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A/n please enjoy and thank you for your support. I hope you are enjoying the Christmas season that is upon us. Thank you for your patience, as it's been a couple of weeks since I have updated. I'm blaming it on RL and Adele the Muse, who can be lazy.

Reid stuffed one hand into his pocket and wished he'd remembered his gloves as he carried his gift for Chriscelia away from the flower shop. At least, he had his faithful, purple scarf around his neck. He hurried across the parking lot in the fading afternoon light to his new SUV. He passed several people, also walking with their heads set against the bitter cold of the February day. He drew in a breath and watched it leave his nose on his exhale as a visible mist. He smelled car exhaust and the clean scent of newly fallen snow. He shivered and stamped his feet when he reached his new vehicle.

After unlocking the car and sliding in behind the wheel, he pushed the button that started the engine and smiled as it powered on without a hitch. Still, he did feel a bit of longing for the capriciousness of his old Volvo. Sometimes, in the middle of a winter such as this, he never knew if the engine might start on the first try. "Nope," he said to the interior of the car. "This is better."

One thing about the new vehicle that was miles better than the Volvo was the heater. It warmed him almost at once and made him sigh with gratitude. He pulled his phone from his pocket and hit the contact button for Chriscelia. She didn't answer, which wasn't unusual if she'd decided on an afternoon nap. Still, she usually didn't sleep this late.

"Stop worrying," he scolded his reflection in the rearview mirror after he'd left her a message. "She's fine. Go home, and you'll see."

Reid pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. He turned right and drove through glittering headlights that made the pavement shimmer in the late afternoon shadows. A light snow began to fall, and he sighed again. He couldn't wait to get home to his wife and bask in the warmth of her love and her arms.

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Jody Fitzgerald hurried as fast as her booted feet could go down her driveway to the mailbox. If she hadn't had to take Goober, her schnauzer, to the vet, she wouldn't be so far behind schedule. Her gray-streaked hair blew around her face, and she shivered in the wind as it flapped her blue sweater around her middle. The sweater had stretched out with repeated use, but it was warm if the wind didn't blow.

"Of course," she said to a car that drove past. "No mail just because I come out in this cold weather. "Should've waited for John to come home."

Speaking of her husband, she wondered as she turned back toward her house if he were stuck on a job, or in traffic again. Another three years, she thought wistfully, and they could retire to somewhere warm like Hawaii, or someplace in the Caribbean. The thought of sun, sand and warm tropical winds in her hair made her smile. A little place on a white sand beach was just the ticket. She'd stay there and never see another winter.

She tucked her hands into her pockets and glanced over at her neighbor's house. Such a lovely young couple was the Reids. They were so kind and helpful. Young Mrs. Reid - was her name Christine or Cecilia- no that wasn't right, was so nice. Every time she went to the market, she'd stop in and ask if she could pick up anything for the Fitzgerald family. Jody liked a helpful nature in a young person, it was a quality sorely lacking in the under thirty crowd, at least in her experience.

Jody stopped her musings when she realized in the low light of the afternoon that the front door of the Reid house stood wide open. Her eyes narrowed in surprise. Mrs. Reid wouldn't leave the door open like that. Maybe she'd go over and see if everything was okay. Mrs. Reid was pregnant and a perhaps she'd passed out or -she shook her head and began to walk back to the sidewalk at the bottom of the driveway.

"You're borrowing trouble again," she told herself, severely. "Stop it."

Still, she hesitated and turned to watch the door. Perhaps Mrs. Reid had gone out to shop and had to make more than one trip into the house. Leaving the door open while quickly leaving the groceries inside might be – she shook her head again. No, she'd watched for more than two minutes now, and no one moved near the open door. Her pulse tripped again, and she felt lightheaded.

Something is wrong!

She pulled her phone from her pocket, a cell phone that John insisted she carried with her everywhere.

"You never know what could happen. You could fall, or get mugged."

Jody had responded with a derisive snort. "A nice way to look at life."

Now she was glad she had the phone as she tried Mrs. Reid's number, but no one answered. "Something's wrong," she muttered again, as the wind picked up and began to moan through the trees. The light faded to purple shadows on the fallen snow. Her boots squeaked on the patches left on the sidewalk from John's shoveling. "Good thing they're new," she said breathlessly into the wind as another car passed on the street, it's headlights passing over her like the backwash of a spotlight on a stage.

She reached the back of Mrs. Reid's car and looked at the open front door. It was black dark inside and for the first-time fear overcame her and made her stop and lean on the car. She swallowed, thought hard and decided. Dr. Reid was an FBI agent. On television, the cops never walked into an open door without a weapon. Perhaps she should call the cops or Dr. Reid before going inside.

She shivered with cold and with a growing edge of fear she couldn't explain. If she called the police and Mrs. Reid was okay- no, she's not okay. No one leaves a door open in twenty-five-degree weather unless they're loopy and Mrs. Reid was not loopy.

