Author's note: Bringing the melodrama in this chapter, yo.

J.J. took to the phones to check up on the local press response, while Hotch briefed Rossi on the case. Then, after he'd sent Rossi to join Morgan at the abduction site, he asked Chief Herrera to gather all the files the LVPD had on known offenders in the area. Morgan had been right, of course; at the moment the father was their primary suspect. He had no alibi for the time of the abduction: he'd taken off work early to run errands, but hadn't kept receipts for anything he'd bought.

Hotch just wasn't sure about the man. He seemed genuinely stricken, but he was hiding something too. He had been distant and distracted, like his mind was somewhere else. Hotch had seen people react to this kind of trauma with detachment before, but that wasn't the case with Bill Woods. He wasn't detached; he was torn – torn between what was happening now, and something that was happening in his own mind. He had a secret, and if that secret was that he'd done something terrible to his own child, Hotch would find out.

"I have a couple of my men gathering the files you asked for," said Herrera, walking back towards Hotch. "Your Agent Prentiss has the parents in the interview room down the hall, if you'd like to join her."

"We'll need to speak to them separately," said Hotch, "Do you only have the one room?"

"There are two, but one of them is unusable," Herrera replied. "The microphone sticks. Damn thing's always on, so there's no privacy. Best to do something quiet in there, but you can use my office for the other interview."

"Thank you," said Hotch. He caught sight of Reid finally emerging from the restroom. Reid looked rough; some time alone might be easiest on him right now, Hotch thought. "Why don't you have your men bring the case files to the unused interview room," he said, "I'll have Agent Reid go through them in there, I'm sure he'll appreciate the quiet."

"It's an awful lot of files for one guy to read," said Herrera skeptically.

"You haven't seen him read," said Hotch, almost smiling.

Reid walked across the busy station toward Hotch. He had to tell his boss that William Woods was his father. No, it was Bill. He was going by Bill now. As he walked, he tried to focus on how hungry he was. It was a feeling he could cling to that wasn't dread, anger, grief, jealousy, or any of the other maddening emotions that threatened to smother him. He reached into his pocket and felt the cool, smooth surface of his One Year Medallion, which he'd dug out of his bag in the restroom a moment ago. When he'd earned it, he had returned the one that had been loaned him two months prior.

I don't understand, he had said when his superior had loaned him medallion, It's your most prized possession. Still, he'd taken it, and kept it in his pocket for two months straight until he'd received his own. Every day of those two months he felt the weight of the little coin in his pocket. Every day he felt the weight of another man's burden and triumph, and he had begun to understand. The tiny weight of that medallion had anchored him.

Now he had his own medallion, and the bitter truth was, he was disappointed. He knew it as the same coin. Made of the same metal, with the same imprint. He knew it represented the same accomplishment. He knew it was just his imagination that made his own medallion seem lighter, less substantial than the one he'd been loaned. But somehow to him, his medallion just didn't seem as good. Maybe it was specifically because it was his own and not someone else's, and as such, it served as much as a reminder of how far he'd fallen as of how far he'd come. Or maybe it was because earning it himself just made everything more real. He couldn't pretend it was happening to someone else: this was his medallion, his burden, his triumph. Maybe it was because the borrowed medallion had been such a good companion, whereas having his own just made him feel alone once more.

So he kept the medallion in the bottom of his bag. When the cravings hit, when he felt the urge to escape, he'd rummage around under the books and files, under the wallet, amongst the loose change, paperclips, candy wrappers, ballpoint pens, and broken pencils, and he'd remind himself just how damned hard it was to get the stupid little coin. It was the struggle that Reid focused on. Not the failure and not the triumph, but the struggle.

Now he grasped the medallion in his pocket and reminded himself that he couldn't run away. Running away only made things worse. Running away meant facing the struggle all over again. Running away is what his father would do. He was going to face this.

"Hotch, can I talk to you in private for a moment?"

The clatter of the swinging doors to the station's main office slamming open overwhelmed all the other noise in the bustling room, and Hotch and Reid, along with everyone else, turned to see Bill Woods, red-faced, red-eyed, and furious, barreling across the room.

