"What am I doing here?" Elizabeth snarls – and, wow today was a lot of really strong emotions because Mari might not have known her mother that well, but she had never seen her look like that. "What are you doing here?"
"Taking responsibility for my family," Des snapped back. "Making sure they're safe. Something you stopped caring about a long time ago."
"Of course. You crash headlong back into my family's lives and the first thing you do is pick a fight," Dad cut in, too exhausted to be angry. "And this is not your family, Des. It's mine, and it's Elizabeth's. You have no claim to me nor my children."
Des paused, body still coiled, to look fully at Dad for the first time since she burst in. She had the decency to look ashamed.
"What are you doing here, Des?" Dad asks, tired and bone weary – pinching his brow as if trying to make the world stop, just for a second. He reaches over, pulling Mari behind him as if to shield her from their fighting. "Des, why are you here. I told you, you're not welcome anymore."
"Arthur, please," Des is pleading, and for the first time Mari notices how desperate she seems. She keeps glancing towards the door, and her hand keeps drifting to her back pocket before she stops it. What is she doing here? "Arthur, we don't have time – we have to get out of here. I have to get you and the kids out of here."
"No, you don't get to make demands today," Arthur snarls, and Mari feels his grip on her arm tighten – too tight. "Not today. Not when my son is dead. Not today."
"What?" Des chokes, taking in the whole room. "No. No, not Casey. Why would he go after Casey?"
"Liber knew who killed your brother," Morgan studied Jane, keeping a hand on her wrist to keep her grounded. "Liber knew who killed Casey, and it wasn't her. She was surprised."
"She loved us," Jane whispered, barely audible. A single tear fell to her chin, hit her blouse. "If nothing else, she loved us. She would have never hurt me or Casey or …"
Perhaps that was why Jane was still alive. Somehow she made it out of the Massacre, but Liber had caught up to her in Chicago and again once she became an agent. They had never figured it out – what the advantage was of Liber pushing back the years for claiming heirship. Or why she hadn't just sent another hit after Jane at any of the numerous points that she was vulnerable.
Love. It was love – maternal love. Des Liber loved Mari Ryden like a mother loves a daughter, and went to the Ryden house that day to try and get the Rydens out. To save them, from whoever wanted them dead.
But if Liber didn't want them dead, then who did?
"Jane, I need you to keep your breathing even," Morgan's mind whirled. He shifted their grip, holding her arm steady as he brought over her second hand to wrap around his wrist. "Focus on my heartbeat. Eyes on the light, fingers on my pulse. I need you to focus on those, okay?"
She nodded slightly.
"Okay, Ivy," He skimmed his thumb over the soft, scarred skin inside her wrist. "Desi came to your house, tried to get you out with your family."
She nodded again, swallowing roughly. Her eyes were red.
"Was it still light out?" Morgan steered her focus. "C'mon, Doc. You can do this. Was it dark outside when … when Desi and your Dad got into their fight?"
"No, not yet – I mean, not fully," Jane dug her fingers into his arm, just shy of painful. "But I left the room, left them all there. Elizabeth was angry and confrontational, and Ada and Bree were just … sitting there. I went to the kitchen, did the dishes. They were building up. There's a window above the sink. I watched the sun go down. Twilight. Casey loved to watch sunsets."
Reid shifted closer to them as her heart rate picked up again
"No, Four, no," Morgan stopped her firmly. "Focus on the window, not on Casey. It's getting dark. You're in the kitchen, you can hear the living room. You're doing the dishes, you can feel the water on your hands – is it too hot? How does the soap smell? Focus on that, how does the soap smell?"
Reid rocked back.
"Like dish soap," Jane scrunched her nose. "Dawn, maybe? Dunno the brand. Something soapy."
Morgan held back the morbid chuckle in his chest. Pushed it down.
"You can hear the argument still," Morgan continues. "It's just in the other room. What are they saying?"
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what in God's name is going on here," She heard her dad growl as she passed the sponge yet again over a dinner plate – getting the last of last night's curry off the surface. "Now get out before I call the police and make you get out."
