Disclaimer: The show Criminal Minds is not mine.

A/N So, another Criminal Minds fiction. This time it is not going to be mostly romance, but it revolves around a character I made up. I hope you like it.

The Lab Girl

If Annabelle Wood was ever forced to use a single word to describe herself, she would go with awkward. It had taken her some time, but she had learned her boundaries and was now living a quiet and comfortable life.

She was happy in the work she was doing, because it didn't involve a lot of contact with strangers and she was comfortable in her private life, because it usually involved only small group of good friends.

She was a forensic scientist. She specialized in DNA and she worked for the FBI. She was high enough on the food chain to have her own office, but not too high to be involved in any kind of politics. Her boss was experienced enough in lab work to understand its difficulties and smooth enough in human contact to make sure his people had everything they needed.

.oOo.

It was half past eleven in the evening and Annabelle was sipping a tea in her office and wrapping up a report. Her work didn't include an exact work hours. She had an amount of hours she had to clock in every month and how she did it was up to her. Sometimes, she was called late at night, but often she chose the evening or night mostly because no one was there.

There was whole bunch of DNA-people, but she didn't know everyone personally. At occasion, she worked whatever was needed, but mostly, her work was directed towards the BAU team. It was her kind of specialty and she liked that every person had a group of agents they usually worked with.

After couple of years of 'specializing' she knew exactly what to put in which agent report. SSA Hotchner liked his reports thorough, highly organized, but most importantly on time or sooner. Agent Rossi was old-school, so the DNA report was to be simple and as easy as possible. On the other hand, report for Doctor Reid could contain highly specialized terminology, he had never problem with that. Sometimes he even called and asked about some new procedure she applied, so he could be up to date. The reports for Agent Prentiss and Morgan were quite similar, just with enough science-babble to seem convincing, but simple enough not to be confusing.

Life was easy for Annabelle. She had also learned how to be invisible and that was the way of life she tended for. The key was to have her work ready on time, reports thorough, containing all available information so no one would need to contact her asking for details.

Annabelle didn´t realize she pulled another whole-nighter till she met her boss on her way to bathroom.

"Morning, Bella" Frank Stewart greeted her using the shortened version of her name. She didn´t like that particular shortened version of her name, but she smiled at Frank anyway.

"Morning" she answered but it sounded more like a question than welcome.

"Don´t tell me you have been there whole night" Frank asked the question he knew answer to very well.

"I´ve came slightly before eleven just to finish report, but shortly after midnight came new samples from a case the BAU is working. They found a girl drugged enough to be operated on without her even noticing" Ani tried to explain herself. Frank had a couple of daughters and the younger of them had just left for college, so he felt the urge to place his fatherly protectiveness on someone.

"The BAU works junkies now?" he wondered and only his look betrayed his disagreement with Ani's way of living.

"Well, she´s not junkie, she was missing for five days and she was found naked in the dumpster. I was trying to get some DNA from the samples hospital sent me, but I didn´t have any luck and now I have to go and tell the agents I´m not able to help them"

"Heads up, Annabelle, if you weren´t able to get any DNA it means there wasn´t any, trust me. If Agent Hotcher gives you hard time, don´t hesitate to come to me, I´ll take care of it" Frank knew Ani well enough to be confident about her work.

"Thanks, Frank, you are great boss" and it was honest answer. Frank never let the agents yell at his lab-workers. Well, only when it was really deserved and then the angry agent was usually the less of the two evils.

"I know, but feel free to repeat that as often as you choose. Now, go to talk to SSA Hotchner and then get lost, I don´t want to see you here till tomorrow"

"Will do, boss"

.oOo.

Annabelle knocked on the door of the BAU Unit Chief. She nervously waited for him to call ´Enter´ before she opened the door.

"Morning, Sir" she greeted and quickly jumped to the point "I´m sorry to say, but we were unable to obtain any DNA from the Annie White´s samples."

