Chapter II

"When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped." ~ Samuel Johnson

David stopped his car on the pavement and ran towards the house flashing his badge to the police officers, not waiting for any permission.

A policewoman approached him quickly at the door.

"Are you Agent Rossi?" she looked quickly at his badge.

"Yes, I am. My family is in here."

"Don't worry, agent. They are all fine."

"Dad!" he heard Joy's voice from inside.

"Thank God..." he said with relief.

The woman let him rush to his daughter who was holding a very scared Kai in her arms. He hugged them both.

"We were trying to call you! You weren't answering!"

"My phone turned itself off. Are you OK?" he asked and his daughter nodded as he rubbed his grandson back, "What happened?"

"One moment Gloria shouted to get down and the next there were bullets everywhere…"

"Bullets? How? How it happened?" David got shocked.

He realised he was asking too many questions to shaken up victims, for an agent he should have known better. He saw Hayden sitting on a chair in the other room obviously in shock.

"Where's Gloria?"

"She fell on top of Kai to shield him. She cut her head on his truck." Joy replied to him.

She motioned towards the kitchen where a paramedic was stitching a slash on Gloria's forehead. She was watching him with a deep relief in her eyes. He had given her an extra scare by not answering his phone. David was thankful that Joy explained fully before showing him. He felt dizzy with the amount of blood on Gloria's blouse. But even small head injuries bleed a lot. He rushed to her side.

"You are ready to go," the paramedic was saying to her gathering his things, "Just make sure you keep it clean."

"That's fine. Thanks."

Gloria stood up only to be caught in David's arms. She held onto him silently. No matter her training, no matter her hyperawareness, she had been scared to death exactly because she was the one that could process the situation fully. He framed her face with his palms checking the cut over her right eye.

"What happened?" he asked again.

Now that he was sure that everyone was okay, he could focus on finding out who dared to target his family and Gloria was the only one that could have registered most of the details.

"Joy and I were playing with Kai in the backyard. Hayden was sitting at the patio. A black car passed by the road at the side of the house, a black SUV, like the ones of the FBI. There should have been at least three people, both the passenger's and the back seat window were rolled down. That's what I caught my eye. And then I got a glimpse of something black and metallic. The flash of a barrel? I don't know. The next thing I know is that I was shouting for us to get down, they started firing and I was reaching for my gun in the ankle holster."

"Did you see the licence plate?"

Gloria shook her head negatively.

"I couldn't, the fence was hiding it and we were practically pinned down."

"Did they try to come in?" David asked fear just at the thought of it.

"They seemed like stopping the car and I fired two shots. They sped off."

"Probably because you fired back..."

"David, they were at least three men with automatic weapons and I was one person with a regular firearm and one mag. I could delay them but…"

David took out his phone, trying to remember how to scroll the screen. She held his hand reassuringly.

"I already phoned Hotch. They are on their way here," she guessed his intentions, "And I informed the Acting Assistant Director. They are sending reinforcement so they can move us to a safe house immediately."

David let a breath. She had taken care of all the technicalities.

"I'll let my team know after this circus. Let's not get too many into this…" she replied to the last question in his head, "And we have enough problems already…" she commented looking over at Hayden who came towards them.

"Can you explain why this all happened, Dave? Machineguns aimed at my grandson and my daughter!" Hayden said intensely, "I knew that it was always a mistake to be around you with what you do!"

"Hayden, can we have that conversation when you have taken some breaths?" Gloria, who never had gotten between David and his ex-wife before, spoke immediately sensing him stiffening at Hayden's words.

"Don't dare to tell me to 'take some breaths'. You came to my daughter's house carrying a gun for God's sake! For what reason, eh?"

Gloria didn't reply. To be honest that was a question in David's head, too, even though he was more than thankful. He was planning to ask her much later.

"Because it's not just him. The problem is you, too! You are as shady as they could come. Who knows how many could be after you, as well! I knew that Joy shouldn't have reached out to you. We had a normal life and now we have two problems in it!"

"Hayden, we'll sort it out. I promise," David replied trying to sound calm.

"Promises, Dave! I've had enough with your promises!"

"Mum, just stop talking like that!" Joy intervened sharply.

