Dedicated with much affection to Reidemption.

"Just when you think you've got it down,

Your heart securely tied and bound,

Your love in pieces on the ground,

They whisper promises in the dark."

~ Pat Benatar~

Chapter One

"Senora, go inside please . . . por favor."

The rain is pounding down on them now, aggressive. She ignores the words, and remains on the wet ground beside the large body of her friend. "No." His body is still warm, and as long as it is, she can imagine that he hasn't quite left them yet.

The pit had been dug early in the late afternoon by a backhoe, a solemn preparation as if for a ceremony. The dirt piled up beside it is soaked now and muddy torrents washed down and around the body of the horse. Esteban Munoz stands in the pouring rain beside the veterinarian with this hat in his hands, head hung, and searches his mind for the words that would make her go inside the house now, so that they can push the carcass into the pit with the backhoe. He doesn't want her to see that.

Dr. Brad Ellington places medical equipment back into the metal box and snaps it closed. He stands and watches the flashing lights of the police vehicles in the distance, by the barn. Why did this all have to happen tonight? "They'll be wanting to talk to you, I suppose, E."

"Si. Yes they will. All of us."

"Dammit."

He watches the woman at his feet for a few minutes, giving her time. He knows that it can't be easy, losing a favorite horse. But it happens all the time in his line of work – he is too often called out late at night to end suffering. This one needed to be put down, and she will have to deal with it. Then he reaches for her arm, pulling her to her feet. "Come on now, Honey. He's gone."

He nods a go-ahead to Munoz and leads her back toward the house, holding her arm firmly.

~~/~~

Reid was content to sit in the back of the SUV and study the files of the other cases that had popped up in Virginia during the past weeks that might be related to this one. It was exactly what he needed – a good case to chew on, something to occupy his mind, a puzzle to solve. The last several days spent in the bull pen doing paperwork, with Morgan sitting there trying to make small talk with him, was driving him crazy. It infuriated him – Morgan pretending as if everything was just fine, just as it had always been. It wasn't, he knew it and Morgan knew it.

He hadn't had the nerve to ask any questions. Not of Morgan, and not of Reid's lover, Ethan. After all, he had set the whole thing up this way. He had told Ethan from the beginning – from their first sexual encounter – that for himself it was temporary. That he couldn't feel for a man – for Ethan – what he had felt for a woman. He had even, in a particularly idiotic moment of overwhelming gratitude and insane generosity, hinted to Ethan that someday Ethan would find someone else. Someone who could really love him fully. Another man.

What he didn't count on is how it would feel when it began to happen. Reid had seen no evidence of it, but he could feel it. The last time he had visited New Orleans, Ethan had been changed. Something was missing in his eyes, something lacking in his kiss. Reid had been perturbed when he first felt Ethan distancing himself. It had been at the airport, when Ethan had fetched Reid. He had been late, while Reid had been waiting on pins and needles, anxious to see his friend again, anxious to wrap his arms around him. Reid had called him and gotten only his voicemail. He had contemplated taking a cab, but didn't because he had expected Ethan to run up to him, a breathless apology on his lips. Instead, when Ethan finally appeared he had seemed nonchalant, "Oh, am I late? Sorry. Got distracted I guess."

Later when they had been alone, Ethan was cool. Reid was desperate to get him into bed, to feel his skin hot and yielding in his arms and hands, under his mouth. And Ethan yielded, but without matching his passion. Without any passion, truth be told.

"Are you okay? You seem. . . kind of far away."

"Oh, I do? Yeah, fine. Just tired."

It wasn't that Reid didn't expect things to change someday, at least on an intellectual level. After all the relationship had formed and deepened because of Reid's crisis: he had fallen into drug addiction after the death of his fiancé, and Ethan had been the hand that had saved him from drowning. Along with that hand had come the physical human contact for which Reid had been desparate, and the deep emotional connection that had quite literally saved his life. The love he had known from Ethan had made him wake up from the nightmare, to want to find himself again.