"What the hell are you people doing?" He yelled, and it felt strange to Reid that his voice ws so familiar. "My son has been gone almost six hours! You should be out looking for him, not dragging me and my wife into a goddamned interrogation room!"

Kathy Woods and Prentiss were right behind him, desperately trying to keep him calm, "It's just a quiet place for us to talk. Nobody is accusing you of anything," Prentiss said measuredly.

"Bullshit!" Woods yelled. "I already told the police, no one I know could've done this! I didn't do this! Some lunatic has my son!"

"Actually, stranger abductions of children are very rare," Reid suddenly heard himself saying, "Statistically, they account for only one-hundredth of one percent of all missing children," he couldn't stop, "Most abducted children are taken by family members or acquaintances," Stop. Stop. Stop! "And children are less likely to be harmed in the case of stranger abduction than in an abduction involving a parent or other immediate family member."

They were staring at him. Kathy Woods was crying again. His father was totally speechless.

Tact.

Tact was like one of those rubber joke toys that were designed to slip out of your hands: the tighter Reid tried to grab ahold of it, the faster it slipped away. A part of him couldn't help but be happy that he'd shocked his father, though.

"Reid," said Hotch, "I believe Detective Herrera has some files he'd like to show you. Detective, would you please show Agent Reid where he can set up?"

CMCMCM

Reid sat perched on the edge of the table in the dim light of the unused interrogation room, rolling his One Year Medallion over his fingers.

He'd set up his map on the corkboard they'd provided, pushing it in front of the one-way mirror, more so that he wouldn't have to look at his own reflection than to keep anyone outside from looking in. He had gone through a handful of the cases they'd left in cardboard boxes for him on the table, including Charles Woods'. Bill and Kathy Woods had been married eleven years, living in a nice suburban neighborhood ten minutes away from Reid and his mother. He wondered if his father had known Kathy while he and his mother were still together. She was an historian. An academic, like his mother. Blonde, like his mother, shorter though. More curvaceous. Healthier looking. They made a nice-looking couple. They had a nice little boy. A nice little family.

He pushed the file away and had started to work on the board, but quickly found himself playing with his medallion instead. A bit of prestidigitation and the medallion vanished. Somewhere down the hall Hotch and Prentiss were trying to clean up the mess he had made with his father and Mrs. Woods, and he assumed Rossi and Morgan would be returning from the abduction site any time now. Garcia had called him twice, and he'd ignored both her calls.

The medallion disappeared. The medallion reappeared. The medallion disappeared. He had been resolved to tell Hotch everything a half an hour ago, but now he just wanted to escape again. Control was as much an illusion as his stupid magic tricks. It was as meaningless as this stupid coin. He shoved it back in his pocket, and returned to his map and files.

"Spencer?" The voice was barely audible. It struck Reid again how weirdly familiar it was. He would never forget it, but he felt like it should have been more distant now, if not totally foreign. After all, his father had been out of his life longer than he'd been in it. Two thousand seventy three days, three hours, and seven minutes longer, to be exact.

"Spencer?" It was just a little louder this time and Reid turned away from the corkboard where his map hung, dotted with pins, traced with bright colors, and illustrated with photographic evidence of the worst humanity had to offer, and of innocent lives they destroyed. In Reid's hand was a picture of Charles that he'd yet to hang in one of the blank spaces.

When he turned, he didn't look his father in the eye, but sort of lingered on his shoes, and the lopsided way the man stood, with his right ankle always rolled outward. He remembered sticking his arms in a pair of his father's shoes when he was a toddler: they were burgundy leather dress shoes, the sole of the right one worn down unevenly on the outer edge. He was three, and his little arms fit into the shoes almost to the shoulder, and it was so funny, and he ran around the house flapping the shoes on his arms, and dad laughed, and mom was smiling, and…

He shut the memory down. He didn't want it. "You shouldn't be in here," he said.

"I…I didn't…I mean…" His father struggled out.

"Just leave me alone. Please," said Reid.

His father took a few paces toward him, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder, "Look, Spencer, just…I just have to tell you…" he began.