FBI agents appeared, the reinforcement sent to transport them to the safe house.

"Shall we cut this before we become the next hot topic in the FBI break rooms?" Gloria said quietly.

"Haven't you two been already, anyway?" Hayden spat.

Gloria hanged her head and walked towards the agents. David had gotten unnerved. First, for one more time Hayden was justifying her choice to keep him away from his own child. Secondly, she was offending the woman he was with. Thankfully Joy spoke before him.

"It's my right to be in touch with my father. And Gloria protected my son with her own body. She doesn't deserve this attitude from you."

Hotch appeared through the door and gave the excuse to David to retrieve.

After checking the backyard in Joy's house that only confirmed Gloria's story, FBI moved all of them to a safe house. The BAU was already going through potential threats, but Hotch had refused Rossi being there. A first neutral look would have been more useful and it would have been better for Rossi to stay with the women and his grandsons that first night, at least.

After having comforted Kai and Joy, David had lied down on the bed of one of the bedrooms of the safe house, looking at the ceiling in thought and worry, when Gloria entered the room. She had phoned her team to let them know that an emergency had happened. They had to stay vigilant and not go in their premises till she contacted them. Then she had spent the rest of the evening making phone calls to Interpol and MI6.

"Everyone everywhere swears up and down that there have been no leaks and everything has been closed and filed. No one is looking into anything and may have retrieved information. And anyone that comes to mind is either dead or in prison," she sat on the bed.

David sat up next to her, his hand went for her shoulder.

"It can't be from you. Your files are under multiple layers of security and the people you helped catching have no idea about your real name. It's far too hard for someone to find you."

The person she saw the previous day had found her, Gloria thought. Well, he wasn't a criminal and he already knew her real name. She felt the urge to speak to David about that meeting, but she had already decided against it. That person was no good. He had never been the enemy, though. He had no motive or intention to be involved in what happened and David didn't need to know that story of her life, it would only raise more matters in his head. But there was one question: Why? Why had he appeared? It was no social call. He hadn't made one in twenty years. What brought him in front of her the previous afternoon? And for sure it wasn't to just poison her life…

"What are you thinking?" David asked softly and Gloria realised that she had been staring at him.

"Nothing I am just trying to understand what happened," she half-lied, "I was the one at the house, David," she added after a while, "You hadn't come yet. But I'm one hundred percent sure I wasn't followed. I did circles. I checked."

David knew that she had the habit of checking if she was followed. She did it every day to work as a precaution. She did it during regular drives unconsciously. He noticed because she kept checking the mirrors more than needed whether she was the driver or the passenger. But doing circles and being fully aware on a drive for a family afternoon that was over the top even for a former spy with dying hard habits.

"Gloria, I have to ask: Why were you carrying when you went to visit my daughter?" he spoke again in the same soft tone.

'Because that mysterious visit confused me too much on top of the nightmares. I was scared beyond reason for no real reason,' she wanted to answer.

"All these nightmares, I don't know... They made me insecure. I thought better safe than sorry," she half-lied again instead.

"Is there a possibility you have picked up on something lurking, some irregular activity? That's why the nightmares?"

"What do you mean?"

"I spoke with Tara yesterday and she is the one that mentioned to me that your instincts may have been alerted by something that doesn't fit, some danger. It's probably not to you but someone close. That's why you can't process it and it expresses itself in troubles with sleep. Given that I cannot calm you down, given what happened, it is possible, I think. One night ago you were dreaming of gunshots…"

Gloria remained stunned for a few moments. For sure she didn't expect David to come up with that theory. She had already thought of that dream and that's why Saturday's visitor was at the forefront of her mind. The visit had reminded her of how she knew that place she had dreamed of. It wasn't a warehouse. It was an abandoned building in Birmingham, England. How had she even dreamed of it just before he appeared? Most importantly what about the shots? How the heck had her brain combined those two together? She did trust her instincts and her out of the blue hunches but they had never blown out in nightmares before. She was no psychic. Was David right? Had something happened and had she picked it up unconsciously?

"I… I don't know…" she stared at the floor.

"I didn't say that to you to start overthinking. Don't. If it's this, it will come to you."

