Essential listening: El Agua de la Vida, by Salsa Celtica

0o0

The apartment was in pitch darkness when she opened the door.

Penelope flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. Surprised that the bulb could have gone (she'd only changed it the week before), she walked further in, closing the door behind her. Something made her hold onto her keys and bag – some tiny hint that something was wrong: that she wasn't alone.

In the kitchen area, a light flared and her heart nearly stopped.

"I turned the breaker off."

"Oh!" Penelope yelped.

The shadows dissipated somewhat to reveal Kevin Lynch, who couldn't look sinister if he tried, lighting a candle at her kitchen table.

"Kevin!" she admonished, heart still hammering in her rib-cage. "You scared me! It's becoming your thing!"

It hadn't been that long since she had nearly been murdered here, after all.

"Well, maybe you scare too easily," he replied.

"Wh-" she began, intending to argue. Her eyes fell on the table, which currently held what looked like a romantic dinner for two. "What's this?" she asked instead.

"Oh – uh – since you couldn't make it to dinner, I thought I would bring dinner to you," Kevin explained, with a lopsided grin.

"Oh, Kevin," she cooed, flattered.

He produced a strawberry from some unknown location and held it up for her.

"Wanna start with dessert?" he suggested, lewdly.

Penelope grinned as he popped it between his teeth.

"Oh, I always said I wanted to try this when I was a grown-up," she said, taking a bite. "Mmm," she laughed.

"Or oo slessed ow," Kevin remarked, the majority of the strawberry still in his mouth.

"What?" she asked, taking it out.

"You're too stressed out," he repeated.

"You didn't like that?"

"No, that's why you scare so easily – you're so stressed."

"I have a stressful job," she explained.

"You know, maybe we should get away," he proposed.

"You mean like a vacation?" Penelope asked, surprised.

"Yeah!" He smiled, and Penelope's heart began to do belly-flops. "You deserve a week in the land of no keyboards."

"I don't know what I'd do with myself," she admitted.

Kevin flashed her a downright lecherous grin – which she very much appreciated – and held up a can of whipped cream.

"I can think of a couple things."

"Oh," said Penelope, happily. "Oh, that is something else I have always wanted to try!"

0o0

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

George Bernard Shaw

0o0

The airport had been air conditioned, so (thankfully) were the SUVs, but the moment you stepped out of a regulated space in Miami, you knew about it.

Grace slipped out of the Yukon behind Rossi, pulling a face at the wave of roiling heat that washed over her. Several of her fellow agents groaned, suggesting they weren't doing much better. She immediately peeled off her jacket, grateful JJ had given them ample warning to pack office wear that better suited the climate.

"Urgh," said Reid, a few feet ahead. "Is it always this hot?"

Morgan laughed, his eyes on the bottoms of two tight-skirted women who were sauntering by, their heels clicking in the midday sun.

"Every day, all day," said Morgan, appreciatively.

"That's South Beach," Rossi agreed.

"Down boys," Grace chided, tolerantly.

"That's not what I'm talking about," Reid told them.

"They know." Hotch met them at the back of the SUVs and curtailed any possible teasing.

They looked up as their contact appeared – a good looking, competent woman who ran her eyes over all of them and made straight for Morgan.

"FBI?" she asked, looking at him in much the same manner he had been looking at the pedestrians. "Detective Lopez, Miami PD."

She held out a hand.

"Oh, uh – Morgan," he replied, oozing the kind of cool that would make a fortune if anyone could figure out how to box it up and sell it. "Derek."

Grace hid a smirk. It was unlike him to get flustered, and he hid it well, but obviously Detective Lopez was exactly his type.

"Tina." She looked at the others, confident that Morgan wouldn't forget her. "So, thank you for comin' down so quickly."

"Agent Jareau – JJ," said JJ, shaking her hand. "We spoke on the phone."

"Yes."

"These are agents Hotchner, Prentiss, Pearce, Rossi, Derek and Doctor Reid."

