For disclaimer, see chapter one

"I know it's you, Erin," Max said, his tone carefully neutral, "I know your voice anywhere."

"I'm touched, Max," Erin replied, unable to keep the sardonic note from her own voice, "After all these years?"

Max was another face from her past who had always managed to get under her skin. The bad-boy image that most of the early BAU tried to live up to had originated with him as much as it had with Rossi, and anyone who had the misfortune of even walking past the BAU bunker back in those days was privy to a lot of what they got up to. Erin had been around the day that Jason Gideon made his infamous run into the director's office - working in the director's private office in fact - but unlike most of the people in the building, she didn't find it funny. Gideon always seemed like an outsider within the boy's club that was the BAU, being a tad too quiet and sensitive, and Erin didn't like the way that they picked on him. And in particular, she didn't like the way they had always done it with a smile and a pat on the back.

"Cut the smarmy talk, Erin," Max snapped, his voice much more suited to the usual style of their exchanges, "What do you want?"

"Information."

"On what?" he hesitated momentarily, probably due to the bluntness of her answer, "If its case related, Jason will-"

"Jason is no longer with the BAU," she said, aware of the regret in her voice but allowing it to remain, "And David Rossi has come out of retirement to take his place."

"No kidding?" Max said thoughtfully, and she heard the creak of what could only be a desk chair, "Jason finally decided to lecture full time?"

"He's travelling," she said quickly, unwilling to share any details of Jason's departure beyond what people needed to know, "But I don't want to talk about him."

"You want to talk about David, I assume? Well I must admit, I'm surprised to hear you tell me he's back."

"I was surprised too, Max," she leaned forwards, picking up a pen that lay abandoned on the paperwork and twirling it in her fingers. She needed to tread carefully here, to avoid Max closing up on her, "And I need you to tell me something."

His answer was the only one she didn't expect.

"Indianapolis."

"How did-"

"There's only one reason Rossi would come back to the BAU. Indianapolis. And judging by how pissed you sound, he's probably already done something about it."

There weren't many times that Erin Strauss was without something to say, but as she sat for a brief moment and listened to Max breathe at the other end of the line, there really was almost nothing that sprang to mind.

Almost nothing.

"Once a profiler, always a profiler."

"You asked, Erin," Max said, the hostility in his voice replaced by resignation, "And I know you want to know the rest."

"I need to know. He's disappeared this morning and taken half his team with him. Unless I can get a very good reason, all of their heads are on plates the minute they get back."

"So no pressure then," the man replied snidely, "You always were the caring type."

"Max-"

"Well there's not much to tell," he continued, ignoring her interruption, "David was in Indianapolis in 1988 on a rapist, I think, and he was riding with one of the deputies when the guy got a call about a domestic disturbance in the suburbs. David called it in with him and they found three little kids covered in their parent's blood and screaming blue murder. Some psycho had murdered them, Erin, in their bed whilst those kids slept. They never found the guy but David couldn't let it go. He kept revisiting the case but he never got any further. If he's back now, that's the only reason. Twenty years ago, if you do the math. Not a great anniversary."

"Why is he so obsessive?" Erin asked, feeling a bite of anger despite the tragedy of the story. So the bastard had been lying to her all along, "You've all seen worse than that haven't you?"

"It was bad, Erin. I saw the pictures. But that's not the point. It was the kids. He promised them that they would find the guy. It tore him up, I think, every year that went by when they didn't get an answer."

"So he was lying," she spat, "I knew it."

"I'd go easy on him, Erin, if I were you," Max said gently, "There's more to it than I think I'm entitled to tell you but trust me, it's never been easy."

"Tell me. His job is on the line here, along with three other agents."

"Fine," Max snapped, the momentary gentleness in his voice extinguished in the face of her threat, "Wife number one left him because of it. He couldn't stop obsessing. He had nightmares. He probably still does. And the last straw was when he refused to get a Christmas tree in 1989. He couldn't look at it, knowing that those kids were suffering and he couldn't do anything to help them. She left him, probably just when he needed her the most. It's painful and it's personal. So cut him some slack!"

His tirade over, Max slammed the phone down and Erin was left listening to the dialling tone. She put her own phone down more carefully and sat gazing at the desk as though it was somehow to blame. Rossi had always come across as one of the most detached agents she had ever met, the complete polar opposite to Jason Gideon and his book and his photographs. Her lasting impression of him, before his retirement, was of an arrogant troublemaker, who the bosses only tolerated because he was so good at what he did. In the relatively small building that the offices were housed in back then, it was difficult for anyone in any department to avoid anyone else. Yet there was apparently this whole side to Rossi that she had no idea about. If there had been a marked change in his behaviour, surely she would have noticed it? But then, she vaguely remembered hearing about his divorce, and perhaps he had changed after that; angrier, less likely to tolerate someone making a mistake, more often seen disappearing with a woman that would never be seen with him again and who afterwards would talk about how abrasive he was. She'd always put it down to the divorce. It made more sense if there was something else too.

The part of Erin that was angry at the man for lying was still fuming, but it was being quite readily silenced by the part of her that actually felt sorry for him. Nightmares, Max had said. No one deserved that, not when they had dedicated their life to helping people. She knew that a lot of the field agents tended to be affected by their work – she'd arranged enough time off and time with counsellors to be privy to this fact – but to have nightmares for twenty years? That wasn't right.

She knew exactly what she should do. She knew exactly what would happen if she let David Rossi slip through the net this time. He'd think himself invincible, above any power she could wield, and what kind of message would that send to his team, who already caused enough of a headache to be a problem? It would be like signing her own death warrant, and for what? He'd never thank her. He'd probably never even know how close he came to getting half his team fired. He'd still look at her with that venom that she wasn't even sure how she had earned, and she'd still answer right back with a sarcastic comment designed to protect both of them from the fact that they were too damn similar and that's why they didn't like one another.

Oh yes, she knew exactly what she should do.

She also knew exactly what she was going to do.