*A/N: You guys are great with the reviews! The more reviews I get, the more I am inspired to write more to this story. Keep the reviews coming and the chapters will keep coming. Sorry that this one is a little late in coming, but here you go! Thanks again!

*CBS owns Criminal Minds, I'm only a fan.*

"We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving."-Jose Ortega y Gasset

As the team walked away from the jet and towards the waiting government-issued SUVs, the mood was very somber. Everyone was thinking of their last experience with The Reaper or in Kara's case, her last experience with a sociopath. No one smiled at the officers who waited for them. No one spoke, they merely climbed into the vehicles and sat and listened as they were debriefed again on the specifics of the case. Hotch found his gaze traveling constantly to Kara, who sat and listened intensely to the details given by the officer on the crime scene, the victims, and the fact that they could find no connection between them. He was worried about her. He knew that she'd called her folks and asked them to keep the kids while they were away, and he knew that she'd called his brother, Shawn, and his wife, Kathryn and asked them about joining them for dinner while they were in town, whenever they got a chance, because Shawn had sent him a text message telling him that he was extremely lucky to have found her. However, he still worried about her. She still smiled, laughed, talked, and operated as she always had, she was too much of a professional to let her own cautions and reservations hinder her work performance, but he could sense the hesitation in her every movement. She was scared. She was scared and she wasn't telling anyone. She was surrounded by profilers and was doing a damned good job at hiding her fear, but he was more than a profiler, he was her husband, and he knew her and he knew she was scared, he knew it because he was scared. He felt horribly responsible. Since Kara had returned to his life, it had been a steady stream of serial killers, kidnappings, drama, near-death experiences, and cases that made him feel as if her life would have been much better if they had not gotten together. It was always at these times that she would turn to smile at him, or come over and hug him or kiss him, or one of the twins would call his name, Judith would give a cute baby laugh, or he'd hear Kara and Jack out back bouncing the basketball. These little things always helped him to remember why he was happy that they were together and why he wouldn't trade it for the world, but as always, just as he would get comfortable, something would happen. Hotch sighed, he was really feeling as if he was getting too old for all of the ups and downs of being an agent, but he could not see himself doing anything other than profiling with the BAU team for the FBI. At the same time, he didn't think his heart, his wife, his family could take too many more life-or-death experiences, either. Hotch knew that the time was going to be coming when he no longer had a choice, when the decision would be taken away from him, but until that time he would do his job to the best of his ability. He would focus on what he had to do, he'd profile and help find this serial killer and then he'd reevaluate his life.

The team walked into the FBI office of the New York branch and directly into the back office that had been set up for them. They had to get to work and quickly, they had no idea exactly when during the Valentine's Day weekend the UnSub planned to gun people down.

"What a great way to spend Valentine's Day, huh?" Penelope sighed.

"Don't worry Baby, I'll make it up to you," Derek replied as he began to look over the files.

Kara glanced at Hotch and smiled. She knew that he was worried about her, and yes, she was scared out of her mind that this UnSub was targeting her, but she wouldn't let him know that. She couldn't let him know that. He'd bench her and she'd be stuck riding the desk with Penelope and she couldn't face that humiliation again. Kara turned back to her set of files and perused them again, looking for something, anything that would stick out or point to the identity of the UnSub. She gasped as she looked at one of the pictures.

"Kara? Are you okay? Is it the baby?" Hotch questioned, his usually stoic demeanor cracking in the face of her gasp.

Kara nodded her head and standing rushed around the table and over to Penelope. "P! Can you blow up the image in this picture?" she questioned, pointing to one of the pictures taken by the UnSub that had been sent to the police station. In the picture of the deceased woman, Keira Farrell, she lay in the middle of a pool of her own blood, her body filled with puncture wounds from the 60 stabs that she had received along with the long, jagged gash at her throat and on her neck there lay a golden locket in the shape of a heart on a gold necklace.

"I sure can angel, but what are you looking for?" Penelope asked.

"Look here," Kara pointed at the locket, "This side is smooth, there are no etchings or engravings on it, whereas the other side is probably covered in them, just like mine," Kara pulled the locket that she always wore at her neck from underneath her shirt.

"I don't think I've ever seen that," Prentiss remarked as she leaned forward to look at the necklace.

