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.

9. Blossoms That Reek of Gunpowder

Trigger Warning: brief mention of gore and blood.

Once again: a very small mentioning. I'll put a (x) before and after the section just in case you need to skip it. :)

FYI- this might start becoming a common occurrence. There is a reason the story is rated at M.

---

Blossoms That Reek of Gunpowder

•••

"You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it." - Alan Moore, V for Vendetta.

—

Beck arrived to the hospital in record time. She said she'd be there in ten, she got there in less than seven.

Beck's boots squealed slightly as she came to an abrupt halt in front of the room number Hotchner had messaged her on the drive over. She was only stopped when her eyes fell upon the blue and white curtain surrounded by lights, doctors, and bloody rags... A body was on the table.

Penelope Garcia.

"You can't be back here-" A nurse said, pushing her away from the double doors, her eyes still glued to the OR behind her.

"It's alright," Beck and the nurse both turned back to see Hotchner approaching. He, like she, was still in his clothes from when they'd arrived off the jet from the last case. "She's with us." The nurse glanced between Beck and Hotchner, her hand slowly slipping from it's hold on the woman's arm.

Hotchner held his arm out for Beck to follow him.

"What are the logistics?" Beck immediately asked after the nurse was out of earshot.

"The police are still on the scene," Hotchner explained. "It's a single gun shot in her left upper chest."

Beck froze for a moment, turning to look up at the Unit Chief. "He was aiming for her heart-"

Hotchner sighed, nodding as if her understood her concern. "They're saying they're unsure whether the bullet nicked it or not-"

"It missed," Beck stated. When Hotchner gave her a questioning look, she explained, "If the bullet had hit her heart- any part of it- she wouldn't have even made it to the ambulance. There's still a chance."

Somehow, her words seemed to have a calming affect on the Unit Chief. Beck thought it was interesting in this moment. Hotchner always had this attitude, towards her and others, that he knew things they didn't, that he knew better. But now that he was in a situation where he was out of control and he didn't know what was going to happen next, it seemed as though he was relying on what others were telling him to get him by.

She also noted how affected he was just by being told that his Technical Analyst had a chance at not dying.

From his reaction, she must've really meant something to him.

Hell, Beck had barely started getting to know the woman herself and already found her to be a bright beacon of light in such a dark field of work. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't crossing her fingers and hoping that that chance she was talking about was a good one.

After reaching the end of the hall, Beck and Hotchner were met by Reid and JJ.

Reid looked as though he had just arrived, JJ jumping to her feet upon his immediate entry and not noticing Beck or Hotchner walk in as well.

"She's in surgery," JJ told the Doctor in a hushed explanation. "There's no word."

Beck watched as Reid swallowed hard, his hands shoved into his pockets as he glanced down. "This is crazy..." She noticed he had had time to change since landing an hour ago in the same second he had even noticed her presence. "Hey," he greeted her.

She probably looked a lot better from when she'd gotten off the jet. Her concussion was still there, her vision was still blurry and she had a massive headache, but she also wasn't as bloody or grimy after getting scrubbed down by Mrs. Kumar earlier. Her hair was a bit damp, but her clothes were still the same, so she imagined how this must've looked.

"Hey," she replied with a nod, also extending the greeting to JJ as well.

"You got here quick," JJ noted.

Beck shrugged. "I was in the area." When Reid looked at her with narrowed eyes, she couldn't help but roll hers. "I also may have ran through a couple of red lights- it's fine."

Reid frowned. "You shouldn't be driving with your concussion."

"Reid," Beck gave him a pointed look. "I'm fine." He sighed, backing off for the time being.

Just then, Prentiss and Rossi came walking through the same way Reid had moments ago.

"What do we know?" Rossi immediately jumped into action.

"Police think it was a botched robbery," Hotchner replied.

Beck raised an eyebrow. "What makes them think that?" An attempted robbery against an FBI Technical Analyst? What were the chances?

"Her purse was missing and he seemed to have dropped a few of the items when he ran," he explained.

Beck frowned, her finger tapping against her bottom lip as she mulled it over. "Could've been intentional to cover for something else," she shrugged.

Hotchner gave her a pointed look similar to the one she'd given Reid a second ago. "We don't know that for sure." Beck glanced at him. Suddenly, the sentiments he'd shared to her involving slim negative aspects back with the Katie Jacobs case made her realize she probably wasn't being as helpful as she thought she was.

She had to remind herself once again that this wasn't the CTU. If another member of the CTU had gotten shot off the clock, the first thing the team would have done was throw themselves into an investigation. Some of the worst theories coming to mind, an accident or slim chance that the attack might've been random was never even an option, especially in their line of work.

Everything happened for a reason.

Even though this was a new team, Beck still believed there was something off.

"Where's Morgan?" Prentiss asked, cutting through Beck's loud thoughts.

JJ shook her head. "He's not answering his cell."

Reid immediately pulled his phone from his pocket. "I'll call him again." Beck noted the dynamic between that pair. Reid figured it Morgan wouldn't answer JJ, he'd answer for Reid. Interesting.

It was like a switch in Beck's brain had been switched. The team was no longer working to solve a single case with Penelope Garcia in the OR, they were gathering together as something more in a time of crisis. Beck, however, immediately pulled the gear into Agent mode when she realized that she didn't know these people, this team, well enough to be apart of this 'comfort' because all she knew right now was that a fellow FBI Agent had gotten shot and she wanted to know by who.

"What aren't you saying?"

Beck turned at the sound of Rossi speaking with Hotchner behind her.

Hotchner glanced around at the rest of the teammates, his eyes not meeting Beck's as she pretended to be looking down the hall, with her ear purposely turned towards them. She could hear him reply to Rossi in a hushed tone, "I spoke to one of the paramedics who brought her in... It doesn't look good."

Beck took a deep breath through her nostrils.

Okay. Think. Turn your stupid fucking Medical Brain on and think this through.

While JJ sauntered off down the hall to get an update, Beck walked to the back of the waiting area. She pulled her notepad from the back of her jeans and began to jot down what she knew to try to piece it together.

If she was shot in the 'upper left chest' then that meant the bullet would have through the sternum portion of her upper left mammary, possibly either going through or between ribs two and three.

The good news was, Penelope pushed through long enough to make it to the OR meaning that the bullet hadn't hit the heart at all and if my prediction about where the bullet went through the ribs is correct, it probably only spliced through the apical segment of the upper lobe of her left lung.

Nothing vital had been hit, so if it were as bad as Hotchner described it to be, it probably meant that the bullet had missed its target and most likely ricocheted from the ribs down her back. From there...

...The bullet could have hit anywhere and Beck's predictions were useless to her now.

She shut her notepad and shoved it back into her pocket. It was just a waiting game now...

JJ was just returning when Beck glanced back at the group a few feet away. "They can't give me an update."

"Morgan's phone just keeps going straight to voicemail," Reid explained as he came back to the waiting area as well. Beck tilted her head slightly... That was weird.

"Where the Hell is he?" Prentiss gaped.

It was probably nothing that Morgan was MIA right now. More likely than not, he was just reeling from what had happened after the last case as well. Beck knew it kind of pushed his boundaries a little bit, especially considering how much it bothered him to face his religious trauma head on.

Ah... She knew where he was now.

Church.

Hell of a time to start praying, Morgan, Beck thought to herself as she kicked the heel of her boot into the tile, crossing her arms as she tried to keep her head on her shoulders. If no one else was going to be practical about this, then she should be the one to maintain her integrity and not let compassionate thoughts towards the Technical Analyst cloud the fact that she'd been gunned down which was a direct attack to the rest of them.

—

An hour ticked by... still no word from the nurses.

Every so often JJ would go and check, but after so many times of being told 'no updates,' the blonde had started to get frustrated.

Hotchner was the one who started to go ask after the second hour, but even his hard glares and stubborn attitude didn't merit an update from the nurses down the hall.

By the third hour, Beck was debating going and kicking through the OR doors herself just to figure out what was taking so long, but it was every one around her that kept her grounded.

In the waiting room, the team all held their breaths, waiting for anything...

Hotchner stood idly in the back of the waiting area, his arms crossed and his posture straight. His arms were crossed and Beck noticed that every time he spared a glance down at his watch he progressively got less frustrated and more anxious.

JJ had opted to take a seat in the chair Beck had been in earlier when she was writing through her thoughts. The blonde had been frozen in the same position for the best forty-five minutes since she first took a seat. She was leaned forward, hunched because she was unable to relax, with her elbow propped up against her knee that bounced every so often. Her chin was propped up in her hand and her eyes were focuses on the wall across from her.

Beside her, Prentiss took a seat not long after she noticed just how little JJ was keeping it together. She didn't seem too overly emotional by all this, but she wasn't completely immune from letting her emotions get in the way. A few moments later, Beck watched the brunette take JJ's hand in hers as they comforted one another.

Reid, like JJ, needed to take a seat after a while. He'd tried calling Morgan a few other times to no avail. There wasn't any tenseness or frustration radiating off of Reid, only pure anxiety. Similar to what she did when she was nervous, Reid began tapping either his finger against his pursed lips or tapping his foot on the floor. There were no seats left, so to stay close to his other team members, Reid had taken a seat on the floor beside JJ's chair. Beck noted that for someone so tall, when he was scared, Reid sure had a way of making himself smaller.

Rossi was leaning against the wall a few feet away, his back to the group. It looked as though he was the new self-appointed nurse harasser for the time being. Similar to Beck's predicament, Rossi wasn't as emotionally invested in what was happening, but he did still have empathy. He'd spent more time with Hotchner and just a team dynamic similar to this before. So although he wasn't completely void of any emotional interference, Rossi was still attempting to keep his head leveled, just like Beck.

Beck couldn't stay still.

She was pacing back and forth in the main hallway a few feet away from the rest of the group. She couldn't remain in one place, she had one armed crossed over her chest and the other propped up by the elbow as she raised her hand to her face and tapped her finger against her bottom lip. She was running through each and every scenario she could think of in which the bullet would ricochet from the lungs and where it could've gone, but she was having a bit of difficulties because she didn't have all the variables.

She didn't know what gun was used, how far he shot her from, which angle he shot her from, where she was standing, if she was running away or towards him, the type of bullets used.

There were too many unanswered questions and all Beck was really doing was trying to create a new headache to distract herself from the one she already had.

Just as Beck was spinning on her heel for her 78th lap down the small hall, Morgan came dashing in. He hadn't seen the group at first until he turned to his right and approached.

Before he could even get a question out, JJ stepped forward. "She's been in surgery a couple hours."

Morgan then turned back to the group, a look of remorse on his face as he explained, "I was at church. My phone was off."

From his seat, Reid grimaced. "There's nothing you could have been doing here." Beck nodded in agreement. It's not like anybody was doing much of anything right now.

"The police got any leads?" Morgan asked, growing more concerned by the second.

"I spoke to the lead detective," Hotchner responded. "He doesn't think we'll get anything from the scene."

Morgan took in a deep breath before turning away. Beck could hear him release all that pint up anger and frustration in his heavy sigh. Beck understood his feelings right now, she was feeling the same way... Just a little more distant from the case.

"Penelope Garcia?"

Everyone spun around to the side, an older man carrying a clipboard dressed in scrubs had just approached. Immediately, everyone was on the edge and alert at this man's presence.

"Yes," Hotchner and Prentiss both responded.

The man, whom Beck presumed to be the surgeon, glanced out at the sea of agents before him before going into his explanation. "The bullet went in her chest and ricocheted into her abdomen-" Beck shut her eyes and had to suppress a groan. From the abdomen, the bullet could've hit a lot of vital organs, veins, re-punctured the lungs. She held her breath, waiting for the result of this unfortunate outcome. "She lost a lot of blood. It was touch-and-go for a while, but we were able to repair the injuries." Beck let out a small sigh of relief.

"So what are you saying?" JJ asked, still holding out for any kind of bad or good news.

"One centimeter over and it would have torn right through her heart," the surgeon explained. "Instead, she could actually walk out of here in a couple of days. I'd say that's a minor miracle."

There was a collective sigh or relief from everyone else in the room. The high level of stress and anxiety that had been building up these past couple of hours finally faded with the news that Penelope Garcia would survive.

Now that the team didn't have to worry about their Technical Analyst's wellbeing and whether or not she'd make it, Beck hoped they would now focus more on catching the fucker that put her there in the first place.

"She needs her rest," the surgeon explained as he began to pull his cap off his bald head. "You can see her in the morning." Beck grimaced at the surgeon, she knew the team would probably be sneaking in to see her before the sun even rose.

"Thank you," Prentiss and Hotchner said in unison once again.

Once the surgeon was out of earshot, Beck was the first to glance back towards the Unit Chief. "So, what's our next move?"

Hotchner, with his arms still crossed and the tense look on his face still there, glanced around at his team members. "Dave and I will go to the scene. I think the rest of you should be here when she wakes up," he instructed.

At his orders, Beck furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Why did she have to stay? She didn't even really know Penelope Garcia. She... admired her and respected her and thought she was adorable, but Beck didn't feel like she was... qualified enough to be one of the first faces she saw upon waking up? It seemed like something a friend would do, and while Garcia was a great person to bump into at the office and occasional interact with over the phone, Beck wouldn't exactly consider herself as a friend of hers.

"I don't care about protocol. I don't care whether we're working this officially or not," Beck raised her eyebrows at Hotchner's exclamation. She now saw what Strauss had meant about his blatant lack of restraint when it came to following protocol and orders. "We don't touch any new cases until we find out who did this."

Despite the fact that Beck agreed in terms of the protocol about internal investigations and being emotionally invested in cases, she also couldn't help but be grateful that they didn't have to pass this case on to someone else.

Like she'd repeated to herself earlier: an attack on one of them, was an attack on all of them.

—

Morgan was pissed.

He hadn't outwardly expressed his frustration, but Beck, Reid, JJ, and Prentiss all sat back and watching him take long strides up and down the hall outside of Garcia's room.

She was in post-op right now, they could see her through peeks of the curtain of her small room. Beck had already tried to bribe the nurses to allow them inside just to be there when she woke up, but they were adamant she needed undisturbed rest. Which, after hearing from another surgeon she'd spoken to about exactly what had happened, she agreed fully that she needed as much sleep as she could get.

Beck had just come back from bribing a surgeon with coffee to get details on the surgery when she noticed Morgan's pacing had come to an end. He was still pissed, now he was just brooding in a seat beside Reid and JJ.

Prentiss, who had been leaning against the wall beside them, perked up at Beck's return. "They tell you anything?"

Beck frowned. "Yeah," she replied, less than enthusiastically as she glanced around the room at all these people who cared so deeply for the woman in the other room. She began to understand why internal affairs was strictly against interference of the team on cases, they were extremely emotionally involved. Beck was almost scared to tell them what she'd learned, but she knew they wouldn't let her off the hook. "Uh, they told me that the bullet went through her diaphragm, slipped through the lungs, ricocheted off the back of her ribcage, and went through her abdomen, just hitting the splenic artery near her kidneys..." Reid, who seemingly understood the weight of her words, looked speechless. The others just looked a little lost.

"What happened after that?" Morgan pressed, growing more concerned with every new piece of information he was being given.

"The surgeon told me they had a little bit of trouble controlling the bleeding coming out from both the artery and her lungs..." Beck paused for a second, taking in the fact that all these agents were holding onto her every word. "She flat lined for a couple seconds. They had to try reviving her quite a few times before continuing. They were able to stop the bleeding enough to repair the damage to the artery as well as fix the damage done to her lungs. The doctor was right, if the bullet would've been just a centimeter off, your friend wouldn't be alive right now... You should be grateful your girl Friday has got someone out there looking out for her," she added the last bit, eyeing Morgan.

They all seemed to be taking that news in different ways. JJ and Prentiss looked relieved, Reid looked a little shocked at perhaps how close he came to losing a friend, and Morgan... Morgan looked frustrated. His jaw had been clenched for the past few hours and his knee kept jumping. Her news didn't seem to take away his edge and he hadn't touched a cup of coffee like the others, Beck also refused to offer him any because she knew it probably wouldn't do him any good right now.

"For Penelope Garcia?"

The group all turned towards a nurse that had approached. It had been the same nurse- Floriana Ramirez (Beck had remembered her name for future reference)- Beck had tried to bribe earlier.

"Yes," Morgan immediately jumped to his feet.

"She's awake if you'd like to see her now," Nurse Ramirez said, gesturing for them to follow her back to the room. They all slowly began to trail her to Penelope Garcia's room, JJ pausing to quickly dial up who Beck assumed was Hotchner to notify him and Rossi of the latest news.

Once inside the small room, the nurse moved to the side, allowing the team to step inside. Beck was in the back of the small crowd filing in, she didn't want to rush in to comfort someone she hardly knew, it wasn't her place. So she hung back, watching as Morgan and JJ walked up on either side of the blonde lying in the hospital bed, Garcia's half-lidded eyes taking in the people around her.

As JJ leaned forward to press a kiss to Garcia's temple, Beck turned towards Nurse Ramirez. "Are you the only nurse tending to her?"

"I'm the nurse solely in charge of her, but when the shift changes after hours, there are two other nurses that will see to her," Nurse Ramirez explained.

Beck gave her a firm nod. "Good. I'm gonna need both their names and descriptions in a little bit after the visit."

The nurse glanced between the blonde and the brunette agent in front of her. "I thought the police said this was some kind of robbery attempt gone wrong."

"I suspect it may be something more," she replied. "Just tell your co-workers the only people allowed in this room are the people you see here now and Agents Hotchner and Rossi of the BAU, no one else. They try to get through, have them either show their credentials or don't even let them past the hall. Am I understood?"

The nurse looked a little shaken, but nodded nonetheless. "Yes."

"Good."

After Nurse Ramirez had scampered off, Beck turned back to the team around Garcia.

"How are you feeling?" Morgan prompted the blonde in the hospital bed before him. Frankly, she looked like shit, but somehow Morgan looked even worse.

"Uh... confused... stupid..." Garcia began to list off. "And... in pain." Beck almost chuckled. After what she went through, yeah, pain was gonna be a bit of a lasting effect of getting shot and cut open.

"Are you up for some questions?" JJ asked tentatively.

Garcia sighed through her mouth, her nose filled with breathing tubes. She slowly turned to the blonde on her other side. "I never saw it coming. He seemed... deliciously normal."

That caught Beck's attention, as well as the rest of the team. "You know him?" Both Beck and Reid spoke in unison. Reid in confusion, Beck in concern.

