"We got the uplinks of the crime scene photos. This is Geoff and Nancy Hale. Both their throats were cut." Jordan moved to sit in the center of the group. Rowan and Spencer moved from their own seats, away from the crowd, to stand and see the photos.

"Any evidence of abuse?" Hotch asked.

"Nothing." Jordan informed.

"Slitting someone's throat is quick and efficient." Spencer said as he took a seat by Morgan, Rowan decided to stand after Spencer quietly offered the seat.

"That's because the real target was down the hall." Emily responded, earning a look from Jordan.

"She has a name. She's not 'the target.' Her name is Kate. She's 10 years old." Jordan's voice was low. Emily looked around in slight confusion.

"Alright." Emily nodded.

"Is there an Amber alert in effect?" Rowan asked, cutting the tension.

"Since 7 this morning." Jordan nodded, snapping out of whatever the hell just happened.

"With the unsub's head start he could be anywhere within a 400-mile radius. Make sure that they're casting a wide enough net." Hotch told. Jordan acknowledged quietly.

"Who discovered the bodies?" Morgan asked.

"Jim Scheuren, Cate's biological father. He was supposed to take her for the weekend. The police don't consider him a suspect." Jordan relayed to the group.

"We'll want to talk to him anyway. We're also going to need a list of registered sex offenders in a 20-mile radius." Hotch said as he looked through the case file.

"What's the makeup of the Hales' neighborhood?" Spencer asked.

"Mostly white and middle class."

"We'll need aerial views of the neighborhood. If Madison county doesn't have them, talk to Garcia." Morgan requested,

"Dave, you, Kennedy and Morgan go to the crime scene. The rest of us will get up to speed at the precinct."

Spencer messaged Rowan while her, Morgan and Rossi pulled up to the crime scene.

Spencer: Don't let Morgan pick on you. I'll tell him once we're done with the case. Stay safe out there.

Rowan smiled at the screen of her phone. She opened the LG Voyager and began to type a response.

Rowan: I'll try, no guarantees. He's a stubborn man. I'll be safe. XX

Rowans attention was grabbed by the stopping of the car. She exited the vehicle, along with Rossi and Morgan.

"Bo whitaker." An officer said, stepping underneath the 'DO NOT CROSS' yellow crime scene tape.

"David Rossi." Rossi introduced himself first, as Rowan stood beside Morgan.

"I recognize you from the tv." Bo said with a southern drawl.

"Derek Morgan." Morgan shook his hand.

"Dr. Rowan Kennedy." She smiled quickly at the man.

"Bo whitaker. Pleased to meet all of you. Point of entry is around back." Bo started leading the agents up towards the house. "Now, the neighbors didn't see or hear anything. And the dogs lost the scent almost immediately."

"Not hard to target a family out here. Surrounding woods, seemingly quiet neighborhood." Rowan observed.

"Even in broad daylight. Walk 5 feet off the track, man could get lost for days." Bo agreed.

"So, he had plenty of privacy to watch what he was really after. I prefer cities. You can see them coming." Rossi said as the group reached the point of entry.

"Nothing very sophisticated. Knocked off the pane to unlock the door." Rowan looked at the ground as Morgan crouched down to take a closer look.

She noticed that there was blue, green and red shattered glass as well as the clear shattered glass. She noted that as an oddity in her head.

"Do you think the girl's dead?" Bo asked, crossing his arms.

"Depends on what he took her for." Morgan said, truthfully.

Bo took them inside and Derek wandered to Kate's room. Rowan followed Rossi and Bo to the parents bedroom. The door was wide open. As the three entered the room, Rowan saw blood spatter all the way up to the ceiling. She sighed and paused for a moment.

"Are you alright?" Rossi asked, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah," She began, taking a deep breath. "It's just awful." She said, looking up at the blood.

"Extremely." Rossi agreed. "Find anything in Cate's room?" He said to Derek, who had entered the room just moments before.

"That's what's weird. There's no sign of struggle. It didn't even look like she tried to get out of bed in a hurry." Morgan looked at the blood stained sheets.

