and looked out over the crowd, raising an eyebrow.

"This attempted rapist," Agent Quinn said, meeting the eyes of both Captain Griffith and Detective Martin for a moment before she continued. "Is not the unsub we're trying to catch, and is instead your garden variety, very disorganized young man."

"As the victim's age goes up," Elle added, once again utilizing her background in Sex Crime from her time in Seattle. "Generally, the attacker's age goes down. Mrs. Gordon is about sixty, which puts her rapist at about twenty."

"And it takes years to develop the level of calm and sophistication that Tommy displays at a crime scene, and the rapist is far too young for that," Gideon piped up, and though Cassie might not have inherently agreed with the senior agent actually using the unsub's press name to refer to him, maybe it was easier than just saying unsub over and over and over again.

She'd never had a problem with it, but she wasn't about to confront Gideon about it in front of everyone, either...she'd learned her lesson from that after she'd blown up at him when they'd been investigating the Bradshaw College fires in Arizona. 

Instead, Cassie stayed silent, looking away from Gideon as Elle spoke up again, her tone more pensive and thoughtful than earlier in the team's giving of the profile, and the former Seattle agent tilted her head slightly to the side as she spoke.

"Mrs. Gordon told me there's a young man who delivers groceries to their home," the other brunette explained calmly. "He fits a lot of what we're describing here."

"Great," Cassie's attention was pulled from Elle to Captain Griffith as the older man stood up straight with a sigh as the team of agents finished giving the profile for the unsub. "So, we're back to zero on Tommy."

But the profile wasn't the only thing Cassie and the others had in their arsenal to help find and arrest this so-called "Tommy Killer", and as Detective Martin handed Griffith a sheet of paper, causing the police captain to twist around in order to grab it, Hotch was already shaking his head.

"Not at all," the unit chief clarified, before gesturing off to the side as he spoke to Griffith. "May I see you in your office for a moment?"

Griffith looked a bit confused, but led Hotch into his office nonetheless, because what exactly was he going to say, no to the FBI agent helping him investigate? Hardly.

Cassie, of course, knew what the older profiler's plan was and hoped that Griffith would be open to trying it, especially after the captain's skepticism following the team's profile, which had not led to the suspect the seasoned detective had expected.

The brunette, though, knew the profile was accurate, and Hotch's plan, which had been formed after Gideon had originally gotten the idea before the team gave the profile, banked on the fact that Cassie and Morgan needed to arrest the young man thought to have been Mrs. Gordon's attacker, and make sure they got other attacker's face on the late-night news.

If the unsub that had already killed four women had started leaving the poem snippets at his fifth and sixth crime scenes because he'd wanted to be noticed, and was angry that he seemingly hadn't been so far, seeing someone else get arrested for his crimes would practically be enraging, and hopefully, it'd make him angry enough to contact them, and Garcia would be able to track his call and get his location, leading to an arrest.

It was a deceptively simple plan, all things considered, and hopefully, Cassie wasn't being too optimistic in hoping everything went according to plan.

Now, though, she just had to wait and see.

☆☆☆

In the end, arresting the man who'd attempted to rape Marcia Gordon was almost too easy. Cassie, Morgan, and a few San Diego officers had cornered the young man in the loading dock of the large supermarket where he worked, with Derek cuffing him before the other man even had time to run.

When they returned to the precinct, JJ was out front with a couple of other police officers standing as both a representation of the department, and as security for the young press liaison as Agent Jareau gave her press conference to the small army of gathered journalists and press reporters, various camera flashes lighting up JJ's face as the blonde continued explaining, more confidently than Cassie would've been able to, how the FBI had connected their current detainee to the previous Tommy Killer murders.

It was a lie, of course, but the press didn't know that, and the real Tommy Killer didn't know that, so as Morgan pulled the car to a stop near the front of the precinct, sirens blaring, and purposefully caught the attention of about half a dozen of the gathered reporters, Cassie readied herself to face the metaphorical music.

She and Derek were also both wearing their FBI windbreakers, the letters of the Bureau's acronym blaring so obviously across their respective backs that there was sure to be no mistake that the two of them were agents, which was really the plan all along.

The press started to, well, press in around the three of them as Cassie took the lead in heading inside the precinct and Morgan dragged the offender behind him, and when they finally made it up to the task force headquarters' floor, Hotch was the one who walked up to the twenty-seven-year-old first as her partner hauled his prisoner towards the holding cells, and eventual interrogation room.

He may not be the actual Tommy Killer, but Marcia Gordon still deserved justice for her attack, so in a way, this was like killing two birds with one stone. Or, in this case, catching two rapists (one a serial killer) with one arrest.

The unit chief stared at the younger profiler expectantly as Morgan disappeared through the door at the far end of the room that led to the holding cells and Interrogation. After a moment, Cassie turned towards her boss, shrugging.

"He'd already confessed by the time Derek put the cuffs on him," she told him, and even though Cassie doubted it was because this guy actually felt guilty about what he did to Marcia Gordon, and was moreso torn up about the fact that the FBI had been the one to arrest him for it, rather than the regular old police.

Cassie didn't feel too bad, though, because he was in custody, and Mrs. Gordon could rest at least that tiny bit easier.

Hotch cracked a small smile as Agent Quinn finished speaking, just as JJ walked up behind the two of them, the press liaison having finished her conference and returned to the task force's headquarters.

"Should just make the eleven o'clock news," she said succinctly, and Hotch flicked his gaze between both Cassie and JJ.

"Did they get good footage?" he asked, and Cassie tilted her head, placing her hands on her hips.

"We perp-walked him right down the middle of all the reporters," the brunette explained. "So, unless these camera operators are really bad at their jobs, there's no way you would've been able to miss him."

"Good," the brief praise came from Gideon, who was standing a little ways away from the three of them near the evidence boards for the previous murders, and as the senior agent turned around, Cassie couldn't help but notice that he was fiddling with his reading glasses in his hands, a nervous tic that she had noticed more than once over the years that she'd worked with him. "Now we wait."

"Call Garcia," Hotch told JJ, and the press liaison only gave the unit chief a single nod before she walked away.

Once she was gone, Cassie let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tried to ward off the exhaustion-induced headache that was threatening to make a very, very unwanted appearance. It had already been a long day, and now, all they could do was wait, and hope that the unsub was obsessed enough with the ongoing investigation (which Cassie was almost 100% sure he was) that there was no way he'd miss this most recent news report, and the suspect that had been arrested in connection with the Tommy Killer's murders.