Kara smiled and looked at Derek, "Derek sent it to me when he went off to college," opening the locket she showed them the two pictures inside, "One is of the two of us when we had gone to Six Flags and the other one is a picture of me and my parents." Closing the locket after everyone had looked at it and remarked on the picture of a young 18yr old Derek, Kara pointed back to the picture of Keira, "The smooth side is so clear that it serves as a mirror, I think that if we blow up the image and clean it up a bit, we may just get a picture of our UnSub."

As the team looked at the picture, Kara's mind drifted back to the day that she'd received her locket from Derek.

Flashback

Kara danced around the room to Whitney Houston's "Dance with Somebody," singing into the hairbrush that she held in her hand. She jumped on her bed and jumped around on top of the pink sheets. It was Saturday, which meant that there was no school and since it was fairly early into the school year, she didn't have any recitals or classes to go to. It was her day of freedom. Jumping off the bed, Kara slid to the middle of her bedroom floor in her socks and did a little air guitar. It would've been a lot more fun if she was playing "Jackson 5" with Sarah, Desiree and Derek but they weren't there, Derek having left for college and Kara was all alone. Kara leaned back as she belted out the end of the song, her eyes closed tightly as she sang with emotion, and falling to her knees, she ended the song, only to be startled when she heard clapping at her bedroom door. Opening her eyes, Kara saw her father standing there with the telephone in one hand.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed as she went to turn off her stereo.

Travin lifted the phone to his ear and said, "Yeah, she was dancing and singing. She's happy because she doesn't have any classes or recitals today." He listened to what the other person had to say for a minute and then laughing he handed the phone to Kara, "It's Derek on the phone for you," he stated.

"Derek?" Kara asked excitedly as she took the phone from her father, clearing her throat she put on her big girl voice and answered the phone, "Go for Kara," was her response on the phone.

"What's up Apple Head?" Derek asked amused at the tenor of Kara's greeting, "Happy that you're free today?" he questioned her.

"You know it!" Kara replied as she walked towards her bed and flopped down on top of it, watching as her father picked up a box from the outside of her door and brought it in.

"Did you get my present yet?" Derek inquired, his voice filled with love for his baby cousin.

"Is it this box that my daddy's handing me?" Kara asked, all traces of her 'Big Girl' voice gone.

"It should be," Derek guessed.

"What is it?" Kara asked as she accepted the box and shook it gently. Smiling as her mother walked into the room to stand next to her father.

"Open it and see," Derek suggested laughing.

"Oh, yeah, right," Kara said, "Hold on for a second." Kara placed the phone on the bed and tore open the box. She'd never been neat when it came to opening her presents, she always made a mess. It was probably due to the fact that she was impatient and nosey. Her parents had always told her that she should consider a career in criminal investigation so she could get paid to snoop. Kara picked up the phone as she said in disappointment, "It's another box," as she held the blue velvet box in her hand.

"Open the box, Apple Head," Derek chuckled.

Kara opened the second box and gasped, "It's a locket! Just like the one that I said I wanted from the jewelry store!" She held up the necklace so that her parents could see it. As her mother exclaimed over how pretty it was and her father talked about how much Derek must have spent on it, Kara merely looked at it. The front had the words "To Apple Head, All My Love, Big D" written on it surrounded by a design of leaves surrounding it, and the back was smooth and empty.

"Of course it is, you said you wanted it, so I decided to get it for you. Did you open the locket yet?" Derek questioned her.

"Not yet," Kara answered as she opened the locket to find a picture of she and Derek from their trip to Six Flags on the inside. She felt a lump rise to her throat and tears sprang to her eyes, "It's us," she whispered into the phone.

"Yes it is. Now you don't have to be scared or worried, because as long as you have that locket, I'm always with you. That's your proof that I'll always be here to protect you and that I'll always love you okay Apple Head?" Derek asked, his voice thick with emotion as he heard her struggling to contain her own tears.

"Okay Derek, thank you. I love you too," Kara responded, her heart feeling much lighter now that she'd received the locket. She knew that her father tried his best to always be around but with his being a translator for the government and then taking side jobs, she barely saw him. She knew that her parents loved that Derek took such an interest in her. She'd always looked up to him, she always would. Her daddy was her daddy, but her big cousin Derek was her hero.

"Okay Apple Head, I gotta go get ready for practice. And just because you don't have a recital or a class, that doesn't mean you should slack off. Remember there is no down town just because the season's over, superstars and heroes are made in the off-season," Derek advised.

