"…Set it Free"

October 2012

"Engaged?" Reid repeated. "As in engaged to be married?" Charlie frowned from his seat.

She looked up finally and nodded. The whole room could see the shock and pain on Reid's face. "I'm sorry, Spence, I should have told you, but it was over with Bobby by the time we started to exchange letters and then I didn't know how to bring it up when we talked."

"What happened to spending your Friday nights with just your microscope?" he asked softly.

She reached over, taking his hand even as he resisted some. He looked down to the floor. "That was the truth. Bobby was my first serious relationship and I was so surprised by the fact that someone cared for me that I didn't realize he could be a little controlling until after we were engaged. It would have ended even if this stalking hadn't all started, Spence. You have to believe me. It's different with you."

"Different how?"

"It's effortless." He finally met her eyes and smiled softly at that answer. That comment made Charlie smile as well. That's how he often felt with Amita, well after they figured out how to transition from their student/teacher relationship to an actual romantic one.

Blake softly cleared her throat, getting the couple's attention. "And you don't think he was involved?"

Maeve shook his head. "No, the photos…they had him in them as well."

"We should still probably talk to him," JJ replied.

"Wouldn't it be statistically improbable for it to be a team? If he's in the photos too, it sounds more like he was stalked as well at the end," Charlie chimed in.

Rossi nodded. "Yes, but he made have noticed something that she didn't, which could be helpful." Charlie nodded in reply.

"His name is Robert Putnam," Maeve supplied. Garcia was quick to pull up his information for the group.

Garcia started her report. "Robert Putnam, 32 years old. Works as a lawyer at Martin, Dasher and Stewart, specializes in environmental law. Son of Cathyrne and Dean Putman, has a older brother Bryan who's a surgical fellow at George Washington. No arrests, tickets, unusual medical records...nothing that stands out as hinky." She projected up a photo of him with a young woman with long brown hair, not unlike Maeve's. "This is from his Facebook page."

"Who's the girl?" Morgan asked. The group looked at Maeve, who shrugged.

"I don't think I've seen her before," Maeve answered.

"She's tagged as a Diane Huntington. I'll see what I can dig up," Garcia commented. The group nodded although they had no reason to suspect her at this time.

Reid turned in his seat and happened to catch a look on his mentor's face. "Charlie?"

The group turned to the mathematician, who opened his mouth and then shut it. "It's probably nothing; I don't have any data to support it."

"Throw it out anyway, Teach. It doesn't hurt for another point of view at this," Morgan replied.

The professor ran his hand through his hair. "It's just that you've referred to her stalker as a man. Could it be a woman?"

JJ thought that over, "Well, it would be statistically unlikely, only about ten percent of stalker cases are women."

"Ten percent really isn't a small percentage when you think about in terms of statistics, JJ," Charlie countered. He stood up and paced a little before turning to look at the profilers, "How many people do you think you need in a room before the probability of two of them sharing the same birthday is greater than 50 percent? Spencer, Maeve, you two can't answer."

The table of profilers and technical analyst looked at each other and then back at him. Reid and Maeve shared a glance, both smiling softly. Both knew the answer and Reid, in particular, could see the point he was trying to make. He hadn't thought about it himself.

Blake took a stab at it, "40?" Charlie shook his head.

Morgan guessed next, "55?"

"Wrong direction," Charlie answered. He turned to the cleared white board in the room and grabbed the dry erase marker, writing up an equation and explaining it, "…which is why it only takes 23."

The group blinked, but Rossi spoke. "That's fascinating, Charlie, but this helps us how?"

"I'm merely pointing out that just because only ten percent of your stalking cases in the past are from women, that basing the foundation of your profile on that data may be falsely eliminating Maeve's stalker. You say one in ten stalking cases are by women. There are nine of us in this room right now, with 44% being female. If you were to put a random ten people in the room, the odds would actually favor more women than men, unlike right now." He paused just a second to let that all sink in. "So, why not look at the actual behavior without that assumption and see where that gets us?" Charlie questioned.

Reid was following where he was going all along. "Let's toss gender out of the profile." He looked at Morgan, "What are our most common reasons for stalking across both genders?"