The problem with having to wait for the unsub to contact them and have Garcia nail him with the Trap 'n Trace was, in fact, the waiting part. Cassie had been an agent for a long time, and even though being a profiler had more to do with her brain than her actual skills at being patient, the fact that, at twenty-seven, one of Agent Cassidy Quinn's least favorite aspects of her job (aside from the general horrific details of the cases she worked) was any sort of long-term waiting, be it stakeouts or, in this particular case, waiting for a phone call from the unsub, was frankly, very annoying.

JJ's press conference had, in fact, made it on the news, so hopefully, the unsub had seen it and gotten pissed off when someone else had seemingly gotten arrested for his crimes, but as the clock inched closer and closer to midnight without a singular viable call from the tip line that Gideon and Hotch had set up specifically for this instance, Cassie was thinking that maybe she had gotten too optimistic when she'd figured their plan would work.

Currently, the brunette was sitting at a desk with both Elle and Reid, her back to Morgan, who sat at another desk, with JJ at the desk just beyond him. Hotch had started to pace, which was never a good sign, and Gideon was still staring at the evidence boards.

From over her shoulder, Agent Quinn heard the sound of her partner slamming a phone back down onto its base, and she assumed that the most recent so-called "tip" that Derek had answered was not, actually, from the person they were all hoping would call.

Elle was periodically spinning her cell phone around on the desk, and the former Seattle agent looked as thrilled about their lack of critical phone calls as Cassie felt. Suddenly, the other woman threw her head over the back of her chair, giving such a heavy sigh that Cassie also knew that Elle was reaching her limit.

"I hate waiting like this..." Agent Greenaway grumbled, and Cassie silently agreed as she leaned back in her own chair, though not back far enough that she'd bump into Morgan.

Reid, meanwhile, who was sitting at the short end of the desk between the two female agents and solving a Rubik's Cube fast enough that Cassie thought it a wonder his head didn't explode, suddenly spoke up, though the young genius did not look up from his colorful cube.

"Do either of you think it's weird I knew that ballad?" he asked, prompting Cassie and Elle to glance at each other before they turned to Reid.

"I don't know how," Elle began, after Cassie had given a shrug. "It is that you know half the things you know, but I'm glad you do."

"Do you think it's why I can't get a date?" Reid's voice took on a more somber tone than his original question, and Cassie abruptly realized that her partner's off-handed comment from the jet when they'd been on the way to San Diego had affected the team's youngest member more than she'd originally realized.

"Derek sometimes doesn't think," Cassie cut in, simultaneously speaking over her shoulder to her partner so he'd also know she was calling him out. "Before he speaks. Ignore him, he goes through girlfriends probably as fast as you think of something, Reid."

"Well, that's hurtful," the brunette glanced sparingly over her shoulder at her partner, who looked a bit miffed.

"Am I wrong?" she retorted, but when Morgan didn't say anything (he knew she was right), Cassie turned back around.

She might have been a little bit hyperbolic at just how fast Derek tended to have girlfriends; his relationships might not be as short as the length she'd told Reid, but they were all relatively short-term, and even though his most recent one—a grand total of four (4!) dates with an agent from the Bureau's Organized Crime Unit—had ended a few days before the team had gone to Seattle to investigate the disappearance of Heather Woodland, the twenty-seven-year-old knew it was only a matter of time before he'd get another one.

"Have you ever actually asked someone out, Spencer?" Cassie asked Reid eventually, and the twenty-four-year-old finally looked up from his Rubik's Cube to give his colleague a small shake of his head. "Well," she added. "That's why you can't get a date. Besides, some women actually like a guy with brains,"

"Are you calling me dumb?" This time, Morgan turned all the way around in his chair, and Cassie couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes, spinning her chair around to face him.

"Did I?" she retorted, as Elle glanced between the two of them with a raised eyebrow. "I don't remember saying your name."

As they began to bicker (again), Agent Greenaway tore her eyes away and looked towards Reid again, who had returned his attention to his Rubik's Cube and was doing a very good job at tuning out the good-natured squabble that was going on two feet away from him.

"Are they always like this?" Elle asked, gesturing with one hand towards Cassie and Derek.

Reid just gave a noncommittal hum as he solved the blue side of his Cube.

"All the time," he explained to the team's newest member. "It's very annoying."

Suddenly, from the desk just past JJ, where Detective Martin was also sitting, waiting for the unsub to contact them, the phone on his desk rang, and mere moments after he had answered, the bald-headed law enforcement officer suddenly stood up, waving his head wildly enough that, while it was a good enough signal to signify that the Tommy Killer had finally gotten fed up, he still looked as if he were trying to swat away a buzzing bee.

Cassie and Derek, to their credit, instantly stopped their bickering at the detective's adverse reaction, and as Morgan flung one arm up in the air to demand silence from everyone else, Gideon got up from the chair he had been brooding in across the room and jogged over to where the other profilers were sitting, just as JJ glanced up from where she'd been on the phone with the volunteers who'd been manning the tip line.

"Line six," the liaison whispered, already also relaying the specific line the unsub was calling from to Garcia so the analyst could trace it, and Morgan rolled his chair up beside Cassie just as the rest of the team gathered around the desk.

Elle pushed the button to connect the call, and the very, very angry voice of their unsub practically exploded from the phone's speakers.

"You stupid, incompetent sons of bitches!" the man screamed, and despite how they'd been ribbing on each other mere moments before, Cassie couldn't stop herself from exchanging a glance with her partner, because the Tommy Killer sounded pissed. "I don't make mistakes! I am Death! You hear me? I am Death! You'll see now. Tomorrow, mark my words, you will see. And, while I'm taking her, I'm going to be thinking of you."

Almost too abruptly for Cassie to notice, the unsub hung up, and the click of the call ending prompted the brunette to spin around in her chair just as JJ asked Garcia if she had managed to trace anything. But, mere seconds later, Agent Jareau's face fell into an astonished mixture of disappointment and sheer shock, and Cassie began to get a sinking feeling in her stomach before the team's liaison spoke again.

"She said she got nothing," JJ said grimly, and Cassie's mouth actually fell open.

"Nothing?" Morgan burst out, just as Hotch's gaze widened, the unit chief, uncharacteristically shocked, was almost completely still.

