Summary: When the BAU discover that the last victim of a serial killer they're after is a CIA agent, the team will have to work with CIA director Sara Reese to find the unsub. Then, Gideon asks her to stay for one more case, and since she and Hotch already know each other, things get a little complicated between them.

Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds but Sara Reese is of my own creation. This is my first fanfiction so please feel free to comment.

Chapter 1- The woman that took secret karate lessons

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The team was informed about the discovery of another body and headed straight to the crime scene, which was the dead woman's house. Her name was Lily Miller. She lived alone in a detached house, in a small neighborhood, just like the other five victims of the unsub the team was after.

Hotch was the first to arrive at the house, and when the team came, he had some very confusing things to show them. First of all, the woman wasn't raped. She was killed, but she wasn't found tied on her bed, instead she was in the kitchen. The way she was murdered was also different. She wasn't strangled, she was hit with a glass bottle to the back of her head. In fact, the only thing that connected this crime to the previous ones was her appearance and past: tall, short brown hair, lived alone, divorced with children and parents that were either dead or lived far away.

"There are signs of struggle" Hotch pointed out the weirdest thing of all.

"What? Wasn't she supposed to be just a shop assistant? How did she know how to fight?" Morgan asked.

"And if she did know how to fight, why did the unsub choose her?" Reid finished his colleague's question. "He was supposed to be choosing easy victims. It's been two weeks since the last kill, this period is more than enough for him to watch her and find out whether she was an appropriate victim or not."

"We can ask her colleagues and friends about her. Maybe then we'll find a way to explain how and why this happened. I'll go check with Reid" Hotch said.

"And if she wasn't raped, that means the unsub entered the house at night, as usual, but didn't leave early in the morning as he did all the other times, so maybe he left witnesses behind. Maybe he was forced to make a mistake." Gideon said. "I'll ask around later with Morgan."

Hotch and Reid went to the shop Lily Miller worked at. It was a small shoe shop in the neighborhood, where only the victim and two other women worked. Each of them interviewed one of the women.

"She was sweet, always ready to help the customers… I could never imagine her as someone who would know how to fight." Jane Wilson said to Hotch, genuinely surprised when he told her that her colleague had actually had a real fight.

"Did she talk about her family?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer. That is, if it was the same unsub.

"No. She was divorced, and her son lives in Los Angeles. Her parents are dead."

Of course she was. All of them were.

"Did she have any friends?"

"Only me and Karen. We were very close, and she never mentioned having any other friends apart from us two."

The other woman, Karen Smith, said nothing more interesting that what Jane had said. The two agents gave them their phone numbers in case there was something else they forgot to tell them. Then, the team gathered at the headquarters to talk about how they were going to proceed with this strange case, that got even more confusing as they continued investigating.

"Witnesses saw a man dressed in black, around 6'3'' tall. They also said he walked with a limp." Morgan informed the team about their discoveries.

"It's highly possible that Miller injured him during the fight." Gideon said.

"We're lucky." JJ commented. "That will help us narrow down the list a bit" She was the one, along with Penelope, that worked on the list of suspects, and there were almost 10,000 of them until now.

"So, she matches the description of the other five victims, nobody describes her as someone who knows how to fight, yet we know she fought." Emily summarised. "It just doesn't make sense."

"She could be taking secret karate lessons" Morgan said with sarcasm.

Then, after two minutes of complete silence during which all of them tried to find a way to explain the case, Hotch's phone rang. A little bit later, he hung up and looked at them.

"I just found an explanation, and you're not going to like it."