The Shadow in the Cave

by Vanessa S. Quest

Big-Bang Challenge 2011 Submission. The team is called in on a case, but when something like this goes so catastrophically wrong will the team be able to find the unsub and prevent even more tragedy? Serious Reid FWUMPAGE here.

The Shadow in the Cave

In the middle of a moonless night, exhaled air crystalized in puffs as a reminder of just how cold it can get after a thunderstorm rolled through. The ground was saturated and that just-rained musty scent was heavy, especially on the road.

Despite the lack of illumination from the moon and overcast stars, the bold double yellow lines in the center of the two-lane road made it clear what direction to go in. To the west there's a cabin, old and worn, a screen door half-off its hinges, locks busted. He will not be going back that way; absolutely nothing could make him want to. To the east, he held a vague hope that there would be more of the street-lights that he currently saw spaced every 500 feet or so.

Somehow he knew, intuitively, that this was not the darkest place he could have landed, that on some county roads there are no street-lights at all, and that the sky would have been all the illumination he'd get except for what lights might be on from a house far off the road, if he could spy it through the heavy foliage that delineated itself from how far it was from any forms of civilization. His feet were sore; his whole body was, in fact, with a sand-bag heaviness that he could feel in each achy muscle-fiber. The ones he could no longer feel were the ones that worried him more.

He was sticky wet from a hot sweat and yet felt a chill on his skin and in his bones. With hollowed eyes, he vividly tried to unsee the things that had been to the west, but somehow, he knew he had seen far worse before, and will see far worse in the future.

That's right, somehow he knew that he would live through this, and that he was going to go back into the dark and hunt again because he doesn't know any other life he could lead.

He had thought about it, many years ago, dabbled with thoughts about what a normal life would be like, but each idea he turned down and rejected with such methodology that it only confirmed why Gideon had recruited him in the first place. As he reached the twentieth street lamp he had seen for the evening, instead of basking in the false sense of warmth the light gave him, he merely shuffled himself past it faster. While it was true he loved finally being able to really see with any clarity, he did not like the fact that he could just as easily be seen from afar, in fact, it was realistic to say it would be easier to see him than he see anyone else.

Markings on the road suggested he's on Rawley Pike. After he had hiked off of the unnamed private road roughly ten miles back he finally had a name to hold onto. He's familiar with this, Rawley Pike crosses state lines between West Virginia and Virginia, and even though he knew he had been close to the West Virginia border, he just knew he did not cross state lines.

No, not with this man, he held this area too highly to walk away. For a moment he ran through the felony checklist of time served for an in-state kidnapping, that would score the unsub a class three felony and 5 to 10 years inside a State-run prison …well, for the kidnapping at least.

There was suddenly a sound, not a loud one, but in that moment of the snap there was an array of pain and he was down, hard on his right knee while his left knee painfully stiffened, as it refused to bend or give. There was a constricting feeling as the entire joint swelled around itself, and all he could do to keep from a fit of screams was pray he could see something that could aid him as his eyes feverishly looked for anything useful.

At the moment, he knew he was in the middle of a dark patch of road, he had walked for almost 20 miles without shoes, his socks were mismatched and he knew far more than what he presumed was normal conversational information on any given topic, momentarily he wondered if this was somehow a bailiwick vocabulary.

What he didn't know was how he got there or who he even was. He saw two bright white-yellow lights race towards him and then heard the cacophonic lean of horn and rubber skid to a stop; the smell was thick and heavy, but he supposed it could have been heavier if it didn't manage to stop three feet away from where he laid on the wet ground unmoved. He took in several breaths and tried to slow the pounds that played within his ears so he could focus on who was stepping out of the car, there was a slamming of two doors, two, he internally notes that besides this car came from the wrong direction. He had definitely seen evidence of only one unsub, so two was not only safe, it was serendipitous luck.

"What is wrong with you, just lying in the road like that? You're lucky I didn't run you over!"

Tired brown eyes loll to the side as he turns his head toward the belligerent man as he yelled at him.

"Oh my god, Charlie, there's blood… he's covered in blood!"

"Oh sweet Jesus, do you think it's a hit and run?" The man's tone had pivoted from angry to stricken with concern as he leaned forward.

"Where's your phone, Charlie? We have to call an ambulance and the cops…"

"It's in the console Erin…"

"…Aaron…?" He slowly forced himself upright into a seated position, eyes scanned the road.

"Lie down, Erin do you see it?"

"Charlie, there's no signal."

"For cryin' out loud…"

"Janet's place is just up the road."

"Take the car and call it in. I'll stay here with, what's your name?"

"…My name…?"

"Yeah, your name, what's your… woah, woah maybe you should lay back down son?"

As he teetered backward, there was a sickening sense of darkness despite how he stared at the bright headlights. Nyctophobia, the fear of darkness or absence of light, the distance traveled within one standard light year was approximately 5,878,482,164,161.3 miles. As his eyes rolled underneath his upper eyelids for the briefest of moments, he could clearly see the dazzling stars peek out from behind the overcast sky.

As his eyelids drooped down he could see an even more heavenly vision, the warm glow of a sun-lit face, of Aaron's face, it seemed almost foreign -the face to the name, and yet with every loosely-sewn-together fiber of his being, he knew that this was the feeling of coming home.

He grimaced and exhaled a slow breath, as he exhaled the grimace transformed to a peaceful smile before he fell into a mute expression of far-away pain.

"Charlie, Charlie listen to the radio announcement! Charlie!"

Erin turned the volume up on the built-in unit of the car radio. "They're saying something about a murderer on the loose… Charlie get away from him!"

"Erin for the love of god, look at him, you can't tell me you think he's a killer!"

"Charlie, get away from him!" She screamed, as she wildly pointed- not at the unconscious man on the wet pavement, but at the man who trained a gun on her husband from behind as he walked from down the road. "CHARLIE RUN!"

There were two quick muzzle flashes, then a third one after a second-long pause, the car was punched into reverse and accelerated to 20 mph before Erin righted herself 180° and sped up the road.

Three more shots boomed through the still night air, the last was followed by a galling sound of a tire rapidly decompressed and ballooned out with a sickening pop, this was followed by the rolling crunch of metal bent unnaturally as her car turned onto itself, and careened down the embankment.

She could see half a mile away where the love of her life was lying so very still in the company of two strangers in the night, one with an angel's face, the other with the devil's tools. She could see within the cabinet of the car, as compacted as it is, and saw something she had never been happier to see in her entire life, two bars on the cell phone signal reader. Upside down and pinned to the driver's seat via seatbelt, her fingers reached forward painfully with her fully extended right arm as she reached for it. Just as she took hold of the device, the air-bag deployed and winded her.

Internally Erin swore she would never, ever buy another Toyota as long as she lived, and prayed she'd have the chance to actually change her mind about the threat. She dialed with shaky fingers 9-1-1-SEND and within thirteen seconds was met with a response.

"9-1-1, this is Danielle, please state your emergency…"

"Someone's shooting at us…" She sobbed. "I think my husband's dead… I'm on Rowley Pike just before Rawley Spring, my car flipped over…"

"Ma'am, do you see the shooter?"

She let out a gasp of fear, "Oh my god he's coming this way!" The hysteria in her voice was apparent, "Please… please I don't want to die…" She sobbed, she clenched her eyes shut, "We were just having dinner, we were just driving home when we saw a man lying in the road… we were trying to help him and then he came and he shot my husband… there's gonna be three dead bodies before you even get to us… I don't want to die!"

"Ma'am, where is he now?"

"I can see him, he's getting closer… he's got on all black… I hear sirens…"

"Ma'am, the police will be there in another minute, you just keep talking to me, where is he?"

"I think he hears them too, he… he's running down the road back towards Charlie… Charlie… please don't be dead, Charlie…" Outside her window was a familiar flash of red and blue, one stopped near her, a second pressed forward.

"Ma'am, we're going to get you out of there, are y'alright?" A high-powered mag-lite illuminated the crushed cabinet to expose a woman caked in red-sheen.

"Charlie… Charlie… Charlie…" She said between sobs, her eyes closed half-way then stop entirely. Unseen to her, the officer threw his hat to the ground angrily.

He fished out the cell phone from the woman's grip, "She's dead. She didn't make it. He turned off the phone in time to hear his radio go off.

"I see one older man, mid-sixties, face down in a pool of blood, looks like he's been shot. There's another large blood-pool, smaller drops coming up the road, and drag marks for about fifteen feet then nothing. He must've loaded the third victim up and taken him back."

"Third, don't you mean the first?" The younger cop announced, he picked up his hat, "How much you want to bet it's the missing fed? The unsub wouldn't give two shits about anyone else, but the profiler? That's his prize."

It took ten more minutes before two large black SUVs and three forensic-team vans reached the spot.

"Walk me through it, what happened?" Hotch says, his face stony, impossible to read.

"First, we have droplet cast-off coming from west to east, up the road, it looks like the victim-" the forensics agent gulps, "I mean, your friend? It looks like he walked."

"We can't assume that it is Reid, it may be another person," Hotch clarifies.

Morgan adds, "But it is unlikely. This creep doesn't tend to just leave people alive long enough to walk around." There's a thin veil between the rage in his voice and the will-power to keep pushing it down.

"Then it pools, it corresponds to the tire marks here, which look like they're from victims' two and three's car. Shell casings indicate that there were 8 shots fired, it looks like two hit victim two, then the unsub shot at the car, hitting the rear windshield, victim 3, and the tire. The glass on the road indicates it went before the tire got hit, then after ten meters, the tire shreds, evident by the rubber, and the car barrel-rolled. The remaining round hits victim 2 in the head, victim 1 does not appear to have been shot here, the blood pool is much smaller than a fresh bullet wound, so the blood is from existing injuries most likely. By the distance in between the droplets, it's probably a limb, since it looks like victim 1 walked, the injury is probably to an arm, a venous injury."

"Thank you…"

"There's one other thing, sir."

"What is it? Spill it."

"We haven't found the origin of the blood trail, we've already traveled up two miles. It hasn't left the road yet. What do you think the chances are that it'll lead back to where the victim was being kept?"

Hotch signals Rossi and Prentiss, the two hop into the SUV just as Hotch lands into the driver's seat. "Morgan, Seaver, I want you to do a perimeter search of any local houses for any witnesses. We're still behind the ball on this."

Morgan's fist clenches, "You're telling me like I don't know that?"

"Morgan…" Seaver breathes out gently, "Maybe one of the neighbors saw something… the driver said he was wearing all black."

"Seaver, look AROUND how many neighbors do you think there ARE here? We passed one house, ONE on our way here that's even close, it's around the bend, there's no street light and he was wearing all black. No one is going to have seen jack!"

"Maybe not today, but think about it, this is a rural road. There's only so many ways in and out by car. Maybe they know which cars they've seen drive by lately."

Morgan's expression lightened at that, "You're right… they might… We suspected that the unsub is a local but an outsider, someone who is a recluse but knows the area, so he blends in to the crowd but doesn't have the social skills to convince anyone to go with him. So, he blitzes his targets, renders them powerless, kills, and discards them as if they were trash. That narcissism that he's more important, that he's worth more than they thought is a clear sign of his borderline behavioral disorder and his asocial tendencies. He's a psychopathic rage-killer, but then he hears about our boy genius, and how the Feds're coming in…"

"He feels like as outsiders we could justify his actions…"

"True, but that's not it. He's also doing counter-intelligence, he took one of our own to figure out what we'd know, and probably how to throw them off. He's borderline, but not paranoid. If Reid gains his trust…? He would be completely blind-sided if Reid had him leave behavioral evidence. We need to get through these interviews and then go back over what Reid was working on. Whatever he was doing he'll push us in the direction in. He'll know we'll look there."

"How would he know that?" Seaver asked, baffled.

"It was before your time, Reid… he went to interview a witness Tobias Henkel, only Tobias wasn't really a witness, he wound up being the unsub. He took Reid and went off the grid… but Henkel was communicating with us, to taunt us, showing us what he was doing to Reid and Reid figured it out. He told us he was in a cemetery, that they were near some animal poachings, this time he might not be able to speak to us directly, but he'll know what we can look into."

"So he'll prove himself right?" she said with a touch of disbelief.

"No, it's not like that. It's more like he'll try to force him into comfort zones that we'd suspect; something like that," Morgan suggests, rolling his wrist.

"But he's hurt, are you sure he'll even be capable to do anything? We know from the footage, the unsub over-powered him after cracking him in the head with a piece of concrete, then dragged him out of view of the cameras into a park and spirited him away."

Morgan exhales a sigh, she's right, there is a chance that Reid won't be able to do anything. "But he got out of where he was being confined and he walked… we know that from what the CSU and victim 3 said."

"If that was even Reid, she didn't describe him." Ashley lowers her own head, "Morgan, why would he take Reid though?"

"Opportunity, for one, and I hate to say it… but out of all of us, he'd probably be the easiest to take, especially if he's unarmed. Reid would be more likely to try to talk his way out of trouble than fight, with his knee, I can't blame him."

"Yeah, but would the unsub know that before the attack? It was a sneak-attack. And we've already asserted that he doesn't have the social abilities to speak with strangers to even determine if they're new to town or if they're police… and Reid doesn't look like standard issue FBI unless he's wearing the company logo, you know? Has he worn that around town yet?"

"No, but he's outside of who the unsub had been targeting all along so that shows it's because he knew Reid's with the BAU."

"And I'm sure he does, that he did before he grabbed Reid, but what I'm saying is he had to know that somehow. Maybe Garcia can look into where Reid might have crossed paths with an asocial person before-hand?"

"You are two for two, Seaver. You channeling boy-wonder or something?"

Ashley's brow crinkles, "I prefer matching socks, thanks."