Gloria nodded and started changing into a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants.

"Do you have any news from Hotch?" she asked.

"They are still going through everything. I should have been there."

"David, they all need you here, at least for tonight..." she caressed the side of his face.

"You were their guardian angel today, bambina…" David whispered catching her hand and kissing her fingers.

Gloria's phone rang. She checked the number and let an annoyed breath. Some people can't keep a simple enquiry to themselves, she thought as she dragged the green circle on the screen. She shouldn't be answering that call in front of Dave but she didn't want to raise any suspicions by stepping out of the room.

"Paterson."

"Yours was the weirdest request for info I've heard of in the last decade," the female voice said over the device in her thick Scottish accent.

"I could have guessed so…." Gloria replied dryly.

"I've been informed about the incident at the home of your boyfriend's daughter. But I see no connection to a guy that has been retired from the agency for twenty years," the voice got stricter.

"I was just double checking something," she got firmer herself.

"Double checking?" her disbelief very clear.

"I'm overly thorough, April. Is there a problem with that?"

Gloria had asked a simple, confidential question to a tech guy of MI6 she knew. But he had spilled the beans to his direct boss and that boss was no other than Gloria's first trainer. April Wetherspoon had multiple ways to demand one hundred percent obedience and full disclosure by her staff and trainees alike. No wonder, the guy was scared of hiding anything from her. But Gloria had never been that obedient and had never given full disclosure, either, not just to her, to anyone.

"The problem is that it doesn't make any sense."

"There has been an attack. Every question can make sense. I just checked because I have heard that he is probably working for private bosses now," that was a lie, she never heard of that, but she took a wild guess to fish.

"Has something else happened, Gloria?" the woman at the other side of line suddenly sounded softer.

'You knew. You always knew...' Gloria thought annoyed. 'But it was convenient and I wasn't some innocent part.'

"Did you just call to interrogate me?" she spat back.

"No," the woman let a breath, "What you guessed, because there is no way to have heard of that, is not that far from the truth. He used to work privately, but we have no Intel where and for whom. He is old-school, highly skilled and disappeared in an era when tracking wasn't that easy as it is today. We don't know if he is still active or retired, though."

"I understand."

"Is your boyfriend's family doing alright given the situation?"

"They are. Thanks for asking," Gloria got softer.

"I hope you find who did this quickly. Goodnight, Paterson, and be careful," Wetherspoon finished and ended the call.

Gloria threw the phone on the nightstand and lied down beside David.

"Another dead end?" he asked avoiding digging into the phone call.

There was something in Gloria's eyes, something he hadn't seen before, which was strange. They had talked about a lot of matters. She never had that expression. It wasn't like one from a painful memory. It was something else that he couldn't pinpoint.

"It looks like it…" she half-lied again.

She closed her eyes for a few moments. She hated it. That whole thing was unlikely to be relevant to the shots, objectively speaking. But she hated lying next to David and lying to him. She had done that a lot in her life but for the job and the target, she shouldn't be doing the same to him. She nested in his side placing her arm around him.

David caressed her hair. He could tell that she was hiding something. Gloria may had deceived many people on the planet, but she couldn't deceive him. Not because she wasn't able to. He was very well aware that if that woman ever turned on him he would have no chance of ever seeing it coming in spite of his profiling skills and all. But she was so sentimentally involved with him that she couldn't bring herself to and she was even becoming gauche. He trusted, though, that if it was relevant to whatever threat was out there she would have told him.

He was pretty sure that none of them got any proper sleep, apart from occasionally drifting off. Just a bit of sleep came in the early hours of the morning. They were woken up by Kai opening the bedroom door and slipping in the bed between them.

"Grandpa! Ria!"

"Are you OK, Kai?" Gloria asked startled.

"I had a bad dream…" he replied rubbing his eyes.

"You are safe. We are here, son," David said hugging him and kissing his forehead.

"I got very-very scared…"

"Hey… It's okay to be scared," she soothed getting hold of the toddler's hand, "Dreams can feel very real. But they are not. They are just our brain playing games."

