Four fresh bodies in Gainesville, Virginia. That was what Jack had for him on the phone. No details about the bodies or what methods had been used. Not over an unsecured phone line, not with all of the unwanted attention Will had been subjected to lately. But it was enough information to get Will started. He'd driven out to the Shenandoahs many a time for the fishing and the quickest route to and from the mountains led through Gainesville. If someone was coming east and north, say from Tennessee by way of their previous crime scene in Staunton, passing through Gainesville was the best route. And while Jack gave no indication that these bodies fit their killer's MO, Will was still certain the two were connected.

He had pulled Hannibal aside that morning, while the boys had been busy with cleaning up breakfast, and had quickly whispered his fears to him. Maybe the boys should come to Quantico. What if their father came looking for them while they were with Hannibal?

Hannibal had frowned. "While I certainly appreciate being the recipient of your concern and attention," he had said, interrupting Will before he could continue to spin out theories about possible disasters. "I assure you that it is not necessary. I believe your theory is correct, that we have little to fear personally from their father as long as he does not believe we are the evil he is hunting. I have given him no reason to think otherwise." He had raised one eyebrow to eloquently express what he thought of that idea. "I also suspect that my office has more protections to it than your home. And, you dear Will, are also one phone call away, yes?"

The blushing had come back with a force and Will had stared pointedly at the far wall. He was going to have to get used to Hannibal saying one thing and meaning a world more than what simple words suggested. "I'd never get there in time."

"Ah, but I enjoy the thought of you rushing to my rescue," had been the drawled response. "Allow me my romanticism."

And really. What could he say in response to that?

So Hannibal took the boys and Will went to work in Gainesville.

Where four bodies waited for him in a cheap motel room. For a crime scene, it was very clean. The motel itself was a questionable establishment, with pay by the hour rates and the faint smell of beer and vomit. The bodies had been found by the owner when he came to demand more payment. The man was more annoyed by the police cars clogging his parking lot than distressed by the fate of his customers.

Jack had been waiting for him when he arrived, standing calmly by his car, a cup of coffee in one hand. "The room's all yours," he had announced as soon as Will exited the car. "We can talk afterwards." The cool distance wasn't normally how they started, but Will appreciated the calm before the storm. The local police were already waiting outside in order to give him his space. He was going to need it.

The room was small and old and dark. Two women were laid out across the bed. Their clothes were disheveled, but still intact. The blonde's head rested partially on the brunette's arm, as if they'd laid down one right after the other. For the kinds of thing Will usually saw, this one was surprisingly peaceful looking. If you ignored the general squalor and the slit throats.

And if you ignored the two men piled up in the bathroom like refuse. Their throats had also been slashed, though one victim also showed distinct contusions and abrasions scrapes to suggest he at least fought back. None of the others showed any sign of distress.

Will breathed in the smell of ill-repute and death and closed his eyes. The man on the bottom was first. The room had been empty when he was brought here. He was the easy one. The lure was something he wanted, something he didn't question. Killing him had been easy and quick. But the angle of the knife wound – it didn't match the rest of the crime scene. If his killer had come at him from behind, from over the shoulder, then there should have been blood everywhere. Will was far too familiar with the dramatics involved in such an act. He got to see it over and over again in his dreams.

Will's hands twitched. He knew what that blood would feel like gushing out from under his hands, the dull pull of skin –

This body had barely bled. In fact, it was nearly postmortem, the amount of blood. Drugged then? Either enough to stop the heart entirely, or clog the blood severely. The throat had been slashed in the bathroom, judging by what little blood there was. After the body had been moved out of sight. So that the room was ready for its next victim, man number two. The fighter.

It was hard to say why there was such a difference between the two. Both were average height, the first a tad pudgier than the second. Both were white working class men. The two extremes in temperament and outcome, however, bothered Will. Why should one look as peaceful as a lamb and the other a bloody mess? What changed between one and the next? Did the killer make a mistake? Show his hand somehow? It was hard to imagine that a killer so proficient and methodical could have made such a grievous error. Everything about the first kill suggested ease and control. The second was brutality personified.