Lopez grinned.

"Well, I hope there's no test, 'cause I'm lousy with names."

Grace liked her a great deal.

"'Agent' will be fine," Rossi assured her.

"Hey – isn't that –?" Emily jabbed a finger towards a man getting out of a nearby car.

Well I never, thought Grace.

Detective William LaMontagne Junior, of the New Orleans Police Department, came striding towards them. The team had worked with him in New Orleans to take down a female serial killer targeting men in the French Quarter – Grace's very first case with the BAU. It seemed like an extremely long time ago now, though in reality it was only just more than a year.

Will was a good officer, and a great guy. It was weird seeing him in Miami – like something out of an alternate reality.

"Detective LaMontagne just arrived from New Orleans, to ID the cop we pulled from the bay last night," Lopez explained.

"Detective – it's… good to see you," said JJ, shaking his hand.

By turns, a disbelieving movement passed through the group; they all knew full well about JJ's weekends in New Orleans, just as much as they knew she might never actually admit to them. Grace forced the smirk off her face as her fellow agents made an effort to do the same.

If JJ wanted to fool herself into thinking none of them knew she and LaMontagne were dating, that was her business.

"How are ya?" he greeted them, in his slow, sugary Louisiana accent. "Yeah, uh – Charlie Luvet and I worked together for seven years," he explained, sadly. "We haven't formally IDed him yet, but… we believe it's him."

"Sorry for your loss, man," said Morgan.

Will nodded.

"So, you all know each other?" Lopez asked.

"Uh – professionally," said JJ.

Grace rested her gaze just above Lopez's head, where she could use it to prevent herself laughing.

"Yeah…" said the detective, clearly a little put out by JJ's secretive behaviour. "The BAU helped me out on a case about a year ago. Just for the sake of clarity, I'm not here to investigate," he told them. "Charlie was – uh – was supposed to be married this August."

Grace frowned, no longer feeling like laughing.

"So if the guy who floated up last night was him, looks like I have the honour of notifyin' his fiancée. So she's gonna need some answers, closure," he said. "I'm just here to get that for her."

"Do you know why he was here?" Rossi asked.

"Well, he was meetin' up with some college buddies to compete in a regatta," said Will. "He was a big boat guy."

"So he wasn't travelling alone?" Hotch clarified.

"Oh, he came alone," Will explained. "He was meetin' them here."

"We should track these friends down, see if they saw anything," Rossi announced. "And the – uh – two other victims," he continued, to Lopez. "Any potential witnesses?"

"No. Paul Hayes was here alone on business, Daniel Brown came down to wind-surf by himself."

"They were all essentially alone," Reid observed.

"The unsub watched them long enough to know that," Emily remarked.

"Tourists," said Grace, looking around. "A new place, somewhere you let your hair down… It can make you vulnerable, no matter how careful you are."

"He's probably scopin' out his next victim," Lopez griped. This case was plainly weighing heavy on her. "And I don't have a damn thing to warn people with. So come on inside, I got everythin' set up."

They followed her in, LaMontagne shaking hands and clapping shoulders as they went.

"How are you guys?" He shook Morgan's hand and grinned sadly at Reid. "It's good to see ya. I gotta say, I'm glad you guys are here, for Charlie's sake."

0o0

JJ got almost all the way up the stairs inside the department before Will caught up with her. Cursing her luck, she allowed him to draw her aside.

She had never felt terribly comfortable about the rest of the team knowing about her love life – it was bad enough living in each others' pockets at the best of times, but when you added in the fact that they were all essentially human lie-detectors it could feel a little overbearing. The thought of all of them staring at her, making judgements, taking guesses about the nature of their relationship made her feel a little light-headed.