"Arthur, please," Desi pleads – and she's never heard Desi plead like that. Never heard Desi plead. "Arthur, I can't – please, you just have to trust me. You, me, and the kids – we have to get out of here. We're running out of time, I don't know how long till he'll be here –"
"Who?" Dad demanded, and Mari just wanted them to stop. "Who is coming? Why are they coming? Why do we have to leave? Des, you have done nothing but make demands since you've walked in here and you need to either start answering some basic questions or get the hell out of my house so we can mourn in peace."
"But why Ada?" Rossi interrogated, dragging out a chair loudly and sitting down with heavy intent. "Why Ada? She was a 22 year old pre-law college student. She had no record, she reported no stalker behavior, took out no restraining orders. She had next to no contact with her mother's side of the family – the worst she ever did was get picked up for public intoxication her sophomore year at college, along with half her class."
"Ada didn't do anything," Liber reluctantly gritted out. "She didn't do anything – none of them did. No one but Elizabeth. Ada dying – it was all because of Elizabeth."
"She was targeted because of her mother," JJ clarified, tone tinged with disbelief. "You're saying Ada became a target, and it was Elizabeth's fault? Or are you saying that Elizabeth is our unsub?"
"No, I'm not saying Elizabeth killed her family for the inheritance, or whatever bullshit story you think I'm trying to spin to save my own hide," Liber snarked. "I'm saying that Elizabeth Colemyer was a coward who let her family die. I'm saying that if Elizabeth hadn't been Ada's mother, then Ada would still be alive and well today."
"You're spinning a fine yarn, Liber," Rossi dismissed. "But you're not actually giving us any evidence to work with."
"Evidence," Liber deadpanned. "Evidence. Fine. You want evidence? Then march your ass out there and find yourself a picture of Ada, a picture of Elizabeth when she was in college, and a picture of your Jane Hart before she got her face cut up. Then you get your evidence."
"You can hear the argument," Morgan repeats himself cautiously. "What are they saying, Jane?"
"Desi won't tell Dad anything," Jane said thickly. "He hates not knowing things, and he hates when Desi won't tell us the whole story – won't tell him. He's a lawyer, he hates not knowing things."
(Reid didn't know whether it was a good thing or a bad that Jane had started using the present tense.)
"You're washing the dishes, listening in on their argument," Morgan continues to lead her. Her grip has slackened, her heart rate stayed even – for now. "But you stop doing the dishes. The argument ends. Why does the argument end, Mari? What happens?"
Jane flinches.
Ada slips into the kitchen, her face tacky with dried tears, and steps too-close. She's right up next to her, and Mari barely dries her hands before she's taking her sister's in her own and is interweaving their fingers.
"Why can't … why can't they just stop?" Ada murmurs softly, too quiet to carry to the other room. "With Casey … why can't they just stop? Just today. Just now."
"At least Elizabeth's backing off – probably to drink," Mari sighs, feeling heavy. "If she were to get back into it too …"
"Please, Dad and Des would –"
Crack.
"I hear a sound," Jane's grip tightens, her BP picking up. "It's loud, like a crack of wood or something – and the shattering of glass. I don't know what it is – but then I hear a shout, right after. And it's Dad and –"
"Deep breaths, Jane, deep breaths," Morgan soothes her, exchanging heavy looks with Reid. "You're not there right now. You're not in your house, you're not in Michigan. You're in the BAU, at Quantico. You've been here the whole time, you're just remembering some things. All of this is in the past, you're safe here."
"No, I'm not," Jane shakes her head, eyes wide and locked on the light – her entire frame quivering like a leaf. "No, I'm not because He's right there –"
"No, he's not right there," Morgan cuts her off. "Only people here are me and Reid. Only you, me, and Spinner – no one else is here. No one else is here."
"Tell us what you hear, Jane," Reid chips in, crouching down next to them. "Just focus on what you hear. You hear a sound – it's loud, there's shouting. Who's shouting? Who's shouting, Jane?"
