Chapter Two

"Next year we're going up in a hot air balloon, Reid," said Morgan as they drove along the gravel road that led back to the Amish farmland.

"Yeah, you enjoy that Morgan..." Reid sipped his coffee and regretted lying awake the night before. He didn't like to take sleeping pills, and herbals didn't take. He had been a prisoner of his racing thoughts for hours, finally surrendering to a blissful three hours of slumber.

"Ah no! You're going Kiddo! Thirtieth! Gotta go big!"

"We could just tie him in it...let it go," smiled Agent Emily Prentiss from the back seat. She and Agent Jennifer "J.J." Jureau exchanged a bemused look.

"Ha ha ha!" Reid retorted with a fake laugh. "I'll be taking a vacation that week."

The rolling Wisconsin farmland had become bright green from a nourishing midnight rain. White Amish houses dotted the landscape here and there - their additions and wings stuck on seemingly haphazardly to accommodate generations of family. No tire tracks marred the lanes, no sign of combines decorated the farmyards. Power lines were scarce. And occasional phone booth appeared, set out alone at the edge of a field to be used only in case of emergency.

"Why don't they use electricity?" Morgan mused, "Why not put the phone in the damn house?"

"They aren't against electricity and phones," Reid heard himself explaining, "they believe that things like that hurt the family life...like cars make it easy to travel away from home too often, and TV distracts, and phones, computers..."

"Everything that makes a family want to spend time away from each other..." said Prentiss thoughtfully, looking at the men working in the fields, a team of draft horses pulling their mechanized tiller. They kept their straw hats on, even while working. The married men grew beards with no mustache, the younger unmarried men clean-shaven. Their hair grew to the bottom of their ears and sometimes longer, giving them an old-fashioned, wild appearance even beyond the dark trousers and suspenders. The bright blue of their shirts competed with the blue of the sky. "I've seen them wear black hats sometimes..." she continued.

"For formal dress and Sundays," said Reid with his usual authoritative tone, "the straw hats are cooler for summer."

Hotch and Rossi were waiting in the driveway at the farm of Amos Yoder when they pulled into the lane. Hotch had parked away from the house and walked the rest of the way in, leaving the car a respectful distance away from the house. He had brought someone with him from town, as the agents could tell by the non-Amish dress. As they rolled closer, they realized it was Aubrey Bennett. Her dog Griff was with them.

"Hello again," she said to Morgan as the four walked up the lane. "I didn't meet you last night," she said to J.J., and stepped forward to shake Agent Jureau's' hand. Reid stood back nervously, and hoped Hotch would get down to business before there was any uncomfortable silence amongst the group. As he glance away from Aubrey toward the house and grounds, he noticed that the sunlight rendered her hair a dark reddish auburn. The lack of purple tint told him it was her natural color. He wondered how rare that was statistically in the American Midwestern population - true redheads. And hers wasn't that showy fiery-red, or orangey-red, but rather it was deep brown-red. Unusual.

He forced himself to walk away from the group and study the fields between this house and that of the Troyer farm where they were the night before. Maybe two miles. And this was the nearest to that farm. "A car could have easily taken those kids, and no one would have noticed. It's far between households..." he said loudly over his shoulder.

"But why?" Rossi repeated their question from over dinner the night before, "Why kill the adults and take the children?" The dogs had followed a trail across the fields, through a stand of oak trees, and onto a quiet part of the county road, where they had abruptly lost the scent. No trace of clothing, no stray shoe, nothing had been found, although police-led search teams of volunteers still walked the fields this morning in hopes of finding any scrap, any clue of what had befallen the missing children. No one spoke aloud of their first educated guess - not in front of Aubrey - that the kids had been taken by pedophiles. Disappearing into the wide Wisconsin countryside by night, in the custody of practiced, expert kidnappers, they might never be found now. It made more sense now to hunt for the murderers than to focus on a hunt for missing kids, regardless of how desperate the community was to find them.

"Everything is weird this morning," Aubrey was saying, hugging herself against an imaginary morning chill, "everyone in town...they feel a kinship to these people. These kids could be anyone's. Those women..." she trailed off, unable to speak any more of the horror aloud.

"I brought Miss Bennett here to guide us," Hotch said, "She can help us understand these people. It's important not to alienate them. We need them to talk."

"And that won't be easy.." added Rossi.

"Reid, Mr. Yoder has agreed to let you speak to Leah. The other man you met last night is his son-in-law, Leah's father. I think you may have to talk to her with them in the room, but we'll try to get them out of the house. Emily, you go in with Reid. If you need Miss Bennett...she is already familiar to the family."