"I know," Kara sighed, "I'll do some ballet and karate," she remarked, her voice sounding like that of a petulant child's. Her parents laughed, as did Derek, and as Kara said goodbye to Derek, before telling her parents that he said goodbye to them, Kara knew that they all found her reluctant agreement to Derek's advice amusing. Kara lifted the necklace from the box and turned so that her mother could put it around her neck. She promised herself then that she would never take it off.

End of Flashback

And she never had. Oh, she took it off when she took a shower and when she and Hotch were making love, because let's face it, it would be weird to be wearing the necklace that her cousin had given her while she was making love to their boss, but other than that, she never took it off. Kara focused her gaze back to the task at hand as the memories of her childhood faded from her mind. Glancing up she saw Derek's fond smile and realized that he must have been remembering the exact same thing as her. The two cousins smiled at each other before focusing their attention back to the specifics of the case.

"The UnSub is someone who studied the case and escape of George Foyett extensively. He's someone who talked constantly about how 'The Reaper' was or is the best serial killer that ever lived. His fascination is borderline fanatic. The three murders took place during the day in broad daylight so our UnSub does not have a steady 9-5 job. He's a loner, he has no friends to speak of and his father has either disowned him or shuns him at every opportunity. His mother supports him and he resents that support, which is why he's killed two women and killed them so brutally. He has a definite problem with women in positions of authority which is why he's targeted female members of the FBI to torture and kill and described it in such detail," Hotch stated, giving the profile after he and his team had examined the crime scene and spoken to the families of the victims, the day after arriving in New York.

"Since this UnSub is a copycat, he sees his work as being in direct competition with that of his 'idol': George Foyett, so he will try to be more brutal and more horrific in his kills. It's very similar to the case of Jack the Ripper who murdered prostitutes in London. Contrary to some belief, he did not come over to America to continue the killings, he did spark a chain of copycats however, who began murdering prostitutes here, each one worst than the last," Reid continued.

"Our UnSub is a white male between the ages of 25 and 35. He's in very good shape and charming. There are no defensive wounds on the bodies of our victims and they were all found either in their homes or right outside of them. And since they all lived here in The City, their apartments and homes were places of high traffic. He's supremely confident to pull off the murders in such high-traffic places, which means we're dealing with a classic Narcissistic personality," Prentiss added.

"Narcissistic personality?" Detective ShaLisa James asked.

"It means that our UnSub feels no remorse. He's a sociopath, and he feels that what he's doing and what he wants is more important than anything else, even the deaths of a few people. He wants fame and recognition and he will do anything to get it," Rossi explained.

"Because of this reason our UnSub is not going to go down without a fight. He's going to go out in a blaze of glory. While he admires 'The Reaper' and his cunning escape from prison, this UnSub feels as if Foyett took the coward's way out," Kara stated pointing to blown up photo of the page sent from the UnSub, "he describes everything in detail and his thoughts are clear on the matter. He plans on being more recognizable and more famous than Foyett and he doesn't plan on ever setting foot inside of a prison. He's going to go down shooting."

"Please get this profile out to all of your officers and agents. Thank you," Hotch concluded the debriefing and the BAU team stood and watched as the officers and agents all stood and walked out of the bullpen. Kara sighed and turned to walk to the bathroom. Her phone vibrated on her hip and unclipping it from her waist she was surprised to see who it was. "Leah?" she answered surprised.

"Hey Kara! Your parents told me that you were in The City working on a case, so I thought I'd call you up to see if maybe you'd want to meet for drinks or something when you get off?" Leah asked, her voice hopeful.

Kara groaned in disappointment. She and Leah had gone to the academy together and while Kara had been promoted to Head Agent and then transferred over to the BAU, Leah had eventually quit The Agency and gone off to teach criminal justice at NYU. "Leah, I wish I could. But first off, I can't drink, I'm pregnant again," Kara laughed as Leah gave a shout of joy. Kara continued walking back towards the bathroom and walked inside, closing the door behind her, "And when we're working on a case like this, we really need to have our wits about us. But hey, once we solve the case and catch this bastard, Aaron, Derek, Penelope and I will all meet you for dinner or something," Kara promised, happy to have heard from Leah, whom she hadn't seen since the wedding.

"Okay, I'm holding you to that," Leah agreed, "Well, I have to go to class, I'll talk to you later. Be careful Kara."

"Thanks I will," Kara said, "Talk to you soon," just as Kara was about to conclude the call she heard gunshots in the background. "Leah?!" she yelled out in fear. Jerking up her pants and flushing the toilet, Kara continued to yell Leah's name into the phone. Washing her hands quickly, she dashed out of the bathroom, with paper towels in her hand as she yelled out Hotch's name.