But Reid cut him off, jerking away a little more dramatically than he intended. "Don't touch me. Just don't," he said quietly. His father backed away, looking resigned rather than stricken. "You don't have to tell me anything," Reid continued quickly. He could feel his voice rising in both volume and pitch, as it tended to do when he was upset. He could feel the pace of his speech speeding up. Why couldn't he control himself better? "I don't need anything. I don't want anything except for you to leave me alone." His father stood unmoving a few paces away from him, the dim light and stillness making him look like he was made of clay. Reid continued, "I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to. If that's what you're worried about. I won't tell."

"Spencer, just give me a…"

But Reid cut him off again, the anger now unambiguously tingeing his voice, "I am trying do my job," he said forcefully, "and I can't do that if you won't leave me alone. If you want me to find your son, then go. Just go!" But Bill Woods remained silent, and Reid finally looked up at his face. The expression was inscrutable; sad and lined, and his whole face was wrong – it was the face he remembered, but wrong. Reid suddenly felt the urge to hit him. His fist began to clench, but in his hand was the photograph of Charles.

He looked at it now; the smiling little boy looking up at him was also weirdly familiar, although he'd never seen him before today. In his features he saw bits of his father, and bits of himself. He saw his own oversized teeth from before he grew into them. He saw the shape of his own ears, and an angle where the forehead met the temple that looked exactly like his. He saw golden brown hair threatening to curl at the ends where it was getting too long. He saw slightly lanky limbs, wrapped casually around a big, yellow dog. But there were differences too. Charlie's smile was easy, and his bright blue eyes were those of a confident boy, staring straight into the camera. Reid's own smile at that age had been awkward, slightly forced. In photographs his eyes tended downward, ringed in dark circles he should've been far too young to possess; his forehead was troubled; his golden brown hair not just overgrown, but unkempt from neglect; his lanky limbs too thin and wrapped around his body self-consciously. Charles is me, he thought, but normal and happy. Without the weirdness and the awkwardness and the stress.

"She doesn't know about me, does she? Your wife. She doesn't know?" The words came out small and sad, not angry, and Reid couldn't look away from the picture.

"No," said his father. Reid could tell he wanted to say more, but that he didn't know how.

"He looks like me," said Reid, "When I was his age. I thought I looked like mom, but he looks like me." And despite the guilt that automatically accompanied it, he couldn't quash the jealousy that rose up within him as he gazed at the photo of Charles, a voice in the back of his mind screeching bitterly, Why do you deserve a father and not me? What's so special about you? "Were you ever going to tell him that he has a brother?"

There was a stifled gasp from the doorway. It would have been humorously melodramatic if not for the sheer sadness of the trembling figure of Kathy Woods, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from six hours of crying, and her face blankly shocked. Behind her stood Hotch, with his usual inscrutably severe expression, and Rossi, whose slightly open-mouthed surprise belied the sharp mind beneath.

"I don't understand," Mrs. Woods quavered. "He's…your son?"

"Kathy…I…yes," said Reid's father, as if admitting to a crime. Reid felt like hitting him again.

There a split second of silence, as five highly intelligent people regarded one another dumbly, and then everyone seemed to talk at once.

"You didn't tell me. Why didn't you tell me?" Kathy Woods asked her husband, as he stuttered her name.

"Ma'am, I…I'm so sorry," Reid blurted out, "I didn't mean for you to find out. I mean, not this way. I didn't know…"

"Reid, outside. Now," said Hotch.

"Let's everybody remain calm," Rossi pleaded as the voices escalated.

"Reid," said Hotch again.

"No wait!" said Mrs. Woods, grabbing Reid by the elbow as he tried to follow Hotch out of the room. "You…are you Diana's son? From his first marriage? It's Dr. Reid, right? Reid was her maiden name, wasn't it?" Reid was at a loss for words, and so gave only a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

"Kathy," his father interjected, drawing close to them both and causing Reid to flinch away again. God, his lack of self-control was embarrassing. "Just let me explain," he continued, but she ignored him, and just stared up at Reid instead.

