Baby Snatcher and the Princess

a/n: this is a continuation of The Bonding, but can be read as a stand alone.

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the Everywhere and into here.
~George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind

They stood in the dirty hovel and looked down at the infant lying in the filth encrusted cot. The room had bare wooden walls and a hart earthen floor. Along one wall was a long bench covered in bottles of various chemicals and test tube racks. A large microscope sat amongst the chaos of laboratory equipment. In one corner was a pile of boxes of baby diapers and formula milk. Another table had a box of baby bottles. A small fireplace was on the wall opposite the lab table and next to the baby's cot was a much used dirty bed for one. The blankets were kicked down onto the floor and sat in a dirty heap in the dirt. The windows were boarded over and the room was much too hot and stuffy on this hot summer day.

'So it's her?' A child of about ten with long ratty blond hair asked.

The man glanced at her and indicated the microscope. 'Look for yourself.' He turned from the cot and went towards the only door in the room.

'I did. It looks like blobs, and why did the water turn blue this time. It didn't change with the others.'

He didn't answer, but pulled open the door and walked out into the sunshine outside.

-o-o-o-

They sat around the table looking at the files JJ had placed in front of them.

'So all of the babies were taken then left outside a local hospital? Do we know how long it was between the abduction and the time they were returned?' Hotch wiped at his brow with the back of his hand.

'It varies. We don't have positive times on when the children were taken. In two cases they weren't missed until the morning. In one it was only about half an hour. In that case the child was left at the hospital two hours later.' JJ told them as she fiddled with the folder on the table in front of her.

'And they all have plasters on their feet and a lock of hair removed. Anything else? Any signs of abuse?' Morgan was looking down the list of names he had in front of him.

JJ shook her head. 'No signs of abuse. In fact they had all had diapers changed and were fed.'

Reid spoke now. 'Each child was taken in the middle of the night and no signs of forced entry. Alarms were set in some cases but the UnSub managed to bypass them and a couple where it seems the UnSub gained entry through an open window. He or she knew what he was looking for. Nothing else taken and nothing to suggest any other rooms were entered.'

'No finger prints. It looks like he wore gloves. He's taking a blood sample and hair and then returning the child to somewhere where she will be found quickly. He's looking for a particular baby.'

JJ's phone let her know there was a call. She talked quickly to the person on the other end and then closed her phone again.

'Another one. Taken last night whilst the family celebrated. She's not turned up yet.'

'So maybe he found what he was looking for.' Hotch stood. 'This is local. Reid get working on a geographical profile. Morgan and Prentiss I want you to go out to this new scene and talk to the parents. Rossi, I'd like to talk to the local PD. Can you go to the hospital the last infant was left at and talk to them about the foot injury.'

Garcia stood. 'I'm going to see if there are any other cases like this out of state.' And she was gone from the room. The sudden flurry of movement got them all standing and ready to get working on this new case. Reid was the only one who stayed where he was staring down at the list of names he also had in front of him. As Hotch left the room his eyes lifted from the folder and watched his boss leave. He then looked back at the list and picked up a pen.

'JJ.' She was just about to leave. 'What is the name of child taken last night?' He looked up at her but wasn't really looking, his mind was elsewhere.

'Rosemary Franks.' She answered him, and he looked back down at his list and added another name.

-o-o-o-

I don't know why that name made my blood run cold, but it did. Something about all the names. Six of them now. Each with the same initials and that in its self caused alarm bells to ring, but this last name, this was something different and it was making my hands shake. I wanted to call after Hotch and tell him to be careful. I wanted to warn JJ of something, but I didn't know what it was. I needed to tell Emily to beware who she talks to, but none of this made any sense at all. There was just some horrible foreboding.

I spent the rest of my time staring at a map and sticking pins in various places. The crime scene and then the hospital the child was found at. Right now it just looked like a random mess of coloured pins all over the map and when Garcia came in with four new names from just over the state line I just felt like throwing the whole thing down and walking out. There seemed to be no correlation between where the child was taken to where she was left. Some were close to home, but others were a long distance. I couldn't see what I should be seeing. There was no central point; just a haphazard mess on the map. I wrote down all the names of the children and the hospitals and tried to see if there was a connection in the names, but still I couldn't see anything. It was all so random. Maybe the parents were connected to the various hospitals? I looked at the time lapses between when the child went missing and the time she was found, but there were too many grey areas. Still it made no sense. Time to top up on coffee and stand away from the map and think. Just think of the names and stop looking at the map.