"It's Dad," Jane chokes out. "It's Dad, Dad's the one shouting."
Garcia thinks she may be falling apart at the seams, just a bit.
Because she has never felt more useless. Never felt more useless, even when Jane was in Montana – when she disappeared, and she couldn't find her. Because at least when Jane disappeared she wasn't taken. If she needed help, she knew how to contact her – Jane could've called them for help at any time.
Hotch couldn't call for help.
The boogeymen that haunted Jane's every step wasn't just a shadow anymore. No, he was very real and very dangerous and wasn't locked up in prison or dying of cancer or any of the dark and morbid possibilities that Penelope had hoped for him. Painful possibilities she had hoped for.
No, he wasn't dying in some dark corner – he was working with other serial killers and stalking Jane and sending flowers that Garcia couldn't track. He had been for years, and Jane had never said anything.
Because this unsub – this monster – made Jane so terrified that she was too afraid to turn to her team for help. To anyone.
She heard her office door creak open.
"Temple of Delphi: closed for renovation," She shoots over her shoulder, hip deep in a completely fruitless search dive. "Come back later."
"No can do, PG," JJ apologized, entering with Rossi close on her heels. "We got a lead, and we need you to –"
"Omigod a lead," Garcia felt a rush of euphoria, whirling around to face them. "Oh lord thank Starbucks Sirens and the DC gods –"
"Garcia, we need to pull up some photos for us," Rossi cut her off, but it was okay because her filter was degraded after too many coffees and not enough sleep and they had a lead. "Can you do that?"
"Of course I can do that – with the speed of a thousand racing heliopaths, I can do that," She readied her magical technology typing fingers. "Gimme. I wanna help. Gimme."
"Three photos:" JJ chimed in. "First, a picture of Ada Ryden – the last taken one before her death."
A couple keystrokes, and a picture pops up. A tall, willowy young woman with chestnut hair and eyes – lightly tanned skin and a small smile and tired eyes. She wore a sweatshirt from Brown, the crest proudly displayed across her face.
A beautiful dead young woman. Jane's big sister – who she watched die.
Garcia suppressed a shiver.
"Now a picture of Jane after she joined the Bureau but before Foyet," JJ studied the snapshot. "Do you have one?"
"Well, Janey-dear wasn't keen on having her photo taken – still isn't," Garcia digged through her personal archives. "But I got one at Henry's Christening …"
Another portrait popped up next to the first. Jane with her hair long and down and her scars hidden, wearing smart trousers and heeled boots – a strained smile on her face as she glanced at the camera.
"Last one – a picture of Elizabeth Colemyer when she was in her college years."
Three pictures, lined up. Two daughters bracketing one mother, all close in ages.
"That's what Liber was talking about," JJ reluctantly sighed, eyes flicking between each shot. "Shit. This is worse than we thought."
"This unsub has been at this a lot longer than we realized," Rossi agreed. "And he still hasn't been caught."
"What?" Garcia looked between them, feeling as if her lack of a profiler-brain meant she was missing something major – again. She looked back at the photos. "What did you guys just figure out?"
"Look at them, Garcia," Rossi gestured helplessly at the screen. "Two daughters. One mother. Ada was the target, but she wasn't originally."
Garcia looked again. Looked again at how Elizabeth Colemyer was all bones, and had long wavy brown hair. How she had the pink of sunburn across her cheeks, and a Brown Law School sweater on.
Oh.
"Jane doesn't look like her mom," Garcia felt it click. "Well, she does – in the face, a bit, and the smile. But Ada does. A lot."
"Ada was a pre-law student at Brown, just like her mother was," JJ scrubbed at her face. "Ada looks like her mother, perhaps even behaved like her. The unsub's obsession was first with Elizabeth, but turned to a more receptive target – Ada."
"But if the Unsub was after Ada," Garcia felt her heart twist, stomach churn. "Then why is Ada dead and Jane's alive?"