"Her parents' throats were cut. If there was the element of surprise, they might not have had time to scream. I'm the unsub. I kill geoff Hale first." Rossi begins.

"He presents the biggest threat." Rowan added.

"But how do I do that without waking Nancy, who's sleeping right next to him?" Rossi questioned, eyebrows furrowed.

"No ligature marks. Neither one was tied down." Morgan looked lost in thought.

"And no defensive wounds, either." Rowan remembered from the ME report. "Geoff Hale's cause of death was a single deep, smooth cut that severed the carotid artery. But his wife Nancy Hale's cause of death was caused by a series of jagged, shallow wounds that punctured the carotid artery."

"There's more than one unsub." Morgan concluded.

"You're sure?" Bo asked, arms crossed.

"He was either able to restrain nancy while he killed Geoff, or she woke up, which means she would have screamed. At which point, Cate would have woken up." Morgan informed.

"Either way, we're looking at multiple unsubs." Rossi agreed.

"So things are worse than we thought." Bo looked disappointed.

"Yes and no." Rossi responded.

"Kate's chances of survival just got better. Having two unsubs changes the dynamic of the murder and abduction." Rowan said, studying the blood on the pillows.

"How do you figure?" Bo questioned.

"They spent more time with her."

Morgan's phone rang and he stepped out of the room.

"With two unsubs, this could mean a long list of things." Rossi sighed.

"What are some of the possibilities?" Bo asked.

"Well, typically in a child abduction, there are 3 main demographics for suspects. Family kidnappings make up about 49 percent. 27 percent is dictated by acquaintances and 24 percent by strangers." Rowan began, shrugging. "I'd say that because most family kidnappings are done by parents and the biological father has a solid alibi, and strangers can't really find their way around here if they don't know the family or the area, it's most likely going to be an acquaintance or someone who knows of Kate and her family. But that's just a guess."

"What is your PhD in?" Bo asked, semi-awestruck by Rowan's knowledge.

"Psychology. My masters is in Sociology and my bachelors is in criminal justice." Rowan smiled slightly.

"We have another one just like her back at your station." Rossi joked.

Morgan stepped back into the room.

"Kate has epilepsy. And whoever took her didn't know to take the medication she takes for it." Morgan held up a bottle of pills.

"So that rules out family." Rossi started.

Hotch directed Rowan, Rossi and Morgan to an RV park after Kate was found, thankfully.

"Most people pay in cash. We don't have much in the way of records." The park owner told the group of agents.

"Ma'am, this was a family. Mother, father, small boy. They would have kept to themselves and then left abruptly." Morgan told her, trying to get more information.

"You just described most of my business."

"The son wouldn't have mingled with other children. He would have been tightly guarded by his parents." Rowan said, also trying.

"Sorry. I wish I could help." The park owner continued.

"The family we're talking about is eastern european. They may have spoken some foreign words to each other." Rossi started, causing the woman to pause.

"They in some kind of trouble?"

"You remember them. Don't you?" Rowan asked.
"Well, you can imagine I don't get a lot of people speaking foreign around here. I can't tell you much.
The husband was real business like. Wife was nice, pretty. Son was quiet."

"You didn't take down a license or a credit card?" Rossi wondered aloud.

"Left in the middle of the night and never came back. And I wouldn't have thought twice about it if I didn't have to clean up the campsite from all the glass."

Rowan stopped to think about the glass the unsubs left in front of the point of entry.

"Glass?" Rowan asked.

"All over the ground. Almost like they did it on purpose."

"Can you show us where they parked?"

After a little bit of searching, Rossi kicked over a rock and found some pieces of glass, the same ones that were found on the crime scene.

"Is it a match?" Sheriff asked.

Rowan stood between Morgan and Spencer, arms crossed, her body weight was shifted onto one leg.

"Which means the rv park owner was right. They spread it on purpose." Derek said in response.

"So everything they do is part of some ritual." Rowan said.

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Sheriff asked as he crossed his arms.

"A family that ritualizes killing together? Definitely not." Morgan responded.

