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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the shows because if I did JJ would never ever leave and Tony and Ziva would've got married by now xD
Author's Note: Yep, your favorite author is back! LOL Chapter 4! I'm so excited, this story has got very good comments and I just wanna thank all of you for the taking the time to read it.
Yeah, like the paragraph above this says, the Profiler's Choice CM Awards are getting started. I actually wanted to nominate this story on the Best Crossover category but then I read the guidelines and turns out I can't. Too bad. Hey, I'm not gonna pressure you guys to nominate or vote for me. Okay? It's your own and free choice.
Well, just got one more thing to say: Enjoy!
Chapter 4
How she wished she wasn't the one there, watching him sharpen the knife that would probably be used on her. She wished that the man had chosen someone else. Wishing bad things to occur to other people was wrong, she was aware of that, but she didn't care. She just wanted to get out of there. She knew that if he let her go, it wouldn't be alive. The purple bruises and the bleeding wounds on her arms, legs, face, and torso told her that.
She wondered why this man had taken her, in the first place. What did he win by hurting women? Because she was sure she wasn't the first to be put under that torture.
"Ready for more?" he asked, pulling her out of her thoughts. He slowly walked towards her, knife in hand, and a mischievous grin adorning his face.
"Why are you doing this?" she said.
He stopped on his tracks. "Why? Hmm… let's say that this is my way of… entertaining myself"
"There's this thing called TV, THAT is entertaining"
He chuckled and kneeled down in front of her "TV has crime shows, right? But they're all fiction, no real adrenaline rushing through your veins while you watch the killers murder someone, right? The good guys always win there. May be that won't happen here. This, is so much better"
"Why me?" she backed away from him as she noticed the knife close to her body.
"I honestly don't know. But I think that was enough talking, don't you?" he smirked and quickly pinned her against the hard stone wall. "Let's have some fun, shall we?"
"Ducky" Gibbs greeted as he walked into Autopsy followed closely by Hotch and Reid. After his call to Fornell he had returned to the bullpen and signaled the two FBI agents to go with him. Tobias told him to trust them, that they were good, but so was his own team. He wondered why Vance didn't let him handle this killer.
"Oh, Jethro, your timing is impeccable, as always!" the medical examiner said, putting down the chart and pen he was holding. "Well, would you like to introduce" he asked, noticing the two unfamiliar men behind his friend.
"Yeah. These are agent Hotchner and Dr. Reid"
"It's a pleasure. I'm Dr. Mallard but you can call me Ducky" he shook hands with both. "So you're a doctor" he said to Reid.
"Not that kind" Spencer quickly clarified "I have some PhDs, that's where the title comes from"
"How many? I mean, you're very young—"
"Duck" Gibbs called "Case"
"Oh, yes. We can continue our chat later, young man" he motioned the three of them to move to the table on which the latest victim had been lay after Gibbs called asking to pull her out of the freezer. "Becky Peterson. Her COD is exsanguination"
"She bleed out?" Hotch asked. That changed the MO; the other women died of asphyxiation
"Yes" Ducky responded, grabbing the victim's arms and them to the agents "She has several deep cuts on her wrists"
"Made by the killer" Gibbs implied.
"Actually, no. The cuts were made with hesitation and the angle suggests that she was the one who caused them"
"The UnSub forced her then" Reid stated. It was the only logical explanation.
"UnSub?" Gibbs inquired. Those profilers and their weird names.
"Unknown Subject" Hotch responded.
"Right…"
"She was badly tortured" the youngest agent pointed out as he looked at the body.
"Indeed" Ducky sighed "She has, I'd like a few but I cannot, a big amount of bruises and cuts all over her body. Like the other victims, she was raped. Two things that stand out are that this dear woman was not asphyxiated and, I found a peculiar mark on her thigh" he went to his desk and came back with a photograph of her upper leg. The image showed a burn mark but it was difficult to decipher it.
"It looks like a…" Reid said, observing the shape of the seemed familiar, he knew he'd seen that somewhere "… a letter of the Greek alphabet! Rho. It's and 'R'"
"According to the examiner of the other shift that performed the autopsies to the two first victims, they also had a strange burn mark on their thighs, and Erica Reggins did too" Ducky explained, passing them the pictures as he spoke.
"It's his signature" Hotch replied.
"Yeah, but they're all different" Gibbs added "May be it's a name or something"
"Hopefully, they'll give us leads" Reid said, still looking at the images. "On the first victim there is a 'L'; on the second, an 'E'; and the third has a 'M'. That gives us four letters of an incomplete word, or may be a phrase"
"And the only way to know the end of it is having more women murdered" Gibbs concluded.