"Something went wrong," Rossi stated grimmly. "In his perfect plan, something went wrong."
Bree –
"Omigod," She feels as if the air has been knocked out of her. Ada's stopped in front of her, blocking the doorway, but she has to move. "Ada – Ada, move. Ada –!"
She shoves her sister out of the way and drops to the ground next to Bree – because Bree's collapsed, and he's got – got –
"He's been shot," Des is saying, pressing down on the wound with her bloody hands – Bree's blood – "Arthur, I was trying to tell you –"
"Shut the hell up!" Dad shouts, shoving Mari out of the way to get closer to Bree. "Call 9-1-1. Ada, I need you to call 9-1-1!"
Mari's been shoved out of the way, and she feels some wetness on her knees, through her jeans. It's red and thick and smells like iron … she's gonna be sick.
But as she turns to dry heave, she spots the window. The window that was in the living room, facing the yard. The glass – the glass was splintered, shattered.
Why –?
"Get down," She tries to say, but the words catch in her throat. There's someone beyond the window, in the driveway, and he's coming towards the house and he looks dangerous and no one is paying attention.
"Get down," She tries again, barely any louder. Sucks in a lungful of air – the most painful thing she's ever done. "Get DOWN!"
Everyone drops but Elizabeth, who is staring at the window in horror and shock. Mari drags her to the floor, just as another shot hits the couch where she'd been sitting. And then another. And then another.
She doesn't know how many shots go off, but it's so many and she doesn't know what to do and –
Dad's hand has a death grip on her arm, face set in grim determination and calm. He's always calm. "Mari, I need you and Ada to carry Bree out through the garage. Get to a car. Drive him to the hospital. Take your mother."
"What – no!" Mari shook her head, looking at her ginormous, bleeding brother and her hysterical sister. "I can't leave you – no, Dad, I can't leave you! That guy is gonna kill you!"
"No, he won't," Desi interrupts with a growl, pulling out a gun. Where did she get a gun? "We're gonna hold him off till you get into the car. Get out of here."
Mari still didn't move.
"Go!"
"The man who shot Bree," Morgan was saying. "C'mon, Jane, I need you to focus. Don't get sucked up in it. The man who shot Bree. You saw him."
Jane nods – or at least she thinks she nods.
"Focus on one detail," Morgan presses, flexing his fingers around her palms. "C'mon, Jane. One detail. Was he tall?"
"I barely saw Him," She says, her voice coming out hoarse. "I barely –"
"It doesn't matter, you saw him. You did," Morgan cut her off. But – "C'mon, Jane. You're smart, you're wicked smart. You remember everything from that day, you just don't let yourself focus on it. So I need you to focus on it."
Her head was pounding. It was pounding and it hurt and she barely saw Him and she can't remember –
"This isn't for you, Jane," Reid steps forward, placing a hand on her cheek. She tears her eyes away from the light – everything still seems to be moving, swimming in her sight, but he's steady. She focuses on him. "This isn't for you, this is for your son, Jack. This is for Jack, because Jack doesn't have his mom or his dad right now. So we need you to help find Rin – find Jack's dad. Can you do that?"
She feels dizzy, off kilter. But she can. She has to. She nods. Returns her focus to the light.
"The man, you only saw him through the window?" Morgan asks after a long moment, after she gets back into the rhythm. "Then you and your sister took Bree and Elizabeth out to the garage."
Ada isn't pulling her weight, and Elizabeth is useless on a good day, so she has to drag all four of them down the hall and through the doorways –
"– Ivy, we can't leave them. Ivy, we can't we can't –"
"Shut up," She growled, shoving the increasingly limp form of her brother into the garage as she grabbed her dad's keys. "Shut up, Ada. Bree needs a hospital."
"But Ivy we can't –"
"You called the cops, right?" She charged on, unlocking the car with quivering fingers. "And there's two of them and one of him. We gotta get outta here, Ada – we gotta –"
Another crack.
She knows what that sound is, now. It goes off –
One, two, three – more times.
