Morgan stood patiently with the rest of the team, watching and waiting, drinking his way through a crappy non-alcoholic beer just for something to do.

"Come on you motherfucker." He muttered. "Come out and play."

His eyes kept being drawn to the table of ten rowdy students who were cheerfully sneaking vodka behind the female teacher's back. They were underage by a long way but arresting them would only create chaos and a distraction for the unsub to take advantage of.

He couldn't help noticing that neither Mr Wotton or Winston had made any appearance yet tonight, and it worried him. If Winston had wandered off again and the teacher had gone looking for him then that was two people vulnerable to attack.

He leaned over and explained the situation to Hotch in a low voice.

"I'm gonna go ask the kids if they know where they are." he said.

Hotch nodded distractedly, his gaze focused like a hawk on Prentiss and Young.

Morgan walked over to the table and two girls scrambled to hide their hip flasks in their bags, giggling at each other.

"Good evening officer." A pretty Hispanic girl with an oversized orange flower in her long dark hair, said flirtily before turning to her friend and giggling some more, obviously pretty inebriated already. The two boys either side of them who had obviously been steadily chatting them up throughout the evening (and whom he guessed had probably brought the alcohol in order to win their favour) looked extremely put out by his presence.

"Evening ladies." He said with a charming smile. "But it's Agent, not officer."

"Can I help you Agent?" A different boy from across the table said, also batting his eyelids and pretending to swoon. The whole table laughed. Morgan smiled at him good naturedly. This boy had floppy blonde hair parted at the side and his face had the features of an angelic choir boy. He didn't dress outrageously but his clothes were conspicuously neat and far more trendy than most of the boys around the table.

"Give it a rest Stephen!" A girl with a short blonde bob called out. "He's blatantly not on your team."

There was more laughter and Steven laughed too, but it seemed forced.

Morgan felt his skin prickle with irritation at the assumption. Any other circumstances he'd have loved to set them straight, but it wouldn't be professional to do it now. He felt a pang of sympathy for the boy. He hadn't had the guts to come out even to close friends until he got to college but he'd had all too many opportunities to observe his classmates' attitudes to homosexuality so he could empathize with Stephen pretty well.

"Any of you seen Winston Cottonwick or Mr Wotton at all tonight?" He asked Stephen, ignoring the blonde girl. He was slightly taken aback when all the students burst into uproarious laughter and wolf whistles.

Stephen looked uneasy and yelled over the noise, "No they haven't been down yet."

"Can you show me where their rooms are?" Morgan asked him.

Stephen nodded and tried to get out past his friends' chairs, stumbling over bags and chair legs. It was then Morgan realised he was possibly the drunkest of the group. He reached out for the boy's arm and steadied him.

"How much have you had?" he asked. Stephen looked scared.

"I don't know, sorry…please don't tell Miss." He pleaded.

Morgan nodded and sighed. He told the teacher he needed to borrow Stephen and then they headed out of the function room into the elevator.

Stephen slumped against the side.

"Wow, I'm alone in an elevator with a hunky FBI agent." He sniggered semi-sarcastically. "My fantasies are coming true. Never expected that when I agreed to go on this stupid trip."

Morgan chuckled.

"Seriously…you're like a black James Bond, anybody ever told you that?" he slurred.

"Actually yes. My friend Penelope said that once." Morgan replied with a smile.

Stephen smiled and nodded sadly, obviously reading between the lines and assuming Garcia was a girlfriend.

"So d'you wanna tell me what the joke was back there?" Morgan asked to change the subject.

Stephen rolled his eyes. "Ugh it's just a stupid inside joke they have that they think Winston and Mr Wotton are…you know. Getting it on. They even came up with a chant for it; 'Cottonwick, Cottonwick, we know you're sucking Wotton's dick.'" He made a face. "Assholes. Still, Winston did sort of bring it on himself. He had a massive crush on the guy a while ago and started telling people they were sleeping together. He broke up with me because of it, though he was obviously just lying to get rid of me."

A feeling of unease settled in Morgan's stomach. The elevator doors opened on the second floor and they stepped out.

"Has Winston mentioned it at all recently?" Morgan asked.

"Mentioned what?" Stephen asked, confused.