-o-o-o-

The crime scene girls and boys had been all over the place. The guests were sitting in stunned silence in the room they had been partying in. Just the parents sitting sobbing quietly in the corner. I left Emily to talk to the parents and I went and had a look around. A CSI showed me the place of entry into the building and so I started there. Scuff marks on the window sill clearly showed that someone had stood, crouched there to gain entry. They'd daubed the area with print dust but had told me that they couldn't find anything but a few smears. It looked like the UnSub was wearing gloves. I stood at the window and looked across the large garden. Right now with the sun shining there was no shadow, but at night this would have been an easy area to cross, if you knew what you were doing, and after this many snatches and not getting seen I knew he knew exactly what he was doing. I walked slowly from the window and across the grass. If I had been the UnSub I would have kept close to the scattering of rose bushes and other spiky plants along the way. Even at night he wouldn't have been bold enough just to walk in a direct line. Following this suspected route took me to a small row of trees and then the fence bordering the gardens. The broken panel was easy to spot and so I slipped through to the other side and out onto a quiet side street. Had a car been parked up here for any amount of time there was a risk it would have been seen. Even though this area was so deserted it would have been a risk the UnSub wouldn't have been willing to take. Knowing that one direction lead to the main high way and the other onto an area with more closely placed houses had I been a kidnapper I would have gone towards the highway, but not in a car parked right here.

'Hi.' A voice snapped me away from my thinking and I looked over to see a local cop standing watching me.

'You know this area?' I asked while rubbing the back of my neck which was getting sweating in this heat.

'Pretty well, what do you need to know?' The young blond cop walked towards me. I now had the garden fence behind me and scrubland in front.

'If I wanted to park a vehicle up close to here and not be seen, where would I go?' I watched the cop look up and down the road and then set his sights further down towards the high way.

'There's a small pull up area just down there. At night I doubt a car would be seen. There's no lighting.'

So I asked the cop to show me where and we walked down the road for a short distance. Still the garden fence to my right and the scrubland had turned more into light woods now. He stopped and indicated a cleared bit of land. Not very big, but still big enough for something to have parked there. I looked at the ground for a while.

'Stay here. Don't go on that bit of land. I need to get the CSU over here.' He nodded and settled back to lean on a tree and I jogged back the way we had come from and back through the fence. This time I didn't go back to the window, I went around the front to find some guys to go check out that small area for signs that something had been parked there.

-o-o-o-

Talking to distressed parents in situations like this is about the worst thing I can think of. I can't promise we will find their daughter, because that would be a lie. I can only tell them that we are looking for her and that all the other children taken have been returned safe and well. Very small comfort as it is now afternoon and the baby hasn't shown up anywhere that we know of. I asked about the party. What they had been celebrating and it was a birthday. Nothing out of the ordinary. There had been a lot of drink flowing and because the place is fairly secluded there had been a lot of music. I asked if they had a baby monitor and of course they did…and of course no one heard anything. They were too busy having fun. I asked if there was anyone who held a grudge. Did they have enemies? Had they seen anyone watching? Had they had workmen in the house? The answer was "no" to everything. The only thing they could tell me which might have a significance was that they had adopted the baby from a private agency when she was a couple of weeks old and that they didn't know the identity of the birth parents. The father got up and got a letter from a drawer. It had the agency address on the top and contact numbers. I asked if I could keep the letter which was just a general introduction to the agency letter and I bagged it as possible evidence.

I asked about the security and the open window and they told me that the baby's window was always kept secure and the one in the spare room had been opened to let in some summer air as a guest was going to be staying there that night. There really was nothing else I could ask or tell them. I rested a hand on the mothers arm and told her that we will do our best to bring her daughter home and to call me if she or her husband remembered anything else and gave them my contact card. Then I went to see what Morgan was doing and had he found anything.

-o-o-o-

Rossi talked to the doctors involved at the last hospital. All they could tell him was that there was a small pinprick in the child's heel and it had been covered with an antiseptic covering. Blood tests from the baby girl had all come back clear. She'd not been drugged as far as they could tell. Her diaper had been changed and she was clean. The only thing he could tell Rossi which he didn't already know was about the strange smell. She smelt heavily of incense or something similar. The lock of hair which had been taken wasn't close to the scalp. She was found in the blankets she had been taken in and had been found on the bench directly outside the hospital door. The local Police Department had the security tapes.

-o-o-o-

Hotch's visit to talk to the police was even less eventful. They could tell him nothing he didn't already know.

He walked outside into the now afternoon sun and called Garcia, she had nothing to add either. This seemed to be a case full of questions and dead ends. He needed to get back to the BAU and coordinate from there. The separate abductions had taken place too far apart in distance for them to be at all the places at the same time. The fact that this last infant hadn't shown up yet was the main cause for concern though. A call from Emily though put a slightly new light on the matter.

He cut the connection with Emily and called Garcia. 'I need you to find out if any of the other abducted infants had been adopted, and if so which agency they used.' He then gave her the number and address Prentiss had just given him and asked her to find out as much as she could about the Adoption Agency the last family had used and if there was a connection between it and the other children.

Again he cut the call and stood for a while thinking about Jack and how he would be feeling now if something happened to him. Quickly he walked back to his SUV and made his way back to the office.

-o-o-o-

I stood and watched the crime scene guys looking at the ground.

'It's not going to be easy to find anything here. The ground is too dry.' A short dumpy woman said to the air.