"What's wrong?" Hotch asked racing to her, his eyes filled with fear.

"I was just on the phone with Leah, she was getting ready to teach a class at NYU when I heard gunshots ring out. We have to make sure she's okay!" Kara panted out frantically. The rest of the BAU team had gathered at this point and as they turned to go, they noticed that the police station had become a frenzy of action as officers grabbed their holsters and vests and took off out of the door. Without hesitation the BAU team followed.

As they arrived at the campus, they noticed the chaos that had ensued. Bodies littered the field, from the front all the way to the door of the criminal justice building. Their guns poised and ready, the BAU team, along with SWAT and other officers and agents from the NYPD office stormed the building. Kara struggled to maintain her professional demeanor as she kept her eyes open for her friend. The campus shooter had made quick exit it appeared, walking and shooting, not stopping, but every shot dead on. Every victim had either been shot in the heart directly or in the head. Kara stopped counting when she reached body number 20. The shooter hadn't even stopped to reload, just dropping the guns and continued walking and shooting. As they came towards the end of the hall, they noticed the back door was open. Kara knew that Leah's classroom was the last one on the right and speaking into the communicator on her vest she asked for Derek and Prentiss to come with her as she went to examine the classroom. The two agents came with her without hesitation after receiving an okay from Hotch. As they came upon the closed door, Kara knocked and called out Leah's name. Hearing nothing, Kara nodded at Derek and stepped back, her gun raised at the soon to be opened door. Taking one step back, Derek lifted his right foot and kicked open the door with force. As the three agents swept in with their guns, they all came to a stop at the massacre.

"Hotch! Rossi! Reid! We're going to need you in here!" Derek called out, his voice loud in the face of the now deathly silent classroom.

Kara stood frozen in shock. This was the target of the killer. She'd figured wrong. He'd come through the back door, shot up this entire room and then as he'd walked out the front door, he'd taken out students one by one.

"How the hell did he lock this door from the outside?" she wondered, her brain on auto-pilot as she walked around, looking for evidence.

"It's a push lock," Prentiss answered, examining the doorknob, "You just push it in and it's locked. You'd have to turn it from the inside to unlock it."

"And there's no one alive in here to do that," Kara nodded, as she continued to walk around the room, counting the 18 students inside the classroom. As she came to Leah's desk, she inhaled deeply and stepped around the corner of the desk, her gun still held tightly in her hand, although it was no longer aimed at anything. She stopped as she saw the two bullets in the body of her friend, her left hand flying up to cover her mouth at the sight. Gasping she turned around and closed her eyes tightly, fighting the wave of nausea that flooded over her.

"Kara? Are you okay?" Derek asked as he came up to her.

"It's Leah," she whispered. Derek nodded and then gently pushing her out of the way, stepped behind the desk.

"Shit!" Derek hissed out, his reaction causing Kara to turn around. At her questioning look he explained, "It's our UnSub. He used her blood to draw the Eye of Providence on the floor."

Kara's eyes flew to the floor next to Leah's body to see the symbol. Upon recognizing the symbol, she slammed her fist into the wall in frustration and thrust her hands into her hair. Exhaling furiously, she looked at Hotch who'd come upon the desk by this point and growled in her throat saying, "I want this bastard's head on a stick in my backyard and I want it now." Without waiting for a response, she stormed out of the classroom, needing a chance to breathe. As she stepped out the front of the building, she saw the bodies of the deceased students and security officers that she'd seen on the way in. She sighed and bowed her head, her eyes closing. Her eyes opened when she felt her phone vibrate on her hip and identifying the caller as Penelope she answered the phone, "Hey Pen what's up?"

"Hey there gorgeous. So is your friend okay?" Penelope questioned, her voice hesitant.

"No, two shots, one to the head and one to the heart. It's our UnSub. He left the Eye of Providence on the floor," Kara answered.

"Oh no!" Penelope gasped, "Well, I can't wait until you catch this sonofabitch."

Kara smiled at Penelope's heated response, her limbs and blood slowly returning to normal, both having gone cold and numb at the sight of her dead friend. "Thanks P, I feel the same way," she stated.

"Well, I worked on this image of the face in the locket and genius that I am, I've cleaned it up. It's not a perfect picture, but it's good enough that we can release it to the media and people will have some idea of what our UnSub looks like," Penelope explained.

"That's great P! Can you send the picture to my PDA?" Kara asked, as she turned and quickly made her way back inside.

