B for Beck

by Assbitch67

Beck has had her life planned for her whether she liked it or not... But for some reason it all just keeps going to shit. Maybe it has something to do with her ability to kill a full grown man with a paperclip and snipe a grape inside a shot glass from nearly 6 miles away. But, hey, the cute Doctor at the BAU that doesn't know how to carry his Revolver seems to tolerate her.

8. Bloody and Raw

Trigger Warning: gore, blood, and subtle mentions of sexual abuse.

It's very a small hint towards sexual abuse, but if you don't want to read it, I'll put a (x) at the start of the section and at the end of the section so you're able to skip it.

---

Bloody and Raw

•••

"Feeling more human and hooked on her flesh, I lay my heart down with the rest at her feet. Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile. Bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet." - Hozier, Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene.

—

Derek Morgan took pride in his body.

Sure, his looks were great, but his pride and joy were his strong, muscular legs. They enabled him to kick down doors, crawl through tight-spaces, and outrun Unsubs. He prided himself in being one of the most athletic people on the team- Hell, possibly even the Bureau...

...That was until Beck Ryder joined the team.

After getting a good look at what Beck could do during the last case in Montana with the militia and the need for a sharp shooter up on the hill to take out Henry Frost holding a woman captive on the peak of a mountain... hot damn. For such a short and petite girl, he'd never seen anyone climb up a mountain as fast and efficiently as Beck had. And to add the cherry on top of that- when she reached the top, she wasn't even winded.

That got him a little bristled, so he started running again.

He kept in shape; mostly sit-ups, burpees, jumping jacks, weight lifting, a little bit of yoga all within the comfort of his own house or even the occasional trip to the FBI gym a few floors down. But this past week after watching that little Spitfire scale an entire mountain without breaking a sweat, he'd been pushing himself every morning, trekking around downtown DC in nothing but basketball shorts and a muscle tee trying to hit six miles in under thirty minutes.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one.

It was around his third lap around the National Mall at six that Wednesday morning that he spotted her for the first time. The little bobbing, jet-black ponytail, the short stature, wearing all black- even while jogging under the morning sunrise- jogging across the street down a path that went along the Potomac.

"Well, I'll be damned..." Morgan muttered to himself. "Hey, Ryder!" Morgan shouted as he redirected his path to try and catch up with the woman. He jogged across open grass and made it to the opposite side of the street that Beck was running on. "Ryder!" He tried calling out to her again, but then he noticed she was wearing earbuds. Her music must've been too loud for her to hear him.

It looked like he would just have to catch up with her. Easy enough, he thought to himself before picking his jog up into a sprint.

It must've been a really upbeat song with a great bridge because as soon as he picked up his pace, so had she. And, boy, could she sprint.

"Hey!" Morgan called out as his lungs began to burn slightly. "Wait- wait up! Ah- shit!" Eventually, the athletic agent had to cut himself short of trying to keep up with little Beck Ryder. "Damn!" He laughed, hunched over trying to catch his breath. He'd have to ask her where she was storing all that stamina, speed, and energy at in that tiny little body of hers... He had to admit, she was pretty impressive. Mysterious, but impressive as Hell.

—

Beck didn't usually like to wake up early, she was more of a nocturnal runner, but these past few weeks of having to constantly be in double-agent mode was really starting to stress her out. Not to mention, Strauss was hounding on her every chance she got.

The Wicked Witch of the West: Your last report was incomplete, be more detailed about your specific instances

The Wicked Witch of the West: Keep the cursing to a minimum, please.

The Wicked Witch of the West: You're here to report on Agent Hotchner's mishaps, not Agent Rossi's.

The Wicked Witch of the West: No, I will not prohibit you from traveling via flight so you can get out of using the jet.

It was all so fucking hectic, Beck just needed a way to blow off steam. So, she started running twice as much, both at night and again in the morning.

Sure, she could've just gone back to beating up the Narcotics steroid-heads a few floors down in the gym again, but that ran the risk of her being seen by one of her new teammates like what had happened last time with Prentiss and Garcia. She'd left quite the impression from the way Prentiss gushed about it on the plane the last case, and the last thing Beck needed after sucker punching Reid- Spencer- in the face a couple weeks ago was getting the reputation of being a violent hothead. She didn't want John Summer's old image, and she certainly didn't want Gina Sanchez's image either. She just wanted to be something else than what she was within the CTU.

So she pushed herself outside.

Beck was an avid runner. During her training with the CIA in between class lessons, one of the first physical trainers was a former CIA Black-Ops operative that specialized in some of the missions even she didn't have the authority to know about while with the CTU. She didn't know his full name, he only gave her his last name: Brenner.

Brenner was a hard-ass, he didn't take it easy on her despite the fact she was only ten at the beginning of their time together. He didn't really care much.

She used to think he was a drill sergeant with how much he screamed and belittled her, but frankly it was unnecessary. All he really had to do was give her an order and she'd do it. After their first few weeks of training together, he didn't do much yelling when he realized she was perfectly capable of pushing herself past her own limits without him.

Through all the training exercises he pushed her through, he never once started with fighting first. It was always about speed, balance, stamina, strength, and energy with Brenner. "Those are the variables that will help keep you on your feet in a fight," Brenner had told her. "But spite is what will keep you alive."

Spite is what will keep you alive.

It was a sentiment that Beck carried through with her through everything. Spite.

She was expected to die in that jungle in Vietnam, but she pushed herself out of that camp. She willed herself not to die because that was exactly what they wanted. And now she pushed herself physically, both as a child and as a full grown adult, because there were people out there counting on her to die every second of every day, but she wouldn't let them get the chance.

As Beck rounded off her tenth mile within the hour on the old sidewalk path she took around downtown, she slowed from her usual sprint to a light jog as she jumped up the pavement to get to the little drug store just up the street from her apartments.

It was coming up on 6:30 in the morning so she knew the little place labeled 'A-Z Groceries' would just be opening right now. Ever since moving to DC years ago, Beck had made sure that her last two places were always around this particular store only for the reason that she just loved the little old woman that ran it.

Sure enough, as Beck was walking up the pavement towards the shop, she could see the short woman bending down to try and pull up the metal gate in front of the shop she locked up every night.

"Mrs. Kumar!"

Beck dashed forward to bend down beside the woman, easily lifting the gate up and out of the way for her. She was also a bit short, but she could jump high enough to push the gate the rest of the way up. After it was open, she turned to the older woman beside her. "You know you can't be bending down like that with your bad back," she chided her.

Mrs. Kumar rolled her eyes. "Gah! Why? Because the stupid American doctors tell me I can't?" She shouted in her heavy Indian English accent as she moved towards the entrance of the store to unlock the doors. "I've been doing this since before you were born, young lady!"

Beck couldn't help but chuckle beneath her breath. That was one of the first stories Mrs. Kumar had told her when she'd' met her the first night she'd stayed by herself in DC. An 18-year-old girl, half-way across the country from the only family she's ever known, staying in her own apartment, getting ready for a job she'd been training for her whole life with one of the most dangerous agencies in the country, possibly the world. It had been a stormy night when a young Beck came dashing into Mrs. Kumar's store and found solace from both the storm and her fear just listening to the story of how Mr. and Mrs. Kumar immigrated from India to build a new life in America for their newborn twins- Mya and Adam. Mrs. Kumar had wanted her children to be named traditional, more Indian names, but Mr. Kumar had wanted them to blend into America instead of stand out.

Mrs. Kumar swears up and down still to Beck that she wished she should have fought harder for their names to represent where they came from because... "if they erase their past, how will they remember our journey?"

Since Mrs. Kumar had told Beck her story, she'd like to always call Mrs. Kumar her first real friend in DC.

She had just finished unlocking the door and turning on the lights when the older woman turned back to the agent, "What are you doing out so early these past few days anyway? Don't you have a new job? Isn't that why you came back after you swore up and down that you were leaving and probably wouldn't be seen in DC again? Tsk, now look at you, a slave to the government again." Beck laughed this time while Mrs. Kumar shook her head and made her way around the raised counter.

"I've just started running earlier again," Beck explained as she stood before the counter, listening as the woman climbed up the steps to get up to the raised platform. This was a bad part of town, so Beck was glad Mr. Kumar was smart enough to build that little hawks nest for the short woman working the register. "And at night."

"Ah, you're running in the day and at night again. It means they're working you extra hard there." Beck could hear the disdain in Mrs. Kumar's voice just as she saw the top of her head peak over the counter as she reached the top. "You need to go on a vacation. And I'm not talking one of your guilt-trips you take on that death machine of yours. I'm talking getting some of your vacation days- I know you have them all saved up because you never stop working, you poor girl-" Beck laughed, flushing a little under the light scolding. Mrs. Kumar knew her too well sometimes. "-And going to some place exotic with a handsome young man." Beck rolled her eyes this time. "No! Don't roll your eyes at me-!"

"Isn't this the same conversation you had with Mya a few years back?" Beck prompted as she started down one of the aisles, still within view of Mrs. Kumar who had opened the register to begin counting, the little rectangular reading glasses that had been dangling from her neck earlier now perched at the tip of her nose.

"You need some love in your life! Everyone needs love in their life! It's why I'm married to Shivrang," she explained, not looking up from her counting. "You think I stay with him because of his little temper tantrums or because he's decent in bed?"

"Oh my- Mrs. Kumar!" Beck gaped, laughing at how the little old woman had zero filter on her. It kind of reminded her of Penelope Garcia.

She threw her hands up in defense. "It's true!"

"Alright, then why do you stay with Mr. Kumar?" Beck prompted as she reached into the fridge at the end of the aisle and pulled out a small bottle of Snapple- the half-lemonade and half-tea that was never sold inside of vending machines and only small drug stores like Mrs. Kumar's.

"Because I love him," she stated proudly. "It's the only thing that kept me from murdering that man in his sleep years ago. Love."

Beck giggled as she snatched up a bag of gummy bears around the next aisle. "If you have the urge to kill your significant other, is it really love?"

"Pfft! Well, what do you know, it's not like you have a husband- yet! He-he-he!" She let out her signature evil little giggle that made Beck shake her head. Mrs. Kumar sobered up with a shake of her head and a sigh, her eyes falling away from the register she closed as she stared off into the distance at something unseen. "Oh, I hope Mya finds a husband soon. I want grandchildren before I die."

Beck slowly approached the register counter, a perplexed look on her face as she walked over with her two items in her hand. "You planning on dying any time soon, Mrs. Kumar?"

"Oh no! I did not survive being married to Mr. Kumar for thirty years and pushing two of his hard-headed kids out of my body to die now," she proclaimed. "But, we all must die someday. Life is unpredictable, but it is our own actions and will that keep us from succumbing to death when we do not wish to leave the living." Sometimes Beck though Mrs. Kumar would be a great priest, or perhaps even a motivational speaker with the way she spouted scripture up at her register-slash-podium. "You have a dangerous job," Mrs. Kumar said, snapping Beck out of her thoughts momentarily. "What keeps you alive?" She asked as she began to scan the two items she placed up on the counter.

Beck shrugged. "Spite," she answered simply. "A lot of people want me dead when I go out there, I have half a will not to let them get what they want."

"A peculiar way to live... Spite," Mrs. Kumar shook her head as she typed in digits into the register.

"It's a good way not to die, though," Beck countered as she pulled out her wallet. "How much do I owe you?"

"Depends..." the older woman began, a dark look in her eye as she looked down her nose at Beck.

Beck tilted her head slightly, raising an eyebrow. "On what?"

"On whether or not you have any juicy details about what that spiteful little bitch Mrs. Stone is up to at the country club these days," Mrs. Kumar cackled as she leaned over the edge of the counter.

Beck laughed, "Oh- so that's what you want in exchange for my breakfast?"

Mrs. Kumar glanced down at the gummy bears and Snapple she was bagging. "I'd hardly call this a breakfast. You need to eat more- put more muscle on your bones. Why don't you come have dinner with Shivrang and I anymore? And don't say it's because you're busy with your job-!"

The buzzing of Beck's phone in her back pocket cut Mrs. Kumar's rant off momentarily. Carefully, she reached to pull it out and read the text that had just come through.

The Doctor: JJ gave me a thirty minute warning to tell you we're having an early briefing.

Beck grimaced as she held up her phone for Mrs. Kumar to see. "I'm busy with my job..."

"Aye!" Mrs. Kumar groaned, pushing her bag of food towards the edge of the counter for her to grab. "You and that damn government job-"

Beck chuckled as she grabbed her bag as Mrs. Kumar continued on a long rant about how overworked and underpaid and underappreciated she was. She could probably go on and on about it, but it looked as though Beck had to get to an early briefing for an urgent case.

Before Beck reached the front doors, she turned back to the woman up at the register and called over her shoulder. "I'll tell you all about Mrs. Stone when I see you on my night run when I get back!" She promised the woman before turning on her heel to head out, but not before she heard Mrs. Kumar shout after her.

"Take a vacation!... And a shower!"

—

With sprinting to her apartment, chugging down her breakfast, taking a quick shower, and speeding through Metro DC to make to Quantico on her Baby, she was able to make it to the BAU office with minutes to spare. Granted, her hair was still a bit dripping in it's usual ponytail do and she'd forgotten to pack her toothbrush in her go-bag, but she made it nonetheless.

Most of the desks were empty in the main office when Beck came speed-walking through the rest of the bustling agents to get to her own desk where she dropped her go-bag and her bike helmet before dashing up towards the Bullpen.

Immediately upon entering the threshold of the room, Hotchner wasted no time in addressing her tardiness. "You're late," he said at the same time she countered, "I'm not late."

Hotchner raised an eyebrow at her while the rest of the already seated team watched the interaction with amusement. "I was given a thirty minute heads up about twenty-nine minutes ago, so technically, I'm early," Beck explained before quickly taking her seat between Morgan and Reid- Spencer. God, she had to get used to that name.

Hotchner, who was seated on the other side of Spencer, seemed to let it slide as he turned to the front of the room. "JJ."

The blonde, standing at the front of the Bullpen, clicked a button on her remote and up on the screen popped a driver's license of a young, bright blonde girl... just beside an image of the same girl only not as bright... or alive. Her eyes were open, glossed over with red around her eyes, she had blood pouring out of her ears and... Her hand was in the shot, only it was missing all of her fingers. Holy shit...

"Bridgewater, Florida. Local girl, Abby Kelton, 19-" Beck winced. Young girl... "-left her parents' home to go to the local junior college. She never came home. Three days later, joggers found her- part of her... in a nearby park." JJ, who had walked around behind Beck's seat, clicked the remote to show another image of the girl sprawled out on the ground... Turns out, both her hands were missing the fingers and... she was missing the bottom half of her body. That was definitely a wake-up call.

"What did that to her?" Prentiss asked what Beck was sure everyone else around the table was wondering.

"Bridgewater's off I-75, which is often referred to as Alligator Alley," JJ explained with a grimace. "For reasons that are now apparent." She gestured the remote at the screen of the dead girl with half her body gnawed off. "Everything below the waist had been eaten."

"Ah, the circle of life," Rossi hummed darkly from a few seats down to Beck's right.

"Suddenly, I don't feel so guilty about my alligator wallet," Prentiss muttered.

Beck furrowed her eyebrows, turning to the woman seated on the other side of Morgan. "You have an alligator wallet?" Prentiss shrugged in response.

From down the table, Hotchner frowned, "Alligators didn't cut off her fingers, slit her throat, or carve this into her chest." Beck leaned forward in her seat to see the printed out photo the Unit Chief had just flung out towards her end of the table. She picked it up to examine what she'd only caught a glimpse of on the screen.

"Seriously?" She scoffed in disbelief as she stared at the autopsy image, holding it up to Hotchner with a look of disgust. "An inverted pentagram? Really?" Hotchner frowned as if sharing her disdain for what that meant for them.

"Locals believe the killing was committed by a Satanic cult," JJ explained. Beck rolled her eyes, tossing the photo down onto the table where it was quickly picked up to be examined by Morgan.

"Some things never change," Rossi mused. Beck remembered him going over Satanic killings in one of his first books. His writing confirming to her what she'd known all along about murderous psychopaths and their obsession with Satan was nothing but bullshit. The same way assholes that liked to justify their bigotry and murders with God was.

"Killer Satanic cults don't exist," Prentiss explained to the man beside her. "They were debunked as a suburban myth." Ah, Beck mused to herself, apparently Prentiss hadn't read Rossi's books. Rossi just sat back and nodded, dragging out the long look he was giving her right now. "What?"

Beck chuckled while Reid- Spencer- tried to hide his smile. "Rossi's the one that debunked them."

Rossi smirked, amused. Prentiss just looked mildly irritated as she nodded and replied, "Oh, right... Thanks." Beck couldn't help but snicker at the small wince Prentiss made after Rossi had turned around.

"Cult or not," Rossi exclaimed as he spun around in his chair, glancing back at the images on the screen behind him. "The killing was ritualized. This will turn serial if it hasn't already."

Beck leaned forward, taking a photo from the pile Hotchner had amounted in the center of the table that consisted of autopsy and crime scene photos. She could feel Morgan's eyes on her as she plucked the autopsy image of Abby Kelton's hands- or... what was left of them.

