*Author's Note* Sorry this upload was a little slow, I just wanted to make sure I was getting this one right, plus I had some class stuff to take care of and I fixed a couple of issues that a commenter found in Chapter 2 (Chapter 1: Victimology) Thank you again to FCOL for the information :). Anyway thanks for all the readership and feedback guys, really appreciate it and I'm really glad you're all enjoying the story. Here's the next chapter:

Chapter 3: Past and Future

Two hours later, Reid pushed open the door and entered what had been James' dorm room at CLMU. It was a private room, he hadn't had a roommate, and his mother hadn't come yet to pack up her son's belongings, so everything was exactly as James had left it when he'd left for the routine appointment that had landed him back in the OR.

It looked like a normal teenager's dorm room… all the furniture appeared to be standard university issue, made of a thin but study wood with a light brown/dark tan stain. There were posters on the walls of baseball and basketball players, school pennants, basketball and debate trophies sat on a shelf above the dresser… the bed was covered by a royal blue and navy plaid comforter, which the ghost was now sitting on.

The ghost child watched Reid intently as he examined the rest of the room, as though he was waiting for something.

Reid noticed this and poked his head back out into the hallway to make sure there was no one within earshot.

Once satisfied, he turned his attention to the boy.

"Quid vultis nosse?" he whispered. What is it you want me to notice?

The boy's answer was silent, but as always, he made himself understood… he walked over to James' desk, taped onto the shelving unit built into the desk's surface, was an old photograph. The ghost pointed at it, or more specifically, the children in it.

Reid gently lifted it off the desk to take a closer look. In the photo, a young James, who couldn't have been older than four or five years old when it was taken, was standing next to two other small children. They were standing in a driveway in front of an open garage. James was on the far left, wearing a red shirt and red and navy shorts, holding a basketball which was also red and navy blue. Next to him, in the center, wearing jeans and a red and blue letterman jacket, stood a boy that Reid actually recognized. In the photo, he was a little younger, and his hair was more strawberry-blond than its current auburn… but it was unmistakably the ghost who now stood beside him….

"Hoc est tibi?" Is this you? Reid asked, showing him the photo.

The ghost answered by nodding in the affirmative.

"Matthew est nomen tuum?" Is your name Matthew? Reid asked in a hushed voice.

The boy nodded again.

So that was it… Bo and Matthew weren't just two friends who had both died prematurely, they were victims who had been killed by the same person… Now Reid understood… the hospital wasn't that far from the hotel they'd stayed in the last time they were in Chicago… Matthew had decided to haunt him, in an effort to protect the friend he knew was in danger… but Reid hadn't caught on fast enough and now James was dead too…so why was Matthew still with him?

Matthew blinked and turned back to the photo, as if to say: There's still more to see.

Taking the hint, Reid examined the photograph again. The third child, the one on the far right, was a little girl who was maybe one or two years older than her friends, wearing a pink jumper with little white polka-dots and a white blouse underneath it, she had brown hair and glasses, and was also holding a basketball.

Reid was about to ask him who the girl was, but that's when his phone began to ring.

"Hi Garcia…"

"Reid, I already told Hotch but for some reason the conference call didn't work. I found something…"

"What did you find?"

"You know that kid, Matthew Ethridge?"

"Yeah…"

"Well it turns out that he died when a case of pneumonia that his parents originally thought was just the flu quickly turned into endocarditis and sepsis… that's not surprising given his medical history but here's the surprising part, the antibiotics that his doctor ordered for him, weren't the ones found in his bloodstream during the autopsy…"

"Which ones did the ME find?" Reid asked.

"Penicillin… but he was prescribed something called rocephin…Hotch told me to look for something fishy about these kids deaths and that is definitely fishy, isn't it?"

"Yes it is… someone messed up somewhere whether it was intentional or not… rocephin is used to treat bacterial pneumonia but only when it's caused by penicillin resistant strains of streptococcus pneumonia bacteria… it wouldn't make any sense to give him penicillin when based on the original prescription penicillin wouldn't do anything…"

"Exactly… the unsub could have mixed up his meds…" Garcia theorized. "That would kill him right?"

