A/N: Thank you for reading. I'm happy to see I have over 200 hits! I really appreciate you spending your free time with my story. I don't own Criminal Minds, and I don't infringe. Love to hear from you.

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Chapter Four

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Derek walked into the FBI on Monday morning, dreading the day before it ever started. He was sure Reid would have glowing stories of how wonderful his weekend was with his new boyfriend. Morgan wanted to barricade himself in Garcia's office to avoid hearing any of it, but he told himself all weekend he was going to be supportive. It would kill him to hear the details, but he'd do it for Reid. It was what one did for one's best friend…for the people one loved.

After Morgan had his coffee and was settled in his office, he began reviewing paperwork from their last case to sign off on the files before they were sent to the file room. It was another duty he took from Hotch's shoulders so the man could have more time with his son.

When Garcia called him, he smiled. "Hey, Baby Girl. What's up?"

"Have you talked to Reid? He's late so I called his cell but he didn't answer," she asked.

Morgan took a deep breath. "I saw him on Friday night. He had plans over the weekend with that Luke kid. Maybe he had a wild time and is movin' a little slow this morning."

"Hmm. Well, Luke's in your class today, right?" she asked, reminding Morgan he needed to get his ass to lunch then to the gym for his training classes.

"Yeah. I've gotta get over to the training center. If you hear from Reid, will you text me, Baby Girl? We're doing suspect seizure training, but I'll check my phone," he reminded.

Garcia agreed and after the two of them signed off, he tried Reid's cell. "This is Spencer Reid. I'm not available at the moment. Leave me a message."

"Pretty boy, give me a shout. I'm in training this afternoon, but I haven't heard from you about your date. Hit me up. Bye." Morgan tossed his phone on the desk in his office in the training facility and put things out of his mind.

After a quick salad in the cafeteria, he returned to his office and changed into his workout clothes. He walked into the gym and blew the whistle around his neck to get the attention of the fifteen students, pulling up the hard-ass cover he used in training.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is SSA Derek Morgan. I'll be your certification trainer. Now, let's get started." He noticed the group was odd-numbered, so he walked over to Lucas Cook and smiled. "I'll be your training partner since we're uneven. You are?" he asked, knowing very well who he was facing. The surprising thing was the guy had some bruising on his jaw and a small bandaid on his forehead.

"Trainee Lucas Cook," the young man answered with a smirk.

"What's with the look?" Morgan asked.

"I, uh, I know you're friends with Dr. Reid. He and I are dating, but I don't expect you to go easy on me, Agent Morgan," the kid stated cockily. Something didn't set well with Derek at all.

He turned to the group. "You will encounter situations wherein you have to apprehend a suspect, or an UnSub as we refer to them, unknown subject. You've learned about them in your other training classes. What you read in books is one thing. What you encounter in a seizure situation is totally different. Does anyone know why?"

He looked around the room, not surprised to see Lucas Cook's hand in the air. If there was ever an over-achiever, it was that guy. "Trainee?" He pointed to the young man and saw the smug look Morgan wanted to slap off his face.

"Human behavior is unpredictable under the best of circumstances. We can have theories and statistics to guide us, but a mild-mannered unsub can become volatile at the drop of a hat without obvious coercion. We can't predict what goes on in the suspect's minds; we can only observe their reactions and take countermeasures we've learned in the past to minimize the threat," Cook stated.

"Good answer, Trainee, just like the book reads. So, let's see how you'd proceed to apprehend a suspect." With that, Morgan led the trainees to the training area and gave the trainee the scenario. He told Cook he wouldn't be holding back regarding the seizure, so the trainee shouldn't either.

"Trainee Cook and I will be the first in line. Observe and determine which of you will be the UnSub and the agent. We're going to do it more than once, so everyone gets a shot," Morgan instructed.

"You think you're ready for this? Since I'm already an agent, I'll be the unsub if that's okay with you," Morgan ordered as he handed the younger man a vest and a gun loaded with blanks.