Instead of answering the pair, Garcia turned to Morgan on her other side. "You were right," she told him. "I should have trusted it..."

The crease in Morgan's forehead deepened as he leaned forward. "What are you talking about?" Yeah, that's what Beck wanted to know. Did she know her attacker?

"It's that guy I told you about," she explained in a hoarse whimper. "The one I met at the coffee shop." Beck raised an eyebrow as Morgan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Clearly, something had happened with a man Garcia met, Morgan must have disapproved, Garcia probably rebelled against his disapproval and went out with or spoke more with this man, and now... Here they all were. "I wanted to believe he was interested in me."

"Forget that," Morgan told her, but she continued.

"I let my guard down," she closed her eyes. Beck could see reflections of small tears forming in the corners of her eyes threatening to fall.

"Do you have any idea why he would have done this?" Prentiss asked the million dollar question.

"Did he threaten you? Did he want something?" Reid added.

"I just thought he liked me," she explained, pausing to take a deep breath when she spoke a little too load and moved a little too fast. Pain flashed across her face and Beck glanced at her vital signs monitor off to the side, her BP was rising the more she started to talk as was her heart rate. She kept it up, her little heart being so close to the wound would pump harder and faster and make it a lot harder for her to heal.

Beck, out of instinct, stepped forward through the group, despite her earlier vow to stay in her place. "Okay- that's enough," she stated firmly. When the group glanced at her, confused at her abrupt demands, she gave a pointed look to her accelerating heart rate on the monitor and they all slowly nodded in understanding.

"We'll, uh, we'll come back in a little bit," JJ muttered to Garcia as the group began to back out of the room.

But not before Prentiss could get in, "We need a name."

Garcia turned to her, her eyes red and puffy. "James Colby Baylor."

Beck's eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out if she recognized it. A past Unsub, witness, government reports, FBI paperwork, the news, CIA files or databases... Nothing. Her memory wouldn't figure this out on it's own because, like Garcia, she probably hadn't met the guy before. Still, there were a lot of people that targeted FBI agents that didn't have a file with them just yet. It was still a possibility that the entire team was targeted with this shooting.

Prentiss started jotting it down while the rest of the group started to head out. Beck could make out the sound of Garcia calling for JJ as they left the small room.

While Prentiss walked to one end of the hall to most likely make a call to Hotchner and Rossi, Reid and Beck trailed after Morgan as he ran his hands over his head. His body language was stiff, tense, Beck could see his jaw was still clenched. He was like a walking, ticking time bomb and Beck was concerned when he'd go off.

Then, out of nowhere, the man a few feet away from them slapped a hand against a white board nearby.

Oh, God... here we go.

"We need to stay calm," Reid took a step towards his fellow team member.

Beck watched as Morgan took a stride towards Reid, holding up an accusatory finger. "Don't tell me what to be." Beck had seen first hand how people reacted to loved ones being put in the hospital. She knew how ugly it could get. She didn't wanna take the risk of letting Morgan walk around this way for the rest of the time they were trying to solve this thing.

As soon as Morgan stepped up to Reid, Beck was pushing herself between the two. She shoved Morgan back with a hand to his chest and pointed her finger at him. "Back off," she ordered, shooting him a withering glare.

She was about a foot shorter than Reid, but about a foot and a half shorter than Morgan. She looked a little ridiculous standing in front of him trying to look menacing, but she'd already gotten taken down in a fight once the day before, she wouldn't let it happen again any time soon.

"He's right," she continued. "You need to cool down. You're no good to us or her-" she gestured her other hand to where Garcia was still speaking with JJ in the room. "- when you're acting like a hot head with a stick up his ass."

Morgan looked like he wanted to fight her on it, but when she pointed to Garcia behind them, she could see his eyes visibly soften. He realized she was right and took a deep breath, unclenching his jaw and relaxing his shoulders a bit more. Good, Beck thought to herself, progress.

"Do you remember anything she said about him?" Reid asked, glancing between Garcia and Morgan.

"No," he answered truthfully.

"Yeah, but you knew something was wrong, didn't you?" Beck raised her eyebrow at him as she crossed her arms. She turned back to glance at the blonde over her shoulder. Who targeted you, Penelope Garcia? And why?

Prentiss returned then, the notepad and pen she used to take down James Colby Baylor's name still in her hand. "I just talked to Hotch. They think he used a Revolver."

"Who the Hell uses a Revolver?" Morgan asked.

Beck shrugged, she could think of a lot of reasons why douchebags used Revolvers, most of which involved forensic counter measures.

Sure enough, Reid explained, "Somebody who doesn't want to leave shell casings behind as evidence."

If the bastard James Colby Baylor used a Revolver, it also made sense now thinking about the way the bullet ricocheted within Garcia's body. Not only was he using forensic counter measures, he also wanted to inflict maximum damage. Unfortunately for him and luckily for them though, he was a shitty shot.

"What about witnesses?" Morgan prompted.

"None so far," Prentiss frowned. "And he staged it to look like a robbery."

"He actually take anything valuable or was she just the target the entire time?" Beck wondered aloud.

"He did take her purse, but he deliberately left a trail of things from her purse," Prentiss explained. "His intentions were obvious."

"Which means if he was smart enough to use forensic counter measures, odds are the name he gave Garcia is probably bogus," Reid mused.

"But the initials JCB have to mean something to him," Beck remarked. "Why give her a full name when he could've just given her something stupid like John Smith?"

The group all nodded in agreement just before JJ came back from out of the room.

"What did she say?" Reid prompted the blonde.

JJ frowned, glancing down at her feet as she explained, "She made me promise not to talk about her like a victim."

Beck frowned as well, glancing past JJ to look towards Penelope Garcia lying unconscious in her bed, her eyes drifting closed once more despite the bright, white florescent lights on her. "Whether she likes it or not, she is one."

Morgan seemed to be in agreement, "So we work this like any other case."

"Hotch and Rossi are already on their way back to the BAU to start working out what we know so far, see if we can get at least a base profile on our guy," Prentiss explained.

"Someone has to stay here," Beck stated, turning away from the woman in the hospital bed being tended to by the nurses back to the group around her. "If this guy finds out somehow that she survived, there's no telling how far he's willing to go to come finish the job."

The team members all shot looks amongst each other as if wondering who was going to draw the small stick for having to stay at the hospital. Of course, it was already a given that Morgan wasn't leaving, but would he be enough to stop whoever was after Garcia?

"Emily and I can go back to the BAU to meet Hotch and Rossi," JJ exclaimed. "She needs you guys here."

Beck immediately protested, "I think I'd be more useful out there."

"I beg to differ," Morgan retorted, giving her a pointed look. "You just got kidnapped by a Satanic cannibal-"

Beck rolled her eyes. "I told you: I'm fine."

"And I'm telling you that you've still got a concussion and instead of being up and out there, you could be just as helpful here protecting her in case that bastard comes back," Morgan shot back at her.

Beck clenched her jaw, mentally debating whether or not to continue pressing the issue further until ultimately deciding that it wasn't worth it. If this Unsub used a fake name and forensic counter measures and there were no witnesses, the best lead any of them had was laying in the hospital bed a few yards away.

As much as Beck hated the thought of being one of the few team members staying behind to be there for Penelope Garcia when she woke up, she also knew it was a necessary evil.

"Fine," she eventually relented.

—

Beck hated hospitals.

The empty, sterile atmosphere. The over-cleanliness to make up for how much blood, gore, and death that occurred down these halls. It made Beck sick to even be standing there with her back pressed against the side of the door frame of Penelope Garcia's room.

The trio that stayed behind- her, Morgan, and Reid- had all taken turns doing laps around the hospital to see if anyone showed up to finish the job after all like Beck had assumed someone might. They came up with nothing so far and eventually the little trips up and down the halls of Medstar Hospital became less frequent.

Morgan refused to take a step inside the room until she was awake. He must have been feeling immense guilt for whatever reason that Beck couldn't quite put her finger on. He couldn't possibly be blaming himself for this, could he?

Reid was a little hesitant hospitals as well, it seemed. He was, after all, an enormous germophobe, so it made sense to see him a little jittery as he stood just outside the room.

Beck felt a little weird at first, being the person that was the least amount of close with Penelope Garcia and being the one person in the room with her, the only sound passing between them being the soft beeps of her vitals on the monitor above her. Beck watched her vitals meticulously. She'd heard horror stories of patients coding after getting out of surgery and dying alone in their rooms because no one was there to catch onto the small abnormalities in the vitals. She didn't need that happening to most useful person on the team.

After some time, Beck noticed the blonde's eyes slowly beginning to peek open. After what happened to her, Beck doubted she was getting woken up by some lights or because she was at full strength... Seemed as though the morphine might've been wearing off right about now.

"Hey, Nurse!" Beck called out to the woman standing down the hall she'd spoken to earlier. She quickly rushed to where she was calling for her. "She's waking up."

Nurse Ramirez nodded to her before walking in to check on the woman inside. Beck stood watch as Reid and Morgan approached, opting to keep watch from through the glass window beside the door of her room. Carefully, Nurse Ramirez began to inspect the Technical Analyst's vitals, moving on to her pulse, how much fluids were still in the baggies overhead.

"I asked her to go out last night, but she was pissed at me," Morgan muttered, Beck and Reid both turning at the sound of his voice. "She blew me off." Beck watched the Agent as he walked away from the window to the other side of Reid, so not to be able to see the damage done to his friend inside.

Reid maneuvered himself to where his back was pressed against the glass of Garcia's room. "So you ended up in church?" He prompted.

"Yeah," Morgan answered honestly. "What does it mean?" Beck and Reid frowned, what could he be meaning? "On one hand, if she'd gone out with me, she would have never got shot. On the other hand... What are the odds that the first time I pray in 20 years, she's on the table?"

Beck pushed herself away from the doorway of Penelope Garcia's room to step around Reid. "You can't seriously think you or your faith are somehow at fault for this," she exclaimed.

Morgan looked like he wanted to reply, but Nurse Ramirez came out of the room then, interrupting what he was about to say.

"She's asking for you," she told them. The group slowly followed the nurse as she led them back into the small room. Morgan and Reid both stood on either side of the bed, but once again, Beck stood back towards the end of the room. Nurse Ramirez turned to her, "I'd take it easy. The pain medication may be wearing off, but she still needs to relax while conscious. No hard questions, no tiring her out, and no getting her too anxious."

Beck nodded that she understood and the nurse left the room.

"Hey," Morgan greeted the blonde, placing his hand on hers just above her abdomen. "How are you feeling?"

The Technical Analyst turned to him, but her eyes were glued to the ceiling in a glossed over gaze. She was slowly coming out of her drug-induced sleep and was still kind of out of it, which was to be expecting.

"Good news, bad news... The morphine's wearing off..." Beck frowned, of course. The blonde then turned to the doctor to her right. "When I was in the ambulance... I could hear the song 'Heroes'... playing in my head... I kept flashing in and out of consciousness... Everything was really bright... And I remember thinking- 'wait... is David Bowie really God?'" Everyone in the room gave a small chuckle. Even Beck cracked a small smile.

"Damn right he is," she exclaimed as she gripped the railing at the end of her bed, making sure to keep her distance.

"We have, uh," Reid cleared his throat, the joking mood evaporating with his words as they were all brought back to the present problem on their hands. "We have a sketch artist coming in."

Beck watched Garcia nod a little. "I'm still a little hazy," she admit.

"It's okay," Morgan assured her, giving her hand a small squeeze. "Anything you tell us will help."

She nodded in agreement, her eyes glossing over once more as she tried to remember. Meanwhile, Beck stood some distance away, her own eyes glued to the vitals above Garcia's bed. Her heart rate was steady, Beck wanted to make sure it stayed that way as the questioning commenced.

"This guy say what he did for a living?" Morgan asked.

The Tech Analyst gave a small nod and swallowed hard. "He said he was a lawyer."

"He say where he worked?" Beck prompted. "Law firm in town? City attorney? Defense attorney?"

She frowned a bit. "City attorney... I think... I don't remember-"

Beck took note of the small uptick in her heartrate as her voice went up an octave. She immediately backpedaled. "That's alright, that's alright," she assured her in a calm voice. "No one is expecting you to remember everything. Just a question." She glanced back up at the vitals. The heartrate had slowed down back to normal pace again. Good...

"Did... did people know him where you went?" Reid prompted next.

"He said he wanted to show me a place," the blonde explained. "It was half an hour away." Beck nodded. Clearly, he was from Metro DC. If the place was half an hour away, there was no way he had just stumbled upon it. Restaurants thirty minutes from downtown weren't places you just found while touring or leaving here after a couple years, this man was born and raised.

"You drove together?" Morgan asked. When Garcia nodded in confirmation, he continued, "What kind of car?"

She turned to face him as she listed off what she could remember, "White. 4-door Sedan. American... It smelled new."

Reid furrowed his eyebrows. "Rental car maybe?" He suggested.

"Maybe... I don't know. I don't look at things like you guys do. I don't see danger," she frowned.

"Then don't focus on danger," Beck suggested as she leaned forward a little, her eyes darting back between the Technical Analyst and her vitals above her as the heartrate slowly began to tick up once again. "Focus on anything you noted was odd, or weird, or something you kind of just chuckled at beneath your breath. Anything like that can help."

Beck watched as the blonde stared off into space again, if only for a moment as she tried to remember anything like what Beck had described. "...He smelled good."

"He seem nervous?" Reid prompted.

That's when Beck noticed a rogue tear trickling down from the blonde's eye as she replied in a hoarse whisper, "I thought he was just afraid to kiss me good night."

Morgan wiped the tear away with his thumb. "Hey," he caught her attention. "You sure you're up for this?"

Garcia nodded, but Beck took a glance at her vitals just to be sure. Blood pressure was a little high it seemed, but Beck figured that if Garcia could reel in her anxiety enough to push through, they would be fine to continue.

Beck watched the blonde swallow hard, a few more stray tears falling as she continued with her recounting of the incident. "...I could hear him walking... He leaned over me and I held my breath so he'd think I was dead."

Beck visibly saw Morgan's jaw clench as he drew away from the blonde just a little bit. Beck imagined having to hear that your close friend had to play dead with a bullet lodged in their body while their attempted-killer stood over them wasn't the best thing to be hearing directly after a tough case... or at any time, really.

"...Then," Garcia sniffled, the tears really falling now. Too much for Morgan to catch all of them as they streamed down her face. "Then when he was sure I was dead, I felt him take the purse from my fingers... I wanted to shout at him, but then I just... I couldn't breathe... I couldn't move- I just- Everything was bright-" The heartrate was spiking and her breathing was growing rapid. Beck slapped Morgan's arm and made a gesture with her hand, slicing her neck to get her message across.

"Okay," Beck cut through the tension in the room as Garcia began to gasp for air a little bit. "That's enough for today. Breathe... Just focus on breathing." Carefully, she reached out to the blonde's leg and tapping her finger to the soft beat. "Bum. Ba-bum. Bum. Bum. Bum-mm. Bum-mm." She hummed softly as Morgan and Reid slowly retreated from the side of their friend's bed.

Garcia slowly closed her eyes as she tried to focus on breathing like Beck instructed. Beck, meanwhile, kept her eyes on the vitals above. The blood pressure was still high, her heartrate was declining, though.

"Bum. Ba-bum. Bum. Bum. Bum-mm. Bum-mm," Beck continued to hum until she noticed Garcia's own hand on top of her stomach had began to tap along to the beat as well. It was a very silent and soft hum, but soon enough, Garcia was also singing along to the rhythm. "Bum. Ba-bum. Bum. Bum. Bum-mm. Bum-mm."

After a few more moments, the heartrate and BP were back to normal and Beck could see the clear signs of what was left of the morphine begin to take effect once more as Garcia's eyes began to droop from exhaustion.

"Okay... You're gonna get some rest now," Beck said, patting her leg that she had been tapping earlier. "We'll all be outside if you need us." Beck slowly pulled away from the bed, ready to turn on her heel and head out like the rest of the group, when she heard her name being called.

"Beck." The agent spun around to find a half-asleep Penelope Garcia calling out for her, her eyes half-lidded and her hand slightly outstretched in her direction. "Please... please stay. I don't-" she hiccupped. "I don't want to be alone."

Beck turned to glance at Reid and Morgan behind her. Was she hearing this correctly or had she meant to call for Morgan?

Slowly, she stepped forward to check the IV bags... the morphine was almost gone, there was no reason for her to be having hallucinations. "I can get Morgan in here for you-"

"I want you," Garcia cut her of.

Beck blinked... Once. Twice. Somehow the glossed over gaze that had been either on Reid or Morgan in the last couple of minutes, was now glued to her. Penelope Garcia wanted her to stay... This felt... weird.

"Uh," panicked, the agent glanced between the blonde in the bed and the two men standing idle at the doorway. They both shrugged slightly as if to say 'hey, she spoke- what do you want us to do about it?' Beck rolled her eyes, biting back a remark about them being too chicken to help her out of this, before turning back to the Technical Analyst beside her. "Okay... Okay. I'll just, uh, pull up a chair-" she did so. "And I'll be right here."

"Mm," Garcia hummed, a small smirk playing at the edge of her lips before everything seemed to go blank for her... And she was out.

After a couple of moments of sitting vigil at Penelope Garcia's bedside, Beck considered just getting up and joining the two men out in the hallway. It felt wrong that they were out there and she was in the room, despite the fact that she hardly knew the woman in the hospital bed beside her.

That also got Beck to question why on Earth Penelope Garcia had asked for her to stay instead of Morgan... It was just odd that she'd want her to be beside her while she slept instead of the guy that was over there wiping tears from her cheeks earlier. Was she missing something? Was this some sort of test?

"Hey," Beck turned to see Reid poking his head through the doorway after almost an hour of sitting at Penelope Garcia's bedside. "The sketch artist is here..." Beck saw him glance between Garcia and her as if silently asking Beck whether or not the Tech Analyst was up for it.

"Uh," Beck hesitated, confused as to how she became the one in charge of Garcia's care. "Let me just... see how she is." Reid nodded, turning on his heel and heading back out the way he came.

Beck slowly rose from her chair and leaned forward to take a look at her vitals. BP and heartrate were a lot better than they were earlier, steady enough that Beck had faith that she wouldn't start freaking out when describing the guy that tried to kill her.