She did it enough herself to know that even with the best will in the world, none of her colleagues would be able to prevent themselves. Everyone had known about Hotch's divorce, even before he had. Reid's emotional problems after his abduction in Atlanta had been painful to watch unfolding, though any other team might have missed them. Whenever Morgan had a new girlfriend it was all they talked about for a week – hell, there was even a surreptitious betting pool on Grace and Reid getting together (technically 'again', but no one besides JJ was party to that particular piece of information), though the odds had looked better on that before West Bune.

That in itself was a case in point: Grace had been coolly civil around him for nearly two weeks now, which was very unlike her, and Spencer seemed reluctant to speak to her. They had gone from being the closest of friends to mere work acquaintances in a matter of hours.

JJ, Emily and Garcia had been trying to work that one out all week.

In the BAU, your life was never your own, but someone from off the team might not understand.

"What was that?" Will asked, confirming her suspicions.

"What was what?" she asked, quietly, aware her colleagues were barely a flight of stairs away.

"'Professionally'?"

She looked away, feeling uncomfortable. This was not a conversation she wanted to have – particularly in the stairwell of a Miami Police Department.

"Hey," he said, purposefully recapturing her attention. "You still haven't told them about us?"

"It's none of their business," she explained.

"Whaddya tell them about where you go every weekend?" he asked, puzzled.

"I – I don't."

JJ stared at him, confused at how he couldn't seem to grasp the concept of secrecy.

"Are you – are you ashamed, or something?" he asked, beginning to look distinctly hurt.

"What?" she gasped, surprised. "No!" She smiled, and he relaxed slightly. "No it's just – in this team, everyone knows everything about everyone. There's no privacy. My personal life is one last thing they can profile." She glanced up at the offices, concerned that someone might notice their absence. "We should get up there."

"Yeah, wouldn't want your team to think somethin's up, would we?" Will scowled.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," JJ exclaimed, stopping him. She was a little taken aback by his attitude. "Please don't do this, okay?"

"You realise that this is gonna happen every now an' then, when our career paths cross, right?"

"Doesn't make it any less awkward," she remarked, one eye on the door above them, in case someone came looking for them.

"Yeah – wow," Will said, tersely. "Never realised how much 'awkward' could sound like 'ashamed'."

He left her there, angrily heading into the office above; JJ stared after him, despairing.

People who didn't work with profilers twenty-four seven just didn't understand.

0o0

"This is everything we recovered from Paul Hayes' hotel room," Detective Lopez told them, leading Dave and Prentiss into an empty space off the main office. "It's all been processed, so don't worry about touching anything."

"Thank you," said Prentiss.

"I'm'nna take the skinny kid, the Brit and Derek out to the dump-sites," she told them. "So, I got my cell, radio – if anyone doesn't give you anything, just call me."

"Great!"

Dave shared a look of pure amusement with Prentiss as Lopez headed out the door.

"She did say she wasn't good at names," he smirked.

"Remembered 'Derek'."

Rossi snorted.

"Wonder how she'll describe us," he said.

"Oh, I am sure I don't want to know." She sighed, as they rifled through the evidence. "It's always sad seeing someone's life reduced to the things they had with them when they died. It's just so clear they didn't know how short their time would be."

0o0

No matter what was going on in your relationship, it was always hard to watch someone you cared about suffer.

Will was trying to force away his emotions when the coroner peeled back the sheet, but Luvet had been a good friend, and that kind of grief was hard to hide. JJ had to fight the urge to hold him, but she couldn't do that – not in front of Hotch. Respecting her boundaries, despite the desperate unhappiness of the situation, Will turned away.

"Yeah, that's him," he announced. "That's Charlie Luvet."

He sighed.

"We had to ID more than the photo before we could ship him," the coroner explained, as gently as she could. "You're not family, but – I can cut through the red tape."

"Thank you," said Will, his voice made strange with feeling.

Needing to help in any way she could, JJ stepped forward.

"If you need help making arrangements, uh- liaising with families is part of what I do."

It was the least she could do, in the circumstances.

"I might just take you up on that," he said, not able to look at any of them. "'Scuse me I'm'nna – I'm'nna be outside."

