"When did this kid get dropped off?" David Rossi was asking Hotch when Matt Cruz parked his car and strode into the house, going over to the huddle of people around the kitchen table that comprised the members of Aaron Hotchner's team.

Aaron looked out at the scene that his yard had become, admitting, "I don't know. The boy wasn't there when I checked the security system before I went to bed last night, then when I went to get the paper this morning there he was on the porch just laying in a cardboard box. I never saw anything, I never heard anything, the CSI can't find anything; it's like this woman wasn't even here!"

"But we know she was," Blake said. "It's just a matter of time before she slips up somewhere."

"We will find her, Hotch," JJ assured him, looking like she'd take down this woman alone if she needed to.

"I don't know guys," Penelope said, glancing up from her laptop's screen. "Whoever she is, this woman is getting smart. I keep turning up blanks on who these murdered women and their children are."

"She's evolving," Morgan said, thinking out loud. "She went from killing an elementary school teacher and her child – who got a lot of press – to killing nameless prostitutes that pretty much no one would miss."

"But if she truly wants to stay anonymous, why is she leaving these children with federal agents?" Blake asked.

"Guys…" Reid theorized. "What if we're dealing with more than one unsub? One could take care of the murdering of the prostitutes, and the other would see to the babies once the job was done."

"She has her own cleanup crew," Rossi remarked.

JJ's brow furrowed as she asked, "What sort of a dynamic would that be though? Judging by what we've seen of these murders, it sure takes a dominant/submissive partnership to an even greater level of submission on the one part."

"Unless he's not even just submissive," Morgan guessed, sitting a little straighter. "Okay, going with our two unsubs theory here – what if one partner was actually being coerced, or didn't even want to be involved at all but felt he or she had to be?"

"A family member of the unsub committing the murders?" Aaron spoke up with his own two cents.

"How does any of that get us any closer to pinning this on our one or two bad guys though?" Garcia asked.

Aaron answered grimly, "It doesn't. Have you found anything on the baby or mother yet?"

Garcia shook her head. "I told you, this lady is getting really smart really fast. I can't find anything on any baby matching our little guy over there," She nodded to the infant boy that had been left sleeping in a whicker basket on the kitchen counter – improvising at its best. "We've got beat cops canvassing the city for any prostitutes that were murdered last night, but so far they've turned up as much as I have, by which I mean nada."

Morgan sighed, summing it up as he said, "So we've got bodies and babies piling up every weekend for – how long has this woman been out there? – a month now, and yet we have nobody to pin this on? Great."

"But we will have her soon," Aaron said, his tone winding with stony determination.


April 4, 2014

But they didn't! They did not have Maggie in custody by the end of the week – they weren't even one step closer to identifying her as the killer – and so she struck again, leaving Grant with one more kid to re-home.

It turned out that the Cruzes seemed to have started a trend when they fostered Isabel Martinez. Agent Jareau and her husband had taken in the baby that they had named Rose. From what Grant had heard, the two families were even getting awfully comfortable with having the little ones around – he had even heard Agent Jareau toss up the word "adoption" a couple of times within the past week – which he thought was great as long as the infants' presences weren't distracting them from the case at hand. Last he had heard, Jessica, Agent Hotchner's former sister-in-law had even talked the SAIC into taking over temporary guardianship of the baby boy that the very same man had christened Gideon.

And though no one had ever accused this particular woman of having any lack of emotions or passion, Grant got the feeling that if Hotchner's team's technical analyst were to try a little harder to dig up her electronic information – maybe break a couple more laws in her hacking if that's what it took – then the team would find Maggie. So he was going to give her emotions the shove that they needed. He placed the little girl in front of Penelope Garcia's apartment and then rushed right back out of the building.


There were some things that were nonnegotiable in Penelope Garcia's life, and during times like this, when the team was all but drowning in cases; an occasional weekend out on the town was one of those things. The only problem was that it left her a little less than sober whenever she eventually stumbled back up to her apartment.

And it led to outright panic when she found a child in a box in front of her door.

Suddenly crying, Penelope fumbled around in her purse and found her phone, punching a random number on her speed-dial since the members of her team were the only people on the list anyway.

The exact voice that she needed to hear filtered through the smart phone, asking, "Baby Girl, is everything okay?"

"Oh gosh, Derek!" Penelope sobbed. "She was at my house!"

"Who?"

"The freaky, Friday night murders woman! There is a kid in front of my apartment!"

"Where exactly are you? Do you have the baby?"

"I haven't touched anything or even gone inside yet; I just saw the kid in the box and I panicked."

"It's okay to pick the baby up, gorgeous. Just take him inside of your apartment and wait for the team to get there. I'm on my way and I'll call Hotch after I hang up with you."

"Okay," Penelope sniffled, rooting around in her purse for her keys.

"Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around when you came in the building or got up to your floor?"

"No! There was nobody in the lobby except for Jake, the night guy, and the hallway's deserted right now and has been since I got off of the elevator. I didn't see anyone anywhere."

"Okay," Derek replied soothingly. "Just take the little guy-"

"It's a little girl, Derek," Penelope interrupted, glancing down at the box as she shoved her key into the lock on her apartment.

"Then take the little girl," Derek amended. "Into your place and just sit tight until I get there, alright?"

Penelope sniffed again as she opened the door to her apartment and scooped up the child, box and all. "Alright."