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A/n this story takes place sometime in the beginning of season five while Morgan is still the Unit Chief and before 100
Prologue - Someone's watching.
The door opened with a click, moving silently on well oiled hinges as the intruder entered the small apartment. A hand, encased in a black leather glove, pushed it shut and engaged the lock. The hand lingered on the lock for a moment, before trailing along the wall to the window. Both hands reached out to tug the blinds shut.
The intruder moved carefully around an old, chocolate leather easy chair, in front of the window. A small folding table made from fake oak and unstained stood next to the chair. One gloved hand picked up the coffee cup standing on the table next to a copy of a book written in what looked like Italian.
A sniff of the cup made the intruder smile. The faint scent of coffee and sugar lingered in the empty cup. The hand put the cup back exactly where it had stood on the folding table. The hands ignored the book on the table and the large bookcase to the immediate right of the table. The leather of the easy chair creaked as an unfamiliar body sat down and got comfortable. The hands slid up and down the arms of the chair as though caressing a lover.
A look around the room showed the stranger, a matching and equally battered couch, a large flat screen television and a wooden coffee table piled with books. More books stood on the floor in precise piles around the room as if in some kind of strange order.
The chair squeaked again as the stranger levered out of it and moved out of the living room to the kitchen. Everything shone as though new or never used. The refrigerator revealed half a gallon of milk, a quart of orange juice, several containers of takeout, and a lemon. It looked as if someone had cleaned it that very day. Everything seemed to be in its place and ruthlessly neat. The air smells of coffee and cleaning chemicals, a combination that made the stranger smile.
Black shoes squeaked on the tile as the intruder moved from the kitchen to the hallway. The dull beige carpet was spotless, the stranger noticed, as though no one lived there. The white painted walls were bare of any decoration or photographs.
The room at the left turned out to be a bathroom as clean as the rest of the apartment with a small vanity, one sink, a toilet and a shower with dark blue curtain hiding the combination shower and tub. The faucet dripped. One gloved hand reached out and tightened it, cutting off water in mid drip.
The room at the end of the hall opened up to a bedroom. More wooden slat blinds covered the room casting it into gloom in the early winter morning. A card table stood at the right of the room across from the neatly made full sized bed. The walls, as white as the rest of the apartment, held three photographs hung on the wall opposite the bed next to the closet. The intruder stood in front of them looking at a woman with blonde hair and dark eyes smiling as she hugged a small boy with dark wavy hair and glasses. The second photograph showed a group of happy laughing people at some kind of barbecue or party. The young boy had grown into a man standing between a plump blonde woman with red framed glasses and a large muscular black man. One blonde-haired woman and one black-haired woman sat in lawn chairs in front of the group. An older man with a beard, mustache and graying hair stood next to another man with very dark hair and eyes who looked like he rarely smiled, but his mouth crinkled up in a large grin. The third photograph held a grouping similar to the second picture, but two of the group was different. An older man with graying hair stood next to the young man. Another woman with dark hair stood at the other side of the flamboyant blonde-haired woman.
The leather-clad hands opened the closet and moved through clothing that looked like it belonged to a college student. Plastic storage containers stood at one end of the closet. They held photo albums, filled with pictures of the same blonde woman and little boy. Some pictures looked like someone had cut another person out of the picture. Some blank spots in the albums suggested that someone had removed or destroyed some of the pictures. They were in order chronologically and hand dated on the spine.
The shelf above the clothing held stacks of comic books and graphic novels stacked in alphabetical and numerical order. The intruder took one down, looked through it, and put it back. The last place the stranger looked was under the bed and found more storage containers with a small stash of pornographic magazines. A photograph, a one of the women in the group pictures, lay on top of the magazines. It had a simple gold frame like the photographs on the wall. The gloved hands clutched it angrily nearly crushing the glass. What was so special about this particular woman? The stranger decided to find out, but first there was work to do.
The watcher climbed up to the bed and kicked off the black shoes chosen for this job because they're quiet. The need to hurry didn't matter. He wouldn't be back for a while and a friend watched outside ready to call if he came back early.
The comforter smelled like him, a familiar smell that made you think of youth and innocence despite the kind of job he had. The stranger smiled wryly. It was as if the intervening years didn't matter. That would definitely make things easier when it came time for the next phase of the plan.
The watcher sat up, reluctant to move from the bed, the time had come to leave. After a long last look around, the intruder left, leaving the small home to its silence and secrets.
----
The jet touched down on the tarmac at exactly four pm Thursday afternoon. The early winter sky held the sun at the horizon, to burn the eyes of rush hour commuters on the streets. The engines of the jet screamed as reverse thrusters engaged to slow the bird down to a stop. It taxied to a stop at the small airport.
Black leather clad fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel as a pair of green eyes watched the group of agents de-plane. He got off the plane last, limping heavily on a cane. The fingers of the hand holding the binoculars squeezed painfully around the hard black plastic.
Who hurt you?
The binoculars stayed trained on the young man with the cane as the group separated for their cars in the parking lot. The large black man reached over and ruffled the hair of the young profiler. He laughed as the younger man glared at him, then they both smiled as the dark hair woman stepped in between them. The blonde woman shook her head and headed off to a car at the far end of the parking lot. The young agent talked to the black man and the dark haired woman for a few minutes, and then limped to a very old car.
"Don't worry, I'll watch over you from now on." The watcher vowed.
