Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.

They hadn't liked Marwick, but ending like this was nothing they would have wished upon anyone. His bloody, beaten body was chained to a chair. Apparently he had been tortured. Two of his front teeth were missing, one completely extracted, one broken off close to its root.

"According to the MI5 files extracting teeth with pliers as a method of torture was another one of Cave's specialties", Reid informed the others.

"Except for this ominous e-mail maybe, but not for sure, sent to us by Marie-Élise Alphonse, all evidence we ever ran into during this case points in the direction of Cave. Can we be really sure Marie-Élise knows what she's talking about? And how do we know her motives aren't tainted either? Damn, I just hate cases with foreign intelligence services involved!" Morgan voiced what they all were thinking.

Hotch, who had been talking on the phone, cut the connection. "Section Chief Chilcott in person will come to oversee our further operations. MI6 also wants to send someone in, a man named Dewhurst, and suddenly CIA is showing interest, too. Our old friend Johnson just filed an official application to be included."

"You should consider asking Erin to join in, too", Rossi said. "They could keep each other busy throwing political BS around."

Before Hotch could formulate an answer, Garcia called Morgan. He put her on speaker. "I've just checked what my tracking program found out about the e-mail to the TV station that informed the journalist about the blue hands. Hold on to your seats, dears. The goddess of all knowledge traced the e-mail back and it was sent from a computer owned by – imagine dramatic drum roll here - Agent Liam Marwick."

Now, this was indeed interesting news. "Marwick gave the information to the TV station? But why would he…"

"Excuse me, agents?" Prentiss was interrupted by a crime scene investigator.

"You might want to take a look at this." The young investigator showed them a small carry-all and retrieved a blue plastic bottle from it.

"Liquefied indigo powder?", Rossi asked.

"Lab examination will have to verify that, but it looks like", the young man replied. "And that's not all. Weren't the Traveler's victims executed with a 45er?" He used a pencil to uphold a gun which had been stashed right next to the bottle.

While the others were completely concentrating on this new development, Reid had remained focused on the body, taking in every detail of its position, its multiple wounds and the way it was chained to the chair. "I'd like to compare this with photos of Cave's documented victims. The file is in the car. I'll be back in a minute", he told Hotch and headed out the door.

"So Marwick's our unsub? Or is this evidence planted?", Rossi asked the others.

"We can let Garcia check when Marwick entered the country and his credit card records; I'm sure she can reconstruct his movements within the last fourteen days", Morgan stated. "Lab examination might find fingerprints on the bottle or the weapon. Let's assume for a moment he not only contacted the TV station but also killed all these people. Why?"

"He wanted to draw our attention to Cave", Prentiss mused, but Rossi vehemently shook his head.

"Not our attention to Cave. Cave's attention to him."

Morgan immediately agreed: "Imagine you've got an assassin gone completely underground. What's the best way to flush him out? By copying his work and making it public! It all fits: The more and more attention-seeking choice of victims and dump sites, the informing of the TV station – even bringing us in makes sense. Marwick was obviously fiercely determined on lighting a fire under Cave's ass."

"Seems like he got a little too close to that specific fire", Prentiss remarked.

"High-profile assassins like Cave take great pride in their work. This…" Hotch turned to the body. "… could very well be his payback to Marwick's provocation."

"I bet Reid's photos will show tons of congruity between the state of Marwick's body and previous victims of Cave. In that line of business, reputation is everything. Cave would surely not want anyone to compromise his track record by killing randomly and in such an in-your-face way", Morgan agreed. "Where is Reid, by the way? The car is parked right behind the cabin."

At this very moment, his cell phone rang; Garcia again. "I've dug up more about Pompon's whereabouts", she said, sounding excited and happy, as Morgan noticed. "Apparently she was a regular patient of a vet in Huntingdon. That's a small town in Huntingdon County in the Haut-Saint-Laurent Regional County Municipality of Quebec. A "Colleen Sheehan" is listed as the owner, resident in Huntingdon since two years. I called the vet's office, the secretary describes Ms. Sheehan as a woman in her late twenties with dark curly hair."

"Might very well be Marie-Élise", Rossi said.

"I go and get Reid, he should hear this." Morgan walked out the door.

"And here comes the really interesting part: Colleen Sheehan left Pompon at a boarding kennel yesterday. Her car was registered crossing the Canadian border a couple of hours later."

"She left the country?" Hotch was highly alarmed and so were the others. If she was the one who had sent the e-mail to Strauss – and they were quite convinced she was – it indicated that Marie-Élise had, for whatever reason, great interest in Cave and the person who had been trying to flush him out. What if she had discovered earlier than they had that Marwick had been playing foul? At Heraklion's they had surely trained her how to torture.

BAM!

The door to the cabin was flung open so vigorously, it smashed against the wall. "Reid is not outside!", Morgan all but shouted at them.