Happy holidays everyone!

Garcia was working off a hunch. She didn't get them often, but when she did, she knew enough to work through it and let it go wherever it wanted to go. The last time she'd had a hunch like this was after Emily and Doyle. There was a small part of her that never truly believed Emily was dead. She'd chalked it up to grief, and so had Morgan when she talked it over with him. But when she'd seen Emily walk through the door to the conference room she'd felt her jaw drop to the floor and she'd known. She'd known. Just like she knew now that they were missing something. Something that could prove to be the key to finding Hotch and the junior g-man.

She was listening to the recording of the phone conversation they'd had earlier and was trying desperately to isolate the two segments of whispers the team had heard. There was no reason for the kidnapper on the phone to whisper and to Garcia's untrained ear, it didn't sound like a man's voice. Was it possible that a woman was involved in all this?

With one last triumphant jab at her keyboard, Garcia had done it. She played both segments multiple times and forced herself not to tear up when she imagined how terrified Jack must be.

True to her hunch, the voice was a woman's. She spoke gently to Jack, soothingly, like a mother might talk to her son. But this wasn't Haley. It wasn't Jessica, or Emily, or JJ, or herself. This was no one that had a right to talk to Jack like a mom, to pretend to be his mom. This wasn't right.

She pulled up the picture that had been sent to Emily's phone during the ransom call. Jack looked fine, calm and happy even. Something had happened between the time that picture was taken and the time the phone call was made. Garcia's eyes moved to Hotch's face, battered and bruised as it was. Jack had probably watched that happen; that was enough to frighten anyone, let alone a small, innocent child.

Garcia scoured the photo looking for any hidden sign or message from Hotch she could find. There was nothing. No hidden sign language, no covert hand signals. Just Hotch, staring off to the side, not looking at the camera.

Not looking at the camera. So what was he looking at?

With renewed determination she flew into action and the frantic beeping of her computers was like her lifeline, racing in time with her heartbeat. A few more taps, a click here and there, scroll in to zoom.

"Oh my God. Oh my God." She repeated over and over. She had it. She'd done it. Well, kind of. This could be the missing link they'd needed. But she had to be sure. She pulled another file up on her screen and compared it to what was on her screen now. This was it. "Oh my God." She said again, gathering her papers into a disheveled pile and racing out of the room as fast as her purple flowered four inch pumps would allow.

She practically skidded to a stop when she reached the roundtable room where Rossi, Emily, Morgan, Reid, and JJ were stationed in various positions of intense review, files in hand.

"I have it. Well, I might have it. Actually, I don't really know if I have it, but I think I might. Anyway, this might be helpful, I don't really know. I think it will be though, because-" she rambled on until Morgan stopped her.

"Baby Girl, you're point?" he asked bluntly.

"My point. Right. My point. I have one, I swear I do." She started again but stopped herself this time before anyone else had to. She dropped her files onto the already covered table and grabbed the clicker for the big screen. She pressed a button and the photo of Hotch and Jack flew up on the screen.

"So, Kevin and I have been working on this software to further enhance digital photographs. What we've been trying to do is see if there's a way to figure out who's behind the camera based on who's in the picture."

Emily gave her a blank look. "How do you do that?"

Reid had caught on already. "The human eye, aside from being one of the most intricately designed aspects of the human body, is remarkably under-utilized. In terms of science, there's still much more to be discovered but we do know the way vision works. What's interesting is that when you see something, your eye actually sees it upside down and then due to the specific refraction of light, the image is flipped so you see things right side up."

Emily nodded slowly. "That didn't help me at all."

"What genius boy is trying to say is that whatever the human eye is seeing at a particular point in time is actually reflected in the eye itself. And since the eye is naturally wet, it provides a decent reflective surface. The software Kevin and I have been working on tries to extract what any person in a photo is looking at, based on the reflection in their eye." Garcia explained.

"Hotch isn't looking at the camera; he's looking off screen." Rossi said, comprehension dawning.

"Baby Girl, are you saying you can tell us who Hotch is looking at? Who our kidnappers are?" Morgan clarified.

"Well, yes and no. I can tell you who Hotch is looking at, but I don't think it's one of your kidnappers. I'm sure it's not."