She watched him go, unhappily.

0o0

The dumpsite was actually on the beach.

Despite the nature of the visit, Grace had to admit she was rather enjoying herself. The scenery was breathtaking and the heat – once you acclimatised – was kind of relaxing, like being in a bubble of tropical, sun-soaked air. As long as no one asked her to lift anything heavy or chase down a suspect, she decided she could quite happily cope with it, at least for a few days.

Virginia was in the grip of a cold snap, despite the usual stickiness of summer, and it had been raining for nearly three weeks straight. It reminded her of being back in England. A couple of days of hot weather was just what she needed.

The beach was full of semi-naked bodies, all making the most of their time in the sun. It was a bit of a trial stepping around them through the hot sand. The beaches of Grace's youth had predominantly been a bit damp and a bit pebbly, and for the first time she felt a pang of jealousy for the tourists relaxing on the beach. Still, they were here to do a job, not to sightsee.

She, Morgan and Reid strolled along beside Lopez, discussing the case, trying to keep things focussed despite the heat.

"Paul Hayes was found in that dumpster over there," she told them, indicating one of the few shady points on the entire promenade, in the lee of a small building.

"It's kind of exposed," Grace observed, looking around. "This beach get quiet at night?"

"Quieter," Lopez allowed. "People move to the clubs instead."

"Hey, I think these guys knew the unsub," said Reid.

Grace glanced in his direction, trying not to let her personal feelings get in the way of a good profile. She still hadn't entirely forgiven him for the stunt he'd pulled in West Bune.

"What makes you say that?" Morgan asked.

"When you're a fish out of water you look to the locals for where to eat, where to shop," he said.

"What path to run," Morgan added.

"Yeah, why would he kill them and risk dragging the body across the beach?" Reid postulated.

"He wouldn't," Morgan realised. "They were already out here."

"You think they met him out here?"

"Look around," said Grace. "It's the perfect hunting ground."

"This place is full of people letting their guard down, making new friends…" said Reid.

She caught him looking at her, behind his shades, and turned away. When she'd first got to Virginia, the whole team had helped her get used to her new city – and her new country – but none more so than Reid.

She sighed, following Morgan and Lopez back to the Yuke.

0o0

JJ pulled on her gloves, stepping back into Luvet's hotel room. The two forensic technicians on the balcony had been happy for them to have a look around, now their trace examination was complete.

Hotch and Will were rummaging around the detective's things, trying to find any kind of link to the other victims.

"So, they've already dusted for prints," she told them.

"I'd sure feel better if we found his gun and shield," Will remarked. "I'm thinkin' if someone tried to grab him up here, he mighta left 'em behind, you know."

JJ grimaced. She couldn't imagine having to go through a friend's possessions like this. It was unthinkable.

"Charlie left the hotel voluntarily," Hotch announced, unfolding a receipt.

"What makes you say that?"

"'Cause we'd know if the valet had his car downstairs," the unit chief explained. "This is a receipt for a Mercury Sable he rented. You know, most rental cars have locators in. I'll call Garcia, see if she can find out where it is right now."

JJ was rummaging through Luvet's suitcase when she felt Will's hand on her back. She straightened up, almost flinching away. It was too familiar a touch for here.

"Don't," she ground out, annoyed.

"I'm standin' in my dead partner's room, and you think I'm in the mood for grab ass, huh…"

This time the hurt on his face was clear, but it didn't stop him searching. He pulled something out of the suitcase and turned away.

"What's that?" JJ asked, following him.

She hadn't meant to make any of this worse for him, and she had no idea how to explain her discomfort to him without wounding him further.

"Plastic ID bracelet," he said, handing it over. "112570. I'm guessin' it's for the regatta," he snapped, stripping off his gloves and dropping them in her hands.

"Hey, I'm sorry," she said, but Will was already out the door.

0o0

The car was in an alley, a few blocks away from the dumpsite. No one had called it in yet, and no one had touched it, as far as the CSIs could tell.

