A/N: Sorry this took so long. I finally made ot back from Dad's, and survived another week at work. Anyway, I hope you all have a merry Christmas, and remember, reviews make a great Christmas present!
Morgan woke up to someone pounding on the lodge door and shouting his and Reid's names. "What the-" He rolled over and sat up before the shouting came again.
"Reid! Morgan! Wake up, please! Teri's missing! Doc too! Hurry!"
Finally awake enough to comprehend, Morgan sprinted to the door. As he was unlocking it, Reid sat up, too. "Huh? Wha…?"
"Wake up, Reid. Teri's missing." He opened the door to see a very distressed-looking Trevor, his short red hair messy, wearing the same t-shirt he had on the night before.
Reid scrambled out of bed, pulling on his shirt and trying to button it straight. Trevor rushed in around Morgan, somewhere between 'all business' and terrified out of his mind'. "She and Doc were still here when I left last night, she was trying to unhook her DVD player, right? And then she was going to give Doc a ride home and come on from there."
Morgan nodded, confirming what he knew of the plan. "They were out of here not five minutes behind you."
Reid had succeeded in getting dressed, and ran his fingers through his hair and joined Morgan and the worried brother in the doorway. "What do you mean, missing?"
Trevor was pacing, frantically trying to get a grip on his emotions. He was trying to hard to be the Clayton County sheriff, but was looking so much like a frightened young boy. "I mean she didn't come home, she didn't show up for her shift at the ambulance service, Doc didn't show up at the hospital. She's two hours late, he's an hour. Teri has worked with bronchitis, pneumonia, she wouldn't even call in when she was septic after her tooth got infected. She hung the patient's IV fluid on one hook, her antibiotics from her PICC line on the other. If she's not there and she's not home, something is bad wrong!"
Morgan looked at Reid, who's eyes were wide with worry. "Go get Hotch and Gideon." Reid was on his way before the phrase was halfway out, leaving Morgan to help the young sheriff. "OK, Trevor, was Teri particularly close to either of the two victims?"
"Huh?" Trevor asked, confused enough to stop him in his pacing. "Not really. She went to high school with Robert and Jason, but they didn't travel in the same circles. What does that have to do with anything?"
Damn. He was going to have to explain the most hopeful theory, and Trevor wasn't going to go for it. "Well, you know how stressful this job can be. Maybe she just needed…a break?" It even sounded weak to his ears, it had to sound paper-thin to Trevor. Morgan had meant it to sound reassuring, instead, it just sounded condescending.
Yup, definitely condescending. "Hell no! She would NEVER just disappear during a case! We may look like little kids in your eyes, but we are both very dedicated! Maybe even more than our parents were, because we still have to prove ourselves to the likes of you people! We-"
"Easy, son," said Gideon, coming through the connecting door. "I'm sure Morgan didn't mean that she would. We just have to consider all possibilities. You're a cop too, you know he has to ask."
Trevor took a deep breath, and nodded. "Yeah. Go ahead. Do your FBI thing and help me find my sister. She's all the family I have left."
Hotch felt the wave of compassion he usually tried to suppress surge through him, and he put a hand on Trevor's shoulder. "Why don't you sit down?" He guided the boy to the nearby desk chair. Once he was settled, Hotch nodded for Morgan to continue.
"Does Teri have any place that she would go, maybe a friend she would stay the night with or something?"
Trevor looked hopeful. "Maybe! She could have stopped to see her friend Veronica. She goes to church with us and Doc. They could have stopped to visit and just gotten tired. Maybe they just overslept!" He pulled out his cell phone to call the woman. As he started to dial, his radio went off.
"Dispatch to Deputy Mitchell?"
Trevor's eyes widened. "I never thought of that! She'd never sleep through the radio!"
Behind Reid and Emily, Gideon whispered to Hotch, "Do you think she'll answer?"
Hotch shrugged. "I don't know." But he didn't have a good feeling about it.
There was radio silence for several moments. Bradley repeated his message, and still no answer. With trembling hands, Trevor keyed up the radio. "Bradley, this is Trevor. Teri hasn't been seen since last night."
Bradley was quiet for a moment, and keyed up again. "Trevor, you need to call dispatch."
Looking very much like a lost little boy, Trevor dialed his cell phone. He didn't even give a greeting when Bradley answered the phone, just listened. After a few minutes, he finally said, "OK. Thanks. Yeah, I'll keep in touch." He shut the phone and looked at Morgan. "They just found her truck. Crashed into a tree. No sign of her or Doc. Just a little bit of blood."
"No sign of them?" Reid asked.
Trevor shook his head. "None. Not even a…blood trail…to follow. Like they just disappeared."
Morgan got a sick feeling in his stomach. "Trevor, were Teri and Doc close?"
"What do you mean close? They're good friends, he's her mentor, we all go to church together. She'd like to go back to school and be a doctor, and he kinda took her under his wing. Are you suggesting there was more than that to their relationship? That they were…sleeping together…or something?" Morgan turned helplessly to Hotch, begging for a reprieve. He didn't want to say this to this boy. He was used to dealing with grieving families, but this was different. He had gotten to know Trevor, and did not want to suggest what he thought.
Hotch decided to bite the bullet and say it himself, had actually opened his mouth to do so, when the law enforcement official trumped the scared big brother and he put it together. Wide-eyed, he stared straight into Morgan's eyes. "You don't mean that, do you? You mean were they good friends. You mean, would it hurt him to see her in pain, don't you?" Tears filled his amber-colored eyes. "You think your unsub took my sister!"