Chapter 4, just like I promised! So far we have Spencer staying with Greg and Derek staying with Nick. What will become of this situation? Find out!

CASE FILE

The following night seemed to come quicker than anyone was ready for. It always seemed like that when there was an important case at hand. The CSI and FBI teams were slowly filing into the break room at the lab, some looking more rested than others. Sara, Catherine, JJ, Penelope, and Emily sat together with mugs of coffee and discussed different things. Catherine and JJ shared pictures of Lindsey and Henry. Rossi and Hotch were in conversation over on the couches. Derek and Nick walked in and went over to the coffee machine, talking avidly about some football team. JJ looked over at Sara, who nodded as if mentally agreeing that 'Derek and Nick were now together.'

"They were acting all lovey-dovey yesterday when we got here," Sara whispered amongst the group of women. "No wonder Greg has been so upset."

"Same with Spencer," JJ said quietly, glancing over at the two men. "I can't believe it happened though, I always saw Derek and Spence together."

"Makes me wanna smack someone," Garcia said over her mug. "Nobody treats my little genius like that."

Emily smiled and sat back. "If he only knew half the things you called him, Penelope."

The three women giggled, causing all four men in the room to look over at them. Hotch was about to ask what was funny when the door opened and Greg and Spencer walked in, both looking tired as hell. Hotch raised an eyebrow. "What did you two do last night that you both look so tired?"

Spencer and Greg took on looks of innocent alarm, causing the women to giggle some more. Hotch and Rossi looked jut as confused as the younger men, obviously not interpreting the statement the same way the women did. Derek looked at Spencer in silent anguish and Nick turned away from the group and stared at the wall instead.

"We, uh…we were just up late moving some stuff around," Greg said, rubbing his tired eyes. He was telling the truth, but he wasn't sure everyone else was buying it. "Spence over here is so freakin OCD, it took forever."

Spencer sniffled and looked around the room, finally settling on a ceiling tile that was slightly out of place. "I thought it might be better if your cds and dvds were organized alphabetically and by genre. It was more ideal."

"I called it organized chaos beforehand," Greg muttered, looking down at the coffee cup he had in hand. Even though he and Spencer had stopped for coffee on the way to work, it didn't seem to help either of them. He was about to say something about the lack of caffeine in his system when the door opened and Ray Langston stepped in.

"Good evening, everyone," he said with a smile.

"Hey there," Catherine said as she stood up. "Well, I guess we should get started. Hopefully we can get this guy before he leaves the state again."

Hotch nodded as everyone else stood. "The last thing we need is to be chasing some psycho across the country."

Everyone filed out of the room and walked down the hall to one of the labs. There was evidence and pictures spread out, waiting for them to look at.

"Ok, here are the pictures of the body," Catherine said, sliding some pictures of the newest victim over to Hotch and Emily. "His name is Ethan Slider, twenty-six years old. A young couple found him sprawled out on the street on their way home. He looks like he was tortured; there are bruises and cuts all over his chest, back, and stomach, aside from the multiple stab wounds. He also had a broken leg and some fractured ribs. We're still waiting for the full autopsy report."

Hotch nodded and passed around the pictures to the other members of his team. "Or unsub tortures and rapes his victims before killing them," he said. "Your medical examiner should find evidence of rape. This body was found yesterday?"

"Yeah, at about seven at night," Sara said.

"The unsub has a pattern," Rossi began, looking over at the two women. "He kills two victims in the same area, the second a week after the first one. Then he leaves the state."

"Why is he leaving?" Nick asked from the corner.

"He might be worried about leaving potential evidence that could lead to him being caught after his second kill," Spencer said tiredly. "We also think it could be because he feels like he's starting over again in another state, and possibly his kill zones mean something to him."

"You mean like from childhood?" Dr. Langston asked.

"Possibly," Emily said. "He might be returning to any areas that may have caused him grief or pain at one point in his life. This might be his way of getting revenge."

"What evidence was found on or around the body?" Hotch asked.

"Aside from his id not much," Catherine said with a frown. "We're going to do a casting of the stab wounds, hopefully be able to tell what kind of knife it is or if there are any marks that might point to a specific one, like if the tip is broken off or something. We are also going to see if we can find what caused his other bruises. We'll check his records of employment; see if he had any enemies. Perhaps your unsub might fall into this category."

