Thank you to those who reviewed the last chapter. There will be an extra scene instead of a reply after the next chapter. Thank you to Kim and Sussi too!

The site is still acting weirdly. I've had no hits logged since Wednesday (I've been getting some reviews so I know that people are reading) and some reviews haven't been getting through to me either via email or going up on the site. If you review, just check it gets posted, and if you don't have a reply from me for the previous chapter and you reviewed, then it's been lost in the ether somewhere. It's quite frustrating as reviews are 50% lower for the past two chapters than what they usually are, so it's either the site or people aren't enjoying the story.

Thank you to Chiroho for the beta. And as an extra note, the lyrics in this chapter are The Killers.

Warning for strong language,

Where the Blue of the Night

"A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting."

- James M. Barry

Chapter Nine

November 5th

They had decided to have breakfast together. Even Aaron Hotchner had joined them. This surprised him somewhat; they were breaking their routine. Some mornings, when a big case wasn't in progress, Prentiss and Morgan might go down to the cafeteria and get a coffee together, or she would come on her own and struggle to carry up six or seven cups of beverages. He'd helped her carry them up to their floor a couple of times. She'd always been pleasant, if sometimes a little awkward, but then that was just her.

He pushed the rashers of bacon around his plate, watching Jennifer Jareau pull her long blonde hair out of the way. She'd settled for a bowl of natural yoghurt, granola, and some summer fruit: it wasn't a substantial breakfast, not when her energy was flagging anyway. He'd seen her yesterday, looking pale and tired. But she wouldn't take any sick time; she'd be at work loyally, day after day, until they realised.

Guilt wasn't something he felt. He'd trashed that emotion years ago, when he'd begun to watch her more closely. At first, he'd just monitored her emails – it wasn't difficult. He'd just slipped into her office late one night and installed a piece of software that logged every key she hit, and voila, he'd had her passwords.

Being caught wasn't an issue; it wouldn't happen. He was too highly regarded now, respected in a way that people wouldn't question what he did, and besides, no one would suspect anything anyway. He was too careful.

He placed his knife and fork together in the middle of his plate, his appetite not what it usually was. There were a few smiles coming from the team, and even the hint of a laugh. He didn't know what case they were working on at the moment – he was surprised that they were working on any, given the explosion at Rossi's home – but they obviously had time to enjoy a joke.

It irritated him. He wanted them to feel pain, every one of them. He wanted to inconvenience them, to make them worry, to feel what it was like to be a victim, and then he wanted to be the one to figure it out, to be the hero. Like he should have been to start with.

They stood up as a group, Spencer Reid taking JJ's bowl, Hotchner taking Emily Prentiss'. He wondered where the analyst was; possibly trying to work out how he had wiped Prentiss' personal email accounts. She wouldn't know what else he had been doing with that. Not yet. But soon.

Kevin Lynch opened up Mrs. Jennifer Keeley's ancient laptop and brought it out of hibernation. It wasn't password protected in any way, shape or form, which told him that this person didn't consider herself as having anything to hide.

He began by looking at her browsing history, and given what he knew about Mrs. Keeley, he wasn't surprised by anything there: religious websites, pro-life, , cheap flights, hotels in Dallas, Juliet Fletcher's own website, and the company Fletcher was employed by. There were no internet banking sites, and just one page stored in her favourites that led to a chat room for members of her church that were also concerned with government legislation into abortion and stem cell research using aborted foetuses. It was exactly what he expected.

Her word processing documents weren't a great surprise either. There were a couple of letters to her bank, a letter to the company in charge of trash collection in her area to make a complaint, and several letters to members of Congress expressing concern or showing support. There was nothing addressed to Juliet Fletcher, and even a search of the whole machine threw up nothing apart from her website, and a brief reference in a letter to a congressman named Max Hornby.

Kevin glanced round the small room which he'd been allocated. It wasn't much more than a cleaner's closet that had been emptied and had a desk put in it. He wasn't bothered though. He had a larger office two floors up, but it would be impractical to be up there when his 'team' would need him closer.

The fact that there was no sign of the letters that Mrs. Keeley had supposedly sent to Juliet Fletcher troubled him. Keeley didn't work; since her husband's death three years ago she'd managed quite competently on a widow's pension and the savings that had been very well invested. Her time had been given to what she believed in, and volunteering at a local elementary school. It could be that the letters had been written elsewhere; if she did have an accomplice, then their computer could have been used, but something was tweaking at his brain.