"Why, Garcia?" JJ asked.

Garcia clicked a button on the clicker and the screen zoomed in on Hotch's eye. The team could make out a blurry image there. Garcia hit a few more buttons and the image was flipped and focused. When she was done, they were left looking at a fairly clear image of a young, blonde woman.

"This is Kayla Jacobsen." Garcia said. "She's been missing for almost two years."

Hotch hadn't moved. He'd been staring at Jack's small, unmoving figure for the past hour; his only comfort was the steady rise and fall of Jack's chest. Logically he knew that with as tiny as Jack was the chloroform was going to have a stronger effect on him than Kayla. She would wake up first. Hotch knew that, but that didn't stop him from watching.

And thinking. With all this time to himself he was thinking a lot. He wasn't sure he liked it because for whatever reason, his thoughts kept drifting to his failures. Reid, with Henkel. Morgan, with Buford. Emily, with Cyrus, then Doyle. Haley, with Foyet. And now Jack, with a different Foyet. Why was it that he was considered one of the agency's "finest" when he couldn't even protect the people he cared for most? The people he loved? What the hell was he doing wrong?

He tried to snap himself out of it. He'd already gone over all of these situations time and time again, asking himself what he could have done differently to spare everyone a little pain, to spare them the grief they felt. And most of the time, he didn't come up with anything. Not anything major at least. No major, glaring errors he'd made in the course of fighting for his friends, his family. But still, surely there was something? Something, anything he could have done differently. Surely it was egotistical to think that he'd acted to the best of his ability. He didn't consider himself an egotistical man so there was no way he'd done everything right.

Especially when it came to Jack. He'd been basically absent from the first few years of his life. Then he hadn't even been able to save the one constant in Jack's life, his mother. He'd been set to leave the BAU after Haley's death; to be there one hundred percent for his son. But when Jessica came along and offered to step in and help, it had been too good of an offer to pass up. He got to stay with both of his families, so how could that not have been the right decision? Even now, with all of this going on, he had to admit to himself that he still thought it was the best decision. He couldn't imagine his life without his team; it had been hard enough to get by without JJ and Emily; there was no way he'd be able to get by without them forever.

He forced his train of thought to another track. He had complete faith in his team. Rossi was a veteran agent, bringing wisdom and calmness to the table. JJ would keep her head, at least in front of the others. She would focus on every angle and handle Strauss with the utmost grace. Reid would compute every probability, every scenario his gifted mind could think of. Hotch worried about him the most; he seemed so fragile sometimes but simultaneously so very strong. Morgan, Hotch knew, would channel his anger into something productive. Hotch could guarantee that when they did figure this out, Morgan's foot would be the first thing through the door. Garcia would let her emotions get the better of her, but that would be a good thing. Her emotions helped her focus and they helped everyone else feel strong in comparison. Then there was Emily. Why did he always save her for last when he thought about his team? It seemed like it always happened that way. Emily would get through this without a problem. She'd been through so much and she'd always bounced back. Not only that, she'd bounced back and ended up comforting and healing those around her. After Cyrus, she'd taken it upon herself to get Reid through his guilt. And after Doyle, after she'd put herself in danger to protect all of them, she'd returned and faced the distrust of the people she cared about most. Not to mention the late night runs to Hotch's place to help out with Jack, bringing cough medicine at three in the morning, or dropping in with a batch of pancakes made from Haley's recipe that Hotch had never quite mastered. Hotch knew that as strong as Jack's bond with Reid was, part of him had associated Emily with the 'mommy' role in his life. Hotch had made it clear to Emily that she had no obligation to fill that role but she insisted that she didn't mind. Hotch was grateful, even if he didn't show it. He always tempered his emotions around her, for fear of them being deemed improper. He'd seen Rossi's knowing looks and the smirks on JJ and Garcia's faces. But he also knew what a relationship between the two of them could do to a team as delicate as theirs. As much as he cared about Emily, he knew he could never take it further than that.