Reid was very aware of Mrs. Woods' continued grip on his arm, of Hotch's expectant stare, of Rossi's penetrative observation. "Please," he began, in an attempt to address Mrs. Woods and Hotch at once, his words tumbling out at an unstoppable pace, "I …I haven't seen him in years…in sixteen years." He looked back and forth between his boss and the distraught woman, "Normally we'd be briefed, but because of the circumstances, Agent Rossi and I arriving separately, I didn't know your names until we were here, in the station, and even then, there are one hundred ninety-eight thousand, nine hundred and sixty people with the surname Woods in Nevada, and William is the given name of approximately one in one hundred American males, so statistically there are at least one thousand, nine hundred, eighty nine William Woods in the sta..." he was losing it, he saw it in their faces: they were getting The Look, "I mean," he tried to get back on track, He looked at Hotch, "I didn't know until we were introduced," then he looked down at Kathy Woods, her eyes bloodshot and wet, "I couldn't make a scene. I didn't want to put you through that. To put you through this. I thought it best not to say anything."

There was another moment of silence. Painful silence. It was Mrs. Woods who broke it this time. "How old are you?" she asked.

Well, that wasn't what Reid expected. "Um, twenty-five," he said.

"You just abandoned him?" she said. The question was clearly for her husband, but she continued to stare up at Reid. Her eyes, despite all their rawness, were gentle and perceptive. Was that pity that Reid saw in them? He expected hatred, resentment, but it wasn't there. There was something else. Was it affection? Was it recognition? Was she seeing Charles in Reid, the way he saw himself in the photograph of Charles? "He would have been what, nine? Ten? And you abandoned him? You said your first wife was insa…was ill," Reid noticed the correction. Even in this time of trauma, the woman was sensitive to him, was trying to be kind. "You said you couldn't cope. You left a little boy alone to cope?"

"Kathy, please…" his father began. But she didn't look at him. Instead she stared into Reid's eyes, and despite himself, he couldn't stop staring into hers.

"Reid," Hotch said. He jumped. He'd almost forgotten Hotch and Rossi were there. "Reid." Hotch's voice was much gentler now, "We need to step outside. We have to talk."

"I can work this case," Reid said, not attempting to move away from Kathy. Her hand still grasped his arm. "I can help find Charles."

"Kathy!" his father practically yelled, "Will you just listen to me? Please!"

The tension in the air was palpable. A steely bond forming between Kathy and Reid, Bill Woods near exploding, Rossi ready to jump in if things got out of hand. Hotch was undeterred. He continued calmly, "Reid, these circumstances are highly unusual. I need to know that you can be objective."

"Kathy!" Bill Woods interjected again.

"I don't even know you!" Kathy replied, "You had another family. Another son, and you left him!" She finally let go of both Reid's gaze and his arm, and turned to face her husband, the rage in her features seem incongruent compared to the tragic compassion they conveyed seconds before. "What else have you been keeping from me? What else don't I know?"

"Nothing! There's nothing," he said, "You need to let me explain." Reid backed away, watching his father, who looked desperate. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Reid?" Hotch said again, quietly.

"You abandoned your own son. He was Charlie's age and you abandoned him. Would you have left us too? If things got rough. Would you have left me and Charlie?" Kathy asked.

"No! God, no," said Reid's father, "I would never. I would never leave you. I would never leave Charlie."

Reid felt suddenly empty inside. Like he'd been punched in the gut. Like every punch in the gut from every bully on every schoolyard he'd ever received came crashing into him at once. As soon as he said it Bill Woods seemed aware of his mistake. He looked at Reid. Both men were pale; Bill Woods shocked at his own cruelty, Reid draining of emotion as quickly as the color had drained from his face. All eyes were on him now. Kathy's tears were streaming silently and freely, and for a moment, Reid saw Hotch and Rossi's composures fall as sympathetic pain flashed across their faces. They regained their composures quickly, though. And so did he. "I can work objectively," he said. He was numb.

"Are you sure?"

No. "Yes."

"Reid..."

"I don't feel anything for this man. I can work objectively," Reid said. He pinned the photograph of Charles Woods onto the board and strode out of the room.