She examined the autopsy photo carefully as she ran her fingers down the zoomed in image of exactly where each finger was cut, both from the side and the front, giving a full view of what was missing.

From the side, Beck could see that all fingers were severed just before the end of the proximal phalanx, but not directly at the first knuckle. Certainly wasn't anyone with medical experience then. The muscle and all three layers of skin around each severed finger wasn't torn or jagged and the bone was cut clean through, there was no sawing involved.

"Well, it definitely isn't this Unsub's first time doing this," Beck tapped the picture of the fingerless hand in front of her. "They used a butcher's knife. The cut through the flesh, muscle, and bone are all too swift and clean to be from sawing it off with anything else. Each one was quick, precise. No hesitation... There's bound to be more where this came from." She gently pushed the image away from her once more, though she knew it would never really be gone from her mind.

"So killer Satanic cults don't exist, but Satanic serial killers do?" JJ asked, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.

Beck shrugged. "There are wars fought in the name of God, people that kill in His name as well," she explained, her eyes glued to the inverted Pentagram on the screen across the room. "Who's to eliminate the idea of a killer killing in the name of His opposite?"

Rossi took in a deep breath from across the table. "Lasciate ogni speranza, ch'entrate!" He spouted, slapping his file on the table before pushing himself up and out of his seat to start out the Bullpen door.

Beck smirked, leaning back in her seat as her finger tapped the edge of the table. "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate," she corrected beneath her breath.

JJ gave her a bored look, "Oh. Thanks for clearin' that up."

"Uh, it's from Dante's Inferno," Reid- Spencer explained. "Uh, 'abandon hope, all ye who enter here,'" he translated.

"So that was a 'yes'?" JJ deduced.

Hotchner frowned as he turned to look up from the photos to her, "A big 'yes.'"

Beck, as well as the rest of the team had started to gather their belongings from the table to follow Rossi's lead and get their go-bags before heading out.

Prentiss and Morgan had already left the room, JJ not far behind them, when Beck heard Reid- Spencer mutter beside her. "It is actually 'lasciate ogni sperance, ch'entrate,'" he explained to her. "Well, at least it is in the original copy and translation of Dante's Inferno."

Beck drew a face, furrowing her eyebrows. "Where do you even find an original copy and translation of Dante's Inferno?"

Reid- Spencer shrugged as he stood from his seat, his files all clutched to his chest. "Oxford library," he answered matter-of-factly.

Beck scoffed. "Oh, excuse me if not everyone reads Dante's original text from the Oxford library, Dr. Reid," she joked as they both started out of the Bullpen.

The Doctor chuckled, flushing a little at her exaggerating his title as they made their way down the walkway. "It was only for a brief trip. I did read a different translation my first time reading it while I was at CalTech, but I found the original to be much more broader in terms of interpreting the actual text."

"Ooh, CalTech, even fancier," she smiled, shaking her head as they parted to their separate desks. Beck set down the files on her counter then briefly turned her attention to Paris. Yet another leaf had been pulled off. "Dammit," she muttered as she flicked it off the little edge of the pot into the trash bin at the side of her desk she'd placed there for the exact reason that there had been so many leafs falling off. "That's the fifth one this week..." She could've sworn she saw Prentiss share a pointed look with the Doctor at the desk across from her, but it might've been about something else.

"Maybe you should invest in one of those spray bottles so you can water your plant more," Morgan chided with a smirk on his face as he leaned over the barrier between their two desks.

Beck would never get over how casual they were with going over the little barriers. Back at the CTU the barriers between desks were kind of like barriers between each person. Here at the BAU it seemed they were all about crossing boundaries.

Beck tilted her head slightly. "Maybe you should invest in a Bonsai yourself so you can rip the leaves off of your own instead of mine," she snapped back with a grin.

Morgan raised his eyebrows as he jaw fell slack slightly.

"Ooh," Prentiss chuckled from across the walkway. "Busted."

"Seriously, kid," Morgan held his hands up as he leaned back into his chair. "What is with you and that plant?"

Beck frowned slightly, "I like my plant."

"You also like being able to breathe?" Beck furrowed her eyebrows at that. What did breathing have anything to do with Paris? "I saw you running this morning," Morgan clarified. "Tried to catch up with you, but you just took off. I mean- do you even have lungs?"

Across the walkway, Reid's- Spencer's interest was now peaked. "Derek Morgan getting winded while running?"

"What did I just hear?" JJ piped up as she walked around to the side of Re- Spencer's desk.

Morgan threw his hands up defense. "She's a fast little woman-" Beck gave him a soft glare for calling her 'little.' "Those short legs can definitely run."

"Oh, yeah-" The sarcasm dripping from Beck's voice as she nodded. "Blame it on the height difference and not just because I'm able to outrun you from speed, strength, and athleticism alone."

A chorus of 'ooh's' sounded from the trio of agents across the walkway, Morgan raising his eyebrows, nodding as if he understood what her angle was in this argument was now. "Okay... okay..."

"Looks like we have ourselves a little friendly competition," JJ grinned, glancing between Morgan and Beck. "Who's the most athletic?"

"Well," Beck shrugged, giving them her best sheepish grin. "I did already outrun him this morning, so the Gold medal falls around my neck this round."

"Okay, Flash," Morgan joked. "We'll just see about the next time you need someone to kick down a door for you."

Beck grinned as she slowly got up from her seat, her hand reaching for her go-bag beneath her desk. "I think I can handle a door on my own just fine, thank you."

Morgan smiled, watching her go as she walked around her desk. "Next time you need saving-"

"I'm sure I can count on Spencer not to get winded," she taunted as she walked around his desk towards the office doors, her helmet and bag in hand as she heard the sounds of collective laughter following her joke.

This felt nice... This also felt different. The only time she'd ever held that kind of witty back and forth had always been within the confines of her own home with her family, the only people she ever reserved the 'fun' side of her for. Sure, she always tried to be a joking smart-ass wherever she was, it was apart of her personality. But, the witty, joking part was always kind of left at the doors whenever she walked into work... More specifically, to work with the CTU.

But like R- Spencer had said, this was going to be different from the CTU. He was being proven right more and more every day. She just hoped it stayed that way.

—

"The Running Woman can fly on her feet, but not on a plane..."

Beck rolled her eyes as the grip she held on her seat tightened ever so slightly with each shake of the small jet. And Strauss wondered why she wanted to get out of traveling this way so badly...

"Planes crash," Beck retorted. "And, apparently, Satanists kill..." She was waiting for someone to pick up on her terrible attempt at changing the subject to try and distract her from the fact that they were a over 25,000 feet in the air right now in a small, floating limo the size of her apartment.

"Satanic serial killers kill, but Satanic cults... don't exist?" JJ repeated from where she sat in the seat beside Beck, closest to the window. She'd beaten her by a second in getting that seat, but Beck was still thankful she had a seat with a seatbelt. She'd probably die if she got stuck on the couch where R- Spencer was sitting to her right.

"Well, initially, me and my old team went to investigate these so-called killer Satanic cults," Rossi began to explain from down the aisle near the back of the plane. Beck nearly sighed of relief. Yes, please, speak about something so I don't have to focus on the sounds of the engines only a few yards away from me. "There were reports across the Pacific Northwest of inverted pentagrams painted on old buildings, odd Satanic symbols left on bodies, and even some form of ritual that involved fire and broken or stolen items out in the woods. But we never found any actual evidence of a killer Satanic cult. In reality, there are only two types of violent Satanic criminals."

"Uh, Type One- the teen Satanists," Re-Spencer wasted no time in jumping right into the explanation where Rossi left the story. "Assume the Satanic identity to rebel. Minor crimes, theft and vandalism to churches, schools, symbols of authority. When combined with drugs and alcohol, they may turn violent."

Rossi nodded slowly. "Yes, in extreme cases, deadly... That was out of my book, word-for-word."

"Yup," Beck shifted in her seat as the plane shook slightly. Her stomach rolled. "Chapter 8, page 193, paragraph 4." Both Rossi and the Doctor turned to look at her with odd expressions. She shrugged. "What? I read, too."

"Great," Morgan grumbled. "There's two of 'em now." Beck could hear the humor behind his words to know he was probably more thrilled than annoyed.

"Killings are accidental," R-Spencer continued where he let off. God- she had to get used to thinking of him as Spencer and not as Dr. Reid. It was getting increasingly harder. "Usually resulting from their hobby getting out of control. Killings won't turn serial-"

"Hey, Reid," Morgan cut him off. Beck turned to see Morgan gesture to Spencer to cut the explanation, making a gesture with his hand cutting him off.

R-Spencer grimaced at Rossi. "Sorry," he whispered.

Personally, Beck would've much rather preferred trying to keep up with whatever fast talking points R-Spencer was giving them than have to get dragged through another 'Back In My Day' story from Papa Rossi.

Also- how come Morgan got to call him Reid?

"Okay, so that's one type," Prentiss swiftly changed the subject, leaning around her seat from across Beck to shout to Rossi in the back. "What's Type Two?"

"The Adaptive Satanist is the one you have to worry about," Rossi stated.

"Aren't out of control teens with raging hormones and an unhealthy obsession with Satan harder to predict and anticipate for?" Beck wondered aloud to the agent in the back.

"Like you said, they're only teenagers with the need to rebel using Satan as a way to do so. They're more irritating than they are dangerous, but they're fairly easy to figure out because they're so clumsy in their work," Rossi explained.

Morgan raised his eyebrows as he examined the inverted pentagram on Abby Kelton's chest again. "Well, this certainly wasn't the work of a bunch of clumsy teenagers then."

Rossi nodded as he continued. "The typical serial killer rationalizes his fantasies by blaming them on outside forces."

"Like Satan," JJ deduced.

"Yes. He adapts Satanic beliefs to fit his specific homicidal drives."

Beck leaned around Prentiss's chair to peer over at Rossi. "If that's the kicker, then what's the real difference between Satanic serial killers, and serial killers that justify their actions using God? Aren't they technically in the same ballpark?"

"Mm, while there are serial killers that use scripture, angels, or God as justification, they don't use specific Judeo-Christian beliefs as a way to kill. Like you said, they use it to justify or excuse what they're doing so it doesn't seem as though they're guilty," Rossi explained. Beck nodded, but she could've sworn she saw Spencer shift in his seat slightly. When she turned to glance at him while Rossi continued his explanation, she could see his hand coming up to rub his arm crease through his sleeve... Huh. "Satanic serial killers don't kill because he believes in Satan, the way other serial killers kill because they believe in God. He believes in Satan because he kills."

"Well," Beck turned her attention away from Re-Spencer and his arm when Hotchner leaned against the side of her chair, files in his hand. "Let's hope it's the teenagers."

Beck scoffed, "Here's to hoping." She glanced up to see him giving her a scalding glare. Oh, someone wasn't amused today... Then again, had she ever seen Hotchner amused with her at any point in their time together? Prick...

Hotchner turned back to address the team, "Whether you're religious or not, the presence of Satanic elements can affect even the most experienced investigators. And we're not immune-" Speak for yourself, Beck wanted to tell him. "-so keep an eye on the locals, and keep an eye on each other."

"I hear you," JJ muttered from beside Beck. "I saw The Exorcist." Beck chuckled slightly.

"My mother took us to church every Sunday until I moved out," Morgan explained from across the table. "This whole... Devil thing doesn't spook me at all."

Beck could hear the annoyance in his voice this time. He had the same irritated look on his face the first time he took that image of the inverted pentagram she'd set back on the table at the Bullpen. Frankly, she was irritated and annoyed, too... But underneath all that irritation from Morgan, she could really sense that hatred. She wondered where that came from. Religious trauma maybe?

"Maybe that's because you never truly bought the God part either," R-Spencer mused from beside Beck.

All eyes were suddenly on the Doctor after what he'd said... A deep accusation. Beck just wanted to poke and prod at the religious trauma that Morgan might've had, R-Spencer just straight up slashed a hole through it.

Like she'd noticed earlier that day; the BAU knows no boundaries.

"No offense, kid, but you don't know what I believe," Morgan countered.

"Well, I mean... logic dictates that if you believe in the one, you have to reconcile the existence of the other," the Doctor continued with a sheepish shrug.

Beck made a half-frown. "He's not wrong," she muttered.

There was a beat of silence before Hotchner picked the conversation back up again. "People's reactions to Satan is what gives it appeal to these offenders," he stated. "It has power... and it would be a mistake to underestimate it."

Beck sighed, rolling her eyes and wanting to disappear into her seat as the plane jolted again. "I just wish people would stop using religion to excuse the shit they do."

The agent wasn't aware at the time, but beside her, Spencer was giving her a sidelong glance, recalling the words Gideon once spoke to him on one of the scariest cases he'd ever been on. The one with Tobias Hankel.

He still remembered what Gideon had told him, similar to Beck's own words. "I'm tired of people using religion to justify the terrible things they do."

Spencer hoped this case was nothing like that one...

"Hey," he whispered over to Beck when he knew none of the other team members were listening. She turned to face him, her back not once leaving the chair she was trying so hard to stay glued to. "One hour, thirty-two minutes, and fifteen seconds before we land."

Beck gave him a grateful smile before turning back to face the front, her eyes closing as she leaned her head back. Spencer knew she probably wasn't asleep as the jet jolted a little, and while it was a little loud from all the rustling of paper files and wind from outside the jet walls, he was still able to pick up the soft tapping coming from her fingers on the table.

Tap-hold. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap-hold. Pause. Tap-hold. Tap. Pause. Tap-hold. Tap. Tap-hold. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Spencer smirked, not looking up from the files in his lap. "Your welcome."

—

"I fucking hate Florida."

The minute Beck stepped out off the plane, she was hoping to find solace from her stressful flight with some fresh air, but was only met by wet and humid Florida heat and sun.

She really fucking hated Florida.

"I don't see how old people retire here," she muttered bitterly as she dragged her feet along the tarmac with her go-bag slung over her shoulder as they walked towards the SUVs waiting for them a few yards away from where the jet had landed at Tampa International. The last time she'd been here, it was for Olivia Hopkins's funeral. She'd actually gotten picked up at this airport by that team of wackjobs Strauss had assigned with her to hunt down Gideon. Good times... "I can see why Satanic serial killers would choose it though."

"Why's that?" Prentiss asked as she walked alongside her.

"It's hot as Hell," Beck joked. Prentiss smiled, looking down at her feet as she shook her head, trying not to laugh.

Eventually, the team arrived in Bridgewater. No one bothered to unpack when they made it to their rooms, just threw down their things and just hurried to get back out there. There was a serial killer on the loose, no reason to waste time with unpacking.

Beck did, however, debate just ripping her bra off and going boob commando the rest of the case if it was going to be as hot as it was the rest of the time. For fuck's sake, it was already November, didn't Florida ever cool down?

But, she decided against it and just sucked it up and headed back down to the lobby where the rest of the team was waiting idly.

Hotchner was the first to explain the plan, "The lead detective on the case is headed to the Medical Examiner's Office. I told him we'd meet him there to take a look at the body. Reid, Prentiss- you're with me." The pair nodded in agreement.

"Wait, what about the rest of us?" Morgan wondered what Beck was thinking.

"Abby Kelton was a devoted member to the only church in the area," Hotchner explained.

"And a low-risk victim," Beck slowly chimed in as she began to piece something together. "If the Unsub has done this before and gotten away with it, he must be kidnapping people that aren't low-risk, that no one would think twice if they went missing."

JJ began to nod as she picked up on what Beck was saying. "So, if he chose Abby Kelton, a low-risk victim, for a reason..."

"It was because she was close to the church," Morgan concluded with a sigh and a frown. "The Unsub is trying to send a message to the church."

"Lemme guess," Beck began, her eyes meeting Hotchner's. "We get to talk to the priest?"

"And the parents," Hotchner nodded in confirmation.

Beck wanted to groan. "I think I would much rather the half-eaten corpse, but... you're the boss." Not for long...

Hotchner glared at her once more, she was barely affected at this point. It was to be expected. "Alright, you have your assignments. We'll meet at the precinct in an hour."

"Yes, sir," Prentiss replied before her, Reid- Spencer, and Hotchner all started in one direction out the lobby doors, and Beck, JJ, Morgan, and Rossi went another.

When the small portion of the team arrived at the church, Beck was half-tempted to rip flesh off her body just to feel something other than suffocating heat. And she thought her time in the Amazon in August a few years back was bad...

Beck slapped a large mosquito that had been unfortunate enough to just land on her arm.

She wiped away the remaining guts from off her hand on her dark pants and groaned, "I fucking hate Florida."

Upon exiting the SUV like she had moments ago, Morgan made a sound that sounded close to a groan as his eyes landed on the small white building they'd just parked in front of. He looked about as pouty as a little boy getting dragged to church on Sunday morning... Well, technically he was getting dragged to church on a Wednesday afternoon and he was a grown man. Close enough...

The group started towards the church when Morgan abruptly stopped a few yards up the way. "Rossi, do me a favor," both Beck and JJ turned to hear what he was about to ask. "You talk to the priest, alright?" Beck chuckled at how firmly he said it, as if he wasn't actually asking a favor, more like telling him how it was gonna be. Wow... Morgan really hated churches.