"It's possible," Hotch said. He turned to his team. "Garcia, I want you to pull up all the towns the unsub has killed in. Look to see if there were any crimes or family deaths of the same name in the past thirty years and see if you can cross-reference them. David, I want you and Reid to go through the files of the seven victims and see if you can find anything in common with them, like careers or hobbies, something that might tie them to the unsub. JJ and Emily I want you two to talk with Ethan's family, see if they can tell you anything more about him. Morgan and I are going to talk with his employers."

The team nodded and went to go their separate ways. The CSI team was also given their instructions and split as well. Greg caught up to Spencer before he disappeared into another room. "Check in with me later if you need anything, ok?"

Spencer nodded and smiled a little. "Same with you." He followed Rossi into the room where they would view the files.

Derek watched this exchange as he followed Hotch towards the elevators. He didn't want to think that Spencer might have already moved on from their break-up. I guess I should have seen this coming, after the way I treated him. He sighed and stepped into the elevator with Hotch.

Hotch looked over at Derek but didn't say anything. He knew about the break-up between his two agents and realized it must have been affecting them more than he thought. He had yet to realize that Nick was Derek's new fascination, and that was the reason Spencer was so down. He raised his eyebrow in thought as he and Derek left the building and walked towards their vehicle.

The ride to Ethan's place of employment was quiet. Hotch eventually looked over at Derek to see the man appeared both deep in thought and sad at the same time. "Something bothering you, Morgan?"

Derek glanced over at Hotch before looking out the window again. "It's just that usually you send me and Reid to do this sort of thing."

Hotch nodded as he watched the road. "I've noticed some tension between the two of you, didn't want to make matters worse. You want to talk about it?"

Derek sighed and leaned back in the passenger seat, still staring out the window. "It's just that…well…I don't know. Spence is just different now that we broke up. He's hanging out with Greg a lot and he doesn't talk to me."

"Perhaps he just needs a friend right now and Greg is that person," Hotch offered. "He may need the contact from another person to help get him through the break-up. I noticed this morning how tired he looked, and I seriously doubt it was from staying up late to put cds away" He looked questioningly at Derek. "Did something happen last night?"

Derek frowned; he knew there was no way of avoiding this subject forever. "He helped Greg move his things out of Nick's place last night and things were just really awkward. It kept me up too."

"Greg and Nick are no longer a couple?" Hotch asked?

"No…Nick and I are together now," Derek said quietly.

Hotch was quiet for a minute as he absorbed the new information. This definitely explained why Spencer had been acting the way he was and why Derek always spent so much time with Nick. "I see," he said after a few moments.

The ride went back to being silent as Hotch thought about this new development and Derek went back to staring sadly out the window. One they arrived at the car garage, which was Ethan's workplace, Hotch looked over at Derek once more. "It seems like you still really care about Reid if you're this down about the whole situation. I think you need to take another look at your relationship with Nick and see if what you had with Reid is something you're willing to give up."

Derek nodded slowly and got out of the car. He followed Hotch to the front of the garage. He looked up when a young lady walked out of the garage. She was wearing mechanics overalls and boots, and there was some dirt smudged on her face.

"Can I help you boys with something?" she asked, pulling off her gloves and squinting in the sunlight.

"I'm Agent Hotchner and this is SSA Derek Morgan," Hotch said, showing the young lady his badge. "We'd like to ask you a couple questions about Ethan Slider, he worked here?"

The lady frowned and nodded. "Yeah, he was my brother."

"I'm sorry," Hotch said, looking at the girl. He guessed she was about five years younger than Ethan, and she looked a whole lot like him. "Is there somewhere we can talk in private?"

"Yeah, follow me," she said, leading the two men back to an office in the garage. "My name is Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth, when was the last time you saw your brother?" Hotch asked, taking a seat opposite of the girl.

"About two days ago," Elizabeth said sadly. "I'm home on break from college and he was at the house. He was only there for a few minutes though, he was dropping off my dad's car. He just put a new starter in it."

Hotch nodded as Derek wrote down some notes. "Was there anything in particular you two talked about?"

"He told me about the car he was bringing in to the shop to work on this week," Elizabeth said, pointing at the door. "It's the Charger out there, it needs new brakes and something is wrong with the axel."

Hotch smiled slightly. "You know a lot about cars."