Tentatively, the agent tapped the woman's arm lightly. She began to stir. "Hey, uh, Garcia," the Technical Analyst opened her eyes a little, strained a bit from the bright lights above her. "The sketch artist is here. You up for it?"

The blonde gave her a weak attempt at a smile. "As much as I can be," she replied. Beck smirked a little, there was that witty rapport Beck had grown fond of hearing over the phone. It was a good sign that she was feeling a little less under the influence and a little more like herself.

After Beck called in Morgan, Reid, and the sketch artist, she was back to keeping her distance. Reid had taken her spot in the seat beside Garcia's bed, Morgan had opted to stand right beside her while the sketch artist sat opposite to Reid near the end of the bed. Beck, once again, opted to try and stay as distant as possible as she leaned against the doorway of the room.

While Morgan and Reid asked questions regarding the description of the man that had shot Garcia, Beck kept her attention solely on the vitals and Garcia's expressions. Whenever she noticed an uptick in BP or heartrate, she'd tell the guys in the room to move on from the question. The minute it looked like it was getting too much, Beck pulled the sketch artist back.

It had taken over an hour, but finally, the sketch artist was able to get a full picture... It just wasn't anything they could identify immediately.

"He looks like every other alpha male at the gym on a Friday morning," Beck muttered as she glared down at the photo the sketch artist had drawn up from Garcia's description.

Morgan scoffed at her conclusion, taking the photo from her as he examined it himself. "I'll get this back to the BAU. See if the police can find out who this guy is at the coffee shop, have Prentiss run it through ViCAP."

Beck turned to him, her eyebrows raised in alarm. "You're going back to Quantico? Who's gonna stay with her?" She asked, pointing her thumb in the direction of Garcia and Reid in the room behind them. Reid had just brought back some Earl Grey tea for the Technical Analyst following the sketch interview and Beck could already overhear the blonde complaining about the remaining curls and hairspray in her hair.

"You can watch her, can't you?" Morgan suggested. Beck turned back to him, an unasked question in her eyes. Morgan closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath. "Look, I need some time to just... wrap my head around everything. You're right, I'm not good to her if I run in hot-headed and pissed off. Just... give me this break." Beck hesitated. "Come on, Ryder, I trust you enough to watch over her for me while I'm gone."

Beck inhaled through her nostrils. "Fine," she relented with a heavy sigh.

Morgan grinned, slapping a hand on her shoulder with a resounding slap that echoed in the hall a bit. Beck gave the agent an evil-eye as she watched him leave with the sketch. Sneaky motherfucker.

After staying behind, Beck decided to head back into the hospital room, which, now that the morphine had worn off almost completely, had become a circus show.

"It's freezing in here!" Garcia moaned as she clawed at the stale white hospital blankets bunched up at her knees.

Beside her, Reid chuckled beneath his breath. "It's already over 80 degrees-"

"Don't talk science to me, Mister," the blonde snapped back at him before noticing Beck's return to the room and perking up. "You! You're in the FBI- is there any way you can blackmail someone to turn the heat up in here?"

Beck suppressed an amused grin. "I don't know if any of the other patients would appreciate the temperature adjustments, but maybe we can come to a compromise by getting you in some clothes that aren't made of flimsy material, yeah?" She asked, gesturing to the blue polka-dotted hospital gown she was still sporting.

Garcia took in a deep breath, calming herself down. "That... that's a good idea," she admit with a nod. "Hey, where's... where's Morgan?"

Beck glanced over her shoulder at the barren hallway that Garcia was pointing to. She was wondering how long it would take the Tech Analyst to realize her personal body guard was missing. "He, uh... he's heading back to Quantico to distribute the sketch, touch base with the rest of the team at the BAU," she answered honestly.

"Oh," the blonde deflated a bit. Beck wondered if she was somehow feeling as guilty as the way Morgan was before he left just now... Their relationship was something else.

Still standing awkwardly in the middle of the hospital room and unsure of what to do, Beck pulled out her wallet to produce a few twenties. "I'll head downstairs and see if anyone is selling a robe or some sweats," she a stole a glance to the blonde with a bad case of the-day-after hair. "...and maybe a spare brush."

"Wait, you're leaving?" Garcia asked, her eyes wide with worry.

Beck nodded slowly. "Yeah, it's just downstairs. I'll be back in a little bit-"

"No!" the Technical Analyst abruptly raised her voice. When Beck and Reid furrowed their eyebrows in concern, she settled down and explained with a resigned sigh. "It's just... Can you stay and Reid goes?"

Beck blinked. That wasn't a request she thought she'd ever hear. She glanced between the blonde in the hospital bed and the doctor beside her with a look of complete confusion. She hesitated with her response a little. "I, um... Are you sure you don't want someone you've known longer to stay with you?"

"That's kind of the last thing I want right now," Garcia admit with a grimace, turning to Reid momentarily. "No offense."

Reid chuckled a little, holding his hands up in mock-surrender. "None taken." He then turned to Beck and offered his hand out to take the cash from her. "I can go. I'll see if they have some food down there too. You still need to keep your blood-sugar up." Beck clenched her jaw and gave him a sharp side-eye. Of course he'd still be worried about her after what happened mere hours ago. Little shit. "I'll be back," Reid called over his shoulder before marching out of the room.

Beck slowly turned back to face Garcia and gave her an awkward smile that resembled that of the half-grimace Reid usually gave people. "How you doing? I mean- aside from getting shot in the chest."

Garcia shrugged, immediately wincing afterwards. "As fine as I can be. How about you?" Beck frowned. Great... "I heard about what happened in Florida-" Fucking Florida. "Are you okay-"

"I'm fine," Beck immediately replied. Carefully, she moved to the side of the bed and took a seat where she had been earlier. "Really. I'm fine. You should focus on your recovery right now."

Garcia nodded. "You're right... I do feel like I got run over by a train and squeezed like a lemon."

Beck chuckled, "Yeah, you're gonna feel like a walking bruise for some time, but, uh..." Beck slowly moved back in her seat to pull out a small drawer where she'd noted the nurse a few hours ago had placed a series of pre-prepped syringes of morphine. She reached in and plucked out a single syringe. She read the dosage- 4 milligrams for the next day they were saving now that the last dose was wearing off. Beck figured just a single milligram to get her through the rest of today wouldn't hurt. "That's what drugs are for," Beck exclaimed, holding up the syringe with a shit-eating grin plastered on her face.

Garcia giggled. "Oh-ho-ho-ho... I really like you."

Beck stood up to administer the single milligram of morphine into the small insertion in her elbow. "It's just a single milligram, not even a fourth of what your dosage for tomorrow should be, but I'll just forge the charts so they don't accidentally overdose you." When she noticed the slightly panicked look on Garcia's face she shrugged. "You'll be fine... Just, uh, don't tell Hotchner."

"Deal," the blonde replied with a beaming smile.

After injecting the morphine, Beck capped the syringe and put it back in the drawer. She'd grabbed the little clipboard and copied the signature and handwriting of the nurse's before on the chart to mark out the dosage. They'd probably look at it a bit funny, but not question it too much.

"It should kick in within the hour," Beck explained as she sat back down. "You need the rest. Hopefully by the time you wake up Morgan and Reid will be back and you won't be stuck with me much longer."

As Garcia began to snuggle beneath her little plain hospital blanket, Beck could make out her mumble as she pressed her cheek into her pillow. "I'm not stuck with you," she heard her mutter beneath her breath. "You're fun to be around. You give me drugs."

"Uh..."

Beck spun around to find Reid had returned... And, of course, it had to be at the exact moment that Garcia had mentioned the drugs.

"I didn't actually, uh-" Beck stammered, gesturing between the half-asleep Penelope Garcia and the Doctor standing in the doorway. "I don't know what she's talking about," she lied with a shrug.

Garcia, still a little out of it, peeked through her eyelashes to glance at the Doctor still standing idly in the doorway. "You're back fast," she remarked.

"Oh, I was able to find a nurse who leant me this robe and some sweats," Reid explained, holding up a pair of grey clothing items draped over his arm. "And I was also able to grab a brush from another nurse." He held up a small comb in his other hand, a few black hair ties wrapped around the handle. "Is this good?"

"You bring food, Junior G-Man?" Garcia prompted. Beck turned back to the Doctor, a raised eyebrow as if asking 'yeah, did you?'

Reid frowned a little, glancing between both women. "...No."

"Then drop the brush and clothes and get out of my sight until you bring back food, Peasant," the blonde commanded, slurring her words a little as she thrust a finger in the direction of the hallway behind Reid.

"O-kay..." Beck cleared her throat. "Time for you to succumb to those drugs and take a nap," she exclaimed, pulling up the blankets on the bed the rest of the way up to cover the bandage on Garcia's chest and the wires connected all across her collarbone. She watched as the blonde's eyes flickered shut the rest of the way, her small frown lines on her forehead slowly fading away as she let sleep overtake her. "There we go..." Carefully, Beck maneuvered herself away from the bed and flicked the lights off in the room for the Technical Analyst to wake up without getting blinded later.

Beside her, Reid set down the clothes and brush on the table beside the door. "Should we just wait outside?" He asked her.

Beck nodded. "Come on, we can see if there's a vending machine we can raid-"

"Beck."

Beck and Reid both turned at the sound of her name being called from the blonde in the hospital bed a few yards away.

Penelope Garcia stirred beneath her blankets in the dark, her hand twitching in their direction as if she were grasping for something unseen. "Stay... please," she whimpered through the haze of exhaustion.

Beck hesitate, glancing between the Doctor beside her and the Technical Analyst in the room. Reid merely shrugged, nodding his head in Garcia's direction as if to egg Beck on to join her. "O-okay," Beck eventually relented, abandoning the hope of getting out of babysitting duty and reclaiming her seat in the chair beside Garcia.

Reid still hovered beside the doorway, leaning in just a bit as he gestured to the light she'd turned off moments ago. "You want me to turn it back on?"

Beck shook her head. "Leave it. She needs her rest more than I need the light," she replied.

Reid nodded. "I'm gonna go see if they're selling food in the cafeteria. You want anything?"

Beck knew this was yet another attempt to get her blood-sugar back up, but once again, she wasn't going to be babied by this man or this team. "I'm fine," she replied.

He merely nodded. "I'll grab you a breakfast burrito and some Snapple." Beck opened her mouth to call after him, but he had already left the doorway of the hospital room, leaving the Agent and the Technical Analyst alone in the dark hospital room once again. Little shit.

Beck shifted in her chair... Great, she thought bitterly to herself as she took in the quiet, sterile atmosphere of the room. The only sounds supplied to her to help distract from the slowly fading ringing in her ears was the soft sounds of Penelope Garcia's breathing, the steady beeping of her heart rate on the vitals monitor above her head, and the occasional thrum of footsteps out in the hallway.

With each breath, each beep, and every footstep, whether she wanted to or not, Beck slowly gave into the sleep that she so desperately needed.

—

When Beck woke up, she was little caught off guard at the fact that she'd fallen asleep to begin with.

She took in a deep breath that came out as more of a gasp of air as she shifted her body weight up out of it's resting position. She'd somehow managed to turn herself in the chair she'd been sitting in, her knees drawn up as she hugged them to her chest while her shins pressed hard against the arm of the chair and her back pressed against the other. Her head had been resting on both her kneecaps and she hadn't realized just how uncomfortable her position was until she slowly lowered herself back down.

Her eyes, still readjusting to the small light coming from a lamp somewhere on the other side of the room, narrowed as she tried to piece together her surroundings.

Lying right where she'd left her was Penelope Garcia, but this time she was sitting up. Sitting up, wide awake, with her glasses on and a brand new grey robe over her shoulders as her eyes scanned what seemed to be some kind of novel.

"The drugs wear off?"

"Oh my God!" Beck watched as the blonde practically tossed the small book in her lap across the room as she jumped straight in her bed, immediately wincing at the abrupt movement. "You... You scared the ever-living crap out of me!" Garcia gasped as she clutched her chest where her wound was.

Beck grimaced, rubbing her eyes as she readjusted herself in her seat. "Sorry." No she wasn't. "How long have you been up?"

"Longer than you- clearly," the blonde shot back, a hint of bitterness still lingering as she glared at the book she'd tossed across the room.

Beck frowned, "How long have I been out?" Judging by the fact that Garcia had had time to sleep off the drugs and put on the robe and sweats Reid had brought in earlier and that she was also barely a quarter of the way through the book she had been reading... some time.

"Seven hours, give or take," Garcia answered honestly.

Beck blanched. "Seven... Why didn't you wake me up? I'm supposed to be looking out for you?" She pushed herself from her seat, ignoring the way her legs protested in response as she made her way across the room to snatch up the book Garcia had tossed in her frightened wake.

As she walked back around the bed to hand it back to her, Garcia replied, "Well, because you needed to sleep just as much as I did- thank you." She took the book back and set it in her lap. Before she could flip back through the pages, Beck got an eye-full of the beefy man on the cover with a woman in a silky white dress draped over him. She couldn't make out the hot-pink cursive title in the far corner, but just judging by the cover (yes, you were allowed to do it from time to time) she decided she was better off without it. "Sappy romance novels are my guilty pleasure," Garcia huffed upon noticing Beck's look of disdain at the book in her hands. Now she understood why she'd reacted the way she did when she had woken up.

"Garcia," Beck groaned as she threw herself back into her chair, running a hand down her face in exhaustion. "I'm supposed to keep guard to make sure the psycho that shot you doesn't come back-"

"I know! But it's just... you looked so peaceful curled up in a little ball-" Beck threw her head back and groaned out loud. "Did you know that you talk in your sleep?"

"Okay!" Beck shot out of her seat. "I'm grabbing myself some coffee-"

"You don't drink coffee-"

"-You want anything?" Beck cut her off with a pointed glare.

When the blonde clamped her mouth shut and shook her head, Beck knew her message had gotten across. No more letting her sleep on the job. "I'm okay. Morgan brought me back loaded potato soup from the café a few blocks from the office a few hours ago."

That got Beck's attention. "Morgan was here? What'd he say about the sketch?"

Garcia frowned and shook her head. "Nothing so far. We went over what happened again while you were..." she trailed off upon noticing Beck's withering glare at the mention of her sleeping in again. "...Still nothing new."

"Where's everyone else at- Oh wow..." Beck's question died in the back of her throat when she turned around just in time to see the array of floral arrangements that were now placed all along the tables on the side of the room. "Someone's got admirers," Beck noted as she took in the many shapes, sizes, and colors of the different floral arrangements- some of them almost the size of her. Someone also had friends with deep pockets, too.

Garcia nodded. "I think half of those are from Rossi," she chuckled. Beck raised an eyebrow. That was a predicament. "But everyone is where you left them when you-" the words 'went to sleep' died in her throat when she remembered the last glare Beck had given her. "Uh, Hotch, Rossi, JJ, and Emily are all still at the BAU. Morgan and Reid are running around downstairs. I kinda kicked them out earlier. They started playing a game of poker and it got a little loud when Reid won... for the eighth time in a row." Beck snorted lightly beneath her breath. "I didn't want them to wake you up-"

"You mean you didn't want to be interrupted while reading about Mr. Steamy and Mrs. Internalized Misogynistic Female Lead Number Fifteen?" Beck prompted, her eyes drifting to the book in Garcia's hands she quickly tossed away onto the desk beside her bed.

"No," she retorted. "...Maybe."

Beck scoffed beneath her breath as she made her way back to the other side of Garcia. She took note of the brush Reid had brought in earlier, still untouched on the desk on the side of the bed. "I see Morgan helped you get dressed, but no one bothered to detangle that thing on your head..."

"Hey!"

Beck raised her arms up in mock-surrender before snatching up the brush. "Hold still," she braced the blonde as she leaned on the edge of the bed. "This thing may still be live-" she had to dodge the swing the Technical Analyst took at her from over her shoulder. Beck laughed, but returned to the task at hand. Carefully and tentatively, the Agent combed through the dry curls that had stuck around through the blood, sweat, and tears of the past two days. Every so often, the brush would get stuck in a bunch of tangled hairs, but Beck would only meticulously brush through the sections of hair until they were flat once again.

As Beck finished up the last of Garcia's hair, she pulled the two hair ties from off the handle and pulled them around her wrist as she began to part the strands of hair on either side of the blonde's head. "How are you doing today?"

She could feel the blonde shrug beneath her touch. "Better than before. My chest is still sore... so is my entire arm."

Beck was halfway through the French braid she had started on the right side of Garcia's head. "That'll pass ... but you know that's not what I meant."

There was a heavy exhale. "...I can't even remember anything distinct about this guy. I should've known to trust my gut and I didn't out of spite and now... Now I have a bullet hole in my gut," Beck could hear the pout in her voice as she moved to tie off the first braid and move on to the next. "You're surprisingly good at this," Garcia noted as Beck parted the left side of her head of hair.

Beck shrugged as she began to intricately braid down to her shoulder. "I practically raised my little sister. The first thing I learned how to do before Alice could even walk was how to braid her hair," Beck explained. She immediately noted how weird this was; talking about her family to a team member. Braiding a team member's hair. Looking after a team member. Monitoring a team member's vitals. Staying in a hospital room with a team member. Getting looked after by a team member. Calling a team member by their first name. This was all so... unprofessional and new territory Beck wasn't sure if she liked crossing.

"That's sweet," Garcia mused, not a hint of malice in her tone. "I was an only child, but sometimes I wish I had siblings."

Beck scoffed. "They're pains in your ass. You're lucky to be an only child," she lied through her teeth. Truthfully, she just wanted to get back off the topic of her family right now.

"I don't know... Maybe I just wanted someone to get through the death of my parents with."

Okay... This was now crossing into a territory Beck seriously did not want to go down. Trauma? Hell no. Babysitting their Technical Analyst was one thing, but Beck was not about to sit here and listen to Penelope Garcia's trauma. She wasn't a therapist- Hell, she was barely her team mate let alone a friend she could talk to. She wasn't qualified for this shit.

"Sorry," the blonde eventually apologized after Beck failed to respond to her last confession. "You probably don't want to hear about all this." You're right- I really don't, Beck inwardly cringed as she tied off the end of the last braid. "It's just... when I flat-lined and David Bowie was playing, it was like my life flashed before my eyes- literally. I saw myself as a little kid, I saw my parents, and I remember their deaths. I remember thinking for a second that I wasn't scared to die because then I'd finally get to see them again." Holy shit, Beck definitely did not want to talk about this right now. She was halfway out of the seat she'd taken beside Garcia at the edge of her hospital bed when she froze as the Technical Analyst turned around to face her. "You've worked a lot of dangerous jobs, have you ever had a near death experience like that?"