"Not a nice game…"

"Nope. But they help us process what has happened. They can't harm us. They make us stronger, you know," she replied, "Let me give you a tip. Every time you have a bad dream you think really hard that you are not alone, that we are all with you and it will go away."

David smiled with his grandson's deep thinking face. Gloria had an amazing way around kids. She was very tender but at the same time she instinctively knew how to treat them and speak to them as adults. He had noticed it, too, with JJ's sons, Jack and even little Skylar, Hotch and Emily's daughter, their goddaughter. Others were surprised, not him. Gloria was made in certain ways because she had to adapt. If she hadn't been in some situations as a child and as an adult, she would have been a completely different person. Her roots and her soul were much different from her rough and tough attitude. And she could have certainly been a great mother.

Ten months into their relationship David had asked her if she ever wanted to try for a baby. The funny thing was that he had once tried to stay away from her despite his feelings, thinking that he was too old to offer her a family, but he had been the one bringing up the subject. She had told him before that she couldn't have kids. But she had managed to beat some of those those chances in the past, even though the pregnancy had been unsuccessful. Medicine had evolved since then and he had nothing but time and money in his hands if she wanted to take the plunge. He would have taken it, too, with her and for her. However, Gloria had refused. She didn't want to deal with doctors and in the highly unlikely scenario there was a chance through a medical route, she didn't want to take any medicines or risk any more miscarriages. If it was to happen naturally – they weren't using any contraception anyway – then that would be a different story and they would do their best to bring a pregnancy to term. But she had gotten pregnant naturally when she was twelve years younger and with a man twenty years younger than him at the time. By then she was over forty and David was over sixty. The possibilities for a baby in the usual way were zero for them. And she was OK with that. He had completely understood her view on the matter and he was still conscious about his age, anyway. He was OK, too. Probably the baby was just wishful thinking. Back with Caroline, having kids hadn't been really a formal decision. Having kids is what young married couples do, don't they? That time with Gloria was the first time that David Rossi ever thought of having kids consciously.

Five months later he had asked Gloria to marry him, despite his former strong belief that a fourth marriage was out of the question for him. Three months after that, Joy appeared in their lives, a child of his from the one marriage he hadn't even stayed long enough and that he had properly dismissed for his career. And she brought along Kai having climbed on the bed with them just like a child of their own could have done.

"Do you get bad dreams, too?" Kai asked Gloria interrupting David's thoughts.

"Sure. All people do, more often when something scary happens to them."

"And you think that Grandpa is with you and it goes away?"

"It works like a charm."

She smiled to the child but she gave David a thoughtful look. His thought, his presence, even his voice, always had a calming effect. Those nights they didn't. Was she scared for him? Was he in danger because of whatever she had picked up? Or was she scared that she would lose him, that he would leave her because of it and what it was about to unravel? Gloria felt nauseous just with the thoughts.

"Kai, how many times I've told you not to sneak into other people's bedrooms?" Joy said softly as she appeared through the door, "I'm so sorry. He was sleeping and I just left him for a bit to get some water from the bathroom."

"It's no problem, at all," Gloria said checking the time on her phone and turned to David standing up, "The shifts are about to change. One of us should be downstairs. I'll go."

"We'll hang here for a bit," Rossi nodded tucking his grandson at his side and she caressed the kid's hair.

"Joy, do you want a coffee?" she asked grabbing a small bag from the nightstand drawer; she had her gun and holster in it, secured since they had a small child in the house.

"I'll come downstairs with you," she said looking at her son with concern for one more time before closing the door.

"Don't worry. Kai is still shaken up but he will be okay. Kids usually recover more quickly than adults," Gloria reassured her, "How are you holding on?"

"I couldn't let him out of my sight. But I'm better than I expected, I guess."

"You are Dave's daughter at the end of the day," she smiled to the side, "Did you tell your husband?"

"He has a game tonight. I don't want to distract him. No one is injured and we are safe here for the moment."

Gloria paused for a bit to take the gun and its holster out of the bag and clip it at her waist covering it with the long t-shirt.

"Sorry, but the change of shifts is a weak moment in these situations. Any danger is highly unlikely but just in case."

"Don't apologise, Gloria. You kept us safe yesterday. And with Kai…? I didn't get to say thank you."