Morgan pulls out his cell phone and ruffles her hair playfully anyway, momentarily forgetting how much women despise that sort of thing compared to men, especially men like Reid.

"Baby girl, I need you to run through Reid's schedule since he got here up until when he was taken. Where did he go, what stores did he stop in, who did he interview, bump into, meet, who was at the station when he was there, as much as you can get. We think the unsub might have met up with him before attacking and that's how he learned Reid was FBI."

"Oh my god, you mean… he might be here… riiiight now," she said, almost purring, "Because if he is, I'm totally going to pull a Hotch and beat him to death with my bare-"

"Woman! Think about what you're saying and play it back pretending Hotch just heard you refer to pulling one of him. I like you too much for you to get let go."

She smiles, "Yeah, I guess that's a little too much… besides if he was here he wouldn't be out there with Reid… Morgan, Reid rode into the station with Hotch and Yours Truly to set up the station, after we set up, Reid handled some of the interviews with victims' families, then he grabbed coffee with Ems and checked into the hotel for us, after that, he came back and started cracking down the geographic profile, he worked on that until 2 AM when you and I practically dragged him back to the hotel, but in the morning, I saw he had a deli bag from the gas station. Maybe he got the munchies and went out for a bite? A night-clerk at one of the three gas stations in town might make for a good gig for someone with the conversation skills of an eggplant."

"And knowing boy-wonder, he'd have a statistic about that. He'd pull out his wallet to pay, and bam, the unsub would see the FBI credentials even if Reid didn't mention it. Garcia, can you pull up the local gas-stations and figure out where Reid would've gone to from the hotel?"

"On it."

"Garcia, call Hotch and let him know what you have. We're going to check in with the neighbors to see if we have any potential witnesses."

"Gotcha, I'll pull up employee records too, see if I can spot any red flags."

[Criminal Minds]

There was a familiarity about sitting in the hard wooden chair, the ringing in his ears wouldn't quit though, and drove the thought further away and out of reach.

The room didn't spin per-say, but it did have a strange lava-lamp effect, bubbling up and puckering as though melting. He felt nauseous, and he missed Aaron. Oh god, he missed him and he didn't even know who the man was.

He assumed lover with the way his body ached, but without any tangible memory it was hard to say with certainty. He didn't even readily recall who he was. He had a feeling he worked with the government, he had a holster, he knew the roads but not the area, maybe he was State Police? But why no uniform then? Maybe he worked for the FBI.

One of the largest FBI bases were in Quantico, VA, near Quantico Marine Base, the BAU was formerly called the BSU… was he a profiler? His head throbbed, and for a moment the only thought he had was that it felt as if his brain was leaking out his ears from all the pressure.

He also knows how unlikely it is that his brain is leaking out, no, the symptoms are much more related to things leaking into the cranial cavity, the increased pressure made the head pain make sense, the changes in vision…

"I have a subdural hematoma…" He lets out suddenly.

"…A what?"

He looks up, he wasn't expecting an answer, apparently he's not alone in the room this time.

"A subdural hematoma, I'm bleeding into my brain, if I don't release the pressure somehow, I'll probably slip into a coma and then die."

The man crosses his arms, looking at him, he feels as if his head isn't on straight, like he's slumped over to the side but can't figure out how to right himself.

"From when I hit you in the head? Sorry about that…" The man starts, "I'm not good at introductions."

"But we already met, didn't we? You're the clerk at the gas station, you were reading Machiavelli's the Prince." Mentally, he chimes up several screeching indicators that he had apparently ignored until now.

"I… like to read, it keeps me company."

Eyes unfocused, he tries to force his vision even again. "I've read that book before, but do you really believe it's better to be feared than loved?"

"If you can't have both? Yeah."

He screws his eyes into focus, "Why? Why if you can't have both? You don't really think running around killing people makes you the king of the town, do you? So if you're not upholding any real tangible hierarchy you're making people fearful of a concept. They don't even know who you are, but you think its better that they still mock you but fear the killer on the loose instead of somehow trying for love?"

"I tried for that already, it didn't work. They'd make fun of me… They'd torture me, and those pigs never did anything about it… so it's only fair I treat them the same way they treated me… to them I'm some animal, so I slaughtered them like the pigs and cattle they are." A chin jutted in approval.

"Then why haven't you killed me yet?" The way he said it held no fear, he isn't sure why. He didn't want to die, even with the pain in his head, not like he could remember enough to know if he'd share that sentiment when 'normal'.

"You're not an animal. You're the first real human I've met in this place." He leans closer to the agent, brushing his loose bangs behind his ear. "It's weird, it's like what normal is supposed to look like. You know about the cave and the shadow and the chair, right? Inside a cave, around a fire there is the shadow of a chair, the concept to everyone in the cave is so inalienable about what a chair is, but the one guy sitting closer to the outside of the cave- he can see sunlight and with that he can see how a chair is really supposed to look. No matter how much he tries to tell the others about this chair, this truth about chairs, they just ridicule and hate him more, because it's outside of their beliefs. So, eventually they exile him… but that's like me, I've been exiled into the freedom of the sunlight. I'm not stuck in the cave of swine-morality. I know what's really right and wrong, and I know how to grab it," he smiles with a glee to his eyes and the room turns four degrees colder.

"Your paradigm is of morality versus amorality, but human nature is to see good and evil. Man doesn't exist inside amoral values because the human mind puts reason and sides to things, the argument is fundamentally flawed…" He tries to reason, and receives a sharp blow to the throat for it, it knocks him off the chair and onto the floor, he gasps, wheezing because of the spasm that shoots up his body. There is an air of fear, but it's distant, expecting… and not expecting anything in this room.

"Are you showing how human you are by taking it out on me when I'm defenseless? Doesn't that just make you the same aggressor that you see the others as? Might is right? You seem to miss that anarchy doesn't do our sorts any good. Anarchy leads immediately to lordships and feudalism, think high school when the teachers aren't looking. Spectacular choice, for years to come you'll have the town justified in the belief that what they did to you was because they smelled the blood of a monster in you and that it didn't make you- it reacted to you. You've single-handedly fucked over the next twelve years of an entire generation. Does that impress you? Does it make you happy that kids struggling the same way you did will now turn to suicide because no one will react to their pleas of help because the town just thinks they'll be just like YOU when they grow up?"

"You don't get it. I'm going to hunt the people who made me resort to this… if they aren't there, no one will be there to take their place, and if they do appear- I'll slice them down. I'll make this place the utopia I dreamed it could be."

Eyebrows furrow together, this man holds the marks of a spree-killer, not a serial killer. Something inside him starts to spin, he's here investigating this… a serial killer, it had started with the spacing of months between kills but now it was painfully obvious that that was merely the prelude. He's working up the courage to do the target-based spree killing his delusion has built up around him.

He knows this, on the floor tied to a chair, held down while not-so-slowly dying. Now he has to figure out how to stop him. How's he supposed to stop a spree killer on his own, and in this condition? A hand wraps around his bicep and hoists him back upright.

"Your head hurts doesn't it?" There's a look of gentility on the man's face that's startlingly odd, he really has dissociated so far from his community with his imagery of them as cattle that he really can have that warped sense of compassion. He felt nauseous- he can't entirely blame it on his head. "I'm going to get you something to eat. Just remember the last time you tried to run away I had to kill those two. I didn't want to, I don't care that I did, they deserved it- they all do, I just don't have a fresh example of why."

He leaned in and smiled, "But then, again, you knew I would have to react that way, didn't you? You're really on my side… aren't you?" He ruffled the brown mess of hair leading to several winces and hushed-in words that he was certain were foreign to him.

"You get it, don't you? Why I really have to do this? It's just you're a fed so you have to say that stuff, it's your job… do your coworkers think like that too? Or are they like the cattle outside?"

"My friends're good people! All they've ever done has been to help others!" He hisses, he's not sure where this outpour started from, this defensiveness, this gnawing feeling that if he didn't say this that they'll somehow be endangered, but he continued with it. He wished he knew who this 'they' is, that he could have faces to place to these feelings, it's all just an arm-reach away locked in his mind.

'Have you considered that these headaches could be a mental block…?'

'Psychosomatic? My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. I know what mental illness looks like and this isn't it! I. get. headaches.'

He bowed his head, was that a memory? Was that him? He shook his head when he heard the sound of the door opening and closing, the strain on the rusty spring the gauge.

It was easier to grab the memory of that sound, he had heard it other times, once when he was barely coming to before being hoisted on the chair, once again when the clerk had left to get food from the storage area wherever that was- he avoided it when he went out a window on the opposite side of the cabin- once when he was brought back in and deposited unceremoniously in a heap on the floor, and now makes four.

Eight, really, it's a double-sound. He corrects himself and it makes him smile with a sense of security. Sure his head feels like it's being pierced open with four-inch nails and a carpenter's hammer, but at least his mental faculties were still somewhere within reach.

He debates escape, he knows his timeline would be much less, but the walk had taken more out of him then he had. He looks to his arms and realizes that he has been bleeding for over six hours thanks to a large wooden splinter impaling the underbelly of his forearm.

The floor has a soft-matte with splotches of sheeny red still absorbing into the carpet.

There is more blood in the room than what he could've lost on his own and lived. He suspects the origins. There are three bodies in the room at the exact moment, a teenage girl and her parents, the girl is enshrined on the couch, he thinks that there is a secret rejection and fantasy inside the posing, as if she had been too pure to taint with physical lust but the fear of changing things between them- or the lack of reciprocity for that change- had led the man in his mid-twenties to kill her, a clean sharp stab in the neck, she'd have bled to death in four minutes, be unconscious within four seconds. She probably died where his chair was centered.

He hoped that wouldn't be a foreboding factor.

The other two corpses in the room were to acquire the desired effect. They were stuffed inside the armoire and a chest, well, most of them- as the gases expanded they had shifted and moved slightly out from their containment.

If he hadn't known bodies did move like that, it would freak the hell out of him, make him think about zombies or something impractical like that. Instead, he realized how little the man cared about the bodies that he couldn't dispose of.

Was it because they couldn't be separated from their daughter or because that would give away his location?

He looked around, no, if they were part of a shrine- the probable start point of these killings, there would be some poise to their positions. He thought hard about his time leaving the cabin, the lawn was overgrown, the lights near the windows were always off… was this their vacation spot? Somewhere they would be if they came into town for a while and then when they pack up and leave for the year no one would be the wiser for?

It was a logical explanation to the odds-and-ends, but who would really come here for a vacation spot?

In the back of his mind he had heard a nagging, Gideon would've. He couldn't place what or who a Gideon was or why he'd come to a secluded cabin away from the safeties of humanity, but he knew this wasn't the first time his mind has traveled there. It ghosts over this as if there's a reflexive history to this name, like the name Aaron. Some sort of muscle memory, like Morgan…

…Wait, that was new. Morgan? Is that a woman's name? He can vaguely recall a sleek, attractive late-thirties-something woman with dark brown hair and fierce eyes that can be oddly compassionate. It seemed to relate well with the phrase Morgan. Just not in the way that a name attaches to a face, not like how Aaron just fits with that image in his mind, that perfectly Aaron-Aaron.

He remembered the spiel the unsub had gone on about chairs and caves, and in that moment, he knew the Aaron in his head is the Aaron out in reality and not in some idealized cave… the Gideons, the Morgans, the nameless woman… they were in the cave with him, he just wished he could grasp what he had before. He knew his processing speed for information was fast, but without memory and experience he couldn't help but feel he was cutting down a forest to get himself a walking stick.

'A walking stick probably would've been a good idea for that last hike, I was shot in the knee after all…'

His eyes screw focused- no he wasn't. His knee, though incredibly sore right now, did not have an outsource of blood… Mentally he told himself to focus again, apparently he's very intuitive, and even though he realized this he hadn't even thought to profile himself. Profile? He's a profiler, that's right… a profiler…

He gave himself a cursory once over, realized the room for errors thanks to time outside of his own care and ability to maintain himself to what his normal standards would be. His khakis were mostly in good condition, the frays on them were new, so was the blood, other than that there were no discernable stains; he had a watch on, and a sizable one. Judging from how itchy his eyes felt, he wears contacts so it's safe to say that time is important to him. When he wakes up he has to move quickly, the large impression on his arm indicates that the watch probably has a large face so it is easier to see first thing when he gets up. He probably puts in a lot of long hours. His socks don't match. That would be eclectic… he doesn't feel psychotic, so it's probably just a quirk, he can tell the difference between the two, this isn't accidental, besides they are far too fun to be accidental in-the-dark grabs. It's a secret intention. His shoes are gone, he can't profile his income level easily without it, but he recalls what they felt like- comfy. Broken in, broken down, worn and worn out but not discarded.

…He has issues letting things and people go…

'Probably has to do with my mom being a paranoid schizophrenic…'

His internal voice registers and lights up his mind brighter than a pachinko machine. His earlier flash of memory had mentioned that yet he hadn't even paid it any heed.

He likes books over computer-screens because it makes it real, it keeps him in touch with reality, at least physically- maybe not with the times- Garcia would tell him that but he still knew the song Telephone even if he didn't know who Britney Spears was currently married to or divorcing from… He screws close his eyes, 'Focus, that's right… Garcia… she's going to be so mad at me for getting hurt… she'll be a big red plume of hair… no… blond… red… blond…'

The tension in his brows relax a bit as he loses himself to the internal monologue of trying to recall what a Garcia looks like, the idealized form too variable, sending him into a tailspin. He slumps out of the chair and to the floor with a clatter.

He didn't wake up when the unsub rushed back in, nor when he was shaken with the unsub's foot planted on his sternum or nudged a handful of times in the ribs with said foot.

