A/N: Thanks for the reviews and sorry for the wait. Now, back to the story! Enjoy! :)
Disclaimer: Same as the past couple of chapters.
Chapter 7 – It Seems You Want Me Just To Watch Me Fall
Hotch knocked lightly on the front door of a two-storey house in a quiet Baltimore neighborhood. When a tall, Hispanic man answered the door, he asked, "May we speak with Karen Larten please?" Hotch removed his FBI badge from his suit jacket pocket and showed it to the man. "I'm Special Agent Aaron Hotchner." He looked behind him. "And these are Agents Morgan and Gideon."
The man pulled the door wide open and graciously let them inside his home. "Karen, sweetie! The FBI is here to see you!" He yelled up the stairs.
The three agents stared in awe as a tall, thin, Hispanic woman in her thirties with long, dark hair walked down over the staircase. Morgan leaned in and whispered to Hotch, "Holy shit, she looks like Elle."
Hotch nodded as Karen Larten asked politely, "How can I help you gentleman?"
"We'd like to ask you some questions about your ex-husband," Gideon stated coolly.
She sighed, "Okay, let's go in the living room." They followed her into the living room and took a seat on a large sofa as Karen and her husband sat on the sofa opposite them.
"You were married to Ken Decker for three months in 1998, is that correct?" Hotch asked in his usual professional tone.
She rolled her eyes. "Yes, unfortunately."
Hotch pulled a picture of Elle out of his suit jacket pocket and passed it to her. "Well he's kidnapped one of our agents, who seems to look an awfully lot like you, and we think that you might be able to help us find her."
Karen nodded as she gazed at the photo. "Sure, I'll do anything I can."
"Tell us about your relationship with Ken."
"Umm…well, we lived across the street from each other when I moved to Baltimore. He showed me around the neighborhood and I thought he was cute, so when he asked me out I didn't hesitate to say yes. We dated for four months before we eloped, I guess you could say that at the time we were…" she rolled her eyes, "…madly in love. But he was a completely different person when we were married. When we were dating he was sweet, considerate, loving. He was romantic and gentle, but after we got married he changed completely. He was possessive, violent, he had such a temper and he would barely let me out of the house. He developed a fetish for knifes and he wanted to use them when we had sex. Eventually I came to my senses and divorced him. He stalked me for about five months after the divorce so I got a restraining order. That's when he moved to Washington D.C. The last I heard of him he was in jail." She paused before she asked, "Did he stalk her too?"
Morgan nodded, "For the past eight months." She shook her head and appeared to be shocked. "What is it? You didn't expect him to do it again?"
She shook her head again. "No, it's not that, I just didn't expect him to go after an FBI agent. Not exactly his type."
"What do you mean?" Gideon asked interested.
"I mean that Ken usually only goes after weak girls, like when we met," she paused and laughed, "I guess you could say that I was at a pretty dark place in my life and the more I look back on it now, I think that he only asked me to marry him so that he could watch me fall apart."
Meanwhile……
"What's he doing now Reid?" Garcia asked concerned.
"He's left the room again." Reid stared at Elle as she struggled against the ropes. "Elle, stop it," he said quietly to the computer screen, "you're only hurting yourself." Garcia looked at him sadly and was about to offer some words of comfort when he said, "Garcia, look at that!"
She pushed her chair over next to his and looked at the monitor. "Look at what?" She asked confused.
"The window! It's snowing!" He said excitedly.
Garcia smiled at him before she began to type furiously. "In an eighty mile radius…it's currently snowing in the Massanutten Mountains and Annapolis." With Reid's spirits so high, she didn't want to bring up the fact that the specific web feed may not be in real time.
"Get Morgan on the phone!" He said immediately.
Garcia dialed Morgan's number. "Yeah, what is it Garcia?" Morgan answered quickly.
"Reid just picked out the fact that wherever Elle is, it just started to snow! Now in our area it's only snowing in the mountains and in Annapolis!"
"Thanks Garcia!" Morgan said relieved. He hung up the phone and instantly relayed the information to Hotch and Gideon. "Reid says that wherever Elle is, it's snowing. Now, Garcia said that it's only snowing in the Massanutten Mountains and Annapolis."
Gideon turned to Karen. "Anything in those areas that would be significant to you and Ken?"
She shook her head in frustration. "Not that I can think of…"
"Where did you get married?" Hotch asked, racking his brain for significant moments in a relationship.
"We drove up to Niagara Falls."
"Where did he propose?"
"In my old house here in Baltimore."
They couldn't be in Niagara Falls; it was too far away, and they would have had to cross the border into Canada. He wouldn't have gotten away with a kidnapped woman in his car. And they couldn't be in Baltimore because you could see pine tress through the bedroom window. Baltimore was too urban. Grasping at straws Morgan picked up his cell phone and dialed Reid's number. "Did you find her?" Reid asked quickly.
Morgan replied sadly, "No, Reid I'm sorry. We're still trying to find out where he could have taken her. We're thinking that it's where a significant moment in his and his ex-wife's relationship occurred, and it's not where they got married and it's not where he proposed."
Reid took a moment to think. He ran his hand through his hair, a nervous habit. What were some pinnacle moments in a relationship? "What about where they first made love?"
"Where did you two first have sex?" Morgan rephrased Reid's question.
They watched realization creep across Karen's face. "In his father's cabin in Annapolis!"
Morgan pumped his fist in the air triumphantly. "We got it Reid! We're on our way to get her!"
A/N: Now, the race is on...review! :)
