Chapter Two: Today Will Be Different

"If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends." ― Charlotte Brontë

JJ watched through the kitchen window as a gray sedan came down the driveway, splashing through the puddles left by the recent rain. A woman, who she assumed was the social worker, and a young girl, obviously Natalie, stepped out of the car. As the girl pulled a backpack from the backseat, JJ headed out front to meet them.

"Ms. Higgins? Jennifer Jareau, I'm the liaison Detective Fitzpatrick told you about over the phone," JJ said, shaking the woman's hand before turning her attention towards Natalie.

"And you must be Natalie. Are you feeling alright to head inside and talk about your brother for a while before you get the rest of your things?" JJ asked the girl, who only nodded in response, not meeting JJ's gaze.

As they walked back inside, JJ studied the girl more closely. She had long dark brown hair, a starking contrast to her brother's blond curls. In fact, the only resemblance she seemed to share with the rest of her family, at least from the photos JJ had seen, were her blue eyes, which were a cobalt blue instead of the rest of the family's ice blue ones.

Natalie seemed withdrawn, but JJ knew that was to be expected. She remembered how she had been in the days after Roz's death, barely eating or speaking to anyone. She imagined it would only be ten times worse losing a sibling that was your only family left.

When they reached the kitchen, the social worker announced she would go back and wait in the car, to give them some privacy. Once she walked out, Reid and Will entered the kitchen to join the interview.

"So, Natalie, we're just going to ask you some questions about Theo if that's okay?" JJ questioned as they sat down at the kitchen table.

"Tate," the girl said, finally looking up at JJ.

"What?" JJ responded, having been caught off guard by the response.

"I don't like to be called Natalie, I go by Tate. Theo came up with it when we were little," the brunette informed the group quietly.

"Alright, Tate it is," Will spoke, joining the conversation.

"Tate, this is Dr. Spencer Reid, he's with the FBI like me, and Detective William LaMontagne from New Orleans," JJ offered to the girl who seemed curious about the two men that had joined them.

"You're Bill's son," Tate stated.

Will was surprised the girl knew who he was. He had assumed if he barely knew about Tate, Tate would have no clue about him, especially since she'd been a little kid when her parents had died. Hell, in Will's mind she was still a little kid, only having just turned 13 a few short weeks ago.

"He came out and visited Theo and I a few times after our mom and dad died," Tate explained to him, seeing his confusion.

Tate had thought Will seemed familiar the first time she saw him, but it was only after he spoke and she heard the accent that his identity had clicked. It also helped that the detective looked very much like his father, with an identical set of sharp blue eyes.

Will was even further confused by that, as his father had never mentioned going to visit the kids at all, but for Tate to know who he was, he knew it must be true.

"Tate, can you think of anyone that would want to hurt Theo?" inquired Spencer. "Any old rivals from school, people that might have been jealous of him?".

Tate shook her head, "everyone liked Theo, you know? Sure, he was popular, I mean he was captain for three different sports in high school, but he was always so nice to everyone".

"How does he spend his days? He's not attending college, so does he have a job?" JJ continued on with the questioning.

"He's been working for a man a few towns over for a while now, Noah Miller. Mr. Miller's a shipwright, but he does some carpentry too," the girl offered.

"He didn't wanna go to school?" Will wondered. "He was always pretty smart from what I can recall".

"He had an IQ of 168, he could've gone to Harvard if he wanted, but I don't think he felt like wasting his time with it. He was happy working with Mr. Miller, he always liked doing more hand-on type of work. Besides, he wouldn't have left me to go off to school. He's a good brother," Tate told them. "Well…was a good brother".

The room grew silent for a moment as Tate stared down at the table, tracing a large scratch in it with the tip of her finger.

"He wasn't even supposed to be home," she whispered.

"What do you mean by that, kiddo?" Will asked her softly.

Honestly, Will was surprised the kid was holding up as well as she was. If it'd been his brother found brutally murdered when he was a kid, hell, even now, he'd be a wreck.

"Theo goes camping every other weekend, the second and last one of each month. He's been doing it for a few years now," Tate told him.

"Where'd he go?" asked Spencer, thinking maybe Theo had met someone camping one weekend, someone that could have had a vendetta against him.

"Cathedral Pines. It's up in Eustis, Maine, so about a 4.5 hour drive. He usually went with his friend Johnny," Tate replied.

"And where would you stay while he was gone?" JJ asked.

"My friend Jess's house, that's why I wasn't home Friday night,".

Spencer leaned over to JJ and whispered, "have Garcia check on the campground, maybe she could figure out if he met anyone there".

"Do you know how we could get a hold of Johnny? And how close were him and Theo?" Will asked Tate.

"I can give you his address and phone number. And they were pretty close, they met at a group home we were in a few years back," Tate told him.