"We missed him?" the older man asked, but as JJ just shook her head helplessly, Cassie leaned back in her chair again, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes.

That made no sense. Yeah, it was a short phone call, and even the fact that the unsub had hung up as suddenly as he had had startled Cassie herself, but even then, the call had been long enough that it should have been more than enough time for Garcia to get a location from the phone signal bouncing between the different nearby cell towers.

The fact that Penelope had somehow failed to trace the unsub's call was...practically inconceivable.

Not to mention, if the unsub's irate and furious ranting was to be believed, that meant that at some point tomorrow, another woman would be attacked and likely murdered, and the team might've just lost their only chance to catch him before he struck next.

☆☆☆

To say that Cassie did not have a good night's sleep would be an understatement. It wasn't something she was unaccustomed to; she never really slept as well as she probably should whenver she was away from home, but this night was worse than most, considering most of the night she'd been staring up at the ceiling of her hotel room, thinking of how there was another woman out there who likely wouldn't survive to see the next night, simply because the BAU had somehow fumbled their only real way of tracking the unsub's location, and now had almost no idea where he might strike next.

But when they all returned to the precinct at first light, with none of the profilers having gotten much sleep, Hotch and Gideon had thought up a plan. They may not have known exactly where the unsub's next victim lived, but they were familiar with his comfort zone. By strategically placing surveillance teams at key locations around this zone, it was likely that at least one team would be near the next victim's home.

Cassie was just hoping they'd get there in time if they needed to. As it were, she was partnered with Gideon for the surveillance, and the brunette wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.

Sure, she'd known the senior agent longer than anyone, even more than Morgan, but Gideon's whole spiel about not giving the then-twenty-three-year-old any special treatment when she'd joined the unit had extended to him not guiding her, more or less, with how to do her job, and he had left her to use her profiling skills on her own.

Derek was partnered with Spencer, which Cassie's partner was absolutely thrilled about. That team-up gave Cassie a good laugh before they got started.

"We have an undercover car for each of your teams," Captain Griffith explained as he walked up to the six agents, who were all standing by the case's evidence boards. "And the entire damn department out there, too."

"Remember," Gideon spoke up, glancing at the captain. "A truck, maybe a work truck, in excellent condition."

"Everyone knows." Griffith gave a single nod to show he understood.

If she was feeling this nervous about what they may end up finding later today, Cassie could only imagine what Griffith was feeling. He'd been working this case from the beginning and had been so lost in trying to figure out this guy's next move that he'd called in the BAU to help.

On the (relatively high, actually) off-chance that today ended badly, Agent Quinn was thinking this case might be the one that broke Captain Griffith for good.

"Alright," Hotch spoke up, prompting the twenty-seven-year-old to glance at him, only to see the unit chief clenching his jaw for a moment before continuing. "He might make a mistake today. He's angry, and he probably hasn't done the kind of surveillance he'd like."

"Yeah, well, neither have we," Derek muttered as he walked up between Reid and Hotch, before clapping his hand against the back of Spencer's shoulder, accidentally knocking the young genius forward a couple of inches. "Let's go, Reid."

Morgan sent a small smile over his shoulder to his partner in lieu of a standard goodbye, and a couple of minutes after they had left, Cassie departed the precinct with Gideon as well. Their surveillance quadrant was the one closest to Brenda Samms's house, and in fact, where Gideon parked the car was at the corner directly across from the most recent crime scene.

And then, they waited.

As she waited for something to happen and tried not to lose her mind from boredom, Cassie watched. She may not be good at stakeouts or anything to do with sitting for long periods of time doing nothing, but her situational awareness had always been higher than most other people she knew, so she noticed a few things.

She saw the mailman delivering letters and other smaller parcels to the mailbox at the end of the Samms' driveway, and further down the block, a man was delivering industrial-size water jugs to some of the neighbors. Two women were jogging down the street as well, and as she and Gideon sat there in the unmarked police car, a UPS truck turned down the street as well, on its way to deliver larger packages to whoever was on their mail list for the day.

It was another thing she had always struggled to process in her job. Even with the crimes she and the team investigated, the people whose lives had been ended by some of the worst monsters humanity had to offer, the crazy thing was...life went on.

Brenda Samms had been killed all of three days ago, and even with her former home still closed off by the authorities, the mail and other packages were still getting delivered, her neighbors were still exercising the way they did every day...the way they probably had the day Brenda had gotten murdered.

Life went on, and Cassie found the entire thing so strange.

"They can't just stop living because one woman got killed." Gideon's voice made her turn, and Cassie hated the fact that she was seemingly so easy to read by the men in her life.

It had been Morgan first, when he'd asked her if she was okay with this case as a whole after she'd freaked when the two of them had been investigating the Samms' house with Gideon, just after news of Marcia Gordon's attack had reached them, and now it was the senior agent himself, while they were both sitting here, waiting for the unsub to strike next.

That was also annoying.

"I didn't say they should," Cassie said quietly, probably a little more rude than she should have, considering Gideon was, in fact, her boss, but they'd known each other so long the twenty-seven-year-old was about...eighty-five percent sure he wouldn't reprimand her for it.

"But, you were thinking it," Gideon retorted, and instead of answering him this time, Cassie just shifted in her seat again, opting to cross her arms instead and look out the window like she was fifteen again, and the FBI agent beside her had been trying to get her to open up for the first time.

Because she'd also known that she'd be sitting for most of the day in a small car with Gideon for hours and hours on end while they waited for something to happen, Agent Quinn had opted to dress more casually and comfortably than she usually did, even while in the field.

Black pants that were somewhere between jeggings and regular old leggings were her trousers for the day, while a burgundy cotton button-down made up the top half of her outfit. She was also wearing a pair of her lower-heeled boots, a pair of black slouch ankle boots that actually didn't have heels at all, which would make it easier for her to run longer distances if they needed to pursue a suspect.

She had her hair tied back in a high ponytail today, but it had been a hasty one, and Cassie still had about a million tiny flyaway baby hairs brushing against her forehead, making her itch and feel as if she needed to jump out of the car in order to fix them.

In short, she was not having a good time.

"Do you know what is continuously one of your flaws in our yearly performance reviews?" Gideon's question made the brunette turn away from her act of staring out the window, though Cassie kept her arms crossed, because she really did not want (or need) an intervention right that moment.

"What?" she asked, and the BAU's senior agent angled his head slightly to meet her eyes.