Beck swallowed hard. What the fuck? What the fuck was happening? How the fuck was she supposed to answer this? What the fuck was she supposed to do with this?

"Um, I... No," she eventually stammered out in a half-hearted attempt to give an honest response. "No. I'm sorry." She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for. Probably for being the only person there and being the most unqualified person to be there right now.

"We missing the slumber party?"

God bless Derek Morgan.

Beck immediately stepped off of the edge of the hospital bed she had been on while braiding Garcia's hair upon Morgan and Reid's entrance. "No," Beck answered immediately. "I actually think it's about time for a shift change. I need to stretch my legs."

"Yeah, I bet you do after all that napping rolled up like an armadillo in that chair-" He laughed harder when Beck bumped her shoulder into his as she walked past. "Hey, Beck-" he called to her, following just a bit as she made her way out of the door. "Why don't you head home for a little bit. Take a day, you-"

"Morgan," she cut him off swiftly. "I'm fine." He looked disbelieving, but frankly, she didn't give a shit whether he believed her or not. Her mind was made up. She wasn't going anywhere...

Her stomach growled slightly.

...except for maybe the food court downstairs.

"I'm gonna go grab something to snack on," she exclaimed, leaning around the towering agent to face the other two across the room. "I'll be back in a little bit," she called out to Garcia. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to reassure the blonde, but a small part of her would've felt mildly guilty if she hadn't.

And with that, she turned on her heel and headed out of the crowded hospital room.

—

The next two days passed in a blur of Beck, Reid, and Morgan going over anything Garcia could remember about the shooting. She was still having a bit of trouble remembering the small details before the shooting. Beck started to notice that the more they tried to dig and sift through the memories she was trying so hard to repress, her panic would start to get the best of her.

Beck had to catch herself quite a few times. She wanted to tell her to push through that anxiety and anguish of the memories of nearly being gunned down just outside of her home, that there were worse ways to go and if they wanted to catch this guy she had to push through that panic. But... Penelope Garcia wasn't Beck Ryder. In fact, she was quite the opposite.

Garcia wore her emotions on her sleeve, she wasn't just gonna push it down on command the way Beck had learned to do at such an early age.

So, instead of coercing the blonde to get the information they needed, Beck insisted on the other two profilers to wait a few days while she healed, recovered, and processed her emotions. Just a little bit longer and hopefully the situation would numb over, making it easier for her to talk to them about it in detail without hyperventilating.

Morgan, Reid, and Beck all took turns heading home and staying to visit with Garcia. Morgan always took the longest. Partially because Beck noted his guilt was still out in full force and he needed to take the longest breaks away from the images of his close friend in a hospital bed surrounded by wires and needles. Reid was somewhat quick with his breaks, but he'd always get sidetracked... Beck suspected it had something to do with his constant vigilance in talking with the doctors and nurses that wandered the hallways about her condition in detail.

Beck was the quickest in her breaks out.

She didn't even really go back to her apartment much. All she did was wash up a bit in the hospital bathroom, take a small snack break, and occasionally would stop at the store downstairs to get some new clothes for Garcia after she complained on multiple occasions about the fabric of the sheets and blankets she was confined to.

Every so often, JJ and Prentiss would visit. Rossi and Hotchner only poked their heads in every so often to ask about any updates on either Garcia's status or on whether or not she was remembering anything crucial to the case. From the way they were digging for scraps, Beck was beginning to realize that they were coming up empty on every front. The sketch, the coffee shop she met him, facial recognition, the phone number he called from, possibly even the fake name she gave him... Everything vital was all inside Garcia's head, and she wasn't quite ready to give it all up yet.

Until today, it would seem where the team was becoming persistent.

"Hey," Morgan greeted the group as he sauntered back into the hospital room.

It was darker, a few days ago, Garcia had insisted it was too bright, so to help her not feel so exposed, they'd turned off the lights and now relied on the natural light seeping through the windows. Reid sat on one side of Garcia in her bed, while Beck sat on the other. After how long she'd been staying with them, she had practically branded the chair to the left of the blonde's hospital bed as her own.

As Morgan walked through the doorway into the dark room, Beck noted the way he held up his phone that she figured he'd just gotten done with using. "Hotchner?" She prompted, not even bothering with the pleasantries of greeting him back.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "Just called to let me know that the local PD took that sketch down to the coffee shop."

Garcia's breath caught in her throat, but Beck deflated, as did Reid's. "They didn't find anything, did they?" The Doctor asked.

Morgan pursed his lips as he shook his head. "Emily even ran it through ViCap... Nothing."

Beck exhaled heavily through her nostrils as she sat back, her eyes turning away to the wall as she crossed her arms firmly over her chest. "This guy's a ghost."

Beside her, Garcia was already beginning to grow panicked. "Well, what do we do now?"

Morgan frowned slightly. Beck figured he would probably say 'nothing', but it looked to her as though he actually had a solution.

Slowly, he leaned both his arms on the railing at the end her bed and met her gaze. "We need to do a cognitive interview."

Garcia's chest faltered for a second, Beck glanced up at the vitals monitor above her. There was a slight uptick in her heartbeat. She leaned forward, shooting a pointed look at Morgan. Keep it toned down.

"Penelope," Morgan started. "I know it's gotta be hard reliving this..."

"I just don't know what else there is to remember," the blonde insisted. Beck frowned. There was a lot to remember, she just didn't want to. Of course, Beck didn't out right say it.

Reid leaned forward in his seat, almost a little too eager to get into this cognitive interview. Then again, he was practically bouncing off the walls in this small hospital room with the way he'd been reading and re-reading every book he had bought from the gift shop downstairs, even turning to the guilty pleasures on Garcia's bed stand... Which, Beck was sure, he later regretted.

"Let's start with behavior," he encouraged Garcia. "That's all... That's all profiling really is, just noticing behavior."

Beck could already see the confusion behind the blonde's eyes as she tried to skim what she could remember about the man who shot her. But... the problem was that she was skimming over memories when what they really needed was everything she wasn't noticing right away.

Her perception of what was vital wasn't what they needed right now.

"Think of stupid things you just picked up about the guy," Beck chimed in from beside her. "Did he smell a certain way? Was he wearing something tacky? How did he talk to the wait staff while you were in the restaurant?" Garcia seemed to be focusing a lot harder on that, her eyes dropped a bit.

Morgan took that moment to step forward. He leaned forward a bit on the bed between Beck and Garcia. "Sweetheart, any details you can remember will tell us who he is. Okay?" Garcia nodded tentatively. "Alright, so let's go back to when you first arrived at that restaurant." Beck watched from afar as Garcia turned away from Morgan, her eyes straight forward as she got into the mindset that she had been that night. "Was he nervous?"

Garcia answered in a heartbeat, "No." That was good she was no longer hesitant in her answers. "The opposite, actually."

Beck and Morgan exchanged a glance before turning back to the blonde. "Why do you say that?" The brunette agent prompted.

"When we were ordering drinks, he ordered a white wine. I told him I only drank wine, but he insisted that I'd love it," she recalled.

"So, he was trying to impress you by showing you how he could take charge," Morgan noted.

"I guess so," she shrugged.

"How was he dressed?" Beck asked. "Anything that jump out at you? Shoes that didn't match his suit, suit jacket that didn't quite meet his wrists, a tie that didn't match the color, an accessory that maybe seemed a bit too over the top-"

"His watch," Garcia suddenly gasped.

"What about his watch?" Reid asked from the other side of her.

"It was a fake Rolex."

Morgan raised a perplexed eyebrow down at her. "You sure about that?"

A sly smile graced the Technical Analyst's lips. "I know my knock-offs."

Reid leaned forward slightly. "Clearly he was playing with it though 'cause he wanted you to notice. I mean, he wanted you to think it was real."

"Cocky... materialistic," Beck frowned. "Sounds like almost every other man in Metro DC." They weren't getting much, but perhaps his personality could at least help them develop at least a preliminary psychological profile on the guy.

Beside the group, Garcia's heartrate was starting to tick up a bit. "Garcia," Morgan pressed. "You okay?"

"I'm feeling really exposed..." she admit with wide eyes as she looked up at him.

Carefully, Morgan took her hand. "You're doing just fine," he assured her. "Just fine..."

Beck leaned forward to examine the vitals up above... They calmed after Morgan talked her down just a little bit. Good. That was good. They could keep going.

"What did he talk to you about?" Beck prompted the blonde.

"We talked about our jobs, mostly," Garcia recalled, her eyes turning straight forward once more as she tried to focus once more.

Morgan perked up a bit at that. "Did he say where he works?" He asked, digging for clues previously unknown.

Garcia nodded. "He said he went to school at New Haven, then law school in Cambridge," she explained. "He said he was a City Attorney, but then his murder case got dismissed because of... I don't he used some long words I can't remember. Judicial something-tude and random collateral... collateral-"

"Estoppel?" Beck offered.

"Yes! Yes, that..." Garcia nodded. Beck shrugged. She was no City Attorney, but she did know a Defense Attorney and read enough books and watched enough Law & Order to remember what the word was. "Then he said he went into private practice after that..."

Across the bed, Reid frowned. "City Attorneys don't try murder cases."

Garcia, who had been in the middle of still reliving whatever memory was playing through her head of that night, turned to him, dumbfound. "...What?"

"How do you explain him knowing all that legal jargon then?" Morgan prompted. "...How did you know it, Ryder?"

Beck shrugged. "My sister-in-law works at the DA's office in LA," she answered truthfully. "I remember she used to study for exams and I'd helped her by memorizing all the chapters she needed so I could pop quiz her at any time." It felt a little odd sharing such a private thing with this team, but... then again, this team knew nothing about boundaries so naturally it would start rubbing off on her.

"So maybe he wasn't lying about the law school part," Morgan remarked.

"But he was lying about the City Attorney part," Reid remarked. "Anyone who was practicing actual law would know that District Attorneys are usually the ones who try homicide cases."

"He failed law school, dropped out, maybe even just failed the BAR exam," Morgan deduced. "But why lie?"

"Men lie," Garcia exclaimed. "It's what they do. Especially when they go on dates. I could probably buy a yacht if I had a dollar for every time a man lied to me about what he did for a living. This guy, no matter how much of a psycho he is, isn't anything special as far as the realm of lying goes."

"But he did try and kill you, so there has to be a reason that of all the things he could've mentioned, he mentioned murder cases," Beck replied. "Forget the law school shit, he probably just wants the excuse to seem like he actually passed the BAR, but he didn't have to mention murder cases, so why did he?"

Morgan and Reid frowned, exchanging a quick glance to one another. They knew she was on to something. "Babygirl," Morgan began, turning back to the blonde on the bed. "Did he say anything else about that murder case? Or any case for that matter?"

"No," she shook her head. "He just mentioned the one."

"Alright," Morgan sighed, a little deflated that she couldn't tell them anything else. "We're gonna head back to the office, brief Hotch on what we know. See if he can get anything from what we have or see if they have anything to give us."

"'We'?" Beck perked an eyebrow up at the agent.

"Reid and I," he answered. Beck immediately opened her mouth to argue, but Morgan was quick to deflect the onslaught of arguments she was about to spew in defense of herself. "You need to stay here and get some rest. When was the last time you even slept aside from a couple days ago."

"I've slept," Beck shot back defensively.

"She's right," Garcia interjected. Beck bit back the need to smile smugly at the blonde's testimony in her defense... That was until she continued to add, "I saw her blink for longer than four seconds a couple hours ago."

"Hey!" Beck gaped, turning to the woman in the chair beside her with a newfound look of betrayal. "Et tu, Garcia?" she muttered in disdain.

But as much as Beck hated to admit it, Garcia was right... Ever since the first night that Beck had succumb to her exhaustion in the chair, she had vowed not to sleep again until the bastard was caught. Frankly, she couldn't even believe she'd slept the first time. She had just wrote it off as the effects of the lingering concussion she'd had from Fucking Florida.

"That settles it then," Morgan exclaimed as Reid climbed out of his seat. "We'll be back in no time. You-" he pointed to Garcia. "-No more going downstairs unaccompanied for those little racy books." Garcia pouted. "And you-" he pointed at Beck. "Get sleep or I'm calling Hotch and having him send you home."

Beck bit back the witty retort she had about Hotchner sucking something of hers because she wasn't about to go home, but decided against it. She could use the sleep... she just didn't want to.

She glared at Morgan and Reid all the way up until they were out of sight and down the hall. Bastards...

"Alright," Garcia exclaimed. "Time to sleep. You wanna switch?" She asked gesturing to her bed.

Beck gave her an unamused look. "You're lucky I don't burn all your little books in that trash can over there for selling me out," she grumbled as she pulled her knees up to her chest.

"You need sleep," the blonde insisted. "I'm not about to have a half-dead FBI Agent protecting me. If that were the case, I'd call some meathead from Narcotics to come stay with me." Beck snorted. "So... sleep," she demanded.

Beck rolled her eyes before closing her eyes... It didn't take long for her bottled up exhaustion to take hold of her once more.

—

(x)

She was running.

She wasn't sure where, but she just knew if she stopped something would be coming for her. Someone. And she couldn't go back. No. No, she couldn't go back. Not again.

So she ran.

She ran and ran and ran- until her foot hit a tree branch. The harsh wood cutting into her ankle as she roughly fell to the jungle ground. It was humid and raining and there was mud all over her and now blood was pooling at her feet and... Beck raised her hands up for herself to see.

When did she get blood on her hands?

She'd been running, there hadn't been blood there before.

How did she get blood on her hands? Was it always there? She couldn't remember.

"...You smell good."

Beck jumped, her position on the jungle floor moving so she was in a defense position, facing the area where the voice came from. She tried to listen again, but all she heard was the sound of rain, and thunder, and wind and... crying? Who was crying?

"Hello?" She called out. Carefully, her bloody hand reached out towards rock near her foot. It was hard, large, and sharp. A decent weapon for now. "Who's there?" No response.

Carefully, she crept forward. Despite every fiber in her body telling her to keep running, she couldn't help but question her own instincts. She wanted to know where the crying was coming from. She wanted to know how the blood got on her hands.

She grew closer and closer towards the small bush she'd heard the voice. As she approached, her grip on the sharp rock grew tighter. The coil in her chest simultaneously tightening as she reached her free hand out to the large, wet leaf in front of her. As she pulled it down, she noticed the wet gleam on the leaf wasn't water... It was blood. As the leaf dipped down and revealed what was behind the bush, Beck's breath caught in my throat.

There was a boy. He was crying.

He looked young, a little younger than she was when she remembered running in this jungle.

His head was bowed, she couldn't see his face.

Why couldn't she see his face? Why was he crying? How did the blood get on her hands?

"Hello?" She whispered to him, trying not to startle him. And although she knew deep down this boy wasn't a threat, her grip still remained firm on the sharp rock. "Are you okay?"

She knew the answer before he lifted his head to reveal that half of his face was gone. Bloody flesh and bone exposed to the rain as crimson liquid dripped through the exposed teeth on the left side of his face. His left eye bulging out through his skull and the exposed part of his brain beating and squirting out liquids as though it were a dying heart.

Beck fought the urge to gag and scream simultaneously.

So that's how she got the blood on her hands...

Wait- had she done that?

Had she-

"You're so beautiful... nhà tôi."

Beck spun around, but it was too late. She gasped just as a hand closed around her throat and a scream ripped out through her clenched teeth. She tried to hit the dark figure over her with her stone, but it didn't hurt him. He was moving too fast- NO!

(x)

Beck shot out of her laid back position, her hands coming out to grab the gun holstered behind her back. Within the blink of an eye, it was armed and aimed to whoever had just moved within her peripheral vision.

"Woah! Ryder!" Derek Morgan shouted, his hands coming up in a defensive position.

Beck, still slowly coming back to reality, lowered the weapon she hadn't even realized she'd drawn on her teammates in real time.

"It's just us," Morgan said, his hands starting to come down simultaneous to her movements.

Beck sighed, trying to control her rapid breathing from her nightmare. She frowned as she put the safety back on and holstered her weapon once more. "Sorry..." she muttered after clearing her throat.

Reid, who had been entering the hospital room right behind Morgan, peered around him towards the woman seated in the chair. "You alright?"

"Fine," she bit out through clenched teeth. She really wished these people would get the hint and just stop asking already. "You guys just scared the crap out of me."

Suddenly remembering where she was and what they were there for, Beck spared a glance to her right to make sure Garcia hadn't just seen her draw a knife on her two friends and teammates. Thankfully, the blonde was fast asleep, blissfully unaware of the nightmare occurring in the mind of the woman beside her. Beck was almost jealous of her. Almost.

The brunette turned back to the two agents who were settling back into the room. "What are you guys doing back so soon anyway?"

Reid frowned as he plopped himself back into the chair adjacent to her on the other side of Garcia's bed. "There wasn't much we could do after we gave what Garcia told us to the rest of the team."

Morgan shrugged as he leaned up against the end of the bed. "Figured we were just taking up space over there," he smirked. "And from your reaction just now, I'd say we're probably taking up space in here, too."

Beck rolled her eyes. Great. Yet another thing she won't be hearing the end of anytime soon. "Don't tell Hotchner."

Morgan chuckled in amusement. "Yes, ma'am."

"Don't tell Hotch what?"

The trio turned to find the blonde in the hospital bed slowly coming to.

"Nothing," Beck immediately answered, her eyes darting back and forth between Morgan and Reid as if daring them to say otherwise about what had happened. No need for Garcia to feel unsafe in her own hospital room because Beck got a little fidgety with her gun.

Garcia groaned slightly as she pushed herself to sit straighter on the bed. Morgan moved with her, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. "You good? What's wrong? What do you need?"

The blonde drew a bit of a face, puckering and unpuckering her lips. "I need lip balm..." The group chuckled slightly at her odd request. "There's a bag that JJ brought on the floor. There should be a little make-up bag in one of the pockets." She explained, pointing in the general direction of the ground close to where Reid was seated.

Reid reluctantly pulled himself from his chair and handed whatever small bag she'd been talking about to Morgan who passed it on to Garcia. Carefully, the blonde pushed her glasses onto her face and began to dig into the small bag, producing some kind of mirror and lip balm.

She glanced up at Morgan and held out the little mirror. "Can you hold it for me?"