"That he was sleeping with Mr Wotton? Did he bring it up recently or act strange in any way?"

"I don't think so. We don't really talk much anymore. He doesn't talk to anyone much." Stephen said, looking slightly guilty. "I never really liked him much to begin with but there weren't a lot of options for guys like us where we come from y'know? He's such an attention seeker, it gets really old after a while. We always have to share a room on school trips though. They stick the gay kids together cos they're not allowed to pair boys with girls but the boys are all scared we'll rape them or something while they sleep. Here it is." He stuck his key card into the slot and opened the door. He turned on the light.

"Woah!" Stephen said, looking round the empty room in shock. The room looked like it had been ransacked. Clothes and other possessions were strewn across the floor, a wardrobe had been upturned and a chair had been used to smash a hole through the back of it. The bathroom mirror looked like it had been smashed with a fist as there were drops of blood in the sink and the metal waste bin had been thrown through the walls of the glass shower so there was broken glass everywhere.

Morgan drew his gun.

"Follow me." He told the kid and walked quickly down the corridor.

"Right…" Stephen stammered from behind him. "Uh Mr Wotton is in room-"

"203." Morgan said.

"Yeah…how did you know?" Stephen asked.

Morgan didn't answer.

After Prentiss left, Young wandered over to where Hotch, Rossi, JJ and Reid were gathered, dressed in formal wear with wires on their ears, their eyes scanning the room for suspicious activity.

They were meant to be blending in but couldn't look more official if they tried and stuck out like sore thumbs amongst the guests, who were chattering in groups from behind their brightly coloured eye masks. The evening had been slow to start but gradually as the alcohol flowed the guests started to relax. It helped that there had been a very public arrest earlier on that day, of one Mr Orwell, the creepy hotel manager. To give the guy credit he had made up for his earlier negligence by volunteering to be the decoy arrest, and make the unsub think it was safe to return to his original killing pattern. Convinced that the danger had passed, the guests were wholeheartedly throwing themselves into celebrating their survival.

Hotch frowned as he saw Young approach.

"Where's Emily?" Hotch asked.

"Uh…well the shoes you got her were killing her feet so she left to change them." Young said, uneasy at Hotch's fierce expression.

"You mean you let her-" Hotch stopped midsentence. "Wait…what are you talking about? What shoes?"

"The outfit, the red dress and the shoes…they came in a big white box last night. She said they were from you! Because all the women who went missing…were wearing red." he stammered.

Young felt his guts slither to the floor as his mind connected the dots from Hotch's blank expression.

"Shit!" Young cursed and bolted to the exit, hoping to catch up to her.

"Mr Prentiss!" Hotch yelled, and Young stopped dead outside the front entrance, at the bottom of the stone steps, and the team ran past him with their weapons drawn. "You wait here. We'll get her."

Young watched them disappear into the dark and smacked his forehead repeatedly.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" he muttered angrily, praying with every ounce of his concentration that they wouldn't be too late.

And failing to see the masked man strolling down the steps behind him with an empty wine bottle in his grasp.

Prentiss gasped and her hand flew to the gun under her dress for a moment, then she relaxed.

It was a deer. Just a curious deer which sniffed the air and then galloped away when the beam of her torch hit it.

She sighed and laughed softly in relief. She still sped up though as she hobbled on her way to the cabin.

She was sitting on the edge of her bed putting on a pair of red flats when Rossi, Hotch, JJ and Reid came crashing into the cabin with their guns drawn. She looked up, startled.

"What's going on?" she demanded as they began checking rooms.

"Are you okay?" Hotch asked urgently.

"Uh yes…I'm sorry I left the party…but I told Adam to tell you where I was…" she said, looking embarrassed. "I thought it would be alright…I mean I had my gun."

"I specifically told you not to leave our sight!" Hotch said.

"Well sorry, but if you'd have gotten my size right I wouldn't be half crippled right now!" she snapped, fed up and in pain.

"I didn't get you those shoes! Or the dress!" Hotch said.

"What? Then who…?" It took a moment to sink in. She made a disgusted face. "Oh…God that's creepy."

She stood up and opened the wardrobe, bending down to pick up a white cardboard box.

"It came in this." she passed it to Hotch. "There's a note taped to the inside."