"You are both impatient," he began. "And get too lost inside your head."

"Empathizing with the victims helps me do my job, Gideon," she said, but the senior agent was already nodding. Among the team, Cassie was sure that Gideon would be the one who understood her headspace the most. The man literally kept a list in one of his journals of all the people he'd managed to save over the years, and if that wasn't getting lost inside his own head, she didn't know why he was reprimanding her for it.

Cassie didn't keep a list the way he did, but she still remembered a majority of the victims over her last three years with the Bureau, whether they'd gotten home safe or not, and the BAU had worked a lot of cases since she'd joined the unit.

"It does," he agreed with her earlier statement, and when Cassie looked at him to see what exactly the problem was, Gideon nodded his head towards the two neighbors of the Samms family who were currently jogging as the other women passed by the car. "But that doesn't mean that the people who did not know our victims need to stop living their lives. You know that better than anyone,"

Cassie looked away from him again, frowning, and hating the fact that Gideon was right.

"So why are we here?" she asked after a few minutes of silence, nodding across the street to the stagnant Samms residence. "Her family hasn't moved back in since the murder, and there's been no evidence that the unsub's been revisiting."

"The family probably never will," Gideon murmured, staring across the street, before Cassie saw his brow furrow from the corner of her eye. "But, this is the last place he watched. That house...it's the eyes,"

"Excuse me?" Cassie asked, abruptly losing whatever train of thought the senior agent was riding, but Gideon just shook his head.

"It's the eyes, Cassidy," he told her, deep in thought and doing absolutely nothing to explain to the brunette what he meant. "There's something not right about the eyes,"

"If you mean the fact that he actually glues them open," she began, still confused. "Then I agree. It's sadistic, is what it is."

"It's also a classic move for an exploitative rapist to force a victim to watch..." Gideon trailed off, and Cassie glanced at him again.

"But..." she prompted, and he turned towards her.

"We're missing something about it," the senior agent said, but what that something might actually be, Cassie didn't think either of them knew.

☆☆☆

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the unsub's comfort zone from where Cassie and Gideon were situated, Morgan sat in his and Reid's own unmarked undercover vehicle with Reid, the older of the two agents already antsy about how long they'd been waiting with nothing so far to show for it.

And, at the risk of sounding disturbingly clingy, the thirty-two-year-old Derek Morgan very much wished that he were here with his partner instead of Reid. He and Cassie, overall, hadn't had much of a chance to work together recently, especially not after the former Chicago cop had stayed behind when the rest of the team had gone to Florida to investigate the copycat bombings. 

Morgan had nothing against Reid, except that the twenty-four-year-old tended to ramble and spout off random facts at times when the older agent just wanted quiet. While Cassie might've found it endearing, the other profiler generally leaned towards a mild annoyance.

He was also worried about his partner.

Cassie had been kind of off the entire time they'd been working this case, and while ambushing her while they were both on surveillance may not be the best plan he'd ever come up with, at least that way she'd have nowhere to run to, because getting Cassidy Quinn to talk about her feelings was like pulling teeth, case en pointe the way she'd almost immediately rebuked him when he'd asked her about it at Brenda Samms's house yesterday.

Now, though, Morgan was stuck with Reid while Cassie was partnered with Gideon across the neighborhood, and while Morgan was leaning back in his seat and trying not to be angry at the entire world, Spencer was sitting up straight and almost vibrating from sheer nerves.

If only to have something to do with his hands, Morgan reached forward to straighten out the rearview mirror before glancing at his watch and sitting back again, sighing heavily and tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. They'd been here for hours already, and nothing of note had happened, aside from a labradoodle on its morning walk almost yanking its owner into the path of a passing minivan.

"It's 10:30 already," he muttered, and Reid glanced at him.

"All he said was 'tomorrow'," the twenty-four-year-old reminded the older profiler, but Morgan was already shaking his head as he continued. "He didn't specify morning."

"Reid," Morgan told him firmly. "This guy's got to spend a lot of time in that house. A lot. He needs it to be morning."

It was the only logical conclusion that Derek and Cassie had come to after they'd first investigated the Samms residence with Gideon, and had realized that, in order to destroy all of the woman's possessions, the way he had after the murder had already been committed, there needed to be a considerable amount of time spent inside the home for everything to get done that the unsub had wanted to.

And, even though Brenda's body had been discovered by her children in the afternoon after their school day was done, the medical examiner had concluded that the woman had already been dead for hours by that point.

As the two of them continued to sit there, Reid suddenly twisted around in his seat, turning almost completely around to peer between both his and Morgan's seats before the twenty-four-year-old turned around again with his brown furrowed in thought.

"Are we sure this is a good spot?" he asked, and Derek glanced at him.

"Three of the victims lived within a block of this street," he explained calmly. "It's the main artery through the neighborhood."

"True..." Reid began, before shrugging. "But three victims in the same block could mean he's done with the area,"

"Or that he's really familiar with it," Morgan added, causing Reid to nod.

"And comfortable in it."

"But, then," Derek continued after a few seconds of silence between the two of them. "On the other hand, the other victims lived more than a mile in either direction. God!" he exclaimed suddenly, pounding one fist against the steering wheel and unintentionally startling Reid. "I hate not having a plan,"

Having teams do surveillance from different corners of the unsub's comfort zone was better than nothing, of course. Morgan was also, of course, grateful that Hotch and Gideon had even come up with a plan after their disastrous attempt to pinpoint the Tommy Killer's location through the phone call. Still, this plan was in no way as concrete as the usual ways of trying to find a suspect that the team usually executed, and that was the reason that Derek barely even called it a "plan" in the first place.

"We're looking for a needle in a haystack, here," he muttered after a couple more heartbeats of silence, and by this point, the thirty-two-year-old was speaking half to himself.

"Actually," Reid corrected the other profiler. "It's more like we're looking for a needle in a pile of needles."

Morgan stared at him.

"What?" he asked, and Reid glanced at him, nonplussed.

"A needle would stand out in a haystack," he said, completely unaware of the cultural context of the idiom, and despite their lack of progress in this case so far, Morgan found himself chuckling at the young genius's brief naïveté.

"Ok," he said simply. "And we're not looking for someone who stands out?"

"No," Reid agreed. "We're looking for a particular needle in a pile of needles."

Leaning back in his seat again, Morgan returned to gazing out the window, trying to catch anything out of the ordinary that might relate to their capture of the unsub. He was starting to think that maybe working with Dr. Spencer Reid wouldn't be too much of a hassle.