"It's all yours, detective."

"Thanks guys," Lopez called, as the four of them ducked under the tape. "This Garcia girl of yours is good!"

All three agents grinned.

"That's an understatement," Spencer remarked.

"She's our resident superhero," Grace told her.

"Hey, you can't go wrong with a Latina at the controls!"

They laughed.

"Yeah, that's my girl," said Morgan. "But – uh – she's not nearly as Latino as she sounds."

He and Lopez got in the car, leaving Spencer outside with Grace, who immediately began to prowl the path to one side of the car. Any excuse not to interact. Spencer watched her sadly for a moment, recalling another crime scene in another alleyway, many months before.

They hadn't exactly been on speaking terms then, either.

He took the other side of the car, looking for anything vaguely out of place in the weeds. He came up empty, coming to a halt a little way in front of the car, where Grace was eyeing up the neighbouring rooftops, in case anyone had private CCTV.

"Nothing," she sighed.

"Me either. I hope they're having better luck with the car."

She 'hmmed' her agreement, her hands stuffed in her pockets.

Spencer waited, in case she was going to say something else, before turning away, concealing a sigh. Conversations with Grace had been strictly limited to cases, of late. Where normally they would be bouncing ideas off one another, or laughing about old episodes of Dr Who, or even just talking, they had fallen into a routine of awkward silences, broken only when their teammates reappeared.

Sadly, he picked at the strap of his watch, which was uncomfortably warm in the Miami heat.

That alleyway in New Orleans had been the first time she'd touched him, too.

An instinctively tactile creature, she used a touch on the arm or a pat on the back almost as punctuation. Spencer hated to be touched – or at least he had hated it; one of the tenets of his life that wasn't strictly true anymore. He'd tolerate it from the team and the few others he trusted; that hadn't changed, but over the last year he had grown accustomed to her inability to stop herself initiating any form of contact, and he missed it like hell when she wasn't around. He'd actually started returning the favour, when she looked like she needed it, and that was something that had never even crossed his mind before.

Now, though, while they remained on more distant terms, he was beginning to crave it, like there was something missing beneath his skin. He twisted the watch strap again, wondering if he was actually beginning to lose it.

"Hey, guys!"

Spencer looked up, startled out of his daydream, to find Morgan beckoning them over to the car.

"The last place Luvet went, according to the Sat Nav, is a gay bar."

0o0

Charlie Luvet's homosexuality (and his struggle to conceal it) entirely changed the victimology. Now they knew what they were looking for, they could target their investigation among the patrons of Miami's gay scene – and maybe catch up with the guy before he found a new target.

Emily shook her head. With people taking weekend or longer breaks every day, South Beach was what you might describe as a target-rich environment. They'd have to move quickly.

No one was more vulnerable than someone looking for love.

Will was taking the revelation pretty hard – not because his friend had been gay, but because he'd thought he had to pretend he wasn't.

Emily sighed, leaning heavily on the corner booth of one of the desks in the Police Department, staring out into the city. The sun was just beginning to set, and in Miami sunsets were utterly glorious.

"For you," said JJ, appearing behind her with a bottle of chilled water.

"Thank you, you read my mind!" Emily told her, as JJ opened her own bottle and joined her sunset vigil.

They settled against the higher desk, leaning on their elbows.

"I don't understand how it can be this dry when it's this humid," JJ complained.

"You sweat all your fluids out outside and then come in to bone dry air conditioning.

"Well, then if I can just hook this up to an IV, then…"

Emily nodded, glancing sidelong at her friend. She and Will were putting on one hell of a show of not dating, but it looked like it was wearing thin on both sides now. Emily grinned to herself. Perhaps some good natured teasing would help her get it off her chest. She cast a look behind them, where the detective was reading through his friend's case file.

"At least we have something fun to look at, keep us on our toes," she remarked.

"What do you mean?"

Emily gave her friend a look of calculated astonishment.