"You know, if the family speaks romanian, the spreading of the glass makes sense.
It's an eastern european superstition for good luck." Spencer informed.

"So they're Romanian. We already knew that." Sheriff furrowed his brows.

"Not just romanian. We're talking about people that are highly superstitious and obsessed with ritual." SPencer continued.

"Romany." Rossi said.

"Romany?" Sheriff asked.

"Gypsies." Rossi responded.

"More accurately, someone who has perverted romany culture." Spencer concluded.

"Call Garcia. They're tight-knit and nomadic like our unsubs, but not usually prone to violence." Rossi informed as Morgan dialed his phone.

"Hiya, baby." Garcia said from the other end of the phone call.

"Hey, baby girl, we need to talk." Derek said into the phone.

"Pg or nc-17?" Garcia said, cleverly.

"You're on speakerphone." Morgan hummed.

"I charge extra for groups." She said back to him, earning a chuckle from Derek. Rowan noticed the Sheriffs surprised face.

It's not every day you hear two FBI agents call each other 'baby' and almost talk dirty to one another. Well, not every day if you're not apart of the BAU.

"We need you to run through crimes similar to the Hale murders in the last 2 years." Rossi requested.

"Oh, I already did that. Zip."

"Go back even further, Garcia." Spencer began. "Cross-reference against any small towns that have had reports of petty theft associated with waves of romany populations entering the area."

"Romany?"

"Gypsies." Rowan answered.

"As in 'gypsies, tramps, and thieves'?" Garcia sounded excited.

"Exactly."

"Oh, bless you all for turning my life into a cher song. You'll have it nearly immediately."

"You're the best." Derek said to Garcia lovingly.

"Thanks, Garcia!" Rowan said into the phone.

"You're welcome, honey buns." Garcia disconnected the call.

"Was she talking to me?" Derek asked, with an eyebrow raised.

"No, I'm honey buns." Rowan said, she never thought she'd put such a sentence together. She earned a chuckle from Derek and Spencer.

"You need to get your men together right now." Rossi looked intensely at the Sheriff.

"Why is that?"

"Cause whatever ritual these people are trying to play out, e know Cate Hale didn't fit their needs." Spencer started.

"Which means they'll have to try again."

"Rowan, come with Dave and I to deliver the profile. You need some experience with that." Hotch asked, Rowan nodded than followed the two older gentlemen to the crowd of officers waiting for them.

"The unsubs we're looking for are a family. A father, a mother, and a son, approximately 10 years old. We believe they're of romanian descent." Hotch said as he passed out case files to the police department.

"The family travels in an rv, but they also have another vehicle that they use to go back and forth between campsites and cities. We need you to call every rv park in the area. Alert the owners to be on the lookout for a family that fits this description, as well as a campsite that might have broken glass scattered around." Rossi added.

"The breaking of the glass and the discarding of Kate Hale because of her epilepsy leads us to believe that these are highly superstitious people and that they are playing out a very specific ritual." Hotch continued.

"The focus of this ritual is the young girls." Rowan said.

"Do we know why?" An officer asked.

"No. But we do know from the location of Cate Hale's house that they don't come across these girls by accident. They study. They hunt." Rowan crossed her arms.

"Cate's father said that she liked to go to the movies at their local multiplex. That's a good place to start." Hotch informed the group.

"Also look at the parks, malls. Concentrate on those that are an easy drive from the rv parks you locate."

"This family is out there and they're looking for their next victim." Hotch said.

Derek came out of the conference room.

"You guys need to see this right now." Derek's voice very serious.

"Excuse us." Hotch said to the crowd, excusing himself, Rossi and Rowan.

"What's going on?" Hotch asked as the three agents entered the room.

"Garcia, you still there?" Derek asked.

"Present." Garcia said before going into what she found. "Ok, I went ahead and went further back looking for similar cases and I made the search national. There's 30 of them. They go as far back as 1909. Rapid city, South Dakota, Taos, New Mexico, Gary, Indiana. My map is lit up like a christmas tree.

"All these girls were abducted and had their parents killed?" Hotch said, going through the papers and papers of case file sheets.