Reid walked beside Prentiss up the porch steps, and knocked softly on the door. Their eyes met nervously, and Reid offered a weak smile. The door opened and they were met by the pleasant, quiet face of the woman from last night who sat sewing while they talked. "Hello," she said, and smiled at Prentiss. "Come in, come in."

The large kitchen was cool and smelled of woodsmoke and bacon. "I have coffee," the woman said. "Leah!" she called up the stairs.

"Uh. .. I love coffee!" said Reid enthusiastically. Prentiss looked at him sharply, and he wondered if he had somehow violated some minute rule of etiquette. They nervously sat down at the table.

Leah entered with her grandfather on her heels. She didn't greet the agents, but went about helping fetch the coffee, unbidden. Reid noticed her eyes were swollen but dry, her cheeks chapped from salt. She'd had a rough night. Cookies were placed before them, and cream and sugar. Mrs. Yoder placed two large mugs of coffee before them, and Leah slid into a chair across from them. Mr. Yoder stood by, hovering at the side of the room, watching silently. Reid tried to ignore his presence.

"Leah," he began gently, "I know you are very tired." He paused. "It's very important that you try to remember everything you can for us. So that we can catch the people who did this and who have your sister and brother. Can you try for me?"

"She doesn't remember," stated Mr. Yoder flatly. The ensuing silence was deafening. Reid heard Prentiss sipping her coffee beside him, her breathing irregular. He looked at the girl, his eyes falling on her hands which lay folded on the table. They were trembling. The trembling was faint, but he saw it, running up her arms to her shoulders. She refused to meet his eyes.

"Leah," he said again gently,"what happened when you ran into the woods? How did you leave without them seeing you? Did you see them?" He paused again, giving her space to answer. Space to calm herself.

Suddenly she made a sound, but it wasn't a word. It was a barely stifled sob. She raised her eyes to her grandfather, glassy with fatigue and new tears.

"That is enough!" Amos Yoder bellowed, not moving from his stance by the wall. "This will not help to find my grandchildren! Why are you not out searching for them? This talk is not going to help!"

"Mr. Yoder," said Prentiss slowly and firmly, "We need to know more about the men who did this so that we know where to look. If we find them, we can find your grandchildren."

Reid bit his tongue. But we don't know if they will be found alive... He chose, as he often did, to trust Prentiss'judgment. "You need to let Leah try to remember everything she can to help us," she continued.

"I will not," the old man answered firmly. "She has suffered enough. You should do your job and go out and find my grandchildren." He then addressed Leah in their language and she rose and left the kitchen. Without another word, he strode to the kitchen door and went outside.

Reid and Prentiss sat through a few moments of awkward silence with Mrs. Yoder, and Reid calmly sipped his coffee and munched a cookie. "My husband is only concerned for our Leah," said the Amish woman, and forced an embarrassed smile. "We are very...we have not had sleep last night. He is tired. He is a good man." She rose to tend to dishes in the sink.

Prentiss slowly stood and pulled Reid up by the sleeve. "We appreciate your hospitality, Mrs. Yoder. We understand that this is difficult." Reid stuffed two cookies into his pocket before Mrs. Yoder turned back to them, "Perhaps Leah will have something to say later," she offered.

"Yes, of course."

Reid and Prentiss walked out into the sunshine discouraged. Hotch would be disappointed in their failed effort to glean more information from the girl. But the old man was making it impossible. And there seemed to be no way to speak to her alone.

J.J. and Aubrey were standing in the yard speaking to one another and Reid and Prentiss joined them. Hotch and Rossi walked toward them from the barn, where they had been speaking to an angry Mr. Yoder. "He's hiding something," said Hotch.

"What makes you say that?" asked Reid.

"Just a feeling. He's way too defensive."

"You don't think that is just... because he is Amish?"

Suddenly Aubrey gave Griff a loud "Lie Down!Stay!," broke from the group and ran down the lane. A buggy had turned into the lane, and the horse had begun to balk when he saw the automobiles - an unfamiliar site in a familiar lane. The driver - Leah's father - tried to force the horse to pass, but he began to back up. Several children inside cried out in alarm. Aubrey stopped in front of the frightened animal and then slowly approached him from the side, speaking softly, and catching the reins. She said something to Ezra Troyer, and he nodded. Aubrey slowly led the horse and buggy past the cars. Griff, sensing the command had expired, happily trotted toward her.

"I'm sorry," said Hotch, approaching Troyer as he hopped out of the buggy, and turned to lift a child down. "I didn't think about the horses."

"No problem," answered the man, without a smile.

"We tried to speak to Leah," continued Hotch. "But your father-in-law was not comfortable enough to allow her to speak to us freely."