"I've already done it ma chere'. Catch this bastard Kara. Penelope out," Penelope commanded as she hung up the phone.

Smiling at the fact that Penelope could cheer her up so quickly, Kara stepped back into Leah's classroom, ready to get to work. As she began processing the crime scene with the rest of the team, Kara trained her mind to treat this as every other crime scene that she'd come across. As she walked back to where Leah's body was, she noticed something that she hadn't seen before. "Reid?!" she called out. As he approached her she pointed out the scrap of paper underneath the right hand of Leah. "It's a page from her notebook," she pointed out, and after getting the Forensics photographer to snap a picture of Leah's body and the placement of her body, Kara, using tweezers, gently slid the piece of paper from underneath her hand. Turning to Reid she held out the piece of paper, "It's Leah's handwriting, but I don't think that I can read it for myself," she explained. She watched as Reid read the two lines written by Leah and waited for his statement.

"She must have written this when the UnSub first began shooting. She writes: Always a troubled soul, and yet his parents own the world. It's obviously some type of clue," Reid identified.

Kara nodded and bagging the note as evidence, she continued looking for evidence. There sitting on the desk was another page from the UnSub's book. "I don't understand, this isn't what he described on the last page at all," Rossi stated confused.

"I think I know why," Kara mused as she lifted the page from the desk and began to read. "The other page was a decoy. He says it right here that he diverted the attention of law enforcement away from the school that so horribly mistreated him. He said that his revenge would be sweet against them and that he would take out as many of them as he could. As Kara continued reading she grew angrier. Having exacted his revenge on the school, he then planned to find his parents and kill them for turning their backs on them.

"He's going after his parents," Kara breathed out.

"But, who are his parents?" Prentiss asked.

Kara looked down at Leah's body that was being placed in the body bag and thought back to the note that Reid had read to her. Biting her lip she thought hard about the possible identity of the UnSub. As a thought surfaced she pulled out her phone and dialed Penelope.

"Yes my dove?" Penelope answered.

"Hey Pen, I need you to look up all companies with the name Globe or Earth in it and cross reference the owners of those companies with any parents that have sons enrolled in NYU who are majoring in Criminal Justice," Kara asked.

Kara listened as Penelope typed furiously on her keyboard. "There's two. Darthur Anderson and Geoffrey Smith," Penelope provided.

"Okay now I want you to cross those with their classes and thesis statements. Our UnSub has either taken a class on serial killers or has written a paper about them," Kara pointed out as she slowly paced the front of the classroom, her free hand gesturing as she spoke.

"Geoffrey Smith wrote a paper on 'The Genius of The Reaper'," Penelope gasped out.

"Great Pen, thanks! Can you send the address of his parents' home and their company to my phone?" Kara asked as she gestured to Hotch who stood watching her.

"Sure can," Penelope replied, "Coming to you now."

As Kara walked out of the classroom, followed by Hotch and the rest of the team, she felt slightly better. Glancing at the picture of Geoffrey Smith and the addresses of his parents' home and company, Kara knew that they were going to catch Geoffrey that day. As the team hurried to their waiting SUVs, followed by members of SWAT and a few officers, Kara was stopped by a student. "Is it true that someone killed Ms. Leah?" the young girl asked.

Kara nodded her head sadly, "Yes it is."

"I just can't believe it," the young girl stated, "She'd just told us that her and her partner, Maria, had gotten engaged. They were planning on flying to Iowa to get married."

Shocked at the news that Leah was engaged, Kara's throat was choked by emotion. Patting the student on the back she turned and hurried to the SUV and climbed in. She gave the directions to Derek who was driving and prepared herself to jump out when they arrived at the parents' home. As the team arrived, they realized that they were almost thirty minutes behind Geoffrey. As they approached the home, they kept their ears and eyes open for movement, gunshots, or cries for help. Hearing Geoffrey's angry ranting, they knew that he'd spent his moments there yelling and criticizing his parents. As the team separated, they knew that this was a very delicate situation.

Kara knocked on the door and called out a warning, "Geoffrey! It's the FBI! Put down any weapons you have and come outside with your hands up!"

"Not a chance you bitch!" Geoffrey yelled out, "They have to pay for turning their back on their own son!"

"This is your last chance Geoffrey! Come out peaceably or we will be forced to come in!" Kara called out in response, hoping that Derek, Rossi and Prentiss had taken the opportunity to come in through the back of the house with other members of SWAT.