The door to his broom closet, as he had decided to call it, opened and Emily entered, looking puzzled. She had a candy bar in her hand which she promptly put on his desk, frowning at it. "Garcia sent you this," she said drolly. "She says you need to keep up your energy, and I'd rather you didn't elaborate why."

He grinned, picking up the bar. "It's nothing like that," he said, biting open the wrapper. "She told me that working down here will be a shock to the system. I'll need to keep my strength up."

Emily nodded, looking strangely at him. "Have you found anything interesting on Jennifer's laptop?" she said, resting her hands on his desk.

Kevin shook his head. "Nada. Absolutely zilch. She's not proficient with technology, that's for sure." He ran through what he'd discovered. "You know, is there proof that these letters actually exist?"

Emily inhaled deeply. "No. Juliet Fletcher said she'd burnt them. Which surprises me, as she seems more like the type to file everything, and act on things that aren't as they should be."

"Could there be something else in the letters that she didn't want anyone else to read?" Kevin said, trying to put himself in that position. "If she was being threatened, then the threats could contain blackmail, using an event in her past maybe?"

Emily nodded, clearly still in thought. "Try digging further into Juliet's background. I know we've already looked at her in quite a bit of detail, but there may be something well hidden."

"Gotcha, captain," Kevin said, giving Emily a mock salute, and earning himself a raised eyebrow. "I just need to print something for Agent Morgan, and then I'll get on it."

She gave him a quick nod and vacated the room, leaving him alone with his candy bar.

Hotch picked up the file that had been deposited on his desk with some trepidation. In it contained all the notes made by Agents Boyd and Sylvester the previous day, notes taken while each member of the team was being interviewed. Boyd had already told him that the only things they'd written down were those they deemed relevant to the case, which made Hotch feel slightly better. He didn't want to intrude on the personal lives of his colleagues. A line needed to be drawn between work and home, and he was about to cross it. He only hoped that it would be a minor transgression across that line.

A knock on his door announced Reid's presence, the door opening before Hotch had time to tell him to come in. He'd chosen Reid specifically for this task; his odd perception of people was often useful, but right now Hotch felt that it was essential. Reid, more than any of the others, would be able to separate himself from his relationship with the person in question and look at them independently. And although Reid would never forget what he'd read, it wouldn't affect his relationship with them afterwards.

He looked slightly apprehensive, and Hotch understood completely the emotions he was going through. "I wish this wasn't necessary," Reid said, sitting down on the sofa next to Hotch. "It's almost as if someone has planned it so that we have to go through this."

"You may have a point there, Reid," Hotch said. He passed him Emily's file; that was one he wouldn't be looking through himself. "What you have is background information on Prentiss and the notes that Boyd and Sylvester deemed relevant to this case. I'm going to look through Morgan's, then we'll discuss anything that seems like a probable cause."

Reid nodded and opened the file. Hotch saw a picture of Emily from when she had first joined the team. Her hair was slightly shorter, and she didn't have the bangs she had now. A pang went through him and he didn't suppress it, instead focusing on Morgan.

There was nothing that immediately grabbed his attention. Morgan had been involved in a couple of altercations outside of work a few years ago, but none set alarm bells ringing. He'd discussed a couple of relationships with Boyd that hadn't ended smoothly, but contact with the women had ended more than two years ago. Hotch could immediately dismiss this; the person planning this attacks and taunts was in regular contact with the team.

There were other events that Boyd had highlighted, all of them back in Chicago. The cop in charge of the case in which Morgan had been the primary suspect was underlined in red, but again, it had been some time ago, and there had been no contact since.

Had Morgan irritated someone, or used his position unwisely? He knew agents who were attached to prestigious units often liked to flaunt their status, but Morgan had always been the opposite of that. He took a quiet pride in what he did.

Then there was Karl, the man in Utah who Morgan had crossed. But that was too recent, and Karl hadn't shown that he would have the intelligence for this sort of attack. They were looking for someone who had been studying them for some time, who had a grudge to bear, was more than competent with technology, and had a greater than average intelligence. There was no one in Morgan's profile who fit those criteria.