"Hope you have a magical evening. Love A." Hotch read out. "You thought this was from me?"

Everyone gave her a funny look.

"I thought he was being sarcastic." She shrugged.

Reid took the note. "The unsub probably meant for you to think it was from Young...uh, Adam."

"We should have seen this. It was too much of a coincidence that they were all wearing red for the party." Hotch said, evidently furious with himself.

"But if he did this to all the women…how come their husbands didn't tell them the gifts weren't from them?" Prentiss asked.

"They probably did, and the women would have just assumed their husbands were being modest or shy about it." JJ said. "And honestly if it made their wives…grateful, what man would look too hard at where it came from?" she smiled.

"So now we know this is extremely important for his fantasy." Hotch said. "He's going to great lengths to perfectly re-enact a specific event in his life."

"How the hell did he get my measurements?" Prentiss said, sounding a little irritated.

"They were given to the hotel in advance to make sure you both got the right size ski suits and equipment." Hotch explained.

"Oh were they!?" she folded her arms. "And no one thought it would be polite to ask me?"

Hotch looked uncomfortable. "We were busy, Garcia found them for us."

"Garcia!" Reid said suddenly, getting out his phone and dialling her number. "Garcia?"

"Well hey there babycakes, what're you wearing?" she asked in a husky voice that Reid knew was designed to unnerve him as much as possible.

"Garcia I'm sending you a picture of a dress that was sent by the unsub." He took the picture without warning Prentiss, and she looked annoyed. "Now am I right in thinking this is a unique design, specifically tailored?"

"Ha! Nice expression there Prentiss." Garcia teased. "But very good my little genius, that is indeed no high street brand. I'll check all the surrounding dressmakers, see if any of them have had four orders of red dresses."

"Thanks." He said. "Bye."

"Do you think the shoes being impossible to walk in was deliberate?" Prentiss asked.

"Yeah, seems likely." Reid nodded absentmindedly. "He needed to separate the husbands from their wives somehow."

"So why didn't he attack me while I was vulnerable?" she frowned.

There was a horrified silence as they all realised their fatal mistake.

"Oh God, because he takes the husbands first!" JJ said.

"Where's Adam?" Prentiss asked fearfully. "Please God, tell me you didn't leave him alone."

"I'll call him." Reid said and held his phone to his ear. "No answer," he said after a while.

Prentiss shut her eyes in dismay. "He had his phone in his pocket. If he's not answering then that means the unsub must already have him." She said.

"Ok, Prentiss, leave him a message saying you felt ill and decided to stay at the cabin. Stay here, lock the doors. Reid and Rossi you're with me, JJ you go to the police and help them monitor the CCTV of the cabin." Hotch commanded.

"Wait you're going to leave me here alone?" Prentiss asked.

"We have to. If he has Young then he'll soon be back for you. That's our only chance to catch him before he kills Young." Hotch explained. "We'll be back once we confirm that he isn't at the hotel. It will take some time for the unsub to take him near to the lake anyway, so we should have time to get back. The police and JJ will be monitoring the outside of the house, he won't get near you without us knowing about it I promise."

She nodded. "Okay. Just…please, we have to find him. He wasn't even supposed to be here."

"We will." Hotch assured her with grim determination.

Morgan knocked on the door of room 203.

"John Wotton? Sir are you in there?"

There was no reply. He banged harder on the door.

"If you don't open this door I'll have to break it down." He said.

Still no reply.

"Stand back kid." He told Stephen.

He stepped back a few paces, then took a running kick at the door, breaking the lock entirely.

The door swung open and Morgan stepped inside with his gun drawn, Stephen following behind him.

He knew straight away from the stench of the place what he would find when they reached the bedroom, but that didn't make it any easier. He told Stephen to stay behind in the living room to spare him the traumatic memories.

John Wotton's naked, bloodied corpse was sprawled on the bed. He'd been stabbed repeatedly, his torso opened up from sternum to abdomen. His intestines had been violently ruptured, which added to the smell. Morgan averted his eyes uncomfortably as Stephen vomited noisily on the carpet behind him. Apparently doing what he was told wasn't Stephen's forte.

Morgan rubbed the boy's back while he got it all up, though he knew nothing he could do would make this moment any less horrific. He helped Stephen stumble out of the apartment and sat him down on the floor in the corridor with his head between his knees. Then he called Hotch to tell him that the unsub had attacked again.

