Thanks for another review, M4E. Yeah, lots of inner turmoil as Reid struggles to stay in character and still hold on to who he is. I'm glad it came across to you.

Warning: Only thing that might bother you in this one is suspense and frustration. Nothing explicit. Give teddy the day off.

Setting: Wednesday of Reid's absence, Hotch's point of view.

Surviving 23: The Suspect Pool

By the time Reid was whiling away his third day alone at Miles Heathbridge's house, my team had made a list of all the classified ads from Reid's various subscriptions, as well as a few other publications, to see if we could find the individual or company that might be harboring a predatory intention to lure in victims. Identification of another missing person finally gave us a break.

Morgan called me with his theory after he and JJ interviewed the family that had placed one of the personal ads. "Hotch, I think I may have found a connection between the victims," he said. "Besides being young and male, they were also looking for housing. With the exception of Reid, of course."

"So, that's why their families thought they might look at the classifieds, and housing may be the ruse the kidnapper used to get the victims to a secluded place for abduction," I surmised.

"Right. It would work for an individual advertising for a roommate, a landlord looking for tenants, or for a realtor working for a company, but it still narrows our suspect pool."

"I'll have Garcia start digging for our unsub in the housing market. Good work."

Within minutes, Garcia had an update for me. "There is a lot of housing to be had in the area, and some of the ads were paid for in cash by a person or persons unknown, possibly aliases, but even so, our list of ad-placers in the last several months has been drastically cut down by this cross-examination. If we go after people who placed ads using false names first, we may get lucky."

"Good thinking, but they'll be the hardest to find."

"True enough, but the nature of the ad necessitates its having some form of contact information, so we do have a lead, however weak it may be. I shall follow the numbers and hit you back when I have something worth jumping on."

"Thanks."

I went down to the bullpen to tell Rossi our new angle.

"Once we have some good suspects, we can work with police to check them all out," Rossi said. "I'll sure be glad to do some actual investigating."

"Me too."

With so little to go on, the team had been combating a maddening silence of late. Strauss had determined that being distressed over Reid put working on other cases out of the question. However, we had to run our major moves by SSA Jay Cook, the level-headed team-lead assigned to oversee the case due to our being emotionally compromised.

"I know that look. You think the kid's chances aren't good."

There was no point in trying to reassure him. He knew my face too well. "He's been missing too long, Dave. I know he's smart and he'll be doing everything he can to stay alive until we find him. But sometimes you do everything right and it's not enough. Sometimes something flips a switch in an unsub's head and nothing will stop him."

"I hear you, but worrying about what might go wrong can get in the way of doing your best. We all owe Reid our best. He's young and bright and loves life. We can't let him meet his end scared in the clutches of a stranger he's trying to appease—not without giving it everything we've got. He's believing in us to do everything in our power for him because he'd do it for us."

"I know." I sighed. He was right. If we were too late, we wouldn't be able to live with ourselves if we didn't do our utmost. If we gave our all and found our friend dead, we could deal with the grief then. For now, we had to focus on the present and assume that Reid was alive.

I suddenly had an idea and called Garcia.

"Yes, my lovely."

I was unsure whether she had been expecting Morgan or she hadn't cared which of us would receive this greeting. "Garcia, see if anyone arranged to cancel ads offering housing after Reid was abducted. If so, we'll want those to be our top priority."

"Ah, good call, sir. I shall slap that on the top of my list. I'll get back to you."

"Feel better?" Rossi asked me.

"A little," I said.

Within a few minutes, Garcia had the name of an individual who had canceled their ad on Monday, as well as a short list of people who had placed their ads anonymously or under false names. With the help of the police, we located each one of them—and managed to eliminate most of them as suspects.

"We're left with just one that doesn't have a solid alibi for the time of Reid's abduction," JJ said when we were all gathered back at headquarters. "But she doesn't have a record."

"She allowed police to check her house, too," said Morgan. "They didn't find anything."

"We're going back to Garcia's list tomorrow," I said. "There are still a lot of names, but it is a finite number, and we're going to find Reid if we have to investigate them all one by one."

"Speaking of numbers," said Rossi, "statistically, our kidnapper is more likely male than female; do we still think it could be a woman?"

"Reid's more likely to let his guard down around a woman," Morgan said, "but you're right—most stranger abductions are carried out by males."

"Then we'll narrow our sights to males as a starting point," I said. "If we don't find him that way, we'll broaden our parameters to include females again.

"Now, I know that you would all keep working through the night, but we've been burning the candle at both ends for days. Reid would be the first to tell us that our cognitive function is suffering from the lack of sleep. Go home and get some rest."

I could tell that they wanted to put up an argument, but they could not deny that they were tired. They began packing up their things. I started back for my office to do the same, my eyes lingering a moment on Reid's empty workstation as I passed.

When I came back out, JJ and Garcia were near the elevator, sharing a hug. I hung back so as not to intrude; I took the sound of the elevator door opening as my cue to join them.

We rode down in a heavy silence and walked outside together.

"Good night," JJ said when we reached the parking lot. She took Garcia's hand for a moment and nodded to me before going to her car.

We echoed her parting words. Garcia sniffed.

"Garcia," I said, "thank you for your help today."

"Well… you're welcome," she said. "But I won't feel like I helped much until we find the son of a bitch who has Reid."

"You did, though. We're down to a list of a few hundred individuals and realty employees instead of thousands of possible suspects. It's a big help."