After being hoisted onto a table and hearing what could be described as the largest- LARGEST mosquito ever- he does start to stir, he feels it then. Straps, there were straps across his shoulders, his hips, and ankles keeping him down.

'That doesn't make sense, the unsub's not into sadism, he hasn't tried to torment his prey before, he's an executioner to right the unrighted, more of a vigilante… this is too much like Frank.'

His eyes crack open, even if his mind has startled awake. Frank is anything but a blissful dream. The man made rib bone wind-chimes for his girlfriend. He smells corn chips, corn chips and blood, and a stagnant reek of what has to be cerebral spinal fluid.

…There weren't any mosquitoes, but there had been a high-powered drill, and a very, VERY unsanitary surgical suite. He suspects he has been trepanned.

Trepanning has been a treatment for headaches for thousands of years, origins include northern parts of Africa, where the earliest of surgeries were thought to be performed.

'Spencer, why do you know that?'

His eyes lit up, puffy and swollen as they were, he filed that under bad. Spencer, that name, it felt like he had come home. Aaron hadn't asked how he knew it, he asked why… because Aaron knew Dr. Spencer Reid as the genius of the BAU…

"Mitch, why am I strapped down?"

The unsub smiled leaning down over him, he had plastic gloves on, the kind from a hair-dye box, and a smock covered in paint and probably blood. "It worked, I knew it'd work! I… well, you passed out, you said you were bleeding into your brain, so I took this drill here and…"

"From WHERE and did you sterilize the drill bit? This is important… did you clean the area around the incision…?"

"Why are you mad at me? I saved your life," he glared, getting upset.

"You're the one who hurt me in the first place, Mitch, if you didn't do it right it can kill me, within minutes to hours, actually." He looked at the man's demeanor, he was losing him quick, "I know you didn't mean to put me in danger, you were trying to help, and you only hurt me because you wanted to talk to me… I know, I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm not grateful to have met you."

"…Grateful?" His eyes shone, apparently that had worked well. He was smiling now, the self-satisfying smile he had on before-hand in fact, only it was intensified, "We're going to really be friends, right? You'll be my first friend… well, besides my girlfriend, you already met her."

Reid looked in the direction he suspected to be the shrine, "Uh, I didn't catch her name though…"

There was a look in his eyes for a moment- jealous rage if Reid had to put a name to it, momentarily happy to have the gifts of experience and intellect back. He knows the cost- a very small window to reach emergency treatment before meningitis and inevitable death or grievous injury such as paralysis induced by encephalitis… he won't run through the list- he could and still profile his way here and back- but he'd rather ignore the elephant in the room.

"Mitch, you don't trust me? You already said she's your girlfriend, and besides, I'm spoken for. I'd never cheat. Ever." The emphasis on the tone seems to calm Mitch down for a few moments, he lets out a breath.

"Heh, like you even could, she only has eyes for me. My beautiful Caroline, she's so feisty too… she'd claw your throat out if you tried something on her- I don't recommend it, I'll do worse than claw your throat out if you touch my sweet pea."

"I can see how good you two go together." There is a pause, recognition, "She makes things feel more stable, doesn't she? That air of having somewhere to settle into, a place to return…"

Mitch nods, "Exactly, now she'd hate it if I called her a little home-maker, she's more independent than that, but she knows how to make me feel like I belong. She's the only person I've ever felt like that with. Not like I'm just human, but that I have somewhere that's right for me to be."

"It's grounding isn't it? My lover makes me feel like that too. When it feels like everyone sees me as having a second head, with a subtle look, it's alright to be me again. Is that how it is with you two?"

"Yeah! Yeah, she's something. This is her place, you know, well… her and her parents…" He rolls his eyes a little with a goofy smile, "She insisted we couldn't leave them, we had to be with them here… I mean, I work hard, I can afford my own place but she doesn't want her parents left alone so I let her make here home."

"Really…" He had had his suspicions, and the happy confirmation of this made Reid give an honest smile, "Have you two ever been away without her parents around?"

He shrugs, "Not for a while, after I moved in we've always together. Not that they get on my nerves or anything, they mostly keep to themselves, but here and there they'll make a fuss. To be truthful, they're real messy, the place doesn't smell so good unless I clean up after 'em."

"Wow, it's usually the parents who say that about the kids." Spencer says carefully, Mitch has probably dissociated from the actual murder of the family, momentarily Reid wonders if he still thinks they're alive. It wouldn't bode well for his mental state if that were true. "My family was like that, when I was younger. I was always the neat one. My dad used to cook though, what about Caroline's parents, what's their role around the house?"

"Oh they used to help more, but since I'm the man of the house they just pretty much keep to themselves, we don't even really eat dinner together any more. They'll just watch a video when we sit down to eat, Caroline likes to listen to the radio, she doesn't sing along now, because of her sore throat… but she'll sing again, I'm sure. I'm sure she will…"

"Sore throat? Uh, for how long?"

"Wow, it's been a while, I dunno… maybe six months. She doesn't complain about it, so I don't think it's anything to really worry about."

Swallowing thickly, Reid can't help but feel his tongue seems heavier and thicker than it had previously been. Dryer too, he notes, licking his lips in attempt to chase away the dryness in his throat. Far away, Reid can hear the sounds of cars going up and down the road.

It's strange because this has been the first time he's heard more than one car travel down the road at a time. He isn't the only one alerted by this, Mitch is at the window and then heading back toward him.

"You're right, you know?"

Spencer turns his head on his neck, he can't really say what this is about, but there is something driven behind Mitch's eyes.

"We really should try being on our own, Caroline and me, I mean… it's high time she flew the nest, she's 14 years old, for crying out loud, four-teen. They need to just let go. And just between you and me, it cramps my style with them on top of us all the time, we haven't gotten a chance to fool around… but I have an idea."

Mitch is nodding, excitement evident on his face. "You'll help us move, won't you?"

His eyes go large, Mitch doesn't seem to care for the pause. "When are we leaving?" Reid says with an affirmation, the police are probably closing in, that realization with the amount of psychosis coming through makes itself clear.

"We'll move back in to my place, help Caroline into the van, it's unlocked. I'll grab some of our things and then we can head out. Nothing big, we don't need much baggage holding us down." He's smiling now, even larger.

Hobbling, Spencer approaches the dead girl on the couch. "Uh, should I…?"

"Shh! I think she's sleeping, carry her out man, just be gentle!"

He swallowed thickly, he figured this would happen. The throbbing in his knee had quieted down over the past few minutes, everything had really. The pain in his head, the aching in his arm, the throb in his knee- all were replaced somewhat blissfully by a heaviness, as if he had replaced his tired flesh and bone limbs and replaced them with bags of sand.

Gingerly, Spencer lifted the girl into his arms, she had to weigh 90 pounds at most, but the weight was literally a dead-lift, there was no assistance, no added momentum or subtle shifts to help- he just had to lift and transport. It was amazing how much she smelled of Febreeze and chamomile. Getting her to the van proved to be an arduous trip, even if he couldn't fully feel the pain in his leg he couldn't make it bend correctly either. With a stiffness to it, he hobbled further and further from the living room, he could see through the corner of his eyes Mitch grabbing photo frames and holding a red canister.

He couldn't say he didn't suspect this… the photos were no doubt of her, but possibly all the photos to prolong the identification of the parents. It didn't take much with the circumstances to convince himself Mitch planned to torch the cabin.

He heard glass smash, a light bulb. His eyes darken, Mitch was going to rig it to blow if anyone hit the switch… that would indefinitely result in severe injury if not death to the first responders, and honestly, Reid knows his team- his family- would be the ones kicking down the doors. A rookie coming in behind might easily hit the lights, and…

He gently placed Caroline's remains on the floor boards in the back of the van before he grabbed a rock and scrawled in his blood the license plate number. He waits to hear the spring door open once and with that timing of when it'll slam shut in mind, he tossed the rock as hard as he possibly could into the glass window to force a hole through one pane. He waited to see if Mitch noticed the sound, he didn't, he pulls himself out of the lurched position pitching had put him in and momentarily remembers that t-ball had finally proven useful. Finally.

Instinctively, he sits in the back of the van, he isn't fully sure why he did that instead of the front seat, but then, he knows he's losing time faster than he can think of ways to get it back.

He slams his head back into the aluminum wall of the van and lets out a dark chuckle, 'So my end game is to break a window…? If he saturated the place enough, that's not going to do anything to stop it from exploding… and if that does happen my message will either be erased by soot or by one hundred ninety two gallons of water… besides, who the hell would luminal a rock?' These are the thoughts that chase away most of his sense of reasoning as a smear of blood travels the path of his sloping head against the wall of the van. Eventually his head rests on his own shoulder, his eyes are half-shut but thanks to the swelling of his eyelids they near-fully eclipse his orbits.

The front door slams shut and Mitch adjusts his mirrors out of habit to spot his passengers, the love of his life lying blissfully asleep and his best friend conked out from moving all his stuff. He smiles, momentarily he can envision this is what it should be like, with large TVs and massive sectional couches and a dining room set and bedroom set shoved into the back of his van, it's what makes him step up his plan. That's right, he isn't going to just go around keeping his head down all ashamed, what he's doing now is good work, noble work. He deserves a new place that fits that image.

He knew just where he could get it too, and that bastard he'd take it from deserved every last bit of what he'd give him.

-That bastard, also known to be the too-good-to-shit high school quarterback who had made it his mission to ruin his life until he had graduated, plagiarized his term paper and gotten into a competitive state-run university in so doing on scholarship for athletics. That bastard subsequently came back to become the town's doctor and married his college sweetheart before recently having a kid or two themselves.

He wasn't thrilled with the odds, Leonard was substantially taller and larger build than him, he could easily overpower him with brute force- just like a pissed off chimpanzee could dominate over a kid, but he had an idea. He was sure Spencer would help him out with it, after all, he was on his side… he'd have to, he'd just have to!

Spencer was vaguely aware when the van came to a stop, on the radio he could hear what sounded like a fire report. For a fleeting moment he feels a gentle, cool breeze on his face as the back door opens. He can feel the warmth of the sun touching his skin but that seemed to go farther away suddenly.

He tried to concentrate, he really did, he had so many questions about the fire- it couldn't possibly mean the cabin could it? Were they talking about injuries? Or worse, were there reports of fatalities?

"Hey, wake up, we're here… I need you to help me out with something," he starts, Mitch tapped his shoulder vigorously to get his attention. It didn't work, he couldn't respond or move more than he already had. He can see now that they are outside of a private medical practice. It doesn't make sense, there's no way Mitch would relinquish control, he wasn't there enough mentally anymore to even see the horrors he'd done to the people he thought he loves.

But that's when it did make sense, the only thing he needed help with from Spencer would be to have him act as a trap. He was outside of a doctor's office, his obvious prey being inside. An affluent, successful man who pulled himself out of a small town to only come back highly educated, was a small-town hero- a god… and that wasn't something Mitch could just take and smile at.

It would be an affront to his own existence, because if that was the definition of a god, what did that make Mitch? Mitch was so delusional with his sense of grandeur that it would either make him into the devil- or make the doctor a false prophet or devil himself out to dupe people about his good nature.

He tried to move, he tried to do something to stop this, he didn't want blood on his hands, especially of some poor sap who's biggest mistake had been trying to help him. Being the tool used to trap someone, to get that person killed? He'd never be able to live with himself. As he thought this, Spencer forces himself to move, through sheer thinking of it, because he's certain his body has nothing left to give- so his mind- his mind HAD to compensate.

It's what he at least thought happened, it was quite possible everything was a hallucination or delusion of his own, for all he knew the next scene would be marshmallow mountain that Jack had climbed with his fork and pancake Sherpa before plummeting into the gooey mess and eating breakfast. His body fell forward as he proved himself wrong. The world he transported to was pure fuzziness. It couldn't even be described as a color, everything was the entity of fuzzy as if he forgot how to think in color or any visualization for that matter.

His hand landed on a mummified lump somewhere below Caroline's shoulder. No warning bells sounded in his mind, no profuse apologies or mentions of accidents form on his lips because Spencer Reid wasn't in the back of the van anymore. He's in the fuzzies.

While he was there, Mitch quickly took a trip to the furies.

"What… what the hell do you think you're doing?" Mitch gawked as his best friend lay atop his girlfriend, the bastard still copping a feel! He had only left them alone for a minute- he had opened the door and looked around to make sure no one was around to identify his van… turned back around and what does he see but this nightmare?

He was wrong, the FBI agent isn't a human being, no human could be so horrible as to do this to their supposed friend! His face darkened, he might not be a willing participant, but he was going to help him now damn it! He already lost his house because of this man's friends showing up on his doorstep. He hoped the explosion killed them, but not quick. They should suffer first. Now, though, thanks to him leading the feds and the other pigs back to the roost, he lost his and his girlfriend's home. He even had a falling out with her parents when he told them they couldn't go! He needed a place to stay- one that suited his and his girl's stature. That and he needed revenge.

By the way his ex-best friend looked on top of his girlfriend he knew he needed a whole lot of that revenge.

Mitch grabbed Reid by the hair and pulled him from the back with a strong tug, taking several strands with him after his body met the pavement. He looked around again before checking to make sure he had his bowing knife, he slid it back into the holster tucked in his waist-band before he turned Reid over with a hard kick.

The fight's one-sided, and that calmed him, he knew he needed to reserve his energy for Dr. Asshole in there, but it made him let out a breath. Maybe Spencer really did that for his sake? This would be way more convincing than if Spencer was just lying on the road… had he planned for this so Mitch would bring himself to hitting him?

