They felt that the quieter their approach was the better. Since they had the nasty feeling that they were doing exactly what Lester expected them to, they hoped to retain the element of surprise by parking at a distance and stealthily entering the building.
They showed Lester's picture to the building attendant, he recognized her immediately, (she was his only tenant who insisted on paying her rent on a week-to-week basis), and he gave them her apartment number, something that the signal coming from Delma's phone couldn't tell them with precision.
Coming out of the elevator they drew their weapons and silently approached the door at the end of the hallway, to finally position themselves on each side of it.
Prentiss gave him a quick glance to make sure he was ready, as she was about to kick down the door, but he held up a hand to stop her as he realized that the door was already slightly ajar. They shared a look. That careless gesture was unsettling to them, they became painfully aware of the foolishness of their complete lack of back-up and of the amount of danger they were in. But there was no turning back now.
Taking a deep breath he nodded, and she pushed the door open.
FBI training and experience kicked in as they split up to clear each room. Kitchen, living-room and bathroom were all empty, but the silence and the lack of any apparent ambush made them both a little jumpy.
They reached the bedroom together, Prentiss pushed the door open with her foot and they entered a very large room with a four poster bed against one wall. On the other side of the room was a small sitting area, with a liquor cabinet, a coffee table and two leather armchairs. Melinda Lester just happened to be sitting in one of them.
She hadn't flinched when they came in; in fact she looked almost bored, barely giving a glance to the two guns pointed at her. Evidently she had been waiting for them, adopting what she thought was her most dignified, most uncaring pose, a drink in one hand, passing the other elegantly through her short, brown hair.
"It's about time, I turned this thing on ages ago", she said, pointing to Delma's phone on the coffee table, "help yourself to a drink, take a seat".
"Where is she?", he asked, not lowering his weapon.
"Oh she's of no importance, she's a means to an end", she said icily.
"A means to an end?", he repeated.
"She's a pawn, Dr. Reid! Do you play chess?", she asked, "you probably do. You see, the surprising thing about pawns is that they are the most expendable pieces, and yet they can take down kings given the right situation".
"And I'm the king in that scenario?", Reid asked, frustrated by how elusive the conversation was getting.
"Of course you are", she said, putting down her empty drink, "look at yourself. You found me; you can arrest me, you can put a bullet through my head right now, and I'm sure you desperately want to, but you'll never find the inspector alive, that's rather the Pyrrhic victory for you, isn't it?".
Prentiss turned to Reid, making sure that he had Lester under control, although she wasn't exactly hard to contain, and holstered her weapon : "I'm gonna search the place, maybe I can find something here about a second location".
"She's wasting her time", Lester sighed, watching her as she left the room, "but it's better this way, isn't it? Our little game of cat and mouse is coming to an end; it's only fair that I should share my last moments with you".
"Your last moments?", he repeated confused.
"You should be flattered, you finally get to see the real me", she said slowly, "no alias, no disguise, no elaborate lie this time. Frankly, I feel almost naked".
She gave him a flirtatious smile that immediately turned into a grimace, as she winced, falling over and onto the floor. Reid comprehended immediately what she had done; he took her empty glass and instantly recognized the bitter almond smell of cyanide.
He dropped it and crouched down next to her, trying to make eye contact with her but she was already going into a seizure.
"Where is Delma? Where did Moreno take her?", he asked frantically, knowing that full cardiac arrest was imminent.
He asked the same questions over and over, but she either ignored him or was in no condition to answer. She stopped moving after a while and simply looked at him, expectantly; he came a little closer to catch her last breath: "It was fun, wasn't it?", she said, before closing her eyes.
They had searched the whole apartment for clues but had to resign themselves to the fact that there was nothing there that would point them to another location. Lester had always meant to take this piece of knowledge to the grave.
While Prentiss called a coroner and a forensics team Reid sat on the edge of the bed, feeling utterly defeated. The adrenaline was leaving his body, and the exhaustion was now hitting him full force.
He knew that Lester's body alone would serve as proof of his innocence in the Valencia murder, but clearing his name wasn't such a priority with Delma missing and Moreno free to keep on killing.
He half-mindedly took out the polaroid and examined it again. Delma was probably being kept in a basement based on the background behind her and the lack of any natural light in the snapshot. She had never been in this apartment; he shouldn't have wasted time following the signal from her cellphone.
And as he scrutinized the photograph he finally saw the thing that had been unconsciously bothering him since the moment he first looked at the picture. Sometimes his brain would perceive patterns without him being able to tell what they were or what they meant.
"Emily?", he said, more calmly than he felt, "do you have today's paper?".
"I think I have it in my car. Why?".
"Look at the way she's holding it", he said, handing her the photograph, "there's something odd about it".