The obsessional expert spoke up. "You've got rejected, resentful, intimacy seeking, incompetent suitor, erotomania, and predatory. Unsubs can be a former lover, someone feeling slighted or spurned by the victim, or someone wanting an intimate relationship, or just a sexual interaction, with the victim but is not actually an active person in the victim's life. Celebrity stalking cases, for example. Not all stalkers are violent and not all have suicidal ideations." Charlie's eyes grew wide for a moment, absorbing that information. So did Maeve's.

JJ looked at her friend's new love. "Maeve, you mentioned Bobby was your first serious relationship?" The brunette nodded. "Any other relationships, no matter how long they lasted, that we should know about? Even something like a blind date gone bad or a one night stand?"

Maeve bit her lip, thinking. "I doubt it. Bobby and I were together almost a year before the stalking began, getting engaged the month before it started. Before I met him, I hadn't even gone on a date in a few months. Then there were two other guys before that, each only lasting a handful of dates. I'm pretty sure Justin moved to Boston to continue his Parkinson's research at Harvard and David is still in the Peace Core overseas." A few of the profilers schooled their expressions at the details about those men, noticing a type emerging. Reid seemed to fit that pretty well – smart, ambitious, determined to make a difference.

"So that likely rules out prior intimacy as the cause," Rossi commented. He looked at some of the letters again. "Sounds more like someone you've rejected in some fashion. Anyone show romantic interest in you even if they knew you were with Bobby?"

She shook her head again, "No. All my coworkers are very respectful, as were the students I worked with."

Reid had turned in his chair some again and saw the change in Charlie's face first. Somehow that jogged an idea in him as well. "Students…"

Charlie nodded. "Didn't you say you review PhD candidates work?" Maeve nodded. "Reject a lot of their dissertations?"

She thought that over. "A fair amount." Before she could elaborate, a groan came from the technical analyst.

"Baby Girl?"

"So Bobby has this girl tagged as Diane Huntington on his Facebook page, right? But I can't find anything on a Diane Huntington anywhere else aside from her page. No social security card or birth certificate. I hacked Bobby's call log and figured out she calls him from a burner phone. She's pure vapor." She paused to take a breath. "So I'm running facial recognition on the image to see if I can find her elsewhere, but some parameters to narrow that down would be nice."

The team latched onto that piece of information. "If she's using a fake ID and a burner phone, she could very well be the stalker trying to get to Maeve through Bobby since she's disappeared," Blake stated.

"What if the rejection of her work turned into a need to possess? And now that she doesn't have access to Maeve, she went to Bobby in hopes that he'll eventually lead her to her main target?" Morgan offered.

Maeve was confused, "But I'm not the only one that reviews those. Others would have to reject her work as well before being turned down, it isn't decided by just one person to avoid bias."

Reid tilted his head, running through something in his head. A move Charlie caught first. "Spencer?"

He turned to look at his…was Maeve his girlfriend? He pushed that thought back for now. "But you're the only woman doctor in the lab, a star in your field."

Hotch picked up his meaning. "A celebrity of sorts for your area. It could be she looked up to you initially, but then she found out her application was rejected and that you were on the committee. In her mind, that group rejection was really just a personal one from you."

"If I may," Charlie injected. The group looked at him. "Even though we are constantly trying to recruit more women into the math and sciences field, there is still often a competitive nature between applicants for doctorates, research funding, and jobs." He caught Reid's eye in particular. "After Amita finished her second doctorate, she had a chance to work at Harvard. She admitted to me later that one of the reasons she considered it over taking the CalSci job was fear people would think she got the CalSci job because she was with me, even though we didn't actually start to really date until after she accepted the job. Even after that, our department head, Dr. Mildred Finch, wasn't happy with our relationship initially. I think Millie was concerned about how it would reflect on Amita and that other women in the department or recent graduates might misconstrue the situation."

"Where are you going with this, Charlie?" JJ asked.

Maeve picked it up. "When men get jealous on the world of academia and research, like say my coworkers, they would be jealous of me because they wanted that success for themselves. But, women would get jealous because they don't want to you to have it, like it makes them look bad because you had success instead of being happy for you. Sometimes the institution can turn us against each other."

That's all Garcia needed to hear. "Okay, running that photo against rejected PhD candidates from Mendel University." The team paused while she worked, everyone noticing the stolen glances being exchanged between the new couple in the room and smiling to themselves. None of the team or Charlie had ever seen Reid like that; they would make sure Maeve was safe so he could hopefully stay that way for a long time to come.