His face relaxed, that had to be it, this was his best friend, he'd never betray him like that! He quickly moved his van out of the way and parked behind the doctor's office where he was sure no one would notice it. First, he had to make sure the doctor saw Reid, and then he'd jump him, kill him, and hide the body in the office. There's an 'Out Fishing' sign nearby the door, not currently in use, but that's not too hard to fix. All that'd be left would be getting to his swank house and moving out his family to move in Mitch's.

He wondered if Caroline would like to raise a family, or if he should kill off the kids, they're young and he knew with his hectic work schedule Caroline would have a lot on her hands.

Mitch reached a pay phone and dialed the office, he called to schedule an emergency home visit for an elderly patient with a bad cough and weakness.

Once that's done, he headed back to the front of the building; as he waited across the way where he knew the doctor wouldn't suspect to see him approach from.

Dr. Leonard Cravens, black bag in tote, emerged from the front door of his office, turned to the door he began to lock it when it dawned on him what he had just seen walking out the door. His keys dropped to the stoop and, bag at the ready, he raced to the fallen man in the middle of the street.

It took him eighteen seconds to get a cursory understanding of the situation, a severely beaten man with grievous injury to the arm and head- he pulls out his phone and dials 9-1-1. No sooner than he hits send, a knife slashes across his throat deeply, there's no struggle, he fell backward into the pull on his scalp by the man wielding the blade.

"Why hello Leonard," Mitch says with a smirk, with a toothy smile he added, "Goodbye Leonard. I'll send your regards to your family."

Mitch takes the moment to pull Leonard back to his office, he's immensely pleased at how little blood he's gotten onto the road but it took longer than he had hoped to drag Leonard off the street, and he began to feel antsy when he heard a car in the distance. Mitch fished through Leonard's pockets, after finding no keys he surveyed the scenery before spotting a shining metallic lump on the stoop. He made a fast jog to it, swiped his hand over the keys and fished out the sign he had seen hanging in the corner before putting it onto the door and closing- then locking it.

By then, he could see a car approach, still too far away to clearly see him, but he knew he didn't have the time to get Spencer. He called out quickly, "Spencer, I'll pick you up later after we finish unpacking! We'll get a beer or something. Okay? Later!"

He rushed back to the van before driving off.

Just as he made a left and disappeared from sight, a cop car arrived in front of the doctor's office. The dispatched Deputy puts a hand over his face as he saw what he could only suspect to be another victim of the serial killer before he radios in, "There's a body here… I… I think it might be that missing fed!"

Getting out of his car, lights ablaze, he scanned the area for any signs of motion, he found none. He leaned in and took a pulse while fully expecting that to just be the routine of clearing a corpse. "Oh my good lord- Harriet, call in an EVAC chopper, he's got a pulse!" He turned off the radio and tried to rouse Spencer for the better part of ten minutes which was the amount of time it took until the ambulance had gotten there.

That said ambulance loaded him up within a minute flat and took the road at a 120 MPH clip before they finally reached the air strip and sent the agent to the county hospital 60 miles away.

As the ID played across the radios, the police on the outskirts of town chimed in.

"Walt, you sure that's the missing federal agent? Four hours ago the CSU put him on the northern outskirts of town, and the suspicious house fire up the road an hour ago- he had to be up around here…"

"The missing fed's the one with the two weird unmatched socks, right? Yeah, I don't think anyone else made that fashion statement in town today. It's him. Tell those feds their friend's at county hospital. He looked real bad, they might wanna hurry. I couldn't wake him up."

[Criminal Minds]

There have been times when Aaron Hotchner truly hated his role as Section Chief, this was one of those times as he ordered his profilers to hold positions. From what the LEO said, this might be the last few moments of Reid's life, but he couldn't just bow out of the investigation. He couldn't have his team look apathetic to the suffering of the other victims, but he could also make sure any reprimand that goes to Morgan was a 'look' that read more 'thank you' than 'you're on my list'.

While he made sure Morgan had left with his own vehicle to double up on Prentiss and Seaver's trip into town, he and Rossi complete what they need to at the arson site, or so he thought before the firefighters announced the building as cleared. There was no point in entering slowly, not with the ticking in his ears that now might be the last time he would ever see Spencer alive, but he compartmentalized and hated himself for doing it so damn well.

No one else on his team could do his job, not one of them would have it in them to turn their backs so fully in official capacity on a team mate and yet he was a seasoned veteran at it. Elle, Morgan, Garcia, and now, officially, Reid had made it into the line-up of regrets and feeling a bit more like the bastard his father always claimed he was.

A CSU would tell you fire is a death-sentence for forensics, a forensic firefighter would laugh and say how much the fire tells them about the unsub, but a profiler? A profiler would read what the fire did, how it changed the room, and what the room would've been set like beforehand as if the fire never took place. He thought this in the sea of layers of foamy CO2 discharge, soot, water, and remnants of furniture.

Eyes swept over the wreckage, he spotted two things that were completely out of place. Burnt and shattered glass- melted from the heat, and a rock, one side completely caked in soot.

Today they had been lucky, well, as lucky as they could be with an agent missing and in the custody of a psychotic spree-killer… though that begged questions of ideology all of its own- like why keep Reid alive- the cabin they suspected the unsub to be hiding out and containing Reid had been rigged to explode. There were two bodies found in the flames, but the fire itself? There is no way the fire could have killed the victims, though Hotch officially had to wait for the autopsy to confirm that.

No, this was a situation of the unsub getting rid of people who would be quickly tied back to him and keeping them out of sight, out of mind. He wouldn't kill himself, he's too much a narcissist to do them all the favor. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered how Reid mentioned how some dictator-run country would execute a 'traitor of the state' and then charge their family the cost of the bullet. Insult to injury.

He missed having Reid here, just as much as he missed not being with Spencer now at the hospital, because he would give just about anything for it to be like it's supposed to… and he knew fully that's not how it worked. Instead he looked back at the odd duck in the room. Well, it's a rock, not a duck… but that didn't change the fact that one of these things didn't belong.

Donning purple latex gloves, he reminded himself that he should not ever allow Reid to do resupplies again for the forensics kit, though he can't entirely rule out that Garcia did this. What company even makes size 12 gloves in purple? He flipped the rock over and his eyes went wide.

Water damage everywhere, and yet he knew the probability of a coin toss is almost a perfect 50-50 split- there was an infinitesimally small chance that it would land on its side and stay upright, he also now confirmed that he will never, ever bet against Reid ever. Even if Prentiss has a Sin to Win Weekend, he'll side with Reid, because sometimes even odds as favorable as a fifty-fifty chance are still lucky when the outcome goes so right. He already has dialed Garcia when Rossi honed in on his discovery.

"We have a plate number. Those bodies can't be them. The deputy was right, that has to be Reid he found." Hotch clarified before Garcia picked up.

"Hello, you've reached the directory board of the all knowing goddess. For fortuitous news press one, for awesome technical analysis press two, for private appointments with a bottle of bubbly, Jacuzzi, and me press three and be Derek Morgan… for-"

"Two, Garcia. I need you to run a plate number, Reid left us a clue… and then I'd like to be redirected to option one on the menu." He rolled his eyes for Dave's sake so he can get the hint.

"Right, I am at the ready, go for it!"

"Zulu Bravo 3 Charlie 4 1 Charlie, if that doesn't come up, try Zulu Bravo 3 Charlie 4 Indigo Charlie."

"ZB3C41C or ZB3C4IC, gotcha, and got him! That belongs to one Louise Devereaux, it's a commercial plate for a company car- van, wait a second this is for a grocery store chain that also has a late-night gas station. Hotch, we just figured out what gas station Reid went to before he was abducted. I'm going to pull up the time-slots and figure out who took our boy-wonder!"

"Garcia, before you do- you said you had fortuitous news… is it about Reid?" He hated that his voice sounded a little weak in his own ears with emotion, but he accepted it and continued on with his wishful thinking.

"Reid made it to the hospital alive, he's in surgery, and from what I hear about hospitals, they don't operate on dead people, so I'm taking that as good news, sir."

There is an air of gratefulness and frustration looming around him, but Hotch opted to give Garcia's optimism the benefit of the doubt because really, it's much less heart-breaking than the alternative. The physical disconnect was met by Hotch relaying the information about the make and model and putting out the APB on the vehicle and then start the coordination of a grid search to find it before the radio-waves were interrupted by Prentiss announcing the addition to the board of victims of the spree killer to include the town doctor. Momentarily it struck them as off that the LEO who had found Reid wouldn't have asked the doctor to stabilize him, unless he knew the doctor was already dead, or out of the office- which Seaver addressed via phone call to Rossi about just that.

Hotch opened the official channel about where Morgan was, not because he wanted to reprimand the man for being a loyal best friend to his lover, but because he couldn't hold out not knowing everything Morgan knew on Reid's status thus far. Prentiss informed them of his absent status from the location Reid was recovered from and Hotch made the call that he had so wanted to dial for the past two hours.

"Morgan, where are you?"

"Hotch you're too good of a profiler to ask that bull shit question, unless you honestly don't remember the name of the county hospital out here," Morgan said, cutting the crap of official reprimand to get to what they all knew they really cared about, "He's been in surgery for the past two hours, but they just rolled him out of trauma, now they're taking him for x-rays for the less-damaging injuries. Hotch, if I get my hands on this creep…"

"Any and all thoughts and or sentiments of non-compliance to FBI protocol should strictly be held until after we all board the jet," Hotch reminded him, because he didn't want to have to give a real reprimand for Morgan losing his temper and seeming unprofessional. They all can think of 6, 12, 15, 15, 10 and 12 things they would like to do to the unsub, and by things they meant bullets in chamber they'd love to introduce. To be fair, Hotch wasn't certain Reid would want to shoot the unsub six times and empty his revolver into the man, but then again, Reid was a damn fine shot. He had an excellent tutor after all.

Momentarily there was talks about who would go break the news to the missus of the good doctor, but the axe fell swiftly to Prentiss and Seaver as they were greeted by the frantic woman with her stroller unloading her car just behind the crime-scene tape. She is frantically struggling to get closer screaming about how he didn't answer her call when she called him and how he ALWAYS answered the phone when she called him.

It had been ten minutes after the team arrived, and after the woman finally calmed down and explained herself to be Mrs. Beverly Cravens, Seaver sat the woman down and took her statement. All the while in the front seat of Beverly's car, a puddle of ice-cream formed in the corner of the brown bag of groceries that had so patiently awaited her to bring diligently to the freezer.

Prentiss offered to take her back to the station with her baby, and Beverly agreed.

By time they all arrive at the station, one LEO offered to take Mrs. Cravens' statement, a dispatcher offered to take her baby, and another LEO offered Prentiss directions to the hospital. The group decided to head to Spencer's bedside for a vigil- and Hotch has long since abandoned concerns about what the LEOs might think versus what he'd think about himself if he didn't cut the crap and get there before Spencer woke up.

He didn't have to face that dilemma, Hotch managed to get to Reid's bedside using slightly excessive speeds, okay so he floored the pedal of the Tahoe and used his sirens and horns creatively- oh, and took five years off Rossi's life in the process- to get to County Hospital, before Reid was even rolled into ICU.

Morgan caught him just before the doctors came out of the elevator with Reid, unconscious and with gauze packing one side of his swollen head, before heading to the ICU.

For a moment Hotch really felt as if Reid was attached to a school of jellyfish drifting just to his left, wrapping his left arm so severely in their tentacles before he realized how ridiculous that sounded even to his own tired ears.

"Ah, Spencer Reid?" one of the doctors asked, implying the party was there for him as they wheeled him past.

Aaron took charge, "Yes, how is he? What happened to him?"

"As far as we can tell, he had a subdural hematoma and then additional trauma to the skull cap when someone tried a DIY trepanning, we repaired the torn vessel and have him on a drip to increase clotting factors so he doesn't bleed out again into his brain and kill him, but there is a very real risk of bacterial meningitis at this point. He's on several high-power antibiotic drips and we won't know how extensive any brain damage may be until he wakes up. If he wakes up. That said, I'll move on to the other news, the lacerations to his right arm were caused by rotted timber and his white blood cell counts are off the charts, he doesn't appear to be septic yet, and hopefully the cocktail we have him on will keep it that way, three of his left metacarpals are broken, II, III, and IV, as is his hamate and pisiform of his left hand- those are carpal bones, they make up part of the wrist and hand… from a stomping injury. He has two cracked ribs also from a stomping injury, a bruised liver a fracture on his right zygomatic arch and hairline skull fracture to the temporal bone on the same side. Whoever your friend pissed off, he did it thoroughly. Your friend really has no reason medically to be alive right now."

Morgan clenched and unclenched his fists and jaw, the doctor's candid manner- while exactly the information they needed to have- had been doled out in a rapid succession of hits to the diaphragm and lower, and it hurt to hear it. He looked at Hotch who just seemed to take it without even slightly being phased or winded. Maybe that was because he had started it with he's alive, well, at least it was implied.

"Did you receive his living will in regards to pain medications?"

"Yes, he's not on any opioids but we do have him on enough pregabalin to kill a small child. His current options are that, bleed to death with mild pain on NSAIDs or go into shock and die from nothing, that or put the opioids back on the table and dose him on the best drug we have in the pharmacy. Ever hear of dilaudid? THAT would be what he'd be on instead of lines two, three and four over there."

The others visibly tensed, the doctor didn't address it, and Hotch was unsure if that's because he wasn't a profiler so he didn't notice it, or because he's so much of an ass he doesn't care. He's glad for the silence though. That, and that Reid didn't hear a word of that segue, he'd have had an anxiety attack except for all the pregabalin in him.

"Morgan, call Prentiss, Seaver, and Garcia. Tell them we're calling it a night and we'll start back up in the morning. I'm going to check in on Reid, if he comes to he might have some more information for us to work with… otherwise, we can council about what we've found out today here."