Delma had placed her fingers on each side of the newspaper, but they were all positioned at angles that felt impractical and unnatural.
They rushed to Prentiss's car to have a look at the actual issue, hoping to see something on it that wasn't obvious in the tiny picture.
Prentiss watched him compare the two, looking both hopeful and uncertain. He knew he was grasping at straws but he also had that familiar feeling, the one he gets when he knows he's making the right connections.
"Hampstead", he simply said after scanning the entire page.
"What about Hampstead?", Prentiss asked.
"Her right index finger is blocking the 'l' of the word 'lamp' in this article, the left one is covering the last part of the word 'steadily', he explained.
"You think she's trying to tell us where she is?", Prentiss asked, unconvinced.
"I think it's the only lead with have, and Hampstead is in the right zone as far as the profile goes".
"We need to narrow it down; we can't go knocking on every door in this area".
"Lester always chose places that had meaning to her", he said at high speed, "she had previously lived in all the cities she robbed, then obviously South America, and then she came back to London where she went to school…"
"I'm gonna call Garcia, she created a timeline of Lester's past, she might find some connection", she said as they both got into her car.
Driving around, they noticed that it was a highly residential area and that some of the houses had the intimacy and isolation that was required for holding women captive.
"We have a precise address", Prentiss said, hanging up and making a sharp turn, "Garcia found a house in the neighborhood that Lester's parents rented for the summer, that was back in 2002".
They drove well above the speed limit all the way to the house and barely exchanged a word until they arrived.
They quietly walked around the house to confirm that there weren't any other exits and finally both entered through the front door, Prentiss expertly picking the lock.
They found themselves in a darken entrance hall, where each shadow looked like a potential enemy, but weapons drawn, they continued.
She pointed to the stairs, indicating that she'd take upstairs; he nodded and proceeded on his own.
He entered the living room, where something immediately caught his eye, the room was plunged into semi-darkness but something on the ground was emitting a faint glow. He picked it up and realized it was a tablet connected to a video feed. He recognized the images on the screen; they showed different views of the outside perimeter around the house. Evidently Moreno had been keeping an eye on the CCTV system and had seen them coming.
He dropped the tablet suddenly as he heard screams outside. He carefully crossed the room, approaching the French windows that had been left open. A few feet away, in the dim light coming from the street, two people were thrashing about in the swimming-pool. He immediately recognized Moreno, his back turned to him, forcefully pushing the other person's head underwater. He got a glimpse of long strands of bright red hair just under the surface and reacted immediately: "Stop!", he screamed, stepping through the French windows and pointing his weapon at him.
Moreno's reaction was instantaneous; he drew a handgun from the waistband of his jeans and fired in his general direction. It missed him and shattered the window behind him.
Reid didn't wait for him to adjust his aim. 'Front sight, trigger press, follow through', he briefly thought as he fired.
He ran to the pool as Moreno was thrown backward. He was slowly sinking to the bottom after taking a bullet to the heart.
When Reid reached the edge of the pool he saw another shape at the bottom, after a few seconds of silence he jumped in.
His heart was beating so fast it was almost deafening. The water was dark and bitter cold and it took him a while to locate Delma. His eyes burning from the icy water and the chlorine, he felt his way through it all and finally closed his fingers around her wrist; he put an arm around her waist and kicked the ground with all the strength he had left.
He reached the surface and with great difficulty due to Delma's dead weight, started to swim to the edge of the pool. Prentiss came running towards him. She holstered her weapon and helped him get her out of the pool. They laid her down on the deck and Prentiss gently put a hand to Delma's neck.
"Reid, I can't find a pulse!", she said, unnerved.
"We need paramedics", he panted.
"They're already on their way".
They started CPR on her. Reid was counting chest compressions in his head; desperately trying not to think about the statistics on emergency reanimation that he knew weren't particularly encouraging.
"What are you doing?", he frantically asked Prentiss as she stopped breathing air into Delma's lungs.
"We're not getting anything", she replied, "it's been too long".
He took her place, alternating compressions and mouth-to-mouth. It had been his vendetta and yet she was the one Lester took. Reid knew that the moment he stopped it would really be over and her death would be his fault.
"Reid...", Prentiss said with great sadness.
He turned to her, to explain why he couldn't possibly give up, but he didn't get the chance, he felt Delma's head turn to the side as she sputtered and coughed.
Immensely relieved, he put a hand to her throat to check her heart-rate again but Delma slapped it away, disoriented and frightened, she struggled for a while, like she had done in the pool a few minutes ago when she'd been gasping for air, trying to keep her head above the surface.
After a few seconds she regained her bearings and hugged him tight. Taken by surprise he nearly fell backward. He awkwardly patted her back and they sat there, shivering, as sirens from ambulances and police cars grew closer.