Hotch looked at the girl standing in front of him. At first he thought she was one of the interns from the lab, but then he realized he had seen her around before. She wasn´t that type of person that was immediately noticed and remembered for long time. Her lab coat was slightly bigger than was necessary, it might look like she had lost some weight recently, but the truth was, it was so on purpose. Ani felt the need to cover her surprisingly wide shoulders and she needed to feel sure that the buttons on her chest won´t tear open. Her hair was pinned strictly on the back of her head. There was some rest of the makeup on her face but Hotch guessed there wasn´t much of it even when it was fresh. She had the type of face that you saw thousands of every day and her figure was what diplomats called well-built and critics massive. But she didn't seem fat, just big. She was only slightly smaller than Hotch and he surprisingly noticed she wasn´t wearing any heels.

"What?" Hotch asked lamely although he heard well the first time, he just needed to cover the awkward quiet moment while he was taking in her posture.

"I personally worked all twelve samples that were sent to us this night. In most of them, there simply wasn´t any DNA to work with, there were two samples that contained some DNA but after preliminary analysis it looks like bacterial DNA. I´m sorry, Sir, but there´s nothing more I could do"

And she put her report on his table. All she managed to write was short summary, but mostly the report contained just rough data. It was the kind of protocol she did for herself but no one on the outside the lab usually understood it.

"It´s just preliminary, Sir, the final version will be ready tomorrow. I´ll sent you it the usual way." she promised and looked like the only thing she really wanted to do was to get out.

Hotch took the report and flipped the pages like he understood it easily. In fact, all he understood was the summary on front page, but the detailed report was out of his comfort zone.

"We are having meeting with the team in fifteen minutes, can you summarize it for me, so I can pass it on" Hotch played it wisely not to appear uneducated in any way. The lab people scared him sometimes.

"Of course, Sir" Annabelle answered politely, when in fact all she wanted to say was ´I think I just did´, but she got used to explaining her reports when she didn´t have time to translate them to more common language.

"It says about the procedures that were done. The only thing that should concern you is the fact, that all the controls were done and gave the expected results. It means that the procedures were rightly done and I didn´t make any mistakes while processing the samples. It´s required procedure and often seek at the court."

"Thank you"

"You´re welcome, Sir. You can call the lab if you need anything else" Annabelle offered and left.

Hotch picked up phone and dialed the lab. But he wasn´t looking for any further explanation…except for one.

"Hey, Frank, how are you doing?" Hotch asked his long-time friend.

"Hotch, that´s surprise" Frank answered "What do you need?"

"I just had a weird conversation with one of your people, Annabelle Wood" he specified as he checked the name on the report "she´s new?"

"Annabelle? Are you kidding? She´s been with us for almost five years, she´s one of the best and most of the time she´s been working for the BAU. Was there any problem?" Frank asked and sounded like he would be really surprised if there had been any problem.

Hotch was quiet for a while, slightly embarrassed. He had never paid attention to the name on the lab results as well as he had never been even slightly interested in the lab procedure. He had no idea that there was person working mostly for them.

"No, no problem, she just seemed quite unsure and gave me strange report so I was checking out how trustworthy she was"

"Yeah, Annabelle doesn´t play well with other kids, honestly, I have no idea why, but that just the way she is. But her work is above first-class, don´t worry. And the report is my fault, I´ve found her in front of computer after she had spent whole night in the lab. I ordered her to go home and finish the report later. Someone has to take care of those lab-rats" Frank joked.

"They are not just lab-rats, trust me" Hotch smiled as he watched his team already gathering in the briefing room. After last night visit to crime scene, then hospital he was more than sure they didn´t get more then couple hours of sleep and if he hadn´t sent them home, they wouldn´t go to sleep at all.

"Anyway, thanks, Frank, we should catch up soon"

"Yeah, some day, when we both have free time" Frank said and they both knew that was not going to happen in foreseeable future.

Next: The case Annabelle worked on:)