Lucas Cook looked at Morgan with hatred in his eyes. "Sure, Agent Morgan."

Derek held the smirk. He knew the younger man thought he had the upper hand on Morgan because he was younger, but he was about to show him he was a fool.

He turned to the class. "Sort yourselves. I'm not your momma," he told them.

Once he and Cook entered the training house, it became a blitz. Morgan tried to evade Cook, but the younger man dogged him and when he found him in a small room, he began beating the living hell out of Morgan with the gun that was loaded with blanks, instead of trying to talk him down at all.

"Cook! Stop! This is an exercise, man, not a beat down," Morgan told him as he pushed the younger man off him after the blitz attack.

"I thought it was a proving ground, Agent Morgan. I caught the Unsub. It goes in my file, right?" Cook stated as he walked away. Derek wiped the blood from his lip and his brow before taking a deep breath.

Spencer had gone out with the man for the weekend, and he wasn't at work. Morgan had spent about fifteen minutes with the guy, and he was bleeding. He didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know something wasn't right. Reid never missed work.

"Okay, that should have shown you everything not to do. Trainee Cook attacked the unsub without even trying to talk him down to take him into custody without bloodshed. Our desire is to take them in without harm if at all possible. We don't want to hurt them if it's not absolutely necessary, nor do we want to cause them to harm another person. We want them to be tried for their crimes, and putting them in the hospital unnecessarily makes the Bureau live up to the public perception of police officers taking the law into their own hands. What you witnessed wasn't the route we ever travel.

"Next team," Morgan ordered as he saw a guy and a girl saddle up. After they headed off, he looked around for Cook, seeing him in the corner drinking water.

He walked over to the young man, grabbing his hands. Morgan noticed before the kid began beating the hell out of him, his knuckles were already bruised and a little swollen. "You belong to a fight club or somethin'? How'd your hands get so messed up, man? What happened to your face? That's quite a shiner."

The guy pulled his hands from Morgan's grip and smirked. "Much like you, I go to the gym on a regular basis. I do MMA. I sparred on Saturday with a buddy who doesn't like the gloves. You spar, Agent? Maybe we could get in the ring sometime," he taunted.

Morgan could have bitten nails in half, but he calmed himself because the kid wasn't stupid. "Outside of this building? You bet. So, let's go again. Get at the end of the line, and this time, you show me how an agent should handle this situation."

The rest of the training session was enlightening for Morgan. The other fourteen trainees were there to learn. Lucas Cook was there to assert his dominance over Morgan, and when it didn't work, the young man became antagonistic and combative. When the class finished at three, the trainees went to the locker rooms to shower and change.

Morgan decided to wait until the locker room was empty because he didn't want to run into Lucas Cook. He tried to call Reid again, only getting his voicemail. He didn't leave a message because he'd already left several. Something was going on and after work, he was going to get to the bottom of it.

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When Morgan knocked on Reid's apartment door, he'd anticipated having a problem getting the boy genius to open up…literally and figuratively. Derek hadn't been able to speak with Garcia because when he returned to the BAU that afternoon, Hotch had sent him the changes to the budget, and he had to make the edits and write up the justifications in order to send it to Strauss before COB.

He sought out Garcia after he was finished, only to find her gone. He hadn't heard from her all day, so he assumed she hadn't heard from Reid either. Going to the apartment in the old Victorian-style building where Reid lived was the only answer.

"Come on, Pretty Boy. Open up for me," Morgan demanded through the door as he banged relentlessly, to no avail.

Just then, he heard a shout from behind him. He turned to see an older woman looking at him with a cocked eyebrow. "Are you going to kick it down?" she snapped at Morgan.

He smiled the smile that got women to do his bidding. He'd have to remember to try it on Reid some time. "Hello, I'm Derek. I work with Spencer," he told the woman, extending his hand in a friendly manner.

The older woman slapped his hand away. "I'm his downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Cavanaugh, and you're interrupting my show, young man. Spencer left for work with a suitcase this morning. I know because I was taking Bootsy out for a walk when the cab arrived to pick him up," she explained.