Will glanced over at his next two victims, still waiting for a more in-depth inspection. No signs of violence. One girl's blouse was half unbuttoned, but there was nothing else to suggest a sexual component. No bruises, no scraps, nothing other than the same slit throat, the same lack of blood, the same peacefulness as if they'd died with no awareness of any danger.

It was almost as if he had switched methods between one victim and the next then back again. One switch might be explained by circumstance. Something changed outside of the killer's control, and in his rage, his method was lost. But typically once that happened what followed afterwards was a continuous increase in violence until the killer was stopped. He had never heard of one killer using such vastly different methods all in the same night.

So there was more than one killer.

The scene shifted into a more logical pattern. The first killer kills quickly, simply, early in the night with the first suitable victim available. It is merely a warm up for his companion. This killer wants a fight. Wants the struggle and takes the time to enjoy it. Now that he's looking, he can see the spot where the second victim was wrestled to the ground. There's where the mess was cleaned up. The room made presentable once more. Then the two girls brought in together. The final act. Back to the first killer, the simplicity, the order.

But to what end?

Different victims, different killers, but the same final act of slitting the throat even though the victims were likely already dead. No showmanship in the placement of the bodies, simply trash left behind or out of the way. Refuse.

Will moved back to the girls. Bent over them. Pictured cutting their throats, the effort involved, where he would have placed his hands. It had been so easy for their killer. A quick, clean motion at the very end. Nothing savored.

"I already have what I need," Will whispered to her.

"Excellent," Jack announced, his voice booming in the small, intimate space. "Then walk me through it."

Will startled but quickly stepped back from the body and pulled his glasses off. He'd seen too much but still not enough. "I wasn't finished yet."

Jack frowned. "You just said you were."

"No. No, he said he was." Will scrambled for words. "I mean, he was finished. By the time he reached the point of slitting their throats, he was already done and ready to move on. He had what he wanted."

"Which was?"

The million dollar question. "I don't know yet."

Jack folded his arms and stared down at the men in the bathroom. It was amazing how easy it was to look at them like that. So many of the bodies they saw were with stretched out in whatever torturous position they had died in or displayed grotesquely in some macabre message. Far too rarely were they neatly piled and waiting for disposal. Like garbage bags after a dinner party.

"Well?" Jack asked.

Will kept his glasses off. He needed time to think, to process without additional information flooding in. "Well what?" he asked then grimace. Lord, he hoped that hadn't sounded as much like a petulant preteen as it had to hm. Dean might be a bad influence after all. "Please be more specific," he grated out.

"Is this killer the father?"

Will slipped his glasses back on and stared at his boss. "I wasn't aware you thought the two connected."

Jack's eyes slid over to him. "LEOs checked the front office security video first. The van we were tracking was seen pulling in and out last night."

"Our victims?" Targets really, possible future victims, but likely the same thing as long as Dean and Sam's father remained at large.

Jack nodded.

Will turned back to the crime scene. Tried to picture himself as Dean's father. The man was slowly becoming a real presence in Will's life. The bits of Dean that were learned, mimicked behaviors – the gaps of what was normal in Sam life– the things they showed and the things they hid, the good parts and the bad, they were all slowly adding up into one person. A father with a machete, that fired a gun with ease and was teaching his oldest boy to do the same even as they hide the truth of the darkness in their lives from his youngest boy. He tried to picture that man calmly slitting these throats. It was possible.

"They didn't know each other," Will started, turning his head slowly from one pile of bodies to another. "The victims. The two men didn't know each other, and the two women likely didn't know either man." Will shook his head. "Besides, I'm sure Dean's father has gone back to working alone now that he no longer has access to Dean. That's what he's most comfortable with."

Jack shifted. "This killer wasn't alone?" he asked, sounding surprised.

Will glanced over at him. "Of course not," he answered. Then he sighed and pointed to the men. "Look at the emotion there. Nothing in one, then more than can be controlled in the second, then back to nothing here. Does that sound like one killer to you?"

"No," Jack grounded out. "It doesn't. Are you saying this has nothing to do with our case?"

