A/n hey everyone. Here's the next chapter for you. Thank you all again for reading and commenting. Reviews make me smile.

Disclaimer: It's still the same as always.

"Reid." Hotch said leading the younger man away to an interrogation room down the hall. "There's something I better tell you."

Reid followed his boss into the small and utilitarian room. It was like hundreds of other rooms of its kind with a large, two way mirrors on the left wall and a metal table in the center. There were three chairs around the battered table. The tile on the floor was light gray. It was scuffed and scraped by the shoes of police officers and suspects over the years. Reid's shoes were quiet, they didn't squeak like the tiny noises coming from his bosses shoes. The lack of anything but the sounds from shoes on old tile, was giving him the shivers.

Hotch took one chair and watched Reid sit in the other chair. "I have some information about what might be happening with your investigation in Sleeping Pines."

He saw the confusion on the young man's face and a twinge of guilt fired through him for not being up front with the agent. There was just too much that had happened before Reid's neighbor had gotten him involved.

"Ok… I don't understand but…"

"When I was in the prosecutor's office in Virginia, I worked for ACA Harold Thompson."

"You mean CA Thompson." Reid voice began to take on a bit of a squeak.

"Yes… He was born in California and grew up in Illinois. He went to Yale and his career started back in Illinois. He was an ADA there too, just fifteen years ago. There was a doctor in the area that was working in a nursing home. There were several unexplained deaths that occurred there, too. It was found that the patients had all left their money to this doctor in their wills. They were all women without families, until the last one. She had one son that tried to contest the will and it came out that while she had Alzheimer's, she wasn't terminal. It was determined that all of the women that died were cremated so none of them could be autopsied, including the last one. Now Harry had his suspicions, but couldn't prove anything. The doctor left the nursing home and came to Virginia where it happened again and now he's in a third nursing home. I know this man, and he knows me, which is why I didn't want to tell you what I knew until there was sufficient proof to get the warrants we need.

Reid sat stunned, not knowing what to say to his boss. He wanted to be mad that Hotch had been tight lipped, but it seemed like Hotch had a good reason for what he had done by leaving Reid and JJ out of the loop for this investigation.

"You said that the doctor knows you," Reid said.

"Yes, I was young and more idealistic. I went in there without a warrant and the judge let him go on that technicality. It was my fault for not playing by the rules." Hotch said with a rueful smile. "If I seem at times to have my tie knotted a little too tight, it's because I know the importance of doing this job the right way."

The anger that had been building in Reid was deflated and he suddenly had the urge to laugh. "How did you know that Morgan jokes about you needing to loosen your tie a bit?" He blurted out without thinking.

Hotch wanted to laugh at the flush that swept over his young friend's face, but he kept his reaction to a smile. "Now that's a trade secret." He told Reid.

"So… What's the name of this doctor we need to pick up?" Reid asked.

His phone rang, interrupting what Hotch was about to say. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw the name on the caller ID. "Hey Garcia… what do you have for me.

"Hey handsome… You were right about the women. I ran all of the photos through my new little program and it found a pattern. You never cease to amaze me with what that brain of yours comes up with on its own.

Now first things first, every victim worked for a company that had some kind of party, or celebrations at the parks where they were found dumped. Three of the women worked as real estate agents, one was an architect and the other three were brokers. All of them attended the company parties last summer, and all of them were held around the time of the forth of July.

All of the tables in the parks were stripped and repainted by the same company last spring, as part of a city wide cleanup effort, or beautification project. The company that was contracted to do the job is 'We Paint it Right Inc.' the owner is Richard Sampson. The company has been in business as a family business since nineteen forty-five. He has a fifty man crew. That job was the biggest they handled last year, and they had to put on ten extra men to do it."

"Is there any one person that was on all the jobs at the same time?" Reid asked when his friend stopped for breath.

"Yes… there were seven men at every work site. One of them moved out of state three months ago. Two of the others were some of the temporary workers and they still live in Portland. One was killed in a hunting accident last fall. The other three still work on the crew."

"Can you shoot me the names and addresses?"

"I'm already on it, sweet cheeks," she said cheerily

"Thanks Garcia… I have some more work for you regarding the case I talked to you about yesterday." Reid told her, one finger in his ear as he and Hotch left the interrogation room and headed back to the conference room.

"Sure thing honey… you got a name for me to run?"

"Not yet… I'll have to call you back when I get it."

He hung up his phone. "Reid… you need to get back to Washington. I know how much Esther Warburton means to you. We can handle things here.

Reid just looked at his boss. He was feeling more torn than he ever had in his life. He wanted to stay here and find this man who thought he was invincible, but he didn't want someone else to get hurt in DC while he was away. Mrs. Warburton was kind of like a mom to him. Speaking of moms, his mother was in care like Esther's friend. What if someone tried to hurt her? He'd want someone in Las Vegas to help when he wasn't there.

"Reid… I want you to relay the information that Garcia just gave you, and then I want you on a plane back to Quantico. We can handle it."

The entered the conference room and the rest of the team looked up with equal expressions of concern and curiosity at the quick exit they had made.

"Is everything alright," Rossi directed to Hotch?

"Yeah… we have some new information from Garcia regarding out case. Reid is going to fill us in and then I'm sending him back to Quantico.

There was a general uproar, but Hotch silenced them. "He'll tell you about it later."

JJ tried to meet Reid's eyes but he didn't look her way. He told them about Garcia's call and what he'd figured out from the crime scene photos and the geographical profile. They split up to go interview the men on the painting crew, taking officers as back up with them in case they got lucky. Reid hoped it would be easy for them this time.

He headed out to the elevator with an officer. The young office took out to the jet and Reid was strapping into his seat for take off, when his phone rang again. "Hey Reid… It's Hotch… I never told you the name of the doctor I investigated…

Sondra Jackson had finished her shift. It was ten pm and her feet hurt something terrible. "You would think I would be used to it by now." She grumbled to herself, while pulling on a jacket, "So much for the shoes being the best thing in foot care since sliced bread!"

She grabbed her purse and keys. The feeling that she was being watched was more and more pronounced as she walked out to her car. It wasn't just the cameras the nursing home had for security. It was more than that. Everything had started to feel wrong when the nice Dr Reid had come to visit and Tommy had reacted so badly to some bad man. Who was the bad man in the noisy shoes, or black shoes? It didn't make any sense to her. While the doctors wore black or brown shoes, none of them had squeaky shoes!

"Come on Sondra… Tommy is autistic… He's not going to talk straight. He probably means something else."

Yeah… that was it. She approached her little Honda Civic and began to look for the keys she thought she'd put in her jacket pocket. They weren't there, so she looked through her purse in the light of the street lamps and couldn't find them. After looking three times everywhere she could think of, she had to admit that they were gone.

"Great… fabulous… Damn it!" She yelled at the car.

She was just turning to go back to the nursing home when she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. "Oh…" She said, looking at the person behind her. "It's you!"