"The time between the kills was long enough and the regions of the country so spread out that it never showed up as serial." Spencer said, handing some of the papers to Rowan. She began looking over them.

"What the hell is this?" Rowan asked.

"I don't know, but it looks like it's been going on for generations." Hotch said, sounding worried. "Rowan, you stay here with me and Prentiss to look through these cases. The rest of the team go to the newest crime scene."

Rowan's phone rang as she sat next to Emily and across from Hotch. She looked at the caller ID.

"Hey, Penelope. What's up?" Rowan asked, putting the cell phone on speaker.

"I hope the three of you are sitting down because boy do I have some wacky stuff." Garcia said through the phone.

"What is it, Garcia?" Hotch asked, looking up from his papers.

"I got a hit from the hair found on the blanket that Kate Hale was wrapped in." Garcia started. "It's from a cold case in 1971. You all should have it. Kathy Gray was abducted after her parents were murdered. She was never found."

"Thanks, Garcia." Rowan said, the gears in her head turning.

"Not a problem, Honey buns. I'll call you guys back if there is anything else." Garcia disconnected the call.

"Guys, I think I know what's happening." Rowan said, frantically shuffling through the case files.

"What is it?" Hotch asked. Emily looked over to her.

"All of the previous victims have been between the ages of 9 to 12. Typically girls start puberty between ages 10 to 14." Rowan word vomited. "And all of their parents were murdered. What if the unsubs are kidnapping these girls to vet them to become wives? And than killing the parents as a countermeasure. Parents are what drive investigations after child abductions. If they get rid of the parents, they get rid of almost half of the motivation to continue investigating."

"Oh my-" Emily said, looking down at the case files.

"You're onto something, Rowan." Hotch said, as he abruptly stood to call one of the other team members.

Once all of the team was back at the precinct, a conference call with Garcia began.

"A working theory from 1971 was that a transient killed the family and abducted Kathy gray. Then all the leads went cold." Garcia typed away through VICAP.

"How do you watch your family get murdered and then make a life with the people who did it?" Jordan questioned. She seemed to be having a rough time during the cases.

"It's Stockholm Syndrome. You adapt or die." Rossi answered.

"And now she's training her son to be a murderer." Rowan said, her voice low.

"At a certain point, once traditions are handed down generation after generation, there is no right or wrong. You simply accept the way the world works." Hotch huffed.

"The romany are a closed society. The unsub simply twisted and distorted traditions to become entirely insular." Spencer said, keeping an eye on Rowan.

"Abducting the children keeps the bloodline pure, and killing the parents ensures that people eventually stop looking for them." Rowan said, her voice became lower.

"We got a report of an rv on fire about 20 miles from here." Sheriff said as he opened the door.

"Dave, you, Reid, Rowan and Morgan go check it out."

"It was started less than an hour ago, so they can't be far." Sheriff said, as he lead the agents to the scene.

"It looks like they left almost everything." Derek said as he looked around at the charred remains.

"The got the girl they wanted. They're starting over." Rossi said.

"Look at the clothes. Most of them still have the store sensors on them." Morgan crouched down and looked through them.

"So how'd they get them past security scanners?"

"Tinfoil. Kate Hale remembers being locked in a closet surrounded by clothing and tinfoil." Spencer told Sheriff.

"Shoplifters use tinfoil to line their bags and negate security alarms." Rowan looked through the bags as well.

"Makes sense. A lot of romany make their living as petty thieves." Rossi added.

"It also explains the bells she heard. Kate says she remembers hearing the sound of bells, Followed directly by the father talking to the son. I think that's probably what the mannequin's for. School of the 7 bells." Spencer picked up a mannequin hand from the char.

"You dress a mannequin, you line a suit with 7 bells. If you can pick his pocket without a bell ringing, you're ready to work a crowd." Derek said, standing.

"These unsubs are guided entirely by ritual. They abducted Lynn Robillard, the newest victim, and killed her family in an area that they knew was surrounded by police and the FBI. They had to. They can't deviate." Spencer looked around at the RV.

