"What's up, Rossi?"

Morgan sounded like what he was: bored. He'd been standing guard for hours, pretending that Hotch was still a patient. At least Prentiss could prowl and enjoy a change of scenery.

"I take it there's been no sign of our unsub?"

"Not unless Prentiss found her, killed her and stashed the body someplace secret without letting me in on it." Derek frowned. There was something about the tone of Rossi's voice that didn't invite levity. "Why? What's going on?"

"Maybe nothing, but Reid and I were thinking…"

"When Pretty Boy thinks, it pays to listen. What is it?"

"We're wondering if the unsub is developing a fatal attraction."

"To Hotch?"

"Yeah. She's been at him three times now. I think that pretty much guarantees she'll continue the pattern until she gets what she wants from him. Or makes sure no one else can get it…or him."

"Shit." Morgan wasn't one to mince words.

"My feeling exactly."

"But she'd come here. Wouldn't she?" They both knew the prediction that Megan Kane would return to the hospital was a highly likely probability. Not a certainty. "Did you try calling Hotch?"

No matter how hard he tried to stop it, a thread of worry wove its way into Rossi's voice. "Reid's trying now, but I set his phone on vibrate before I left. Wanted him to sleep himself out, ya know?"

Like a communicable virus, the worry-thread wormed its way across the connection to Morgan. "Where are you guys right now?"

"The marina where they towed the yacht in."

"Okay. We're closer to Hotch. I'm gonna round up Prentiss and go check on him and…"

"Derek, you don't want to abandon your post. Not after putting this much time into it. The way our luck's going with this unsub, she'll show up 15 minutes after you leave."

"Yeah, yeah…right." Disappointment at not being rescued from the tedium of his job made Morgan sigh. "Fine. I'll send Prentiss over. I'll stay here. Just in case."

"Sounds good. Talk to you later…"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I…I…" As much as he tried, Hotch couldn't make the things tumbling through his mind form into words.

He still wasn't sure whether or not he was suffering from residual effects of being drugged. There was something surreal about the entire situation in which he found himself.

It might be that he was physically weak and the shock of Megan's appearance in his room…in my shower!...and her bold probing into his childhood, a place no one was allowed to trespass, had rendered him emotionally weak as well. But nothing seemed quite…solid. And when he tried to focus, it was like struggling through snowdrifts…cottony and resistant and so, so tiring. For a moment, he thought he must have misunderstood what she was asking him.

He blinked at her. The compassionate look in her eyes was at odds with the gun in her hand. And the questionable contents of the champagne flute between them.

"W-What? What did you want t-to know?" Hotch clutched the towel circling his waist. It was the only thing available that could give him any sense of security at all. One of the fractured facets of his mind gave a childlike titter, poking fun at the big, bad FBI agent who felt about his towel the way a toddler would about the ratty, old bit of comfortable cloth he'd drag around with him…a security blanket. Blankie, the little voice crowed. Aaron's got a blankie…

Megan leaned closer, engaging this man's dark eyes that held equal parts puzzlement and fear. "What was your father like? Tell me, Aaron."

"I…uh…" What's wrong with me!? You don't have to tell her the truth, Hotchner! Say anything! But that thick, cottony sensation was wrapping around his brain.

"Look, if you'd rather we end this right now…" Megan nudged the champagne flute closer to Hotch with the snub-nose of her gun. "…you can drink and call it a day." But something in his eyes…his expression…stopped her from making any more threats.

A faint crease marred her otherwise perfect brow. "Aaron? Aaron, can you hear me?"

Hotch squeezed his eyes shut, hoping it would help whatever was happening to him if he blocked out as many stimuli as possible. But it only brought back the episode of being fully under the drug's control, and having none of his own. His lids shot open, his breathing rough from the momentary reminder.

And Megan wasn't across the table from him anymore.

Before he could react, something soft descended onto his shoulders, making him startle and shiver, but controlling hands kept him from turning around to confront what he was sure was a new danger, another attack. And she still had her gun. The barrel was barely visible in his peripheral vision.

"Put this on." The unsub's voice was gentle as she moved back to her chair, but held all the command Hotch felt he'd lost to places unknown.

Not unknown…just very, very old and buried deep…you might fool everyone else, Agent Hotchner, but you can't fool me…Aaron's got a blankie!... He tried to push the past back down where it belonged, doubling over with the effort.

"Stop it, Aaron!" Megan's words were whiplash keen. She didn't know what was wrong, but she was no fool. She realized their time together was limited. Sooner or later one of the others would show up. She intended to be done before then. "Sit up! NOW!"

Hotch unfolded himself, leaning as far back as the chair would allow, head falling back, exposing his throat. He felt the soft cloth against his neck and shoulders. Forcing his breath toward more normal rhythm, he realized she'd draped the hotel courtesy robe over him.

That small kindness broke through the cottony banks that muffled him.

Shivering, despite the warm, Dallas afternoon, he released his choke-hold on his towel in favor of slipping into the greater security of the robe. "Thank you." Even under duress, Hotch was a gentleman; courtesy so ingrained it was second nature to extend it.

"What was that all about?" Megan still sounded commanding, just not quite so brittle.

Hotch shook his head. "I don't know. I don't feel so good."

The unsub's derisive snort challenged him. "You unravel all the dark, little secrets in others for a living, but you 'don't know'?" She leaned forward, trying to force eye contact…failing. "God, Aaron. I've had my shrink sessions just like every good little rich girl…" She lifted one shoulder in a delicate half-shrug. "…at least until Daddy left, taking all his money with him…so even a non-pro like me knows what panic attacks look like." Her voice softened again. "And I don't think being here with me is what set it off…do you?"

Hotch tried to cuddle deeper into the plush robe.

"It's him, isn't it?" Her eyes had been verging on tears a number of times. Finally, some spilled over.

A part of Hotch that wasn't railing at his weakness, that still clung to his professionalism, noticed how Megan's moods seemed to shift and flow like quicksilver. Devolving, it whispered. Dangerous...Unpredictable…

"My father did the same to me, Aaron. He ruined my life. And to hell with those people who say you can pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get on with it anyway! You can't! You can't! We can't!"

She was crying full-out now, tears flowing in rapid succession down cheeks ruddy with emotion. "And you just answered the biggest question of all. We don't heal! We don't get over it! What our fathers do to us never goes away! It's a life sentence…" She sobbed, seeing a soul-deep sorrow in Hotch that confirmed her worst fears. "We'll never be whole…never be like people whose parents wanted them…And I don't want to live like that…"

Hotch wasn't sure exactly when it started, but he heard the ugly, ragged sound of sobs torn from his own chest. They hurt.

So much so that he didn't notice his phone vibrating importunately near the unsub's elbow.

"I bet your whole life…the way you live it…is because of your father. Am I right? Aaron?"

"Yes." He had to force the word out, but once it was there on the table between them, right alongside the flute of Mimosa, he felt not only the truth of it, but the enormity. The inescapable imprisonment of it.

Megan sniffed back some of her tears, causing Hotch to try to do the same. "I always thought…if I ever had to face a sentence…I always thought…I'd prefer death to a lifetime of punishment…" She eyed the still-fizzing wine, tinted as brightly as a marigold. Slowly, with shaking fingers, she pushed the glass closer to Hotch.

"What about you? Aaron? Did you ever think maybe you'd rather not serve a sentence? You'd rather…" She gulped back the sob-impulse. "…rather end the pain? Ever?"

"Yes." This time the word came out so much more easily.

And the graceful flute of champagne and orange juice really was a pretty color…