The way he said 'here', Morgan knew he should tell the girls to swing by the hotel and pick up their go-bags, because he's certain they'll be haunting the hospital's ICU wing until Reid wakes up, and then some.

He's about to go inside Reid's room when Rossi grabbed his arm, it saved him from a broken nose when the door closed crisply as Hotch entered.

"Tell the girls to pick up some good coffee too. I'll buy as long as it isn't the cheap crappy shit. We'll all need it," Rossi suggested, then dropped Morgan's arm leaving him to ponder if Rossi saved him out of friendship or because he really just wanted drinkable coffee. Possibly a combination of the two, but Morgan had to lean toward drinkable coffee.

Hotch sat beside Reid, and when he took ahold of a swollen and purple hand, he quickly became Aaron and the hand transformed from Reid's into Spencer's hand. The level between work and personal had momentarily dissolved despite hundreds of promises of professionalism that they both knew were lies, they knew it in a plantation cemetery in Georgia, they knew it in the Hotchner home in Virginia, and they knew it now… and if Spencer didn't know it now, he would as soon as he woke up… because Aaron knew that's not a fucking 'if'. He had rarely wanted to physically harm a medical professional as much as that man, although, he did suspect with Dowd he wouldn't have had hurt feelings had he made the shot instead of Reid, the ass had clocked him pretty hard just for the sake of self-satisfaction.

"Spencer, it's time to get up…" He whispered softly as he brushed back Spencer's matted hair away from the gauze in a horrible comb-over that he's certain would make his lover self-conscious once he comes to. "You can't just skip work like that, we need you in the field, so please, wake up."

Aaron is under no delusion that he had any privacy here in this fishbowl, his subordinates hovered outside, and he's sure Prentiss can and will read lips. He's sure she won't translate to the others, but that's collateral damage already done, he had no sense of privacy and he'd be a fool to think under these pretexts that his private life would stay that way. They're a family, they know enough of the secrets they each have; they've just refused to outright say them. If any of them couldn't profile it, he'd have given them the pink-slip.

"Spencer, wake up." Two hours, he knew logically that the 'better' way to have used them would be meeting and discussing what they had on the case, but this was by no means the wrong decision. He only confirmed that more-so when Spencer's hand twitched underneath his own pair.

One hand traveled to Spencer's hair, still brushing it over, again and again as he continued to coax him back to the waking world. "That's right, open your eyes for me, it's time to wake up."

Puffy eyelids started to crack open, it's a beautifully ugly sight, the swollen things three times their normal size, and yet the deep purple not that far from the shade they'd be when Spencer pulls a triple-decker all-nighter, like he once did when he had a thesis due by Friday the next week and they knew they had a consultation Monday. Spencer had stayed up Thursday, Friday and Saturday, half of Sunday, finished up the report, emailed it in, then passed out on the couch in Hotch's apartment- and slept like the dead until 6:37 AM when Hotch pushed his scrawny ass off the couch and onto the carpet because Spencer had told him to do it if he wasn't up by 6:00 and didn't make any signs of progress by 6:15.

Aaron smiled, it was a cute, funny moment when the groggy Spencer had given him such an accusing look until he remembered that he literally hadn't just asked for it but made Aaron promise he'd do it.

Spencer licked his lips and made the whites of his eyes visible as he forced his eyelids up just a bit more. They're half-lidded at best, but Aaron is certain this was his best try.

"Welcome back…" Aaron said as he smiled a truly genuine, albeit sad smile. He had never been so happy and so horrified at the same time, hope was a crushing thing, he knew this but he couldn't stop himself from believing things would really be okay. Spencer the Magician could pull anything off, this included, was all he had to tell himself and he believed.

"Where did I go?" Spencer said as a tired smile played across his swollen features, "Did I fall asleep?"

"Just for a bit there, you scared the hell out of us all, too. Don't expect to get any more sleep tonight, you beat us all out with that 6 hour cat-nap."

"Cats sleep for roughly 17 hours a day… how can that be a cat nap? You said we could go home for the night, six hours would still be…"

"Spencer, do you know what day it is today?"

"Tuesday, unless it's passed midnight, then Wednesday. What time is it?"

"It's Wednesday alright, but it's 7PM. You went missing last night around 11PM, the unsub grabbed you, we need to know what happened." He locked eyes with Garcia from outside the window and signaled her to come in.

"Unsub…? You think I've met him? No, you're wrong… I know I'm not exactly a morning person, but, come on Aaron, are you really going to mess with me first thing when we have a case?"

"Look around, does this look like a hotel?"

He did look around, Aaron knew it was a good sign that he's communicating, but the fear that he'd lost that information and the even larger fear that he's possibly lost something that made him Spencer Reid was stifling.

"…This… isn't our room. What's going on? I… I just went to get some Funyons."

"Who did you see? Did you get to the store?"

"Yeah, and then I came back to the room and fell asleep. Aaron, this isn't a funny prank… did you and Morgan get some weird ideas and…"

"Spencer, I'm not the type to play a practical joke, or set up a line for an IV for that matter. Tell me about the clerk, what was the clerk wearing, what color uniform, they're name, hair color…"

"Some guy named Mitch, he was reading The Prince by Machiavelli. I commented on that and then I left and walked through the park back to the hotel…"

"And then what?"

"I got back to the hotel and woke up in a weird room." His eyebrow rose in frustration.

"Spencer, you never got back to the hotel room, you walked through the park, someone hit you with a rotted tree branch- it got you in the arm and in the head and knocked you out cold probably. You were then taken to a cabin close to the West Virginia border and walked on-foot back toward town until he caught up with you again. We pieced that much together, but-"

"How did you know about my dream? Profiling dreams is really difficult- and a bit of a pseudoscience since the interpretations can be so wildly different."

"Spencer, it happened."

Across his face, and it shocked Aaron genuinely to see it, and Garcia who had been paralyzed at the door half-inside, was a look of sheer anger that Aaron did not normally equate with a face Spencer Reid could make.

"I'm telling you it was a dream! It didn't really happen!"

"What didn't really happen?" Garcia's voice cracked in, it's gentle, nurturing, supportive, everything that was needed to defuse Spencer's hostile outburst and it scared Aaron to see how quickly that rage transformed into a gut-wrenching look of guilt.

"He didn't really kill those people because of me… I… I can't believe it's my fault they died… I can't be responsible for more innocent people dying… I won't be… I'm telling you, Aaron, it was a dream." His voice cracked, his lips turned downcast, as if a denial of this would be a denial to a fundamental truth that would take Reid's ability to live away.

Aaron swallowed thickly, and raked his fingers through Spencer's hair. He knew the state of fuzzy logic, the processes were working but they're on autopilot, there was no captain manning the ship to veer from the icebergs, "You're right… I'm sorry, I'm sorry it was a mean joke. You hit your head, you woke up in the hospital, that's what happened, okay?" Halfway through the reprieve, Aaron pulled the clearly shaken Spencer into a tight hug.

He nodded into Aaron's embrace.

"Tell me what happened in the nightmare. All of it, otherwise I can't fix it and make it disappear."

Garcia locked eyes with Hotch, not sure if she really should bear witness to him lying to his lover, not sure she liked being an accessory to something that could so easily be so damaging.

"I was in a cabin with dead bodies poking out of curio chests, they smelled and were bloated with gas… and on the couch was this young teenaged girl, desiccated to the point of mummification, I heard the screen door and I chanced running. I lost my shoes but my knee just throbbed. I… I couldn't remember if I was coming or going or who or what I was, or anyone I knew, I just knew a monster was behind me and I had to get out, and then I ran into an old couple on the road, I had fell under the street lamp but they stopped before they hit me with their car. He killed the couple in the car that almost ran me over… he made me watch as he shot Charlie the second time. He told me how he didn't know them but he was sure they deserved to die, because they're all animals, that only he and I are the real humans and was going on about the shadow and the chair from Plato's philosophy, then we were outside, he made me move the corpse of that girl into the van… he wanted to kill the doctor and steal his home, kill his wife and keep their baby to raise as his and his girlfriend's own- but she's dead… and he thinks she's alive… I wouldn't help him though, I wouldn't help someone kill anyone! I wouldn't, I'd rather die… you have to believe me…! It was a nightmare, it wasn't real… It can't be real…"

Prentiss looked at Morgan, "He used Reid as bait in the trap, sprung on Dr. Cravens and that's how he overpowered him. We thought it was strange that someone could get the best of a man so physically fit to slash his throat, but we know he blitzes and he set up a great scenario to do it," she said decisively, her tone grew cold in her critique, she added an angry, "That clever bastard."

"Wait, wait why would Cravens be his target?" Seaver braved.

"Isn't it obvious? It's envy," Morgan started, but Rossi interrupted.

"Why would he envy something subhuman though? It's more than that, he thought Cravens life should really be his. He wanted those nice things that lifestyle could afford…"

"The house, the car, the respect, the beautiful wife, the happy kids, the money… he would be like a king here."

"More like a Tyrant, in the Greek sense, if he interpreted Dr. Cravens as a king, if he killed him, he would be entitled to take over that role… it's what happened in Oedipus," Prentiss offered, "Where is Mrs. Cravens?"

"She should still be at the precinct, I think she called her parents, they live near Richmond. They should probably just be getting there," Ashley informed, her eyes went wide. "You think he's in their home, don't you?"

"Didn't they say the door was unlocked? The LEO who found Reid didn't find the doctor but assumed he was out fishing like the sign said- even though the door was unlocked when we checked. He didn't have the time to move the body set the sign and lock the door, but he has his keys." Prentiss pushed open the door. "Hotch, I think I know where he is. He's at the Cravens household."

Prentiss exited as soon as she entered, but Hotch can't interpret that sign, his eyes are too focused on Spencer's as his jaw dropped and he started to gasp a panicked, "…No… it, it wasn't a nightmare? …It was real…? I… it's my fault… it's my fault he's dead…" Hollowness replaced sorrow in Spencer's eyes and it genuinely terrified Aaron.

"No, Spencer- Reid, listen to me it's not your fault. You were unconscious, there was absolutely nothing you COULD have done to stop it, you were just in major surgery for 2 hours, there is no way you could have physically done anything to prevent it. They found you there unconscious and unresponsive, this isn't your fault at all."

"But… But I…" He choked back and looked up at the ceiling, where as he stared he willed the tears to stay hidden.

"No, there is no but, Spencer, this isn't your fault. You're not the mad man running around shooting people, we were brought in to stop him and it's not always a clean process, but everything we have now we have because of what you did and what the team as a whole was able to get out of the clues you left behind. Now we have to catch him before he can hurt anyone else, do you understand?"

Spencer nodded meekly once.

"Alright, then Garcia is going to wait with you here until I get back. I promise we're going to stop him, Spencer. I swear."

[Criminal Minds]

Spencer took a deep breath, every time he did this, he could feel the throbbing in the base of his neck all around his temporal bones and down to his jaw pulsate just a little less before picking back up. It didn't hurt, it just throbbed. It's the familiar feeling of being on a pain killer, but thanks to his ever-present sense of self he knew there weren't opioids. Those would have given him a sense of abandon, he could have said to hell with it once the drugs were in his system. He was so glad they weren't.

The room was hazy and as he looked away from the ceiling he appreciated the surreal feeling of an empty hospital room. It was a great magic trick, making Garcia disappear too. He's glad she wasn't here to watch and nurture him as he tears himself at the seams. Good god he's responsible for at least three innocent people dying, and that's just who he knew about! The explosion Mitch set up might really have killed some officers, and he knew better than to even ask because all he'll hear is either a deflection and lie of omission, or an outright lie or denial, unless of course, it's true no one died, because then he'd hear a 'Worry about yourself, kid.'

He did truly worry about himself, not as much as he suspected he would if he wasn't on Lyrica, he can't complain about the anti-anxiety aspect of the drug which was keeping him from going insane over the fear of falling off the wagon even though it's not an opioid-derived analgesic. Hell, he swore off cough syrup until, well, Anthrax.

His eyes shifted around the room, it was ethereal, the door truly felt like a portal between reality and this… limbo he found himself in. Inside the empty walls he decided he wasn't lonely. He's alone now, because he couldn't bring himself to break down again in front of his family like this. Aaron would probably ask how he got Garcia out of the room, but he'd side-step and deflect that, because he knew Garcia herself didn't know how he did it and a great Magician wouldn't go on about how he accomplished something.

That, and he was a total cad about it. She probably thought her noble quest would help him, and it did… but much more in the way that the destination was nearly the stopping point of a journey. He smiled warmly thinking how nice it actually would be to hold a physical copy of a book in his hands. He looked at his right hand and corrected his thinking, hand. He wasn't going to be playing with Aaron's tie anytime soon, but when he inevitably starts PT, it will be a very worthwhile motivational tool.

Spencer let out another deep sigh, it was strange that he cared about the pulsing, he knew intuitively it should hurt him, even if he didn't perceive the pain, but still- he wasn't actually feeling it, so why did he bother?

He let out a small laugh, and that does manage to hurt. Despite how his mind was attempting to divorce him from himself, he was still managing to be empathetic to himself. He really was a goody-two-shoes.

That's when his thoughts started to roll in darker, a goody-two-shoes who got three innocent bystanders killed because he made for such great bait. For the life of him he wished he knew where Mitch was heading, sure he suspected it's to find the doctor's home and move in, but it's not a straight path to it. He didn't even know where the house was, but he's sure there would be collateral damage the entire way there unless Mitch was somehow placated.

By being there with Mitch he led to the deaths of three people, but by being with Mitch there were countless opportunities and lives he didn't take as well. Spencer just couldn't quantify, he wasn't omniscient like Garcia.

