Summary: The team investigates a string of murders recreating a series of popular crime fiction novels. They fly to Seattle expecting to name the reclusive author as their prime suspect. What they find instead is a woman without a past who may or may not be their unsub.

Rating - T

Author - amomentintime3

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Albert Einstein

The Foundling

Reid juggles a coffee and his messenger bag as he scurries through the main isle of the BAU jet. He bumps into Emily as he passes, messenger bag falling to his elbow and coffee spilling through the small opening and onto his hands. He drops it down instinctively, waving his hands to cool the amber liquid. His bag follows next, thrown beside where he's about to sit. When he looks up again he notices how the others always appear so polished and ready and he's stuck fumbling through his pack, searching for a wrinkled napkin. JJ offers one from the side, encouraging smile out of place with the rest.

There's a sombre attitude in the jet; not that there was often anything but, at least on departing for a new case. But this was different. They were all tired; exhausted really. They'd just arrived back yesterday morning, hadn't even graced the leather chairs of the conference room this morning when the call had come. And if the seven am wake up call wasn't enough, the fact that they'd bypassed the conference room to collect details on the jet, or the fact that most had yet to complete their paperwork from the last case. If those weren't clues enough to the severity of their new direction, than the knitting together of Hotch's eyebrows would have been enough. You could always tell the severity of a case by the look on Hotch's face, and their leader's eyebrows were bunched so close together that Reid was convinced they might just cross.

The leader is rubbing his thumb over their latest case, a stack of folders that lay beside his leather briefcase. He fires the first across the main table as an introduction. "We're headed to Seattle," Hotch offers as Morgan flips the first folder. "Mother, father and daughter were all found in their beds, their throats had been slashed. The teen son..." Hotch continues and Morgan flips the photos on cue, "was found in the living room." Morgan tosses the boys photo on top of the rest. He had sandy brown hair and a well defined jaw bone. He was the kind of boy that could have been handsome in life. No one is handsome on a slab. "His wrist's were slashed."

"Murder-suicide?" Rossi asks.

Hotch points out two lines on the boy's wrist in contradiction. "There's ligature marks on both wrists.

"So the unsub subdued him first," Emily suggests "that seems personal."

"Not so fast," Hotch stops the building chatter with a hand and another set of photos. "The second case is a high school teacher who was shot in his home and then left in a classroom in the downtown core."

"What is the relationship between victims?" Rossi asks.

"None," Hotch says blankly and then flips again. "The third set of victims is an elderly couple. They were fatally drugged in their own home and then robbed."

"Relat..."

"None," Hotch snaps blankly and a couple others shift quickly in their seats.

"Are we sure these murders are related?" Morgan asks.

"Seattle traditionally has one of the lowest murder rates per capita when compared with other large urban centers," Reid prompts automatically.

"And sometimes things just change," Morgan points out with a deeper look at the files. "These aren't even related in time. The family murder is nearly six months old, and these two sets are on the same weekend."

"The timeline is problematic but these crimes are related," Hotch assures them. It's enough to quiet the group long enough for the captain to progress to the last set of photographs. "Three adults women strangled in the same hotel and another," he flips the page, "who jumped off of her luxury townhouse."

"Eleven bodies?" Rossi asks, "And we're only being called in now?"

"What do you see when you look at the files?" Hotch reflects.

"Nothing," Emily notes. "There is no relationship between victims, commonality in method or signature."

"There was no reason to suspect that it was the work of a serial killer."

"These cases read like five very independent crimes," Rossi agrees with a few more flips. Reid stopped paying much more than cursory attention by the second case. That's when the nagging feeling had started, the wave of deja vu. The others debated but Reid reflips the last few pages, trying to capture the missing words.

"Are we sure they are connected?" Morgan asks again but it isn't more than a mumble in the background. Reid can feel his eyes pull together in deep thought.

"They are. They're all based on..."

"Novels," Reid spits out as the realization dawns, hand slapping the table with the force of his epiphany. When the glimmer passes; Then Reid notices the rest of his team. There's a lingering amusement on them all, even Hotch's customary neutrality threatened with a slight tugging. It's barely distinguishable but it's enough for Reid to clear his throat and silently move the offending hand beneath the table.

"A series of popular crime novels by the author Sam Thomson to be exact." Hotch supplies with a quick look at his notes. "He's published ten novels in as many years, these," he spreads the photos out across the table, "are his first, second fourth and third respectively."

"So it's snuff fiction."

