Chapter 1

A/N: So, there was some confusion over the prologue. It took place when Elizabeth was five years old. The story "The Phoenix's Child," when Reid meets Elizabeth, takes place when she is eleven. The rest of this story takes place when Elizabeth is thirteen.

I worry about her, too. It's too much for a kid, knowing that we might have to bolt at any time, or that something might happen to me and she'll have to get to you on her own with the worst kind of people chasing her. I know there are days when neither of us think about it at all, but then we'll see an unfamiliar car in the neighborhood, or there'll be a missed call from a blocked number. Then she'll get white and silent, and start biting her nails, although she's been nagging me to break the habit for years.

When it gets really bad, she doesn't sleep, and reads all night so she can think about astrophysics or Indo-European languages instead of being afraid. There have even been a few times when she insisted on crawling into bed with me. Those are the worst nights for both of us.

But it's better this way. It's better she knows and can be ready. It could save her life one day.

His partner squinted at him. "You want me to what?"

Mallory suppressed a sigh. Sometimes he thought Cox took the whole good-cop, bad-cop thing a little too seriously. "Call her dad."

"The other guy said he was her dad."

"Yeah, and he took off, which is fishy as hell in my book."

"All she gave us was a name and a phone number, which might or might not be this dad of hers. And she swears her mom isn't available. How do we know she's not making the whole thing up?"

"The fact that she's sitting there quietly, waiting for us to call."

"Could be a prank. Some kind of a teenage hazing ritual."

"Pretty fucking elaborate. And anyway, do you have a better idea? Really, share."

They both looked at the tall, gangly teenager sitting next to Cox's desk. She'd given her name as Matilda Wormwood, which, what the fuck kind of parents named a kid Matilda if they didn't want her to turn out a serial killer or something?

She seemed to be rebelling against that prim, old-fashioned name by dressing like a slutty hobo, in hole-ridden jeans, a tight pink shirt with a glittery purple heart on the front, and tattered black tennis shoes. As if that weren't enough, she'd slathered on black eyeliner half an inch deep around her eyes and dyed her hair an eye-searing shade of peacock blue. To complete the picture, a ring glinted dully in her lower lip.

Really, how stupid did you have to be to shoplift in front of two police officers dressed like that?

She watched them with no expression in her dark eyes. She didn't wiggle or fidget. The only indication that she was anything other than purely bored was the way she would occasionally pick at nails already chewed down to nubs.

"Some spoiled brat, wasting our time trying to get Special Agent Daddy's attention," Cox muttered.

"So what if she is? I say we just call and get it over with," Mallory said.

He was annoyed too. They'd been on their lunch break, for God's sake. Couldn't a uniform get a fucking sub sandwich without running into something?

But Cox was going to drag this out into next week. The shopkeeper hadn't wanted to press charges, so this was really about getting somebody take a truant teenager off their hands so they could get back to real police work. Which brought them to the small matter of actually getting ahold of the man she claimed was her real father.

Cox was still bitching. "So we're supposed to just call this random number. Then, if this clown actually answers the phone instead of some giggling teenager, I'm supposed tell him we've got his daughter so he can come down here and throw his Special-Agent weight around and get Daddy's little princess off the hook?"

Mallory unhooked his phone from his belt. "Yes, jackass, that's exactly what I'm saying."

The BAU was its usual self, unchanged in the days that J.J. had been out sick. Phones ringing, coffee burning, somebody discussing evisceration while eating an Egg McMuffin. She made a face and steered clear of that conversation, cutting through the row that housed her team. "Hey, Manning, Simons."

Agent Manning looked up from her computer screen, and her round face lit with surprise. "Hey, J.J. How's the stomach?"

"Steadier, thanks."

"You know, Laila swears by toast and chamomile tea with honey."

J.J. winced. Her family had been living on dry toast for the past two days. "If I never see another piece of toast again, I can probably die a happy woman. But I think I have some chamomile tea in my office. I'll try that."

Simons leaned back in his chair. "Didn't think we'd see you today."

She shrugged. "Oh, well, I hadn't thrown up for eight hours and honestly, the kids were driving me nuts. So, I thought I'd risk coming in for the afternoon."

"Aren't they feeling too sick to fight?"

J.J. rolled her eyes. "My kids? Oh, no. If it ever got to that point, I'd call 911."