He let out another smooth breath. 'What's the chance that Mitch will go peacefully if he feels cornered?'

He doesn't fully recognize that voice buzzing about in his head, either because he has cerebral swelling or because he doesn't think he wouldn't offer up the statistic even to himself, but he knew that it's really his ego pondering something. He just wished he could tell who the super ego and the id were in this conversation.

There was a part of him- one he was very afraid of, that just wanted to lie here hooked up to these IVs and not feel anything until he could find a way to numb the mental pain of causing good people to become vulnerable, and exploited with finality. Another part knew it's selfish to leave- knew what his teammates would feel if he did something so uncharacteristically stupid and yet so characteristically naïve.

He can't think of anything he can do outside of that door to help in his condition.

'Open your eyes, you can't do anything in here like this.'

He begged to differ about things his mind could do and easily references some very pleasant memories with Aaron and himself, and not much in between in the ways of clothes or props. He let out another breath, this one had a small stutter to it.

There was an understanding between Hotch and Reid, between Aaron and Spencer about what work was, and the call of duty to that mistress, but Spencer couldn't help but feel a little put-off by his own wish to forsake that and just hold Aaron. It's been too long, he wanted to go to bed, be in bed with that man and instead last night turned into this grueling existence, and really, he would never go to a gas station at night again for anything if presented with sleep in bed with Aaron or potentially miss that for x-y-z time.

He somehow thought he might have exacerbated his nyctophobia, that or become more clingy. He heard a strange knock at the door, he looked back up to the ceiling, the white light emanated downward from it hurt his eyes a bit. Funny, with the way he's swimming in his head but his eyes still hurt.

The knock sounded more like a raking sound, his heartbeat picks up, there is a possibility that Mitch would have doubled back for him, especially if he was diverted or already accomplished his goal. How long had it been? Hours, for the surgery, right? Maybe he did… Spencer screwed his eyes closed tighter and that's when it hits him.

It hits him in that subtle scent of musk and sweat that is Hotch when he's actually done something to make him sweat- which is almost exclusively a physical activity, because save for thermodynamic cooling, nothing could make that man sweat. His eyes weren't even open, all this time, that door he'd been so intently staring at, the hospital room was too sterile, and different from how he remembered it the first time he had awoken.

He let his eyes open gently, batting them until he can force them further apart. He saw a chair dragged over from the corner, Aaron's there, leaning over him, his tie mingling with the corded accessories going in and on his arms and chest respectively. Aaron dragged a chair over, he wasn't wearing his suit jacket, proof this is Aaron and not Hotch, in a much more overt indicator.

"Hey, you're finally waking up from your nap, huh?" Aaron smiled down at Spencer, but his eyes are too tired for it to be completely genuine.

"…Mm, nap? I didn't realize I fell asleep…"

Aaron nodded knowingly, "Isn't that the point?" He moved Spencer's hair over, he was fidgeting, he was on edge about something. Spencer noticed now that maybe this wasn't a pure Aaron moment, he still had his shoulder-holster on, and his gun was already drawn. Drawn. Somehow that should be sending some kind of frantic message to his brain but he just doesn't get why it would or should. Spencer was certain that he had swelling in the brain, encephalitis was the only rational reason for his own irrational thought processes. He could remember Lyrica- the more common brand name of pregabalin, the drug class, the secondary uses for the drug in a psychiatric setting, but he can't think of why Aaron having his gun out would be important.

"Did you find him?" Spencer asked, slowly realizing that might be part of this.

Aaron smiled and squeezed his hand, "We have an idea of where he might head to. We disrupted his comfort zones and we're predicting one of three things will happen. He'll try to get back into a different comfort zone he still feels is accessible, he'll go ballistic and try to take down as many people as fast as he can, or he'll end himself quietly and leave a nasty mess for some crime scene cleaner crew to fix."

"…How?"

Aaron nodded toward the window, "We were half a step behind him, when he reached the Cravens' home, we disrupted him and put him in a position where he'd either get caught or he'd have to run- literally- and abandon what he was trying to bring with him. His first victim, she couldn't have been more than 16."

"She was 14," Spencer corrected, but he's not sure if he is correct, come to think of it.

"The area was blocked off and evacuated, everyone is accounted for, so he can either try suicide by cop, or he'll try to reach a safe place."

"…And you think that's at a hospital?"

Aaron shook his head, "No, I think that's happen-stance. Some witnesses heard him talking to himself while he was driving through town, talking as if he was on the phone with you. He lost his idealized girlfriend, so now he'll try to reconnect with an idealized best friend."

Spencer smiled, "Morgan is going to be pissed if he hears he was replaced."

Aaron squeezed his good knee, "He'd cope."

Spencer closed his eyes, "Aaron do you hear that?" He let out a slow breath almost silently as he peeled off the heart monitors to halt the beeping, Aaron gives him a befuddled look but tried to focus in on the sound as well.

"It's down the hallway, coming from the left."

Spencer nodded, "Where are the others?"

"Garcia is back at the station, Seaver's with Morgan, Prentiss is with Rossi, and a few county plain-clothed officers are mingling through the hospital keeping eyes out for our unsub."

For a moment Aaron has a hard time reading Spencer's face as he obscured it, leaning his chin into his neck before he looked up to lock eyes up at Aaron and raise his chin in an authoritative air of a confident person who knew something no one else did. He gave a cocked smile.

"He's not coming here."

Aaron can see the sadness in his eyes now. He let out a slow breath, and willed himself not to make it into a sigh as Aaron sank next to Spencer, the bed dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge of it. "It's still a chance."

"And there's still a chance I'll get hit by lightning while scratching off a million-dollar lotto ticket but it still isn't going to happen."

Aaron raised an eyebrow at the analogy, "And what exactly are those odds?"

"Zero, you know I don't play lotto, if I gamble I'll play cards, they have the second best odds, the slot machines have the best but I'm not sitting at the penny machines all day with a cup of quarters, your chance of crime are higher, although I have always been tempted to map out a roulette wheel."

Aaron gave Spencer a look. "What?" A pause passed between them, Aaron didn't adjust his look, "What?"

"We've talked about this, Spencer. Do you want a repeat of what happened last time we were on a case in Vegas?"

"Look around, this isn't Vegas. Besides, what's so wrong with paying for Jack's college education in cash?"

Aaron's raised eyebrow practically read: What isn't wrong within that entire last sentence? His incredulousness is enough of a distraction that Spencer needed to let out a lower guttural caterwaul as if he accepted that he is in fact in a copious amount of pain after all.

It was followed by a set of suppressed syllables he forced under breath to keep into a whisper while he forced his back up off the hospital bed's slightly cocked mattress and into an upright sitting position.

"If you really want to catch him, we have one clean, good shot. If we mess up there is no redo."

Aaron's eyes grow hard, more intense and focused, the transformation into Hotch and Reid apparent in their body language as they move more into 'case' mode. "What are you thinking?"

"Gideon told me once the reason I couldn't beat him at chess was because I don't think outside of the box. This is the box, this town- they've made the unsub feel trapped and pressured until he had to lash out. He sees us as the only humans here besides himself, if we make it apparent that we side with him and make a big show of leaving… he'll come out. We have to make it look like the police resent us and that we're not willing to stop him. If he feels he's going to lose that connection to people again he'll come out to say goodbye. That sounds crazy doesn't it?" He looked at the corner of the bed then back up to meet Hotch's gaze. He licked his lips.

"So orchestrate the media into reporting on this schism, we'll have to tell the sheriff, but not his units. They wouldn't be believable. How long?"

"It'll take a day for it to hit the local newspapers, but he's more likely to read them then watch the news." Their eyes met once more, Hotch clearly analyzing him. "All we have to do is make it clear we don't think there's anything further we can do here, say we plan to fly out tomorrow at noon and be highly visible rolling out, he'll see us, and he'll come. I'll act as bait while everyone 'loads up the plane' and …he'll probably approach me. Hopefully he won't feel the need to blitz me again."

He let his eyes roll toward the floor as Hotch's fill with concern. "That's your plan? Piss off the cops, make the media think we're not here to help them and give the FBI a black eye in the same state that houses the main branch?"

"Outside the box." Reid's lips curled into his mouth as he chewed on them awaiting Hotch's decision on the matter.

Hotch pinched his brow, "If you're wrong about this Strauss will have all of our asses."

Reid gave his a quick possessive glance before looking back at Hotch, "Can't have that now, can we?"

Another glance passed between them, Hotch gave Reid a look vaguely familiar to ones he would shoot Morgan and Garcia if they got too handsy or mouthy in front of the LEOs. "Alright."

"Alright…?" Reid's head cocked to the side.

"Alright, we'll do it." He focused back on Reid again, honing in, "But you'll be placed in a strategic position and you will not wander outside of that window. We'll call in a sniper just in case things turn ugly. Are you sure you're up to this?"

"I have to be."

"Reid, I'm asking you seriously, I'm knowingly putting you in the field with injuries, can you draw your gun and defend yourself if push comes to shove?"

He straightened his back and suppressed his wince, "I'm not going to let him kill anyone else on my account."

Hotch rolled his head on his neck, "That isn't what I mean."

"Oh, it is though. If I have the chance to make the arrest, I'm taking it, there are three bodies in the morgue because of me and I'm not giving him a chance to add to it. Besides, I've walked off bruised ribs before."

Hotch winced at the thought, Dowd, that had been years ago but it brought it all right back, "Yeah, you walked it off and we still had to call an ambulance."

Reid smiled smugly, "No, you didn't have to, you just opted to follow procedure. They missed the diagnosis, and so did you until we got back." He let out a laugh, "You were testing out your hypothesis at the firing range, you know I still have the gun you gave me."

Hotch's face relaxed slightly, offering the smallest, but fond smile at hearing that, "Really? Even though you only carry the revolver?"

Reid nodded slowly, deliberated, "Revolvers don't jam, they're easy to clean, and I don't have to police my brass when I practice at the range. Yours? I keep it at my apartment because it's saved my life when it mattered. Plus the tritium sites make it ideal if I have to shoot an intruder in the dark."

Hotch rolled his eyes at that, "Don't tell me I should come in wearing Kevlar."

"Completely unnecessary, unless you come in during a night-time black out. You know I usually keep at least two lights on."

"And sleep with your contacts in," he added, he was still raking his eyes over Reid to assess him.

Hotch watched Reid as he elongated his neck and straightened his mouth into a calm, calculating demeanor. The show acted as proof and Hotch pulled his phone from his pocket.

"Garcia, I need you to patch through to the team and the sheriff, tell him it's for his ears only."

[Criminal Minds]

"This is totally a bad idea," Garcia said, obviously flabbergasted by what she had just heard.

"For the record, you're only saying that because you think it won't work," Reid retorted, he smiled back at Hotch while conversing on speaker with the rest of the team.

"No, actually, I'm pretty sure any time we use each other as bait is bad, even if it's highly successful bait- ESPECIALLY when it's highly successful bait. We just got you back from being kidnapped by this cuckoo and you're all gung-ho to face him again?"

"Baby girl, cuckoo isn't exactly a legit psychoanalytical term," Morgan offered, gently. Anything to get her less riled.

"Well how about crazy son of a-"

"Still not in the DSM-IV even if it should be," Morgan explained quickly. "Delusional in psychotic break is accurate enough though. And I agree with Garcia all the way on this, you know what the kick-back on a pistol is, if you can even see straight right now- and Hotch, I swear to god that boy's lyin' if he says he can, that kick-back is going to hurt like no other and if you miss you'll be on the ground with a delusional psychotic who you just disillusioned, I don't know if you can remember the last time that happened, what with you being in a COMA and all, but hey, I'll remind you just this once, for bragging rights."

Clicking his tongue, Rossi chimed in, "It sounds pretty feasible to me, Prentiss, what do you think?"

"Well, it depends on where we're talking and how soon. They won't even release him from the hospital for a 24 hour hold from when Reid woke up, and to go right back into the field?"

Seaver let out a small cough to indicate her variation in opinion, "Morgan's right though, I'm sorry Agent Reid, but you were hurt really badly, no one can just recover from that and be back at full-swing. You wouldn't be able to defend yourself."

"I could and I have," Reid said, voice low, reproaching his teammates with a determined fierceness that Hotch was certain related back to knowing that he had been used as a lure. "I was dead and then I wasn't and in the span of fifteen minutes I shot my attacker fatally. If I could do it in Georgia, I can do it in Virginia."

Seaver looked to Rossi, both at a seeming loss, but Prentiss touched her eyebrow giving them a cue that he's right on the mark. The quiet venom is enough to sting back Garcia's fast worrying approaches, but Morgan won't go down so easily.

"Hotch, are you seriously okay with this? Not only are we putting his skinny behind on the line, but we're pissing off every cop in a thirty mile radius except for the what, five or six we have in on it? Do you really think that'll be enough back-up?"

"We count on each other and we count on our experiences, Reid believes he can do it and believes his plan will work. I have no reason to doubt him."

"Yeah? I do, hey, Ashley, when you had your concussion- what did you say about grapes?" Morgan chimed in without missing a beat.

"They talk with a weird accent," she said with deadpan resolve, "I also didn't like how my milk looked at me. Cognitive reasoning kind of takes a backseat when your frontal lobes are getting squished."

"The initial encephalopathy has gone down considerably, any brain swelling I have now is secondary to inflammation and even still the pressure is being reduced and drained by the burr-holes they drilled through my skull."

"And where are you going to stash your IV? Real convincing, 'I'm leaving on a plane… let me wheel my IV, because hospitals let patients check out still attached to them!' My ass," Morgan growled.

"If he's close enough to see it, I'll be close enough to shoot him. Of course, you could just arrest him before he even finds where I'll have it taped to. And I'll have you know, I've hidden larger things on my person for longer periods of time."