Will shrugged. "Hell of a coincidence if not."

"Well, I'm glad we agree on something. So if it wasn't Daddy Dearest, then who was it?"

Will went back to staring at the bodies silently and Jack let him take his time. There was something here, just beyond what Will could see. Something unusual, something just beyond Will's ability to understand. He turned slowly, taking in all of the room. Even as things slipped through his fingers, the possibilities staying blurred just beyond his sight, there was something familiar.

"Bev and I theorized that there is something abnormal about the three victims in Sparta," Will said slowly. "They didn't eat."

Jack gave him a look that spoke volumes.

"Yes, I mean no, I mean obviously. But there was something wrong with them. Different. Doesn't matter what it actually was. Dean's father interpreted it as evil. That's why he targeted them. But the important thing is the victims also viewed it as something to hide. Something they shared only between each other. Something that separated them from everyone else."

Jack waited a moment after he finished speaking before prompting him. "So?"

"So. Only guilty people hide things," Will drawled out before continuing. "Or more accurately, people who feel guilty hide things." He should know. He was the master of hiding things and they both knew it. "But we both know that there can be a world of difference between the two." He paused. "I'm beginning to suspect that isn't the case here this time. I think our victims may also be just as guilty as Dean's father."

"You think our suspect's targets did this," Jack asked baldly, looking around the room once more, taking it in through the filter of this new information.

Will closed his eyes, ran what he had through his mind one more time, before looking back at Jack. "I think it is a distinct possibility."

"Great," Jack exclaimed. "I've got a killer hunting killers."

"Possibly," Will was quick to remind him.

"Your possibilities have a way of being actualities. Would it be too much to hope that they might just kill each other off and leave the rest of the world out of it?"

Will gestured to the room and let it speak for itself.

"Wonderful," Jack growled. With a sigh of disgust, he turned to leave the room but paused in the doorway. "There were four people in the car that State Trooper stopped in Blacksburg."

Will hissed as his eyes darted from one body to the next to the next to the next. "Either they lost two people," he said slowly. "Or we have four killers here instead of two."

"Please tell me you are shitting me," Jack replied. His brief bout of anger seemed to drain out of him completely, leaving behind only the kind of weariness everyone in the BAU knew. "Four? Together? Doesn't that violate some kind of standard?"

"Probably, but we're working outside the norm already," Will agreed. "Look at the victims. One docile man killed one way, another man intentionally goaded into fighting back, likely selected based on that objective. Then one short blond woman, another tall with dark hair. Once we have their information we might find something linking all four, but I doubt it, not in a kill done this quickly. It would take time to gather people like this if they weren't randomly chosen. These people were picked out from a crowd, based on a whim and preference. Does anything here look like a unified method?"

"Four victim types," Jack muttered.

"Equals four killers," Will finished. "At least in this case, it's a very real possibility."

Jack sighed again. "Just what we need. Two cases."

Will grimaced. It was times like these that he understood why Jack pushed him. There was simply too much of this evil out there, waiting for them, happening at every moment of every day. So much of their job was playing desperate catch-up, trying to stop something that had already happened. "Sorry, Jack. For what it's worth," he added. "Dean's father is likely to want to kill only them."

Jack grimaced as well but managed a harsh laugh. "No, that really doesn't help much. But I suppose it limits the possible harm. Right up until he decides we're also an 'evil' he has to fix."

Which was all too true. Dean's father was very committed. Heaven help anyone he saw as a threat to him or his boys.

"Oh."

Jack turned around sharply. "What?" he said, his expression intent and his voice demanding.

But Will's stomach felt like it had dropped to somewhere around his feet and it took him a moment to find his words again. "The boys. Their father will kill anything he sees as a threat to them."

"Yes?"

"The hunter hunting the hunted. If you wanted to stop a man like that, to be free, maybe even avenge your fallen comrades, what better place to start than his two children?"

Jack's mouth thinned into a hard line, his eyes focused completely on Will's face even as his mind was likely racing through possibilities and orders to issue.

"After all," Will concluded softly. "Why else follow us up from Staunton instead of running away? They're hunting Dean and Sam."