Here we go round three guys! I'm so thankful for all of you dedicated readers 3 I'm going to try and upload a new chapter every Thursday, so stay tuned!

"Morgan, conference room now. We're doing an update meeting with our findings from yesterday." Hotchner breezed by Derek as he was in the middle of making a new pot of coffee.

"Alright I'm on my way."

Derek turned on the coffee pot and stretched, wincing once more at his sore muscles. It had been a really bad idea for him to sleep the way he had last night after nearly being blown up that morning and he was paying for it today. The hot shower he took earlier had offered some relief, but he would definitely be moving rather stiffly today. He turned around to make his way to the conference room and nearly ran smack dab into Penelope.

"Hey Hot Stuff. Got you a coffee. How was your night?"

"You are a life saver." He took the coffee Garcia handed him and sipped it. He knew that she was non-directly asking if he wanted to talk about his nightmares. She was the only person that knew he had them. "Actually, it was nice and uneventful."

"Really? Maybe you should nearly be blown up more often." She laughed and took his arm as they headed to the conference room together.

"Alright guys. Let's go over everything we uncovered yesterday, starting with what Garcia, Reid and Morgan discovered about the victim." Hotch sat down as Garcia grabbed the projector remote off the table.

"Well, for starters the last eight months or so of facebook updates and messages seem to have been from two different people, but the last six months definitely have not been her. I'm guessing the last thing that she posted was about her move. After that, the IP addresses and the locations both stay the same. This means that she most likely left her computer and phone in Nashville and tried to break away for a clean start."

"How do you know she just wasn't lying about the move and trying to hide from someone and make them think that she moved?" JJ asked.

"Well, for starters I discovered that the house you found her in was being rented to her. She used a fake name and fake ID to lease it so she couldn't be followed, but it's going to take more than that to throw me off the trail."

Garcia pulled up a complete and very well done set of IDs including a passport, drivers' license and social security card for a Rebecca Ingall. The face on the drivers' license matched Jolene perfectly.

"Also it does appear as though she really was completely alone, which is why the unsub targeted her. We found a facebook account for Rebecca Ingall as well, but it had no profile picture and for being six months old had very little content. She never posted, and only followed a single band. This suggests that she was struggling with the fact that everyone she had loved and supported for so long was willing to believe that whoever took over her other page was really her. Which is understandable: we've never even met the victim and within ten minutes we could tell that it wasn't her. How could people who had known her for 20 years believe that she would change that completely? Her posts and messages lost all compassion and intelligence in my opinion." Reid added.

"We believe that the person who took over her facebook page and who now has her phone and computer is her ex boyfriend Carl Jenkins." Emily added, glancing down at her notes and nodding to Garcia to switch the slide.

The screen pulled up a picture of an average man with dark brown hair and cold brown eyes. He had sharp, harsh features and Morgan instantly disliked him.

"He's been in Nashville the entire time that we assume she's been in Virginia, working the same job he's had since highschool and living in her old apartment. Other than a few nights in the drunk tank and one call for a domestic dispute six months ago he has no criminal record, and unfortunately he also has an alibi; he's been at work in Nashville when we've had encounters and phone calls with the unsub. Plus there is no way he could make the 10 hour drive often enough to do this kind of damage to someone, and he's not connected to any of the other victims."

"Well to be fair we haven't connected any of the victims yet." Derek interjected. "So far all we know is…" Derek trailed off for a second, the wheels in his mind suddenly turning rapidly. He couldn't believe it had been right there in front of them all this time.

"What is it Morgan?" Hotch asked. Derek felt Penelope put her hand on his arm.

"The answer has been here the whole time! The victims, they're all females with seemingly no one who is going to miss them that move to Virginia for a fresh start right?" Derek was starting to speak faster now as the pieces were falling into place. "Well, where do woman go for comfort when they have nothing? A woman's shelter! That's the connection between the victims. I'll bet if we dig deeper each one of them has stayed at a woman's shelter at some point after moving to Virginia. The unsub probably either owns one, volunteers for them, or delivers items for them. He's got to be connected to them in some way. That's why the attacks have been seemingly random. That's why it seems like he doesn't target a specific type of girl. He does, it's just not focused on appearance. He focuses on the girls that no one is going to miss immediately. That way he can drag out his torture like he has been. If there's no one missing them, there's not going to be anyone looking for them to report them missing."

Everyone looked at Derek with sudden enlightenment on their faces. It made perfect sense. The attacks were sometimes weeks apart. Going by this timeline, Jolene was probably abducted just after she found the house to rent. She hadn't even gotten time to get a job yet. She had been completely vulnerable.

"Garcia, look into this. I want you to take our victims pictures and email them to every woman's shelter in Virginia asking if they've seen these women. Emily and JJ, go out and do interviews starting at the ones closest to Quantico. We're more liable to get more information if it's women interviewing women. Reid, I want you to go through all the paperwork we have on all the victims and find out everything you can about them. Look and see if they've all rented houses from the same person, or if they all stayed at the same shelter. Work together with Garcia again and keep me posted if you find anything in common, even if it's something as simple as they shopped at the same Walmart. Morgan, you reassemble the bomb from the blast yesterday. All the pieces should have been delivered for you this morning. Rossi and I will go back to the crime scene from yesterday and see if we can't find anything with fresh eyes."

At Hotch's instruction everyone got up to go to work with renewed vigor. After staring at this case for days with little to no improvement aside from finding Jolene yesterday and everything that the unsub had given to them, this breakthrough brought new life to the team.