"You'd rather interview the grieving parents on the worst day of their lives than the priest?" Rossi asked Morgan, perplexed and confused at the so-called 'favor' he'd asked of him

Morgan looked back at the church for a second, debating, before turning back to Rossi and nodding. "If that's alright with you, yeah."

Rossi just sighed, him and JJ turning on their heels to continue walking towards the church. Beck, however, hung back, waiting for Morgan to start walking before falling into step with him. He was probably feeling something right now, walking into church after whatever happened to him. If he was seriously asking Rossi of all people to talk to a priest instead of doing it himself, then something certainly happened to him before. Beck didn't wanna push it, but she also didn't want him to feel like he was alone.

It was a weird sentiment, but sometimes she wished someone in the CTU would have done it for her when she needed it. Sure, Olivia Hopkins used to try, but that was out of guilt for the loss of her relationship with her own children. Beck was a substitute for her, not a real teammate. Not a real team.

When they entered the church, Beck was hit with that scent all churches had. The odd smell that came from consistently burning fragrant-less candles, dusting off fake gold, and sifting through old books day after day. Church smell.

"Good afternoon."

The group spun around at the entrance of a short, darker man with a bushy mustache, bald head and a grey suit that notified them that this must've been their preacher. Beck turned to Morgan and found him taking in this new preacher with a mixture of disdain and... was that fear?

"Hi. Father Marks," JJ addressed him as she extended her hand, he shook it. "Agent Jareau. These are agents Rossi, Ryder, and Morgan."

This... Father Marks, smiled as he shook Rossi's hand, then Beck's, then Morgan's. Beck was almost convinced that her hand would burn at the priest's contact, but she felt a sigh of relief go through her when it didn't. Great, so she wasn't a demon. That was good to know.

"Yeah, it's good of you to come," Father Marks thanked them after circling back to JJ.

"We're sorry we have to be here under these circumstances, Father," Rossi told him with genuine remorse. Beck had once been apart of a church... Very distantly, it felt more like a chore for Beck when her Mom would drag the entire family every other Sunday, but she'd seen first-hand just how connected and close most church communities were. She couldn't imagine how hard the loss of Abby Kelton was for the rest of the church.

"Well, Abby's parents, Bob and Lee-Ann, are in my office," Father Marks explained to the group. Beck could see Morgan eagerly glancing towards the stairs that Father Marks had come down moments ago. He looked like he was just itching to head out of there to get to the mourning parents. "We were discussing her service..."

Rossi nodded. "Agent Morgan actually has some questions for you," he explained. Beck tried to bite back a smile as though she were surprised at Rossi's course of actions. She nearly giggled at the sight of Morgan worriedly glancing between Rossi and the priest now looking back at him as he tried to keep his surprised expression under wraps.

"As do I," Beck cleared her throat and sobered up. She was humored by the circumstances, but she also was very curious to see how questions between Morgan and Father Marks would look.

"Well, uh, they're upstairs, first door on the right, and they're expecting you," Father Marks told Agent Rossi and JJ.

Rossi nodded, following after JJ towards the stairs. Beck watched Agent Rossi smirk knowingly at Morgan before brushing past her. Beck couldn't help but mumble beneath her breath, "Ben fatto." Well done. She heard Rossi cough to stifle his laugh as he continued his way up the steps.

When Beck turned to see Morgan with raised eyebrows looking back and forth between her and Rossi, she knew she probably shouldn't have made a joke. Even if Morgan didn't understand what she had said, he could probably tell she was still being a little shit.

Right... Religious trauma. Thing with priests. Questioning a priest about Satan in a church. Not the best time to be a little shit right now.

"So, long as it been, Agent Morgan and Ryder?" Father Marks asked idly as he walked towards the edge of the many rows of white seats facing towards the podium surrounded by candles and crosses.

Morgan furrowed his eyebrow, turning back from where Rossi and JJ had left to him. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, since you've been in God's house," Father Marks smiled at the both of them as he spread his arms out and up into the air as if gesturing to the Big Man Himself. "Priests and dentists can spot and overdue customer from a mile away, so... how long's it been?"

Beck broke the tension with a small chuckle. "Uh... Easter about seven years ago," she grimaced. "I'm not exactly the religious type, Father, you'll have to excuse me for my absence from the church."

"Ah," he nodded, smiling nonetheless at her confession before turning back to Morgan. "And what about you, young man?"

That must've set Morgan off because Beck saw the change in behavior almost immediately after Father Marks called him 'young man.' His posture stiffened and his chest buffed out as he took a step forward, his eyes sharp as though he were staring down this priest. "I didn't come here to talk about myself," he stated.

Father Marks barely even seemed shaked. He nodded, smiling apologetically. "Occupational hazard. My apologies." Beck was half-tempted to apologize on behalf of Agent Morgan, but thought it best not to cross him again after what Rossi pulled.

"Is this the biggest church in town?" Morgan asked.

Father Marks nodded as he answered, "Well, we're the only church in Bridgewater Proper." That means that this was definitely the center of the Unsub's anger. Abby Kelton wasn't only his victim, she was his weapon he was using to hurt the church.

"You're aware of the religious aspects of this crime: the pentagram?" Morgan prompted.

A dark look crossed the priest's features. Beck recognized the look in his eye. He was probably recalling seeing Abby Kelton's dead body... the inverted pentagram being dangled in front of his face as some sort of taunt. The poor man.

"Yes," he answered in a soft whisper as he was able to meet their eyes again. "I am."

"Can you tell us about any smaller incidents that have occurred recently?" Beck chimed in, not needing Morgan to put anymore of his boring questions into the man who had already seen and been through enough. "Break-ins, thefts, vandalism, threats towards the church?"

The priest immediately shook his head. "No," he answered firmly.

"Parishioners behaving strangely?" Morgan added. "Regulars who may have stopped coming?"

"We believe that our suspect could be specifically targeting this church," Beck explained when she saw the very confused look on Father Marks' face. "We're just asking these questions out of precaution. Any small detail you pick up on or remember that you thought might've been odd could be vital, Father."

Once again, he shook his head. "There aren't any that I'm aware of, I'm sorry." Beck frowned. It must've been hard to look towards any of his parishioners, church community members, as suspects. Priests were supposed to welcome and help and see the good in all people, there was no way this man was looking at something as odd as Satanic behavior going on directly beneath his nose.

"How about questions of Satan?" Morgan bluntly asked. Beck took a deep breath as she tried not to snap at him for being so upfront about it. "From your young members? Possession? Exorcisms? The Occult?"

The priest nodded as he replied, "Now, that, I'm sure I would remember."

Morgan then pressed his lips in a firm line. "Good. Thanks for your time," he said curtly before practically rushing out of the church doors.

Beck opened her mouth to call after Morgan, but quickly clamped it shut before turning back to Father Marks. "Thank you for your cooperation," she told him in a much more genuine tone than what Morgan had offered in his departure. "We're sorry we have to ask you these questions, but like I said before, they're vital to figuring out who did this to prevent them from doing any more harm to your church."

"Thank you, Agent Ryder," he told her, emotion dripping in his tone. "You know, for someone that isn't too religious, you speak with high respect of the church."

Beck smirked. "'If anyone thinks he is religious and does not brittle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless,'" she quoted effortlessly.

Father Marks looked at her, impressed and also taken aback a little bit. "James 1:26," he mused with a smirk. "You know your scripture."

"Not my scripture, Father. Yours," she corrected. "I'm just a girl with a degree in Theology."

"Mm," he hummed, pleased nonetheless with her answer. "Well, I appreciate your efforts. I pray that you're successful in apprehending the man that did this and for your safety."

"Thank you, Father," she smiled awkwardly, not really sure how to respond to someone telling you they'd pray for you, before heading out the doors after Morgan.

When she eventually caught up with him, she found him standing near the SUV looking up at the large cross up above the church sign. She strolled up to stand beside him, the height difference making it a bit awkward as she tried to imitate the way he was leaning against the SUV, looking out at the church. He probably expected her not to ask questions, which he was right, she wasn't going to... But maybe she could get him to talk without questions.

"You know, growing up with a devout Catholic mother that dragged me and the rest of our family to mass every other week and major holidays, I never understood what the big deal about all this is," she admit, gesturing with her leg out towards the church.

"What?" Morgan asked, without looking down at her. "Churches? God?"

"Religion," she clarified. "I mean... studying religion from afar is one thing, but devoting your life to something- someone- that may not even exist just for a shot at Paradise in an after life that, once again, might not even exist... Seems pointless." She shrugged, Morgan didn't say anything, but she could tell he was listening by the way his features softened momentarily. His jaw wasn't as clenched as it had been moments before. Good, she was getting somewhere. "Then again, we dedicate our lives to saving people from psychopaths, sociopaths, and terrorists- oh my- and we don't even know if we'll even make a difference when we finally hang up the gun holster and hand in our badges."

Morgan did turn to look down at her this time. "You comparing what we do to believing in God?" He asked, sounding a bit more perplexed than he did offended.

"No, I'm saying I understand why people have faith," she reiterated. "You just seem to despise it..." It wasn't a question, just an open statement to let him know that she saw what was happening. And although she wouldn't be actively digging for answers, she would be open to hear any answers.

As if on cue, JJ and Rossi came out of the church entrance shaking hands and thanking Father Marks as they left down the small ramp.

Beck and Morgan both pushed themselves off the SUV as they approached. Rossi even going as far as putting on his designer sunglasses and smirking smugly while sauntering past the two. "Faccio del mio meglio," Beck heard Rossi mutter as he brushed past her to get to the passenger's side of the SUV. I do my best. This time, she did chuckle despite it being at Morgan's expense. Not only did Morgan need to have that first talk with the priest, but little did Beck know, so did she.

—

"I fucking hate Florida," Beck muttered for what seemed to be twentieth time in the past two hours since initially landing.

"What's the reason this time?" Re-Spencer asked as he approached where she was standing before the large vending machine down the hall from where Prentiss, Hotchner, Rossi, Morgan and JJ were all setting up the white boards for the profile they'd eventually deliver.

Beck crossed her arms, glaring at the snack choices in front of her. "They don't have any good Snapple flavors here," she grumbled beneath her breath. The Doctor laughed. "Whatever... Mango is just gonna have to do for the time being." She pressed the buttons for the drink and watched it fall to the bottom of the machine with a thud. "You want anything?" She prompted R-Spencer as she leaned down to grab her drink.

"Uh, I'm good," he shook his head. "I had a big breakfast before I came in today. There's actually this really great 24 hour diner I go to sometimes after cases, they have some of the best waffles there."

Beck grimaced, "Well, I'm not sure if they have vending machines that sell waffles, but if they did, I doubt it would be in Florida." The Doctor shook his head at her blatant distaste toward the state, but didn't remark on it. Frankly, it wasn't one of his favorites either. "Hm," Buck mused after reading the bottom of the Snapple cap she'd just popped off. "Each year, the Moon moves away from the Earth by about four centimeters."

"3.78 centimeters," Dr-Spencer immediately corrected before awkwardly clearing his throat. "...If we're being precise..."

Beck smirked, sparing him from getting scolded for being one of the smartest people in the room like he had on the jet earlier that day. "Snapple: 1, Dr. Reid: 1. Seems we're at a tie," she grinned before taking a sip from her drink. "So, I'm assuming you just got back from the Medical Examiner's."

"Yeah..." he didn't sound too eager to talk about it.

Beck turned to glance at him as they fell into a slow stroll down the hallway, taking their time towards the conference room. "That bad? I mean- I know it's bad, but is it... that bad?"

"Well, the, uh, Medical Examiner determined the cause of death to be exsanguination from her throat being slashed about eight hours before the joggers found her. Her nose had been broken 48 hours before that," he explained.

Beck nodded, "Blitz attack." R-Spencer nodded. "And lemme guess, the body was so badly mutilated that they couldn't even check for signs of sexual assault?" He shook his head. "...But that's not what's eating at you so what is."

He winced. Was it something she'd said...? "The, uh, ME also found Abby Kelton's fingers... They were fed to her before she was killed... All ten of them."

Oh.

"Jesus fucking..." Beck cut herself off. Her skin crawled and stomach rolled just at the thought- Fuck. She'd seen shit in her days, done shit herself that she would take to the grave, but never... "Reid- Spencer," she corrected herself. He turned to face her as they got closer to the conference room. "We're gonna get this guy."

He looked a little uneasy, but nodded nonetheless.

Beck moved to open the door to the conference room, but was stopped when Re-Spencer spoke again, "Are you religious?"

She shrugged. "Sunday, Christmas, and Easter masses were always more of a chore for me and my family growing up. The only real devout Catholic in the house was my mom and I only started going when I was first adopted at 8," she explained. "But studying theology and human outlook and community dynamics connected through religion is a really beautiful thing... until it's not." He nodded, seemingly mulling over the indirect answer she'd given him. "What about you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I never grew up with religion, my mom was a professor that specialized in medieval texts and literature who firmly stood by her choice in allowing me to grow up with an open mind to anything, but..." he trailed off for a moment. "Cases like these make me wonder... that if people believe in something so fervently enough to push them to such great lengths as a showcase of their faith, is there really something out there by virtue of the fact these people believe so firmly of It's existence, or is it all just a hoax made up to help people justify their actions?"

"You wanna know what I think?" Beck asked. He looked up to meet her eyes, an unspoken confirmation that he was very open to listening to what she had to say. "Religion, no matter the origin, gives people hope. Some, a reason to live. It's like... Communism," her voice joking as she tried to put her explanation into words. "In theory, it's a beautiful idea. In some places or instances, it could even work if executed in the way it is intended. But... in a lot of cases, it can turn into something even worse. It all just depends on the people who carry it out or interpret it."

The Doctor seemed the consider her words for a moment as his eyes trailed down to the door handle as if he were studying it intently. A beat passed between them before a small chuckle escaped R-Spencer's lips. He glanced back up at her. "You know, you happen to know a lot about religion for someone who just studied theology..." he said suggestively, a smirk playing at his lips as if he had just figured something out. Which, he had, but Beck wasn't about to let on.

Beck shrugged. "I was a nerd that fell down a rabbit hole in a library," she replied with ease. It wasn't a complete lie, but it also wasn't the complete truth. "You're not the only one who reads, Reid."

He narrowed his eyes at her as she pushed the door to the conference room open, but he didn't get the chance to press her on the issue seeing as they were walking into the middle of a conversation.

"He cut off her fingers and made her eat them," Beck heard Prentiss reiterate to Rossi from where she sat at the round table beside the Agent. "If that isn't sadistic-"

"If it was," Rossi swiftly cut her off. "That's the only sign of sadism present in the crime."

"True," Beck interjected, notifying the group of her and Reid's- Spencer's (fuck!) presence. "The fingers were cut off, but there was no hesitation. It was, as I said, like he was just doing a chore. If he were savoring the pain he was inflicting, he would have sawed through the fingers to cut them off. Not to mention- the Unsub also could've carved the pentagram into her chest before killing her, but he waited until she was dead to do so."

Rossi nodded in agreement. "And the fingers, like the pentagram, are a message," he stated.

"What the Hell's the message?" Morgan asked from where he stood just a few feet away, leaning against a nearby desk.

"'She's not my first,'" Hotchner answered just after his entrance into the room. Beck, along with the rest of the group in the room, all furrowed their eyebrows at his meaning. "You were right," he said, casting a glance to Beck which caught her off guard slightly. "None of the fingers found in Abby Kelton's stomach were hers, and six of them were index fingers."

The room fell silent. If Beck focused hard enough she was sure she'd probably be able to hear someone's beating heart in the quiet room following the bomb Hotchner just dropped on them.

Beck was a shocked.

This Unsub not only cut off all of Abby Kelton's fingers while she was alive, but also fed her all his previous victims' fingers... She wanted to throw up, but instead she just set down her Snapple onto the closest surface before she dropped it.

Beck swallowed hard, trying to wash away the urge to puke all over the conference room floor as she was sure the rest of the team was as well. "I hate to be the one to ask, but were you able to pull any prints from them?"

Hotchner frowned before answering, "We were-" The fingers were still fucking intact- dear God- "Garcia's running them through the system to see if we can get a match, figure out who these other victims are and where they might've gone missing to determine where this Unsub's hunting ground is."

"It isn't Bridgewater?" Morgan asked, confused by the Unit Chief's resolve.

"I didn't say that, but we have to know for certain where he's been taking his initial victims before Abby Kelton," he explained. "We set up a geographical profile of where each victim was taken, we're able to get a more precise location on where our Unsub might be, Bridgewater or not."

The group all collectively nodded in understanding.

"You should have Garcia check police databases," R-Spencer interjected. "If the Unsub is only now just surfacing, then he most likely kept a low profile by only going after high-risk victims prior to Abby Kelton."

Hotchner nodded. "I'll let her know. Until then, keep your eyes peeled on anything that seems out of the ordinary about any of the church members. Maybe get something to eat while you're at it."

Beck scoffed. "Yeah, that's not happening anytime soon."

—

It had been almost twenty hours since Beck ate her gummy bears she'd gotten from Mrs. Kumar for breakfast earlier that morning. True to her word about not being able to eat after hearing about what the Unsub had done to Abby Kelton, Beck held out.