Reid looked up at the same time as Hotch and shook his head. "Emily's listed several international criminals who have targeted her in the past because of her connection with politics, but none are recent. And if it was someone from Emily's background, then a hit on Rossi would be unlikely. The obvious target would be her, then you in order to hurt her."

Hotch nodded in agreement. He'd already considered a potential threat from Emily's past, before this case had even begun. It had been one of his arguments against having her on the team. "What about past boyfriends?" he said, keeping his tone as nonchalant as possible and not looking at Reid.

"Nothing," he said. "Although your relationship has been highlighted by Agent Boyd. He wonders if it has triggered a potential jealous suitor."

Hotch looked up now, alarmed. "Reid – was there anyone who showed more than just a usual amount of interest in Prentiss before this started to happen?"

Reid looked thoughtful for a moment. "There were a couple of agents who asked her out, and she turned them down. The only person I know of Emily seeing was when she first started at the BAU. It only lasted a couple of dates. And Hotch, someone would have had to have been looking very closely. I mean, you went out for a meal once before we went to Utah, and it's only been the last couple of nights when you've been at her apartment. That's not long enough for someone to plan this."

Hotch nodded, his momentary loss of common sense ending. "No, you're right. We had trouble with the cell phones back in Utah, before anything happened between Emily and me."

"It's a good thing, Hotch," Reid said, looking at him directly.

Hotch looked away, not wanting to discuss this right now. Or ever really. "Thank you Reid. Is there anything else that Boyd and Sylvester noted about Emily which could be useful?"

Reid shook his head. "Prentiss isn't the type of person to attract a stalker, if that's what we're dealing with. She's attractive and pleasant to everyone she meets, but she doesn't act in an elusive manner. She's direct and not out of reach. Stalkers tend to be attracted by people who they can never be with, so they perceive themselves as having been slighted, when in fact they haven't actually been noticed until their behaviour becomes threatening."

"Emily doesn't profile as a person a stalker would target," Hotch said, agreeing. He felt a sharp sense of relief. "So who on the team does?"

"Yourself," Reid said. "Your aloofness and position of power would make you a possible target for a 'Resentful Stalker', and I would put Rossi in the same category. An attachment could have been made because you remind the UnSub of someone that rejected them for a job. So far our UnSub profiles most like this type of stalker.

"JJ is a likely target for a Predatory Stalker or Intimacy Seeker. She's very much in the public eye; she's attractive and personable, but has more of an air of unobtainability than Emily or Garcia. You have also got recent triggers connected to JJ – her relationship with Will, and the birth of Henry. She's also the first barrier to getting into the team."

"What about you?" Hotch said. Reid's evaluative profiles were brief but accurate so far.

"I'm similar to Emily. I can be overly enthusiastic and possibly too empathetic with people, which stops me from being unobtainable. My oddness would also put somebody off; they would be more likely to attach themselves to someone who could be easily substituted for their ideal," he said, making Hotch surprised at Reid's assessment of himself.

"JJ would be the obvious individual target," Hotch said. "Yet if we look in her file, there's virtually nothing in here that would support that. There's rarely any conflict; she's not noticed anything unusual; there's nothing in her past that would warrant any negative attention – she's the cleanest out of all of us."

"Then maybe that's part of the attraction; he sees her as being perfect – a blank canvas with which he can mould his own ideal," Reid said, taking the file from Hotch and skim reading it. "She was in with Boyd and Sylvester for a long time though – why was that?"

"Agent Boyd had to take a phone call from the PD in Littleborough. They were asked to check on Agent Mansfield. It turns out his cabin is empty – looks like no one's been there for months," Hotch said. It was something he hadn't given much thought to yet.

"That's worrying," Reid said. "Are they checking on his whereabouts?"

Hotch nodded. "Boyd was going to go round to his apartment later. I've been through Rossi's file already. He's mentioned half a dozen names that could be possible UnSubs, all connected with cases, except two. Both of those are current agents: Warner and Hernandez. According to Rossi, both profile like a work-based stalker would; high rate of absenteeism and poor job performance, with issues against people in power. Rossi has had confrontations with both of them, and threats were made at the time, although they weren't taken seriously. Agent Sylvester is interviewing both of them today, although we agree they are unlikely. We would have suspected them before something big had occurred."