"Not really," Reid says. "The author is more concerned with the killer's psychological state than the actual aspects of the crime. The books are more internalized, more character studies than graphic literature. Take the first novel for example. It's a family annihilation plot but there can't be more than twenty to forty pages dedicated to the murders themselves. The entire story is written from the perspective of the ten boy. What leads him to murder his family, and the guilt he feels after and who it eventually leads to him to kill himself. Or the third. It's considered the weakest of the author's novels because he couldn't quite take on the perspective of the female but, that aside, it's a fascinating look at obsession. You have a wife who finds out her husband is having an affair and is consumed by jealously. She kills each of his mistresses but in the process of doing, and of studying and researching them, the wife becomes a bit more like them until in the end, she loses herself and sees herself as just another mistress like the others. I mean each novel is so..." He continues with customary enthusiasm but it dies when he looks up and sees five other faces staring back at him.

"You've read these novels?" Emily asks in shock. It's reflected around the table.

"Don't you get enough in your day job?" Morgan adds to the nodding of several other heads.

"They're very well written," Reid mumbles before lapsing into silence.

"What do we know about these types of suspects?" Hotch offers once the party recovers themselves

"People who do mimic crimes seen in the media have in most cases prior criminal records, prior severe mental health problems or histories of violence." Rossi points out.

"Did you get that Garcia?" Hotch asks to the screen in the middle.

"Researching possible mental scumbags as we speak."

"They're like copycats," Emily adds. "Less intelligent, less confident, reliant on an already established script."

"They tend to be more impulsive," Morgan says.

"And yet this unsub is none of those things," Hotch reveals as he sits back into his chair. "He's organized enough not to leave a shred of physical evidence behind."

"And patient enough to wait for the right victim," Morgan adds.

"Which would require both planning and restraint," Rossi finishes the realization.

"He's accelerated his timeline as well. In the novels these crimes are carried out over weeks," Reid explains, "years in the case of the last but this unsub has consolidated things into a single night."

"Without taking artistic liberties," Prentiss points out. "The husband of the seventh victim was apparently having affairs with all these women."

"It couldn't have been an easy task to find those sorts of similarities," Morgan says.

"It could explain the lapse between kills," Rossi suggests with a final look at the snapshots. "The irregular timeline could be cause by the need to research...to plan."

"And yet he does take artistic liberties...meaningless ones," Reid points out. "He takes the time to match backgrounds, physical characteristics and even personality traits."

"But he plays with location," Rossi realizes, pulling the photos of the three brunettes forward. "He dumped them in hotel rooms rather than in their own homes."

"Perhaps he doesn't know where they live," Emily offers.

"Not possible," Hotch counters. "Not with the amount of research he must have gathered."

"Perhaps he's trying to recreate the feel of the novel," Reid suggests, scanning his memory for the exact details. "There was an opulence to the settings in that novel. Perhaps the real lives didn't match up." Reid puts a hand to his mouth as he contemplates, pushing back a few photos as he goes. It's silent as he does, contemplation playing out in his teammates. "No," Reid dismisses his own supposition before any of the others, drawing all eyes his way. "The third novel," he pulls a drawing of a smiling blonde man to the forefront. "The teacher worked at an inner city school. This man," he taps the photo contemplatively, "he worked at a run down school only two blocks from his apartment. The best security it had was a set of deadbolts and a neighbourhood crime watch. He's killed at his apartment..."

"But he doesn't dump him there." Emily says.

"He transports the body across town into a new state-of-the-art facility."

"With an alarm system and video surveillance," Emily finished the realization.

"The hotels...the school," Reid continues.

"They're all high risk locations," Morgan shakes his head. "The unsub is arrogant. He thinks he can't be caught."

"Well we're going to need to catch him and fast." Hotch flips another page in his notes. "the next novel is about a failed suicide pact and the one after that..."

"It's about a long-range serial killer who shoots twenty-four people in a public area," Reid explains.

"We have to consider something else," Morgan interjects from the side, waits a moment before putting the theory forward. "That the author himself might be making fantasy reality."

"That's why Reid and I will be interviewing him provided the publishing company coughs up and address."

"Provided?" Emily shakes her head.

"It took three phone calls and the threat of a warrant before the publishing company admitted that the author lived in Seattle."

"It's not surprising," Reid jumps in. "The author is a known recluse. He has never done a television or radio interview." He adds as Hotch's cell phone dings loudly through the still space. "It's sparked all sorts of conjecture about who it can be. One of the most popular theories is that he's an inmate in a maximum security prison."

"I hate to disappoint," Hotch interjects as he flips his cell closed. "But the publishing company finally came through with an address and it's a boring street one."

"Are they sending officers there now?"

"We're landing in thirty," Hotch confirms with a look at his watch. "We're going to let us take the lead in questioning. Emily and Morgan, I want you to survey the latest crime scene and Jennifer, you're going to go with Rossi to interview the publisher. We'll try to get a lead on any crazed fans."

A/N - just an idea that's been languishing on my hard drive for awhile. Review if you'd like me to continue.