While the rest of the team had divulged in ordering chicken, fries, and biscuits from a place down the block from the precinct, Beck settled for just throwing herself into her work. There was no way she was going to be able to eat anything meaty for the next couple of days... possibly weeks.

SATANIC SERIAL KILLER

"doesn't kill because he believes in Satan, believes in Satan because he kills."

More victims.

Meticulous in removing fingers.

NOT A SADIST

Sending a message with the fingers being fed to a low-risk victim after only hunting high-risk victims.

THE CHURCH IS THE TARGET

Abby Kelton is not the first victim, but he could've sent the message that she wasn't the first in any other way- why feed her the fingers? Why not just dump them on her body?

There's more to the fingers.

So, he chops off the fingers of women, I'm sure there are a lot of other serial killers out there with a thing for fingers, but what makes it so drastic that he has to resort to worshiping Satan to justify what he does?

Fucking Florida.

She was alone in the small break room outside the open precinct office, sorting through a pile of files, when she was joined by Morgan not long after he had seemingly finished eating. "Find anything?"

Beck briefly glanced up at him from over the edge of her notepad. "Nothing but dead ends and unanswered questions," she replied before turning back to the other stack of files Garcia had pulled from the church records a few hours beforehand. "I've only gone through a couple dozen of these," she explained, gesturing to the stack of church profiles on her left. "Got caught up in piecing together a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces."

Morgan took the seat across from her and glanced down at her notepad she was shutting. "You good, kid?" Beck glanced up at him, her eyebrows furrowing as she wondered why he was asking. Did she seem... not good? "What you told me about you remembering all the things you see, the crime scene photos... Are you alright?"

Beck let out a wry, bitter laugh. "I am, really," she reassured him. "Frankly, I've seen worse."

"Satanic serial killer that cuts off the fingers of girls and feeds them to people before killing them too? There's stuff worse than that?" Morgan asked in disbelief.

Beck frowned down at the notepad in front of her... "Yep," she answered simply. "But it sure does crack my Top Ten list of 'Worst Things I've Seen In My Life.'"

Morgan looked both taken aback and mildly amused. "You have a 'Worst Things I've Seen In My Life' list?"

"Yeah," she replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I'm sure you do, too."

Morgan looked like he was thinking about it for a second before raising his eyebrows slightly in realization. Oh yeah, he definitely had his top ten. Beck wondered where some of the shit she'd seen and done landed on his list. "So, this case cracks your Top Ten. What number is it at?"

She thought about it for a second. It definitely wasn't any of the Top Five... Not worse than what her Six was, not her Seven either... She guessed if she had to actually give it a rank it would be... "Nine, probably."

"What's your Number One?" He asked, all traces of humor gone from his voice and replaced by genuine concern and curiosity. He was digging... She didn't appreciate it.

"You don't wanna know my One," she told him truthfully, the humor gone from her voice as well. "If you did, it would probably become your One, despite the fact that you never had to experience it like I did, so it wouldn't be real."

There was a beat of silence that passed between the two. For a moment, Morgan looked as though he wanted to say something to her about what she'd seen or ask if she wanted to talk about it, but thankfully his phone began to ring on the table between them. Saved by the bell... She'd have to thank Garcia for that later.

"I'm guessing that's probably Garcia," Beck muttered, glancing down at the cell. "I'll leave you to it." And with that, she pushed out of her seat and walked towards the other room where Prentiss and Hotchner were now residing. "Huh," she said upon entering the partially empty room. "Where are JJ, Rossi, and Reid?" She didn't feel like being informal with his name while he wasn't around. Besides, she wasn't used to saying his first name anyway.

"They turned in for the night," Prentiss answered, looking up from the autopsy report she'd probably been reading for the past few hours, trying to see if she'd missed anything at all. Beck doubted she had. "Thinking of doing the same?"

"Pfft, not any time soon," she muttered as she ran a hand through her bangs.

"What, afraid you'll get nightmares from all this?" The brunette held up the grotesque images of Abby Kelton's autopsy photos. "Me, too..."

Beck glanced away from Prentiss in the direction of Hotchner. His back was to them and he seemed to be more interested in whatever he'd mapped out on the whiteboard at the front of the room than the conversation Prentiss was kicking up behind him.

Beck decided it was safe enough to take a seat at the edge of the counter a few feet away from where Prentiss sat. "Truthfully, I don't remember many of the dreams I have. I just don't think I'd be able to sleep until the guy is either dead or caught, so why bother leaving until he is?"

"It's coming up on... eleven," Prentiss said, checking the clock on the wall. She looked concerned when she turned back to Beck. "You're not even gonna try and get some sleep tonight?"

Beck shrugged. "I'm sure I'll sneeze sometime tonight and close my eyes for second. It'll be enough to get me by until we get this bastard."

Prentiss shook her head as she went back to flipping through the ME report once more. "That's a terrible practice."

"Works for me," she shrugged innocently just as the printer across the room beeped and began to spit out documents.

"Looks like Garcia found something," Prentiss said, perking up. The pair got up from their collective seats and walked over to the printer, collecting the files, documents, and images that were being sent through. The pictures were of different mug shots of different women, all attached to names, missing posters, and a positive ID on the finger print.

Beck held up a few of them, listing them off in her head.

Keira Eckman. Jill Quader. Samantha Naris. Floria Marcias. Rita Tayamo. Jada De Aguirre. April Yorkers. Megan Gettler. Cecilia Baquerizo. Delia Gamarra.

One person for every one finger that was fed to Abby Kelton...

"Holy shit," she muttered beneath her breath.

"Hotch!" Prentiss called out to the Unit Chief. Hotchner quickly rushed over to see what Garcia had sent over. "All ten women identified, all high-risk victims, all went missing within this radius." She then showed him a map Garcia had sent over, a red blip and image for every woman and where they'd been reported missing from... Bridgewater was in the center of the large circle the Unsub had created in his targeting.

Hotchner frowned. "I'll set up the profile briefing," he stated firmly. "Ryder, if you're not leaving anytime soon, your help would be appreciated. Prentiss, you start calling the families of all the victims. Tell Morgan he's in charge of briefing the locals."

"Yes, sir," the brunette said before heading out of the room with the stack of files Beck had already memorized and handed to the woman.

Hotchner wasted no time in gathering up the individual images and locations of the women before starting to head back to the white board to set up the geographical profile to present in a few hours, seeing as it was coming up on eleven and people would be back in the precinct as early as six the next day.

Great... an entire night spent setting up a profile with Hotchner... This might be Number Ten on her list.

—

There was minimal amounts of talking between Hotchner and Beck as they set up the white boards for the profile the next morning. They started at 11 pm and didn't finish until close to 3 in the morning. Through those four hours, the only things Hotchner had said to her were of the following:

"Eat something."

"If you need band-aids for your paper cuts, the first aid kit is in the bottom drawer."

"The coffee is still lukewarm if you need any."

"Go back to the hotel, Ryder."

"I'm driving you back so you can get sleep. I don't need an agent dead on their feet the day we deliver the profile."

To which she responded with the same two words:

"I'm fine."

She knew he was only trying to help, but frankly, it was really fucking weird. Especially, coming from him.

"That wasn't a suggestion, it was an order," he pressed her after shutting a file shut and sliding it back onto the table nearby to where Beck was seated sideways with her knees over the arms on one side of her chair and her back against the other as she curled up against the cushion of the seat. Without food or any sugar or caffeine in her system, her vow to stay awake and not eat until the caught the Unsub was started to weigh on her. She'd already yawned for the first time about thirty minutes after they'd initially started.

Hotchner, who had been without his suit jacket or tie for the past three hours, picked up both from the back of the seat opposite of Beck's and walked around the table to press into the bottom of her knee slightly, putting enough pressure on it to wake her up again from her little power nap.

"What?" She snapped groggily.

"I'm taking you back to the hotel. Get up," the politeness he'd had in his tone moments before when she was partially awake was gone now that she was only half-asleep and fully pissed off.

Beck wasn't having it. "Just let me rest my eyes for a couple minutes," she muttered as she pressed her face back into the cushion once more. "I'll be good to go in a second."

"Ryder, that's the seventh time you've said that in the past forty minutes," he retorted. "Now get up. I'm not carrying you."

Beck had never had to fight the urge to tell him to go fuck himself more than she did now, pulling herself back to partial consciousness and out of her comfy position in the chair. It might not have seemed comfortable to most people, but she'd slept on a jagged floor of rocks for seven nights straight before. The chair was a luxury she would've been fine with taking over having to be dragged to the hotel by Hotchner.

"Fine," she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest as Hotchner led the pair from out of the conference room, through the precinct, and downstairs towards the last and only SUV in the parking lot. "Prentiss and Morgan leave already?" She asked upon climbing into the passenger's seat, Hotchner settling into the driver's.

"They left two hours ago during one of your naps," he answered as he turned the key into the ignition. Beck gave him a half-hearted glare, or as much as one as she could muster in her condition. "Put your seatbelt on."

Beck rolled her eyes. "Okay, Dad," she shot back before obliging.

Beck's consciousness went in and out in the ten minute trip it took for Hotchner to get them to the hotel. When they'd arrived, her eyes were open, but her mind was shut off completely as she dragged her feet from the elevator on their floor to get to her door. She'd barely registered Hotchner telling her he expected to see her tomorrow morning at the precinct before she shuffled into her room. She didn't bother to change or even turn on the lights as she trudged towards the bed.

She kicked her shoes off, pulled her gun from behind her back, unclipped and threw her bra across the room, and hoped that her alarm was set before throwing herself onto the scratchy hotel bed.

She was asleep before she even hit the pillow.

—

"Fucking Florida," Beck grumbled as she kicked the vending machine for the third time, this time willing the mango punch Snapple to fall from where it had gotten stuck. Victorious, she snatched it from the bottom of the machine and started back down the hall before she was late to the profile she'd fallen asleep making last night.

Thankfully, Hotchner had left a message early in the morning that woke her up, letting her and the other team members that the profile would be delivered around nine that morning. So, naturally, Beck slept in until eight and had to speed to catch a taxi to get to the precinct since everyone else had opted to carpool early.

"We've gathered you here to deliver our psychological profile of our Unsub and to tell you what we know so far to deduce who we're looking for," Hotchner began his presentation just as Beck pushed through the small crowd that had gathered around the white board at the front of the room. She pushed through to take a seat at the edge of a detective's desk. "Abby Kelton and ten others murdered by a serial killer here in Bridgewater."

"Here?" The main detective on the case- Jordan, she believed she'd caught his name not too long after getting to the precinct the day before- asked with a large cigar still in his mouth. Beck rolled her eyes. Fucking Florida. "How can you be sure?"

Hotchner crossed his arms and turned towards the board between he and Beck. The map they'd set up with each picture of a victim had a red pin in it and was attached to a string that connected them to the location of where they went missing. Abby Kelton's was in the center of the circle around the city. "These marks represent where the first ten disappeared. The void in the center if his safety zone. He avoids killing near his home to escape detection, and the void's center is Bridgewater."

"Why would he violate his safety zone?" Detective Jordan asked as he plucked the fat half-smoked cigar from between his lips. "No one knew he existed."

Rossi nodded from his seat beside the detective, "Because no one knew he existed. That's why he left us the fingers." Among other reasons. There had to be another sick reason why he had Abby Kelton eat the fingers. A thousand ways to send a message that you've killed people and who they are, leaving fingers to be identified would've worked fine, but he fed them to her. There was symbolism behind everything this Unsub did, there had to be symbolism to why he had her eat his other victim's fingers, Beck knew it.

"If he wants us to know, does he want us to catch him?" Detective Jordan prompted.

"No," Rossi answered truthfully. "Killing gives him power. Our knowing gives him more. He won't stop... He's just getting started."

As if on cue, Beck heard the Detective's phone ring. She leaned over and around Rossi to watch him answer.

"Detective Jordan," he answered as he stood from his seat and began pacing. "Yeah... Yeah, I got it." By the time he had hung up the phone, Beck could tell by his demeanor that it wasn't exactly good news he'd be told on the call. "You were right," he told Rossi. "He's just gettin' started. Local girl, Tracey Lambert was just reported missing by her roommate."

Beck glanced across the room towards Hotchner. The Unit Chief glanced around at all his team members spread around the room and gave them a collective nod. "Where was she last seen?"

"Her car was just found on an old hiking trail not too far from here," Detective Jordan answered.

Beck and Morgan were the first up from their seats as they started towards the door. "You know the directions to get there?" Morgan asked her as they began to push their way through the group of police.

"I can lead the way for y'all if you're okay with following," Detective Jordan chimed in as he joined them on their trek out of the precinct.

"Deal," Beck replied to the Detective before snatching up the keys from Morgan's pocket and holding them up to him. "But I'm driving."

—

"Fucking Florida," Beck muttered bitterly after the sixth time she'd hit her head against the back of her seat from maneuvering the large SUV through the bumps and dips down the road between marsh to make it where Tracey Lambert had been seen last.

Morgan chuckled at her expense as they climbed out of the parked car.

The local cops were already on the scene when they'd arrived, so the place was already crawling with the boys in the blue as they stomped around the area surrounding the pit stop. A few yards away was a silver jeep, Tracey Lambert's car.

"Dammit," Beck cursed as she clapped her hands directly in front of her face at the sight of the mosquito that had just flew into her eye line. When she pulled her hands back, there was a mark of guts in her palms. She wiped it away on her black pants with a look of disgust. "Fucking Florida."

"You really hate Florida," Morgan said, smiling in amusement at her reaction to everything since the minute they'd gotten off the jet.

"And you really hate churches," she retorted.

"I don't hate churches," he countered. Beck turned to give him a look. He could practically hear the 'yeah, right' coming from her mouth at just how sarcastic she looked. "It's not about churches, or community, or hope, or any of that crap-"

"Then what's it about?" She pressed.

"Hey," he said, moving to stand in front of her, abruptly stopping her in her tracks and forcing her to look up at him. "You don't talk about your Top Ten, I don't talk about mine. Alright?"

So, one of his Ten had to do with churches...

"Alright," she nodded.

It wasn't long before the rest of the team arrived.

Hotchner was the first to approach where Beck and Morgan were standing just a couple feet from the car. "Rossi and Prentiss, go check the restroom where she was taken," he ordered. "Morgan, Ryder, you find anything yet?"

Beck shook her head, the moment between her and Morgan now brushed to the side as they came back to the case at hand. "We just got here, but there's not much else here it seems except for the car."

"Cops are looking around, trying to see if the Unsub is nearby since it doesn't look like there are any other fresh tire tracks," Morgan piped up. "He might've walked here and dragged her somewhere nearby. He couldn't have gotten too far since last night if he's traveling by foot with a body."

"Or just the girl," Beck immediately corrected him. When he glanced at her questioningly, she clarified, "He had Abby Kelton for two days before killing her, we should assume Tracey Lambert is also still alive." Morgan nodded in agreement.

Beck hoped Tracey Lambert was alive... If he really was devolving and using people close to the community then there was no telling what he'd do next. His first couple kills were for practice, Abby Kelton was his message... What was Tracey Lambert going to be for this Unsub? Beck didn't want to wait to find out.

"She planning on hiking out here for long?" Morgan asked as the group walked towards the Jeep, the windows down and the doors unlocked. She definitely wasn't expecting to get kidnapped on this hike. She had faith in the fact that she would be fine all alone out here. That Unsub took it from her.

"According to her roommate, she wasn't gone long, but after a couple of hours without hearing anything she started to get worried and then called in that she was missing," Hotchner answered as he walked around to the other side of the car, pulling on some latex gloves from his back pocket. "The car was called in by a police officer that found it this morning when he came looking for her."

Beck frowned, having realized she didn't exactly come prepared with her own pair of latex gloves. She wasn't always used to being thrown into forensic examination out in the open at an active crime scene like this. It was usually in an enclosed space, but she should've known better.

"Here," she turned to her right to find a pair being handed to her by Morgan.

She took them with a look of gratitude and pulled them on. They were a bit too big for her, so they went all the way past her wrists, but it was fine. Once she had the gloves on, she popped open the unlocked driver's side door and leaned in, Hotchner mirroring her movements on the passenger's side.

The first thing that caught her eyes was the cross dangling from the bottom of the shift on the side of the wheel. Beck lifted it up with the tip of her index finger and frowned. "She was religious," she remarked before glancing across the car towards Hotchner. "How likely are the odds that she attends the only church in Bridgewater Proper?"

Hotchner then reached out to the compartment close to his head and popped it open. He reached in with his gloved hand and pulled out a bible along with a song book. "Very," he answered, holding them out for her to see.

"Hey," both Beck and Hotchner turned at the sound of Morgan calling to them from through the backseat window. "What's he doin' here?" Beck moved back and out from the Jeep and glanced around Morgan's shoulder to see who he was talking about. She should've known from how pissed he sounded that it couldn't have been anyone but Father Marks.

The priest looked concerned as he stepped out of a small black vehicle that had seemingly just arrive.

