So, another update! I worked on this instead of doing my CAOLA classes... I am much appreciative of my two wonderful reviewers, Neusuada and QuirkyRevelations. Enjoy.

Morgan's stomach growled loudly, and he looked up. "Wasn't Gideon supposed to bring lunch?" he asked of no one in particular.

Prentiss glanced at the clock. "He's been gone a long time, for just going to get subs. Even with a line it shouldn't have taken him an hour. The place is a five minute walk away." She glanced over at Hotch. "Want me to go see what's keeping him?"

"Yes, please," Hotch said, and Prentiss got up and left.

She headed out and took the route she imagined Gideon would have taken. It was the most direct, and Gideon not only hated wasting time, but would have known that his team was waiting on him to return.

"What can I get for you?" a smiling man asked as Prentiss entered the shop. It was one in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and the place was deserted.

"I just need to ask you a few questions…" Prentiss began.

The man looked at her nervously. "I have nothing to do with those murders you lot are investigating. Ma'am." His sudden addition of the title showed Prentiss how nervous he was, though she was pretty sure it was of having his shop closed down due to a suspected involvement in murders.

"I don't think you do," Prentiss replied soothingly. "I just need to know if you saw this man." She pulled out the picture of the team that she kept in her wallet and pointed to Gideon. "He was supposed to come get us all lunch here, but he never returned. I just want to know if something happened to him before he got here or after he left."

The man looked at the picture. "Nah, never seen him in my life. He never set foot in here, ma'am."

"Okay. Thank you." Prentiss left, a bit angry and very worried. She remembered when Tobias Henkel had gotten Reid, and how terrifying that had been. He had never been the same since he got back, though she supposed she couldn't blame him. And now something much the same was happening to Gideon. This was bad. Gideon was, in his own way, the backbone of the BAU. Hotch may have been the chief, but Gideon, with his manners and his acute way of reading suspects and his simple affection for victims and their families, held the team together in a way that the stony Hotch never could. He tried, but he couldn't imitate it.

"He never made it to the sub shop. Something happened along the way." Everyone in the room turned to stare at Prentiss. Morgan had that concerned expression of his on his face. JJ's eyes were huge. Hotch looked like, well, Hotch. Reid, though…the expression on his face nearly broke Prentiss' heart. She knew—they all did—that Gideon was a father figure to Reid, and the young genius needed one. The rest of the team cared for him, they really did, but they tended to use Reid for his brain. That had started to change after Henkel, but it hadn't entirely, not yet. Gideon was the only one who always treated Reid like a person, like someone with opinions and feelings and not just an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory.

Reid looked around the room at his teammates. Hotch couldn't tell them to go back to the hotel and compose themselves—now that an agent was missing they needed to focus more than ever—but he could tell that working more would be hard. More than anything he needed the dilaudid, but he couldn't just pull it out in the middle of the room.

He picked up the cup of water he had gotten earlier that day and took a sip, but his hands were shaking so much that he spilled it all over himself. He stood with an exclamation of surprise, his entire front dripping wet. The rest of the team looked over at him.

"Okay there, Pretty Boy?" Morgan asked in a tone that would have been teasing had it not been for the circumstances. "It's not like you to be making a mess of yourself."

"Yeah," Reid said, already scrambling for a safe lie about why he had been so clumsy, but JJ saved him the trouble.

"I think it's the shock, Morgan," she said in a reprimanding tone. "He's close to Gideon."

Reid breathed a sigh of relief. JJ had just given him a very convenient excuse.

"Morgan, go with Reid back to the hotel. Reid, change into dry clothes."

"I don't need an escort," Reid complained. "I'm perfectly capable of driving myself back to the hotel."

Hotch looked at him sternly. "With Gideon missing, I am not sending any of my agents out alone. I cannot lose another member of my team. Morgan will go with you."

The man strapped to the chair woke up slowly. He didn't know where he was, or even who he was. Everything was a blur and pain. He remembered something about subs, and subs that weren't subs, and people who would be worried about him—a dark-haired man, a similarly dark-haired woman, the coffee-with-cream-colored man, the pretty blonde woman, and the younger man, the one with huge vulnerable eyes. But he couldn't for the life of him remember who they were, or who he was.

And his head hurt so much. There was the sharp pain where he guessed he had been hit, and it throbbed everywhere else. He couldn't remember anything useful, and he was in pain, and he just wanted to curl up and die, but the strap around his limbs wouldn't let him do that.

Loud footsteps echoed, and the man winced. Every strike of the shoes against the concrete floor resonated in his already pounding head, and he wished that the noise would stop. It hurt so much…

A man, tall and lean, entered the other man's view. He was handsome, with nicely arranged features and the lean build of a runner. The smirk on his face, however, detracted from the pleasant appearance.

"Ah, Agent Gideon. So glad that you're finally awake."