Troyer turned to face Hotch. "He might know best," he said. Then he turned and strode toward the barn.

Hotch breathed out slowly, a sigh of exasperation. "All right, let's regroup. Let's go back to the station and look at what we have."

Morgan joked with Aubrey as he walked back down the lane with her toward the parked SUV's. Reid watched the braid that held back her hair, marveling at its color, and wondered what her hair smelled like. He imagined Morgan would know, soon enough.

~~/~~

Waiting for lab results was always maddening. The forensics team had recovered hair, fiber, saliva and seminal samples from the bodies of the two murdered women. Processing these for possible identification took time, and if the owners of the samples weren't in any database, the time was ultimately wasted. Penelope Garcia had checked every record in Wisconsin for names of possible serial pedophiles. But no one had seemed to be a likely culprit. This was further narrowed to those young enough, mobile enough, and connected enough to organize a kipnapping - and also murder any protective adults who were in the way. Garcia had come up with next to nothing.

Each member of the team coped with these down times in their own ways. It was part of the job, part of keeping one's bearings, keeping sane. Prentiss donned shorts and explored the village at a steady running pace. JJ sorted photos of her toddler Henry into a scrapbook, complete with meticulous dates and memories of his every accomplishment. Rossi wrote. Hotch read. Morgan chatted up the local female shopkeepers, collecting the phone numbers of the most attractive. Reid normally inhaled a foreign book, but today he was exhausted.

The team discussed over lunch the futility of what they had gathered thus far. Aubrey answered various questions about the Amish culture. She had grown fascinated by it early in life, and at thirteen years of age had finally been informed that her uncle grew up in an Amish household. A gold mine - right before her eyes! She had applied to college at a Pennsylvania school, so that she could attend classes and achieve a certification in Amish studies. Her thesis for the program had discussed the rarity of violence and crime amongst the Amish, and the reasons for this phenomenon. The rare cases of violent domestic crimes had been nationally publicized and could be counted on one hand. A few were horrific. Although she had to visit the details of those cases for her studies, Aubrey was more interested in why these things didn't occur more often...in what the Amish were doing right.

Sometimes, she had thought about the good fortune of those women born into that quiet life, and how impossible it would be for a single women to enter it from the outside. A woman with no man to support her, no family within the Amish community, would have no hope of surviving. The family connections, the marriages were vital to the survival of individuals within the community. Being born into the Amish way of life guaranteed safety. Even the elderly and infirm and disabled were cared for by the community, never the outside. No one was left alone to starve, or even know loneliness. Every individual was expected to conform, to follow God's laws, but every individual mattered. No one was abandoned. Even in the practice of banning - a punishment only inflicted on the already baptized (the Amish were baptized as adults, and by choice) - was in Amish eyes an act of tough love. The hope was always that the lost one would return to God's laws and the embrace of the community and loved ones.

Aubrey often watched the traffic in town, listened to the buzz of computers, the singing of cell-phones, televisions, various motors and engines. Always the noise of the modern lifestyle. And in her deepest soul she resented being on the outside of the Amish. But then she picked up her violin, or popped in a CD, and knew there were some things she was grateful to have known in her life, things she would have never been able to give up... even for an Amish man. She never shared these thoughts with anyone...she knew they were too ridiculous. And she could never find adequate words.

Aubrey lived alone with Griffon. She had been orphaned when a small child, when her parents died in a storm on a Wisconsin lake. A fishing trip gone bad. She didn't remember them. She had been taken in by an elderly couple in town, who were close to her parents - sort of surrogate parents to her parents. She had been raised in a generous Christian home, simply and gently, with unrelenting love. She knew she had much for which to be always grateful. Edith had passed away from cancer when Aubrey was 22, and William the next year followed her, his broken heart giving out.

Aubrey had attended graduate school, putting aside her grief, clinging to the dignity of a fierce self-composure. One semester she found herself the subject of the attention of a young history professor. John was pleasant, handsome enough, fearless and well-traveled. He taught her things, he courted her with open enthusiastic determination. It didn't occur to him she would hold out forever, and it didn't occur to her that she should.

Three years later, she had found herself with a history degree, a budding writing career, and a full-time job training search and rescue dogs. And yet, nothing in her life made sense. She had grown to hate the man she lived with, and to hate herself. Breaking away from John had been the toughest thing she had ever done. . more than earning the degree, more than all the death and loss and sorrow in her life. Walking away from him had been torturous, not because she cared for him, God knows, but because it all was safely familiar, and the step into a life of intentional solitude was terrifying. Alone once more - as seemed to be her curse and her place in life. The relationship had left her with scars that made her determined to live without men, without their hands or their mouths on her. These things were now disgusting. She wondered sometimes how other women enjoyed those things...how it was that she came to be so... defective.