Manning laughed. "What are they doing?"

"Instead of fighting over the TV remote, they're fighting over the bathroom and who drank the last of the Sprite. Which in fact was Will, but they're not about to let that ruin a good screaming match. Oh, and Henry's taken to calling his sister Typhoid Mary. You can imagine how well Cliff takes that."

"Ouch," Simons said. "I'm sure that doesn't help when she's already feeling guilty over single-handedly laying the whole family low."

"She'd better feel guilty," J.J. said grimly. "How does a kid who's made straight A's in science since preschool not realize that you shouldn't cook chicken that's been sitting on the counter for eight hours?"

Manning considered that. "Immature pre-frontal cortex strikes again?"

"Since the alternative is that I gave birth to a complete dingbat, sure, let's chalk it up to brain development. Where is everybody?"

"Hotch is in a meeting, Garcia's working her magic on some video for this consult of mine, and Reid got a phone call about fifteen minutes ago and went tearing out of here like his hair was on fire."

"I hope everything's okay." J.J. glanced around and lowered her voice, and the other two agents instinctively leaned in. "Have you two noticed anything strange about him lately?"

They glanced at each other. Although they were the most recent members of the team, Manning had been with them three years, and Simons two. It wasn't the same as the fifteen-plus years together that the rest of the team could claim, but it was plenty for profilers.

"If recently means the past couple of days," Simons said, "well, yeah."

Manning muttered, "He was completely off his game in St. Louis yesterday. Kept losing his train of thought, checking his phone . . ."

J.J. let out her breath. "Hotch said the same thing. He called me last night when you guys got back to see if I knew of anything going on with him."

"And do you?" They all knew how close Reid was to J.J.

"I have no idea. When I called him this morning, he said he was fine." But his voice had been clipped, and he'd all but hung up on her.

Manning squinted. "Hey, you think it's got something to do with his work for the Organized Crime division?"

But J.J. shook her head. "I don't think so. He's been consulting with them for over a year and it's never affected his performance." That had been the deal he'd made with Hotch, and he'd stuck to it. When asked why he was adding more profiling onto his full plate, he'd shrugged and said something about different personality types and maybe getting a paper out of it.

J.J. tamped down the fear that always lived at the back of her mind. As far as she knew, he'd stayed clean for seventeen years, even through pain and loss that would have tipped anybody off the wagon. Although he kept that little corner of his life strictly off-limits, she was pretty sure he had sponsored four or five people through the program.

Maybe it was some problem with a sponsee, which would explain his fierce denial that there was anything wrong at all.

Because neither of the other two agents knew anything about that part of Reid's life, she said, "You know, maybe it's nothing. Just a temporary thing."

"Maybe his cat's sick," Manning said.

"Maybe he's seeing somebody," Simons offered.

Manning laughed out loud, and it broke the tension. "You think he has a girlfriend?"

Simons grinned at her. "It's not completely out of the realm of possibility. He's only forty-four, right?"

Manning said, "Yeah, but this is Reid. Monks think he should get out more."

"He's not that bad," J.J. said. "It's true, he hasn't dated in a couple of years, and I think the last time he was actually serious about someone was . . ." She trailed off, biting her lip.

"Was?"

"A long time ago," J.J. said. "And she died. So."

"Yikes," Manning said. "On that cheerful note, I'm going back to this consult. Hopefully I can get something to Atlanta by the end of the day."

J.J. frowned. "I don't remember giving you anything from Atlanta."

"You didn't. We triaged some intake for you this morning, so you can actually open your office door without getting buried."

"Remind me to have you sainted," J.J. said. "Anything look like an out-of-town case? Please say no."

"I didn't think so at first," Simons said. "But the more Manning gets into that one, the more I wonder."

"It's weird, and getting weirder," Manning confirmed.

"What is it?"

"A thirteen-year-old girl went missing, and so did her mom. But it was from two different places, and then a cop that was involved turned up dead . . . and there may be a connection with a nasty home-invasion murder . . ." She shrugged. "Basically, it's like a bunch of loose puzzle pieces. From five different puzzles."

"Well, that is our specialty. Do you want to move into the conference room? We can all have a look. See if we really should go out there."

"You sure?"