"Bootsy?" he asked.

"My tabby. He likes to get a little walk in the morning before we watch our shows. Then we have our nap after lunch, and we get ready for our evening shows…shows you are interrupting," the woman stated harshly.

Morgan nodded and started down the stairs before he remembered something. "Did Spencer have his cat with him?" he asked.

She frowned. "No. When I asked him about Morgan, he said he'd given her to a friend because he wasn't going to be back for a while. He loves that cat very much. We used to have playdates with Bootsy and Morgan," the woman told him.

The human 'Morgan' stopped on the stairs. "I don't suppose you have a key to Spencer's apartment or maybe the super's number?"

She glanced at him with a cocked eyebrow. "How well did you know Spencer? I've never seen you here before, and he's never mentioned a Derek. He used to talk about a guy named Morgan who he named his cat after, but he decided to give up on him because he saw no future in the relationship. He started dating that handsome young lawyer…Larry…Lance? Anyway, they came here last night, but they had a fight over that Morgan character.

"I came up here at midnight, threatening to call the police if they didn't hold it down. After that, I never heard another peep outta them. Like I said, I saw Spencer leaving for work this morning," she explained. Morgan felt his gut tighten.

"When you saw Spencer leave, did he look upset?" Morgan asked.

She shook her head. "I couldn't see much of his face at all. He was wearing dark glasses and a hooded sweatshirt that was too big on him, though that's how he seems to like his clothes. Anyway, it was red and had a cow or something on the front. I've seen him wear it before. He's an odd guy, but he's very kind. He knows I like my sweets, and every once in a while, he'll drop by my place with a pie. He bakes, you know. He said it's something he and his mother used to do together. I guess she's passed, bless her heart. We'd have coffee and pie, and he would talk about how much he missed her, poor boy," the woman told him.

Morgan nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Cavanaugh. If you hear from Spencer, would you mind calling me?" he asked as he pulled out his wallet and handed her a business card with his information.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess I can. I need to get back to my shows."

The woman followed him down the stairs and after she walked him out, he heard the front door dead-bolt click closed. He needed to get back inside that building, but he would wait. Mrs. Cavanaugh seemed to be the neighborhood watch, and he wanted to fly under her radar for a while. The old gal had to hit the hay eventually.

He called Reid's cell once more, and when it went to voicemail, he left another message. "Baby boy, it's me, Morgan. Give me a call. I've got a custodial consult I could use your help on. Thanks." Morgan knew an inquiry into Reid's whereabouts wouldn't get a return call, but work? Work always came first.

As he sat in his home later that night with Clooney in his bed in the corner, he thought about what Mrs. Cavanaugh had divulged. Thinking it through, something didn't set right in his gut. He thought it was odd Reid had named his cat Morgan. It would figure the cat would be a girl, but he wasn't about to analyze whether it was a jab at his sexuality or just a coincidence of the ridiculously obvious sort.

She'd said Reid was going to work, but Morgan knew that wasn't true. They hadn't had a case in a week, and if there was something special Reid was working on, Garcia would have known about it. Reid had called into work sick, so it wasn't a Bureau case.

The neighbor also mentioned Reid was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a cow on it, which could only be Morgan's 'Chicago Bulls' hoodie he'd put on Reid on a trip home from Seattle. The kid was cold because it had been raining like crazy and he'd lost his coat somewhere between the hotel and the airport. As Morgan thought about it, he remembered Reid never gave it back. He'd seen the kid wear it a few times and tease him it wasn't going to be returned. At the time, Morgan just laughed at the kid and blew it off as good natured ribbing, but maybe it meant something to Reid that he wanted to keep it and he wore it when Morgan wasn't around?

The more he stewed on it, the more his gut became unsettled. Something wasn't right, and he needed to get to the bottom of it. Reid wasn't one to just disappear without a word. Where was he?

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E/N: Now we have a missing hottie! Head up a search party! Thanks for reading. ML