"Eureka!" Garcia exclaimed, snapping them all back to reality. She projected an image up on the screen. "Real name is Diane Turner. She was a research assistant that had a rejected PhD application at Mendel. She left not long after Maeve and now works at a junior college."

"I know you got more than that, Sweetness," Morgan commented.

"Patience, my Adonis, patience." Her fingers had been continuing to fly across her keyboard. "Oh."

"What oh?" Blake asked.

Garcia sighed. "Her parents committed suicide when she was eight."

Maeve sat up straight. "I remember her now." The table all looked at her. "Her research was on Spontaneous Cellular Death in Suicide Patients."

Reid and Charlie both exchanged a look. "Cells don't behave that way," the mathematician commented.

She nodded. "Exactly, but that wasn't the basis of my rejection. She included her parents in her sample size."

"Biased data," Reid remarked.

"That's her," Hotch finalized. "Garcia do you have an address for her?"

"One sec boss man."

Maeve looked at the screen, the image of her stalker with her ex still on the screen. "What about Bobby? Should I call and warn him?" She bit her lip, assuming the worse. "What if she's hurt him because of me?"

Reid felt a pang of jealousy in his heart at those words. Should he let her go back to him after all this was over? They had been engaged. His supposed 'controlling' behavior might have come from fear when the stalking started after all.

JJ eyed Reid as she answered, knowing her friend well enough to know where his thoughts went. "If she's with him and you told him, that could get ugly fast. It's better he not know until we get her in custody. We can check his place to be safe, however."

"Um." The group looked at the mathematician again. Charlie was beginning to feel out of place, not having any math to help them out. "What exactly can be done when you do find her?"

Morgan sighed, "Well, now that we know who the stalker is, Maeve can get a restraining order. She can also go in for a forced psychiatric hold in a hospital. Given the tone of some of her notes, I suspect she'll meet criteria to transfer to a facility for awhile and hopefully get the help she needs."

"Bobby's home and work addresses, her real address and the college's address all just sent. Based on what I see here, she should be teaching right now," Garcia supplied.

All the profilers stood up. "Rossi, Blake, check her place. Morgan, JJ, go to Bobby's home. If he's not there, check the law firm. I'll take Anderson with me to the college."

"Hotch?" Reid questioned.

"You're staying here, Reid." He didn't trust Reid to stay clear headed right now. Reid opened his mouth to object when Hotch put a hand on his shoulder and guided his youngest agent out onto the walkway. He dropped his voice to keep the conversation just between them. "Diane doesn't know we're on to her; she has no idea that Maeve is with us. We're all going in with soft approaches and I'm not sure you can pull that off without tipping off our hand."

"I'll be fine, Hotch."

The unit chief sighed. "Maeve also just found out who has been torturing her for seven months and that a person in her life might be in danger. She needs you right now." He made sure he had Reid's eye contact. "You say you love her, Spencer, so support her. That's where you can be the most helpful for this case."

Reid nodded, unable to stop the small smile that crossed his face at his boss' words. The woman I love. He reentered the room as the rest filed out. Charlie eyed the couple and then looked at Garcia. She seemed to have the same thought. "I'm going to get all these digitally transferred to our records in my lair for the judge later on, just in case." She gathered the letters that Maeve had kept from Diane. "Want to help me, Teach?"

Charlie smiled and nodded, following her out the room and leaving the doctors in love alone. Reid took his seat back next to her by the table. He bit his lip, suddenly not sure what to say. His head was flooded with thoughts about how amazing it was to be with her in this room, but at the same time worried she'd go back to Bobby. Or if she'd just leave because she was mad he got the team involved.

He finally snapped out of it when he felt her take his hand. She had moved her chair closer to him. He looked up and met her eyes. "Thank you, Spence," she stated.

"For what?"

"For pushing. I know it's not over, that they still need to find her and make sure Bobby's—" She felt him stiffen. "okay." His eyes looked down again. "Spence, I just want him to be okay. I'd feel guilty if something happened to him because she was trying to use him to get to me. It doesn't mean I want to get back together with him."

He met her eyes again. "You can't know that for sure. You've been under a great deal of stress, your adrenaline and cortisol levels have been elevated for a long time and could be impacting your thought processes…"

She raised an eyebrow and smiled softly. He couldn't believe how beautiful her smile was. "Trying to school me on how the brain works, Dr. Reid?" He couldn't stop the smile that crossed his face at that.