'Well that's why you are here. If it was going to be easy I'd do it myself. I just need to know if there was a vehicle parked up here last night or any night.' She gave me a withering look and started a careful search starting at the place where parking up area met road.

'Could be.' She muttered.

I walked quickly over to her and looked at what she was looking at. 'Could be what?'

And she looked up and frowned and shook her head. 'I'm not sure, but this looks like motor cycle tracks. Very faint and I'm not going to be able to lift it for you, but I'd say that's what was here.' She stood up and stepped back and said something to a colleague who then crouched down and joined her looking at the earth. I'm not going to pretend I could tell what they were looking at. Just some marks in the dry ground, but they were nodding and pointing and nodding again. Finally they stood again.

'Motorcycle and side car.' She said to me. Sorry really not possible to give you and make or colour.

I stood and looked at the woman for a while and then back at the ground. 'Show me.' I told her.

She pursed her lips and sighed and then crouched down again. 'Here then. You won't see it from way up there.'

Not sure why she had such an attitude with me but I let it go for now. Some things were more important than bad social skills. I moved closer and crouched down. She showed me grooves in the earth and matching ones nearby.

'I don't know how familiar you are with this sort of thing Agent Morgan, but I am almost certain that they are made by bike and side car. The slight difference in weight and the alignment of this.' She points to something which could have been anything. 'And this.' Points to something else. 'Couldn't have been made by a small car.' She looked at me and sighed. 'I'll get photos for you and mark it all out properly so you can see what I'm talking about.' She stood and someone else moved in and started snapping away. 'We'll get them sorted and sent over to you ASAP.'

-o-o-o-

Evening at last. Incidences with babies are going to be harder for me now. I know that, but I have to leave home at home and keep work in my head. Will is away for a few days and this is probably the first time that I've been nervous about being here with Henry on my own. I considered asking someone to stay over with me, but then wondered what I was so worried about. There was something though. I put it down to my protective mothering instincts and made sure all the alarms were set and all the windows and doors were closed and locked. I turned on the baby monitor and checked it was working down in the lounge and now that he was sleeping soundly I permitted myself to sit back and listen to some relaxing music for a while and then picked up my romance novel I was reading and settled back with a glass of wine. It was good in a way that we were going to try to keep the case local. I really wouldn't have been happy leaving Henry in the care of someone else right now.

It's a good story. All about love and loss. Something I could really get my head into. The time must have gone really quickly and maybe the wine had gone to my head slightly even though I'd only had two glasses, but the sudden sound on the monitor had me sitting bolt upright from my laid back lounging position immediately. Maybe I was hearing things. Maybe I had drifted off the sleep and dreamed it, but I was still on my feet now and looking at the closed door. I don't know what I'm waiting for. Then there it is again. Almost like someone whispering. In my baby's room! I grab my phone and speed dial and pull the door open. A quick glance shows me that the alarm is still on.

'Hotch.' I whisper. 'I think there is an intruder in the house.' And I snap the phone shut as I hear a door open upstairs.

I can't think! I don't know what to do. Someone has been in the baby's room. Maybe it's just Will. Did he come home and not tell me? And I'm running. I'm running to the stairs and I'm taking them two at a time. Not my baby. Please god not my baby. I am nearly at the top and onto the landing when I hear a voice in the darkness.

'Out of my way bitch.' A kick in my face and I am falling backwards silently as my head hits the wall at the bottom and I lie there trying to get back up again. 'A child needs a mother to care for it.' I hear the voice hissing in my ear and I feel a hand on my shoulder and one on my head...

-o-o-o-

I know Hotch is back in his office. I saw him walk across the bull pen. I slam the marker pen down on the desk and make my way over to his door. I have to warn him of something. I don't bother knocking, I just walk in and close the door behind me and stand against it. He's just sitting there looking at me.

'I, I..'

'Do you have anything?' He asks me. And I don't. I have nothing.

'Hotch.' Is all I can think of to say.

'You've been working on it all day Reid. You must have something.' He is standing up now and removing his jacket and I stand shaking my head slowly.

'There is nothing. I was wondering if there is a connection between the parents and the hospitals but there doesn't seem to be and...' He is just standing there looking at me. 'And there is something wrong.' I take a step away from the door. 'I don't know what it is but…' And I stop talking.

I really don't want to talk about the case. I have nothing to tell him. I have nothing to add to anything except that it's baffled me. I want to tell him to be careful. I want to tell him to contact Emily. He just stands looking at me loosening his tie and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and my hands are going to my tie also and he is still just standing there looking at me.

'It's still too hot.' Hotch tells me and pulls off his tie and places it on his desk. 'What can I do for you Reid?'

Oh god. I have to get out of here. Now! I turn and move quickly back to the door. 'Just, just be careful.' I mutter as Hotch's phone rings.

'JJ?...JJ!?'

And he moves quickly towards me. 'With me Reid.' And he grabs my arm and squeezes gently as he rushes past me. For a few seconds I am just standing there wondering what that gesture meant and then I am running after him.

a/n: was that really crap and confusing? Let me know plz!!! Pb xox