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Reid pushed his way through the pulsing mass of people that moved and swayed to the loud metal music. The strobe lights were very disorienting and he kept going in the wrong direction. He looked for curly black hair and seemed to see it everywhere. He saw her eyes, and her smile, in every woman's face he encountered trying to get through the club to the door.
He didn't hear Morgan shouting to him from behind, or hear the curses of the couples he pushed out of his way to get to Katie. Finally, he ended up at the entrance to the club and was about to go outside when a hand fell on his shoulder and someone spun him around. A very angry voice cursed at him over the din of the music as he was pushed up against the black painted block wall.
"You want to watch what you're doing."
The man in front of him was huge. His fists looked like they could not only break his nose, but put a hole right through his face. He had dirty blond hair and light green eyes. His nose was squashed like a small pug dog, and there was a crooked scar running from his left temple down the side of his face to his chin.
"I didn't see -"
"Are you blind stickman? You almost knocked my girl friend on her pretty little ass."
A very small, black haired woman stood next to the man and she was grinning up at Reid like he was the source of great amusement. Her eyes were as dark as Katie's, and his heart began to beat so fast at the sight of them, it felt like it was going to jump up out of his throat.
"You going to just stand there staring, you little freak?"
"I'm sorry," He began to stutter.
"Hey…" Morgan's voice came through the crowd.
He grabbed a hold of the man's arm and stopped the arc it was making towards Reid's face. Reid hadn't noticed that the man was about to connect fist to face.
"Back off jack ass…" Morgan growled.
"Who are you, his body guard?"
"No… I'm a federal agent and so is he. So if you don't want to go away for a long time, back off."
The two men were nose to nose, but Reid could see that the man he'd angered was backing off at the sight of Emily's badge. She'd worked her way out of the crowd with Garcia trailing along behind her.
"Fine… but don't let me catch you in here again or you're dead!"
"Thank you," Morgan said, wrestling the man into cuffs. "You just threatened a federal officer, which is a bad as hitting one. You just made my night."
The crowd that had been gathering around them began to disperse at the sight of all the badges and the handcuffs.
--
Reid was standing next to his car watching the cops load his new "friend," into the back of a black and white. "So are you going to tell me what happened in there?" Reid hadn't realized that Morgan had approached his car. A lot of the people that had been partying inside were making tracks to leave now that the cops had shown up. The place was emptying out faster than rats deserting the Titanic.
"Nothing happened, except that once again, I got on the wrong side of a bully."
"I'm not talking about Mister Scar Face. I'm talking about what happened before you ran into your new admirer."
"Morgan…"
"He's right - we're worried about you." Garcia said and her face reflected the concern that showed in Emily's eyes.
So he told them about Katie, and everything that had happened from the moment he first saw her in the library. The concern that he'd seen in Garcia and Emily's eyes was forming in Morgan's eyes too.
"Reid…" Morgan began.
"No… I know what you're going to say."
"I'm not going to say anything. We just want to help you."
"Right, so that's why your talking to me like I'm an un-sub, like I'm about to kill someone."
"I'm not talking to you like you're a un-sub Reid."
"Look… I know you think I'm obsessed, but Katei needs my help. I'm going to find her and I'm going to help her."
"You're being irrational Reid." Morgan said and Garcia clapped a hand over her mouth in shock.
"Thanks Morgan, It's good to know you're on my side."
"Hey man… I'm sorry if I hurt you, but you have to know that this is crazy."
"Why is it crazy?"
"You hardly know that woman. You've met her three times and you can't tell me anything about her besides her first name and what she looks like. You said yourself that she's seeing someone. You have to let it go."
"No… I don't have to let it go. She needs my help. I don't know why, but she does. I can tell just by looking at her."
He turned stuck his key in the door to the car and opened it. "Reid, please don't go." Emily begged him.
"Leave me alone. I'm going to show you all that I'm right."
He got into the car and slammed the door while the others stood by helplessly. "Reid…" He could hear Garcia shouting through the closed window. They were wrong… There was nothing wrong with him. Katie needed his help. He was going to find her, and then maybe he could sleep at night and concentrate at work.
--
Morgan knocked on Hotch's office door the next day. The abrupt, 'come in,' was just what he expected and it put his world, that had been out of wack since they all ended up at the same club last night, right again. He hesitated for an instant before opening the door and facing his boss. Hotch was doing paperwork and he glanced up at Morgan with a "what do you want," look.
"I'm sorry to bother you Hotch, but I'm worried about Reid."
Hotch's eyebrows went up into his hair. "Why," he asked.