"LaMontagne!"

JJ pretended to look in his direction and assess him. Emily smiled, trying to keep from laughing.

"You think so, huh?" JJ asked, nonchalantly.

"Don't you?" she laughed.

JJ looked at him again.

"Yeah – yeah, I guess he's –" She turned back abruptly as Will noticed her scrutiny. "He has a thing…"

"Yeah, definitely a thing."

Across the room, she heard Hotch approach him. She and JJ made an attempt to look like they were neither talking about him, nor eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Detective, is that the case file?" Hotch asked.

"Yeah," he replied, handing it over. "How'd I not know Charlie was gay?"

He'd asked Hotch by instinct, going to the man who always seemed to have the answers, the way everyone on the team did.

"Because he didn't want you to know," said Hotch.

The truth, delivered gently enough that it might provide some comfort. Will rubbed a frustrated hand across his face.

"He flew hundreds of miles jus' to be someone else," Will remarked, almost chewing the words.

"No, he flew hundreds of miles to be himself," Hotch told him.

Will shook his head.

"What do I tell his fiancée?"

"The truth."

"Alright everybody, listen up," called Lopez, bringing the disparate parts of the room to order. "The FBI has a profile of our guy."

JJ took the lead, switching instantly from awkward discomfort to fully professional.

"Okay, we wanna stress what we're about to present is just a preliminary profile," she announced, to the room at large. "There may be a time restraint here, so we just wanted to give you what we have now." She nodded at the large computer screen, currently at the centre of their display; Garcia was lurking in a video link-up window to one side of it. "Our technical analyst, Penelope Garcia, will start off by talking about the four remaining victims still missing."

Garcia nodded as everyone turned their attention to her.

"Two of them disappeared on the same day a few months ago," she told the assembled police officers. "The third and the fourth went missing in the last four weeks."

"We think the unsub is targeting these guys on their travels," JJ continued.

"Yeah, and when the befriending happens, whoosh! They vanish," said Garcia, which characteristic colour. "However, it looks like there's a connection between the current victims and the men that are still missing. See, two of those four missing men were totally out – openly gay when they disappeared. Uh, I saw one of them on ," she went on, loading it in the adjacent window so the whole room could see. "That's a social networking site. They had a photo – with his boyfriend."

The men in the picture looked happy, in love. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw Detective LaMontagne shift uncomfortably. Notifying his partner's fiancée was going to be extremely unpleasant.

"Assuming the four missing men are meeting the same unsub, this means he's killing almost weekly," said Hotch. "Which also means he's already chosen his next victim."

"What we need is more information on the movements of our victims before they met the unsub," Emily explained. "We have three confirmed victims and four possibles. Some of our other colleagues are out in the community now, trying to see if anyone remembers anything about these men."

They'd more or less sent Grace along to keep Morgan and Reid out of trouble. Emily had made her swear to provide photographic evidence if anything embarrassing happened.

"It's not just that these men are travelling alone that left them vulnerable to the unsub," she went on. "We believe they may have specifically been looking to meet other men."

"Based on the age of the victims, we're looking for an offender in his mid-to-late twenties," Hotch described. "He's familiar with the area and may be offering assistance to those who are not."

"He studies his victims' habits," Emily explicated. "Learns how to gain their trust. This unsub is charming, charismatic, intelligent. We assume he frequents gay establishments, but he may also work at one."

"Given the technique with which he kills, he may have had prior defence tactic training," Hotch added. "So he may be a member of the military, or recently discharged."

"He steals their possessions, but he doesn't pawn a thing."

"The fact that he's targeting gay men may mean that this is a hate crime," Hotch inferred, "and – or the unsub may be struggling with his own sexuality."

"We're gonna put together some teams to get out there," said Lopez, turning the conversation to more practical matters.

In the back of the room, Will LaMontagne watched the officers around him with an air of sadness, chewing at the inside of his mouth.

Guessing that he missed his friend, Emily felt for him.