This night, Aubrey walked across the local park with Griffon and wondered how these missing children might ever be found. She had seen the looks the FBI people gave one another, heard the exhaustion in their voices. She knew it didn't look hopeful. And she knew that the Amish were not helping.

She had reached the center of downtown and was turned to start home again, when she heard a voice call her name. Derek Morgan was waving to her from the opposite side of the steet. He trotted across the meet her.

"Hi Pretty Lady. Have you eaten?"

"Yes, with you all, four hours ago, remember?" She smiled.

Griffon sniffed Derek's pants and licked his hand. "Well then. How about a drink?"

Aubrey looked down at Griffon, smiling softly, and started to make an excuse.

"Come on! Tomorrow something will come up and we will all have to be back on the case. Let's have some fun."

"Agent Morgan, I'm not ... I don't really get into that sort of fun." She cocked her head at him and smirked a smile. He wasn't backing down. "One drink, then I need to get home."

"Done! Come on!"

~~/~~

Three hours later, Aubrey and Agent Morgan stepped out of "Youngstown's Only Saloon," one of three bars in town. Aubrey stooped to untie Griff from his lamp post, from which he had been greeting various passers-by and enjoying himself thoroughly. His master had been seated by a window and watched him as she listened to Morgan's friendly banter, and marveled at the sheer confidence of the man. It never occurred to him that she wouldn't be interested, a character trait that reminded her of John, and thoroughly unsettled her. But she did appreciate a few hours of company, and for all she knew he was not so selfish a lover as John had been.

Morgan was feeling the ale and the warm night air, and cheerily offered to walk her home.

"It's all right," she said, "Griffon will take care of me, really."

Morgan opened his mouth to offer an argument, but stopped, gazing past her shoulder as someone approached. "Reid! What are you doing out here? It's eleven o'clock."

Reid nodded briefly to Aubrey as she turned to look at him. "I do take walks, Morgan." He summed up the situation quickly. Apparently, Morgan wasn't wasting any time. "I'm just going back to the hotel now." He looked at Aubrey, again startled by the intensity of her eyes, even here in the light of a streetlamp. He forced himself to look away. "Bye," and walked away. "See you tomorrow Morgan," he called back.

Morgan chuckled and shook his head. "Crazy kid."

"Why do you say that?" Aubrey allowed him to fall into step beside her as she started to head toward home.

"He lives in his own world," Morgan smiled,"Good kid. Good heart. He's a genius. Not in the same place as the rest of us." He laughed again.

As they walked, Aubrey thought about the encounter with Reid, and tried to occasionally keep up with Morgan's chatter out of politeness. She knew she was being pursued, and she didn't find any pleasure in it. Men called her beautiful behind her back, she knew. She knew because other women joked about it, or resented her for it. They didn't know the unwelcome attention it brought. The rude comments under a man's breath as he passed her on the street, the humiliation of trying to ask for help at the hardware store while the male clerk scanned her figure head to toe and neglected to meet her eyes. The fear of living alone before she found Griffon. No, Morgan's type were a dime a dozen. She had known one well. She had slept with one, let him touch her. And she wasn't interested now.

It surprised her when her mind keep going back to Spencer Reid. Quiet, soft-spoken, solitary Spencer. She wondered what he thought about, if he ever thought about women, thought about her. Maybe he was gay. He was so pretty, almost effeminate, but there was something very male behind his gaze. His hair had fallen into his eyes when he spoke to them in front of the bar, and he had brushed it back with a practiced motion, and quickly dropped his eyes from hers. And now she remembered that she had felt herself blush as he did.

When they reached her house, Morgan took the key from her hand and leaned over her to unlock the door and push it open. She felt the hair rise on her neck as he did. His eyes scanned the interior before he stepped back to let her pass. She knew he wanted an invitation and felt mildly annoyed by it. She forced her warmest smile, "Thank you, Agent Morgan. It was so nice to ... spend a few hours with you."

Derek's eyes searched hers for a hint of hesitation and he didn't find it. He gave in. "Goodnight, Miss Bennett" he smiled. He walked merrily toward the sidewalk again, determined that next time he wouldn't be leaving her at the door.

Aubrey locked and chained the door, watched him walk down the sidewalk, and chuckled to herself. An hour later she lay in bed unable to sleep. She leaned over and fished around in the dark for earphones, and switched on Mozart. She lay back and closed her eyes, trying to let the music seep into her tense muscles, and fought to keep Spencer Reid's face out of her mind.