"Don't thank me. I did what I had to do. And don't thank me, too, till we figure out who brought these men to your door…" she looked at the floor.

"Don't take my mother's burst so seriously. With what you and dad do, I know there are dangers, but things like this are rare. It just happened to happen to us."

Gloria looked back at her realising that David's logical thinking was somehow hereditary. They went to the kitchen, after Gloria exchanging a few casual words with the agents camping in the living room and got busy with making coffee. Joy looked thoughtful, though. She spoke again.

"What I got to really see is that out there, when he or you step out of the door to go to work, chances for something like this get too high. I will certainly worry more about my father now."

"Don't get into this mind-set," Gloria replied, "Are our chances of being hurt higher than an accountant for example? Yes, they are. But we have the training and the experience to get out of situations. David knows how to take care of himself. And he is surrounded by people that know how to take of themselves and each other. You just have to trust that."

"But I can't help but wondering if that played a role in my mother's decision to do what she did with me. I'm not saying I agree, but she had some points of not wanting to live in that worry."

Gloria didn't speak. She didn't really want to get involved into this kind of discussion. She had mixed feelings about the situation.

"What would you do?" Joy asked quietly.

"Joy, don't get me into this story. It's not my place…"

"If you were to have a child with him, would you want him to disappear for days while you would stress whether he would come back?"

"That's a fictional scenario…"

"Hypothetically speaking," the younger woman pressed more.

Gloria shook her head. She had no way out.

"I would ask him to never step foot in the field again… And I would quit first," she admitted honestly.

The younger woman looked like balancing the words. Gloria decided to clarify some things. This whole story was still fresh and Joy hadn't really found her grounds in it.

"But that's personal," the redhead added, "Our Goddaughter's parents are doing more than fine and Hotch is still in the field normally. JJ, an agent in Hotch's team, is the same. They manage to do it and they are good at it. They have their reasons. I, personally, wouldn't. And I have my own reasons."

"What are your reasons?" Joy asked almost impulsively but then regretted it, "That's only if you want to tell me. I know I am becoming too indiscreet…"

"My mother died when I was ten, not due to any dangerous job, at a car accident. My father never got over it. Let's just say I practically grew up with no parents. It didn't work that well for me and it could have been worse. I would not be able to manage with a similar danger to my own child and normal life is dangerous enough," she explained reluctantly only half of her reasons.

The other half was that she had once considered a family with another man and he was murdered on the job. She had already lived that scenario once. She couldn't afford to have it twice. She worried for David as they were already, regardless of kids.

"Everybody has lived a different life and sees things in a different way. That's a discussion you have to have with your mother, not with me, Joy."

Joy watched the other woman as she obviously tried to avoid her stare and the topic altogether.

"But then you do think that she had legitimate reasons to do what she did. That's why you got so insecure when my mother appeared, isn't it?" Joy said softly.

Gloria eventually looked at her surprised and embarrassed.

"My father looked overly troubled one evening. Trust me; I had to push him way too much before he revealed anything and even then I had to drag the answers out of him."

"I'm sorry…" she murmured, "I was stupid…"

"Love makes us think the craziest of things, doesn't it?" Joy smiled in understanding.

Gloria wished it was that simple…

A knock came from the front door stopping abruptly that uncomfortable conversation. Gloria stepped to the living room, her hand close to her hip as the agents opened the door to the new shift. The two new agents hadn't come alone. The lean, tall, dark figure of Special Agent Mark Ryland, a member of Gloria's team, appeared with them. That morning couldn't get worse, she thought.

"Good morning, Paterson. Your weekend was that bad? How are you?" the man asked her with concern in his deep voice.

"I am okay. We all are," she replied firmly, "Who told you to come here? Because I didn't."

"The Acting Assistant Director disclosed the whole situation to me. He assumed that it would be easier if I acted as a liaison. He has sent you an email," he replied.

"I would have appreciated a call from you at least. The BAU has taken the lead for the moment and they haven't shared any findings yet. What I had to enquire, I did it through my personal contacts. There is no plan of action yet. There was no need for you to be here."