"No problem. Just let me drop my things in my office." J.J. pressed a hand to her stomach. "And maybe get that tea."

The girl who'd given her name as Matilda Wormwood sat on the toilet, breath still coming in hiccups. It had been fully twenty minutes since she'd heard his voice and burst into tears. She'd barely been able to talk, only to tell him she was okay and that her mom -

She folded over, pressing her forehead to her knees, her mouth open wide in a soundless howl.

There was a knock on the stall door. "Matilda? How you doin' in there?"

It was a female officer who'd taken her to the precinct's bathroom when she couldn't stop crying. She'd resisted all efforts to be hugged and comforted, fleeing into a stall even though there was no other exit and she could be trapped.

She wasn't safe here, she knew it. She'd had no indication yet that the cops were dirty, but all the same, she wouldn't be really safe until she got to Quantico. She shouldn't be falling apart like this, but she couldn't stop. She clutched her knees and sucked in breath through her clenched teeth until her heart stopped trying to burst out of her chest like the thing in Alien.

"Matilda?"

"I'm okay," she called in a wavering voice. "I just need a moment."

"Okay."

Her head hurt from crying and her face was sticky. The toilet-paper dispenser had a metal surface, still slightly reflective through the layers of scratched-on graffiti, and it showed her that the eye makeup had smeared and streaked all over her face.

She couldn't seem to care, but knew she should, so she took a piece of toilet paper from the dispenser and swiped at her face. It just moved the mess around. She gave up and just concentrated on breathing.

Please, Dad. Please, get here fast.

The first sensation Emily registered was a dull, pounding pain in her head. Those jackasses had hit her.

The second was the cold of the dirt-packed floor. Give it another hour and her ass would be entirely numb. Not that she could get up; her arms had been wrenched behind her back and fastened firmly to a length of pipe. She gave a few experimental tugs and determined that it was duct tape that held her.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes.

Thin wintery light spilled in from a tiny window high above her head. By it, she could see the proportions of the room. Judging by the height of the window, it was a basement, and from the naked brick behind her back and the dusty, decrepit equipment scattered around, it was a warehouse. Almost exactly like where the warehouse where she'd held a gun to Declan Doyle's head and taken photographs.

Well, that wasn't such a surprise, was it? She'd always known what was driving him.

She tried to say a name, and it got caught in her dry throat. She coughed, worked up some spit, swallowed, and tried again, praying not to hear a reply. "Elizabeth?"

Nothing.

Louder: "Libs?"

Still nothing.

She relaxed, but only slightly.

She closed her eyes again and listened. Footsteps moved across the floor above. Then a door creaked open somewhere up off to the right, and she heard the reek-reek of old wooden steps under weight. She opened her eyes again. Someone was coming downstairs.

A flashlight beam danced just outside the door, and then swung into the room and into her eyes. The sudden brightness sent a stab of pain through her head, and she flinched away before she could stop herself.

"Awake, Lauren?" a slightly accented voice inquired, as sweetly punctilious as a maitre d'. The beam twitched aside, and through the spots dancing in front of her eyes she could see the solid bulk of Ian Doyle, looming above her.

He was older, of course. His skin had a more papery look, and his hair had gone entirely white. But other than that, he still appeared as hale as the last time she had seen him, on a chilly D.C. night, when they'd sat across a cold wire table from each other exchanging threats.

He continued. "Or Emily? No, no, it's Nora now, isn't it. You've more identities than Madonna, you know."

"We both know it doesn't really matter what you call me," she said, listening hard for another voice, another set of footsteps. "You're still going to kill me." Maybe a whimpering cry or tremulous breathing.

Nothing.

She looked up at Doyle and smiled. "But not yet. You don't have her."

"Maybe I do," he said. "Maybe she's upstairs now. What's left of her."

"You don't," she said. "You've waited twenty years for this, you're going to do it right."

"And how's that?"

"You want me to see it. You want me to read the terror in her eyes. If you did have her, she'd be in here now, with a gun to her head. You don't have her."

He knelt down and took her face in one hand. Although his fingers compressed her jaw and the heel of his hand pushed into her windpipe, she met his eyes coolly. He leaned forward and kissed her, hard enough so that her lips ground against her teeth.

Just when she tasted copper, he let her go and smiled, with her blood on his mouth. "I will."