Elizabeth gave a small smile back. "Ethan taught me everything about cars. When I was in middle school he would bring me here on weekends and show me how to change oil and tires and replace things in the hood and stuff. It sparked my interest, so when I was old enough he got me a job here. He was the best big brother anyone could wish for." She grabbed a tissue from a box off the desk and wiped her eyes. "I don't know why anyone would want to hurt him," she cried lightly.

Hotch gently patted her shoulder before settling back into the seat. "Elizabeth, do you know if your brother had any enemies?"

"None that I know of," Elizabeth said, looking up from her tissue. "He was pretty popular in high school and college, he had tons of friends. He knew just about everyone in town."

Hotch nodded. "That's all the questions I have for now, Elizabeth. Thank you for your time, and I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," Elizabeth said. She got up and walked back out into the garage.

Hotch looked over at Derek. "If Ethan knew everyone in town, he might not have felt threatened by walking the streets at night. It could be an easy way for the unsub to grab him."

Derek nodded. "I'm beginning to wonder if his kills are random of if he is following these people."

Hotch nodded. "Let's head back to lab to see what everyone else has."

Back at the lab, David Rossi and Spencer were still going through the files, Spencer of course a lot quicker than David. They were studying every little bit about the victims that they could, but nothing was adding up.

David sighed and put down the file he was reading. "You got anything over there, Reid?"

Spencer shook his head and closed the file he had. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Every victim worked at a different place, had different hang out spots, and went to different colleges. The only thing they have in common is the age range." He ran his hand through his hair and leaned his elbow in the table.

David looked over at him and sighed. "Perhaps they're people he ran into on a vacation or something."

Spencer sat up, and looked over at David. "Maybe he went to school with them." He suddenly jumped out of his seat and raced to the door.

"Hey, wait, where are you going?" David called out in surprise, following the young genius from the room.

Spencer scrambled into the AV lab where Archie and Garcia were at work on the computers. "Garcia, I need to you look something up for me."

"Sure thing, cupcake, what is it?" Penelope asked.

"Pull up the schools the victims went to and see if you can find a listing of the students that went there between nineteen seventy and now."

"Got it," Garcia said, typing away at the computer. Archie had slid over to see what was going on. "Got them, now what?"

"Can you run any program that can pull out certain names? I think the unsub may have gone to school with these people, he may have moved around a lot."

"I like the way you think, Dr. Reid," Garcia said with a smile. She did some more typing when the computer started beeping. "I got something." She looked at the screen when a box popped up with a name. "One Mr. Alex Findler," she said. "He showed up on the alumni lists of every school, elementary through secondary."

"Reid, you might have just found our unsub," David said, staring at the young man in amazement.

Spencer blushed and smiled slightly. "I'm calling Hotch."

"Ok, so we have our suspect, thanks to Spencer over here," Catherine said, smiling at the younger man. Everyone had gathered in the break room to hear the news. "Mr. Alex Findler, we couldn't get a lot of information on him because he wasn't in the database, but we got an address to his current workplace. We can pick this up tomorrow. Good job, Spence."

Spencer blushed as various members of both teams patted him on the shoulder as they went to leave. "At least we have a name."

"Yes, my genius friend," Greg said, smiling over at the man. He stood up and grabbed his jacket. "Let's go, I'll get you an ice cream cone as a congrats gift."

Spencer laughed, and was about to make a comment about asking Garcia to come when he noticed Derek and Nick in the corner. The two men hugged and then shared a rather passionate kiss. Spencer frowned, a sick feeling forming in the pit of his stomach.

Greg noticed the interaction as well and pulled Spencer from the room. "Don't pay attention to them, I think they're trying to piss us off." He frowned, knowing he felt the same way Spencer did.

"I wish they wouldn't," Spencer said sadly as they stepped into the elevator. He looked at the floor. "I just want Derek back, I love him so much."

"Yeah, same about Nick," Greg said quietly. He looked over at Spencer. "I wish we could do something to make them jealous, make them want to come back to us, you know?"

Spencer smiled sadly. "Yeah, like a fake relationship to make them jealous."

Greg snorted, the stared at Spencer, who was staring back at him. The two men grinned, the ice cream suddenly forgotten.

TBC

Haha! So there is the grand idea of this whole story, Greg and Spencer are going to fake a relationship to try and get their men back. Think it will work? Review and find out!