He did know for sure, though, that the kid would've been able to do his job without the pair of binoculars.

☆☆☆

It was another hour of her and Gideon sitting in silence, both of them lost in their own thoughts (ironic), before anything of note happened, and that something came in the form of Cassie noticing a police cruiser making its way down the street and turning the corner closest to where their undercover car was parked.

The officer inside slowed the cruiser down almost to a crawl once he was beside them, and as she peered around Gideon's shoulder at the man, she realized it wasn't someone she'd recognized from the team's earlier interactions with the local San Diego Police Department, and figured this officer must be from a precinct separate from the task force's headquarters.

"Can I help you folks with something?" the cop asked gruffly, and Cassie abruptly realized how strange she and Gideon must've looked to someone not familiar with their work, the way they had been sitting in a parked car for hours by now, across the street from the site of a brutal murder.

She'd probably have pulled them over, too.

Gideon, though, retrieved his credentials from the pocket of his pants and flipped open the small wallet-like object to show the cop. After a quick apology for the inconvenience, the officer drove away again, leaving Cassie and Gideon alone as the senior agent turned towards his younger colleague.

"After the fourth killing," he began, causing the brunette to glance at him. "PD doubled the patrols in these neighborhoods, then doubled them again after the fifth and sixth."

"But," Cassie said once Gideon had paused. "The unsub was still able to stalk his future victims without ever being noticed, even with so much added surveillance. He's practically a ghost."

Obviously, the team knew that this particular unsub was good at blending in; it was the whole reason he'd been able to get away with his killing thus far, but the fact that absolutely no one had seen him was making Cassie's head spin, because it was practically inconceivable.

She did know, though, that a majority of people (ie, the ones who didn't investigate these types of crimes for a living) didn't know just how many serial killers were active at any given point in time, but to not have seemingly anything out of the ordinary in a neighborhood where four women had been murdered was ridiculous.

As Gideon continued to talk to himself, thinking out loud about what they could have possibly missed in their earlier investigations of this case, Cassie turned her gaze back towards the street outside, and particularly, the telephone lines that ran the entire length of the street, and crossed perpendicular to the corner where the two agents currently sat. A small orange-and-black bird landed on the line as she watched and chirped for a moment.

"What kind of bird is that?" the brunette asked, causing Gideon to glance at her for a moment before he looked towards the telephone line as well.

One of the senior agent's favorite pastimes when he wasn't hunting serial killers was, in fact, being a prolific birder, and while Cassie had never known exactly how the man had chosen that particular hobby as one of his favorites (she was not going to say it was an "old man thing"), Gideon was so interested in the different types of birds around the world that, every year during the Super Bowl, he instead chose to go to the Smithsonian and study some of their exhibits, considering he was good friends with one of the curators.

But, Cassie thought that was also part of her mentor's lack of standard social battery.

"Black-headed grosbeak," the older man answered her earlier question, finally, giving a small smile as the songbird continued to balance itself on the phone line. As they watched, another bird flew over to sit beside the grosbeak, and Gideon smiled again. "Another grosbeak. Female,"

"What else do you know about birds?" Cassie asked, because at least hearing Gideon talk would give her something else to focus on aside from the team's lack of progress in the case.

"Well," Gideon began a few seconds later, his voice taking on the same tone that it did when he lectured at the Academy: a teacher who was actually eager to, well, teach. "Orson Welles said that 'all the birds that belong to our sex have prettier feathers, because males have got to try to justify their existence.' " He paused for another moment, and Cassie tilted her head, finding nothing untrue about the quote from the man behind the War of the Worlds radio show. "We spend all of our time screaming, 'look at me! look at me! mommy, mommy, look at me!'."

Suddenly, Cassie heard her cell phone ring, drawing her attention away from the senior agent, and as Gideon continued staring out the front of the car, eyebrows seriously furrowed, the brunette answered the call. 

It only took the twenty-seven-year-old a second to recognize that the caller was Garcia.

"I realized why I couldn't get a fix on Tommy's location," the analyst said almost before Cassie could say hello, and the profiler raised an eyebrow, actually pleased that at least someone was making headway in this case. For now, she was electing to ignore the way Garcia referred to the unsub by his media-given name. "He routed the call through, and I shit you not, twenty-five different substations. It would've taken me probably an hour to get an accurate location like that,"

"You're serious, Penny? Twenty-five?" Cassie asked once her friend had actually paused to take a breath after her ranting, even though she knew she probably would've been as annoyed as Garcia was if their roles were reversed.

"Dead serious," the analyst confirmed, only for Cassie to hear her gasp a heartbeat later. "That was an unintentional pun, I swear."

"Thanks, Garcia," Agent Quinn told her before hanging up and turning towards the BAU's senior agent to relay what she had just been told.

She knew Gideon was listening because it was hardly ever, even before his medical leave at the beginning of the year, that the older profiler didn't hear what someone was saying to him, even if it looked as if he wasn't paying attention. But, right now, he wasn't looking at her, and she heard him mutter "twenty-five substations" under his breath for a moment before, very abruptly, Gideon was opening the car door and getting out.

Cassie was startled enough that she didn't move for a moment, but Gideon, who was too wrapped up in whatever he was thinking, didn't wait for the younger profiler to join him, and as he started to speed-walk across the street towards the Samms residence, it was up to Agent Quinn to get out of the car on her own and jog after him.

"He wanted them to see him," Gideon said firmly once Cassie had neared him again, the brunette dramatically slowing her jog down to a speedy walk as the two of them neared the front door of the house, and even though his back was to her, Cassie furrowed her brows anyway.

"We knew that already, though," she said, but this time Gideon stayed silent, instead only hopping up the two steps that made up the tiny front porch of the Samms house and yanking down the yellow caution tape that had been reapplied across the door before he inserted the key that he had never given back to Detective Martin and unlocking the door, walking into the abandoned house before Cassie could say anything else.

There wasn't really anything the twenty-seven-year-old could do to stop him, because frankly, she didn't really know what Gideon was up to, so as the door started to close between the two of them, Cassie stuck her foot in between the two large pieces of wood and slipped through the door behind the senior agent, shutting and locking the door behind her once she was fully inside.

Gideon didn't even slow down, and Cassie had to jog (again) in order to catch up, and when she did, he was already upstairs and walking into the bedroom where Brenda Samms's body had been found by her children, the two profilers once again being met with the stripped bed that still gave Agent Quinn the worst kind of chills.