"I suppose that would be a futile argument." She laughed at his response and his smile grew. When she calmed down, he squeezed her hand a little more. "It feels nice talking to you face-to-face."

She smiled, tucking some hair behind her ear with her other hand. "It is, it really is."

Reid quickly ran through what he had learned today and chose to distract her while they waited on news. "How is your mom doing? Why didn't you mention that before?"

+ - x / + - x / + - x / + - x /

Charlie watched Garcia with amusement as she scanned letters while simultaneously trying to talk him into telling her more college Spencer stories. So far she'd gotten more details out of him about the boat race as well as when he argued – unsuccessfully – to try to get a license at fourteen. "I remember during my first semester, well my only semester at CalSci, that hacks were a big deal. Did he ever do one of those?"

"You went to CalSci?" Charlie asked, enjoying the sip of coffee they had stopped to get after they left the conference room.

"Hmm, yes," Garcia commented, turning back to her screens. He opened his mouth to question further when her phone rang. "Hey Boss Man." He watched as she frowned as she listened to the update. "Okay. No, I can tell them."

She turned to the mathematician and he was afraid to ask. "What happened?"

She sighed. "Maeve won't need that restraining order." She stood up and he followed her out to the conference room. She gently knocked and poked her head in to see the couple still at the table, holding hands. "Well, I have good news and, well, sad news I guess, my lovely nerd couple."

"What happened, Garcia?" Reid asked, fearing the worse. They were both now standing.

"Well, first off, Bobby is fine, he was at work. So was Diane. Hotch went in soft, talking to her after her chemistry lab got out, but she pieced together what he was there for and ran." Reid felt Maeve squeeze his hand harder. "All the way to the roof of the four story building they were in. He tried to talk her down, but…" Reid sighed. As relieved as he was to know it was over, it still saddened him that Diane didn't get the help she needed. "Blake and Rossi found evidence at her address to confirm she was your stalker, Maeve. It's over."

He could now feel her relax, a few tears coming to her eyes after hearing those last two words. He turned to meet her eyes and in an uncharacteristic move for him, he pulled her in for a hug. She softly cried out of relief for a few moments on his shoulder before pulling back. She moved to kiss him for what would be their first kiss when he pulled back.

"Spence?" She blinked, confused and hurt.

"Not like this. Not right after all this is over when your emotions are all jumbled together. Not at my work," he offered.

She smiled softly, wiping her tear stains away. "Okay."

He took her hand again, trying to decide how he wanted to do to this, to make sure it was right, it was real. "Let me take you home. I know you're going to want to tell your parents…and everyone else important to you that this is over, that you can come out of hiding." She nodded and he led her out the room.

"Should we wait for the team to come back? I want to thank them," she commented as they reached the elevators.

"You can some other time, they'll understand." She accepted that answer. Soon he was walking her back up to her apartment. Once she had the door unlocked, he finally took a leap of faith and spoke again.

"Maeve. I'm going to give you my cell number and my address. I want…" he took a deep breath. "I want you to take some time adjusting back to your normal life. Get back to work, live somewhere you want to live, not just because you had to move again. See your parents." He bit his lip. "Get closure with Bobby." He took another breath. "I want you to take time to do that and then contact me."

"Why Spence? Why separate now that we can finally be together?"

He closed his eyes for a second, pushing down his emotions, and then opened them. "About seven years ago, I helped protect another woman from her stalker and she claimed she was attracted to me. We kept in contact for a few months after that, but eventually the shock of the event wore off and so did her feelings. Same thing happened four years ago, albeit that was an even shorter timeframe. I want this to be real, Maeve. I don't want us to rush, only to have you discover in a little while that your feelings came from the desire and then fruition of me rescuing you. I'm not sure I can handle that."

She sighed, but nodded. "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be." He smiled just a fraction and nodded, handing her his card with his home address on it. She hugged him before he could react. When she pulled back just a fraction, she placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.

"Thank you for everything, Spence. I'll talk to you soon, I promise."

A/N: Don't kill me! You may not like that ending, but his reaction came out of me almost immediately as I wrote this and after re-reading it many times, I still support this would have been his decision if they had saved her, particularly with Bobby still alive. Everyone asked me to keep her alive, but you didn't specify that they should be riding off into the sunset in the end. Which, when you think about it, is completely unrealistic. But, don't panic, this isn't the last time you've seen her either.