Detective Jordan, who had been perched on the seat of the cop car just behind the Jeep, was close enough to hear Morgan's question. "I called him," he said through his teeth, that stupid fucking cigar still in his mouth. Beck was tempted to rip it out and stomp it into the dirt. "State Search and Rescue's out of Tallahassee. It'd take at least 4 to 5 hours to set it up."

"So?" Morgan prompted.

"He's saying that we need all the help we can get looking for this girl," Beck answered for the Detective.

"Tracey's a member of the church choir," Father Marks explained, confirming what Beck had feared. Both girls were close to the church. Abby Kelton was a message, so was Tracey Lambert. "And my congregation is feeling helpless. At least this way, we'll feel like we're doin' something."

Morgan was still persistent. "It's not a good idea."

Father Marks looked confused, so Beck jumped in to try and explain... At least in a better way than what Morgan was doing. "What he's trying to say is that the Unsub has only targeted two low-risk victims, both of which are members of your church meaning you are the target of his message he is sending by taking them... There's a possibility the Unsub could be apart of your congregation."

"So?" Detective Jordan shot back at her, that fucking cigar hanging out of his mouth- God, she wanted to sock him in the forehead and watch him choke on the thing.

Thankfully, Hotchner stepped in before she had the chance to act on those violent urges. "Serial killers like to inset themselves in these investigations," he explained to the Detective.

"Look, Tracey is the second girl to go missing around here in a week," the Detective persisted as he stood from off the hood of the car. "And we all know what happened to the first. Now, I am conducting this search." Beck rolled her eyes this time, not caring whether or not he saw because frankly he was starting to piss her off. Him and his fucking cigar.

"Sir," JJ jumped in, suddenly appearing from the other side of Beck and Morgan. Had she been there the whole time? "We're here to help, okay? Let us set it up. If we have to do a search, we can try to draw him out."

"Use this search as a trap?" Beck prompted, mulling over the idea... It wasn't a bad one, but it was risky sending church goers out into a marsh searching for a missing girl with the serial killer in their midst's.

"The volunteer sign-in sheet should give us a good suspect list," the blonde stated.

Despite the fact that no one was really asking him, Detective Jordan nodded in agreement. "Alright, let's do it."

Beck glared after him as he walked away, almost mirroring the glare Morgan was giving Father Marks before he turned on his heel and walked back towards the Jeep, Hotchner and JJ falling back as well.

Father Marks took Beck's staying put as a sign to approach. "Is he always like this?" he asked.

Beck followed his suspicious gaze towards where Morgan was standing with his back turned to them. "I'm not sure," she answered. "I've only been with the team for a couple of cases, so his behavior is as new to me almost as it is to you." It wasn't completely a lie, but it also wasn't the full truth. She was honestly just saying things she hoped would calm both sides of this silent feud between the two now.

"But you study behavior, don't you? That's your job?" He pressed.

Beck shrugged. "I try not to use my knowledge on the team members I work with. Out of respect." Oh, she was completely bullshitting him now. Lying to a priest? Not the worst thing she's done and it certainly wouldn't be what got her on the Naughty List after she died. Why sweat it?

Changing the subject, she glanced down at the nice dress pants and shoes the priest wore and smirked, "You going on a search in that, Father?"

He glanced down at his attire then back up at Beck- well, more like down, there was height difference of only a couple inches. "As much as I'd like to go out with my congregation, I feel my services would be worth more in just helping organize the event," he answered. "And... you did say that the church was the target and the killer could be a member of the church, I... I wouldn't want to cause any more danger when we need to focus on finding Tracey."

"That's a good idea," Beck replied. "How big is your congregation?"

He shrugged. "Only a few dozen families, couples, small groups," he replied as they started a slow walk down the road.

"Any stragglers?" She asked. "Single people that just come in and keep to themselves?"

He shrugged. "I suppose. A lot of the people that come by themselves tend to group in with the others fairly well. It's why it's difficult to pinpoint just a single person in my community. See, we at the church are more than just a group of people who share the same faith and sit around singing gospel songs. We're a family. We look out for one another, we share with one another, we praise with one another, we protect one another," he exclaimed as they walked. "Just a couple weeks ago, one of my single church-goers, as you would call him, was facing homelessness. My church helped set up a donation drive to keep him on his feet, and until he was able to find a home and a job again, he lived with a very loving older couple for a few weeks."

"See, what shifts the difference between just a group of people working together is empathy and understanding," he continued, Beck crossing her arms as she listened to him speak as if she was getting her very own sermon. The older pastor at her Mom's church was never this passionate about what he spoke of. "We're brought together by not only our Faith and love of God, we're brought together by our love and understanding of one another. Each one of us have our struggles and our stories, but we all turn to the same place to feel safe, to feel like we belong."

Beck frowned. "I understand it's hard to look at your family this way," she told him with genuine remorse. "But there is a man out there that is tearing pieces of your family away in order to break down that structure and home you've built in your church. We need you to look past just the smiling facades you see every Sunday and focus on people even you know don't fit in. Don't listen to scripture right now, and don't listen to what your heart is telling you about how everyone can be saved- I need you to trust your gut on this one, alright? Can you just... do that for the time being, please?"

Father Marks didn't looked pleased with the predicament, but he could at least see where she was coming from when she listened to what he had to say and explained why she needed him to do what he had to do.

He mulled over her request before eventually nodding in agreement. "Alright, Agent Ryder. I... I'll try, but I make no promises."

"Just trying can be enough to save Tracey Lambert or anyone else from your church, Father," she assured him. He nodded and Beck turned back to continue walking towards the edge of the brush where most of the police officers seemed to be setting up what looked to be the beginning of the search. Just as they were walking down, Beck's boot heel slid through the mushy sand just off the edge of the road. She'd slipped for a second before catching herself on her other foot. "Fucking Florida," she cursed, then immediately regretted it upon remembering who she was next to. "Sorry, Father," she grimaced at the man beside her.

He didn't look too offended, but he did look rather amused as he extended his arm to her. "It's fine. I've heard worse from Detective Jordan," he assured her. "Are you alright? The terrain out here is a little difficult..."

"I'm used to the terrain. I've been to a couple places with a lot harsher conditions," she explained, reluctantly taking the pastors hand as he helped her down the slope going towards the search set up. "I guess I just chose the wrong day to wear my favorite shoes."

"Were you in the Army before the FBI?" he asked, setting down his arm after she'd let it go when they reached the bottom of the hill.

"The CIA," she specified.

"Ah," his eyebrows raised slightly. "So you've definitely seen worse than this then." She probably would've given him the same answer she had given to Morgan about this case being within her Top Ten, but she figured that the priest probably didn't need to hear that. "Yeah, there's a lot of terrible things out there. This is just one of 'em. The key is to leave your work and... dirty boots at the door, I guess." She chuckled, kicking a bit of the mud off her heel into the grass.

"You don't ever wish you had something to turn to?" He prompted. "The answer isn't always religion for some folks. Others it's family... friends... a hobby to help distract you..."

Beck shrugged. "Most people have baggage of their own, I wouldn't wanna add to it. Be a burden."

Father Marks reached out and touched her forearm. She flinched for a second at the contact, but calmed herself before she lashed out by accident and slapped his hand away. "If someone was really there for you, they wouldn't view you as a burden."

Beck took his words with a grain of salt, brushing it off as she turned back to the task at hand: setting up this search. "Thank you, Father," she replied. "So... how fast can this congregation of yours get here?"

"Most of them are already on their way," he answered. "A few had to call in to work to help out, others shut down their businesses earlier than usual, drop the kids off with babysitters, but they'll be here soon. They always turn out for family. I think someone even talked the local barbecue business out here to feed the volunteers. You ever had hearty Floridian barbecue, Agent Ryder?" He asked, a beaming smile on his face despite the circumstances.

Beck winced, "Truthfully, Father, I think I'd take my chances with Chinese food from the Midwest." The priest laughed at her joke while she pursed her lips together in an amused smirk.

As if on cue, a small line of vehicles started to pull into the field a few yards up the road as more people from the church began to arrive.

"Well, looks like you were right about your family pulling through for one another," Beck mused. "Let's hope we find who we're looking for out there." Beck and the priest both looked back at the thick brush behind where the police were now setting up tables and tents.

"I'll be praying for Tracey's protection," Father Marks said with a firm nod of his head. "And yours as well."

"Thank you," this time she sounded genuine in her appreciation.

It didn't take long for the rest of the congregation to arrive. JJ had done a fairly good job at being quick and efficient in setting up the search. As promised, the local barbecue business had turned out to feed the congregation and fellow cops and other town volunteers that turned out. There was a group of firefighters who had brought out packs of water to the volunteers as well. Flashlights were distributed as were whistles, and as more and more people arrived, Beck's Agent Mode was turned on in full force.

"Please have your ID's out and ready for the volunteer sign-in," JJ shouted after the cluster of voices where a line was being formed at the table in front of her, Prentiss and Re-Spencer. Shit, she seriously had to get better at that.

"As soon as you've signed in, move towards the staging area, and officers will instruct you on search procedure," Prentiss added as more people moved through the line up.

Beck stood off to the side, watching as more people arrived and went through the sign-in. Her eyes were peeled for anyone that looked a little out of the ordinary. Taking her own advice, she was focusing on people that made her skin crawl or her stomach roll. Before what happened with Hawks, she liked to believe she had a bit of a Sixth Sense that allowed her to know who was lying or being deceitful up until she was backstabbed by the one person she never suspected that was closest to her. Since then, she just tried to go with what she knew.

He'd be alone, incapable of forming any real relationships do to the fact that he'd feel no one would understand his warped sense of faith. He'd also view the church as the enemy, so while he'd put on a facade of being friendly and familial, he'd ultimately still stick out.

She couldn't see anyone that matched her ideal Unsub just yet, then again it was early.

"You planning on going out there?"

Beck turned to see Morgan had approached her little look-out spot off to the side. She glanced down to see he was peering at the whistle she had in her hands and that she'd rolled the sleeves up on her grey V-neck shirt. She couldn't exactly go change into some combat boots, but the outfit would do for now. If she could run in the outfit, she would be fine out in the brush. Hell, she's ran through a jungle barefoot before, how hard could it be?

Beck shrugged, "Not like I'm gonna sit out. You?"

"Not like I'm gonna let you go out there without having your back," Morgan retorted with a smirk. Beck opened her mouth to reply, but he swiftly cut her off, holding up his hand to defend himself. "I know! I know you don't need me to have your back, but it's still nice to have someone covering your six anyway, isn't it?"

Beck frowned slightly. She didn't like having to depend on someone to have her back. Frankly, the last person she'd even trusted to be behind her through it all ended up taking advantage of the fact her back was turned to him and stabbed her in it, twisting the knife and milking her for all her and her skill was worth until he got caught.

"I guess," she muttered begrudgingly.

"Looks like we're up then," he stated, gesturing towards the group that was already heading in.

Beck and Morgan trudged through the brush, following just a few yards behind the group that started down an already carved out path through the forest. It was hot, humid, and crowded and already Beck was starting to get annoyed with the amount of mosquitoes that were buzzing around the place. I swear to God, if I get bit by a snake out here, I'm going to petition to have Florida be dropped into the Atlantic Ocean where it belongs.

They were already a decent distance away from the start of the search when Beck really began to pay attention to her surroundings. She wasn't used to being so exposed like this. Sure, she had her gun, but she had no coverage or height or hidden advantage. She was out in the open with a group of people on a path shouting the name of the girl they were looking for while there was a Satanic serial killer still at large.

Beck pushed her worries to the back of her mind and focused on the environment. Morgan was right, on foot with Tracey Lambert, he couldn't have gotten too far since last night so he definitely could've been close or had a car hidden somewhere. So despite the fact that everyone was shouting 'Tracey!', Beck was glancing down at the bushes and leaves on the ground as well as just the path itself.

She could see which fresh tracks were already left by the small group of volunteers in front of them, but she was also on the lookout for marks that looked irregular. Lines that showed the edges of someone's feet as they got dragged away, scratches on tree trunks that signified a fight, any dropped items, small wheel tracks, old boot tracks... Anything.

The paths were starting to separate as they got deeper into the woods that Beck realized that the newer set of tracks she had been following behind showed that someone might've gone off on their own.

Beck quickly followed after this stray person and caught up into the brush, off the beaten path, until she reached a young woman in a pink button-up and khaki pants. "Hey," she said softly, touching the woman's arm. She jumped as she spun around, almost running into Beck. "You might wanna stay closer to the group. No reason to have you getting lost and then we have to be on the lookout for two missing women."

The pink shirt woman chuckled, her stiff posture falling at the joke as she laughed nervously. "Right... Sorry," she grimaced before jogging back down to the path, meeting up with the rest of the group.

Beck had taken a step to follow after her, but paused when she heard the sound of crunching leaves somewhere behind her. It was clear that the movement had been intended for when she'd taken a step to cover up their own, but... Beck made sure to never make noise when she moved, meaning... She wasn't alone out there.

She slowly turned around, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the brush for any other movement. Whoever it was out there was watching her intently, but they'd suddenly stopped moving upon realizing she'd heard them. Beck refused to move as well, her eyes glancing back and forth through every crevice of the thick brush. Nothing... but he was out there, she knew he was.

It was then that her eyes drew down to the ground, it was pilled with sticks and rocks... no mud or sand. There would be no tracks this direction since they were off the path. This Unsub was smart. He might've been waiting for the pink button-up woman, but now he had her in his sights.

Beck unclenched her fists, ready for a fight as she slowly began to reach towards her back where the weight of her gun was now burning a hole into her lower back. Her fingers had just barely brushed the handle when movement out of the corner of her eye had her moving at the speed of light, her hand now gripping her gun as a tall figure in white came barreling out of the brush to her left. She'd just pulled the gun out when a large hand smacked it from her grip and another force knocked into her nose.

The brunt force alone from the hit to her face sent Beck back a few feet, but she recovered quickly.

Her eyesight was blurry from the hit, but she could see a tall man, curly hair, round glasses... Big target.

"Rah-!" He charged at her, but she saw his moves before he made them. He was right-handed, he stepped forward first with his right foot and immediately about six different counter attacks popped in her head. She ducked beneath the punch he threw with his right fist, then attempted to jump back from his left handed punch, only for the unthinkable to happen.

"Ga- shit!" She halted in her movements when the heel of her boot got caught in the one part of the ground that wasn't covered by branches, but fucking mud. FUCKING FLORIDA.

Her defense was thrown off when she had to duck down to her knees to catch herself before letting herself fall down the hill. With a height and weight advantage, speed would've been her key factor in getting away, but he caught her at an moment where she fucked up.

Without even a second to process she was on the ground, a hand came up and gripped the back of her head through her ponytail and hair and pulled hard.

"Argh!" She screamed as she was forcefully pulled off her knees, her neck straining as he pulled her up. She could feel breath against her neck and growled.

"...you smell good."

Her eyes shot open and instinct took over.

Her free hand that wasn't gripping at the hand grabbing the back of her hand shot out with a swift movement, striking the Unsub in his throat with the space between her thumb and index finger.

She could hear him choke, gasping for air as he stumbled back. His hand falling from her hair, dropping her back to her knees. She pushed herself to her feet, spinning around to face him again, but... today her height would be used to her disadvantage.

Just as she was back on her feet ready for another go, so was the Unsub.

The tall man came barreling at her, but instead of throwing punches she could deflect, he rammed into her stomach, catching her off guard and pushing her off her feet and throwing her down onto her back.

"Mmph!" She hit the ground and all the air was forcefully pushed from out of her lungs in a single cough. She tried to compose herself once more to get back on her feet again, but he lifted her off the ground as though she weighed a pound.

"No-!" Her scream caught in the back of her throat when she was slammed against the tree behind her. She could feel pain blossoming in the back of her skull, but she still pushed through unconsciousness. She groaned as her body slowly slid down a rigid surface. The Unsub must not have expected her to still be conscious, so he tried again. This time, his large hand encasing her forehead before slamming the back of her head against the tree again...

No!

Again...

Gah!

And again...

Then it all went black.

—

Morgan hadn't noticed Beck had left his side until he saw a woman in a pink button-up come skipping from the thick brush. Morgan wondered how she had gotten lost or why she had thought it a good idea to get separated especially with how easily she'd be able to get taken with her short stature. Not to mention, she was separated from the group...

Speaking of which...

Morgan slowed his walk a bit, glancing through the small groups of people passing him calling out for Tracey as they looked through the woods. It shouldn't have been that hard to find Beck. She was short, but she had a way about her that drew attention to her.

He tried to be on the look out for black jeans, heeled boots, and grey V-neck, even just her tell-tale bangs and ponytail, but... nothing. Could she have gotten farther ahead and he just not noticed? Or maybe she was with that woman leading her back to the group. She could've just been out reeling in stragglers, but... a churning feeling in Morgan's stomach told him to keep investigating.

He spotted Reid a few yards back where he'd last seen Beck and figured he was a good place to start seeing as he was the only one to get the closest with the mysterious new agent.

"Hey, Reid," he called as he got closer, pushing through the crowd. "You seen Ryder?"

"Beck?" He furrowed his eyebrow and shook his head. "No. She isn't with you?"

"No-"

"Argh!"

Morgan and Reid both turned at the distant sound of what sounded like their missing team member screaming.