Morgan drew a face. "What? Why me? Why not Ryder- she can do make-up-"

"Ah-ah," Beck shook her head firmly. "I already did her braids, that means you gotta suffer through the make-up."

Morgan threw his head back in an over exaggerated groan. "No," he gave a fake moan of displeasure before popping open the mirror and holding it up for the blonde. "You're too much sometimes, Woman."

"A girl's gotta take her time getting pretty," Garcia muttered as she carefully used her thumb to scoop up small bits of lip balm to rub along her top and bottom lips. "Haven't you heard the phrase 'beauty is pain'?"

Across the room, Reid frowned. "How so?"

Beck scoffed as she readjusted herself in her seat so that her legs were crossed in the chair. "Clearly you've never had to have your eyebrows threaded."

"Or pluck your eyebrows," Garcia chimed in.

"Or walk in heels for a long period of time."

"Or push yourself into some spanks."

"Or wax your-"

"Okay, okay!" Morgan interjected with a laugh. "I think he gets your point." Reid even cracked a smile from where he sat.

Garcia frowned as she continued to apply her lip balm, "You're about to get another point if you don't quit moving."

"My bad, my bad..." Morgan steadied himself and the mirror.

Just then, there was a knock on the door.

Everyone turned to see none other than the Unit Chief walk in. Beck immediately uncrossed her legs and sat straighter in her chair because from the look on his face... something was up, and not in the good way.

"Hey," Garcia greeted him as Morgan climbed off the bed with the mirror.

Hotchner slowly approached to the side of the bed across from Beck. "How are you feeling?" He sounded genuine in his concern for the Technical Analyst, but Beck knew better than to believe he was just here to check in. He hadn't before this.

"You know, I've had better dates," the blonde quipped softly. Beck snorted beneath her breath at the ill-timed joke.

Morgan, seeing right through the façade, same as Beck had, decided to break the ice. "What's going on?" He asked what everyone else had been thinking since the moment he had walked in the room.

Hotchner frowned and Beck braced herself. Oh, here it comes. "We found an encrypted file on your computer," he explained, looking pointedly at Garcia as if asking the unspoken question about 'why' she had encrypted something on her work computer. Even Beck was anxious to know what could be so important that Garcia would have to lock something away.

Everyone in the room turned to glance at the blonde.

"Are you involved in something that I need to know about?" Hotchner prompted.

Without missing a beat, Garcia answered, "No." For someone as suspicious as Beck, even she believed her answer.

"Hotch," Morgan piped up from where he stood close to where Beck sat. "What's going on?"

But Hotchner didn't answer him. "Could this be connected in any way to whoever shot you?" He pressed Garcia further. Now Beck's attention was piqued. She slid to the edge of her chair, glancing to the blonde for an answer. It would make sense, if someone as knowledgeable as Garcia was keeping secrets on an encrypted file in her system that held a plethora of information, someone would target her to get to whatever she was keeping locked away.

Still, Garcia shook her head. "I don't think so."

What's on the encrypted file?

Beck wanted to ask, but the words died in her throat. Sometimes curiosity was known to kill and if she let on that she was eager to know the secrets of the BAU now, she would wreck what little ground she'd just gained in her favor with the team. All that trust that they were bestowing upon her would slowly begin to chip away if they detected even a trace of an ulterior motive to her presence on the team.

So she sat back and kept quiet.

"I need the password," Hotchner stated.

Morgan was growing frustrated by the second at the implications flying back and forth between the two. "Is this really necessary?" He demanded, to which Hotchner merely turned to him and answered truthfully, "Yes." Hotchner turned back to Garcia. "The password."

A beat passed between Garcia and Hotchner, Beck swore for a second Garcia was almost considering telling him 'no', but eventually, she relented. "Gilman Street." Beck frowned. Was that supposed to hold some kind of sentimental value to her? Or perhaps to the team as a whole?

"Thank you."

Beck blinked and turned towards the Unit Chief. His Technical Analyst was just caught with an encrypted file on her computer and he thanked her for giving him the password and didn't immediately bite her head off? Maybe it was just because she had just been shot, but Beck couldn't help but feeling as though if their roles were switched, Beck would already charred to smithereens just from the verbal beating she'd receive from the Unit Chief.

Then she had to pause for a moment and think about why that bothered her so much.

Who gave a shit whether Hotchner took his anger out on her more than he did Garcia? He had history with Garcia and had trust issues in regard to Beck, of course he wouldn't treat them equally. Same way he didn't get as angry with Rossi on his screw-ups the way he did Beck.

...But why did it have to bother her so much?

"They don't honestly think Garcia's a security risk, do they?" Reid piped up from where he sat on the other side of the bed. Beck inferred the 'they' he was referring to was the superiors within the FBI, possibly Strauss or even Internal Affairs.

"I don't know," Hotchner shook his head with a heavy sigh. "We've been ordered by Internal Affairs to stop working the case."

"What?"

"Of course," Beck muttered at the same time Morgan expressed his outrage. Were they really surprised about that? They find an encrypted file on the computer of the Technical Analyst that was just gunned down, of course they were about to start looking into things. It's what Beck would do. It's what she wanted to do right now instead of be grounded to the hospital room, but... It was all in due time.

"And..." Hotchner continued. "Until this is cleared up..." he turned to face Garcia once more. "You've been suspended... I'm sorry."

"Wait, what?" Now it was Beck's turn to be ticked. "She was just shot and the assholes in IA want to suspend her for it? Seriously?"

"Ryder," Hotchner said her name in that 'drop it' tone, but she wasn't having it.

"You're not actually letting them call the shots in terms of her suspension, are you?" When he turned to give her that signature Hotchner glare, she knew she had her answer. "She's a victim, not a suspect."

"I'm sorry, it's already been enacted," he brushed off her words.

"...Right," was all Garcia could muster in response before watching Hotchner turn on his heel and head out the hospital room door.

"What- that's it?" Beck demanded, clearly pissed at the predicament. "Hotchner-" She started storming after him when Morgan leapt up in record time and wrapped an arm across her middle to keep her from following after the Unit Chief.

"Ryder," he stopped her. "There's no point. Don't make it worse."

Beck turned her fiery gaze away from where she'd been mentally burning a hole in the back of Hotchner's retreating head to look up at the agent with his hand still on her arm. She clenched her jaw and shook him off, turning back to face the room once more. As much as she hated to admit it, he was probably right. Hotchner was almost as stubborn as her and if he had even a fraction of her hard head (which, he did) he wasn't going to budge. Even after a verbal beat down from her.

What was done was done, but that didn't mean Beck had to like it.

If anyone could find out who this guy was and why he'd targeted the team, it would be Garcia. She was the team's best weapon and they were suspending her because of some file. Which, Beck admitted to herself, that she was very keen to find out what exactly was on that encrypted file, but she highly doubted it had anything to do with the asshole that targeted her. Clearly, someone was trying to attack the Unit by aiming for one of the most powerful and the most vulnerable member of the team, it wasn't just by accident-

Beck lifted her head slightly as she took a seat back at Garcia's side. Morgan and Garcia getting into a scuffle beside her, something about her taking out her IVs and everything happening for a reason, but Beck wasn't paying much attention as she pulled her phone from her pocket and scrolled back through her messages from a few weeks ago.

She clicked on the short conversation she'd had with an Unknown Number.

[Unknown Number]: We should talk.

[Unknown Number]: Seriously? The Silent Treatment? Don't make me get Spruce in here to hack into your mainframe and fuck with your systems so you have no choice but to talk with me.

[Unknown Number]: Okay, your mainframe is pretty solid, but now you know I'm not bluffing when it comes to threats. Hurry the hell up and get back to me. I'm serious.

Gina Sanchez was one stuck-up bitch, but maybe she was a bitch with access to a very powerful computer and possibly information on anyone with the initials of JCB that failed the BAR.

"Derek," Garcia gasped as she spoke with Morgan beside Beck still. "If I lose faith in that, then nothing in my life makes sense."

"I get that-" Morgan tried to reply, only to be swiftly cut off by Garcia.

"No, you don't."

There was a beat of silence and in that moment, Beck knew what she had to do.

She pulled herself to her feet and started for the door.

Reid, who was still seated on the other side of Garcia's bed, sat straight in his chair looking as though he was willing to jump and run after her if he needed to stop her from doing something stupid. She doubted he'd be able to. "Where are you going?"

"To make a call," she answered without sparing him or anyone else in the room a parting glance as she left.

This is a bad idea.

The mantra repeated itself over and over inside her head as she hit the ground button in the elevator. Her finger pressed the 'shut elevator' button as he other finger hovered over the dial button on her phone.

This is a bad idea.

The words rang through her skull as the doors opened again and she sauntered out. This time, her finger hit the dial button.

This is a bad idea.

She thought to herself as she took a deep breath and pressed the phone to her ear, waiting for someone to pick up as she walked through the hospital halls towards the door leading outside.

This is a bad idea.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. And finally, someone answered.

"You've come to your senses," the raspy and aged voice of Gina Sanchez greeted her on the other end of the line. "Ready to finally leave the BAU?"

Beck's lip twitched in a frown. If Sanchez could see her face now, she definitely wouldn't have that stupid thought bouncing in that hard head of hers. "And come join your merry band of misfits- I wouldn't hold your breath, Sanchez," she grit out through her clenched teeth as she walked through the sliding glass doors of the hospital. "I'm calling about an attack on the team."

There was a pause. She could practically hear Sanchez thinking of a way to get out of this one. "...You think it was me." It wasn't a question.

"You tell me," Beck replied, her anger festering the more she had to listen to this woman act coy and feign humility. "I get a text about an attempted cyber attack from your people and now almost a month later, my team's Technical Analyst is gunned down outside her house without even so much as a viable lead as to who could've done it or a motive as to why."

There was silence on the other end.

"So you tell me whether or not you put a hit out on my Tech Girl and directly impacted my work or I'll drive my ass all the way to Langley and get it out of you and your unit myself," Beck growled into her speaker as she grew closer to her parked bike. "And you know how I handle my threats in comparison to yours." She quoted her text verbatim in a low, dangerous tone.

She could hear Gina Sanchez let out a heavy sigh.

"Look, Ryder- I admit, I've had Kruger try and get into your system quite a few times, but we've failed every time, so after the last time, I told him to stop and we haven't since," Sanchez explained. "But that was all just to get your attention. We didn't put that hit out on your Tech or your Team... But the reason I wanted your attention in the first place was because I might know who did."

Beck shifted, her eyes darting across the hospital parking lot, even checking behind her as if someone was going to come up behind her with a large sign with the words 'Punk'D' on it with a series of cameramen beside them. It had to all be some joke. Gina Sanchez offering help. The CIA failing to get into Penelope Garcia's files. Someone else putting a hit on Beck's team to get to her.

All some sick joke.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Beck muttered into the receiver.

No answer.

"Sanchez?"

Still no answer.

"Answer me- now!" Beck was growing impatient.

"...Is this line secure?"

Beck took a breathed in through her nose, trying to calm herself. "Only from certain networks at the moment," she answered truthfully.

"Then I think it's best if we have this conversation in-person, Ryder."

Beck's frown deepened.

"I can be at Langley in less than half an hour."

—

This is a bad idea.

Beck had to talk herself out of turning Hades around and just riding back to DC and sitting another 36 hours in that hospital room with Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan, and Dr. Spencer Reid at least ten times before eventually pulling up at the GBC at Langley.

It had been almost two years since Beck had last stepped foot in this Hellhole. Frankly, it could've been less than a century and it still wouldn't have been enough time away. The GBC used to represent a future of protecting and serving for Beck back when she was first starting out as a bright-eyed 18 year old... Now all it reminded her of was all the people she killed in the name of some crooked prick who'd manipulated her for 16 years of her life.

"You made it," Califax was the first to greet her upon her entrance into the infamous Pit.

Beck smirked slightly at her bright and bubbly greeting. After all his time at the CTU, Beck was surprised to still see Califax sitting at her same old desk in front of all the screens of the Hub. "You're still here," she mused as she grew closer.

Califax shrugged. "What can I say? I guess I'm a glutton for punishment," she chuckled wryly. "Place isn't the same without the original team. Now it's just Sanchez and Spence running the operation. Still trying to find people with half your talent and skill to fill up positions after what happened..."

She trailed off and Beck couldn't help but spare a glance over to the two cubicles off to the side. One she recognized as her own, the other belonging to Olivia Hopkins.

This is a bad idea.

"Ryder," Beck glanced up to see none other than Gina Sanchez standing up on the catwalk. She wore the same expression she always wore when first meeting Beck, a bored look that she cast down her nose as if reiterating that she was somehow above Beck.

Beck stepped forward, climbing up the steps to level with her up on the railing. "I'm here, Sanchez," she stated, her jaw tight and her fists clenched at her sides. "Let's talk."

The cocky expression on Sanchez's face diminished, replaced by one with complete seriousness. "This way," she jerked her head to the side and led her towards a computer room off to the side. It was dark, the only light was produced from the dozens of screens around at least four keyboards all set up around a single chair where Kruger Spence sat. "Kruger, you remember Ryder."

The man glance up at the brunette upon her entrance, his eyes glistening a little. Beck knew all he could see when he looked at her was the last time he'd seen her... Olivia's funeral.

Despite not knowing about Olivia and Kruger's relationship up until a few hours before her death, Beck could tell just from his look of complete anguish that he probably felt some form of affection for her. It almost made her feel bad for the prick... Almost.

"Nice to see you again, kid," he muttered.

"It's Ryder," she corrected him grimly, turning her attention back to Sanchez. "So... what's this about?"

"I see your time at the BAU has made you no less of a pain in the ass," Kruger remarked bitterly as he hit a couple of buttons on his keyboards, the screens moving at an alarming rate as he pulled up something Beck couldn't decipher just yet.

Sanchez took a deep breath before beginning, "After what happened with Hawks and Summers-" Beck managed to keep her micro expressions under control for Sanchez to continue without seeing a break in her mask. "-I tasked Kruger with locking away any and every fiber of information we had in the system on any of our old aliases from the missions Hawks sent us on in case the DOJ decided to try Hawks and bring all of our old cases under investigation. He made his mistakes of going rogue and we made ours by blindly following his lead, there was no need for the entire Unit to go under for his stupid decisions-"

"So you covered your own asses," Beck finished for her. "Classic."

"We covered yours too," Kruger retorted, his back still turned to her as he continued to work away at the computer. "Put every one of your pretty little aliases in a box and burned it, buried the ashes in a hole, and covered that hole with a shit ton of concrete and steel. They were all untouchable."

"'Were'?" Beck caught that real quick.

"For everyone's security, we hid away the old aliases, but we didn't scrub them completely just in case something came up and we'd need to revert back to those files. So, I had Kruger hide everything, but put an alert and trace in case anyone broke through and came close to finding anything. If someone put in any of our aliases in a Google search and hit enter, we'd know," Sanchez explained with a frown. "Which is why we got a little twitchy when we got a hit a couple months ago from someone digging through the aliases, specifically, your old ones."

With a click of his mouse, Kruger pulled up a series of files all across the screens. Beck strained her eyes to see them. They looked familiar... Of course, they should have, they were her a handful of her old aliases.

Reba Nunez- the alias she had for a few of her Middle East assignments.

Arabella Nakajima- the alias she used for several North African assignments.

Beth Nolan- the alias she used for a series of cases across Europe.

Raya Navarro- the alias she'd used for all of her South American missions.

These were only three aliases of a couple dozen... but still, Beck understood the threat.

"You said you set up an alert and trace," Beck noted, her eyes not leaving the screen where fake ID's, passports, and birth certificates with her fake names still remained plastered before her. "Who did you trace it back to?"

Sanchez's frown grew deeper. "That's where this gets a lot more complicated," she replied. Kruger hit another button and up popped a very familiar crest. A blue globe with a sword through the middle surrounded by a crown of olive leaves and two ends of a scale on either side of it... Oh shit...

"What the hell is Interpol doing looking into my old aliases?" Beck demanded.

"That's what we'd like to know," Kruger remarked as he spun back around to face her. "Because the minute you're busted for the fucked up shit you've done over seas using whatever face you decided was convenient for you- is the minute we all go down."

Beck's stomach dropped to the floor. As much as she hated Kruger and the CTU and Hawks and everything that happened, she knew he had a point. If Interpol was looking into her, it meant that there was a pretty big chance that the person that had targeted Garcia to get to those encrypted files that more than likely kept whatever information she'd had on Beck after skewering through whatever Beck left for her to find had been an Interpol operative.

"Shit," Beck muttered beneath her breath.

"Who shot your girl Friday, Ryder?" Kruger prompted. "'Cause it definitely wasn't us."

Beck was already starting for the door. "I gotta go."

"Ryder," Sanchez tried to call after her. Beck barely paused to hear her out as she approached the edge of the catwalk. "Whatever this is... it's only a matter of time before whoever targeted your team uses whatever they have on you to get to the rest of us. I can't let that happen."

Beck tilted her head to the side slightly. "And what do you plan on doing if it gets out? Everything we've done?"

She took a deep breath. "If Interpol gets their hands on even a quarter of those files... the DOJ will be nothing compared to the treatment we'll get from the UN," she explained in a somber tone. "If Interpol somehow gets those files..."

Beck paused for a moment, evaluating the words Sanchez was trying to say. It was no secret that Sanchez had a way with covering her tracks. In fact, it was her specialty. Beck made the messes most of the time, Sanchez cleaned up her mess on the field. She was known to make things go away. It was what she'd done with Summers, with Hawks... Beck knew what Sanchez was implying when she left her words hanging.

"...You'll have me killed and make it look like an accident so nothing is linked to you or the Unit," Beck concluded, not an ounce of emotion behind her words.

"It's nothing personal, Ryder," Sanchez explained.

Beck wanted to scoff. "It never is."

And with that, she turned on her heel and started back to DC wishing she'd never left in the first place.

She was right, this had been a bad idea.

—

Compartmentalization.

It was the key to most of Beck's success.

One problem at a time.

She repeated the mantra to herself beneath her breath as she headed back to the hospital. Interpol was looking into her, her position with the BAU was being held over her head by Strauss, someone was attacking her Unit, and Garcia had an encrypted file that may or may not have information pertaining to her. And the cherry on top of it all was that the stitches in the back of her head from getting kidnapped by a Satanic cannibal serial killer a few days ago were giving her one bitch of a headache that painkillers just weren't going to fix.