Morgan took the chair across from his boss's desk and began to tell the unit chief what was bothering him. Hotch gave him his undivided attention, but he didn't interrupt, or ask any questions till Morgan had finished his accounting of all that he knew up to the night before in the club.
"I don't know what to do. He's acting like an infatuated teenager Hotch."
"I've noticed that he's been a bit distracted at work." Hotch said.
"Then we need to talk to him, or something."
"Why do we need to do that?"
"Hotch… he's chasing after someone we don't know anything about. I've never seen her or talked to her and neither have the girls. He was telling us last night that she was at the club, but I didn't see her."
"You said that it was dark in there," Hotch reminded him as he sat back in his chair.
"Well yes, but I didn't -"
"And you said that he met her in a library, so someone had to have seen them there together."
"Yes… but Hotch I don't -"
"Are you trying to say that Reid is seeing things, that this girl isn't real?"
"No… I just think…" He trailed off because Hotch had hit it right on the head. "He's not becoming schizophrenic if that's what you think." Hotch said with certainty.
"How do you know," Morgan said and was instantly sorry he'd challenged his boss.
"You know as well as I do what the symptoms of the disease are and how they present themselves. Reid is not turning into his mother."
"Are you sure Hotch?"
"Yes, I'm sure… He's okay. If he doesn't pull it together, and if his work suffers because of this woman, then I will have a talk with him. Until then, I suggest you back off and leave him alone. I trust Reid, and if he thinks this woman is in some kind of trouble… then she probably is. He's one of the best profilers in the world, just like you and me."
"I know… I'm just afraid for the kid."
"I know you are, but you have to let him live his own life. If he wants to get hurt, then let him get hurt and learn from it. Who knows, maybe this thing, whatever it is with this girl, will work out. You do want to see him happy for a change Morgan."
Morgan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He wanted his younger friend to be happy, but there was just something bugging him about this girl.
"Of course I do," He admitted.
"Good, then keep an eye out for him, but leave him alone." Hotch advised.
The unit chief went back to his paperwork and that was when Morgan knew that he was being dismissed. He got up and went to the door. Leaving this alone was going to be much harder than he thought.
--
JJ knocked on Garcia's door and entered when the tech's voice called out "Who's there?"
"It's the big bad wolf come to eat little red riding hood." JJ joked at the tone in her friend's voice.
"Enter!" Garcia called out in an impatient tone and JJ frowned at the door. What was going on with everyone?
"Hey, what's with the informal meeting that I wasn't invited to?" She said as she entered and saw that Emily was hunched over Penelope's shoulder, watching the tech work her magic.
"We're trying to find someone." Emily explained without looking up at her friend.
"Who are we looking for? We don't have a case that's hot." JJ said.
Garcia looked up and directly into the blonde's big blue eyes. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Are you kidding?" JJ said trying not to laugh.
"I'm serious," Garcia retorted.
"What're we getting into today? Is it the CIA files on Brad Pitt?"
"You can leave if you can't be serious." Emily said glaring up at JJ.
"Okay… sorry," JJ said taking the seat next to her two agitated teammates. "What's the matter," She asked again hoping to get a coherent answer this time.
"We're looking for a woman for Spencer." Emily said in total seriousness.
JJ snorted laughter and her friends trained two pairs of angry eyes at her. "What…" She said.
"This is serious!" Garcia said.
"I can see that, but don't you think we should let Reid pick out his own dates."
"It's not a date." Garcia said while her hands flew over the keyboard and pictures flashed by so fast JJ couldn't see how she could find anyone in the chaos.
"Yeah… we're looking for someone that Reid met in the library." Emily told JJ.
JJ watched Emily's face very carefully till the realization hit her that Emily and Garcia weren't playing around in Reid's life.
All business, she sat forward and looked at the computer screen more carefully than she had when she first entered the room. "What happened to Reid?"
Emily explained everything they knew to JJ while Garcia kept up a feverish pace on her computer searches.
"So you think that Reid's cracking up." JJ asked.
"No… we don't think he's cracking up. We're just very concerned that he seems so - attached - to this woman. He doesn't know anything about her. He doesn't know her full name or where she lives. He's sure that she's in some kind of trouble."
"If Reid thinks there's a problem, then there is a problem. You guys should trust him. He'd be really angry that you're snooping around in his life."
"We just want to keep him safe sunshine. This woman could be into anything and I think - wait, I think I found something."
Her computer was beeping and her voice had gone up an octave with excitement. Emily and JJ turned to the screen and Emily's jaw dropped.
"I think we need to talk to Hotch," JJ said.