"Ryder!" Morgan shouted before sprinting through the thick brush. He thought he heard Reid follow after him for a couple yards, but after he had picked up enough speed, there was no catching up with him as he pushed himself through leaves, branches, ferns, and vines. "Ryder!" There was still no answer and he kept pushing through until abruptly coming to a stop when he spotted a glint of light coming from something on the ground.

He stopped, bending over to examine what it was. Reid, who had managed to catch up a few moments later, stopped just beside where he was. "What is it?" Morgan didn't answer immediately, his fingers brushing over broken branches covering where the light was coming from. "Morgan?" There it was... a Glock 17 pistol.

"It's her gun," he answered in a hoarse whisper.

Reid could feel his chest constrict... She hadn't just dropped her gun. And she was a former CIA Agent, there was no way someone could've gotten the drop on her, unless they were either as skilled as her or just plain lucky.

As Morgan was standing up, turning back to Reid, he paused at the sight of something else just behind the Doctor. "Reid," he started, his hand coming up to gesture towards a spot of crimson liquid splattered and dripping along the tree trunk, a small black rubber band on the dirt a foot or so beneath it. "It's fresh. They can't be far."

"What do you- wait, Morgan!"

But it was too late, he was already sprinting through the trees again. He wasn't sure which direction the Unsub could've taken her, but he couldn't have gotten far with the way Morgan knew Beck was probably fighting him tooth and nail. It looked like a lot of blood on that tree though... A lot of blood.

"Ryder!" He shouted, pushing himself to go further, faster, farther. "Ryder!" Further. "Ryder!" Faster. "Beck!" Farther. "Beck!"

Eventually, his legs just couldn't carry him any further through the brush. He fell into a jog and then into a speed walk, and then he just stopped, aimlessly spinning around, his eyes looking in every direction, fruitlessly trying to find her. But she was already gone.

—

Mud... She got tripped up by some fucking mud.

Or at least that was all of what Beck could immediately remember upon regaining consciousness. That amongst other things...

Blood... Pain... A shitty headache... Police sirens... Wool... A weird smell... Trumpets...

Then it all came back to her like floodgates opening and all at once she felt her chest constricting and her entire body immediately going into high-alert.

The first thing she registered was that she was on her stomach. Her eyes widened and narrowed when she realized she was in a dark room with minimal light, she needed a second to readjust after being in only darkness... The Unsub must have thrown her in his trunk after unnecessarily slamming the back of her head into a tree over and over again.

Speaking of which...

"Ow..." she muttered as she tried to move her head back only to be met with a sharp pain in the back of her skull where she'd been grabbed, slammed, thrown and shoved. From the way her head felt full of lead, yet empty at the same time, and her eyes were still having trouble focusing due to the light in the corner of whatever room this was, she most definitely had a concussion. "Sss- aw, shit," she hissed, her eyes squinted as she tried to push herself up from off her stomach. Only... she couldn't move.

Pushing through the pain, she glanced from the left and the right at both of her wrists where the pushback was coming from keeping her down... Restraints.

Handcuffs, she could've gotten out of. Zip ties, absolutely. Chains, might've been a bit difficult. But... these were those special restraints that were specified to the size of her wrists, tightened as much as they allowed and gripped tight to whatever weird fucking bed this was. She was splayed out on against some weird fucking mat on a raised surface. Judging to where she was at by looking at the chained fence between where she was held and where the light was on the other side, she was on a surface about three feet off the ground.

What the hell was this?

She was expecting a chair or some shit. Something where he had easy access to her fingers, since that was his shtick. But from this position, she could easily just pull her fingers into a fist and never let go... And if she pressed her face down flat, he couldn't force feed any fingers to her... But he did have easy access to her her back... Her arms... Not her chest or throat... Her legs.

Abby Kelton's legs were missing... It wasn't the alligators that got her legs, was it?

But why the fuck would he take her legs and her fingers?

"The fingers, like the pentagram, are a message," Beck remembered Rossi's words. She's not my first, as seen in the fact that he had fed her ten identifiable fingers for ten missing women... The other part...

Of all the ways he could've let them know she wasn't his first, he fed the fingers to her... Abby Kelton's fingers and legs were still missing...

He fed them to her.

All the air in Beck's lungs was suddenly gone as the realization hit her head on like a train...

He was fucking eating them.

—

Everyone at the precinct was on high-alert.

APB's for Ryder had been sent out hours ago after Morgan had returned to the search group and broke the news that the Unsub had her. No one was pleased and suddenly the urgent search for Tracey Lambert became an all out frenzy to figure out who this Unsub was to get Beck back.

The entirety of the congregation and search party had either already left or were just now coming back by the time a head count could've been started to see who had gone missing so they could deduce who might've taken Beck, so now Morgan was starting to get a headache from not only having to deal with whatever he'd brushed up with Garcia back in DC, the looming stress that one of his teammates was kidnapped by an Unsub, and now having to deal with Father Marks.

"So?" he prompted the man as he came back into the room for another shot.

To his chagrin, Father Marks had gone through the volunteer sign-up sheet thoroughly. He knew the risks with Ryder gone, so he was sure to take his time and be thorough. But still, he seemed to be coming up empty. "I know these people better than anyone," he told Morgan honestly. "And none of them fits the description of the man you've described."

He shook his head. "Well, Father, one of them does," he pressed both of his palms onto the table in front of the priest and glared down at him. "Look harder."

Father Marks shook his head, "I'm sorry. I-"

"He's a mimic. He imitates faith," he began to list off as though he'd done it a hundred times before already. "Attends service every Sunday, but only goes because everyone else goes. You know him."

"I do my best to guide my congregation, okay?" the priest insisted.

Morgan's irritation had boiled over at this point. "This isn't about your congregation, this is about the man within your church that is kidnapping these women, that has kidnapped my teammate. So I'm going to need you to put your do-gooder act aside, and tell me straight, which one of them just feels off to you? Which one are you around and your skin crawls or you get a shiver down your back?"

"None," Father Marks shook his head. "None of them."

"None of them?" He moved to grab one of the autopsy photos of Abby Kelton from out of the files off to the side to slam on the table in front of the priest. He flinched and turned his eyes away. "This man is slitting throats of girls, carving pentagrams into their chests, chopping off their fingers, and feeding it to them- he is within your church and you're the only one who can tell me who he is. Now I'm not gonna ask you again-"

"I don't know!" Father Marks' voice broke as he shouted up at the agent. "I. Don't. Know."

Even frustrated and worn out, Morgan knew when he'd hit a dead end.

He dropped the image of Abby Kelton and began to walk away from the priest, not able to take much more of this. But before he could reach the exit, he heard Father Marks call after him.

"What happened to you?"

Morgan slowly turned back to face the priest, his jaw set and his fists clenched.

That didn't deter Father Marks who began to stand from his seat to approach. "Only someone who grew up with religion could have so much contempt for a priest he hardly knows."

"What's your Number One?"

"You don't wanna know my One."

Morgan had his One. Oh, he had it locked in place and there was nothing that could top that. And this priest was really starting to get under his skin as that Number One on his Top Ten 'Worst Things I've Seen In My Life' was starting to creep back out of the past where he thought he'd left it along with Chicago, Carl Buford, and his faith in God.

Morgan took a step towards Father Marks, staring him down as he replied evenly, "When I was a kid, something bad was happening to me..." There was a flash of recognition in Father Marks' eyes. Morgan figured he'd probably put the pieces together fairly quickly about what that bad thing was. "And I went to church every day, and I prayed. Oh, I prayed for it to stop- you know what God did? ... Nothin'."

Father Marks frowned, his anger fading into pity and sadness for the man before him. "He never gives us more than we can handle," the priest remarked. But Morgan didn't want his pity.

"Your God expects way too much of 13-year-old boys," he shot back, giving the priest one last look before leaving the way he'd come.

—

Okay... stay calm.

Beck repeated the mantra in her head over and over as she tried not to think of the last time she'd been bound or shoved onto a surface this way.

"...you smell good."

"You're so beautiful..."

Don't-

She sighed, pressing her forehead against the table.

Don't think about that. Stay in the present. Focus on getting out of this.

Beck tried rattling her wrists out of their restraints again, but just like the other seventeen tries before that, it was fruitless.

"Dammit," she muttered. She had to take a second, the nausea from her concussion was starting to catch up with her now that the adrenaline was slowly starting to decline from the lack of action going on. She tried to use the cool surface of the table she was on to try and keep her alert and awake, but she wasn't sure how long that would last. She could feel the warmth of blood pooling at the base of her neck from where she was probably bleeding at the back of her head.

When she got out of here, she was going to bash this bastard's face in until he was no longer recognizable.

When, she assured herself. It was going to be when because she'd be damned if she survived through all the shit she had up until this point only to be chopped up and eaten by some dick with a thing for Satan and fingers that listened to Louis Armstrong and wore those disgusting glasses.

As if he had heard her mentally cursing him, the door in the room past the fence squeaked as it opened slowly, and squeaked again as it closed. Beck didn't move, or breathe for that fact. She was turned away from him. Maybe if he thought she was dead from the blunt force trauma to the head, he'd fuck up and let her out of the restraints... Or he'd just fucking eat her whether she was dead or not.

This time, when she heard the fence gate opening closer to her, she lifted her head slightly. She wasn't looking at him, she couldn't because he was behind her, and frankly, if she even moved her head in the direction of him, she'd probably pass out. So, she spoke while looking at the concrete wall in front of her. "You fucking touch me and I swear to God, you'll wish you'd died in whatever hole spit you out," she spat.

There was a pause. She couldn't tell if he was moving or not, but after a beat of silence, he chuckled darkly. "God hasn't been here in some time..."

(x)

Beck refrained from shuddering at his words. She wouldn't let him see how he affected her because he didn't affect her. She'd been through worse. She'd seen worse. He barely cracked her Top Ten... He barely cracked her Top Ten.

She could make out the sound of knives being sharpened. Long ones from the sound of it. Sharp ones. Two of them... Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"Don't," she growled, her restrained hands clenching into fists as she tried to shake free again. No. No. She was not going out this way. Come on! "Don't you fucking-" She gasped when she felt something pulling at her pant leg near her ankle, then slowly she felt cool air hit her skin as the sound of fabric tearing met her ears. "You fucking- argh!" She thrashed in her restraints, trying to kick him away from her or just break free as he slowly cut through her jeans.

Think, Beck! Fucking think!

"Relax," he told her, making her want to do everything but relax as she continued to thrash and shout.

"Get the fuck away from me, you fucking freak!"

He didn't seem to be affected by her words as he seemingly set aside the knives to pick up something else. Beck could hear the clatter from behind her.

Okay, words didn't affect him. Clearly, he spent time in a church where all they did was praise God. If words affected him so easily, he wouldn't have been able to willingly sit through those services. So if degrading him or humiliating him didn't work- what would?

Think. Come on. Think.

"This is gonna feel real nice," he muttered before something cool touched her exposed leg- two things- two hands- covered in... what the fuck was that? Was he... slathering her in oil- Oh, God.

"No. No. No!" She started to trash again. Pushing against her restraints, harder and harder, hoping, praying, wishing to anyone out there that could feel her fear, that could hear her heart and blood racing, that understood the danger she was in right now, would somehow set her free. "Get off me! No! Stop!"

"Stop!"

"You're so beautiful..."

"Get away from me!"

"Your skin is so lovely..."

"Làm ơn! Làm ơn!"

"Stop it!"

Stop.

Stop!

STOP

THINK, for fuck's sake!

(x)

"I do drugs!"

The cold pressure against her leg abruptly stopped.

Beck almost let out a sigh of relief, but she realized she had to do a little more work if she wanted to get out of this one.

"No, you don't..." he slowly replied, almost sounding confused in his response. He couldn't tell if she was lying or not.

"Yes- I do!" she shot back. This had to work. Of course, it would. Just keep lying. "70 to 75 milligrams of Oxycodone a day, a pinch of Fentanyl on my bad days, and a side of Deca Durabolin just to keep me in shape." She had enough adrenaline coursing through her veins to spare a glance over her shoulder at the man who looked completely taken aback by everything she just threw in his face. "Yeah, I bet you don't like to eat meat when it's been tainted with drugs and all other kinds of bullshit. It's probably why you stopped going after prostitutes and turned your attention to nice church girls, isn't it, you disgusting piece of shit?"

The light was still blinding and the concussion was blurring her vision, but she thought she saw a look of pure disgust and rage flash across the Unsub's face as he wiped the oil from off his hands forcefully. Oh yeah, she rightfully pissed him off, now she just hoped he wouldn't fucking kill her straight away and that her prediction about him didn't backfire on her.

"Drugs leave your system eventually," he muttered as he began to walk around the side towards where her head was. "You just have to wait for them to clear out."

"No, no, no, no-"

Beck's protests caught in her throat when his fist met her face.

—

"Cannibalism, the greatest taboo," Rossi remarked from where he sat at the conference table surrounded by the rest of his team members, minus the one they were currently working to try and find. "That explains his drive to blame his appetite on an outside force."

Across the table, JJ pressed a finger against her temple, shaking her head to try and understand this wicked thing... "Why would anyone want to eat human flesh?"

"It's like a sexual urge," Reid chimed in. "The cross-wiring of the two most basic human drives- sustenance and sex."

Beside him, Morgan sat with his head bowed, shaking his head. Only an hour and a half ago had he just discovered yet another victim in the church on his way to apologize to Father Marks after his outburst. Maria Lopez.

But what upset him the most wasn't that her fingers were missing, or that her throat was slashed, or that there was an inverted pentagram carved into her chest, or even that she was missing half her body and was just a stump set up in a seat at a church.

What upset him the most was that for a split second before he turned her over to see her face, he thought he'd just found what the Unsub had left of Beck.

"It all fits," he mumbled after regaining his composure enough to speak.

Just then, Prentiss's phone began to rang from behind him.

"Hey," she answered before walking towards the table. "Garcia, I'm putting you on speaker." The brunette then set her cell in the center of the table for the rest of them to listen in.

"So, I can't find any patients in Florida who have the charming cocktail of being both a Satanist and a cannibal," Garcia's voice came through the speaker. Under normal circumstances, her voice would alone would brighten up the room, but with a team member missing at the moment, everyone was just anxiously hanging onto every word she was saying. "However, Hazelwood Mental Institution is the place to go when looking for Florida's most dangerous kinds of wackos, and they had a fire in 1998 that destroyed all their records."

"How far away is Hazelwood?" Hotch prompted.

Before Garcia even had the chance to answer, Reid did. "70 miles."

The Unit Chief turned to the blonde on his left. "JJ, tell 'em we're on our way. Uh, Reid?"

The Doctor, who had been aimlessly playing with the black hair tie he'd picked up in the woods a few hours ago, glanced up to see Hotch looking at him expectantly as the rest of the group began to clamber to their feet.

"Let's do it," he replied, climbing out of his own seat and silently hoping they would make it in time to Hazelwood to figure out who was keeping the owner of the hair tie on his wrist captive before he chopped into her like he did all the other women he'd captured up until this point.

—

When Beck came to again, she was no longer on her stomach in a dark room.

In fact, it was the opposite.

She was on her back in an extremely bright room.

Bright.. and fucking cold. A lot colder than what she expected from Florida. She was still in Florida, right? Or maybe this was Hell? No, Hell was hotter... And had less dead bodies- Holy shit! Those were dead women... A lot of dead women.

As Beck's vision began to become clearer- despite how blinding the light was and how she had to squint to be able to see- she began to realize that she was in some kind of cold ass freezer. Literally, her ass was pressed against some kind of cold surface beneath her- the entirety of her backside was in fact- including her bleeding and pulsating head.

Jesus fucking Christ- he was going to try and 'detox' her in a giant freezer filled with dead women. Oh, God. Oh, fuck.

Across from where she was shoved inside this little space, she could see pale arms without fingers on their hands, cold-dead eyes, frozen blonde, brown, and red hair, legs missing, chunks of flesh.

Beck was used to the smell of death, but while she was freezing and recuperating from getting hit in the head so many times, she wasn't sure how much longer she would last in this... frozen-over version of Hell.

"Mm," she attempted to get up, but it was like her body weighed a thousand tons. Her head, the center of her balance, seemed to have taken quite the hit after the Unsub socked her in the face a few times to knock her out. She had a tolerance, but he seemed to find hitting her over and over again did the trick. Now, not only was she bleeding from the back of her head, but she could already taste the blood on her lips from where she was bleeding from her nose.

She flexed her nose a little, up and down, and took deep breaths, in and out.

Okay, it's sore... not broken.

Beck could feel herself involuntarily shaking more and more. She felt exposed, the tear in her pant leg and her rolled up shirt sleeves weren't doing her any good either. Not to mention the fact that a concussion wasn't something that mixed well with freezing to death.

Fuck...

It was slowly getting harder for Beck to breathe.

Shit...

Focus. Focus. Focus.

Kuso...

Just take deep breaths.

Merde...

You'll be fine.

Foda-se...

She couldn't breathe, every part of her body was shaking, she could slowly feel the headache in her skull getting worse, her heartbeat was pulsating through her finger tips and rattling her brain, and her lungs were ceasing their function.

Shit.