"Fuck me," she muttered beneath her breath as she rubbed her eye trying to will the migraine coming on away. She was still wincing slightly when she walked into Garcia's hospital room only to find the three FBI agents packing everything up.

Morgan glanced up at her upon her entrance, his hands pausing where they were beside a bag of things he'd been packing. "How'd that call go?"

Beck didn't miss a beat with her answer, "It was a dead end." A total lie, but they didn't need to know that she suspected that whoever attacked Garcia might've been an Interpol operative attempting to get the walls down on her encrypted file in order to get whatever information they could get on Beck and whatever war crimes and humanitarian crimes she committed under her old boss's crooked jurisdiction in over six different continents.

...Yeah, they definitely didn't need to know that.

But what Beck did need to know was what the Hell was going on in the hospital room.

"What's going on?" She prompted, gesturing to Garcia standing out of bed despite the fact that she'd only been out of surgery for a few days and still needed to rest and all the rest of her belongings being packed up by Morgan and Reid.

Reid stood up, a vase of flowers in one hand and a satchel over his shoulder. "The doctors cleared her to go home, so we're helping her pack up."

Mental note for future reference: don't trust the doctors at this hospital to ever operate on me- they're fucking idiots.

Beck refrained from rolling her eyes. "We're not even going to consider what would happen if the man who attacked her finds out she survived and comes back to finish the job?" Beck directed the question to Morgan who, out of every other person in the room, was probably the most concerned with Garcia's well-being, which meant he was the most rational.

"Hotch and the DC Metro Police already put an around the clock security detail at her place," Morgan explained nonchalantly as he tugged Garcia's florescent bag over his shoulder as if it were a purse. "If he even gets within a block of her place, the cops will stop him."

I doubt that, Beck thought to herself.

"Alright," she dragged out, her eyes still adjusting to the bright lights as the small blotches in her vision continued to grow. "What are we doing for the time being?" She prompted, watching Reid and Morgan help shuffled Garcia out of the room along with the rest of her belongings.

"You-" Morgan told her pointedly. "Are going home and taking that sick leave I pestered Hotch into giving you-"

Beck turned to face him as he passed. "You-"

"You're welcome," he had the gall to call over his shoulder as they left.

"-had no right or reason to do that, Morgan!"

Morgan paused as Garcia and Reid went on down the hall, he turned to face her. "Ryder, look at you. You haven't slept in days, you're dead on your feet, and by my calculations-"

"What, are you Reid now?" Beck rolled her eyes.

"-those stitches are starting to act up from the way you've been behaving like you've got the worst hangover known to man right now," he gave her a smug grin, his index finger coming up to tap his temple as if to mock her aching headache she had right now. Oh, he just knew everything, didn't he? "Beck," Morgan's grin dropped as his tone became more serious. "Take a break, take some ibuprofen, take a shower-" Beck's glare sharpened. "-and just get some sleep, please. You're no good to anyone if you're dead."

And with that, Beck watched Derek Morgan turn on his heel and jog slightly to catch up with Garcia and Reid as they waited for the elevator to stop on their floor.

Beck remained frozen in place just outside Garcia's old hospital room. Her headache was still killing her, but it wasn't anything a couple of ibuprofen couldn't kill. But what was making her stay in place wasn't her developing migraine, it was the realization that Morgan was right.

She was no good to anyone if she were dead.

Beck didn't even think twice about what she had to do next. It was risky, but it was a risk she was willing to take to ensure Interpol kept away from Garcia, away from that encrypted file, and away from her. Beck would be damned if she let lackeys from Interpol take her down after all this time, and she'd be even more damned if she let someone like Gina Sanchez assassinate her to cover her own ass.

If anyone was covering anyone's ass, Beck was saving her own.

And all she needed was an untraceable laptop, a secure connection, and a ladder. It was gonna be a long night.

—

Over the course of the seventeen years prior to being rescued as a child soldier in a South-Asian guerilla war group- Rebecca Ryder accrued four PhD's, three Master's Degrees, two Bachelor's, and one Associate's. But of all of her very extensive amounts of degrees, none of them had anything to do with computer science.

This was one downfalls Beck had to deal with a lot as of recently. In fact, when she'd manually had to go into her files to lock away her education, background, and former missions with the CTU to keep away from the grimy hands of BAU Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia and the rest of the BAU, she had to resort to anything and everything she'd picked up from Califax, Adams, and- even though she hated to admit it- Kruger Spence. It took some time to become even remotely decent at half of the shit they were capable of behind a computer screen, but thankfully, with her skill, she could scrape by just enough to get by.

So, there sat Beck, on the roof of the small apartment complex that was home to Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia. She wasn't sure how she went from being almost eaten by a Satanic serial killer to camping out on top of one of her teammate's roofs, but she was pleased to admit to herself that this wasn't even the weirdest week she'd ever had in her life.

It didn't take too much effort to get up onto the roof of a four-story building with a heavy-duty laptop dressed in all black in the dead of night with a police officer on every corner of the neighborhood, but by the time Beck made it up to crevices of the roof to open her laptop, she was a little winded.

"Oh, I'm so taking a nap when this is all over," she muttered beneath her breath as she shifted with her back angled at an odd degree against the roof crevices. She had to bend her knees to use as a table and she could already tell this was going to be a long night when she saw Morgan and Garcia step out of the black SUV together some time in the night.

Beck waited for over an hour before taking the risk of even opening her laptop. What she was about to do was risky. Not only was she risking her ass by logging into the encrypted file of an FBI Technical Analyst, but she was also risking her cover. If Garcia or anyone looking into the file with Internal Affairs back at Quantico traced this back to her, Interpol would be the least of her problems when she'd be thrown into federal prison for twenty to life for treason.

But, if Rebecca Ryder was one thing, it was quick and efficient.

In and out, she told herself. In and out.

So, she waited. She waited until she knew the people in IA at Quantico most likely wouldn't be logged into her system at this hour of night. She waited until she knew Garcia was asleep and wasn't in front of a computer screen to even check to see if anyone would log into that encrypted file that wasn't IA.

It was a very narrow window, but Beck believed she could make it, even going in blindly.

By around a quarter after two, Beck was able to bypass the mainframe of the FBI database. It certainly wasn't the hardest thing she'd ever done, but getting through all the cyber red tape and shooting blindly at the departments at Quantico to get to Garcia's was going to be pretty fucking difficult.

Thankfully, Garcia tended to leave quite a cyber footprint wherever her signature was. And Beck was picking a lot of it up around some nasty firewalls. Beck knew well enough not to use some random ass laptop... she'd picked up this laptop a while back with the CIA. Back when she had trust issues with her co-workers- which was rightfully based in the long run- she'd made a friend at the NSA who gifted her with a little tricky laptop just in case she ever needed to defend herself electronically from anyone in the CTU. It had never come in handy until now.

With the signature of a federal program, Beck was hoping Garcia's firewalls wouldn't immediately attack her system because it would recognize the NSA's coded signature as some form of similar system and let her in without a fight.

Beck held her breath as she skimmed her way towards that encrypted file buried just beneath the surface of all those nasty firewalls... Her system didn't crash.

Beck let out a heavy sigh of relief, but persisted. She wasn't out of the woods just yet.

The agent knew she didn't need to do much hacking from this point forward, all she really needed to do was type in the password.

"G-I-L-M-A-N-S-T-R-E-E-T." Beck mouthed as she typed it into the box. When the screen lit up in a bright green florescent light and the plethora of information and data poured out into her hard drive, Beck smirked. "Thank you, Penelope Garcia."

Carefully, Beck connected her USB stick she'd brought along and began to transfer every Gigabyte of information her little system could reach. Every file, every date, every name, every write-up, every ounce of data that Penelope Garcia had stowed away in this cyber-safe, Beck wanted it all.

But, unfortunately, this was turning out to be Beck's No-Good-Very-Bad-Day.

BANG!

She flinched at the sound of a gun shot that sounded close by- too close. Shit! The Interpol agent- or possible Interpol agent.

Without even second guessing herself, she ripped the USB from the side of the laptop and ripped her program clean from the system before wiping everything and initiating the 'Clean-Slate' Protocol she'd picked up from watching Kruger do so often on his own files. Once she knew there was no way anyone could trace her or her laptop or that she even downloaded at least a year's worth of data from Garcia's encrypted file, Beck shut the laptop, slid it into a dark crevice on the roof where she'd be able to find it later, and leapt into action.

The little entrance into Penelope Garcia's enclosure was on the opposite side of the roof where Beck had been perched, so it was a little bit of a climb down to get to the inside stairwell. Once she dropped in, she had to duck when she heard more shots being fired about on the stairs. Worried a stray bullet would hit her, she drew her own gun and peered over the edge of the floor she was on. Down below, at least a story beneath her, she could spot a man with a Revolver. That was him...

There was another shot fired and he ducked out of the way. Beck flinched back, her eyes darting up towards the stairwell above her to find a military-grade pistol pointed through the bars just above her. "Stay there!" She heard a familiar voice shout. Morgan.

Before she even had time to comprehend what she was doing, Beck grabbed onto the railing beside her and launched herself down onto the stairwell beneath her. She halted in her tracks and froze, pausing at the entrance of the apartment building was the man with the Revolver... the man who'd shot Penelope... the man who may or may not have been an Interpol operative coming to hunt any information on her down.

His eyes widened momentarily upon taking her in before he dashed out the door, Beck chasing after him, and Morgan not far behind either of them.

"Ryder!" He could hear Morgan shouting after her, but his voice faded in the background as she kept going, not even bothering to acknowledge the cop gunned down a few yards away that she passed. She had to get his Unsub.

Beck watched as he sprinted across the lawn outside the complex, he turned around momentarily to fire off a few shots from the Revolver, but for an Interpol operative, he had some shit aim. Beck didn't even have to try hard enough to dodge the bullets, they didn't make it anywhere near where she was gaining on him. He crossed the street, she followed. Then he started towards the main street. Beck could see incoming traffic and knew if she followed him now, she'd either get slowed down by the traffic, or get hit and die on impact. Either way, he'd get away. So, she improvised.

Beck pushed her gun back into it's holster behind her back and pulled out the blade safely sheathed on her thigh. With her knife in hand, she paused at the edge of the sidewalk, watching carefully as her target continued to zig-zag across the street an attempt to avoid getting hit. This was a difficult shot to make, but she'd made harder ones.

With precise aim and a lot of hope, Beck tossed the blade a few yards towards where the man was running. She wasn't aiming for a lethal spot, but she smirked nonetheless when she noted how he tripped up when the blade sliced across his lower calf. Even injured, the man was determined to get away and Beck let him. It wouldn't be long before she tracked him down with the DNA on the knife now lying in the middle of the street slathered in his blood.

The agent stepped into the street, making sure to avoid traffic, and collected her blade. She held it between her thumb and her index finger and carefully carried it back towards Garcia's apartment complex that was now swarming with police officers and Black SUV's alike. Beck hadn't realized she'd chased the guy so far until she had to walk back the way she came which ended up at about two and a half blocks. Huh.

Beck didn't even bother acknowledging the DC Metro Police shouting at her as she cut through the yellow tape surrounding the entrance to the apartment complex and sauntered in like she owned the place. Judging by the amount of police presence and the three SUV's parked out front, Beck already knew the BAU was here.

Sure enough, as she walked up the stairs and into the room she'd seen Morgan jog out of during the shoot out earlier, she was met by three beat cops guarding the door. "Excuse me, ma'am-" the cop paused momentarily when he noted the bloody knife dangling in her hand. He swallowed hard before continuing. "-This is an active crime scene. You can't be here-"

"It's alright," Rossi called from inside the apartment. "She's with us."

Beck gave the cop with his arm still outstretched in front of her a pointed look, and judging by the way he withered away from her, she knew the point had gotten across that she wasn't someone he would ever want to get in the way of again. Beck pushed through the door and held up the bloody knife to the rest of the team all scattered about the room. Garcia huddled in a chair in the far corner, JJ, Reid, and Morgan seated around her while Prentiss, Rossi, and Hotchner stood hovering over the living area. However, all eyes were on her the minute she came in the door with a bloody knife in her hands.

"What is that?" Prentiss was the first to ask, her eyes wide with concern. "Is that...?"

"Evidence," Beck replied as she gestured for one of the cops wearing gloves to come take it off her hands. He approached with an evidence baggie and she carefully slid it in. "Get that to Forensics at Quantico. We'll process it faster there," she instructed the officer who nodded and walked away with the bag.

"You stabbed the Unsub?" Hotchner prompted her.

"No," Beck answered truthfully. It didn't seem to suffice enough for an explanation from the pressing looks she was getting from both Hotchner and Rossi, so she continued. "...I threw the knife and it managed to hit him in a non-lethal place. He'll live, but I got blood to run through any system that we may have and cross reference with anyone who failed the BAR-" and the Interpol Agent Database. "You're welcome," she added with an exasperated frown. She sprinted after a guy for two and a half blocks, almost got shot and hit by a car, and got her clothes all bloody and all she got from Hotchner was criticism in her method? Prick.

"What were you doing here anyway?" Morgan chimed in from where he sat. "You came out of nowhere, you were supposed to be getting rest-"

"Screw rest," Beck shot back. "You seriously think I was just gonna go home and act like everything was okay while Garcia was here like a sitting duck just waiting for the Unsub to come back? I gotta ask- was the plan always to use her as bait or was that just a plus to her suspension?" She directed the last part of her question to the Unit Chief beside her.

"Alright," Rossi cut in, trying to diffuse the situation that was bound to get even more heated if Beck continued to let her frustration get the best of her right now. "Did you get a good look at the guy?"

Beck nodded, letting out a deep breath and trying to remember what she had to do to keep her cool. Compartmentalize. Compartmentalize.

"Yeah," she answered. "Wide-set face, round chin, bright blue eyes, stubble... Revolver gun and good stamina. Clearly athletic... skilled, but not that skilled, with a gun. Has the aim of a Storm Trooper, but damn, can he run."

The group all turned back to where Garcia sat. "Does that sound accurate?" JJ prompted the other blonde in a soft, tentative voice.

Garcia gave her a small nod. "I'm... remembering a little."

Reid glanced up at Beck and gave her some kind of look she couldn't really read before turning back to Garcia. He leaned forward on the couch where his elbows were on his knees. "Tell us about the car," he pressed.

"Why?" Garcia asked. Good question, Beck thought to herself.

"Just go with him," Morgan piped up from his seat beside her.

"You said it was white, four-door, American," Reid listed off. "What else?"

Garcia shook her head slightly. "That's it. It was just a car."

"Remember what I told you about not focusing on danger," Beck chimed in from across the room, Garcia turning slightly to face her. "Remember something you thought was odd, interesting, or just weird. Any small stupid detail you might've picked up on."

The blonde pursed her lips, her eyes glazed over as she glanced off into space, trying to piece together something from that night once more. There was a beat of silence before Garcia spoke again. "When he'd parked at the restaurant... I remember something I thought was weird," she explained. "He climbed out of the car and I saw that the seat belt was buckled behind his back."

The room went silent.

All Beck could hear was the pounding of her heart.

Fuck.

Garcia immediately picked up on the change of atmosphere in the room at her recollection. "Why does that matter?"

Slowly, Morgan leaned down to explain, "It wasn't a rental. It was for surveillance." Beck's chest felt tight, was it suddenly hot in the room?

"Agents don't wear seat belts," Prentiss exclaimed beside the brunette. Beck tried to get her breathing under control so they didn't see through her hard exterior she was trying to upkeep. "They need to get out in a hurry." There was now a bigger possibility that the underlying suspicions Beck was holding about the entire situation could've been true. This wasn't just any old Unsub, this was someone out to get Beck. And he was willing to go through every member of this team to get to her, Garcia included.

Fuck.

"Alright- let's cut the crap," Rossi surged forward, pushing through the rest of the group from where he stood off to the side to take a seat on the coffee table directly across from where Garcia sat.

Everyone frowned, unsure of what to make of the formerly retired agent being so crass in a moment like this, but Beck maintained composure. Frankly, she was about ready to shake someone for answers if she needed to as well, but she had much more self control than David Rossi, it would seem.

"You need to be straight with us. Right now." Garcia's frown deepened as she threw concerned looks towards Morgan and JJ on either side of her. "Look at me- not them." Rossi pressed.

Garcia did as she was instructed, looking a little too caught off guard to argue. "I'm not hiding anything," she insisted in a soft tone that made Beck almost want to believe her. But she couldn't, she didn't have the privilege of trusting anyone anymore. That's why she joined the BAU, it's why she took Strauss's deal to kick Aaron Hotchner from his position, it's why she went to Langely to meet with Gina Sanchez, and it was why only an hour ago she was camping out on this buildings roof hacking into the system of the woman she'd just spent three days with in the hospital.

Beck shook off the guilt that resided deep within the pit of her stomach.

No, she didn't have the privilege to trust anymore.

"You got shot. Most people get shot for a reason," Rossi retorted. When Garcia turned to face Morgan for help again, Rossi snapped. "Eyes here!"

Morgan stepped in this time, "Ease up, Rossi!"

Rossi brushed him off, determined to get the answers he needed, and while everyone else in the room seemed to be off put by his methods, Beck stood aside and let the man get what he needed, what she needed as well. The truth. She needed to know there wasn't anything about her on the files she downloaded from that encrypted file. She needed to know that Interpol wasn't looking into her past to lock her away in some cement cell at a location that didn't exist. She needed to know she wasn't going to disappear.

So Beck didn't flinch when Rossi continued to raise his voice. "You got a roomful of people here willing to believe that an FBI agent is trying to kill you. We need to know everything you do on company time that we don't know about," he demanded, his eyes boring into hers as he spouted every word.

Garcia froze for a moment, her eyes drifting away as if she were remembering something.

"What?" Rossi immediately pounced on her, Beck restraining herself from doing the same.

"Come on, man," Morgan scolded him once more.

"It's nothing bad-" Garcia tried to insist, but was cut off by Rossi shouting, "Spit it out!"

"It's nothing bad!" Garcia shouted once more. "It's just... I counsel victims' families... and they know where I work so sometimes they ask me to look into cases for them."

All the blood rushed back to Beck. Her hands unclenched slightly at her sides, she felt as though she can breathe again. Holy fuck. Holy shit. Okay... breathe. Breathe...

This might not have anything to do with Interpol looking into her after all.

Beck reigned herself in from doing a little celebratory dance because although she might've- might've been out of the woods, Garcia wasn't just yet.

