"We have to tell them," Derek sighed as he eased the black GMC SUV into the flow of traffic. Emily sat beside him, strapped into the passenger seat. She had been staring straight ahead at the road before them until he spoke. Leaning forward and stretching the seatbelt as if she had been pushed into the dashboard, Emily gripped the smoothness of the dashboard. As they glanced at each other, Derek could see the surprise in her eyes.

Shaking her head, trying to deny hearing the sentence that sprung from Derek's mouth, Emily's eyes grew wide like saucers. "No," she said in reply.

"Emily," he sighed.

From the day they'd first met, shaking hands in the conference room of the BAU, they'd always been honest with each other. They hardly disagreed on things either. It was as if their minds at times were one and not seperate. Yet the woman had a mind of her own and he should have known his declaration would have elicted a negative response from her.

"Don't Emily me," she told him, her tone dark, almost sinister yet full of sass. Repositioning herself so that she was facing him and not the road, she kept her eyes glued to his face. They were narrowed and hard, just like they always did when she was ready to fight. "We're not telling the team, Derek."

"There's a killer targeting interracial couples in D.C!" He exclaimed, taking his eyes off the road briefly so that his eyes would come in contact with hers. "We have to tell them!"

Emily snorted sarcastically in reply as his eyes focused on the road ahead of them once again. "Yeah," she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm like it was venom. "We tell the team, they're happy, we throw the unsub behind bars, and everyone lives happily ever after." Derek sighed at her comment and opened his mouth to say something, but Emily wouldn't let him speak. "Yeah right!" she exclaimed, dropping the sarcasm. "Hotch'll be pissed and I don't know about you, but I kind of like this job and don't want to have to find another!"

If his current task of driving didn't require both hands and his eyes on the road, he would have burried his face in his hands briefly to accompany his exasperated sigh. The woman was stubborn and self-righteous. Unfortunately, so was he and he refused to give in to her wishes.

Arriving at the crime scene, he easily shifted the vehicle into park and opened his door. "We're here," he announced, not bothering to look her way. "We'll talk about this later."

"Damn right we will," Emily huffed, unbuckling her seatbelt and exiting the vehicle.

xXx

Rossi studied the medical examiner's report, his brows raising in piqued curiousity at the cause of death. The black men while tortured were all killed by a single gun shot to the head, but it was how the women died that piqued Rossi's interest. Glancing upward from the written report to look at the medical examiner, he pointed to the report.

"What is this Flunitrazepam found in the women's systems?" He asked.

"You might know it as rohypnol," the medical examiner replied.

"The date rape drug?"

The medical examiner nodded her head in confirmation. A date rape drug administered to the women would explain why there were no defensive wounds. Rohypnol, if Rossi recalled correctly was colorless, odorless, and tasteless. But how could the unsub slip a little white pill to the victims without their knowing.

She must have been able to read his thoughts, because she continued. "The pill dissolves completely in liquid," she explained, "and is one of the top drugs used to 'spike' drinks."

Spiked drinks. That could definetely be how the unsub gained control over the female victims, but there were no signs of drugs in the men's systems. So, how could one unsub subdue the male victims while keeping complete control over the drunk like females?

xXx

The couple was taken from their home, making the abduction sight located in the middle of a cul de sac. Putting their recent quarrel out of her mind, Prentiss Looked around the neighborhood. Shaking her head, she gazed up at Morgan. The man frowned as he met her gaze, obviously thinking the same thing she was. As their eyes met, silent apologies were made and professionalism replaced all sense of personalism at the moment.

"Someboy must have seen something," Emily commented, her eyes doing one more sweep of the surrounding area.

Morgan nodded in agreement, taking the key they were given before their departure from the Federal building. Fitting it into the lock on the front door, he twisted the knob and the door flung open. Being the perfect gentleman, he allowed Emily to enter the house first.

"I think we should canvass the neighborhood," he said, making his thoughts known.

"There's 25 homes in this cul de sac," Prentiss pointed out, looking over her shoulder to stare at him. "and you want to go door to door?" Morgan shrugged in reply. Knitting her brows and scrunching her nose, Emily's lip twitched. "That's going to take a while."

Again, Morgan shrugged as he pulled out his cell phone.

xXx

"If you have any questions, please call the number on the bottom of your screen. Thank you."

JJ ended the press conference and stepped away from the podium and evaded the pack of reporters hounding the front of the Federal building as best she could. Answering the questions she could, but more often than not answering with, "no comment," the blonde turned her back to the story hungry reporters and joned the stern faced Aaron Hotchner who watched not too far away.

Entering the building, both agents were glad to leave the reporters outside on the steps. JJ's heeled boots clicked on the hard flooring in long strides as she attempted to keep up with Hotch's quick pace. No words were spoken between the two agents as they rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, leaving them lost in their own thoughts.

Hotch wanted to close this case as quickly as possible. Since the unsub targeted couples, the body count was double than it would be if he only killed the men or women. But four couples, meant eight bodies and he feared another couple would be discovered at any time, bringing the body count to ten. Hopefully the geographic profile and the crime scenes would help them to discover a lead so they could get ahead of the bastard before anymore lives were tragically destoryed.

Meanwhile, JJ had a completely different matter running through her mind. While right now the case took top priority over everything else, the communications liason couldn't help but wonder if there was something going on between two of her co-workers. Prentiss was like Hotch, the epitome of professionalism. Morgan was too, except when he was flirting with either Garcia or Prentiss. But the banter was always friendly and Morgan and Prentiss' behavior wasn't any different. And yet, while she wasn't a profiler, JJ had spotted the quick glance between Prentiss and Morgan during the briefing. The expressions etched on their faces resembled that of worry and concern.

