A/N: Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

Chapter 27

Even with Reid there reading twenty thousand words per second and two extra sets of eyes, they spent all morning and most of the afternoon going through old cases. It was kind of depressing to look back on closed cases and see how many of the people they arrested were back out on the streets now. So much for justice.

According to Reid, approximately ninety-five percent of all inmates were eventually released back into society. Even most 'life' sentences were eligible for parole after only fourteen years.

Personally, Rossi thought more of them deserved the death penalty.

Serial killers generally got a minimum sentence of life without parole but not always, and not everyone the BAU caught had actually killed more than one person. It was rare for the BAU to help in cases with a low death toll, but it did happen, especially when children were involved. Some of the unsubs they caught over the years were only found guilty of kidnapping and attempted murder, and many of them were eventually released on parole.

There were also unsubs who were under eighteen at the time of their crimes and received lighter sentences because of their age. Even when minor children were tried as adults, judges and juries were more sympathetic to children who were on trial. People inherently wanted to believe in the innocence of children. In cases where the evidence of a child's guilt was overwhelming, people wanted the child to get help. The goal with a juvenile offender was almost always rehabilitation rather than punishment. It was a noble goal, but the profilers knew rehabilitation wasn't always possible.

They usually didn't have any suspects when they began an investigation. Even if the local police had a suspect they liked for it, the BAU went in without any bias. They started with victimology and crime scene, studying the behavior of the unsub to build the profile. This time there was no crime scene. There hadn't even really been a crime yet – at the most, the person they were looking for was stalking them and their kids, but there was nothing law enforcement could do for victims of stalking until the stalker did something. Even if they knew exactly who had sent the pictures of their children, the agents wouldn't have a reason to arrest him or her. It was a waiting game, but no one in the BAU conference room was going to wait for one of the monsters the team had hunted to make a move on their child. Figuring out who they were dealing with would help them predict what the person would do next. They needed to get ahead of this.

By early afternoon, they had three suspects – Danny Murphy, Jeremy Sayer, and Claire Bates. The agents who had worked the cases originally summarized the details of the crimes each suspect had committed for the newer members of the BAU team.

"Danny Murphy turned eighteen a few weeks ago on December 23rd," Emily began. "He was institutionalized in 2009 after he killed his younger brother, Kyle, by stuffing model airplane parts down Kyle's throat."

"He was released on his eighteenth birthday?" Hotch questioned.

"He was. Not exactly a cause for celebration," Emily commented dryly.

"That kid was a straight up sociopath," Derek stated bluntly.

Tara's eyes narrowed in thought as she mentally calculated how old Danny would have been in 2009 based on his eighteenth birthday. "He would have been nine." She looked at Derek quizzically, her background in forensic psychology coming into play. "We don't diagnose adolescents with antisocial personality disorders."

"Nine?" Luke repeated the age a little incredulously. He hadn't done the math yet and didn't realize how young Danny Murphy would have been at the time until Tara stated his age. Even for a profiler, it was shocking to hear about a kid that young killing someone. "That's gotta be…"

"The youngest killer the BAU has ever seen," Reid spoke up, knowing what Luke was thinking.

"He had already killed a puppy and his little brother. He felt nothing, no guilt or remorse. We couldn't diagnose him because of his age, but he was a textbook sociopath," Emily confirmed.

"And he almost got away with murder. His parents tried to protect him. They even had a cop who was a friend of the family that was willing to go away for a murder he didn't commit to protect Danny," Rossi explained for the benefit of the newer members of the team.

"If it wasn't for the BAU's involvement, he would have gotten away with it," Hotch said with absolute certainty. "Which means if anyone has a grudge against this team, it's him."

"He saw how his parents reacted to his brother's death," JJ observed. "He knows the best way to hurt a parent is through their child."

They needed to talk to the Murphys, but the parents tried to protect Danny before. They might do that again now.

The records from Danny's psychiatrist would be more useful than anything his parents had to say, but most psychiatrists refused to talk to law enforcement without a warrant, and the agents knew they couldn't get a warrant with no actual evidence pointing to Danny Murphy.

Danny was barely eighteen and had no resources to his name, but it wasn't even a three-hour drive from his last known location of Cherry Hill, NJ to D.C. It wouldn't be that hard for him to get there if he really wanted to. He wouldn't have the money for a hotel room and he didn't have a car unless he 'borrowed' one from his parents. If he was there, he was probably on the streets. That would make him harder to find.

Talking about Danny Murphy, who was the youngest sociopath the BAU had ever encountered, made Derek think of Jeremy Sayer. At thirteen, Jeremy was already a budding psychopath even though he was also too young to be diagnosed with an antisocial personality disorder.

After a lifetime of incidents in his home that culminated with him breaking his younger sister's arm, his mother abandoned him at a hospital in Nebraska. Jeremy turned his rage toward his own mother against other mothers, killing their children and husbands in front of family matriarchs as a method of mental torture for the mothers before finally killing the mothers in an especially brutal manner.

