Lux Gold

Garcia had been right. It was kids.

Hotch had told them both to come straight to the station in Alexandria, as soon as Garcia got whatever she needed form the office.

She didn't want to look at the photos. That was Derek's job. She was given other things-parameters of the disappearances, for example. She avoided the photos whenever she could.

Except of the victims smiling and happy. She always found at least one, or a childhood snapshot of them. This was both.

Bethany Gibson was a three-year-old girl from Alexandria whose parents had been killed in a rather ugly, nasty fashion. Garcia didn't want to know the details-the look on Derek's face was enough for her. And by all appearance the now-orphaned Bethany had watched the whole thing, or been forced to.

And now she was gone, kidnapped by whomever had killed her whole family, even the visiting grandmother. She literally had no one left in all the world.

"Hang in there, sweetie. We will find you and bring you back," she talked to the picture on the screen of the gap-toothed child in a flounced pink dress with her hair in a matching bow. A pedophile's dream girl.

Garcia shook her head to rid her mind of that ugly image.

"Anything?" Hotch asked from the other side of the room.

They were past the first 24 hours. If Bethany was still alive, she would remain so. Only she and Hotch were still at the station at two AM-him going over the profile again and again, and her sifting through data streaming in from places most people didn't dream of.

"No," Garcia moaned. "This guy doesn't even seem to exist, not with what you gave me."

"I know. The profile's off somewhere," Hotch muttered.

"I mean," Garcia stopped typing for a minute, thinking aloud. "This guy just hacks up the parents and the grandmother, right? With poor Bethany just watching, or being made to watch, and then he doesn't kill her too. That makes no sense. He just snatches her up and leaves. According to the profile, we should've found her body by now, because this unsub doesn't care."

"But this indicates that he does," Hotch pointed to Bethany's photo on the board.

"But he can't."

"Exactly."

"Unless he doesn't."

"Garcia, my last cup of coffee was at midnight."

"Sir?"

"Explain."

"Well, what if Bethany, with all her bows and colors, was sort of a present? I mean, she looks like a package, no offense to the poor baby."

Hotch looked her over. "A present for who?"

"Whom," Garcia corrected, sipping her own coffee. "What of he sort of has somebody?"

"But he's a loner, we profiled that. No family or close attachments."

"No, you said," and her fingers were on the keys again, rapid as a heartbeat. "You said he wasn't married, had a low-level job, and was under thirty. That just spells living with your mom or dad. Which one do I go for?"

"The ones living with their mothers," and she could see Hotch's mind begin to whirl again. "The attacks on the women were the most vicious."

"Okay, single males in Alexandria county living with females relatives, starting with mothers and grandmothers. Under thirty, white, low-level job, never married."

"If he graduated high school, which I doubt, it would have been bottom of class."

"Dropouts and underachievers singled out."

"Petty crimes. Peeping Tom reports, petty theft, possession of drugs, probably weed."

"I'm down to a hundred. More, Boss Man."

Hotch paced. "The girl is a gift. Why would he bring a gift to his mother?"

"He loves her? No, then he wouldn't want to kill mothers. So he must hate her, but why?"

"She did something."

"Or didn't do something."

"Dead fathers only," Hotch added. "Families that had domestic disputes called in."

"What if she didn't want a baby boy? Hotch, what if she said she wished her son had been a girl-"

"And so he brought her one," Hotch finished.

"Oh God."

"Yes. If that's the case, then Bethany is safe-"

"No sir. She isn't."

"But if she's a gift-"

"Then he'll be jealous, sir. He'll be so jealous that it might boil over and he might kill her."

"Or himself, when he sees how happy his mother is with a girl. Why didn't she ever try to have another child?"

"Narrowing the women down to those mothers who couldn't-I have a hit. Jason Mirsky was hospitalized for attempted suicide last year after his father died, was released last month, lives with his mother-all of it matches."

"Call the team, and the lead detective. We need everyone in here. Good work, Garcia."

She nodded, already dialing.