She was about to call Dr. Reid when she heard a car. She turned as z vehicle she didn't recognize pulled into the driveway behind her. Its lights dazzled her, and for a moment, she nearly ran, then she realized that her legs refused to move. It was as if they had concrete for shoes. Her heart pounded in her chest and sent blood rushing to her head as someone shut off the engine and got out of the car.

She couldn't see the face of the person, and she was about to try and run, again, when a voice said. "Mrs. Fitzgerald, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, Dr. Reid," she nearly collapsed as her teeth chattered from relief and fear. "I saw your front door open, and I came to see –"

"The front door," Reid almost snapped. His face whitened in the last of the sunlight, and he put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll take care of this. Go back home and don't worry."

He withdrew his gun from his holster and Jody winced. "Okay," she agreed and began to make her way back to her house. She looked over her shoulder when she reached the sidewalk at the end of the Reid family driveway and watched Dr. Reid slowly enter his house. She shivered again because suddenly he resembled a small child entering the mouth of a dark and forbidden mountain cave, where a monster waited to devour.

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Reid stopped on the threshold of his home and tried to see into the entryway, but the streetlights threw shadows that engulfed the hallway, and he began to feel as though a presence stood just beyond the door, waiting for him to enter.

"Stop it," he said, firmly.

He entered resolutely, and with his back to one wall, moving sideways into the entryway. His eyes fell on the display of their new alarm system. It flashed green, and his heart thumped. Chriscelia must've entered the code, disabling the system, but why leave the door wide open. He reached for the lights, and they flared to life. He blinked and berated himself for his stupidity. He was half-blind, in an unknown situation and without backup. What if she'd fallen, and couldn't move, he wondered as he began to clear the house. She might be sick. Call out to her and find out.

He didn't call out. Instead, he cleared each room as fast as he dared, beginning with the upstairs rooms. He found Chriscelia's office empty, and the sight of a copy of her new book nearly made him give in to the panic lodged in his throat.

He moved back down the stairs, slowly, with his back again to the wall, and then around the corner to the great room. A notebook lay on the coffee table, and he knew it contained the beginning of an outline for a new Agent Riser book. He swallowed hard and turned, his eyes falling on one of his sweaters tossed over a chair where he'd left it.

"Spencer, will you please hang your sweater in the closet."

He heard it as clearly as if she stood there with irritation in her eyes because once again, he'd left an article of clothing in the great room. If only she were there, berating him. He'd hold on to her until she pushed him away out of the need to breathe. He'd never leave the house again.

He checked the kitchen, but she wasn't there, and finally, he went to the nursery, and their bedroom. He should've cleared those rooms first because someone could've snuck up behind him, but he hadn't thought. The nursery was clear, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he entered the bedroom.

Chriscelia had placed candles around, ready for lighting, and there was something in the middle of the bed. It was a box wrapped in scarlet paper with a silver ribbon and a white card attached. He swallowed again as tears filled his eyes. "Chriscelia," he shouted, but he already knew she wouldn't answer. Their home lacked a certain warmth and joy when she wasn't there.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Emily's number. "Emily."

"Reid?"

"Yeah."

"What's wrong," she demanded. "You sound terrible."

"She's gone."

"Who's gone."

"Chriscelia. I came home, and the door was wide open. It was dark, Emily. Her car is here, but she's gone. How can she be gone without a car? I don't understand."

"Spence…"

"I should go look for her. She might be hurt or –"

"Reid," Emily snapped. "Stay there. I'm calling the police and then the team. We'll be there as fast as we can."

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Spencer hurried from his bedroom and took the stairs, two at a time to the second floor. He sat at his desk and powered up his laptop. Accessing the security tapes from the front of the house seemed to take forever. He ran back the recording watching images fly by until he saw Chriscelia. Her face, pale as milk in the black and white playback glanced up to the camera in the doorway. He swallowed hard against tears as she stared up with an expression of stark terror in her eyes, then down at the person holding a very large gun pointed directly… he pushed his chair away so hard, it flew back on its rollers and hit the edge of the door jam. He barely felt the jolt because a white-hot rage such as nothing he'd ever felt heated his blood to the point he felt as though he had a high fever.

"No," he shouted, and it filled the office with his misery.

He forced himself to push back to his desk and inspect the tape. He ran it back and watched the delivery person, approach the door. He didn't realize it was a woman until she pushed the doorbell, then looked up as though she knew exactly where to look and find the lens of the camera. She smiled, and it was the smile of a stone killer, a predator about to spring and catch all of them unaware. Spencer went cold instead of hot when he realized the identity of the woman. Confusion overrode everything, and he sat up straight in his chair. It couldn't be her. Why? How? It'd been years, yet there she was holding a gun on his wife, and as she looked at the camera once again, he remembered her name.