Jeremy's ultimate goal was to kill his sister while his mother watched, but the BAU stopped him before he could. As he was being led out to the car in handcuffs, he yelled that he was thirteen and would see his mom in five years, presumably to finish what he started. He didn't actually get parole when he was eighteen, largely due to Derek Morgan showing up at the parole hearing, but Jeremy was granted parole at his second parole hearing two years later. He'd been out on parole for a little over a year.

It wasn't one of the cases they pulled because JJ wasn't on the team at the time, but it was only about a month after JJ left the BAU to work for the Pentagon. Derek still thought Jeremy Sayer was worth looking into for this, and Rossi was quick to agree. There were some killers that just stayed with them, and he was one of them. They didn't see many thirteen year old family annihilators. Both men remembered Jeremy well and argued that if he had simply searched for the BAU team online, there was a good chance he thought JJ was part of the team at the time of his arrest and targeted her along with Morgan, Hotch, and Prentiss.

"We need to call Mrs. Sayer," Emily decided.

"Easy for you because you, my dear Emily, have me, but if Jeremy wanted to call his mom, it would be hard. Kendra Sayer changed her phone number after he was arrested," Penelope said all of this very quickly. "She also moved, and not just across town but to another state. Minnesota."

"She doesn't want to be found," Hotch deduced.

"Not by Jeremy anyway," Emily muttered.

"What about his sister?" Rossi asked. "She would be, what, seventeen or eighteen now?"

Penelope's fingertips flew across the keyboard as she found the girl's date of birth. "Caroline Sayer is seventeen. She's a senior in high school."

"A kid that age has to have social media," Derek said, glancing at Penelope questioningly as he wondered if Jeremy could have found his mom and sister that way.

"No, at least not under her real name," Penelope replied. "I can keep looking. Sometimes kids use a nickname."

"Please do," Emily told the tech analyst. "We also need anything you can find on Jeremy – last known address, job, car, name of his parole officer."

She was the agent who had the most previous interaction with Jeremy's mother so Emily took it upon herself to call the woman while the team continued going through old case files. At first Kendra Sayer lied and said she didn't have a son. When Emily told her they were looking into a crime and believed Jeremy might be involved, the other woman finally acknowledged that Jeremy was her son but said she hadn't seen or spoken to him since the day he was arrested. Emily believed her. This was not a mother who was trying to protect her son. This was a mother who was trying to protect her daughter from her son.

After going through every single old case file they had pulled, they came up with just one more suspect – Claire Bates. Her victims were children and she had a son of her own who was taken by Social Services after a seven-day evaluation. She then abducted five year old Ethan Hayes and cared for him as if he were her newborn before smothering him to death with a pillow, recreating the loss of her baby. With Ethan dead, Claire abducted another replacement for her baby, four year old Michael Bridges, but the BAU was able to save him before he met the same fate as Ethan.

After her arrest, Claire pled not guilty by reason of insanity. In her case, it wasn't just a ploy to get out of prison. She was mentally ill, and she only went off her meds because she had to while she was pregnant. Rather than prison, she was institutionalized. Once her psychosis was under control with medication and she was no longer a threat to herself or others, Claire Bates was released. It had been several years since her release, which begged the question why now?

Everything she did was about her son. That was where they started, with Garcia pulling his file from Social Services. Upon her release, Claire tried to get custody of her son, Jamie, but, in the eyes of Social Services, she was an unfit parent because of her history of mental illness. She did, however, get supervised visitation with her son. They needed to find out what happened during the last visit. They also needed to know if she was still on her meds.

With her history of mental illness, a real or imagined grievance could have triggered Claire. Was her son being mistreated in his foster home? Even if he wasn't, did Claire think he was being mistreated?

"They put him in those silly blue sneakers and lime green Oxford. He hated those," Tara read aloud from the transcript of Claire's last phone call to the parents of the second boy she abducted with raised eyebrows. She looked up from the printout, frowning. "Based on this, it could be something as simple as her son wearing clothes that didn't meet her approval."

"It wasn't," Reid said, returning to the conference room from his desk, where he was calling the social worker who supervised Claire's visits with her son. "The last time Claire saw him he had a broken wrist from falling off the monkey bars. She became enraged, accusing the foster parents of being bad parents. The whole thing upset Jamie to the point that the social worker had to end the visit early."

"Did he really fall off the monkey bars?" Emily asked with healthy skepticism.

"The social worker says he did. It happened at school," Reid reported back. "He's been in the same foster home for three years, and this is the first time he's been hurt."

"Three years? Isn't that a long time for a foster kid to be in one home?" Derek questioned.

"Maybe if they weren't trying to adopt him," Reid responded. "The only thing stopping them is Claire. In order for him to be adopted, her parental rights have to be terminated first."

"And she's not going to do that," Emily said knowingly.

"Not voluntarily," Hotch specified. "Long-term mental illness is grounds for involuntary termination of her parental rights by the court. It will just take longer."

"That could be the stressor," Simmons mused.

"She feels like she's losing her son all over again," Tara concluded. "And to the same parents who were responsible for him at the time he was injured."