Will zoned out for a couple of minutes while JJ continued asking questions. It seemed so incredibly wrong that a 13-year-old kid was entering foster care for the second time in her life, all because some psychopath decided to gut her brother in their family home.

During the time that JJ had begun asking Tate about Johnny, the girl had started fiddling with a piece from the chessboard on the table.

"Do you play?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah, Theo and I usually have a game going and just move our pieces whenever we have time. We barely ever actually sit down and play together though, don't really have the time" Tate responded.

Letting out a small laugh, Will asked, "you aren't worried about him cheating?".

"I have a photographic memory so Theo knows he can't get away with cheating".

"You must have a pretty high IQ then," JJ remarked.

"175. I think it always annoyed Theo a little".

At Tate's comment, JJ's, Will's and Reid's eyebrows raised simultaneously. If it had been any other kid, in any other situation, JJ would've thought the girl was lying, but she could tell Tate was being serious. It seemed genius ran in the family.

Tate set the chess piece back down, no longer content with fiddling with it after remembering she would never again play a game with her brother.

Noticing the shift in Tate's behavior, JJ decided she had done enough questioning for the day.

"Why don't you pack up the rest of your things and then you and Ms. Higgins can head on out, ok? Just don't go through the living room," JJ instructed.

After Tate got up from her seat and headed up the stairs, Hotch and Rossi came through the kitchen door.

"Emily and Morgan just finished up with the coroner. There was no sexual assault, and the cause of death was blood loss as a result of the stab wounds," Hotch informed the group.

"Did the coroner give any suggestions as to what he thought the weapon might have been?" Will inquired. "I saw the body last night before it got to the coroner, and it definitely wasn't a regular knife".

"He's not quite sure. While he agrees it wasn't done with your typical run-of-the-mill knife, it doesn't appear to be from a sword or machete," Hotch replied.

Despite being highly trained agents, none of them happened to notice the young girl coming back down the stairs.

"Theo was s-stabbed?" Tate stammered.

The adults all looked at one another, kicking themselves for not noticing the girl sooner. It was then Rossi that decided he couldn't outright lie to the girl. It was, after all, about her brother, and if anyone deserved to know about his case, it was Tate.

"Yes, he was. But we aren't sure what he was stabbed with," Rossi gently told the girl.

"I think I might have an idea…" the girl murmured before rushing down the hallway.

Tate couldn't explain how she knew what the weapon had been. After all, maybe the murderer had brought his own sharp object to stab Theo with. But as Rossi explained that they didn't know what the weapon was, she just had a feeling she couldn't shake.

The agents quickly got up to follow her, and soon found Tate standing in front of a bookshelf at the bottom of the stairs. With a quick spin of some dials at the top of the shelf, Tate unlocked what was actually a door, and slid it open.

The group stepped into a large office, neat if not somewhat dusty, and well lit from the windows that faced the side yard. It'd been Thomas' office that he often used for work, and Tate and Theo never really went inside. The walls were lined with books, most of them antiques or first editions, and a smooth mahogany desk filled the center of the room. As they wandered through the office, Will noticed Tate staring at a glass box on the mantle of the fireplace, looking several shades paler than she was earlier in the kitchen.

"What was in there, kiddo?" Will asked her.

"A Jacobite bayonet, 18th century, from the Battle of Culloden," Tate whispered.

It had been a while since Tate had ventured into her father's office, but Theo would never have removed it from its box. Neither of them were willing to risk damaging it in any way, given how important it had been to their father. Since Theo hadn't removed it, only one other person could have. The killer. The thought alone made Tate want to throw up right there on the oriental rug. The fact that her brother was dead made her feel ill enough already, but knowing that he had died at the end of her father's favorite possession in the world made it worse.

"Your daddy always did like history," Will said. He could remember the bayonet, having seen it at Thomas's house in New Orleans once or twice. It'd been used at one of the bloodiest battles of the Jacobite Rebellion, then passed down through the family for generations. And now, it'd been used to kill one of the last two living members of the Jacobs family.

Will glanced at the other members of the team, knowing that it was the bayonet, her deceased father's most prized possession, that had killed her brother. Suddenly, as he looked around, Will noticed the window in the corner, cracked just a teeny bit open.

"Can you open those windows from the outside?" Will wondered.

"No, they lock them from the inside, and we rarely come in here, so I doubt Theo would've left them unlocked".

"Well, now we know why there are no signs of a break-in. Theo must have let the killer in, and locked the front door behind him. Then, when it was time for the unsub to leave, they came through the office and out the window," Rossi declared.

Tate seemed to grow even paler, and JJ asked her what was wrong.

"The bookcase has a code at the top, that's what the dials are for. So the killer must have…we must have known him, right?" Tate stated.

JJ could only silently nod in response, her heart breaking at the look on the young girl's face. Tate had lost so many people in her short life and had just discovered that anyone left that she could have trusted had in fact killed her brother.

"In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again." –Clarke Griffin