"Oh and Morgan," Hotch called out causing him to pause and look back at his leader, "good job."

xxxx

"I thought I might find you here Hot Stuff." Penelope walked into the hospital room and walked over to where Derek was sitting and put her arm on his back. "How is she?"

"How did you know I would be here?" Derek asked, not taking his eyes off Jolene.

"A few days ago Hotch asked me to check in on her. The nurse told me you've been coming to see her every day for the last month. After what happened at the office today, I figured that you'd come here."

Derek shut his eyes and put his head down. After making the connection about the shelters they found that every single victim had indeed been staying at a shelter when they first arrived in Virginia. From there a man who no one seemed to be able to remember had showed up and offered them a chance to start fresh. Even though they didn't have jobs he would offer them a house to rent with the first six months paid off. He would help them move in, and then he would start the torture. After that, the trail ran cold. He never showed up to another shelter to make the offer. So far no more fires had been started and no more bodies were found.

Then today they received contact from him once more. A bouquet of flowers had been delivered to Derek's desk while he was out at lunch with Penelope. The message on the card had chilled him to the bone: when she is better I will find her and start again. She will be my 7th. The flowers were taken and immediately processed for prints or any other clues but Derek knew they wouldn't find anything. When they checked up with the company that delivered the flowers it would be another fake name used and it will have been paid with cash. This guy was good, and he knew how to cover his tracks.

As soon as he could, Derek slipped away and came down to the hospital. He had kept up his promise. He visited her every night after work, some mornings before work, and he had even started spending most of his days off with her. The doctors told him to keep it up. She was doing much better. Her vitals had improved enough that she had been taken off the ventilator and allowed to breathe on her own. Her bruises had healed, the constant nutrition had helped her fill back out again and her left leg was completely healed. Now she only had a few places with stitches and a cast on her arm yet.

When Derek was with her all he did was talk. He had told her things that he had never told anyone else, not even Garcia. He told her about his childhood, his deepest fears, the nightmares that kept him awake at night and how lonely he felt every time he went home. He told her about all his relationship mistakes and everything he dreamed of finding one day. He wasn't really sure why, but talking to her felt natural, even if she was still in a coma.

"She's doing better. They stopped the medications that were keeping her in a coma about a week ago. It's all up to her now when she wakes up."

"Derek, I think you mean if she wakes up." Penelope said gently while rubbing his back. "She's been through so much. If I were in her shoes I know that I-"

"Don't even talk like that Garcia!" Derek roared, more harshly than he meant to. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was just another victim. He couldn't let this get personal. "She's a fighter. She's going to wake up. I know it. We need her to. We can't let this happen to anyone else."

"I know babe. Are you sure that you're okay? You seem off."

"I'm fine." He knew Garcia would see through his lie, but he couldn't tell his friend he was desperately clinging on to Jolene because he was lonely. She looked him up and down for a minute, and he held her gaze hoping she would just let it drop.

"Well then I know you must be hungry. Let's go down to the cafeteria to get something to eat."

"Hey sweetness," Derek said as he stood up and stretched, "why were you looking for me anyway?"

"It's the first Friday of the month. It's movie night. When I went to your house you weren't there so I figured I'd check here."

"Have you told anyone else that I've been checking in on her?"

"Of course not. That's not my place. If you want to spend all your free time at the hospital with a victim in a coma who am I to judge? I just thought maybe you'd like some more lively company tonight." Penelope playfully pushed his chest.

"I love you Baby Girl." Derek wrapped her in a hug before they headed down to the cafeteria to get a bite to eat.

When they got back to the room to watch a movie like they did every first Friday of the month Hotchner was inside talking to the doctor. Derek's heart hit his feet as he wondered if he would get in trouble for visiting Jolene every single day without having it approved first. He really hoped that Hotch would see that if he hadn't she probably wouldn't have made it, and not be concerned that the case was getting too personal for him. The doctor walked out as Derek and Penelope walked in.

"Dr. Kline was telling me that you've been here every day for the last month." Hotch's voice was even and steely and he didn't look up from Jolene's face.

"That's right." Derek replied.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't think you needed to know every detail of my personal life." Hotch looked up at Derek, who was shocked at the tone of his own voice.

"When it involves the only living victim of the current case we're working on it does! I know you saved her, I know you feel sorry for her; we all do. But I'm beginning to wonder if maybe something else isn't going on and you're using her to take your mind off your own troubles." Hotch was clearly angry as he spit his reply back at Derek. "And you Garcia. You knew and you didn't tell me?"

"You leave her out of this Hotch. This is between you and me." Derek moved so he was standing between the two. "And I'm sorry, I thought that maybe letting her know that someone was here for her might give her a better chance. I thought that maybe it might be a good thing to have her still be alive at the end of this so she can help us finish this case and catch this guy before he does this to somebody else!" Derek's voice was louder than it needed to be, but he couldn't help it.

"So that's it then? You're not doing this for any reason other than to profit the case?" Hotch raised an eyebrow at Derek.

"Correct. I'm not personally invested at all." Derek lied; he really did like this girl and hoped to be her friend after the case was over. Lord knows she needed one.

"Guys? I hate to interrupt your little screaming match…" Penelope said, tapping Derek on the shoulder.

"What is it Garcia?" Hotch asked, his voice still rough with anger.

"She's awake." Penelope pointed.

Derek looked around Hotch and straight into the deep blue eyes he'd been praying to see in person for the last month.