His stream of consciousness was interrupted when he heard Kayla stirring to his right. She moaned and her eyes fluttered open. She let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the room while she pulled at the bindings on her wrists. She hadn't really expected them to budge and they hadn't. Finally, her eyes traveled over to where Hotch was sitting, looking at her intently. No, not intently, sternly. And not looking, glaring. She maneuvered herself to a sitting position with some difficulty and leaned her head against the wall as some of the after-effects of the chloroform hit her. A wave of dizziness and nausea passed but she kept her eyes closed.

"Are you alright?" she heard the FBI agent's voice come out of the darkness. Hotchner, that was his name, she recalled. She opened her eyes and nodded in response.

"Can you come over here?" he asked her. She considered her current lack of mobility and finally laid flat on the ground and rolled over to where Hotch was sitting. She ended up with her back facing towards him but before she had a chance to sit up she felt his hands tugging at the binds on her wrists. His strong fingers worked quickly and her hands were free within minutes. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and pulled the gag out of her mouth before untying her ankles.

"Thanks." She told Hotch without looking at him. She crawled to where Jack was still lying unconscious. She freed him and picked him up gently, cradling him against her chest. She walked on her knees back to Hotch and set Jack softly on his lap.

Hotch pressed his lips to his son's cool forehead and held him close. Kayla dug in the pocket of her jeans for a moment before she withdrew her hand, grasping a hair pin between her thumb and pointer finger. She reached her hand out toward Hotch and when he finally met her eye she saw the distrust coated there. But he held his hands out toward her and she went to work picking the lock on the cuffs.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough by now, so he could see things more closely than he'd been able to before. The sleeves of Kayla's gray v-necked t-shirt didn't cover the bruising on her arms and as the cuffs fell away from one of Hotch's wrists he couldn't help but place his hands around her thin arms, his fingers masking the impressions someone else's had made before him. The handprint-shaped bruises wrapped all the way around both arms and Hotch had the mental image of Gabe holding her down.

Kayla didn't flinch at his touch; even though he knew what he was doing wasn't beneficial to her in any way. He needed to do this for himself, to put the pieces together and figure out if he could trust her, count on her to get Jack out of here safely. Her eyes met his and what he saw there was a pleading look more than anything else. Pleading for what, he didn't know.

She gently extricated her arms from his hands and started working on the cuff around his other wrist. This one went faster than the first and Hotch rubbed his wrists gently when both were free.

"Thanks." He told her, breaking the silence that had enveloped the room.

"Mm hmm." She said softly, reaching now for the padlock that fastened the chain around his neck. Hotch tilted his head away from her to allow for better access and he took a deep breath when he heard the telltale click of the lock sliding open. She unraveled the chain and let it fall to the floor. Hotch rolled his head around on his neck a few times. Kayla settled back into a sitting position with her back against the wall, two feet or so away from him.

"Will that door open?" Hotch jerked his chin toward the only exit from the room.

Kayla shook her head. "Not from the inside. This room is solid." She sighed. "Trust me."

"Is there any way out of here?"

"Of this room? Other than that door, no."

"What about the house? How many exits are there?"

"There's the front door. It locks from the outside and the inside. Gabe and his father are the only ones with keys. There are a few windows, but they're all barred."

"Can you break the window through the bars?" Hotch needed to know everything.

"Yeah, but I don't fit between the bars."

"You've tried?"

She let out a huff of air that passed as a grim chuckle. "Yeah. Once or twice."

"How long have you been here?"

She let out a long, slow breath. "One year, ten months, and seventeen days."

"You're keeping track." It was an observation, not a question.

"I have to hold on to something." She told him softly.

He held the stern look on his face. "How did you end up here?"

She closed her eyes. "It's a long story."

"We don't have anywhere else to be." Hotch pointed out.

"Fair enough." She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. When she spoke again Hotch could tell that she was fighting to keep her voice steady.

"My husband-not Gabe. That…man is not my husband. He just likes to think that we're married. Sometimes I think he really believes it."

"How did you meet him?"

"Gabe? Sorry, I'm getting this all jumbled." She took a deep breath and Hotch could tell this was painful for her. "My real husband's name is Andrew. Andrew Jacobsen. We've been married for ten years, since we were nineteen." A wistful smile crossed her face. "We grew up together; we were next door neighbors, if you can believe it. Best friends turned into high school sweethearts."