She nodded, still looking forlorn. "Sir… I know you're the pillar of stoicism in our unit, but would you mind terribly if I hugged you?"

I held out the arm that was not holding my briefcase and hugged her firmly.

"Thank you," she said, squeezing me back. "I know we'll find him… I'm just scared of what shape we'll find him in. After Tobias Hankel…"

"I know." I rubbed her back for a moment and then let go of her.

She sniffed again and forced a grim smile. "You give good hugs."

"Let me walk you the rest of the way to your car," I said.

"Okay."

We crossed the parking lot to her vehicle and she unlocked and opened the door.

"Make sure you get some sleep," I told her. "We'll need you tomorrow."

"Yes, sir. Thank you… be careful going home."

I nodded. I closed her door for her and waited until she started the engine to walk back to my own car.

I was tired, but in no danger of falling asleep at the wheel on the drive home. Jack was already asleep when I got there, but after seeing Jessica out, I went into his room anyway.

I probably spent ten minutes watching Jack sleep, petting his hair, thanking God he was safe, asking for intervention for Reid. I leaned down and kissed Jack's forehead, ready to take my own advice and get some rest.

"Daddy?" I had woken him.

"I just came to say good night. Go back to sleep."

"Did you find Spencer?"

"Not yet." I worked my arms under him and pulled him into a hug. "We're getting closer, though. I hope we'll find out what happened to him soon."

Jack sighed sleepily and hugged me back. "Okay."

"Now, go back to sleep," I repeated. I laid him back down and kissed him again. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

I pulled his covers back up and told him good night before leaving the room. I got ready for bed in a daze and barely had enough presence of mind to set my alarm before crawling into bed.

.

"Aunt Jessica is going to drive you to school this morning," I told Jack as I got out a cereal bowl for him Thursday morning. "What kind do you want? Golden Grahams?"

He nodded. "Are you leaving early to find Spencer sooner?"

"That's the idea." I got out the box of cereal for him. "There's a lot to do to figure out who our unsub is. I'll drive you tomorrow if I can, okay?"

"Okay."

I thought about pouring the cereal for him, but decided to let him do it himself. When a few pieces fell onto the table, I didn't say anything. He picked them up and put them into his bowl. I all but held my breath when he reached for the milk jug. He hesitated.

"The jug's pretty full," he declared.

"Want a hand?"

He nodded.

I poured the milk for him.

"I could do it if it wasn't quite that full," he informed me.

"I'm sure you could." I heard a car pull into the drive and went to the window. "Aunt Jessica is here." I went back to Jack and leaned down to kiss him goodbye.

Jack reached up and hugged me. "Be careful."

"I will."

"Find Spencer as quick as you can."

I gave him a squeeze and a kiss on his head. "Okay. Work hard in school. I love you."

"I love you too."

I opened the front door to Jessica. "Hey, I'm going to take off," I told her. "Jack's having breakfast."

"Okay. Hope you find Doctor Reid," she said.

"Thank you."

I used the drive to focus on how to direct the team that day. We would look at our male suspect pool and start eliminating anyone that had been working Saturday when Reid was abducted. We would eliminate anyone who didn't own a vehicle—the wide dispersal of abduction sites suggested the necessity of private transportation…

When I got to headquarters, only JJ was there ahead of me. She told me that she had awoken early and not been able to go back to sleep. Her restlessness woke Will, who told her that she might as well leave early, rather than be consumed by worry.

We started writing down our ideas for Garcia. Morgan arrived about ten minutes behind me and joined us. In addition to what I'd thought of, Morgan suggested trying to narrow down the kidnapper's location by mapping the abduction sites. It was something Reid definitely would have done by now; I urged him to start on that while we continued brainstorming.

"The unsub might be using date-rape drugs," JJ reminded us. "We could have Garcia look at availability and opportunity."

"He has to have some confidence and intelligence to be successful for this long," I said. "But he is using potential housing as a ruse, so he's not confident enough for a direct approach."

"Maybe he lacks social skills, or he has a deformity," Morgan suggested.

"If anything, I think a lack of social skills would feel like a positive thing to Reid on a subconscious level," said JJ. "He wasn't popular in school and still feels some awkwardness when he's outside his comfort zone. But even someone as open-minded as Reid would feel an instinctive aversion to a deformity. Unconsciously, anyway."

"So, the former would make him want to trust the unsub, and the latter would raise a red flag."

"Right."

"Intelligence plus social awkwardness means that he would be able to hold a steady job, possibly even dealing directly with the public, but he wouldn't likely rise to a managerial position," I said.

Rossi and Garcia came in together, bearing their expected coffee containers: Garcia's a colorful thermos and Rossi's a generic to-go cup that undoubtedly contained a brew fresh from his own French press.

"Good, the cavalry," Morgan muttered. "Ready to work some numbers, gorgeous?"

I could tell that Rossi was set to answer as if Morgan had been speaking to him, but the personal nature of our case prevented him from joking.

"I'm so ready," Garcia declared. "I'm gonna work those numbers until they bleed and…" she frowned as she tried and failed to come up with a clever, colorful way to end her sentence. "...and give us back our resident genius. Please give me good stuff."

In half an hour, Garcia had cut our list of names in half and produced a short list of men with prior arrests. Again, we spent the day tracking down every person on the list, and again, came up empty. Another day gone.

They're trying so hard... Thanks for reading!