Shit.

Shit.

CRASH!

Beck flinched at the loud sound, she tried to turn her head, but all her vision allowed her to see were two blurry figures. But she was able to focus enough to hear their voices.

"Dear God..." a man moaned.

Beck could hear soft sounds of trumpets... music coming from another room, quickly followed by another crash. People were there. The police had found her. The BAU was there.

"Clear!" She heard someone shout from another room, a woman. She sounded familiar. "Ryder isn't in here, neither is Tracey Lambert!" They'd come to save her...

"Keep it together," another woman spoke, this time closer. She also sounded familiar. "I need you to look at the faces. Do you see Tracey Lambert?"

There was a beat of silence, lots of heavy breathing and pacing as the figure in her vision moved around a lot. Slowly, Beck tried to move to get their attention.

"He...Help-" her voice caught in her throat which caused her to cough. "Over here..."

"Beck?" The woman closest to her sounded relieved as she moved forward, into her direct line of sight. Blonde hair, blue eyes... JJ, she immediately put a name to the face. It was JJ. Yeah. JJ. "Beck, are you alright?"

"Mm," she tried to nod. It hurt. "Con...concus-"

"Don't try and speak," JJ ordered her as she put away the black thing in her hand. It was her gun .Right, JJ carried a gun because she was in the BAU. So was Beck. Where was her gun? Oh, right... She dropped it fighting off that asshole that slammed her into a tree a bunch of times.

"The tree," Beck mumbled in disarray. "He got me... the Unsub..."

"We know," JJ assured her as she tried to reach in to grab her, her eyes darting up at the bodies above and beneath Beck. "Morgan and Reid told us."

"Oh my God," the other woman said as a new figure popped into Beck's view. The other familiar woman from the other room. Brown hair, pale skin. Prentiss. "Morgan! Rossi! We got her!"

"I'll get Feylinn out of here," the man that had first entered the room- Detective Jordan- said, all too eager to step out again.

Just as he was leaving, another man came barreling through the room. "Ryder? Beck? Kid?" He moved to replace JJ in her direct line of sight. Beck slowly felt her body shift from up off the cold surface into a warm pair of arms. "Come on, let's get you out of here." All was going well until he tried to lift her head up. His arm came up to move beneath her neck and brushed against the back of her skull where she'd been hit. Beck hissed in pain. "I got you. I'm sorry. Come on, you're gonna be alright."

One minute, she was in that bright freezer, and the next she was in another dark room like where she had been kept when the Unsub- Feylinn, she presumed- had cut her jeans open. And she lied to him. She lied to him about the drugs she took. Or didn't take. "Morgan," Beck muttered into the warm body she was pressed against. He smelt like Kevlar and really strong cologne she hated already. "He was eating them."

"We know," she heard him reply as they moved out of the weird-smelling house out into the humid air. She could smell the cedar and allergens. All the smells mixed in with the sound of police sirens made Beck wince and screw her eyes shut. "I know, I know..." Morgan mused. "Fucking Florida."

Her feet touched the floor for the fist time when Morgan set her down on the edge of the open doors of an ambulance. Beck was conscious enough to be able to tell where she was now that the initial shock from being in a freezer filled with corpses had sense washed away with the warmth of not only Morgan's body, but also just the humid Florida heat.

She was so conscious, and fueled by anger, that she was moving around on her own. Even awake enough to swat away the latex-gloved hands of the EMTs that were trying to wipe away the blood from her nose. She brushed them off, stating that she could do it herself and wiped until there was nothing left of the blood running down her nose to the edges of her jaw. Her face still hurt like hell and the concussion was still there making her life a living Hell. As if what she had gone through wasn't enough already.

"Is she gonna be okay?" Prentiss asked from where she stood a few feet away, as if Beck couldn't hear them.

"I'm fine," Beck insisted, wincing immediately after when an EMT pressed something against the back of her head, directly where it hurt the worst.

"She has a concussion from blunt force head trauma to the face and back of the head. Her blood pressure is slowly returning to normal, but her body temperature and blood sugar are still severely low," the EMT that was slowly removing the pressure cuff from off her arm explained to the BAU members standing just outside the ambulance doors. "We suggest she take it easy for the time being-"

"I said I'm fine," Beck groaned as she smacked the other EMTs hand away from the back of her head.

"Ryder, you're no good to us dead on your feet," Rossi insisted. God, he sounded like Hotchner sometimes. "Let the paramedics do their job so you can get back to doing yours."

"Did you find Tracey Lambert?" Beck prompted the group.

No one answered her at first. All of them sharing looks of regret and disappointment before JJ finally let her off the hook. "No," she answered truthfully. "But Reid and Hotch are on their way back from Hazelwood so we should be able to find out where she is soon after interviewing Feylinn- the man that took you."

"By the way," Morgan interjected. "How'd he get the drop you?"

Beck rolled her eyes then winced at how it caused her headache to worsen momentarily. "I had him on the ropes... then my boot got caught in mud," she admit bitterly.

"You didn't call out for help sooner?" Beck noted how frustrated he sounded.

"I would've, but he kind of yanked me by my hair then threw me to the ground and slammed my head into a tree until I passed out," she retorted.

"Until you passed out?" Prentiss furrowed her eyebrows in concern. "How many times did he slam you into the tree?"

"Twice," she grumbled, then paused. "...Three times..." Another pause, then a resigned sigh. "...Four times."

"Jesus Christ," Morgan muttered. "What happened with that?" He asked, gesturing to her ripped jean pant leg. "He didn't..." he trailed off, suggestively. Beck didn't need to ask to know what he meant.

"No," she quickly assured him it wasn't like that. "He cut open my pants and started to... tenderize my leg. It didn't take long for me to figure out what he was doing with his victims."

"How'd you get him to stop?" JJ asked, perplexed and disgusted at the same time.

"I lied to him. Told him I was on a couple drugs," Beck answered. "I realized he didn't target Tracey or Abby just because they were in the church or to get attention, he also got tired of prostitutes because they were probably all on something. Abby and Tracey, low-risk victims, weren't."

"Smart move," Rossi praised her.

Beck scoffed humorlessly. "Yeah, Hell of a lot of good that did me 'cause then he got pissed and socked me in the face a couple times before shoving me into that freezer. He was gonna freeze me to death and wait it out until the drugs left my system," she explained. "For someone who's gone undetected for so long, he's kind of an idiot."

The group chuckled in unison at that.

"Okay," Morgan broke in. "We gotta get back to the station. The paramedics are probably gonna take you to get a real look over at the hospital a block away from the precinct, but we'll be there to check on you when they clear you, alright?"

"Mm," Beck hummed, nodding in agreement because she knew this was an argument she wasn't going to win while she was most likely had a minor contusion in the back of her head. She could feel the splinters pinching the skin in her scalp.

Prentiss, JJ, and Rossi were already peeling away towards the SUVs they'd arrived in to rescue her, but before Morgan left, he had to make sure Beck was alright.

Despite the fact that she kept repeating the sentiment that she was 'fine,' he could see the way her fingers were still shaking when they weren't clenched into fists. Now, it could've just been the fact that her body temperature was still recovering from being in a literal freezer for who knew how long, but it also could've been residual shock from what she'd just gone through.

"Hey," Morgan called to her before he walked off. "You good?"

She glanced up at him, she looked like she was mulling over how to reply before eventually settling on the response, "Number Four."

Morgan took a deep breath as he considered her answer for a second. Yeah, if being locked in a freezer after getting slammed into a tree repeatedly and threatened with literal cannibalism made it to Four on her 'Worst Things I've Ever Seen' list, it must've been pretty bad.

"You did good," he told her with a nod.

He was just about to leave when she heard him call after him. "Hey, Morgan," he turned back to her. "The reason I don't have faith in God is because I know some higher power isn't going to save me from a Satanic serial killer about to dig into my legs. It's because I know my team will."

Morgan nodded, acknowledging her words before finally heading off to catch up with the rest of the team back at the precinct. He had a Satanic cannibal serial killer to get information out of.

—

"Hey," Reid perked up at the entrance of Prentiss, JJ, Morgan and Rossi back at the precinct. Floyd Feylinn Ferrell had already been seated inside the Interview Room, but it was just now that the group was coming in after stripping themselves of their tactical gear. "How is she?"

He didn't need to specify who 'she' was, the group already knew who he was referring to.

"She's fine," JJ answered. "EMTs say she needs to take it easy for a while, but she'll make a full recovery."

"How was she when you left her with the paramedics?" Hotch prompted the group.

"Pissed," Rossi answered honestly. Hotch nodded. Of course she was. "She has a nasty concussion from getting slammed into a tree a handful of times, may need stitches from the amount of blood I saw dripping down her neck, and could use a few minutes by a toasty fire to get her body temp back to normal, but... like JJ said, she's fine. Kid's strong, she wasn't going to give in that easily. She did good out there."

"She have any information on where Tracey Lambert might be?" Hotch asked.

Morgan shook his head. "She asked the same thing to us after we got her out of that freezer. She knows about as much as we do," he replied.

Reid, who had just noticed the piles of journals, books, and paintings that had just been placed in front of him, leaned forward to take a look at them. "What's this?"

"What we grabbed from Feylinn's shrine in his basement where we found him," Rossi answered. "Some... interesting paraphilia."

Reid picked up the first painting that caught his eye, a portrait of a demented demon biting the head off an already decapitated human in it's clutches. Brutal. Beautiful. Seeing the way it was interpreted by Floyd Feylinn made him remember what Beck had said about religion and communism and how it was interpreted and carried out by different people.

"Francisco Goya, known as the Black Paintings," Reid remarked, dropping the painting to move on to the rest of the images, books, and journals Feylinn had in his possession. "Lorenz's notes say that Feylinn was exposed to them as part of his therapeutic art therapy."

"I don't think it worked," Prentiss muttered from the doorway of the room behind him.

"No shit," a new voice piped up. Everyone turned to see none other than Beck Ryder marching in through the side entrance.

She was wearing new clothes, seeing as her last pair of pants were ripped open up to her thigh and her shirt had blood, sweat, and frozen bodily fluids on it. Now she came dressed in black pants, similar to her jeans, and a navy blue short-sleeved V-neck. She looked close to normal, aside from the fact that her hair was down and not in it's usual ponytail do, but that could've just been because she'd just had to get stitches in the back of her head.

"What are you doing out of the hospital?" Hotchner asked her immediately upon seeing her there.

"The doctors cleared me-" Well, more like she'd shouted at them until they allowed her to go. She even pulled out the 'I'm a medical doctor, my second opinion is you can shove yours up your ass because I'm fine,' but they didn't need to know the specifics of how she got out of that Hellscape immediately after being given pain meds, stitches, and a ride to the hotel to get new clothes. "And they gave me some of the good stuff. I'm fine for the rest of the case."

"Your blood sugar?" Morgan prompted her.

"I had one of the nurses watch me chug a soda before I left," she immediately answered.

"Your body temperature?" Rossi shot back.

She glared at him half-heartedly. This was quite the team up to get her back into EMT custody. "Getting back to normal," she replied as she took a seat at the table on the other side of Reid- and, yes, it was Reid right now. She didn't have the time or effort to keep correcting herself after the shit she'd just been through.

"Fine, you can stay and spectate," Hotchner allowed. "But you're not going in there to speak with him." Beck opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off swiftly. "You're supposed to be in a hospital bed, you're lucky you're here at all. Don't push it."

Beck bit her tongue, fighting the urge to refer to him as 'Dad' again.

"He kills them after 72 hours, Tracey's been gone for 24," Hotchner said, turning to hand Morgan some kind of black leather-bound book. "See if you can find out where she is."

Beck could see Feylinn on the other side of the glass if she focused her vision past Hotchner's shoulder. He looked like shit. Then again... he ate human flesh, so she kind of doubted he'd look like the peak of human health. This was also the clearest she'd been able to see him since he first jumped her in the brush earlier that day. Fucking bastard.

"Do what I can," Morgan reluctantly took the leather-bound book before going in.

He was just entering the interview room when Beck began to shake again involuntarily. Since getting out of that freezer, there were still moments of time where she could still feel the cold, brisk air against her skin. She hadn't packed a jacket after hearing they were coming to stupid fucking Florida and her grey V-neck had been the only long-sleeved shirt she packed, so she was kind of out of luck. But, hey, she'd take a case of the chills over actually being stuck in that freezer again.

"Here," Beck turned to her right to see Reid reached over his seat and grabbing what looked like a dark grey jacket nearby. He held it out for her to take. "I haven't really needed to wear it, but you probably should take it if you want your body temperature to level again." Beck glanced between the Doctor and the cardigan, sighing then reluctantly taking it after realizing he was right.

Upon pulling the gray cardigan around herself, she did actually feel a lot better. The chills weren't a hundred percent gone, but it helped significantly to warm her up. And a bonus: it also smelled like old paper, ground coffee, and... scentless shampoo that definitely had a scent if you focused hard enough.

Back inside the room, the sound of leather hitting wood resounded and echoed into the room outside the glass where Beck could hear the interview beginning as Morgan opened the book. "'Kobe Girl Steak,' huh?" he read off a page. "That's where you massage the meat, right?" Beck's breathing faltered for a second and she had to shift her legs to remind herself that all the oil he'd rubbed on her had come off and his hands weren't on her again.

Breathe, she reminded herself. Push it to the fucking side, you have a job to do.

"Floyd, these are some pretty unusual recipes you got here," Morgan remarked. "You try 'em all?" No answer. "Hm?" Still nothing. "You must have tried some of them, right?" Still, no response. "Talk to me. Which ones did you try?"

Finally, after some persistence, Feylinn answered. "They have a smiley face by them. Others have a frowny face," he muttered.

Morgan flipped through the pages, probably noting what Feylinn confirmed. "They sure do. Why?"

"They didn't turn out so good," he answered honestly.

Beck drew a face of disgust. "Thank you for that," Morgan sighed, she could hear him trying to repress a groan. "You hear voices, Floyd?"

There was a pause. Through the glass, Beck could see his eyes looking everywhere around the room. Down, up, left, right- but never at Morgan. "I'm not smart... But I have a smart friend who tells me things."

Beck rolled her eyes.

"What's your smart friend's name?" Morgan prompted.

He didn't answer. "He wants me to tell you something," he said instead.

"Tell me what?"

"Your watch has stopped..." This time, Feylinn did finally turn to look Morgan in the eye. The dumbstruck look on his face wiped away, replaced by a blank, empty stare.

"He's tryin' to spook him," Rossi remarked a few feet away from Beck.

"Well, that won't work," Hotchner replied, both of the men keeping their eyes peeled to the scene playing out before them.

"Yeah, um... I was meanin' to change the batteries over a month ago," Morgan played it off. Beck nodded. Good. Don't let him think he has some kind of power in this.

Slowly, Morgan stood from his seat walked around the edge of the table off to the side. She could see him turn to the side, glancing through the glass, as if silently asking permission before going back into interrogation tactics.

"You know, we thought you chose athletically built women because you were attracted to them. But that was only part of it, right?" Beck winced. Ah, so that's why he had looked through the glass. "Like a woman with a little meat on her bones, don't you?"

Beck cast her eyes down to the edge of the table. She hadn't even realized that in crossing her arms, her left hand was still able to touch the edge of the table where she had been tapping nervously since the interview started.

"Makes for better recipes, doesn't it?"

She faltered momentarily when her fingers abruptly dug into the wood at the thought of her body being looked at as though it were something delectable.

Fucking freak.

Feylinn turned away from Morgan, his eyes casting down again. Morgan frowned, "Something I'm missin'?"

"Skinny ones take drugs," Feylinn answered.

"So, what, you don't like drug users?" Morgan pressed.

"They taste funny..."

Rossi glanced back at Beck from over his shoulder. "You were right about that." She spared him a pointed look before they both turned back to the interrogation.

It was good she thought on her feet about that one. She wasn't even sure where it came from but a part of her knew that taking low-risk victims that were mildly athletic, not to mention targeting her instead of pink button-up lady in the brush, was intentional for more reasons other than being close to the church. Beck wasn't close to the church, but she was more muscular than most women. And smaller...

"Where's Tracey Lambert, Floyd?" Morgan asked, no longer wasting any time on pleasantries.

"I'm not supposed to tell you," he replied. "I'm only supposed to tell Father Marks." Hotchner glanced back at the rest of the group as Feylinn's eyes glassed over. "I'm gonna stop talking now."

"Great..." Beck muttered what everyone else in the room was thinking upon hearing Feylinn's indirect proposition.

"You're seriously considering letting Father Marks go in there with him?" Prentiss prompted the Unit Chief after he silently nodded to Detective Jordan to go retrieve the priest.

Rossi answered for him, "It's the only way to get Feylinn to talk."

"He wants to deliver a message," Beck remarked. "He used the fingers and Abby Kelton to set up what he was trying to say to the church, but he took Tracey Lambert for something else, I just don't know what yet..."

"If he's taking these low-risk victims to not only satisfy his appetite without the... aftertaste of drugs, but to also directly target the church," Reid began, glancing towards the woman that sat beside him. "Why take you?"