Hotch's thoughts drifted to Haley. They'd been high school sweethearts too. And best friends. He pictured her face in his mind, smiling and beautiful. He reluctantly let it fade when Kayla started talking again.

"When we graduated from high school, Andrew joined the Marines and I went with him. I got a job teaching dance at a studio near his boot camp and we got married a year later. When he graduated from basic training he was stationed at Quantico and we moved onto the base there. I went to school while he served, here and abroad. He'd been on deployment to Iraq twice in five years before all this started."

"Before what started?" Hotch prompted. Jack stirred before Kayla could respond and both looked at him desperately. His eyes snapped open but slammed closed again just as quickly.

"Jack?" Hotch asked, managing to keep most of the panic out of his voice. "Jack, open your eyes for me buddy."

Jack obliged. "Daddy, my head hurts." His voice was so tiny and pitiful; it broke Kayla's heart.

"It's okay Jack, just take deep breaths. You can close your eyes and go back to sleep if you want." Hotch allowed, now that he was satisfied that Jack was capable of regaining consciousness.

"Okay Daddy." His voice faded as his eyes slid closed and his breathing became deep and regular once again.

Kayla stroked Jack's hair softly.

"Do you have children?" Hotch asked her.

She shook her head. "I can't have kids." There was no further elaboration.

"I'm sorry." Hotch told her truthfully.

She shook her head. "It's really okay. Who knew it would come in so handy?" she asked grimly before getting herself back on track. "While Andrew was on his second deployment I opened my own studio. I like to think of the kids I work with as my own." She shook her head, as if to clear it. "Anyway, it was during his third deployment that I started getting the notes."

"Notes?"

"Yeah. Addressed to me. I found them in my mailbox, on my front porch, taped to the front door. They were love notes, poems, I guess. Then there were pictures taken of me on my way to and from work, taken while I was teaching class, taken while I was grocery shopping, taken while I was sitting in the living room of our house. I was terrified. I talked to the police and the MPs but there wasn't anything they could do unless the stalker actually made contact. That's what they called him, a stalker. He was, I guess, I just didn't like the word because that made me his victim."

Hotch listened intently as more and more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

"When Andrew got back from Iraq I was so relieved. I thought that his return would put an end to things." She paused. "It didn't. Our first night together we went out to dinner to celebrate and our house was broken into. There was a chilled bottle of champagne sitting on the kitchen counter when we got back, alongside a dozen red roses. We had to completely change our routine after pictures of us on our morning run started showing up at our front door during breakfast. Before long, Andrew was working from home constantly and I never left the house alone. When I did leave, Andrew went with me. That poor man sat through more dance classes that I ever thought he could bear. The notes kept coming and we finally decided that enough was enough. Andrew's superiors had understood, but he needed to get back to work. After a while, getting those notes just started to feel normal." She took a steadying breath. "And then…then Andrew was sent out on his fourth deployment. Some of the guys from his old unit promised to drop by every once in a while, and one of the other wives called every night to check in and make sure I was alright. It didn't stop him. I woke up one night with Gabe on top of me. I recognized him because he was one of the MPs that were supposed to be patrolling the house. That's how he was getting on base so easily; he worked there. He knocked me out and when I woke up I was here, in this room. I've been here ever since." She finished.

"How does he treat you?" Hotch asked her. She hesitated before answering and Hotch knew what the pleading look had been about. She didn't want to go there, to relive everything she'd been through during her captivity. "Listen, Kayla. I'm an FBI agent."

"I know." She lowered her eyes. "Jack told me." She smiled. "He's a great kid."

"I know he is. Kayla, I'm a profiler, I bring guys like Gabe down by figuring out what goes on in their heads. Anything you can tell me about him is going to help get us out of here." Hotch told her, a touch of urgency in his voice now.

She sighed. "At first, he was gentle and loving, most of the time. He'd get mad without warning and it was like something in him would snap and he would let loose. As time went on he just seemed mad all the time. Controlling and angry. And mean." She whispered the last part. "He likes seeing people in pain." She hugged her knees to her chest.

Hotch thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he needed to be sure. "Has he raped you?"

A single tear escaped down her cheek. When she spoke, her voice wavered. "Every night for the past one year, ten months, and seventeen days."