"What does that mean?" Rossi pressed. Beside him, Morgan looked just about ready to strangle the man.

"It just means that the cases, the unsolved ones," Garcia began to explained. "I tag them, so whoever's investigating them knows that the FBI considers them a priority." Beck could've passed out from relief there on the spot, but she knew there was still a man targeting Garcia. Most definitely not an Interpol agent, but still... it was the priority for the time being until Beck could deal with why Interpol was looking into her.

Finally, across the room, Hotchner spoke up. "You're no authorized to do that," he scolded her.

"I know!" she whined slightly as an exasperated Rossi stood up and walked away from where he sat on the table in front of the blonde. "I was just trying to help."

"Hell of a back fire on that," Beck muttered beneath her breath, earning her a small glare from Morgan she was much too relieved to give a shit about right now.

Prentiss crossed her arms over her chest. "But whoever's working those cases thinks you're watching them," she noted.

"I just wanted to put pressure on them so that they don't slide!" the blonde insisted.

Hotchner's frown deepened as he began to pace. Ah, now Beck was finally getting to see a very angry and frustrated Hotchner directing all that rage towards someone that wasn't her. Clearly, Rossi got special treatment, but perhaps Garcia didn't. "How many cases are we talking about?" He asked in a clipped voice.

"I don't know. Seven... eight, maybe. I need to get into my system."

Beck nearly laughed out loud of the irony of that.

"You can't. You're suspended," Hotchner replied matter-of-factly.

"Wait a minute, Garcia," Morgan leaned forward at the edge of his seat. "On your date, you said this guy was pressing you to find out if you were working murder cases." She nodded silently. Beck was just glad this had nothing to do with her demons. "Hotch," Morgan turned to the Unit Chief. "We gotta look at those files."

Beck, along with the rest of the team, turned to Hotchner expectantly.

The Unit Chief took a heavy breath before turning towards Rossi. Beck narrowed her eyes at the exchange, noting that it was almost as though Hotchner were asking Rossi for some kind of permission despite being the one in charge.

"I told you- I'm sick of this jagoff being in front of us," Rossi supplied.

"Dave's right," Hotchner stated simply with a small frowned. Beck refrained from rolling her eyes. Dave Rossi- subordinate position my ass. "We'll go back to the BAU-" his pointed looks directed at Rossi, JJ, and Beck. She was almost willing to overlook the fact that he was giving some type leadership power to Rossi for him letting her back to the office after being 'grounded' for so long. "-Morgan, Reid, Prentiss, you stay here and make sure no one forgets to log out of the system. Garcia should not have access."

Beck almost chuckled at the little hint of sarcasm in there. She almost wasn't sure the guy had it in him to understand sarcasm, let alone use it.

"Understood," Morgan replied as the group began to file out; Hotchner leading the way as Rossi, JJ, and Beck followed in suit.

As the group made it down the stairs of Garcia's apartment building and out towards the lawn area outside the complex, Hotchner stopped just short of the SUV parked by the curb. Beck halted in her tracks when she saw him turn towards her. "You should go home- change into something with less blood..."

Beck glanced down at herself. She noticed that although the crimson color of the blood was only making her all black attire damp, it made the red all over her hands more prominent in the light. "Right..." Beck muttered in agreement. She hated having to admit he was right in any type of form or way.

"You need a ride?" Rossi shouted from where he stood on the other side of the hood of the car.

Beck shook her head. "I brought my bike to stake the place out just in case something like this happened," she explained vaguely. "It's a block away. I can walk." Neither Rossi or JJ looked suspicious of anything as they shrugged at her explanation and climbed into the SUV. Hotchner, however, hovered a bit.

He glanced back down at her, his eyes darting to the blood still covering her hands then back up to meet her eyes. She expected him to be glaring at her, she braced herself for some kind of lecturing on how reckless it was to chase after the Unsub without back up and then how it was against about a dozen protocols to throw a blade after the suspect. But, he surprised her for once when he asked, "Are you alright?"

Beck hesitated for a second, a little caught off guard by his genuine concern he seemed to be hiding underneath a hard exterior he wore in the form of a clenched jaw and stoic facial expression. "Yeah..." she replied before raising an eyebrow in skepticism. "Am I not supposed to be?"

"You've just endured being kidnapped and almost eaten by a Satanic serial killer, stitches to the back of the head, four days with little to no sleep in a hospital room, and ran after a suspect after a shoot out for two and a half blocks all in the course of a week," the Unit Chief replied. "I wouldn't expect you to be alright after everything that's happened. If you need some time-"

"If feigning concern for my well-being is your way of trying to get me to sit out the rest of this case, it isn't working," Beck cut him off swiftly. "I'm headed to my apartment, changing, and I'll be back at the BAU within the hour to check on any hits Forensics get on that knife."

And with that, Beck pushed herself off the curb and started back around the side of the apartment building. She pushed through the yellow tape, glance left and right to make sure no lingering cops were around to catch the agent making the climb up the back of the building the way she had come hours earlier.

Once up on the roof, the brunette slid her way back to her original position she'd abandoned to go chase after the Unsub.

She couldn't describe just how relieved she felt knowing for certain that this shooting and this entire case had nothing to do with her past or any type of operative attempting to get at her or information on her. She would've been nearly ecstatic if there wasn't still an bastard out there that tried to gun down the team's Technical Analyst and was still trying.

Still, as Beck retrieved the laptop she'd left on the roof of the apartment building and pocketed the USB filled with at over a year's worth of collected data on the BAU, she couldn't help but feel a new problem was on the horizon for her... and it had nothing to do with the fact that her stupid fucking migraine was back.

—

Beck made due on her promise to Hotchner that she'd be back at the BAU within the hour.

It took her a record amount of time to fetch the USB and laptop from the roof, speed back to her apartment, change into clothes with less blood on them, scrub the bodily fluids from her hands, and race back to the office- all under 55 minutes.

...she really had to stop running red lights on Hades. It was only a matter of time before she got in an accident in the middle of an intersection.

By the time Beck reached the BAU office, everything was in total chaos. Interns, agents, and everyone in between were running around the office with files, coffee, or phones in their hands. Everyone bustling around trying to sort out the fact that someone was trying to kill the precious BAU Princess, Penelope Garcia. And while Beck would've loved to stay...

She immediately turned on her heel upon seeing all the chaos and started towards the elevators, intent on just sitting and staying in the Forensics department for the foreseeable future of the night... that was until her plan was thwarted by a large man with thick-brimmed glasses, a satchel, and a colorfully patterned shirt.

"Uh, Agent Ryder?" He asked, his hands clutching at the strap on his satchel.

Beck halted in her tracks and narrowed her eyes at the man standing between her and her escape. "...And you are?"

"Uh, Technical Analyst with Internal Affairs- Kevin Lynch," he introduced himself with a small, uneasy smile. "Forensics told me you were looking for this," he explained, handing her a small manila folder.

Beck snatched it from his hand and began to sift through what Forensics had found. AB Positive blood type, Caucasian, male, around 30-45 years old, taller than 5'11"... Results in for a Deputy Jason Clark Battle.

JCB.

Gotcha, bitch.

"Is that him?" Beck glanced up at... Kevin Lynch. "I mean- is that him, the man who shot your Technical Analyst?"

"Yeah..." Beck answered slowly. "How'd you know that?"

Lynch looked a little caught off guard by the suspicion in her tone. "I- uh..." he stammered, glancing back and forth in the hall as though he were either looking for help or making sure no one was around to hear his answer. Eventually, he turned back to her. "Can we talk... privately?" When Beck hesitated, he added a small, "please?"

Beck threw a short glance over her shoulder at the chaos inside the BAU before turning back to the IA Technical Analyst. She gave him a small nod of permission to lead the way.

Kevin Lynch slowly led her back towards a small office a little way down the hall. Inside, Beck noted the odd fuzzy bobble heads, sparkly do-dads, colorful ball-point pens, and plethora of silly photos scattered across the small office filled to the brim with computer screens, wires, keyboards, and other systems Beck couldn't even be bothered with trying to identify. "This place is..." she tried to find the right word. "...interesting," she settled on.

"It's not mine," Lynch replied as he took a seat at the rolling chair in the center of all the screens. "It's actually your Technical Analyst's office, I'm just working here while the IA Investigation is pending and her suspension is still intact."

Beck rolled her eyes.

"Is there a reason you dragged me into your borrowed Batcave, Mr. Lynch?" she prompted the man seated before her.

"Yes!" He answered quickly, spinning back in his chair towards the lit up computer screen in front of him. He hit a bunch of things on the keyboard before an image appeared on the large screen in front of him. There it was, a photo of Jason Clark Battle, identical to the one on the report from Forensics. "This the guy you're looking for?"

Beck nodded. "How'd you find him?"

"Well," he smirked smugly. "Let's just say your Analyst is good, but she can be a little clumsy sometimes when it comes to shutting the door behind her when she's done messing around in her system. It was fairly easy to track what she was doing in her system," he explained. "But... it is a little weird that she would download backlogs of information dating back from over a year and then sign back in just too look up something she already had."

Beck's breath caught in her throat. Shit. Fuck...

Kevin Lynch had had access to Garcia's encrypted file and her system... which means he probably saw what Beck had been doing while snooping around on the roof with her laptop.

Fuck. Shit. FUCK!

"Maybe she downloaded the info she thought she needed, but when presented with new information, she had to log back in for data she may not have gotten in her download," Beck tried to explain away, just in case Lynch decided to start snooping around where he shouldn't be. She was not about to be brought down by some over-sized child with fast fingers and a big nose. She might not have been Gina Sanchez, but she wasn't past staging someone's death to make it look like an accident to cover her tracks either.

"Hm," Lynch hummed. "Maybe."

Beck let out the soft sigh she'd been holding in. She wasn't out of the woods, but she knew she'd put a cork in that leak for the time being. If it popped off, she'd deal with it later, but for now, they had a Deputy Sheriff to catch.

"Lynch," the Techie turned to face her. "Can you log into the Deputy's department system and see if he made it to work today?"

Lynch nodded, turning back to face his computers and getting right to work. Eventually, a frown graced his lips. "According to his work logs, he hasn't made it into work at all today," he explained. "He could be anywhere."

Beck's frown deepened. "Not just anywhere," she mused. "He's after Garcia because of whatever it is she found on him while tagging cold cases, meaning after he believes Garcia is dead there is no one else who could've made the connection between him and whatever cases she tagged..."

She trailed off, her eyes widening slightly upon realization.

Lynch looked a little lost. "What? What would happen then?"

"...He'd come back to wipe the files so no one else would be able to make the connection and his name would be cleared," she explained, tossing the manila folder in her hand onto the desk beside Lynch. "He's coming back here to the BAU."

Beck started out of the office, Lynch hot on her trail, though she wasn't sure as to why.

"Wait, wait, wait- hold on for just a second," the Techie tried to speak in between his rapid breathes as he attempted to keep up with her fast pace through the halls of the building. "If he's coming back here to make sure no one else could have access, if I'm the next person with access wouldn't I be the next target?"

Beck halted in her tracks and turned back around to face the Technical Analyst. "Yes, you would..."

Lynch pulled a face at the tone of her voice and the perplexed look she was giving him right now. "You look like you have a plan right now..." he said uneasily. "You do have a plan, right?"

Beck spared him a small smirk.

Oh, she had a great plan.

—

"This is a terrible plan," Kevin Lynch whined as he attempted to jog just to keep up with Agent Ryder's fast pace down the hall back towards the BAU office. For such a short woman, she was a very fast walker.

Agent Ryder had her back to him, but from the tone of her voice, he could almost tell she was rolling her eyes at him. "Stop being such a little girl and just do your job," she chastised him.

"That's sexist," he whispered beneath his breath as Agent Ryder turned down the hallway lined with all the photos of Agents lost in the field. He was probably next to be on that wall if this plan of hers didn't work out. Oh, God... "I don't think I can do this."

Ryder spun around on her heels and grabbed the man by his biceps. Wow, she had a really strong grip and how was she this intimidating when she stood at least two feet shorter than him? "I swear to God- if you don't stop panicking I am going to beat you to a pulp, then you won't be able to type on your precious little keyboard with all ten of your fingers broken," she threatened in a low tone of voice so no other agents around them could hear. "All you have to do is what you're asked to. Any minute now, that Deputy is gonna walk in here and politely ask someone- which is you- to remove his files from Garcia's system. You're going to do everything he asks and just stay calm and play it cool like nothing is wrong. Now is that really so hard?"

"Yes!" He answered, his voice raising a couple octaves too high. "How can I 'play it cool' like 'nothing is wrong' if nothing is cool and everything is wrong!" Ryder rolled her eyes and he was pretty sure she was looking at her brain for a second. "He is a murderer! Who knows what he'll do to me if he finds out-"

"He will find out nothing because you will not let on anything," Ryder growled through her clenched teeth, her grip tightening on his arms as she pulled him deathly close to her face. He thought he could see a little bit of red in the dark irises of her eyes. "I won't let him do anything to you because while you're playing bait, I'm going to actually be the bait- remember to play your part..."

"...And I won't get a bullet in my head," he finished what she'd implemented in his head while discussing the plan only moments before. "What if he pulls the gun on me instead and you don't make it over in time-"

"That's not gonna happen," she assured him.

"But what if it does?" He persisted.

"What if I just shoot you right here in the middle of this hallway?" She countered with an irritated glare.

Kevin raised his eyebrows, perplexed. "Will that get me out of having to go through with this plan?"

Ryder's face fell into an unimpressed glare.

He swallowed hard. "Sorry. Right- just follow the plan."

"Go," she jerked her head to the side, indicating for him to start towards the BAU office around the corner. He hesitated for a moment before her glare turned deadly. "Go," she reiterated.

"Okay- okay!" He held his hands up before scurrying around her towards the two glass doors of the BAU Office. He felt so exposed and out in the open now that he was away from his one form of protection. Sure, Agent Ryder was extremely terrifying and possibly the scariest woman he'd ever met, but she was also ten times as deadly when up against the bad guys like the one who now posed a threat to him. "Please let this work, please let this work, please let this work..." the Technical Analyst muttered beneath his breath.

He was a few yards away from the glass doors of the office and with every step he took he felt as though he were getting closer to salvation. Maybe- just maybe- if he made it through the doors the murderous Deputy Sheriff that already shot one Technical Analyst wouldn't dare to even pull a gun on him in the safety of the BAU Bullpen.

Three yards. Two yards. One yard-

"Mr. Lynch!"

Oh, for fuck's sake!

Kevin turned around to find his boss- Agent Adam Fuchs- calling for him.

Shit.

"I need you to access some files," Agent Fuchs explained with a friendly smile on his face. God, for someone he got along with so well, sometimes Kevin really wanted to punch the smile off his face- especially right now of all times.

"Yeah, I'm kind of busy," Kevin supplied. It was a lame excuse, but... he didn't really wanna have to explain to his boss that he was being used as bait-not-bait for one of the BAU's agents to catch a murderer right now.

"We'll step in with you," Fuchs insisted, gesturing to the BAU double doors just behind Kevin. "It'll just take a second."

Kevin opened his mouth to break out another lame excuse about having to run down to IT for someone to fix his... microwave- when he same him.

The man standing in uniform beside Fuchs spun around to face him then. Immediately, Kevin recognized the piercing blue eyes he'd seen on his screen only moments earlier. This was him. This was Deputy Jason Clark Battle, the man who gunned down Analyst Penelope Garcia. This was the man Agent Ryder had wanted him to act as bait for.

Shit, this was it.

Don't panic.

He could hear Agent Ryder's voice echoing in his head.

Do as you're asked, don't argue, and keep your head down.

Immediately, Kevin dropped his head down, trying not to make eye contact with the murderer standing beside his boss as he hurried through the BAU double doors.

"Deputy," Kevin heard Fuchs say to the man across from him, inviting him in. Kevin had a fleeting thought about murderers being like vampires. He wondered if Fuchs hadn't invited him in if he'd even bother to follow. But it was too late now, he was in the Lions Den and he was the prey.

Upon entering the office space, Kevin remembered what Agent Ryder had told him.

"In the scenario that he takes you into the BAU office, take the first open desk space," she'd explained to him. "He's on edge and he's anxious. At this stage, he's going to over analyze everything. If he suspects you're positioning yourself for some kind of advantage, he's going to panic and take you as a hostage and I won't be able to get to you in time. So don't overthink it, just take the first free desk you find. I'll work my way around wherever you are in the office."

Kevin did as he was instructed and took a seat at the first desk available- which, just so happened to be the very first desk closest to the door and directly across from the small desk where he could clearly see the Bonsai tree beside the name plaque: REBECCA RYDER.

He was slightly relieved when he took his satchel off and took a seat.

"Jason Battle-" Fuchs stated, expecting Kevin to immediately search up the name as if he hadn't already done an extensive background on the man taking a seat on top of the desk right beside Kevin. "B-A-T-T-L-E." Kevin couldn't breathe, but he sure could do as he was asked.

Do as you're asked, don't argue, and keep your head down.

"I just don't understand why one of your analysts would be looking into my murder cases," Deputy Battle exclaimed as he crossed his arms. Kevin tried not to flinch at the dark irony of the way he said 'my murder cases'. Oh, they were definitely his alright.

Kevin heard Fuchs let out a heavy exhale. "To be honest, the woman we're talking about is currently investigation," he explained.

There was a pause. "You don't think she could be involved in a killing somehow, do you?" Kevin had to actively try not to scoff at the irony of that accusation.

Keep your head down. Keep your head down. Keep your head down.

"We haven't made in determinations," Fuchs replied.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just let me speak to her?" Battle suggested. Kevin's fingers froze of the keys on the computer for a second. He had to steady his breathing for a moment.

Don't argue. Don't argue. Don't argue.

"I'm afraid she's in the hospital," Fuchs replied, not even paying the Deputy across from him any attention as he sorted through whatever paper files he held in his lap.

"This the woman who was shot?" Deputy Battle prompted. "Every cop in the city's working overtime, but they can't come up with anything."

Kevin could hear his voice getting distant as he pushed off from his spot on the desk beside him and walked more towards Fuchs. Kevin's heart rate picked up. Fuchs might've been a hardass sometimes, but the last thing Kevin wanted was for this guy's next victim to be his boss.

"Think she might be dirty?" Kevin could hear Deputy Battle whisper to Fuchs from over his shoulder. Prick.

