Seattle, August, 2014

The team gathered back at the police station to discuss what they had so far. Alex and JJ took the two chairs left beside each other, and subconsciously pulled them further apart, turning away from each other. It caused Hotch and Rossi to exchange looks, and Reid to frown.

"Something wrong?" he asked, aiming his question at Blake. She was careful to look completely expressionless when she replied.

"No."

"Blake has a theory about the unsub," JJ said. "Tell them."

"Well, we noticed that on each abduction site, there's a playground in the immediate line of sight from the entrance. Our unsub might use a child to lure the victims away, either to his car or some other location where he can subdue them. While it does seem like it would be too eye-catching with a lone male around the children at the playground, it is possible that he was close by."

"The unsub could be a woman, though," JJ added, but Reid shook his head.

"Not likely. The victim we did find was beaten so hard she was almost unrecognisable, and she had been strangled to death with bare hands. It's not consistent with a woman's strength or usual MO; most women who kill do so by means of poison or drowning."

"So our unsub is a male."

"He could be a father?" Alex suggested. "Asking her for help with his kid? If the kid is obviously not wary of him, the victim probably wouldn't be alarmed."

"And then they would lure her back to their car and somehow subdue her. Interesting theory. Is the child in on this?" Hotch said.

"Could be conditioned to it. Or he or she is just subdued as well. An 'if you don't do this I'll kill your mother instead' type of deal."

"Families that kill together, stick together…" Rossi mumbled. JJ shuddered.

"What I'd like to know is where is the mother in all this?" Alex said. "Does she know? Is she afraid of talking? Is she in on it? Is she dead?"

"Or divorced," Reid chimed in.

Hotch nodded.

"All interesting points. We need to find someone who can tell us who were at those playgrounds in those specific days. It can be difficult, especially since the investigation so far has been… lacking. We need to check all men with children who were at the restaurants around the time of the abductions."

"What if they never went inside and bought anything? Then there will be no surveillance footage and no records of them being at the site, not to mention no witnesses placing them there," Reid said.

"A kid, on the playground outside a McDonald's, and they don't even get a milkshake?" Alex said. "You'd spot that kid - and everyone in their company - from miles away."

JJ actually chuckled a little at her remark and nodded.

"Yeah, Blake is right," she said, much to the other woman's surprise and delight. "Besides, if he's using the kid as a bait and the kid isn't acting afraid of him, he must bribe them with something."

"Buying their love and obedience with junk food. Sounds like about half the divorced fathers I know," Rossi said, accidentally caught Hotch's eye, and added; "present fathers don't count, of course."

Hotch shook his head, but didn't take it personally because he knew it wasn't true for him. However, it was true in many cases, and not only among fathers.

"Also, a child that has been conditioned to this behaviour would see nothing odd about it. That's just 'what daddy and I do'," Rossi finished.

"He might even have turned this into a game for the kid. Like some kind of a twisted treasure hunt," Alex pointed out.

"How old do we think the child is?" JJ asked, and she had to struggle to keep her voice steady. Alex noticed, but she didn't think any of the men did. It was so marginal… and she only knew it because she had once been very finely tuned into Jennifer, for a short period of time, yes, but it had been… it had been intense.

"Somewhere between five to eleven," Reid said. "A child younger than that would be hard to control even with bribes and threats, and an older child would stick out at a playground."

"You don't think he… hurts the child as well, do you?" JJ asked. Alex realised that JJ's own son would fit the age span, and she once more wanted to reach out and touch the younger woman, this time to offer comfort and reassurance, but she once more kept her impulse under tight wraps.

"Almost certainly not," Reid said and launched into a tirade of statistics, but neither JJ nor Blake could forget his initial word.

Almost.

A little while later, JJ and Reid were looking through the surveillance tapes from all the fast food joints while Hotch discussed previous actions with the policemen in charge of the local investigation. Blake and Rossi had gotten the very vague task of coming up with other theories if this one turned out to be a dead end. They thought they had gone through every other possibility, except for those that clearly belonged in "The X-files", but nothing that could be deemed glaringly obvious turned up.

"I still prefer the theory with the child ruse," Rossi said.

"Of course the playgrounds could all be a coincidence and he had another ruse," Alex said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Or he had no ruse at all and just grabbed them."

"Yeah, but in broad daylight on a crowded parking lot with no witnesses? I'm not buying that."

"I'm not saying it makes sense, maybe he was just lucky."

She groaned.

"Why are these guys always so lucky?"

"Not so lucky… we'll catch him."

"Yeah… but he's good."

"He is. But we're the best."

She looked up and smiled at him.

"Yes, we are."

"So, how are you holding up, you and JJ? You seem to have some issues. Does it work out?"