"He's meticulous," Gideon explained as he walked further inside the room, nearing the bed, and Cassie started to wonder even further what he was doing. "Nothing is an accident. He vacuumed. The scene is about domination, his creation. He positioned everything exactly the way he wanted it..."

The senior agent trailed off for a moment, and while Cassie waited for him to continue, Gideon actually laid down on the mattress with his body posed stomach-down and face angled to the side, in exactly the same position that Brenda Samms's body had been when she'd been found, his head turned away from Cassie and towards the window.

Cassie was actually glad that Gideon wasn't looking at her right then, because she wasn't entirely sure how she'd be able to explain her expression other than, What the fuck?

"What's your point?" she asked, once she had regained enough control over herself to avoid a complete freak-out, and Gideon was only quiet for a moment before he answered her.

"If the eyes were so they could watch the attack," he began. "Why are they all facing away from it?" Cassie blinked, abruptly realizing that Gideon was right, but before she could say anything, he continued. "In that position, they couldn't see him during...he wanted them to see him afterward,"

Cassie leaned down a bit so she was closer to Gideon's eyeline while he was lying on the bed, and once she was able to look out the same window that the senior agent was staring out of, the younger agent's jaw dropped as she realized what it was that the unsub had wanted his victims to "see".

Outside the house, almost directly in the center of the window, was an electrical pole, and connected to the top of the pole was the large metal canister that made up the same type of transformer that a phone repair technician would work at while trying to fix the lines.

In a way, Cassie knew it made sense. While the team had been giving the profile of their unsub to the local cops and detectives, they had mentioned that, since their killer operated during the day and obviously without being noticed by anyone in the neighborhoods his victims lived in, that he might use a vehicle associated with his job to get around, and who ever noticed the technicians working sixty feet above their heads?

Having discovered that particular detail that made them one step closer to finally bring to light the Tommy Killer's real identity, Cassie and Gideon hurried to return to their car and call the rest of the team, but as they made their way out of the Samms' house, the first call Agent Quinn made was to Garcia, because she was the only person who would be able to get employment records on such a short notice.

"Office of Unfettered Omniscience," More often than not, Penelope's habit of answering every one of her phone calls with a humorous quip never failed to put a smile on Cassie's face, regardless of her mood, but right now, they were on a time crunch, so she kept her face stern, just this once, even if Garcia wasn't actually able to see her. "Penelope Garcia is in. Speak, oh fortunate one."

"It's Cassie," the twenty-seven-year-old said once the analyst had paused. "I need you to get into the phone repair records for San Diego and see which repairman was fixing phone lines closest to where each of the previous Tommy Killer murders took place. Look even into repairs that took place four or five days prior to the crimes. Any names that pop up more than once could be our unsub."

"Piece of cake," Garcia said, getting serious with her task ahead, but never failing to flaunt her own skills at a keyboard. "Stay on the line, Sunshine,"

It only took a moment or two for Penelope to hack her way into the San Diego employment records for all the phone technicians in the city, and as soon as she had the unsub's real name, Gideon took his cell phone out and called Hotch, who was at another end of the unsub's comfort zone with Elle, alerting both the unit chief and the BAU's newest member to what they had finally discovered about their killer.

"He's a phone technician, Hotch," the senior agent said once the other profiler had answered. "The police are looking for someone walking around the neighborhood in broad daylight. Who notices a phone guy up on a pole?" Gideon paused for a couple of seconds, and Cassie assumed either Hotch or Elle were talking on the other end of the line before Gideon continued again. "He knows when he'll have plenty of time. He can even tap into a phone line to make sure someone's home. And how about routing a call through twenty-five substations? Backyard? Hey, he's just looking for a pole. Got tape? Of course, he does. Wire? He's a repairman."

When he said it all out loud like that, everything seemed obvious, and Cassie was metaphorically kicking herself that it had taken them all this long to figure it out. She was just hoping they weren't too late to stop the unsub (though he was no longer unknown) before he killed his victim.

"It is right, Hotch," Gideon was saying as he and Cassie finally reached the car, just before the senior agent spoke again. "And we have his name,"

☆☆☆

Morgan and Reid, it turned out, were the two agents closest to the company where the Tommy Killer worked. Even though he knew that he'd probably broken about half a dozen traffic laws speeding to the company's headquarters, Derek found he didn't really care, and he was already yanking open the glass door to the building before Spencer was even out of the car.

He also definitely started the poor receptionist who was behind the front desk of the San Diego Bell company, if the look on the other man's face was anything to go by, but Morgan was already pulling out his credentials.

"FBI," Derek said firmly. "I need to know where one of your technicians is."

They were running out of time before the unsub struck again, and knowing where his most recent jobs might have been would give the team a better idea of what area he might hunt in next, and hopefully, they'd be able to get there before anyone else ended up dead.

The company's receptionist, though, was still apparently gobsmacked at having federal agents in his workplace, because he just stared at Morgan and Reid with a dumbfounded look on his face.

"FBI?" the worker echoed, and as Morgan's patience got closer and closer to running out, Reid tried to steer the conversation back in the direction the profilers needed it to go.

"Where are your technicians?" the young genius asked, and Morgan was able to see the receptionist physically shake himself to coherency.

"T-They're all out in the field," the man stuttered, not actually helping the profilers with anything, just before Derek slammed his hand down on the desk, startling both the receptionist and Reid.

"Listen!" the former cop exclaimed, in time to see the receptionist snap his gaze to his. "I need Franklin Graney right now!"

☆☆☆

As soon as the terrified receptionist gave up Graney's location to Morgan and Reid, Derek called his partner to tell her and Gideon the specifics, and once he had hung up, Cassie turned towards the senior agent beside her as Gideon sped down the street.

"He's working in the area of Orange and Chandler," the twenty-seven-year-old explained succinctly, and Gideon whipped a U-turn so fast Cassie felt her seatbelt dig a bit into the base of her neck, just before the older profiler spoke up.

"Get a hold of Hotch," he said quickly. "Tell him to bring the team and any SD cops he can round up."

Cassie nodded once before she did as he'd asked her to, giving the BAU's unit chief probably the shortest phone call in the history of Agent Quinn's time with the unit, while also giving him all the pertinent information, before hanging up again and sitting back in her seat, taking a deep breath.