Reid stretched out his legs, Hotch catching sight of a wince. "Where do we go from here?"

"We have the letters," Hotch said. "I suggest we go through them and do a good, old fashioned linguistic analysis and see what type of person we're dealing with. We have nothing to narrow it down to someone who works here, or doesn't, but maybe how they write can tell us a bit more." He passed Reid a thin file that contained copies of the letters.

The hope was fading of their being a quick resolution. They knew who in their team was likely to attract a stalker's attention, but they were no closer to a definite trigger. Hotch had the uneasy feeling that they were going to need more clues to get any further, and that those clues may not be kind.

Martha Moore closed the door as her mother finally left and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Sometimes she despaired of being a considerate daughter; nothing was ever done right; she didn't call at the right time; she didn't come round often enough, and when she did it wasn't at the right time of day; she had let herself put on weight; her cooking wasn't up to much... the list continued. However, she had done her daughterly duty and could now put her feet up – once she had sorted through the laundry.

It was a Saturday job, sorting the clothes into colours, whites and delicates, getting them dry and then doing the ironing on the Sunday; and although it wasn't her ideal way of spending time, she took satisfaction from the fact that she was making John's life a little happier. His ex-wife had done nothing to help; he'd been responsible for the cleaning, washing, and even the cooking, and it wasn't as if her job was anywhere near as demanding as Martha's.

Martha taught third grade at Parkview Elementary School. It was a job she'd had for eighteen years and had no thoughts of giving it up. As she sorted the washing she considered the pupils in her class, smiling as she recalled their good points. She prided herself on being positive, on seeing the best in people, and she guessed that was why her job was a pleasure, rather than the cause of stress. She dug down in the laundry basket, pulling out the whites, and it was then that she found it; a slight line of blood on one of John's t-shirts.

At first, she figured it was from shaving, but then saw it was nowhere near the neck. Instead it was on the side.

He'd probably cut himself on shrubbery when he was fishing, she concluded, or wiped a bloody finger on it when he'd bit his nails too close. There were countless ways in which it could have happened.

But for some reason it irked her, and she just couldn't put a finger on it.

We look everywhere for certain answers. We ask a God who we can't be sure exists. We nose into other people's business in the hope of finding what we need to know. Yet sometimes, we'd rather not discover a certain piece of knowledge; a lover's unfaithfulness for example, or a reality we'd prefer to ignore.

As Agent Boyd tapped on Agent Mansfield's apartment door, he had the odd sensation that a life changing event was going to occur; that from that moment, things would be entirely different. He would be right too, because when he looked through the letter box into the hallway with its wooden flooring, installed by Mansfield eighteen months ago, he saw a trail of brown footprints leading away from the kitchen.

Boyd called for back-up, the faint sound of a radio audible from Mansfield's apartment, and then disregarding protocol, he lifted a leg and kicked the door with full force, a storm of anger blowing inside him.

Pay my respects to grace and virtue, send my condolences to good.

The music grew louder, a false voice calling out.

"Andy?" Boyd called, although he knew it was futile. "Andy?"

Give my regards to soul and romance, they always did the best they could.

Nothing came back apart from the sound of the radio, still playing, as it had done for days.

And so long to devotion, you taught me everything I know.

Boyd stood still, not daring to move. He didn't want to know this. He wanted his boss to be on that fishing trip, in his cabin. Not here. Not like this.

Wave goodbye, wish me well.

He heard sirens in the distance, their call too late. "Bastard," he said. "Fucking bastard."

You've gotta let me go.

Sometimes there is no shame in not knowing everything. Sometimes it is kinder to oneself to remain ignorant. Agent Boyd watched as the wooden floor that Mansfield had laid himself became full of the feet of people he'd never known, but the radio still played, still asking the same question.

Are we human?

A/N Kim asked which authors and books were my favourites. I don't know, to be honest, there is no stand out! I like Stuart MacBride, Karin Slaughter, Tess Gerritsen, Patricia Cornwall, Kathy Reichs, Susan Hill – and more! I do think that Stephen Moffatt and Russell T Davies who worked on Doctor Who are amazing at creating plots. How things fall into place in the series is incredible!

Oh, and you can follow me on Twitter, I'mSarahMakin on there.