"Ringdove and robinet, is it for wages, singing to be sold? Have you decided it's safer in cages singing when you're told?"

-Stephen Sondheim, "Green Finch and Linnet Bird", Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

"How is she?" Beth asked as she rushed into the waiting room of the hospital. It seemed like they had been there much too often as of late, but she had still headed there as soon as she'd gotten the call that something had happened.

"Still out of it," Hotch sighed. He had been there for several hours, and the girl had yet to wake. That wasn't the only thing frustrating him, though. There was so much on his mind that he didn't know where to start.

"What else is bothering you?" Beth, who had seemingly read his mind, asked gently. She took the seat next to him.

"I don't know what else to do," Hotch shook his head. "We've asked all the right questions, we've taken all the right precautions, but we're still coming up with nothing. I don't know how to get her to trust us, let alone cooperate…" he was cut off by the woman at his side.

"If you want her to trust you and cooperate," Beth began. "You need to stop treating her like a witness and like a victim, and start treating her like a person. Start treating her like the scared girl she is."

"But she doesn't seem afraid," Hotch argued.

Beth sighed in exasperation. "You're right, Aaron. She's not afraid. She's terrified, and she needs someone to alleviate that fear. You need to be that person, or you aren't going to accomplish anything."

"Welcome back," Hotch said to the finally awake teenager. "You were out for a good seven hours."

"What happened?" River asked groggily. She had a massive headache, severely dry mouth, and couldn't remember most of what had happened earlier in the day.

"You were drugged," Beth said gently before Hotch could say the same thing bluntly.

"Rohypnol?" River guessed without missing a beat.

"You've been exposed to it before, then?" Hotch asked.

"Yeah, more times than I'd care to admit," the girl answered darkly.

"Were you ever drugged with anything else?" Hotch continued with the questions despite the condescending look he was receiving from Beth.

"Heroin, but only sometimes."

Hotch took a deep breath before speaking again. If he was going to have any hope of helping the girl, he had a strong feeling that he would have to take Beth's advice. "Is there anything you need or want to talk about?" he asked.

River shook her head. She wasn't ready to talk about what had happened., at least not that soon after she had been brought out of the negative situation.

A thought seemed to have crossed Hotch's mind. He had a feeling that if he got the right information, they would have a new lead in the case. "You were adopted, yes?" he asked.

River nodded. "Yeah, but if you're after a name, it's not going to do anything," she sighed in annoyance. "I already told you the only one I knew and the only one we ever heard him called by is Ciaran McGee, and you said that it was a dead end."

"I'm not after a name, I'm after a witness," Hotch said. "Do you remember the name of the agency the adoption happened through?"

River shook her head. "Just that it happened at the orphanage."

"And the name of the orphanage?" Hotch pressed.

"I don't know. Just that it was in West Virginia," River responded.

"Do you know the area it was around?"

"Wheeling."

After having Garcia try to find possible leads on orphanages, they had found one, St. John's Home for Children. Hotch had sent Morgan and Reid to the scene to talk to the staff and instructed them to look at old files.

"River Washburn, you said the girl's name is?" one of the administrators, an older woman, probably in her sixties, asked.

"That's correct," Morgan confirmed. "She would have been here about 12 years ago."

The woman nodded. "Oh yes, I remember her," she smiled slightly as she started going through files. "Strange case that one was."

"What was different about it?" Reid asked as he took a seat opposite of the desk. Morgan opted to remain standing near the doorway.

"Mother was a well-known prostitute," the woman answered. "Had four children that we were aware of, none of the fathers were known, all births were done at home. There were two girls and a pair of twin boys."

"That doesn't sound too out there," Morgan commented.

"That wasn't. What was odd is how the mother died. Stabbed to death, supposedly by the younger of the two twins, but the prosecutor never charged anyone, didn't want to waste funding. They were separated, though, except for the boys. The oldest girl was sent off to Charleston. The two boys seemed to disappear, and we received the youngest, River," the woman concluded. "Found it," she said as she pulled up the file.

"Can we look at it?" Reid asked.

"Be my guest," the woman answered. She handed the file to Reid. Morgan moved from the doorway to the desk so he could see as well.

"Adopted when she was five," Reid said mostly to himself. "But we knew that already…" he pulled out a picture of a man. At the time he was younger, most likely in his mid-twenties. He had darker hair and green eyes. Reid knew they could use the eye color to narrow down a suspect list. "Who is this?"

"That would be the man that adopted her," the woman answered. "John Stone was his name… May I ask what all of this is about?"

"We have reason to believe that this man has been adopting young girls to prostitute them out. Recently several have turned up dead. We have River under protective custody, and we need everything we can get," Morgan answered.

"Then by all means, take that with you," the woman said. "And if you need anything else, you know where to find us."

Once outside, Morgan made a call to Garcia. "Baby girl, I need you to look up John Stone," he said. He doubted the name was legitimate, but they might find more leads under it. "He'd be in his late 30s or early 40s by now, dark hair, green eyes."

"On it, my liege," Garcia said through the phone before hanging up and getting to work.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

-Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life