She shoves Elizabeth forward and hits the clicker to open the garage.
"You heard gunfire," Morgan coaxes her gently. "You heard gunfire, and you were getting your mom, Ada, and Bree into the car. Who was driving?"
"I was," Jane croaked. "Bree – Ada wasn't able to. Elizabeth got into the back. I had to. It was me."
"So you open the garage door, you're in the car," He prods carefully. "The three of them are there with you – where are they?"
"In the back," Jane tugs at their hands. "In the back, Ada's trying to stop the bleeding. Elizabeth's a statue."
"What do you do?"
"Ada was the target, not Mari, because she looked like her mother," Rossi finished catching Blake up.
"That's –" Blake massaged her brow. "After Jane told me she was a Colemyer, I looked into the case – but there was nothing like this. There was nothing at all."
"Politics shut down any serious investigation, too many secrets would've been uncovered – too many big fish in the net," Rossi explains unhappily. "Gideon was furious back in the day, and Hotch –"
He cut himself off.
"Anything with the notes?" JJ changes track, glancing at the depressingly bare evidence board. " 'Oh, my dear Lotus. You know it is for the best.' Any idea what that means?"
"I keep coming back to the word 'lotus'," Blake shook her head. "The rest of it is almost ridiculously straightforward. Poetic style to inflate his sense of worth and to give his words a greater weight in his own mind. A direct message to a single receiver, Jane – Lotus, justifying his actions, as if expecting that she would understand. Possessing her, saying 'my dear' – my. But this nickname…"
"It's her middle name, it's on her tattoo," JJ pointed out. "What's eating at you?"
"Your guys files said that Marisole Ryden had two nicknames as a child – a teen," Blake began to flesh it out. "Mari instead of Marisole, the name she used the most; she never used the name Marisole. But also a family nickname – Ivy, for 'IV.' The roman numeral for 'four' to signify herself as the fourth child. Adaline, Casey and stillborn Clove, then Mari – followed by finally Gabriel."
"Yes …" Rossi trailed off, not seeing where Blake was going. "And?"
"And why didn't the unsub use one of those nicknames?" Blake gesticulated wildly. "Both of those names are intrinsic to both her identity and her tattoo. Nicknames like these, when an unsub is possessing a person – my dear Lotus – develop with and as a core part of the fantasy. They're as much marks of possession as anything else, and unsubs often use nicknames that family would use as an added sense of proximity. So then why 'Lotus' and not 'Ivy'?' Does the middle name matter that much? The tattoo?"
"I don't know," Rossi reluctantly ceded defeat, sharing frustrated looks with JJ. "We'll have to hold off on that for now. We've got to see what we can get out of Liber before she falls back on old habits and remembers she's supposed to be an uncooperative serial killer."
There's a car in the driveway – Ada's fucking car – blocking the garage.
She can't back out any further, and her brother is bleeding out and her dad and Desi might be dead –
"I'll get the keys," Ada shakily offers, but like fuck.
"No, Elizabeth – get the keys," Mari orders, getting out to pull Bree out of the useless car. Her royal highness doesn't move. "Elizabeth, get the keys. Elizabeth. Elizabeth."
"Mom," Ada pleads.
Elizabeth looks at them – shakily gets up, legs wobbling as she goes back through the garage.
"Hurry," Mari whisper-shouts, ducking under Bree's arm – Ada taking the other side, her height throwing Bree's limp weight off even further.
Limp weight. He'd lost consciousness.
His blood –
"This is why people have neighbors," Mari laughs half-hysterically, hands sticky with blood shakily pressed against his side. "This is why we should've had neighbors. Families can't get murdered when you have neighbors."
"Mari –"
"Get him to the door," She steered them towards Ada's car. "We can get him in when we have the keys."
They barely make it, but when they do they're propping him up against the side of the car because they can barely hold him up anymore.
They hear the door creak open behind them, and Mari whirls around to look – hoping that Elizabeth was back with the keys –
It wasn't Elizabeth.