The two of them were barely five minutes away from Orange and Chandler, and were, in fact, the surveillance team closest to the area, but Cassie also knew that five minutes might be too long, especially if Graney was still as pissed about their arrest of Marcia Gordon's rapist as the Tommy Killer instead.

Gideon took a sharp turn onto the street where Orange and Chandler crossed, and Cassie couldn't help but suck in another sharp breath as she saw the distinctive San Diego Bell work truck parked on the side of the street. The senior agent parked diagonally in front of the vehicle, blocking him in on one side in case Graney came running back out, and as the two of them got out of the car to look at the stunningly empty-of-people street, the federal SUV that was carrying Hotch and Elle came screaming with the lights flashing from the other direction.

"This is his truck," Gideon said quietly as the four agents gathered in the middle of the road, a heartbeat before the senior agent spoke again. "Fan out. Go through the yards and look at the telephone poles. He's around here."

The four of them spread out into four different directions, and as Cassie made her way as quickly as possible down a narrow side alley while also making sure to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary that might alert her to where Franklin Graney might be, the brunette was hoping with all of her hope that they wouldn't be too late.

But, as she peered through the various fences and hedges and over the multiple walls that encircled the homes in this particular neighborhood, the twenty-seven-year-old hated to admit that nothing seemed to be out of place. There were no doors or gates left open; all the fences she tried to pull open were securely locked, and none appeared to have been tampered with, the way they would have if an intruder were trying to enter one of his houses.

It didn't exactly bode well for her finding Franklin Graney before he claimed another victim, but just as she reached the end of another side street, Cassie's cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and the brunette had it out and in the palm of her hand in less than a heartbeat, it seemed like.

The caller was Gideon, and with the same words he was likely to give to Hotch and Elle as well, the senior agent told Cassie that the house at 875 Orange was likely to be where Franklin Graney had been found with the back door having been his entry point, and with a quick glance at the closest street sign, Cassie realized that she was already on that particular street, though at the opposite end than Gideon.

The brunette didn't think she had ever sprinted so fast in her life, not even when she and Morgan had been racing to rescue Gideon from the office fire at Bradshaw College, and once she finally reached the house Gideon had indicated, the screaming toddler in the high chair in the home's kitchen, with the work belt on the counter and the fallen sippy cup was almost a dead (oof, bad pun) giveaway that this was Graney's next target.

Cassie drew her gun the moment she was in the kitchen and past the baby, and as she made her way further into the house, the twenty-seven-year-old could hear voices coming from the second floor, one of which Agent Quinn instantly recognized as Gideon's.

Hotch and Elle appeared through the same open back door that Cassie had entered through a minute or two before, and together, the three agents made their way upstairs as silently as they were able to, reaching the second level as Gideon continued to try to talk Graney down before he killed his final victim.

"Put the gun down," the senior agent was saying as the three other profilers neared the cracked-open door that Cassie was assuming led into this house's master bedroom, the same room that Graney had murdered the rest of his victims in their respective homes, as well. "Come on, walk out of here with me," Gideon continued. "I'll make sure your face is splashed across every newspaper and TV in the country. The Tommy Killer: Franklin Graney, everyone will see you then."

Cassie knew it was her job to get into the heads of the people the BAU hunted, to figure out why these criminals committed the crimes that they did, and why each of them had their own distinct dichotomy concerning their M.O. and signature compared to other serial killers of their time, but that didn't mean that the twenty-seven-year-old understood it.

She didn't think she'd ever fully understand what it would make someone threaten to kill a mother in the same house as her baby, or have a man rape and strangle any young woman he came across while leaving a yellow ribbon tied around their neck, just because they looked like his ex-wife.

It was ridiculous, and Cassie might know the psychology behind it, but she'd never quite understand.

For instance, consider Graney himself. He'd felt so powerless and invisible that, for some stupid and despicable reason, his solution to get people to see him was brutal rape and murder. She would never feel sorry for him; there were other ways to get someone to notice you without resorting to assault and killing.

As it were, his newest victim, while still alive (thankfully), wasn't safe quite yet, and Gideon continued trying to talk Graney down from ending the woman's life.

"Bundy, Dahmer, Graney," the senior agent's voice was still a bit muffled through the wall and the part of the door that was continuing to close off the bedroom from the rest of the house, but Cassie was still able to hear her mentor clearly enough. "The whole world will know who you are. It's up to you, Franklin. You can be famous or you can be invisible."

"You'll tell everyone?" Graney's voice almost startled Cassie, since she had, in fact, not heard him speak since she entered the house, and the brunette crept forward a few more steps as silently as she could, Hotch and Elle on her heels.

"I have a media specialist outside right now." Gideon was lying through his teeth, considering JJ was still at the task force's headquarters, but Graney didn't need to know that. "It is your choice."

"Promise?" It seemed as if, finally, the thought of having everyone know his name and what he had done was swaying Graney in his resolve to kill this latest victim. Through the clouded glass that acted as a translucent window to the bedroom, Cassie saw the indistinguishable blob that was Gideon shift in a nod.

"Yes, sir," the senior agent continued to lie. "I promise." It was a couple more seconds before anything happened, before suddenly, Cassie heard movement from within the bedroom, an instant before Gideon spoke again. "Back away from the gun,"

Realizing that Graney must've surrendered, Cassie, Elle, and Hotch moved in, with the BAU's unit chief being the one to arrest Graney, holstering his weapon and retrieving his handcuffs from their clip at the back of his belt, leading the man out of the room and the house as the rest of them made sure the woman he'd been threatening to kill was as alright as she could be, given the circumstances.

Graney had only gotten as far as tying up the woman with duct tape (thank God) before Gideon had caught up to him, and as Cassie walked around the other side of the bed with Elle in order to untie the woman's ankles, Gideon removed the tape from over her mouth, allowing her sobs to escape.

The first thing, or rather person, that she asked for was her baby, and Cassie and Elle both reassured her that the little boy was completely fine, and once that had placated the woman at least a little bit, her worry for her child turned into devastating thanks to the agents for saving her life.

In the end, they had caught the Tommy Killer, and his seventh potential victim had escaped with her life. 

That, in Cassie's book, made this a successful case, and now she could go home.

☆☆☆

Rose Kennedy once said, "Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?"