"Go to hell!" Geoffrey called out.

Kara stood back as Hotch kicked in the front door and covering him, followed him, SWAT and Reid inside the home. As they entered the front room, they saw that both of Geoffrey's parents had been tied up to their chairs, gagged, and that they were sitting in front of a table and on that table there lay pictures of all of his victims. He'd been forcing them to see what their rejection of him had "forced" him to do. Geoffrey, an in-shape, 20-something young man, stood with his gun pressed against the back of his father's head.

"I'll shoot him!" Geoffrey yelled out.

"Okay, that's not necessary. See? Look Geoffrey, I'm putting my weapon down," Kara said, lifting her hands in surrender and placing her gun on the ground gently. Prentiss followed suit as did the other female members of SWAT and the NYPD who were there. All of them having remembered that Geoffrey had a major problem with women in positions of authority. As they all stepped away from their guns, they noticed a subtle change in Geoffrey's shoulders. He relaxed just a bit, even though his gun was still pressed against his father's head.

"Geoffrey, why did you leave us a page detailing a shooting in Times Square and the torture and killings of the female members of my team and then not do it?" Hotch questioned in an effort to distract Geoffrey so that Derek could sneak up behind him and arrest him.

"You're so stupid! It was to get you to look anywhere but at me. You'd be focused on people with connections to Times Square, not a Criminal Justice student from NYU. Just like Foyett did with stabbing himself to get the focus off of himself," Geoffrey stated proudly as he mentioned his idol.

"You're definitely smarter than all of us," Rossi said.

"I know I am," Geoffrey said smiling, finally getting some sort of praise, not noticing that Derek was slowly coming up behind him.

"You killed way more people than 'The Reaper' and your kills were much worse," Reid said playing into Geoffrey's Narcissistic personality.

"So I'm going to be more famous than him right?" Geoffrey asked, his eyes lighting up with joy.

Derek took that opportunity to pounce and grabbing Geoffrey from the back, he knocked the gun out of his hand and forcing him to the ground, he handcuffed him. Prentiss rushed over and untied his parents, receiving their thanks and talking to them. Kara glared at Geoffrey as he passed by, the taste of bile in her throat as she looked into the eyes of the young man who'd killed one of her dearest friends. She had to admit that she was hoping to have the opportunity to shoot the little prick, and that fact alone, let her know that she was too close to this case. It was a good thing that it was over.

Valentine's Day

Kara grabbed her red clutch from the nightstand next to her bed and walked to the door of her hotel room. Opening it, she found herself face-to-face with a dozen red roses. "Aaww Aaron," she breathed out, "They're beautiful."

"Not half as beautiful as you," Hotch stated as he leaned forward to kiss her.

"Aaww that's so sweet," Kara said as she kissed Hotch back passionately. Placing the roses on the table in the room, Kara took one last glance at herself in the mirror, happy that her new red, silk, sweetheart dress hugged her body in all the right places. It came down to her knees, swirling around at the bottom and grabbing her black fur coat, Kara stepped out of the room and took Hotch's hand. They were going out for a romantic dinner with Derek, Penelope, Reid, Elle, Rossi, Prentiss, JJ, and Maria, Leah's fiance. It wasn't the traditional romantic, Valentine's Day dinner that most people experienced, but it was what worked for them. The team was together, happy, alive, and it was Valentine's Day in The City. At the restaurant as they waited for their meals to arrive, they were shocked when Reid stood up and kneeling on one knee before Elle, proposed to her. They all clapped in delight when Elle said yes, knowing that it meant that she would be moving back to Quantico.

The dinner quickly changed into a celebratory, impromptu engagement dinner as Elle showed off the two-carat diamond ring. As the food arrived, Kara stood up and raising her glass of cider she looked at Maria and smiled. Then placing her hand on the shoulder of her husband she gave a word of tribute to her fallen friend, "To Leah, who believed in the power of love, no matter what the package or the circumstance." As the rest of the group raised their glass, Kara sighed happily as she remembered her friend. No matter how the cases went, in the end knowing that they had done good and had made the world a little safer and a better place made it all worth it.

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.-Henry W. Longfellow

*A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! I know it was a little long, but I couldn't finish it, my muse just kept me typing. Anyway, I look forward to your reviews! Hope everyone's looking forward to the new year, have you got your New Year's Resolutions ready? I do! This chapter is dedicated to my sister: seekinglove90 who is featured in the chapter as the detective, I've totally got her hooked on CM now! Ha!*