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Reid left the deli with a roast beef sandwich, a large kosher pickle and a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. He'd decided to go with a bottle of soda instead of his usual coffee. The little tub of potato salad at the bottom of the white bag and a chocolate chip cookie rounded off the meal nicely.

He was very hungry and not in the mood to eat lunch in the cafeteria at Quantico so he'd walked to the small park just outside the strip mall that housed the deli. He wouldn't have to escape, but everyone was treating him like he was made of glass and might shatter at any moment. It was annoying and comforting at the same time, which really confused him. It also brought back bad memories of the months he wallowed in a Dilaudid induced haze.

The weather was very cool, but at least the rain had stayed away for another day. He found an empty bench painted dark green and sat down. There was a pond to his left that was rippling up in the wind that was also blowing his hair all around his face. The sun was bright overhead and he pushed his sunglasses up on his nose.

He watched people walking by the bench. They were few and far between as it was the middle of a work day, but he saw one elderly couple holding hands. They looked like they had been married for years and were as happy as the day they met. He was halfway through his sandwich when a guy that looked like he was in his thirties ran by wearing shorts and a tee shirt. He had I pod buds in his ears and a fanny pack around his waist. Despite knowing that running must get the guy's body temperature up, Reid thought he had to be cold in this weather.

He picked up the little tub of potato salad and took off the lid. He was dipping in the plastic fork when a shadow fell over the bench. He looked up and almost dropped the container of salad on the concrete walkway. He wanted to get up, but his legs suddenly felt like they had cement shoes.

"Hello," She said and sat down on the other side of the bench. Only the debris of his lunch was between them. She was more beautiful in the light of day, than she had been in the library and the club.

"Should I be happy to see you?" He asked forgetting about the rest of his lunch.

"Please don't be mad at me Spencer."

"Why not?" He asked in what he thought was a very reasonable tone. "You come and go out of my life like it's nothing. My friends think you're a figment of my imagination. Maybe they're right - you're just the beginning of a genetic disorder I was starting to think had passed me by."

"I'm not a figment of your imagination."

He picked up the second half of his sandwich and played with it, turning it over and over in his hands till the bread was pitted with his fingerprints.

"Then come back to Quantico with me. If you're in trouble, we can help you."

He looked into her deep dark eyes until she lowered her eyes and stared at her hands which were fidgeting in her lap. One hand played with a ring on her right hand. It was silver with a round turquoise stone in the center of the setting and some odd markings in the metal that he couldn't quite make out.

"I'm a profiler… I know when someone is hiding something." He tried again.

She twisted the ring around faster and faster on her finger. She wouldn't look at him so he went back to playing with his sandwich, which was beginning to fall apart. The red onion fell into the napkin on his lap, and a bit of mayo dripped out the side and onto his right hand.

"I'm not supposed to be here. I should go home."

"No…" He reached over and put a hand on her arm. "You're not leaving this time. Tell me what's happening to you. Let me help you."

She flinched away from his hand as though he'd slapped. He pulled back his hand. "I'm sorry."

"I told you that I was seeing someone."

"Yes," the wind continued to push his hair around his head and for small intervals of time he was blind to her before the wind died off and he could push back the strands that got in his face.

"It's a little more complicated then that." She said while staring at her shoes. "He tried to kill me."

"What!"

"He tried to kill me," she repeated and her lovely face had gone sheet white.

"When… Why didn't you call the police." Reid asked.

"I don't know… I should go."

She leapt up and ran down the path before he could stop her. "Katie," he called after her "Stop… let me help you, please!"

She didn't turn or acknowledge in any way. Her hair flew back in the wind and her pink dress whipped around her legs as she rounded the path out of sight. He followed her, but she was out of sight by the time he got back to the parking lot.

His head was reeling from this news. She said that someone, the person she was dating or living with, had tried to kill her. God, he had to find her before this guy tried it again.

He headed back the bench, grabbed his messenger bag. He gathered up the rest of his lunch and dumped it into a garbage container on his way out of the park. He was going to go talk to Hotch. Hotch would know what to do. He always knew what to do.

--

JJ knocked on Hotch's office door and heard a curt, "Come in."

She opened the door and stepped inside when Hotch looked up and nodded to her. "Has something important come up?" He asked her.

"No… Well yes actually…"

"Which is it," He asked a bit impatiently. He hadn't made a dent in the paper work on his desk.