Beck shrugged. "Well, considering the fact he only stopped tenderizing my legs when I lied to him about being on drugs," she cast a dirty look through the glass at the emotionless gaze staring back at her. "I'd say it was because he was hungry."

"If he were trying to send a message by taking you, it would be to terrorize the church to in a display of power," Hotchner stated. "He kidnapped an FBI agent in broad daylight surrounded by law enforcement. He wanted to show the church that they weren't safe. Nobody was." Beck shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hated being used as some kind of tool or pawn in a game. Especially when it highlighted her weakness in the moments before Feylinn had taken her.

Big bad former CIA Agent with a higher body count than Floyd Feylinn Ferrell would ever have, and yet... she was taken out by an oversized child with hippy lenses.

She wanted to punch something.

It wasn't long before Morgan returned to the interrofation room with Father Marks, the priest taking a hesitant seat directly in front of Feylinn, while Morgan took the seat at the end of the table between the two.

"A priest, a Satanic serial killer, and FBI Agent walked into an interrogation room," Beck muttered beneath her breath. "The set-up to a really shitty joke or an even worse predicament for us to have to deal with." Reid, having heard her, turned to glance at her, then turned back towards the interrogation room. He had a feeling she might be right.

"Thank you for coming, Father," Feylinn muttered, his eyes downcast to the table between them still.

Father Marks, being the kind and compassionate man he was, leaned forward. "Anything I can do to-" Morgan was quick to cut him off with a gesture and a pointed look. Beck felt a twinge of remorse for the priest. Despite what he knew this man before him had done, he still believed he could be saved and that he could help Feylinn. It was more cruel than actually having him believe he couldn't. His faith was just blind optimism in this scenario.

"Floyd," Morgan said, turning back to the killer beside him. "I had to pull some serious strings to get him here. My bosses didn't like the idea at all of sendin' him in. Now they're gonna allow him to sit right here and listen, but you're gonna talk to me, alright?"

"Okay," came the almost silent response. Beck glanced up then and noticed Rossi slowly flipping through a couple of paper files, she narrowed her eyes, silently wondering what it was he was looking for. "I've done some really bad things."

"Everybody's done bad things they're not proud of, Floyd," Morgan replied. "The only thing that helps is to talk about 'em, tell other people. Things are always better after you talk about 'em."

"Not everything." Beck was surprised to realize she actually agreed on something with a Satanic cannibal.

"This is strange," Rossi remarked, his eyes still peeled to the files he was looking at.

Beck tilted her head, trying to see what it was he was studying. "Whatcha got over there?"

"Volunteer sign-up sheet from the search," Rossi answered. "Looking at the lists, when he entered the park, Feylinn signed the volunteer sign-in sheet, but... his name's not on the list of searchers."

"Come on, Floyd," Morgan continued to press Feylinn in the interrogation room. "I got him here like you asked. Now it's your turn. Tell us. Where is Tracey Lambert?"

Rossi shook his head. "Something's wrong."

Slowly, Beck stood from her seat, her finger tapping against the base of her neck as she crossed her other arm over her chest. "Tracey Lambert was reported missing around midday yesterday, but there were no tire tracks found around the road she was on. Meaning he dragged her through the brush onto another road where he then proceeded to transport her to either his house or some other location within the same ten mile radius in his comfort zone."

"So?" Detective Jordan prompted. She was glad to see he no longer had that stupid cigar in his mouth, but she was still a little irritate by his presence alone.

"So," she retorted. "It means that all would've taken him anywhere between two to five hours and if he wasn't seen again until the search for her around mid-morning the next day, it means he had Tracey Lambert for around eighteen to twenty hours."

Hotchner narrowed his eyes as he turned to look back at her. "What are you trying to say?"

"Father..." Feylinn moaned inside the interrogation room, though his voice sounded void of any emotion. "I feel so alone. I feel like God has abandoned me... Why?"

Beck glanced between the interrogation and Hotchner. "I'm saying Feylinn only had me for, what, five- six hours?"

"Five hours and twenty-seven minutes," Reid corrected her.

"Five hours and twenty-seven minutes and he was already trying to dig into me," Beck exclaimed. her hand coming out to gesture to the sick fuck on the otherside of the glass. "You really think he kept Tracey Lambert intact for all of the almost twenty hours he had with her?"

"You are not alone, my son," Beck heard Father Marks tell Feylinn still inside the interrogation room. "God is in all of us."

Then, like a switch, everything fell into place.

"We need to stop the interview!"

Rossi looked up from the lists with wide eyes as though he'd just pieced something together, Hotchner's narrowed eyes twitched at Beck's exclamation, and inside the interrogation room, Feylinn looked up to finally meet the eyes of Father Marks as he delivered his message.

"...So is Tracey Lambert..."

Beck felt all her blood fall to her feet upon hearing what Feylinn had just admit.

"I think someone even talked the local barbecue business out here to feed the volunteers. You ever had hearty Floridian barbecue, Agent Ryder?"

"Oh my God..."

Before the words even left Beck's mouth, Rossi and Hotchner were already dashing into the interrogation room as all out chaos broke loose. Father Marks was shouting obscenities at Feylinn as he cackled menacingly, the priest being held back by Morgan, Hotchner, and Rossi as they tried to pull him out of the room.

"He was..." Detective Jordan stammered for words. "He was feeding the volunteers."

"Local barbecue business," Beck muttered beneath her breath. "He.. Feylinn had a local barbecue business as well- holy shit."

He wasn't just eating these women... He was serving these women up to others.

Jesus fucking Christ.

"Get him out of there," Prentiss shouted to Detective Jordan who quickly ushered three other police officers to help cuff and take Feylinn out from the interrogation room as Hotchner, Rossi, and Morgan all escorted Father Marks to the closest trash bin.

Dear, God...

No.

He was right. God hadn't been there in some time.

—

Beck wasn't allowed to fall asleep on the plane ride back to DC because of her fucking concussion. Not that she would've been able to after the case they'd just wrapped up in fucking Florida. That one was gonna stick with her for a while.

Staying awake was a lot harder than she thought it was going to be. Not only was she exhausted from the pain meds and just the entirety of events in the last day, she also didn't have anything to distract her this plane ride back. She'd never been awake any of the other times, always opting to pop some melatonin pills and leave it to someone else to notify her when they landed.

Now she was relying on someone to keep her from sleeping the rest of the trip back.

"Beck!" The agent flinched at the sound of her name being snapped at her. She focused her still mildly blurry eye sight on the Doctor seated across from her. "You were dozing off again," he explained with an apologetic grimace.

Beck threw her head back against the seat and winced slightly at the contact to the stitches in the back of her skull. "I really don't see the purpose behind being forced to stay awake after what we just went through," she muttered. "I already got checked out, got an MRI, got that stupid flashlight shoved in my face, got eleven stitches in the back of my head, and I even got a lollipop by the end of my check up. This seems redundant and overly critical."

"You got punched in the face, thrown onto your back, slammed into a tree four times, then punched repeatedly in the face a few more times," Reid replied. "I'm just trying to be efficient in making sure there's no amount of brain damage that was caused that we might've missed and you end up having a seizure in your sleep that could've been prevented."

"Reid," Beck called back to him, prompting him to look up to meet her eyes after he'd been so focused on the handful of cards in his hand. "I had an MRI scan."

"MRI scans have been proven to be inaccurate before-"

"Yeah, with a 9.01 percent chance of inaccuracy," she shot back at him before he could go into a long rant about a study done that actually proved the accuracy of MRI scans. When he furrowed his eyebrows at the fact that she knew that, she shrugged him off. "Like I said, you're not the only one who reads, Reid... And there's more of a chance of me getting false positive results than false negative. You're freaking out over nothing."

"I'm not... freaking out," he muttered, a small frown playing at his lips.

"You're freaking out." Beck smirked in amusement. The smirk was quickly wiped from her face when the plane shook and her hand shot out to clutch the edge of the table. "How long until we land again?"

"Fifteen minutes, forty-four seconds," came the quick response.

"Well, in that case," using her hand that had been gripping the table, Beck reached out and slid the rest of the small Splenda packets on her side of the table into the center pot. "I'm all in."

Reid raised an eyebrow at her course of action before assessing his cards once more. He glanced between her, the pot, then his cards again before ultimately deciding... "I fold," he said, gently placing his cards on the edge of the table with a polite smile.

Beck narrowed her eyes at the Doctor across from her. She carefully laid her cards out to reveal that they were shit.

A four of hearts, a five of spades, a nine of clubs, a three of clubs, and a seven of diamonds.

Slowly, she raised her eyes up to meet the Doctor's, leaning forward to take the cards he'd set down to lift them to reveal his hand.

A six of spades, a six of hearts, a six of clubs, a six of diamonds, and a Jack of diamonds.

Four of a kind.

Beck sighed, Reid grimacing across from her. He'd let her win.

The agent leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't like hand-outs, Dr. Reid. And I certainly don't take people 'going easy' on me very well either," she stated. "What gives?"

"I just..." Reid frowned, the humorous feel of the conversation now gone. "There was another Agent before you. This was before Gideon left, you may remember her from the case with John Summers and Bruno Hawks-" She did. The brunette, bitchy agent- what was her name again? She couldn't remember anyone calling it out and she hadn't read it anywhere, she just thought she resembled Sanchez. "-Well, she, uh... something happened to her on a case. She got injured, bad. She took some time off, but it still stuck with her. She was different after that. Acted different, did the job differently. We all thought she was fine too, until one day she wasn't."

Beck frowned, "What happened to her?"

"She, uh, she left," he answered, but something about the way his eyes fell to the center of the table instead of meeting her prying gaze told Beck that there was more to the story. "The point is that she went weeks, months without talking to anyone about what happened and then instead of helping her, it just made it worse for her. I don't want that to happen with anyone else on the team. I don't want what happened to her, happen to you."

"Spencer," Beck softened her gaze as the Doctor turned to meet her eyes. "I've been through a lot worse, and I've gotten through a lot worse. Trust me. You don't have to worry about me having some kind of break."

"Is it alright for me to just be... overly cautious?"

Beck allowed herself to smirk... but only slightly. "I'll allow it," she replied. "But only under the condition that you never let me win again. I can very easily beat you on my own."

Spencer laughed at that quite openly and in disbelief. "We'll just have to see about that."

Beck blanched a little, she drew her head back to give the Doctor an astonished look. "Was that... a threat?"

"I don't make threats," he told her simply as he began to gather up the deck to reshuffle it. "I make promises."

Beck laughed, but had to quickly clamp a hand over her mouth when the jet shook again and a groan could be heard from the front of the plane where Beck assumed the other members of the team were trying to sleep.

She turned back to the Doctor and whispered, "You're on."

—

By the time the plane landed, Beck and Spencer had to call their game earlier than they intended. Hotchner was adamant she be driven back to her apartment, but she insisted on driving herself on her bike to get back on her own. She ended up winning that argument with him easily.

The drive to her apartment was a bit rocky. Thank goodness it was early in the morning when no one was out on the streets because she probably would've been either pulled over or hit by accident with the way she kept either stopping too far past the line at lights, going too late, or just swerving through the lanes.

This concussion was starting to get fucking annoying.

By the time Beck finally reached her apartment, it all felt so weird.

Hours ago, she was inside a freezer filled with corpses. Now, she was standing in the middle of her apartment like nothing had happened.

Her chest constricted and suddenly the walls inside her home were beginning to grow suffocating. Without putting much thought into her next course of action, Beck dropped her go-bag on the ground and started out the door again.

She wasn't sure where she was going. There was no case, no mission, no assignment she had that she could throw herself into. The BAU probably wasn't the best place to be when all it would do would be remind of the place she just came back from.

She wasn't sure why she was freaking out, but she just didn't expect to feel so normal so soon after what had just happened.

That's how Beck somehow found herself standing outside the drug store down the street.

"Rebecca?" the older woman called to her after closing and locking the gate in the front. It was late, even for her, but...

"I didn't know where else to go," Beck admit.

Without questioning it, Mrs. Kumar gestured for Beck to follow her as she wrapped a hand around her arm and tugged her towards her house just down the street from the store. Beck had been there before, she'd had dinner a few times with the Kumar family. She'd been there enough times to know that Mya used to have extremely long hair as a pre-teen before shaving it all off after she graduated high school. She'd been there enough times to know Adam had just got accepted to law school. She'd also been there enough times to know Mr. Kumar still took late shifts at the pharmacy up the street and probably wouldn't be home until the early hours of the morning, so Mrs. Kumar and Beck had the house to themselves.

Beck wasn't really sure what Mrs. Kumar had in mind as she led the young agent through the halls of her home until they eventually wound up in the large bathroom.

"Can I take your cardigan off for you?" Mrs. Kumar asked, gesturing to the grey sweater she still had on.

Right, she'd forgotten to give it back to Reid before she'd left. Beck nearly blurted that it wasn't hers, but she found her chest had tightened so much she wasn't able to speak. All she could do was nod.

Mrs. Kumar gently pushed the cardigan from off her back, then removed the gun from the back of her pants, the knives hidden in her shoes, her keys, her phone, her boots, her socks, her pants, her shirt, and then her undergarments until eventually Beck was standing fully nude before the older woman in her bathroom.

Beck didn't really question it. It didn't feel weird, it just felt as though she was a kid again getting bathed by her Mom after she'd come back from Vietnam, given to her as some broken little kid with a bunch of scars.

Mrs. Kumar didn't speak as she helped Beck into the large tub and started up the water. She didn't ogle too much. Beck had been with people that ogled before. It was probably weird, seeing someone with so many white spots on their skin from left over wounds, some fresh and some aged over the years. Beck had gotten used to it when she looked at herself in the mirror. It didn't bother her anymore. Honestly, she thought they made her look more dangerous.

Mrs. Kumar probably looked at them the way her Mom had: with concern.

Beck curled up into a ball, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them to hug them to her chest. She rested her head on her knees and tried not to flinch when the water from the tub began to gather beneath her. She stayed completely still as Mrs. Kumar applied a wet towel to the back of her neck, wiping away the grime, dirt, sweat and dry blood.

When she rinsed the soap with a cup she used to gather the tub water, Beck shuddered when it touched her head, the water slathering the back of her scalp where her stitches were.

"What happened?" Mrs. Kumar asked in a tentative voice.

Beck shook her head. "I can't tell you."

If it were under normal circumstances, Beck was sure Mrs. Kumar would make a comment about her 'damned government' job, but instead, she just kept pouring water down her head. Every so often, she'd press her hand to her forehead and push it up to let the water drip through her hair and down her back. It felt nice.

"That's alright," she replied. "Do you have someone you can tell?"

"I don't know," Beck muttered into her knee. "Main apane bure sapane kisee ko nahin dena chaahata."

I don't want to give my nightmares to anyone.

There was a beat of silence that passed between the two women.

Beck heard Mrs. Kumar set the cup off to the side before she felt two fingers press beneath her chin. She allowed the older woman to lift her head up and tilt it back to face her from over her shoulder.

"Listen to me closely," Mrs. Kumar said, with utmost sincerity and authority. "You are not a burden. You think you are the only one with nightmares?"

"There is no one with nightmares like the ones I have," Beck retorted, gaining strength in her voice to match the angry and frustrated tone Mrs. Kumar was now giving her. "The things I've seen-"

Mrs. Kumar abruptly grabbed her by her wrist and held her hand up between them. "Unakee ungaliyon par kisee ka ek hee print nahin hai. No one has the same print on their fingers," she stated, dropping Beck's hand. "Just like no one lives the same lives. Every one has their own demons, their own unique experiences, you are not as special as you think. Continuing to punish yourself by bottling up every little thing just because you don't think anyone will understand or can handle it, will only make it that much worse for yourself."

Beck turned away from the older woman, her eyes falling down to the spot they'd been glued to at the bottom of the tub once more as Mrs. Kumar continued.

She heard Mrs. Kumar slowly stand up and away from the tub after pulling the plug and allowing the water to begin to drain out of the tub. "When will you realize... tum ajey nahin ho." And with that, she could hear her departing foot steps as she left the restroom, probably to go grab her towels or new clothes.

Beck remained with her knees still pressed to her chest as she mulled over Mrs. Kumar's words.

Tum ajey nahin ho.

You are not invincible.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

Beck lifted her head up, turning to find the source of the noise coming from behind her. She lifted herself up onto her knees and pressed close to the edge of the tub to reach out to the pile of clothes on the closed toilet lid. Carefully, she reached into her crumpled up jeans plucked her ringing phone from the pile. She turned it over to face her and blinked in surprise at the name on her screen.

Hotchner.

Beck answered, "Ryder."

"Garcia's been shot," the Unit Chief explained, not bothering with pleasantries. "I know it's asking a lot, but how quickly can you make it to Medstar?"

It was like a switch flipped inside of her. Suddenly, that coiling feeling in her chest was pushed to the side and numbness had been wiped away, replaced with newfound purpose and emotion that burned through her veins.

Someone had shot Penelope Garcia.

"I can be there in ten."

—

A/N: I think this is the fastest I've ever been able to write a chapter. I actually had a lot of fun writing this one. This episode is actually one of my favs to watch. Not in terms of comfort, but in terms of like- holy shit that's fucked up... nice.

Anyway, enjoy!

Next up: PENELOPE!