"That would do it…it would also be less risky for the unsub because it wouldn't be immediately apparent that he was was withholding anything since there would still be an IV hanging at his bedside…"

"I'll keep looking for similar issues in the other cases…"

"Ok, thank you so much Garcia…"

"You're welcome, Garcia out…" She told him before hanging up.

Right after his call with Garcia he saw JJ standing in the doorway…

"Was that Garcia…?" She asked.

Reid nodded.

"We were right… there's definitely an angel of death operating in Chicago…the question is how James fits in to all this. I mean he could've been an idealized target like Morgan suggested, but from what he and Hotch got from the security footage at the gas station I think it's something more than that…I mean angels of death don't usually kill people that they know outside of the patient/care-giver relationship…"

"Well maybe he attacked James for a reason more specific than that. I just talked to his Academic Advisor, he said that James declared his major within a month of his first semester starting. He chose psychology, and apparently he was very, very interested in abnormal psych and criminology… what if James was on to him…?" JJ asked.

"If that's the case, he was a victim of necessity, not opportunity… which is probably why he came after him even after he left the hospital…"

"But is there any evidence of that?" JJ asked.

"Well, it's safe to say he definitely missed his friend…" Reid replied, handing her the photo.

"The boy in the middle is the same one from the house James used to drive by all the time right?" She asked.

"Yeah…"

"Even if James just thought that his friend's death was suspicious and started poking around that could have been enough to catch the unsub's notice."

"And if he was right and he was getting too close, whether he fit the unsub's normal parameters or not, he would have had to eliminate him…" Reid concluded. "We've seen it before when Jason Battle shot Garcia because he thought she was linking his cases..."

JJ nodded. "What do you want to bet that is exactly what happened? Except…if that's what happened, why wouldn't James have gone to the local police?" She asked.

"He probably didn't have enough evidence to back up his theory and get the police to look into it, that and he probably knew that even if he managed that there would still be jurisdiction issues in terms of who would handle the case… they both lived in Woodridge but Matthew died here in Chicago. That means that the case would fall into the hands of the local field office and they'd have been even harder to convince."

"Then we need to find out how much James knew and who might have known he had the information. Plus there's another identification we need to make and fast…" JJ told him, pointing at the girl in the photograph.

"Agreed…"

They took a picture of the photo to send to Garcia and then bagged the original for evidence. Once they had done that, they left the university to meet up with the others at the local field office. As always, Matthew followed Reid out and got into the backseat of the vehicle.

Reid called Garcia back once they got on the road and put her on speaker.

"Hello my friends…cute pic by the way, does someone want to tell me how it's connected to our case?" Garcia asked.

"It's a photo we found in James Kirkland's dorm room, the boy in the middle is Matthew Ethridge, the only other victim we've confirmed, and we think the little girl next to him could also be on our unsub's list of targets so we need to identify her as quickly as possible…" Reid explained.

"Ok, but I'm going to need more than an old photo to find her you guys, any more parameters?"

"She looks to be about five or six years old in the photo which makes her roughly one to two years older than James and Matthew which would put her in her early twenties currently. She probably grew up within three hours of Woodridge and most likely also suffers from some form of CHD…"

"I'm checking, but again… full medical records not easy to get…"

"We need to find her and fast Garcia, if she is our unsub's next target then we either need to find him and bring him in or we need to find her and put her into protective custody…" JJ told her.

"Anything else?" Garcia asked.

"We think James might have known that Matthew's death wasn't entirely natural, check his social media and go through his computer for evidence of that and who else might have known about James' suspicions…"

"I am all over it…" She replied.

"Thanks Garcia..." They told her before hanging up.

Reid looked up in the rearview mirror, Matthew was kneeling on top of the seat in the middle, he used the mirror to return Reid's gaze with that now familiar pleading look, but this time there was something new in those blue-green eyes...fear...