"But wouldn't the foster parents be the target of her rage?" JJ asked the obvious question.

"I think they were," Reid told them. "She showed up at their house after the visit with her son was cut short. The foster mother called the police, but Claire left before they arrived. That was the week before Christmas. She hasn't been seen or heard from by anyone since."

"In her mind, we're the police," Hotch stated matter-of-factly. "The BAU handled her arrest in 2008."

"It's not too much of a stretch for her to believe we were – are – complicit in keeping her from her son," Emily conceded.

"Especially if she's off her meds," Derek said.

"Why stay on her prescribed antipsychotic medication if she's never getting her son back, no matter what she does?" Reid asked. It was a rhetorical question. He was playing devil's advocate, but maybe he felt compelled to jump to Claire's defense. Diana Reid had to go off her meds when she was pregnant with Spencer. What if he was taken away from his mom? Being the son of a paranoid schizophrenic wasn't easy, but Spencer Reid loved his mom. For that reason, he found himself feeling a strange sense of empathy for Claire Bates. "She did everything right when she was pregnant, and Social Services still took her son away," he pointed out.

"Her son's still in Vegas. Would she leave Vegas when her son's there?" Simmons questioned.

"She might if she's given up on ever getting her son back," Hotch answered. "Adoption is permanent." He gave Emily a quick apologetic glance as he realized how his words might affect her, but she didn't look upset by what he said.

It was true. Adoption was permanent. Emily gave up her parental rights fourteen and a half years ago. She had already accepted that she had no rights to her daughter. She didn't like it, but she had accepted it.

And she would be reminded of it when she finally called her daughter's adoptive father to let him know what was going on.

Emily waited as long as she possibly could to make that call, but she couldn't, in good conscience, say nothing knowing Hannah would be easy prey when she was walking from her school to the Metro stop. They had no indication that the unsub would make a move now, but Emily wasn't willing to take that risk when it came to her child's safety, and she didn't think Steve would be either. The other parents who had received pictures were all planning to pick their kids up from school. Emily couldn't just pick Hannah up though, not without permission.

It was never going to be an easy call to make, but it would have been easier if they'd been able to narrow their suspect pool down to only one person. Instead, they had one sociopath and two psychopaths – all of whom would have a reason, however insane, to target the BAU team.

Emily was behind her closed office door, sitting stiffly in her desk chair, her spine perfectly straight, when she dialed Steve.

"Emily?" He answered after several rings, having stepped out of a meeting to take her call.

"I need to talk to you about Hannah," Emily began nervously. "Something happened today. Several of the agents on my team received pictures of their loved ones in the mail. I received a picture of Hannah."

"What kind of picture?" Steve asked. He was already worried, and he didn't know the half of it yet.

"It was taken on New Year's Eve when she was standing in front of my building, waiting for her ride to the party," Emily answered. "We think the pictures were taken by someone my team arrested…someone who was recently released."

"How would anyone even know about her?" Steve demanded, starting to sound accusatory.

"The only way they could have known is if they were watching me when she was staying with me," Emily admitted. "Right now, whoever's doing this just wants us to know that they're watching us," she continued in an attempt to reassure him. "We don't actually think Hannah's in danger." The yet went unsaid. "But I would still feel more comfortable if she didn't go anywhere alone until we know more."

It took Steve several long seconds to respond. When the birth mother of his child showed up at his office out of the blue, he never in a million years would have imagined this happening. He was wishing Emily had never come back into their lives even as he resigned himself to trusting her with his daughter's safety. She was an FBI agent. This was her area of expertise, not his. Whatever else he could say about her (and at the moment anything he had to say wouldn't be very nice), he knew Emily loved Hannah and didn't want anything to happen to her. On some level, Steve knew it wouldn't be smart to cut the gun-toting FBI agent out of Hannah's life now, even if the gun-toting FBI agent was the reason an ex-convict knew who his daughter was in the first place. He thought he was being remarkably civil considering. "She gets out of school at 3:25," he told Emily as he looked at his calendar. "I have a meeting at three, but I can call my sister."

"If you need someone to go get her, I can do it," Emily offered.

"You said someone's watching you. Is she even safe with you?" Steve questioned.

"They already know about her," Emily replied warily. "As long as they know about her, she's safer with me than alone."

Right now Hannah would also be safer with her than she would be with Steve or with Steve's sister who was a stay-at-home mom, but Emily didn't say that.

"Okay, fine," Steve conceded grudgingly, recognizing the truth in Emily's words. "I'll text her to let her know you're picking her up. She goes to Westborough Prep. Do you know where it is?"

"Yes." Emily hesitated slightly before asking, "What do you want me to tell her if she asks why I'm picking her up?"

They spent the next few minutes discussing how much she could tell Hannah without scaring her any more than was absolutely necessary. All that was left was for Emily to tell her fourteen year old.

A/N: Thank you for reading. For anyone wondering, the unsubs from old cases that were mentioned are:

Danny Murphy from Season 4x21 A Shade of Gray

Jeremy Sayer from Season 6x05 Safe Haven

Claire Bates from Season 4x06 The Instincts