"That's what we want to avoid" Hotch said. Yes, if they wanted to know what those letters meant they needed more victims. But that would take away the lives of innocent women, and they couldn't ask that.
"We need something else" Hotch declared.
"Well, then we need to wait for the others to return from their assignments" Gibbs responded.
"So… you live in Virginia?" Tony asked the brunette on the passenger seat next to him. Morgan was on the backseat reading a case file.
"Yeah" was all Prentiss responded.
"Big house, apartment, condo, or bunker?"
"Why would I live in a bunker?" she replied, turning her attention to him. Morgan chuckled but remained silent.
"I have no idea" the NCIS agent responded as he shrugged. "I'm just trying to make conversation. You guys don't talk that much"
"We're not here to socialize, you know"
"Nah, you're kidding. I thought this was the federal agencies' 'How to make friends' convention"
"Hey!—"
"Guys, stop it" Derek interrupted. "We're almost there"
"We had noticed that, Morgan" she said.
A couple of silent minutes later, the three agents arrived to the place the first victim, Miranda Kelmar, had been abducted.
"A 24/7 Laundromat. Perfect place to meet a stalker" Tony said as they entered.
Morgan looked at him "How come?"
"Well, first of all, I suppose that crazy people come here to do laundry; second, normal people tend to talk to the crazy ones while they're waiting for their clothes and stuff; and third, the front wall is all made of glass and there is a café in front so the crazy dude could just sit there and stalk her"
"Excellent deduction, man" Derek replied as the two of them followed Emily to the counter.
Tony grinned "Always". He eyed Prentiss and asked "Why is your lovely friend so cold at me?"
"Em? Oh, well, she may not respond to your flirty phrases because she's taken"
"By who?"
Morgan chuckled and shook his head "It's not my place to tell, and if I do tell, she'll kick my ass"
"Really?" DiNozzo said, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh, yeah"
"Could you please stop talking about me and do your jobs?" a female voice said.
"Sure" they responded.
"Excuse me" Emily said to the man reading a magazine behind the desk "Have you seen this woman here before?" she showed him Miranda's photo.
The middle aged man put the GSM magazine down "Mrs. Kelmar, yeah. She came here once a week to wash her beddings. I've been asked the same before, who are you?"
"FBI" Morgan answered.
"I'm not" Tony intervened "I'm from NCIS. My agency is the one that interviewed you"
"Yeah, and like I said before, I don't know if she talked to anyone, and I didn't see anything suspicious" the man replied and sank back into his chair.
"Oh, someone's cranky" Tony commented.
"Man, don't start" Morgan warned "We should go"
"Yeah, you should" the man agreed.
"Dude, you should stop reading those magazines and start sleeping. Crankiness is not welcomed in the United States" Tony said.
"Okay, we're leaving" Prentiss announced and pushed Tony towards the exit. The last thing they needed was being attacked by a pissed off magazine reader.
"You don't have to worry, you know" Rossi said to Ziva as they got off the sedan and walked to their last dumpsite.
"Excuse me?" the Israeli asked.
"You don't have to worry about agent DiNozzo flirting with Prentiss" he explained.
"Ah…how… I am not worried, or jealous, or anything"
JJ placed a hand on her shoulder "Don't try to deny it. Profilers notice everything"
"… Fine… but how can you be sure that he does not…"
"Like her?" the media liaison finished for her.
Dave chuckled "Every time he talked to her he kept looking your way. He wants you to be jealous. Don't let 'im win"
"You can pair yourself up with Morgan" JJ suggested.
Ziva smiled. The black was good looking. "Well, he certainly is—"
"Ookay, before you two start chatting about how hot he is, let's get back on business" Rossi interrupted.
"Okay, old man, let's search a dumpster full of dirty trash" JJ said and walked towards the mentioned object.
"So, Becky Peterson was found here a month ago" Ziva began "She had no ID with her and she was only wearing her underwear"
"The UnSub wanted her humiliated even in her death, then" Rossi asserted.
"Yes…" Ziva replied. UnSub? She would ask later. "We searched the dumpster and surrounding area but we found nothing"
"Hey, guys" JJ called from behind a pair of boxes.
"What's up?"
"Come here"
"What is it?" Rossi asked as he moved to where his co-worker was standing.
"I've seen that" JJ answered, pointing at a sheet of paper stuck on one of the boxes.
"I have too, at the first dumpsite but it was done with a yellow marker, I just ignored it" Ziva added. She pulled out a pair of gloves and took the paper. "This wasn't here a month ago"
"Then the killer left it after you were here, but why?" Rossi said. What did a smiley face drawn with blood mean?
A/N: Interesting, right? Yeah, the GSM magazine, woo. Haha, LOL. Reviews are love for me!