"I hope so, for this case at least. I'll request a transfer when we get back, though," Alex replied, averting her eyes and hoping her clipped tone would keep him from asking any more questions. No such luck, of course.

"I think that would be a huge mistake," he said.

"I think staying on would be a bigger one," she shot back.

"Now you're being too harsh on yourself, Blake. Don't make that decision just yet. Can you at least promise me that? Work this case with us 100 %, and decide after we get back."

"I know I cannot possibly get a better job, but it's not only for myself, I have to think about JJ as well."

Rossi leaned back in his chair and watched her tapping her pen against the table. Nervous tic. Interesting.

"What really happened?"

"I can't say."

"Can't, or won't? Because I have never seen JJ hold a grudge before. She's a sweet kid, quite easy to get along with."

"Obviously I don't."

"I think you should have a talk and sort things out."

"We had a talk in the car earlier. It didn't go so well, so…" she shrugged. "It's okay."

"If at first you don't succeed…" Rossi said. "Talk to her again. If you choose to leave, that is one thing, but you should sort things out with her before, so you can get some closure."

"What would you know about that?"

"I don't even need to be a profiler to know how hard the Amerithrax case hit you. And if my calculations aren't completely off, that would have happened about the same time you met JJ, if she took your class when she was in her senior year."

Alex felt like he had just slapped her in the face.

"What are you getting at?"

"Only that you were in a rather strained situation to begin with. What kind of relationship were you having?"

"She was my student. That's all." That was her official story and she stuck to it. Clung to it by teeth and nails was probably more like it, to be honest.

"You were lovers, weren't you?" Rossi coaxed in a soft, gentle voice.

That wasn't like a slap in the face, more like a punch to the gut. She refused to answer, but her cheeks heated up and answered the question for her.

"I can see the truth written all over your face," he said and gave her shoulder a brief squeeze before she could recoil. "Now, what do you say I go get us some of that horrible coffee they have?"

"Yes, please," she said, pretending to look at the case files when in reality, she was far away. "Rossi?"

He turned around.

"Mhm?"

"Please don't tell anyone, okay?"

"I won't. But think about what I said. I think you'd make a good addition to the team. Don't throw that away without consideration."

"That's not my decision to make," she said. He looked back at her, seeming a tad surprised.

"Yes, it is."

"I can't work side by side with someone that still makes my heart flutter."

"Then talk to her. Maybe you can figure something out."

"I would never have a chance either way. She's married."

"Well, so are you."

Alex was speechless. Rossi gave her a little smile as he went back to the table and sat down.

"At least don't walk away without clearing the air. You'll just end up running for another decade if you do."

"What do you know about that?"

"I know what went down during Amerithrax. The media trashed you, the army practically lynched you, the Bureau turned its back on you, the public ridiculed you. Your husband had just signed on to work with Doctors without borders. Life was not kind to you, Alex. Then you found a ray of light. A spark. A reason to keep living. And you reached for it. Most people would have."

Alex swallowed to hold back a sob.

"She saved my life just by being there, you know. By not judging. I know it would seem to the world like I was some kind of a predator, zeroing in on a young helpless student, but it wasn't like that. She was the strong one. She was the one who lent me some of her light so that I could survive the dark. She was the one who motivated me to get up in the morning, to put on my makeup and go to work, when the only thing I wanted to do was to sit on the floor in the shower and cry."

"So what happened?"

Alex laughed bitterly.

"I got scared, and I walked out on her. That was it. No big epic fight. No public exposure or drama. I just left and cut all contact."

"That's a classic. The linguist that doesn't communicate."

"I've heard that many times before, trust me."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"I fail to see why I have to do anything about it. We're working this case as professionals, we go back to DC, we go our different ways. Problem solved," she said, slowly working her way back to a more comfortable tone - a snarky one.

"Ah. So you want to keep running away. Well, in that case, good luck," Rossi said as he stood, smiling. He was hoping to provoke some further reaction in the woman before him, maybe even offend her to the point where she'd lose her cool and be forced to deal with herself, but if there was anything at all, it only showed as very shallow ripples on the surface. The vast undercurrents of emotions stayed hidden beneath, where they had been gathering poison for the past ten years. So she felt guilty because she believed she had used JJ and then thrown her away. And JJ was under the same impression. That was some mess, indeed.

Guilt is a mighty stressor, he thought to himself as he went to get that coffee.

Fuck you, David Rossi, Alex thought as she wiped away the tears of anger, embarrassment and sadness that had pooled in the corners of her eyes. This is none of your business, so stay out of it. I'm leaving this team as soon as the case is closed, and I will never look back again.

Oh, how good we are at fooling ourselves!

A/N

Meh. I want to grab them by the collar and scream in their faces that they're being idiots.

Grumpy writer is grumpy today.