Part 1

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.

- Joel Osteen

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Chapter 01

BAU Headquarters
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Quantico, BA

September, 2011

"Where are they Ian?" Emily Prentiss asked.

Ian Doyle was shackled to the interrogation table. He'd been captured, finally, but they didn't want him. They wanted something else. Now he lolled back in his chair and looked at the agents across the table. "Where are who?"

"This is your only chance for any good will." Hotch said. "Where are Agents Reid and Seaver?"

"Oh, those two," Ian studied them a moment and then shrugged. "Guess I'm not getting any good will then, for I have no idea."

"Bullshit Ian!" Emily looked ready to lunge over the table and throttle him. "Your men were following all of us! They had to have seen what happened!"

Ian chuckled. "They saw your people go into that church up there in Theresa. Didn't even look like a proper church, looked like a warehouse. There was no cover so my men decided to tuck back around to the main road, hid behind a hedgerow out there. They never saw your agent's vehicle move."

"Did anyone leave?" Hotch asked.

"A lorry. One of those big ones, haul cargo. It was moving by the time they parked."

"A semi?" Emily asked.

"Yeah."

"I don't suppose you got the plate."

Ian smiled slowly. "How much goodwill will that give me?"

They dealt with Ian, with Chloe Donaghy, with all the crap that went with it. In the end Declan was safe. But they were no closer to finding Spencer and Ashley. "Nothing! Damnit!" Garcia sounded near tears. But that was nothing new, she'd been sounding that way for nearly a year now.

"That plate didn't pan out?" Morgan asked.

"Not nearly well enough. It had been stolen earlier that day. The local sheriff found it abandoned on Highway 12 the next morning in the middle of nowhere."

"So whoever had them changed cars?" Morgan shook his head, "Slick. And no one saw anything?"

"Not according to the report. It was abandoned in farm country in the middle of the night in a snowstorm. People reported hearing the truck but no one stuck their head out to see. This gives us nothing else to go on!"

"It might."

"Let's go over it again." Rossi said.

They'd been doing this every Friday for a while now. At first they did this all day, every day, but it had been so long and there were so many cases. At least they seemed like so many, so many distractions now.

"Theresa, New York." Garcia said again. "The Sheriff called us in. They had found four bodies at that point." She put the pictures up on the board.

"All young men in their late teens and early twenties. Buried in deep, narrow holes to the neck. Arms bound behind their back. Their heads covered with a pile of rocks. Next to each body was a shovel covered with the victim's DNA and blood." Rossi nodded. "A classic stoning. And while we were there they found two more."

"They were all local to Theresa but students at SUNY Empire State." Morgan said. "That was our first commonality."

"But later you found that all the victims were homosexual." JJ said.

"Yeah. We also noticed that two of the victims had business cards for Victory Baptist Church back home in Theresa. It seemed like a long shot but we sent Seaver and Reid to ask around at the church, see if anyone knew anything." Morgan sighed. "They haven't come back yet."

"Pastor William Maesden and his wife Leslie and Deacon Roger Brunswick and his wife Kelly, along with their combined seventeen children, all went off the grid that night." Rossi said. "Their homes looked like they had packed for a long trip. There hasn't been any sign of any of them since."

"And the killings stopped then?" Emily asked.

"From what we could tell."

"So it was someone from one of those families."

"And no one in the church knew anything?" JJ asked.

"If they did they haven't said anything. Now we know they likely loaded everyone in that semi, including Ashley and Spencer, and took them...somewhere." Rossi said with a sigh. "That was nine months ago."

"And someone knew enough about law enforcement techniques to help them hide the evidence." Hotch said. "Garcia, does anyone in the congregation have law enforcement background?"

"Um...Yeah, there was a Sheriff's deputy, John Cosgrove."

"We should go talk to him."

"We can't. He disappeared two months after we moved out. No family, no connections, just poof." Garcia sounded like she was going to cry again.

That was all right. They all felt the same way.