"Can you come with me and take a look at something Garcia, Emily and I found?" She asked twisting her hands nervously. "It's about Reid."

Hotch stared at her and there was something in the depths of his eyes that made her heart rate go up. He looked a bit put out, but it was hard to tell.

"Morgan was in here a couple of hours ago. Please don't tell me he's been talking to you and you bought into what he had to say about Reid."

She decided to look at the picture of the President on the left hand wall instead of directly at her boss, instead of trying to maintain eye contact with her boss.

"Um… well, I didn't actually talk to Morgan. It was Emily and Garcia."

She said, kicking herself for blaming her friends, but with Hotch staring at her like that. It was hard to take all the blame for her thoughts on the subject. She didn't have to look at her boss to know that he was put out to say the least.

"I told Morgan and I'm going to tell you. Reid not becoming his mother, he's not ill. If he has a legitimate concern over this young woman, then we need to back off and leave him alone. He wouldn't appreciate you snooping into his business and you know it. Frankly I expected better of you JJ."

JJ dropped into the chair in front of him and leaned forward. "I don't think Reid is going crazy. I know he's not. He was right; there is a problem with this girl. Garcia found her in the local police files."

She watched as Hotch pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do I want to know?"

"No… you don't want to know," JJ smiled.

"What did our computer genius find?"

"Her name is Katherine Elizabeth Duncan. She was a student at Georgetown University in 2003, a sophomore when she went missing."

"Missing," Now his full attention was on his communications liaison.

"Yeah… She went missing without a trace five years ago, right here in Virginia."

Now the headache that had been coming on since Morgan talked to him, jacked up another notch. Leave it to Reid to get into something like this. It was infuriating and yet at the same time, he felt a surge of pride at the young genius.

"Okay… I want to see everything we have on the case. We're going to have to let the locals know that we may have information on one of their cold cases."

"But Hotch, where has she been all this time?"

"Maybe she went underground. It's easier than you might think to disappear these days."

"But why come out of hiding now?" JJ asked perplexed.

"I don't know… Give the locals what we know. They're going to want to talk to Reid."

"Aren't we going to do anything to help her?"

Hotch put down his pen and crossed his hands on the blotter in front of him. "We haven't been invited by the locals. I don't see how we can get involved."

"A federal agent was approached by her that has to account for something!"

Hotch raise his eyebrows at her acid comment. "I have complete trust in your ability to cut through the red tape and deal with the locals."

She grinned at him and got to her feet. "I'll just go back to my office then."

--

Hotch put another file on top of his out box when for the third time that day, someone knocked on his door. He sighed and told them to come in.

Reid rushed into his office and Hotch stopped him as he was opening his mouth. "I know why you're here and no, I don't think you're going crazy."

Reid's mouth snapped shut so hard Hotch heard his teeth click together. He wanted to smile, and it was very hard to suppress the urge with Reid standing there looking very agitated.

"Morgan and JJ talked to me about her… Garcia found her for you, but I don't think you're going to like it Reid."

--

She opened the door to the basement apartment she shared with Johnny and closed it carefully. At least he wasn't home. He wouldn't know that she had been gone. If he didn't know she was gone, he wouldn't have a reason to hurt her. She looked around the room that had become her prison and she wanted to cry.

Spencer was such a nice man. She should trust him and tell him about her predicament, but she just couldn't say the words. If he found out what she had done and the way she let Johnny hurt her, he would hate her. It was wrong that she stayed here and let it happen. She watched the day time shows and listened to the doctors on the radio. They all said that there were ways to get help, but it was so hard.

She didn't love Johnny anymore. She had loved him when they met in college, but he'd turned very mean and abusive to her. She didn't have anyone else. She was alone in this world.

She went to the couch and sat down. If she closed her eyes, she could dream that this was her home with Spencer. He was a kind man that wouldn't hurt her. She should trust him. But, what if Johnny found out, he would try to kill her again, or maybe he would hurt Spencer. But, he was a federal agent so he would be okay, Johnny wouldn't dare try to hurt him.

She twisted her ring, the ring that Johnny won at the fair. He promised to love and take care of her. Why did he hurt her if he loved her? It wasn't right… Anger grew in her chest and she got up off the couch. It didn't matter if he found her out of the apartment. He wouldn't be back very soon anyway. He hardly ever spent any time here anymore. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been there or spoken to her. She would go find Spencer again and ask him to help her.