As they stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor, Hotch's phone rang and he stopped to answer it while JJ stepped into the empty bullpen. Many of the agents had gone home already except for Hotch's team who were all disperesed throughout working on leads. Entering the conference room, she saw Reid hard at work, diligently, coloring a map of Washington D.C. pinned on the evidence board with a red marker. Rossi was seated at the table, going through notes in greater detail.

"He rendered the women unconcious using rohypnol," Rossi shook his head, thinking out loud.

"A date rape drug?" JJ asked, leaning against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. Shrugging her shoulders, she asked, "Why not just use chloroform? Wouldn't that work better?"

Listening to the other two people in the room, Reid's marker stopped scribbling on the paper map. Turning to face his colleagues, Reid capped the marker and fidgeted with it in his hands. "Not necessarily," the young genius piped up and JJ and Rossi both turned their attention to him with interest. "Using chloroform to incapacitate someone is widely cliched due to the popularity of most crime fiction. However, the chloroform would have to be inhaled for at least five minutes to render someone unconcious. More chloroform would have to be administered then to keep them unconcious and the chin would have to be supported so that the tongue does not obstruct the airway, which happens to be a very difficult procedure to do even for an anesthesiologist." Both Rossi and JJ remained silent as they listened to Reid's babbling. His face lit up and the rate of his voice increased as he remembered something else about chloroform. "In 1865 a medical journal offered a "permanate scientific reputation" to anyone that could demonstrate "instantaneous insensibility" using chloroform. To this day, no one has-"

Rossi and JJ took their eyes off of the rambling agent and looked at each other. "Spence," JJ snapped her fingers to pull him out of his state of intense concentration.

"What about rohypnol?" Rossi asked.

Reid sighed, taking a deep breath to fill his lungs with oxegyn before continuing. "Rohypnol is classified as a date rape drug although studies indicate that it was used in only 1% of reported date rapes. It's known as the "forget me" drug because it has the abilitiy due to high potency to cause anterograde amnesia. On the streets, rohypnol is known as "roofies" as it is generally a small white pill that completely dissolves in liquid. When dissolved in liquid, it is completely tasteless and odorless, making it impossible to detect except through a drug test. Once it is ingested, the drug begins to take effect in as little as 20 minutes and a dosage as small as 1 mg can last up to 12 hours. When the drug begins to take effect, the person will start to feel drowsy and start to hallucinate as their judgement, motor skills, and speech are impaired. Confusion and memory impairment is also common and within two hours the person could be completely unconcious. If combined with alcohol, it can be fatal."

Hotch stepped into the room and his gaze immediately fell upon Reid's half colored map. However, he didn't say anything to the youngest agent of the team and dropped his gaze to JJ and Rossi. "Morgan would like you to meet them at the abduction sight."

Rossi and JJ looked to each other but did not say a word as they left the room to join the other agents out in the field. With JJ and Rossi gone, Reid went back to work on his geographical profile and Hotch left the young agent alone. Instead, Hotch left the room and made his way to his technical analyst's lair.

Garcia was furiously typing away at the keyboards, lighting up the assortment of screens on her different monitors. Sighing in frustration, she pushed herself away from the desk and nearly slid the chair right into Hotch. Turning around, Garcia hastily pushed her colorful rimmed glasses up on her nose and profusely apologized.

"What do you have so far, Garcia?" Hotch asked, waving off her apologies for running into him.

"Ultimately nothing, Captain."

xXx

Morgan sighed as Prentiss knocked on yet another door. After walking through the crime scene, the door to door canvas was promising to be less draining when Rossi and JJ showed up to take half of it. However, the sun was sinking farther and farther into the horizon and the FBI agents were beginning to feel drowsiness sneak up on them as they continued to work. Beside him, Emily tried to stifle a yawn so as not to let Morgan know how tired she really was. Although Morgan could see right through her facade, he didn't say anything.

The door was opened to reveal a young woman, holding a sleeping toddler. She was short, barely 5'0 and dressed in dark sweatpants and low cut tank top. Her sleeping toddler was dressed in superman pajamas and the two agents couldn't help but inwardly smile at the scene.

Immediately, they flashed their badges, causing the woman to gasp. It was Morgan who spoke first to introduce them. "Agent Morgan," he introduced himself as. Next he gestured to Emily and introduced her as "Agent Prentiss."

"May we come in?" Prentiss inquired and the woman immediately stepped aside to allow them entrance into her home.

xXx

Morgan and Prentiss stumbled into the bullpen followed by JJ and Rossi later that night after having canvassing the neighborhood that the latest victims, Cheryl and Christopher Brown lived. While JJ and Rossi went straight to the conference room to check in with the rest of the team, Morgan and Prentiss made a detour to the small kitchenette to grab some coffee.

Stepping closer to the brunette, Morgan whispered, "That cul de sac wasn't far from -"

He was unable to say anything else because Emily interrupted him. Turning her head to look in his direction, she glared at him. The normally affable brunette woman's dark eyes narrowed and were hard like ice, causing Morgan to think of the meaning of "as silent as the grave" because he knew if looks could kill, he'd be dead several times over.

"We are not telling them," she hissed, as they stepped into the small kitchenette.

"Tell us what?"