Hotch nodded silently recalling the day that Morgan lost his stapler, his keyboard, and his desk organizer in the period of three minutes after he had used Reid's coffee cup. It had led to a discussion of magic in the work-place, well, office-place really. The first talk about magic had come right after he cornered Reid when he 'saw him when he got back' from removing a chip from a paranoid schizophrenic's arm. His exact words were, 'I can't believe I let you attempt such a dangerous stunt. I can't believe it worked, how did you pull that off, anyway?' Answered immediately by, 'A magician never reveals his secrets, even if it does technically have to go into a report.'

"Yeah, would my foot be about the right size? I can figure out a perfect place to hide that if you think of getting outta that hospital suite…" Morgan continued.

Reid isn't 100% clear if it's Hotch who rebuked that or Aaron, because both the aspects of his boss and his lover made it clear that it's a line Morgan aught-not to have crossed. "Morgan, threatening a fellow agent isn't conducive to the conversation or the planning process. Cool your head. This isn't the first time, and knowing all of our track records, likely not the last time we've had to work through grievous injuries."

"But it's a head injury Hotch, you can't tell me a single time when knowing any of us took one to the head that you wouldn't pull our asses to the side line until we got perspective!"

"New York Counter-Terrorism," he said in a deadpan voice, recalling quite readily his own brush with explosions and head-injuries, "And immediately afterwards Lower Canaan Ohio."

Rossi chose to throw in with a soft, "And how did that work out for you?"

Reid's face contorted knowing full-well Hotch couldn't have heard something that low. He gave Hotch a look signaling they were waiting for a reply, leading Hotch to surmise what was said, "Dave, if you want to catch up with me do it over some drinks when we're done. Until then, stop being an insubordinate ass, you're being a bad example for Agent Seaver."

"If you're all done pretending we're not going to actually do this… we have stuff to start setting up." Reid suggested, he looked at Hotch with a peculiar expression.

Hotch took the phone off speaker before tapping Reid's foot through the blankets and stepping into the hallway.

Reid leans back into the pillows on his hospital bed and imagines for a moment he doesn't know exactly what Hotch and the others are saying behind the door.

"The plan isn't to allow the unsub to initiate a secondary form of contact with Reid, it's to draw him out into the open. We have the local police fan out over all local roads and funnel him towards the airstrip where we can avoid any civilian casualties and take him clean. This isn't a debate, this isn't up for discussion, this just is. This is how we're proceeding, and I know- believe me I know just how much we're asking of him, Reid's right. This is the best way to minimize loss of lives. He's spiraling and his delusion of grandeur will only make him more dangerous. Reid has given me a full briefing of his time with the unsub and the portrait is of a person building up to a spray of bullets into a street full of people or suicide by cop, this may be our only chance to defuse that."

"Or get our boy-genius shot up holier than Swiss cheese when he does suicide by cop," Morgan said angrily, which was quickly followed by a rush of air and an, "Ow! Woman did you just smack me?"

"Don't say such things about Reid, it's just bad karma to even think like that!"

In the silence that fell between Morgan and Garcia, Rossi chimed in, "Well, now that they're about to discuss the kinkier side of their relationship, I'm hanging up. Meet you at the station, I'll start laying the ground work."

Hotch let out a small smile, "Just remember we don't want to make them hate the FBI, after we leave, we still want them to call us back if they ever need us in this county again."

"I'll do my best, chief," he said in a refreshingly peppy, completely sarcastic voice before deadpanning, "Ashley, that's an example of kissing ass, I hope you took notes, you'll never see me do that a second time."

And with a smirk, Rossi ended the conference call between Seaver, Prentiss and himself. Hotch let out a sigh, "Garcia, you have to play this like you're starting to feel reserved and start pulling back, we'll handle the political head-games, Morgan discuss with the Sheriff what if anything he might require from county for the sting, but when you're in his office, make sure it looks like you're both arguing."

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. You staying back at the hospital with Reid?"

"Just in case the unsub does try to come here, yes. It will lend itself to the local police thinking we're disinterested in the case now."

Morgan muttered something under his breath about if Strauss finds out and career suicide, but Hotch is sure Morgan wasn't expecting him to pick up even that much of it.

[Criminal Minds]

Two in the morning in rural townships are not known for their excitement. In fact, the only three places open in areas like this would be a gas station, a hospital, and a Walmart, and that strictly depended on whether the town even had the last two in or nearby it.

All that said, there was a fairly high level of buzz going throughout the police station. For the past six hours Rossi has been dismissive and unattentive to the locals theories on where the unsub might be, looking outright disinterested in any and all information they had gathered from the latest three crime scenes, and finally, one of the deputies called him on it.

"What the hell is wrong with your team? Weren't y'all mentioning ya were here ta help us and now that ya got your friend back ya don't give two shits about here? People're dyin' damn it!"

"Huh, people, that's a choice word," Rossi said, dusting his jacket a bit. "The way I see it, maybe this guy isn't so far off the mark."

"Rossi, conference, now," Prentiss said, materializing at just too good of a time to be anything but scripted. She makes sure her conversation is loud enough to be overheard by anyone straining to listen, but not anyone else.

She also made sure that everyone was straining to listen.

"Dave, I know what you mean, these people treated that poor kid like this for so long and he's just lashing out- that they deserve it, but we have to stay professional. It's not like we have much else that we can help them with anymore, anyway. Any idea when Hotch is just going to call us in to leave?"

"Not soon enough, probably by this afternoon."

"Alright then, you have to just hold it out a little longer, okay?"

The incredulous officer stormed Morgan and Garcia at that moment, bypassing Seaver as she looked at the geographical profile on the wall half-heartedly, or maybe that really was all she could give to it, not knowing the parameters as well as her senior coworkers did.

"What the hell is wrong with your people?" Luckily, or so he thought, he found the sheriff in the office with the two.

"Whatever do you mean?" Garcia said, tilting her head sympathetically.

"They don't even care! Just because y'all got your friend back alive y'all can just give up nice and easy, is that it? It got too real for ya? Well it's real for us too! These're our neighbors, our friends, our family and they're up and dying and y'all are ready ta just head out on us!"

"Deputy, no one said we're leaving, we're doing everything we can to…"

"Like hell ya are! No one's looking inta anything new, that board hasn't been touched all damn day, and your boss ain't even here! He can't be bothered with us!"

"That's because he's interviewing a valuable witness, the only one who's met the unsub and survived… we're really trying, you just can't see where we're…"

"Baby-girl, don't sweat it. Man, I get it, this is frustrating, you can't figure out where he is, but you have his name now, and once Ashley figures out what area he'll be in, we probably will head out."

"Let me guess, she'll figure it out once the jet's refueled and y'all can leave! Un-friggin'-believable! I hate ya feds, y'all have a stick up your ass or something? These are good people- good people dyin' for that little shit's enjoyment and y'all just wanna call it quits and leave. Cowards!"

"Deputy, watch yer tone," The sheriff drawled out, "They didn't hurt anyone, they came to help and since that time we've gotten the name of the unsub and where he's been hiding out which is more than we've had since this all began. We'll catch him and we'll make him pay for his crimes but the BAU is right, they've done just about everything they can. You want 'em to hold your hand until you slap the cuffs on this prick or do you want to hold your head up like a man and do it yourself? They aren't cops, you need to realize that."

"D'ya even know what they've been sayin' about the victims? It's like they agree with that monster!"

"Hey, that kid was pushed, and pushed, and pushed, eventually something was going to happen with all that pressure, what did you think? He'd turn into a diamond? He'd rise above everyone belittling him? Now we're not saying what he's doing is right but what he's doing isn't out of left field either."

"Are ya sayin' we could'a prevented this?" The man seethed.

Morgan thought back to a confrontation that he had seen between Hotch, Reid, and a local sheriff, modeling his responses to fit into the perfect scenario, "Yes, but not easily. Not everyone snaps, and most teenagers profile as sociopaths, but there were cries for help long before he took up arms, he was troubled and before he got help he hit this stage, learn from it and prevent it in the future. Garcia, check in with Seaver, see how far she's gotten."

"So you're the type who can up and leave after that being done ta a friend? A coworker? Y'all are just as messed up as this bastard. I mean, I'd get it if that pip-squeak had ta go home for medical, I get it, I got clipped in a nasty accident once, but for y'all ta pack up and go with your tails between your legs, ya know, we don't need help like that. You're right, boss, we don't need these pricks taking credit for the arrest. We can do this on our own."

As the door slammed shut and the deputy left to gather up the officers still at the station, Morgan gave a satisfied smirk.

"Well that lit a match under his ass," The sheriff whistled.

"About time," Garcia added quietly.

"Yeah, he's the sort that convictions feel real about, he's a good cop though. Really cares. He'll probably be sheriff once I hang up my hat. Don't tell him that, though, I don't want him trying to chase me out or go soft and complacent," The Sheriff added with a smile.

"Seaver should be done in another hour or so with blocks to canvas, sheriff, did you have your man put in the anonymous call to the press about us backing off?"

The man nodded, "Had Hannah do that, she's our best marksman in the town, served in the Marines for seven years before she was medically discharged. Had a nasty case of cancer but once she was back on her feet, she hit the ground running. I'm lucky to have such a fine staff, not so lucky to have a spree killer."

Morgan gave a smile, "Today is going to be a long one, but if everything goes to plan tonight is going to be worth the wait."

"I hope so, we can't take another funeral."

[Criminal Minds]

Reid looked at the newspaper Hotch had laid down on the blanket at his lap, it was 5 AM, he knew that the remainder of the team was back at the hotel, hopefully sleeping, but he could understand if some of them if not all of them were fretting. Hotch had left ten minutes ago, after waking Reid up to make sure he'd have his wits about him just in case anyone entered the room, Reid had surprised himself in remaining awake for it.

He looked at the newspaper headline about the latest victim, he flipped the paper to the bottom half of the first page and saw the leading line of: Feds Pack It In Call it Quits.

Reid's lips curled in a subdued smile as he read through the entire article, flipped to the third page to continue on with the story- and that is exactly what the article was, a carefully crafted work of fiction disguised as truth.

Between the two, a quiet moment passed, Hotch raised his eyebrows to express his sentiment. "Leave it to Rossi to piss off an entire station of cops in under 6 hours time."

"Well, at least he made the cut off time. I guess as a writer he wanted to give the reporters as much time as possible to work their magic." He gave a soft guffaw before clearing his throat. "So Garcia got the schematics to you?"

Hotch opened up a file that had been resting on a side table near Reid's bed. "These buildings here have the right vantage point for setting up a sniper, and given the clear weather, we should set up here and here," Hotch pointed to a spot on the diagram, "You would stand here which would be just inside the fenced in air field. That way we have a sniper on each side of the fence, but it's likely he'll approach from the outside. Our 'flight crew' who will be walking around the perimeter will all be plain-clothes officers. The rest of the team will be stations at strategic exit points, Morgan and myself will be at these two vantage points…"

Hotch demonstrated on the map, "We'll both have eyes on you the whole time, understand?"

Reid nodded once, "Who will have Garcia and Seaver's cover?"

"Rossi is with Seaver at the West gate, Garcia will be with Prentiss near the control tower, we don't suspect he'll get in through that area, it's more likely he'll funnel through the South entrance, or the Terminal, which will be headed off by Morgan."

"What's the scale of this? The airport has what, four buildings, the control tower, the terminal, and the two hangars, two runways- one incoming and the other outgoing? Three separating fences between the outer perimeter, the terminal, and the runways?"

Hotch nodded, keeping in mind what Morgan had mentioned about vision. "So the building listed here is a café with a second floor perch, and the other sniper would be situated in the control tower with the optimal viewing field."

"Yes." The definitiveness set Reid at ease.

"So if I stand by the hangar I look completely out in the open for him to approach, except he's more intelligent than he seems. He might have already made it to the airport and if he paid for a private flight, he could already be inside the hangar waiting to blitz me from there. Do we have eyes on the hangar?"

"Garcia is patched in to their surveillance, and as I said, the plain-clothed officers are our flight crew. It won't look out of place for them to go to and from there, the other benefit of this point is that Garcia will have a camera on you and the general area, if we miss anything she'll be able to alert us."

"Alright, sounds like the place. So when are we 'leaving'?"

"At 3PM, any later and we risk bad lighting for the snipers and lose out on our ability to see him clearly, but earlier risks him not noticing the paper."

Reid nodded in agreement. "Hotch, you should probably get some rest. You'll need it if you're a part of the stakeout. I can keep watch."

Hotch shook his head, "Reid, can you see what it says on the door right now?"

Reid's face turned southward, frowning at the notion, "Let me put my glasses on first."

In response, Hotch handed them to him. Reid focused his eyes intently on the left-handed scrawl, "Well the author of the note is clearly a perfectionist, you can tell by the even measuring between letters and spacing."

Hotch rolled his eyes, "I didn't ask for an analysis, I asked if you can read it."

"I can," Reid smiled smugly, "But I'm sure the nurses will be able to, too. Shouldn't you take that down?" Hotch smiled, "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Tzu."

Hotch gave Reid a small smile before walking back to the door, retrieving the post-it and putting it on the side table, "In a few hours I'll call Rossi in to switch up guard duty."

Brown orbs locked on darker-brown eyes and relinquished with a small sigh and a smile, "I figured you'd say that."

"Well, do you really think if you were a bad profiler I'd have you on the team?" Hotch rebuked, Reid simpered instead of replying verbally.

He silently willed away his headache while Hotch held his left hand with his right and kept his left free for the draw if need-be.