"We also know that they're starting over. Which means they're gonna need some money." Derek said.

"Where's the closest shopping mall?" Rowan asked.

"About 15 miles from here." Sheriff told her. Derek pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

"Hey, Hotch, we know where they're going." Derek told Hotch over the phone.

They caught the female unsub and Hotch was playing 'bad cop' and Emily took on the role of 'good cop'

Rowan watched with Jordan as the woman was interrogated.

"How's it going so far?" Spencer, Rossi and Morgan stepped into the room. Spencer walking to Rowan on the far side of the window in the room.

"They're trying to crack her by reminding her of the girl she used to be." Jordan said.

Rowan pinched the bridge of her nose, as she did when she was frustrated. Spencer placed a hand on the small of her back and rubbed gently, as if to comfort.

"I hope this good cop/ bad cop routine works." Spencer sighed.

"If her family gets away, we've lost that little girl forever." Rossi said as he watched Emily and Hotch interrogate.

They dug into Kathy's thoughts until a name, Morris Collins, made her call out infrustration.

"There it is." Derek is. "Reid, Kennedy, let's go."

Derek drove to the location given by Kathy. Spencer, Rowan and Derek, along with some police officers, cornered the male unsub.

"Fbi! Hands in the air! Hands in the air! Get on your knees! Down on the ground! Now!" Derek yelled at the unsub, all three agents, and all of the officers had guns aimed and ready. Derek had the man on the ground and cuffed him. "You know, we got a long list of girls to go through with you."

"In history, warriors invaded towns, killed the men, women, and boys, But kept the girls for themselves. You exist because your ancestors did what was needed for you to survive." The unsub said, staring at the agents.

"Get him out of here." Derek handed him off to an officer.

"You'll never find my boy!" The unsub screamed.

"We already have." Rowan called out, obviously angering the unsub, causing him to yell and squirm in the officer's grip.

"Come on, come on." The officer told the unsub.

After finding the boy and the abducted girl, a translator was needed.

"Don't tell them about your brothers." Kathy said to her son. When asked about his brothers, the boy refused to answer.

Once back at the office, the rest of the team were starting their reports when Rowan decided it was due time for a cup of hot chocolate.

As she poured the hot water from the hot water dispenser, she felt gentle hands on her shoulder, sliding down her arms. She turned to meet Spencers warm gaze and the smile that she loved.

"Hi." Spencer said, looking down at his newfound girlfriend.

"You know the whole team can probably see us, right?" Rowan chuckled as he moved a step closer to her.

"I know they can." Spencer slid his hands to hold hers. "I don't really mind."

Meanwhile, from her desk, Emily was beginning her report for the case. She sighed and looked up for a moment to distract herself. Something very intriguing caught her eye.

Spencer and Rowan were very close together as she observed their conversation. Emily looked the pair up and down and they were holding as their conversation continued.

"Well, I'll be damned." Emily whispered to herself. "Morgan!" She whisper-yelled as he left Hotch's office.

"What's goin' on princess?" Derek diverted his original route back to his office over to Emily's desk.

"Tell me I'm not seeing things." Emily nodded towards the break area, where Spencer and Rowan were. Derek followed her line of sight and took in what she was seeing.

Only, they has shifted from holding hands to him using his left hand to cup her cheek as she spoke up to him.

"Nuh uh." Derek chuckled in disbelief. "Pretty boy got the girl."

Just as Derek spoke, Spencer pulled Rowan into a hug, kissing the top of her head.

"Took them long enough." Emily huffed as she looked back at her paper, earning a laugh from Derek.

So I haven't updated in a couple days but I wanted to sort of establish a publishing schedule. I want you all to be aware of that schedule as well. I've decided I will update on Mondays and Thursdays my time (Eastern Standard Time). I've already gotten a head start on the next few chapters and I honestly can't wait for you guys to read what I've got planned for this series. Also, I'm going to go back through the previous chapters and edit some of the errors once I'm satisfied with the how the story is progressing. Thanks for reading/reviewing/favoring/following! I appreciate it all! XxXx