Back again!

And I'm sooooooooo sorry for all those lovely reviewers who are wielding pitchforks and flaming molotov cocktails, ready to throw them at my head for this...but, you're going to have to wait just a tiny bit longer...

For the next few hours, Garcia and the team struggled to find any latent information regarding T.J. Parker Jr. Nothing was forthcoming. The man was elusive, the bank account records showed that he had bought large stocks of basic food a month ago, from various stores. He had withdrawn a large amount of cash, and had yet to use his card again. There were no leases in his name, nor any business transactions citing him at any measure involved. The van he had used to transport Emily and Hotch was still missing. His motorcycle, which Garcia had invented a program specifically to search for it, had not been found. They were at a complete and utter dead end. They couldn't even find a current photograph of Mr. Parker Jr. He was a ghost.

Garcia had an idea. It wasn't legal. It was rare that her ideas were. She worked under the assumption that the greater good far outweighed any particular breaching of protocol or small addendum rules that might be found within the law. It wasn't called the Justice System anymore was it, no, it was called the Legal System. Because really, when a burglar entered your house to steal, stole some pretty valuable stuff and fell down your stairs on his way out. Was it right that he was able and legally allowed to sue you for damages? And win? Penelope didn't think so, that wasn't truly Justice that lived in the realm of legality.

Her idea lived on the circumference of what could vaguely be called the circle of all that is good. One would have to slightly twist and shake the accepted terms of what 'good' is to allow her idea to be 'good'. But Garcia wanted Emily and Hotch back. The FBI and extended law enforcement had already proven that all their revenue, expertise and protocol had come to naught. It was time to extend their net.

She could do this on her own. Morgan would never agree. Neither would Rossi. She couldn't bear to bring JJ into that kind of decision at this point in her new motherly life. That left Reid, and then the question became, could she trust him under the circumstances to agree with her, and then eventually help her? Garcia was confident that she could do this on her own, but did she want to? She had had enough of being solitary in her life. Living on the streets had taught her to be careful with whom you trust, and that when you did trust people, to only trust them with physical things, never your life or what you loved. Possessions could be replaced. The thing about her BAU family though, was that she did trust this group of people, she trusted them with more than her life. She trusted them with the truth and with the lives of innocents. But could she trust them with walking on the other side of the law? Could she trust them enough, to trust, that they would trust her? She seen their doubts before, their doubts about her. Frankly, though she had never kept such a big secret from them as she had when she had helped out those families. There had been an upside to the whole fiasco with Battle…she had seen the trust of her team. She thought over who she could trust with this stroll down the wrong side of the law.

Perhaps Reid was the correct choice.

She had to get out of Quantico to do it though, and she doubted the person she needed to talk to would take her seriously. She doubted that he would take Reid seriously either, but if she could download some images onto her laptop and show him…yes, that just might work. She would need Reid, she decided. Even though Reid was the least FBI-looking male in Virginia, his intellect would influence her target's decision. The least FBI-looking woman in Virginia? That would be me, sweetie, Garcia thought to herself.

Now she just needed to make her plan happen. It would be difficult to get out of her fortress, especially since she had not left it in over a week.

"I need some Vitamin D," she exclaimed, ignoring the surprised glances from her teammates, "Reid, you look like you could use some too, come with me." Making it an order meant he couldn't refuse.

Reid startled as he realized he had been included in this strange jaunt to the outside world. To stand and bask in the waning sun. He waited patiently by the door as Garcia unplugged a laptop from the larger grouping of machines and led him out of the building.

Inside, Garcia breathed a sigh of relief. All she needed now was to get Reid into a taxi, and for him to not ask questions in front of the cabdriver.

Reid was utterly bewildered, Garcia had wanted him to absorb Vitamin D from the sun, but now they were entering a cab, and driving to an unknown destination. Garcia was giving directions from the backseat. One look from her though had quelled any questions. Garcia always had her reasons even if you never knew or understood what they were.

Reid was startled when the streets started to look familiar. The oxidized wrought iron guards surrounding slim and leafy trees reminded him of something. He couldn't figure out what. There were the remnants of neon signs, their usual chemical luminescence dormant as their owners tried to be environmentally friendly. Not that twelve hours of dormancy really meant that much of a difference to energy consumption, but Reid appreciated the effort. He saw a bank of motorcycles, Harleys mostly, but on the edges, Yamahas, Suzukis and Kawasakis. That's when he realized where they were.

"Garcia…" he doubted his voice had ever held that much of a threat in it before.

"In a minute Reid." She replied. Garcia was busy paying the cabdriver, thanking him for the effort. The Cabbie grunted in reply and turned up his throaty Metallica song to within an inch of ear-splitting capacity. Reid left the cab quickly.

Garcia gazed at up the street that she had spent so much time analyzing in 2D. Now she started to see nuances and details that a flat-screen could never depict. Crevices in the brickwork and knobbly knots in the trees all came to the fore. Cracks and divisions in the concrete, blood and vomit stains on the street, carefully but not fully washed away. This was a street that had a lot of character. This street had seen a lot. This was the street where Smokey's Bar was. And she and Reid were standing outside of that Bar, Reid in an ill-fitting tan cardigan, beige slacks, off-white buttoned shirt, and his customary satchel. Garcia flittingly wondered if he even owned another bag, or if his closet was full of replicas. For herself, Garcia stuck out like a vibrantly colored poppy in a field of dandelions. Her faux snake-skin maxi-bag fit most of everything she could possibly need, including her laptop. There was a key-chain dangling off one end, clipped to over-extension with trolls, voodoo dolls and brightly arrayed sea creatures. Her favorites were the tri-colored turtles.

She took a breath and started into the bar. Reid's hand on her elbow halted her.

"Garcia, why are we here?" His troubled eyes peered at her intently.

"When you work on the side of the law, there a certain places you can't go. Certain avenues of information that you can't access. When I joined the FBI I lost a lot of my contacts, there are certain places even my techno-goddess abilities can't get to. We need to go underground with our search for Emily and the Hotch-man. This is underground central." Waving her hand toward the bar she pleaded with him to go with her, she wanted a wing-man for this particular journey.

Reid sighed, but there was no way he would live if Morgan ever found out he let Garcia go in there by herself.

He led the way in.

I really did need to get that out of the way...

Arc

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