Reid hated to admit it, as he waited there staring at the door, but he found it impossible to give in to rest, he still held the same thought Hotch held as he also watched the door. What if he's wrong? What if Mitch really did intend to approach the hospital to find him?

The police couldn't locate him- just barely missed him at the Cravens' house, but they found his first victim. Proof he made it that far in the first place. But now he's hiding out, and with no real or certain way to determine where he went, they can only focus on where he'll go.

Somehow it doesn't feel right, as if he's still missing steps, like- now that they have the unsub's identity they could do more than place a trap ahead, but he can't think of it, and he can't bring himself to admit that he can't. The others rely on him to have the answers, or at least the right questions, and Hotch is right, he wouldn't have Reid on the team if he wasn't capable, he squeezes Hotch's hand for assurance it's still there.

It is, of course, and it brings Hotch to focus on him instead of the door.

"Hotch, I feel like we missed something. Maybe I'm out of the loop, maybe you've already run his name through the databases, but can a person really truly be alone in a small town and have no one? I mean, sure the girlfriend before he killed her… but no one else? Not a parent or teacher or peer?"

"We spoke with his employer, his mother abandoned him at birth and his father neglected him severely. There are reports on file that there were instances of abuse, but he refused to give insight, then the authorities found his animal collection and he was sent to a juvenile facility for the mentally unstable, a year later he came back, it was status quo, he never made a mark on the radar and he eked out a GED, got his job as a gas station attendant, and two years later when his dad died, lost anyone who'd check in on him. He was over 18, it was easy for them to move on."

"His dad never remarried or anything?"

Hotch shook his head, "No, he managed a factory in West Virginia thirty miles away, he'd work 12 hour shifts six days a week."

"The factory was out of town?" Hotch nodded in reply to Reid's question, "What about where he hid his animal trophies?"

Hotch's eyes shifted, "They only ever found his first nest, do you think he's hiding where he kept his second one?"

"Maybe. It might be where he keeps a weapons reserve too. Think you can hand me a map and some markers?"

A familiar brown satchel landed on the side of his bed, Reid glanced at it in between feelings of familiarity and foreignness. He swallowed thickly before he put his hand on the flap of leather and pushed it over. In the forefront of his mind he couldn't tell what he was digging out where or why, but that didn't stop his hands as they grabbed a set of sharpies neatly held in the third inside pocket. It's frightful, not remembering how he remembered it, not recognizing what was obviously familiar, and all he could hope was that the sensation would just go away.

"Do you have a map?" he reiterated, and Hotch pulled out a small pamphlet from inside his inside liner of his suit jacket.

It took Reid much longer than he cared to admit to even remember how he had color-coded his lines, but he was painfully aware that he never really explained his methods to his coworkers, they might not even know what his internal coding meant, then again, maybe they did. His hand hesitated over the map for a solid hour before touching a red marker onto it once and then placing it down.

"Hotch… I… don't think I can do this yet." He hung his head with a sigh. "I get that I'm not at my best, but I know what I can and can't do, I have a firm grasp of my limits, and while I think I can fully perform my role later on, I just… I can't remember if red means interior perimeters or exterior limiters and I know that doesn't seem like much difference saying the lines will almost be touching it would possibly eliminate an entire area if it falls on a street, and then blue- does blue mean outlier of the hunting zones or the cross-hatched aqua? I…"

Hotch locked eyes with him intently. "You…?"

"I'm getting frustrated. It's like I know what the puzzle looks like in my mind but I don't know what it's a picture of even though it's so clear in my head. It's scrambled up, but I'm usually good at puzzles, you know? I could draw it out, the geographic profile, but there's no way I could translate it to tell you what it even means or where to look. There's just some disconnect in my head and… yeah, I'm… I'm getting frustrated."

Hotch put a firm hand on Reid's shoulder, the feeling more like what Aaron's warm palm was like on Spencer's skin than Reid cared to admit in work more.

"The aqua hash marks are territories of interest for dumping grounds, blue is kill zones when the bodies are transported, but he seldom transports except for trophies, so that would be shaded in areas of grey that would be of interest. Red does mean interior perimeter, and orange is the exterior limiters, as for territorial outliers, you usually use yellow. Purple is where you extrapolate the unsub's home is or at least their lair or nest, if you think his nest isn't a home territory it would be grey, otherwise it would be purple."

"Did I ever tell you all that…?" Reid locked eyes, quite honestly impressed by Hotch's reciting of the now familiar sounding code.

"Not even once," He let out a pleased laugh and smiled, "But we all have to find ways to keep up with your genius, and I've done geographic profiles before and knew what those areas should mean if I were doing it, so I extrapolated. Have I ever questioned your work before?"

Reid shook his head slowly, "No, not once, not even when I was just starting out."

"There's a reason for that."

"Because I have an eidetic memory and an IQ of 187?"

"No, because I knew you were right. If I thought you were off base with a hypothesis I'd let you know."

Now Reid let off a wily smile, "Eviler twin."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hotch breathed out, "Yes, that would be an example of a not-so-good hypothesis," Aaron returned eye contact with him.

"There's no such thing as a bad hypothesis, a hypothesis is just a question- with either a null or affirmative spin."

"Spencer, I have your back, if I think you're going in the wrong direction I'll get you back on track. Just like always. Believe me, because I believe in you."

"You're right. And I do, full-heartedly. You know, when I woke up- I don't know how many times between when I was taken and when I made my first escape attempt, but- but I do remember consciously not being able to remember things, but I remembered your name and your face and that it made everything just feel… right. His nest should be in this area here, I'd have to have Garcia look into the structures as they are physically present now with how they were ten plus years ago, five years ago, and current… but this town doesn't seem like the place that gets a lot of growth. I strongly suspect it's here." He pointed to a rural street coupled with known abandoned and dilapidated homes. "He seems pretty comfortable with Breaking and Entering, maybe he practiced to get up to that point?"

"Welcome back," Hotch mentioned before he pulled out his phone and dialed the sheriff, the winner of the 7AM wake-up call lottery, however he hardly had any other allies within the LEOs to call something in to without a tip of their hands that they couldn't afford so prematurely.

[Criminal Minds]

Two squad cars lined a packed-gravel private road in front of a house that could easily be over a century in age. Pieces of the siding were rotted so thoroughly they could see into the home. The once pink-paint job was peeled and warped, the color faded and greyed from the many years being sun-washed.

Entry had been made fairly easily with evidence of tampered locks, and upon entrance it was clear that the place had been occupied by something far worse than a clan of raccoons. It could have been the dream-set of a taxidermist's office, dozens of skins, carcasses, and bony remains of creatures past, with the exception of the trauma evident on each kill. Even the tools were there, machetes, a chainsaw- for Christ's sake there was no unseeing what that thing had done to that poor dear, three rifles, a shotgun, and ammo casings for at least three unaccounted for guns. He even had a cross-bow and compact bow.

"Sick son of a bitch…" One of the officers mentioned while creating an inventory of the evidence. "He used a serrated knife on this duck to saw off its bill. What kind of whack-job would watch an animal starve to death so intently?"

"The same kind who can shoot up his neighbors and slice the throat of the woman he supposedly loves, I reckon," The sheriff said sagely. "Now, anything at all that looks like it's missing…? We need to know what he's got."

"There's at least- at LEAST three guns missing, two pistols- a .22 and a .45, and a .22 gauge rifle. He could've taken all the rounds for another one, or have multiple guns of the same caliber. Oh wait… damn it!" A mid-thirties-something woman let out a swear, "He's got a shotgun, we're missing a case of buckshot. Didn't the feds say he might escalate before they all bowed out?"

"Looks like that end game they were all yappin' about when they're boy went missing is about to happen. Look't here, looks like he's been playin with how to make body armor."

"That's not good. He doesn't wanna be taken alive. I'd be happy to oblige," the same woman said as she wrote down an ID number for the evidence she cataloged.

The sheriff noticed that time in the house of horrors had flown by, common happen-stance for a busy day, it was nearing 2PM before he excused himself. "I have to see off our guests."

The LEOs happily gave middle-fingers in response to that, before he shook his head, "Fellas, they're why we even found this place. It was that brainiac's geographic profile …thing."

"Ya mean the blond girl actually did somethin' useful?"

"She's done plenty to help, I meant the real genius though, the one that got took. He figured out where this place would be and told me this morning. Now I need y'all to go on your rounds like Agent Seaver detailed for you because that's how we're going to catch that son of a bitch and keep him from doing it again. We're all more than a team, we're a family and it's time to pull together and make it through this."

Shocked looks passed between several of the deputies.

"That's right, we're setting up our own little trap for this one here. He thinks we're animals, we'll show 'im just how human we are."

[Criminal Minds]

Reid was pacing nervously in front of the wall, the radioed words in his ear telling him in exasperation what had to be the eighteenth time to, "Calm down. Breath, he'll be here soon, if you're too agitated he'll get spooked," only heightening his stress.

He took a deep breath, shook out his hands and wrapped them in a guarded manner across his chest. He wasn't nervous about the sting, he was physically afraid of how much pain he was in, he knew the pain medications given to him at the hospital would have to go, he just hadn't realized how fully they had helped. He filed that under nervous thoughts but knew he had to focus and keep his head in this to make it work.

He paced because if he stopped moving the blood rushed to his head and made it hurt all the more.

"Reid, stay still, you're moving outside of the sniper's scope, go back toward your left side three large paces," Hotch instructed, keeping his eyes trained on his subordinate with a hawkish intensity.

"Right, sorry."

With the stage set, and almost all the players on screen, the clock hit 2:20. Reid immediately stopped fidgeting, his head rising upward.

"Did you hear that?" he said into his radio, fairly certain none of the others would be close enough to have also heard the rustling sounds of metal rattling and turned to come face to face with Mitch as the man attempted to climb the fence.

Reid's eyes went wide. "Mitch? W… What are you doing here?"

"Hey, I came to see you off…" He said with a smile, still climbing the fence, Reid spotted the pistol underneath his jacket.

"So you brought a gun?"

"What? This ol' thing? I bring it everywhere. The cops found my new place and took my lady. For the longest time I was tryin' to figure out how they did that until I realized… maybe, just maybe you did do that on purpose."

Mitch landed on the ground in front of the fence before smiling, "You really did like my girl, didn't you?"

As Mitch drew his gun, Reid had already drawn his and fired three rounds in rapid succession into his core, as Mitch stumbled back, gun still in his hand Reid realized there was no out-pouring of blood. His eyes went wider until two hallowed gusts of air sounded with a "Patink, patink." Mitch sloped over much more quickly the second time around, the ground staining red as Reid lowered his piece once more.

In the center of Mitch's forehead there is a pronounced hole from a .38 revolver. Reid lowered the gun and slid into the wall to recuperate his strength as Morgan and Hotch reached him.

The Texas Stand-Off, misappropriated in its Virginian location, fizzled out faster than the blood leaking from the down figure.

"Reid, you alright man?" Morgan asked as he disarmed his friend who had yet to remove his finger from the trigger. Reid looked at him baffled, "You didn't get hit right?"

Not getting any responses, Morgan took the duty of pulling at Reid's shirt to double-check for holes or any red that shouldn't be there, finding no obvious wounds he let out a, "Well… shit, I guess your vision was fine after all."

Reid gave a half-felt smirk before closing his eyes again, "You were right too, that kick-back hurts so bad. Can hardly breathe..."

As Hotch approached his teammates he radioed in to the snipers confirming the suspect was down. Two high-powered rounds had entered through Mitch's back and neck, while Reid's bullet lodged firmly in between the man's eyes.

"We should all head back in to the station to fill out their preliminary reports. We'll fly out tonight by 8." Was the first and last thing Hotch mentioned to his teammates at the airport.

[Criminal Minds]

True to his word, at 8 the team was loading onto the jet, Reid splayed over the long couch, as he tried to grapple with a headache, a sensation he had become all too painfully familiar with.

Morgan, Prentiss and Seaver played cards while Garcia chatted with Rossi about the finer points of Merlot, Hotch pretended he wasn't watching Reid intently while he poured over his own files.

As Morgan lowered an Ace face down- because the profilers were making sport of playing bullshit, he asked, "Why do you think he really decided to come to the airport?"

Prentiss played 'two twos' which tempted Seaver to say something, "He probably knew it was his only real way out, his suicide by cop that he could actually equate to being killed by man."

Reid, without sitting up or pulling himself from the cushion muffled out, "Belief is the death of intelligence. Robert Anton Wilson. His belief that he could physically change his world through violence into anything good cost him his life. He couldn't see that other people suffered like he did, and because he was too afraid to realize the most human of conditions, he died. Maybe now he'll realize that he was the one seeing the distorted view of man all along."

"If you're about to review Plato, I'm going to sleep," Morgan threatened, "one four."

"Bullshit!" Prentiss cried, slapping the pile and flipping the card. Morgan smirked.

"Oh really?"

As she flipped over the card to reveal a six she gave her own successful smirk, "Yeah, really. Pile's yours." She pushed it back at him as he rolled his own eyes and gave a broader smile. Hotch closed his file and walked over towards Reid.

Sitting down nearby him, he put a firm hand on Reid's ankle. "Reid, get some sleep. When we land I'll drive you back to your place."

Morgan rolled his eyes at that, and called out a well-timed, "Bullshit," as Ashley put down her cards.

Smiling, she flipped over her tens happy to hand Morgan the pile, "Hey, no, I meant…"

"Meant what?" Prentiss said daringly, Morgan let out a sigh and pulled the pile back in.

"You know damn well what I meant," Morgan said, though he refused to elaborate to a confused Seaver's displeasure.

"What, never heard the old adage Mi Casa Su Casa?" she said in a barely audible whisper.

"I don't even want to know, we'll just leave it at that," Morgan added, putting down four kings.

Finis.