Hotch sounded confused but said that the team were on their way up and that he would alert the police and on-site medics. Morgan went back into the room. The sight was even worse the second time.

It felt really disrespectful to look at the guy naked, even in death, when they might have been lovers if the night had gone differently. He followed procedures as clinically as he could, checked pulse, checked blood spatter, looked around for murder weapon. His eyes fell on a bloody handprint on the white bathroom door, as if someone had fallen against it.

Cautiously he pushed the bathroom door open. Winston was sitting against the wall with his knees against his chest, arms wrapped round himself, face hidden. He was crying like Morgan had never heard anyone cry before, so lost in misery he couldn't move or think.

He must have really had it bad for the guy. Morgan thought sympathetically.

He knelt down beside him. "Hey Winston, remember me? I talked to your teacher a couple of times. He was a good guy, I'm sorry."

The kid sobbed harder.

"I can't imagine what you're going through but I need you to help us catch the guy who did this. Did you see him? Did you see where he went?"

There was no reply. Morgan put a gentle hand on the boy's neck. Winston flinched like he'd been burnt, screamed, "Don't touch me!" and lashed out with his left arm.

Morgan caught his wrist and saw that his hands were both covered in blood, a long knife shard of glass tucked in the unprotected palm of his right hand, which was torn up pretty badly, the ligaments in tatters.

Then Morgan realised he had heard somebody cry like that before. Like he was trapped in some hell he couldn't understand, and he couldn't tell anyone what was happening to him because he was too ashamed, because he thought it was his own fault, because he had been slowly trained to believe he was weak and powerless, and all alone.

Like he'd cried every night after Buford abused him.

There was nothing he could really do for him now. He'd realised way too late what Winston had been trying to tell everybody when he was acting up. He'd overlooked him, failed to protect him from this horror, just like every other adult in his life had failed him.

He held onto him tightly until the paramedics showed up, telling him that it was okay, that it wasn't his fault, that he'd get some help.

He stayed while the paramedics gave him a physical exam, saw the many hand shaped bruises on his upper arms and back and throat, where he'd been held down. The male paramedic gestured for him to leave while he got the zombied teenager into the shower to wash the blood off him and check for the inevitable signs of sexual assault. Morgan bagged up the boy's clothes for evidence and then waited with the team, who had been examining the body.

Eventually they took him away, dressed in grey scrubs with a shock blanket draped around him, a police escort either side to shield him from the sight of the body. Stephen was led out along with him to go to the medical centre. He also had a blanket and was still very ill and shaking from the shock, an oxygen mask held to his mouth by another medic, since apparently he was severely asthmatic and triggered by stress.

Morgan shook with suppressed rage and felt like screaming. He couldn't stop thinking about how twisted it was that he'd liked the guy. He'd been attracted to him, from the moment he'd seen him. And all along he'd been molesting God knows how many of the underage boys under his care.

"You couldn't have known." Reid said quietly from behind him. "You talked to Winston once, and he acted like any other teenage boy."

"You knew. You knew straight away that something was wrong about that bastard." Morgan clenched his fists. "I liked him. I thought he seemed like a good guy."

"I didn't know. I had a feeling. If I'd known, then I sure as hell wouldn't have let this happen. My feelings about him weren't any more helpful to Winston than yours since I didn't do anything to investigate them. We couldn't have known." Reid wrapped his arms around himself, as if to convince himself of what he was saying.

"I hope he rots in hell." Morgan replied venomously, and walked out of the room.

Once they'd established that this attack wasn't related to their case they all headed back downstairs. Hotch explained the situation to Morgan rapidly, and told him what they'd discovered.

"We found broken glass and blood on the front steps where we last saw Young, and nobody has seen him since, so I think at this point it's safe to assume that the unsub was at the party all along, and ambushed him with a glass bottle when we left him alone." Hotch said. "There are tyre tracks in the snow, but it's impossible to distinguish which ones are the unsub's vehicle and which are others."

"So we have to get back to the cabin before he comes to get Prentiss." Rossi finished.

"Okay then." Morgan nodded, a dark, threatening edge to his voice and posture. "Let's go catch this creep."