She didn't use to be that bitchy with her team. She had more of a neutrally friendly approach. They were a small team, anyway, five agents her included. Most of them had some challenges. She didn't want to make their situations worse by being over the top strict. She couldn't really be anyway. At that moment, though, she was pissed with the Acting Assistant Director stepping all over the situation and not letting her decide for herself when to talk to her team and what to say. She was so looking forward for the Director to finish whatever he was doing and get back to overlooking the Red Cell or at least get a new permanent Assistant Director. That bureaucratic smooth talker was getting on her nerves way too much… And swallowing her temper wasn't that easy.

"Do you want me to go, then?" he asked, his tone getting stern, too.

Gloria could tell that her harsh attitude had startled the agent and he was one of those that didn't like any nonsense from anyone, not even their superior.

"Hotch will phone at any moment, so I guess we can just wait. There is fresh coffee in the kitchen," she changed her tone; there was no need for more tension under one roof.

"Okay," he nodded softening.

Agent Mark Ryland was practically the second after her. To be honest, he could have been the leader of that Red Cell, if the FBI hadn't wanted to offer her something big enough to get her to leave Interpol and convince MI6 to loan her to them instead. Ryland was a couple of years older than her and with a history similar to hers, as he had been working on FBI undercover operations his whole career. Gloria had to admit that his character was much more stable than hers, too. She had been concerned that he wouldn't be that happy with being assigned under some British woman borrowed from a different agency. And indeed he was reserved at the start, till a couple of times when the situations and he actually challenged her and Gloria had proven her skills and actually showed even more than his. Since then it seemed that she had gained his respect.

They went back to the kitchen where she introduced Joy to the agent as she was on her way to check up on Kai and her father.

"I'm sorry for my tone before," Gloria said when they were left alone, "The situation is serious and personal, I would have preferred to get the team involved in my own terms. But you just did what you were told."

"I understand. And you are right I should have rung before I appeared," he appreciated her apology, even though he wasn't the type to apologise if he was in her shoes.

"What about the other case? Did you find anything new?" she asked after a pause and two sips of coffee.

"I'm afraid we don't have anything to make anyone that may know or was with her last talk. If we ask too much, we are risking of blowing up the rest of the investigation. I've told you before; we are not that far from the sea. We may never find her."

"Those people have a power complex. If they figured out an undercover agent and killed her they would use it to scare others, somehow. They have something whatever that is."

"When the investigation ends, they may figure it out. There is no much difference. She volunteered; she chose to go undercover. She made a mistake. She is gone."

"Tell that to her mother when she phones next time," she spat back, instantly regretting showing emotional attachment to the case; Ryland considered this another type of non-sense and a weakness.

"She didn't seem to care that much about her mother, when they picked her up with gangs at seventeen, did she?" he said coldly.

Gloria felt her blood boiling but she kept it in. It was better not to show more or he would realise that she was identifying herself with the presumably dead agent and questions would pop in his head. Only whoever from the FBI enquired about her knew how she had ended up in the agencies in the first place, the paper version anyway. It wasn't something to brag to the people she led about.

"Just like we don't know whose fault exactly the death of a twenty-three year old agent is, the same way we don't know whose fault was her being in the streets. It may not be entirely hers. You are asking too much from such a young girl, don't you think? And don't speak ill of the dead, Ryland," she replied firmly.

'If she is dead,' she thought and kept it to herself, like she had kept it from everyone. Only David had suspected that she considered it possible. He had acknowledged her reasoning but had underlined that she shouldn't be carried away by basically hopes. She had followed his advice. The situation was hard enough, anyway, by having a mother desperate to at least put her child to rest.

Ryland raised an eyebrow to her reply.

"You were too good but you were eventually too sensitive, too, weren't you? I should have guessed that," he said raising an eyebrow disapprovingly.

That face from Saturday flashed in front of Gloria's eyes. She got so distraught by that that she lost momentarily her yearlong ability to read people like Ryland. She couldn't tell if he was disapproving or found the point in her remark and probably wrongfully she was clinging towards the disapproval getting herself even angrier.