But his heart understanding the change was another question altogether. Although he had willingly become Ethan's lover and had accepted the affection with true gratitude, he had always known that he couldn't return it with the same feeling as Ethan had in giving it. Ethan loved him. He knew it, and over many months he had become comfortable with it and accustomed to it. Now he found himself angry over the thought that any other man would lure Ethan away from him. He was torn between giving Ethan time to come around, and wanting to confront him – to rage and demand a name. But he was afraid to. He was afraid that doing so would give Ethan the chance to speak it aloud – that yes, there was someone else and that yes, the relationship that he and Reid shared would have to end. Reid wasn't ready to hear it. Not yet.

And so he had resolved to wait, and to fight. Morgan, noticing Reid's distraction at work, had asked about it. Morgan was the only person with whom Reid could talk about Ethan – one of the few who really knew about his relationship with Ethan and how deep it was. He had been there at its beginning, and understood how and why it began - how Reid had come to take a man as a lover.

"How much experience do you actually have with long-term relationships, Morgan?" Reid asked, cocking his head and smirking.

"Something up with Ethan?" Morgan returned, smiling and ignoring the bait.

Reid told him about his suspicions, interjecting every other sentence that they were probably baseless, but glad to be able to share them with someone. They had weighed heavily on his since he had returned from New Orleans.

"So how often do you see each other – you've been there what, four times in as many months? Ethan up here twice?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Reid, that isn't taking care of a relationship. That's a little fun once in a while."

Reid had taken slight offense at Morgan's downplaying the relationship. He of all people knew full well that it was a serious one, and he of all people knew what Ethan had done to pull Reid back from the brink of his own destruction.

"What would you have me do, Morgan? I work here. Ethan works there."

"Why didn't you ask him to move up here?"

"I don't know if he would have. What are you getting at?"

"Nothing. I just think maybe Ethan needs more commitment."

"We had . . . we have a commitment Morgan. It is a long distance relationship, but it was committed."

Morgan looked up from his files, "Really? You ever say that out loud?"

"No. We didn't really need to."

"Oh, okay, " Morgan chuckled.

"What?"

"Nothing, Pretty Boy. Nothing."

"I don't know why I'm talking to you anyway. How would you know what Ethan needs? It isn't like you can bring any experience to the conversation," Reid slid his chair back and stood, "I'm getting coffee."

Morgan shrugged. He was accustomed to Reid's occasional testiness. But this time was different. And the words were out before he could think it through. "I might know more than you think, Reid."

"What? What do you mean?" Reid stopped, looking down at Morgan.

Morgan stared at the file, pretending to study it, his heart pounding.

Reid was suddenly aware that he was holding his breath, and that the hair on the back of his neck was rising. Morgan knows something and kept it from me. He turned on his heel and walked away.

~~/~~

Special Agent Hotchner stepped out of the SUV and put a hat on his head to shield it from the rain, frowning up at the night sky. He felt the beginning of a headache nagging between his eyes. The ride with Reid and Morgan was enough to give anyone a headache. The two of them had hardly spoken to one another, and the tension in the car had weighed on Hotch like a thundercloud all the way from Quantico. Over an hour and a half of fun and joy. Now, he was looking forward to getting away from it and into the case.

"Agent Hotchner?" a tall man extended a hand as he crossed the farmyard. "I'm Detective Ferris. Sorry to get you all out here in this weather."

"We've seen worse," replied Hotch without smiling, shaking his hand. " This is Special Agent Morgan . . . Dr. Reid, " he said and nodded toward his colleagues, 'Where were they found?"

"Manure pile, back of the barn." Ferris tipped his chin to where a large tent had been erected. "A man and a woman. Both worked here at the farm. Siblings, not from around here."

The group trudged through the mud toward the site. "Have you spoken to the owner?" asked Hotch.

"Not yet . . . they were out burying a horse. She'll be down in a bit."