On the jet on the team's flight home, Cassie was trying to focus on her reading of The Haunted Bridge while the rest of the BAU relaxed in various ways around the plane, but unfortunately, the brunette was still riding the adrenaline high that had come from successfully arresting an unsub that she couldn't focus on much of anything at the moment, much less her book.

Elle was asleep on the other end of the couch from Cassie, while Gideon and Reid were about half a dozen moves deep in their most recent chess match at the table across from the twenty-seven-year-old. Morgan was also asleep in his seat at the other end of the plane, while JJ and Hotch were both still working, with the unit chief getting a head start on the reports for this particular case, while the team's liaison was flipping through files and trying to figure out what their next case would be.

The seat across the aisle from Agent Jareau was empty, and Cassie found she did not envy the blonde's job.

As Reid stared at the chessboard in front of him, tapping his fingers together as he tried to figure out what move he could make that wouldn't allow Gideon to win the game by metaphorically obliterating him, the senior agent cleared his throat, catching the attention of both Reid and Cassie as Gideon turned slightly to where his bag was sitting on the seat beside him, nearest the window, and pulled a small rectangular box out of it.

"I almost forgot," the senior agent said as he retrieved the box and held it across the table towards Reid. "I have something for you. Forgot to give it to you at the party."

Cassie's eyebrows flew up her forehead as Reid warily took the box, with its dark blue wrapping paper and red ribbon. The box wasn't much better than the size of the tiny notebook Gideon sometimes used to take notes while he was working cases, but he also hadn't really ever been someone who did birthday presents.

"But, you don't give birthday presents," Reid said quietly, unknowingly reading Cassie's mind, and with her book forgotten, Agent Quinn kept her attention focused solely on the two men across the aisle from her. Gideon shrugged in response to Spencer's comment, and with a glance to Cassie, who just gave a shrug of her own, Reid swiftly untied the ribbon holding the box closed before he opened it.

When she saw what Reid's birthday present was on the inside of the box, Cassie could barely withhold a giggle, because she knew what Gideon was planning, and frankly, she thought it was hilarious.

Spencer, on the other hand, looked as if he had just touched something hazardous. Cassie didn't think the twenty-four-year-old had ever been to a professional football game in his entire life.

"Wow," the genius said after a couple of seconds of staring at his present and sounding decidedly unimpressed. "The Redskins?"

"It's a VIP box," Gideon clarified, but Reid still looked lost, though he thanked the senior agent anyway, because he was nothing if not polite.

"They're for a football game, Reid," Cassie explained to Spencer after a couple of seconds, and in the split second of his turning to glance at her, the brunette noticed that Spencer looked absurdly grateful, at the very least, for the older woman to let him know what exactly he was holding.

"You're going to love it," Gideon added, and while Cassie might not go that far—sports, professional or otherwise, didn't exactly seem as if they were Reid's forte—the gift was thoughtful nonetheless, especially considering who else on the team was a Redskins fan.

"We are," Reid said, glancing at Gideon again. "You're coming with me, right?"

"No," the senior agent shook his head, and for about two seconds, Cassie saw Reid have the most panicked expression on his face at the mere thought of attending an NFL game all by himself, before Gideon continued. "Someone else on the plane is a huge Skins fan,"

The first person the young genius looked towards was Cassie, but the brunette just shook her head. Football wasn't her favorite sport in the entire world, but she had been indoctrinated as a fan of the Chicago Bears just from her association with Morgan.

"Who?" Reid asked, once he realized Cassie wouldn't be attending the game either, just as Gideon nodded his head towards the opposite end of the plane from where the three of them were sitting, and where Morgan, Hotch, and JJ currently were.

"The only person in the world who calls you Spence," the senior agent hinted, and Cassie was able to see the moment the dots connected in Reid's head.

"JJ?" he asked, sounding disbelieving, and Cassie couldn't help but agree with him.

She'd known, of course, prior to right now, the young media liaison's appreciation for the sport, but her professional demeanor while at the office was deceptive, and hid the craziness that came from being a fan of American football well.

"She's a huge Redskins fan," Gideon told Spencer, who turned around in his seat for a moment to gaze down the plane towards JJ, who was blissfully oblivious to the other profilers' conversation.

"What should I say?" Reid asked, suddenly nervous, and as Cassie leaned back against the couch again, the brunette shrugged.

"Just be yourself," she told Reid gently. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Reid looked as if he could think of several things that could be classified as the so-called "worst that could happen", and maybe Cassie's words had been a bit cliché, but she honestly thought that, because of how close the two youngest members of the team already were, Spencer had a good chance of succeeding at actually asking JJ out.

The twenty-four-year-old seemed to mull over the brunette's words for a couple of seconds, probably weighing the pros and cons inside his head, before finally, after sticking the pair of tickets in the breast pocket of his shirt, Reid stood up.

He went to walk over to JJ, but before he did, Reid turned back to the chessboard he and Gideon had been playing before the senior agent had given him his birthday present and moved his knight, effectively trapping Gideon's king and ending the game for the first time ever since Spencer had joined the unit.

"Checkmate," he said, and as Cassie's mouth dropped open, she noticed that Gideon looked about as shocked as she felt, though there was also a glimmering of pride on the senior agent's face at the fact that he had finally been bested in a game.

Once Reid had left the two of them, Cassie glanced at Gideon again, bracing one hand against her cheek as she turned to the senior agent.

"You're playing matchmaker," she stated, and as Gideon glanced at her, the older profiler's expression was the paragon of innocence.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he told her, an obvious lie, but the brunette just laughed, a moment before Gideon nodded toward the chessboard that Reid had abandoned in his quest for romance. "You want to play?"

"And have you mentally eviscerate me?" Cassie retorted, laughing again. "I don't think so, Gideon,"

The senior agent shrugged, but Cassie could see the way a smile was twitching on his lips as he rearranged the chess pieces to their starting positions.

"I'll take it easy on you," he said a couple of seconds later, and while Cassie was sure he was still lying, making her brain work in a game of chess against Gideon was better than trying to read a book that she wasn't even able to focus on.

So, with Reid now in the empty seat across from Morgan as he spoke in a hushed voice to an enraptured JJ, Cassie took the seat that the young genius had vacated and looked down at the various white chess pieces in front of her.

Gideon went first, moving one of his pawns one space out from his starting position, before the senior agent nodded towards Cassie's side of the board.

"Make your move, Agent Quinn," he said, steepling his fingers together in such a way that he looked as if he were the villain from an action movie. "Let's see what you got."

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.