Her face was her usual poker one, of course. She realised she was overly projecting her own issues and they were irrelevant. Were they irrelevant for sure though? She should have a look on her own maybe, not trust whatever the people from the other side of the world were telling her, they had lost him and no tracking and everything… Possibly it was true. But no intelligence service in the whole world was ever fully truthful. In any way it didn't mean that they couldn't track him back. She could. Her team could.

"Apart from whatever comes from the BAU, I would like Leenux to find feed of any street cameras of this road at 4.15pm the day before yesterday, Saturday, and for the next two hours. She will see my car parked and me going in a Starbucks. Also, she should check this licence plate and how far around that road she can locate it," she decided quickly noting on a scrambled paper the name of a road and a licence plate.

Leenux was the nickname of their young tech girl, Lee Xing.

"Is she looking for anything else in particular?" Ryland frowned puzzled.

"I just need all she can find. I'll check it and I'll tell her what she has to look for further. And please, this stays between you, her and me," she replied.

"Consider it done."

"Thanks."

She pushed the paper towards him with her left hand. His eye fell instantly on the ring there. She realised she had forgotten to take it off. She wasn't the type of woman to wear fancy jewellery casually and the sapphire with the diamonds even in a delicate and discrete design didn't really hide that it was an expensive piece. Ryland could easily guess that that wasn't just any ring. In any way, since the previous afternoon their business had become everybody's business all over again and the agent wasn't the type to comment. But Gloria felt like his stare stayed on the jewellery for a bit longer than it should.

Steps were heard from the stairs and he put the paper in his pocket as David appeared talking on the phone.

"Hold on a moment, Hotch. Let me put you on speaker," he was saying, noticing the other agent in the room and turning to Gloria who nodded that his presence was okay, "I have Gloria and Agent Mark Ryland with me," he had been introduced to Ryland, before.

"As I said we didn't find anything obvious," Hotch's voice came from the device, "We started going through contacts of inmates. One of the first hits we got is that Yates is in touch with a woman. She is probably a fan and nothing more but it's still worth checking."

"I am practically this guy's lifeline," Dave commented, "If I am not around, he can still be put on death row."

"You were not in the house, Dave…" Aaron replied.

David shook his head from side to side acknowledging the point. He wasn't the target. His family was the target. He had to look for the danger he brought to them, not the danger he brought to himself. Gloria, who had come close to him leaving Ryland at the corner, rubbed his arm to calm him.

"Hotch, that thing yesterday was organised. Someone learned and watched and sent other people to do his job. Don't you think it is too much for a loner psycho to organise?" she asked.

"I do. But in prison they can meet people from organised crime background," the BAU Unit chief answered, "And that brings me to another matter. There has been some chatter about a hit being out on an FBI agent."

Rossi and Gloria exchanged deeply concerned looks. A hit meant anyone could target whoever that agent was just for the money, irrelevant hit men looking for business.

"Do we know the amount?" she asked.

"30,000 dollars."

"That's too low for either of you," Ryland spoke stating what was already in his leader's mind.

"He is right. David, you are an FBI celebrity. The people I have pissed off even if they knew my name could be certainly far more generous than this."

"And if that yesterday was related to a hit they would have burst into the house. They wouldn't have been put off by two shots. They would have been sure that someone knew how to shoot, so the potential target was in," Rossi agreed.

"I was considering the same factors," Hotch affirmed, "But we need to take precautions nevertheless. Gloria, your team will have to be temporarily moved here, in case the location of your premises has been compromised."

Gloria looked over at Ryland in question. He shook his head negatively. He didn't know that.

"Okay. I'll make the calls," she said.

"Please get to Quantico and we can go in more depth," Hotch was about to end the call when quick steps were heard.

"Sir! Sir!" Garcia's voice sounded urgent, "This came through the post. They opened it at security as the folder has no return address."

The shuffling of a page travelled through the microphone.

"What is it, Aaron?" Rossi asked anxiously.

"It is a threat letter."

"Addressed to whom?" it was Gloria's turn to ask, her touch on David's arm getting into a grip.

"To whom will understand it," Hotch read.

"Sphinx is the riddle, not the riddler." ~ George R.R. Martin

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Let's celebrate 2020 and the start of the Final Season of Criminal Minds with an update!

Don't forget to let me know of your thoughts!