Inside the tent a forensics team worked to uncover the bodies within the man-high mound of manure. It was a slow procedure, each move calculated to do the least damage to the crime scene. Morgan stood with his nose tucked into the arm of his coat. "What is this going to do to forensic evidence?" he asked no one in particular.

"Nothing good . . . " answered Reid as he squatted to get a closer look at the arm and leg protruding from the pile. "How old were the victims?"

"Nineteen and twenty-three. Poor kids."

"You said on the phone that you think this may be related to the murder in Gordonsville?" asked Hotch.

"That one was killed in town, yes. And another one in Palmyra. All of them young. All of them from the Richmond area. All within two weeks."

"I'm going to look around in the barn," said Reid.

"Forensics has finished in there. You'll have the run of the place."

~~/~~

She had walked into the barn without being noticed, in the confusion of the crime scene. They wanted to talk to her, but they could wait. She'd had a rotten day – she'd lost a good friend and two of her best hands were buried in the manure pile. They could wait a few minutes. She left the hood of her barn jacket up and went to work. She wanted Arturo's stall clean. She wanted every sign of him gone, so that she wouldn't be greeted with it in the morning. She had raked out the soiled hay and carted it outside, removed his water pail and food bucket. She screwed the hose onto the faucet beside the stall and fired the driving burst of water onto the floor, washing away the last part of him that had been there only that morning. She watched the dirty water drain into the gutters along the sides of the stall.

She knew that losing a horse was part of the business. But this one . . . this one had been special. He had come to her shortly after she began this new life. Shortly after she bought the farm. He was the first one she had formed a bond with, and it had been a strong one. Her bonds with horses and dogs were the mainstay of her existence now. She didn't bond with many people. Too much work. Besides, horses had more integrity.

Turo had integrity to spare. He had always carried himself with a rare nobility - rare even for a Paso Fino - holding himself above the fray, above the trivialities of everyday human business. He was from something ethereal, somewhere more dignified than this life. It wouldn't hurt her half so much if he had been older. But he had been young, only eight years old. He should have had another ten. And he had not died in any dignified way, he had died slowly – wasting away, his coat growing duller and falling out, his once long silken mane tangling until she had trimmed it short – an insult to his breed. She had taken him outside to walk for long walks through the woods, along the roads, anything to get his body working and make his mind grab onto something interesting. When his appetite waned she would call Brad and demand he give him an appetite stimulant. She fed him with her hands, several times a day. She willed him to recover as she did it. She spoke to him about willpower, miracles, even God. In the end, it wasn't enough: his weight loss was always a step ahead of her best efforts. And then an expression had come into his eyes that hadn't been there before, in all the weeks of illness: he was asking her to let him go. It was an expression that was beyond weary, without any more fight. He was asking her to stop fighting.

That morning she hadn't been surprised when Brad told her that he had lost more weight. His organs were beginning to fail. It was inevitable now that the end would come whether she fought it or not. She had given her barn hands instructions to dig the pit, hardly believing her own voice. That was at 4:45 pm, and now here she was only six hours later. But it seemed like days ago.

She was unscrewing the hose again and winding it up, when she noticed a young man walk into the barn on the other end. He dodged to the side suddenly as a horse shoved its head over the gate of its stall and snorted loudly at him. She smirked – city boys - and went back to her work. She walked into the feed room and rinsed out the pail and bucket with bleach, and set them out to dry for the next horse's use. She found the vitamins that were his, five bottles of pills and liquids, and she tore from the fronts of the bottles the pieces of tape with his name. After she had crossed his name off the feed schedule with a thick black marker, she took a last look around the feed room before shutting off the light and stepping out of the door.

She nearly bumped into him. "Uh Ma'am? Excuse me, are you the owner?" That voice. My God, it couldn't be.

"Reid?" She moved her hood away from her face and blinked up at him. He was taller than she remembered. The large, deep eyes probed her own as they always had.

"Elle?" He stood staring at her with his mouth agape.

She moved past him and started toward the barn office. She tossed over her shoulder, "You gonna stand there with your mouth hanging open, or help me make coffee?"