"Like I said, we haven't made any determinations," Fuchs deflected with ease. This was literally his job: being vague about Internal Affairs and making his lies seem believable.

"Well, until you do, is it possible to remove my files from your system..." Deputy Battle slyly suggested as he moved back to his previous seat right beside Kevin on the desk once more. "...for security's sake?"

"Yeah, we can do that," Fuchs answered nonchalantly. "Mr. Lynch?"

Kevin bit his tongue.

Do as you're asked. Do as you're asked. Do as you're asked.

"Yes, sir," he replied without even looking up from his computer. Now this was the part where he actually came in, not just as bait.

With his very much unharmed fingers, Kevin logged into the one place he knew he could alert someone that could send in reinforcements: Penelope Garcia's system.

He wasn't a very religious person, but he begged, prayed, and pleaded with whatever God or Gods were out there that she was still logged into the system she'd locked him out of earlier. It was a shot in the dark, but Agent Ryder had been very precise in her instructions to him.

"Now, he's gonna ask you to clear all evidence against him when you log into those files. I know I told you to do as you're asked, but this is where you rebel a little bit," she'd explained. "You're gonna log into the system, but instead of clearing this bastard's name, you're gonna log in and you're gonna alert Garcia that he's there."

"How do I do that?"

"Figure something out," she'd replied.

Figure something out...

He repeated to himself in his head as he sent out a mass link throughout the system, hoping Garcia would see it and figure out what was happening at the BAU.

Come on, come on, come on...

Just after he sent out the link, a pop up appeared on his computer screen.

LOCATE CASE FILE PER PARAM: COLBY

Now, to anyone peeping over his shoulder the way he was sure the trigger-happy Deputy was doing right now, it would've just looked like he was requesting access to files. But this was Kevin Lynch and he knew what a disguised point of contact looked like on a computer screen.

He typed out a response and sent yet another link attached to the many cameras linked to the BAU systems.

CLARK LOCATED

Once he knew Penelope Garcia and the rest of the BAU team was notified of Deputy Battle's whereabouts in their own office, he clicked out of the system and began to 'work' at 'erasing his files from the system'.

As he worked, he noticed a figure dressed in black and light grey move in his peripheral vision. He glanced up and noticed Agent Ryder had come in at last. She'd taken a seat at her desk and seemed to be pretending to sort through some files in a folder. She didn't even look scared or frightened or even as though she noticed he was there.

Either she was a really, really good actress or was trying to desperately ignore the fact that there was a murderer right beside him.

Keep your head down, he could practically hear her voice in his ear once more.

His eyes darted back down to his work, but he just couldn't help himself. He stole another glance in her direction and, finally, she met his eyes. It was a knowing look, very brief and very quick, but it put him at ease just enough to keep going.

The small pop-up in the corner of his screen lit up once more.

ACCESS SEC CAM A-1 THROUGH C-6

Kevin paused for a second. Why did this Garcia girl want to see the cameras outside the Bullpen? Was she not concerned for the people's safety inside?

Still, maybe she had a plan.

REROUTE VIA REMOTE UPLINK H8-B8

There was beat of silence before his screen beeped again.

ACCESSING

Oh, he hoped to everything that this Analyst knew what she was doing and wasn't just taking a shot in the dark the way he had by trusting Agent Ryder.

These BAU Agents were freaking crazy sometimes.

"Is there a problem?"

Kevin jumped at the sound of Deputy Battle addressing him.

Fuck.

Don't panic!

Don't panic...

Kevin cleared his throat so not to sound like a pre-pubescent frightened little boy. "No," he answered quickly. "I'm sorry- I- It's- it's not my system," he gave yet another lame excuse. "It's... taking me longer." Good. Good. Keep stalling, he tried to imagine Agent Ryder's words echoing in his head.

Kevin took a deep breath before 'wiping' some random files from off this system. Please, like he'd actually clear evidence for this man to get away with anything.

But, now came the difficult part.

"When you're eventually 'finished' with clearing the system, he's gonna make another excuse to stick around if he fears you're lying- which he will because at this point, everyone will be made aware of the threat," Ryder had explained earlier. "This is the part where you just wait for the signal and do as I ask, got it?"

"Okie dokie," Kevin finished with a grim smile.

"You're sure my files are wiped off the system?" Deputy Battle reiterated, but his eyes were directed towards Agents Hotchner and Rossi a few yards away. Kevin wanted to turn and follow his gaze, but he could already see Agent Ryder approaching. Oh, please let her get this under control.

Kevin nodded. "Yes, sir," he answered in a wisp tone of voice. He tried not to let it show how terrified he was until everything went to shit.

"Alright, I'll keep you updated on our investigation," Fuchs exclaimed he stood up and walked towards Deputy Battle.

In the same second, Agent Ryder had approached and dropped the file she'd been messing with earlier onto the desk in front of Kevin. Deputy Battle stood up from where he'd been leaning on the desk and stared down at the Agent, his eyes flashing with something close to pure rage. Ryder didn't even seem to notice as she calmly addressed the Analyst seated before her, "Those files you asked for."

When Kevin didn't immediately get the hint, she nodded down at the manila file she dropped in front of him, indicating for him to open them up.

Kevin was a little confused, but went along with whatever plan she had. He flipped open to the first page and his eyes caught sight of a blue sticky note in the middle of blank papers. On it read two words written in neat penmanship: GET DOWN.

Within the blink of an eye, Agent Ryder moved swiftly, shoving Fuchs away from the other side of Deputy Battle, putting herself in between the murderer with a Revolver and the Technical Analyst shouting as he ducked beneath his desk.

Just as she'd intended, Deputy Battle took the next best option of hostages now that Fuchs was too far and Kevin was huddled beneath the desk: her.

His arms wrapped around her small frame, an arm coming up over her collarbone, pressing her back to his chest as he held her in place. His hand shooting to the gun on his holster and raising up to point at the agents surrounding him, two of which were Rossi and Hotchner.

"Get back!" He shouted at the agents surrounding him, his grip tightening on Beck. "Get back or I put a bullet through this little bitch's skull!" Beck nearly smirked, she could feel the way he was putting all his weight on his left leg seeing as she'd injured his right with a knife in the calf.

"You're a cop," Rossi called back to him in a dangerously calm voice. "You know this isn't gonna end well."

His eyes narrowed as he hid his face behind Beck's. The gun he had pointed at the many agents around him then turned towards hers. She could feel the end of the Revolver pressed against her temple and his hot, rigid breath against the base of her neck.

He was a cornered animal and he knew he wasn't get out of this. So did Beck.

"You're standing in the middle of the FBI," Hotchner said from the end of his own gun. There was no way he was gonna have a clean shot of Battle when he had Beck so close to him. There wasn't a way to shoot him without going through Beck, he knew that. So did Beck.

That ticked him off enough to move his head around the side of Beck's to shout at the Unit Chief, "You think I'm afraid of the FBI?!"

"Yeah," Beck chuckled. Her nonchalant tone of voice seemed to catch everyone off guard, most of all Battle. "You gun down a girl with pink streaks in her hair on the front steps of her apartment all because you were afraid of getting caught by us-"

Battle's grip on her collarbone tightened. "Shut up," he growled into her ear.

She didn't.

"You go through all the trouble of putting a gun to my head and I can feel your hand shaking-"

He shook her slightly. "I said- shut up!"

Almost there...

"If I were to guess, I'd say you're very afraid of us." She slowly turned her head in the direction of the gun so that it was pointed directly at her forehead instead of her temple. She could feel the other agents in the room holding their breath, probably wondering what the hell she was doing as she looking into the cold, piercing eyes of the man holding her at gunpoint. "Your leg still hurt like a bitch?" she prompted him with a sly smile.

A flash of blind rage reflected in his eyes, the moment she knew he'd made the decision to pull the trigger, she'd already been four steps ahead of him.

One.

Her hand shot up, pushing the gun away from her forehead just as he'd pulled the trigger. A shot firing into the air.

Two.

He had the upper hand, but she had the better leg. She kicked the calf she'd injured hours before and snatched the gun from his hand as he shoved her away with a roar of pain.

Three.

She kicked him once more in his chest as he stumbled away from her. With all her force, she fell to the ground with the gun still in her hand.

Four.

She spun the Revolver towards him and aimed up directly at his forehead.

BANG!

Beck narrowed her eyes as she watched Jason Clark Battle fall lifelessly to the ground, a small shot of blood coming out through the left side of his brain.

That was odd... She hadn't even gotten the chance to pull the trigger.

...So who had?

Beck glanced up around the edge of the desk from where she still lay on her back. She noticed that only one agent had smoke coming from the barrel of their pistol: Hotchner.

Hotchner had killed Battle before she got the chance.

"He's clear!"

She watched as he slowly lowered his weapon, a series of agents rushing over to ensure she was alright and whether or not Battle was really dead. She was climbing up to her feet when Hotchner and Rossi approached, JJ as well rushing in from where she'd been standing just outside the double doors the led into the office.

"Are you alright?" The blonde asked, barely even sparing a glance to the dead body a few feet away.

Beck ignored her question, turning to face Hotchner as he holstered his weapon. "I had that," she stated in an exasperated tone as she held up the Revolver she had been held at gun point with moments ago.

"I know," he replied simply. Beck furrowed her eyebrows, confused at his answer, but acceptant nonetheless.

"Holy shit." The group all turned to find Kevin Lynch peeking out from beneath his desk, his eyes wide as he looked down at the dead Jason Clark Battle lying with his lifeless eyes still open across from him. Kevin looked about ready to puke.

"Lynch," Beck called to him, turning his attention away from the dead Deputy as Fuchs helped him out from the desk and away from the fresh corpse. "You good?" She prompted him, a little worried at how pale he looked right now.

He looked a little out of breath. "I'm gonna have nightmares for a couple of weeks, but I think I'll be alright," he replied breathlessly, earning a few small chuckles. "Thanks for saving me from getting my head blown off. You BAU people sure have some crazy plans."

Beck shrugged. "I figured it was better my head blown off than yours."

Beside Lynch, Beck noticed Agent Fuchs from Internal Affairs looked a little pale as well, his eyes darting between Beck and the dead Deputy once more. "You alright there Agent Fuchs?" she prompted.

Fuchs turned back to her and nodded slowly. "I will be. Thank you for your concern, Agent Ryder."

She pursed her lips. "I only ask because I'm wondering how long it'll take for your hands to stop shaking so you can sign Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia's reinstatement papers?"

Fuchs stared at her with a look of bewilderment.

She could've laughed in his face right there and now, but once again... her stupid migraine was back and she could already feel blood trickling down from where she'd hit her stiches falling.

Stupid fucking Florida, still coming back to haunt her.

—

It was coming up on two in the morning and Beck was still at the office.

Hotchner and Rossi were insistent she get Medical attention, but Beck was adamant on staying until everything was cleared up and she was sure Garcia would be getting her suspension lifted. In fact, she'd been there to watch as Fuchs notified Garcia her name had been cleared, her investigation was dropped, and she would be back in her little office by the time she got off medical leave in a couple of weeks.

The blonde looked absolutely ecstatic upon hearing the news.

Beck watched from afar as her and the rest of the team conversed across the room. Prentiss, JJ, Reid, and Morgan all mingling and talking, happy to have concluded the tragedy that was almost Garcia in a body bag similar to the one Jason Clark Battle was being rolled out in.

It seemed like a celebration Beck didn't want to intrude on, so she sat back and waited until everyone was gone and safe.

She did eventually get some medical attention in the form of two agents from the Medical coming up to patch up the stitches she'd popped open in the back of her head that were also nice enough to give her a few pills of the Good Stuff. Her migraine was a thing of the past, but the ice she had pressed to the back of her head still stung a little bit.

"Hi," Beck turned to her left and noticed the pink burst of color in the stale white room approaching her. "How are you?" Garcia asked her.

Beck supplied her with a thin smile. "As good as I can be, given the circumstances of almost getting killed," she jokingly replied. "I'm fine," she reiterated in a more serious voice upon seeing the flash of guilt in Garcia's eyes.

"Kevin told me what you did," she explained in a soft tone.

Beck frowned momentarily. The word 'USB' flashed in her mind as a million different lies and scenarios flooded through her head.

"He did?" The brunette prompted her.

She nodded, then did the unthinkable. Penelope Garcia rushed forward and enveloped the short woman in a hug. Beck froze for a second, unsure of how to react to this type of affection, especially in the middle of their work office around all their co-workers. Beck was half-tempted to push her off, but... she wasn't that much of a bitch.

"It isn't personal."

"It never is..."

Beck sighed, allowing herself to hug the Technical Analyst back.

"Thank you," Garcia muttered into her shoulder.

Beck frowned slightly. "For what?"

"For caring."

Beck thought her heart stuttered for a second, but it might've just been the panic in her chest at the realization of the fact that she was crossing so many boundaries and had been crossing many boundaries these past few days. Sitting and watching over Garcia while she was in the hospital, braiding her hair, talking about Garcia's dead parents and Beck's siblings, showing up at her house to stake it out, nearly taking a bullet in the head to catch the guy who shot her.

And, true, there were moments in time where Beck might've been working towards her own agenda in terms of making sure the person who targeted the Technical Analyst hadn't been targeting the entire team or wasn't an Interpol operative trying to get at her. But overall, Beck was doing it to protect the bubbly personality that was Penelope Garcia who had managed to slither her way over those boundaries Beck had solidified while working with the CTU and curl up within Beck's good graces.

If she were delusional, she'd call this friendship.

The agent cleared her throat the longer the hug dragged on.

"Oh," Garcia gasped with an awkward chuckle. "Sorry."

Beck gave her an apologetic grimace.

"Thank you, again," Garcia reiterated with a beaming smile. "I'm supposed to be in the hospital for another week and a half while I recover. If you ever want to stop by and hang out some more, I already told Morgan to keep your name on the visitors list."

Beck couldn't help but sigh. "I, uh, actually was thinking about taking Hotchner up on that recovery leave after what happened in Florida and... today," she explained. "I could use it just as much as you."

Garcia gave her a sad smile, "You deserve it." Beck nodded, watching as Garcia turned on her heel and headed back towards where Kevin Lynch was standing idly, waiting for her to return with a beaming smile on her face. That was new, Beck noted.

It only took half an hour before everyone cleared out of the BAU office, Beck being one of the last of those people. She'd overheard a series of people stating they were all either headed home, headed to a bar, or headed to Garcia's hospital room to stay for the night. But Beck decided to take the long route to the parking garage.

"Agent Ryder," the petite assistant called for her as she passed the open door of the Section Chief's waiting room. "She's asking for you."

Beck grimaced. Great, getting held at gunpoint and Strauss all in one night. How did she get so lucky?

Beck glared at the assistant that shied away from her as she passed into the office where Erin Strauss sat in the dark at her desk. "Good morning," Beck greeted her cheekily.

Erin Strauss took in the young woman taking a seat across from her. She pulled a face. "You look..." she trailed off.

"Like shit? Yes, I'm aware," Beck replied as she plopped down in the chair opposite of the Section Chief. "Can't this wait for the morning?"

"No, it can't. You're going on leave for a week, Hotchner emailed me the papers for your request a few hours ago," she replied. Beck cursed herself for not instructing Hotchner to at least wait until she'd left the building to turn those in so she wasn't caught in a situation like this. "Nice try, though." Bitch.

"I was kidnapped, almost eaten, shot at, and held at gunpoint just in the past week," Beck grumbled. "I'm not in the mood to play double agent right now, so what is it you want?"

"I want to know why."

Beck narrowed her eyes. "'Why' what?"

"Why you broke over a dozen protocols in these past 72 hours alone," Strauss answered. "You disobey direct orders to stay out of the field following Analyst Garcia's discharge, you stake out her house, pursue a suspect while off-duty, throw a knife at a suspect, concoct a plan without notifying your team putting multiple people at risk, and use yourself as bait to take down an Unsub all while being unfit for the field following your unethical discharge from a hospital in Florida just a few days ago..."

Beck winced. That was quite a rap sheet she'd acquired this week.

Strauss leaned forward in her seat, her hands propped up on her desk as she said, "What I want to know is why you cared so much about this case to go to such lengths to see to it the suspect was caught?"

Beck sat up straight and looked forward into the barely visible eyes of the Section Chief. "Because a threat to one member of the team is the threat to us all," she answered emotionlessly.

Strauss shook her head, "I don't believe that for a second. Not knowing you."

"I had to catch him," Beck stated. "I had to catch him."

"Why?" Strauss pressed. Beck clenched her jaw, but she didn't answer. Eventually, the blonde Section Chief figured she wasn't going to get an answer out of the agent, so she changed tactics. "I should fire you right now."

"But you won't," Beck immediately shot back.

This perplexed Strauss. She tilted her head to the side as she leaned back in her chair, "Oh? And why's that?"

"Because you fire me after I not only save the life of the Head of Internal Affairs but also catch a serial killer that managed to bypass your security within the FBI, people are gonna get a little suspicious of what you had against me," Beck began to explain. "They start asking questions, more specifically, Adam Fuchs with Internal Affairs starts asking questions... you put a lot of faith in me to keep quiet now about what you're up to within your own unit, but that secrecy dies the second you terminate me."

Strauss's eyes widened slightly and Beck raised her chin up in defiance.

"You forget, you don't have all the power in this arrangement," Beck continued. "You keep me in this position, I get Aaron Hotchner's resignation papers on a platter, and the two of us both guarantee no one else knows."

"Mutual destruction," Strauss muttered.

Beck smirked as she stood up from her seat. "I call it a fair trade," she replied smugly. "Checkmate, Erin. I'll see you in a week with my report for the past two cases." And with that, the brunette agent sauntered out of the Section Chief's office feeling as though she'd just dropped all the bricks she'd been holding on her back these past couple weeks.

Now that she had the main chess pieces in order, it was time to find out what other pieces she could move with the information she'd gathered on that USB drive.

...And so the game begins.

—

A/N: Sorry this took forever, I got a little caught up with life. This summer has been crazy insane and this chapter is one of the longest and most detailed/plot-oriented chapter I've done in a while. Still, I hope this holds you guys over while you anticipate what is next to come :)

Also, thank you to everyone leaving reviews, they give me more inspiration and I appreciate all the lovely feedback I'm getting from this story. I'm glad you're all enjoying it.

As a treat:

Incorrect Quote of the Chapter:

Hotch: Not everything has to be an argument.

Beck: Yes, but I can tell you that you're wrong in over a dozen different languages, which gives me an advantage.