The world was cut off from this place… there was nothing outside of here, there was nothing away from here, here was here and here was the only place, the only place. But that couldn’t be right… this couldn’t be the only place, this had to be a temporary place, didn’t it? She could remember the little things, the odd itchy sensation of laying down in freshly cut grass for too long, the sunlight… but that was only that it was light, she couldn’t remember what the light’s warmth felt like, not now in this place, here.
It was wet almost all the time, it was never right, it was never dry. Goose pimples were always on her skin except for in the rare moments where he thought she was being good enough to have a blanket, but it was gone the moment she closed her eyes and she’d wake up shivering in the middle of the night. It was something like a relief that he wouldn’t be there, but at the same time… she gave a large shudder and started coughing, the hacking sounds echoing and bouncing off the brick walls. The small, pale body wracked until she grabbed the little bucket she used as a bathroom, thankfully empty, and retched, dry until there was something burning in her throat and it pooled out of her lips. Disgusting.
It was a rare moment of lucidity in this little place. This little cage she was so afraid would become her tomb. “Are you feeling ok, little pet?”
A electric jolt seemed to wrack her body and she flung herself against the back wall, crying out as the uneven bricked surface slammed into her side, before curling up in a lump on the poor excuse for a mattress He allowed her, barely making it all the way down before the heavy, thick metal and leather brace around her neck stopped her, chocking her until she managed to scramble into a crawling position, her forehead pressed to her crossed forearms. The Voice gave her these things because he loved her, He said, the Pretty collar and bed. But if he really loved her, then why did he chain her to the wall?
“Tsk, tsk, tsk” heavy footprints as the wooden door swung open, obscuring the light for a second before it swung shut again, gently, it made no sound. Why could no one hear her in here? Was this why? She whimpered and tried to look up at him, long hair matted and filthy, she could barely see through it, his shape, large, looming over her as he kneeled down, touched that filthy hair, pulling it out of her eyes. “What’s wrong, little pet? Are you tired?” he pulled her head up with a finger underneath her chin, petting the side of her cheek with his thumb, she shut her eyes as tight as she possible could against the tears that wanted to flow but he wouldn’t like it, she couldn’t show it.
“I wrote them, I’m certain the letters reached the FBI at this point, a little cliché little pet, but I couldn’t help myself. Knowing that they’re looking for you makes you all the more precious, because if they still can’t find you… then maybe you truly are mine. You love me, not like the others, don’t you…?” another shudder, eyes still shut tight “Don’t you.” a statement this time… she swallowed a sob and nodded, biting her lip so hard it nearly bleed “… yes…” the whisper was so small he could barely hear it, but she’d said it, that was what mattered. He was going to kill her, wasn’t he? He was going to kill her and she was just going to let this happen. “Good, yes… your beautiful, you know that…” he let the words roll from his lips and she let out a choked sob as his fingers dragged gently over the curve of her spine, down to the hem of her shirt and then poking underneath it. She shuddered…
“This area is massive; do you even think that there are enough people in the towns to organize into a search party?” Standing next to a large pine Spencer looked twice as thin as he normally did, the circles under his eyes darker from staying up on the jet to read the minimal case files and reports, trying to find something hidden in the scenes before him, but for the moment there was nothing. The only thing that seemed remotely possible was the Unsub’s reference to The Fool, a card in the Tarot deck, the minor arcane. Of course knowing that wasn’t enough, it was only a reference without knowing more. “I don’t know, kid. It’s not like we’ve got much to go on. Our Unsub’s smart and pretty methodical if he’s going to keep coming back to this spot” Derek Morgan was standing on the edge of the reservoir, looking out over the water and just below the surface for anything useful.
“It’s also brazen. The first missing girls were found in the water, some of them with weights on their legs. He wanted to hide them, but something eventually happened that he stopped caring.” Agent Hotchner was walking up, hands at his sides, eyes hard as he glanced around the trees “They were are strangled, but sexually assaulted before death, but it appears to be getting more violent with each new body they find, in the order of first missing to the last, it seems the ending few were choked repeatedly. He was playing with them.” “Just like he’s playing with us…” the black cell phone at his hip rang out and Morgan slipped it from its case and flipped it open in one fluid motion “Hey angel, what do you have for me?”
“We only have a partial profile… I don’t think that I need to tell you the statistics of us finding her without a more concrete file are exponential at best. Not unless…” Reid trailed off, his feet fidgeting slightly in a little nervous side step, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence, because Hotch did it for him. “Not unless we find her body, and then we’ll be looking for another girl.”
“Right…” It was hard to think that sometimes they needed more victims before they could catch this people, the world’s proverbial bad guys, and the monsters in our nightmares. Reid leaned his back against a tree a little farther up the hill, away from Morgan and Hotch, lifting his hands to his head and pressing his palms to his temples. Lights danced underneath his eyelids and he muttered to himself, no, to the trees around him “We know she’s here… We know your hiding her here…” a sign and his arms fell, longish soft brown hair falling into his face “It’s not like talking to you is going to help, I already know this is more something for my own benefit than anything that’s going to track you, something to give my mind a little ease in the situation, but it’s now going to give her any ease…” there was another pause as something hit him that should have hit him earlier “They all have dark brown hair…”
A loud, piercing caw interrupted Reid’s little moment of clarity, or momentary insanity, however you wished to look at it, and he jumped to find a crow on the branch a few feet above his head. The bird big black eyes stared at him, tilting, reflecting his face, gaunt and pale… He knew it was impossible, but it still felt like the man was listening, still taunting them. A flock of crows was called a Murder. “… I will find her” he assured the death black bird before it nodded, turned and cawed into the woods, flying off through the trees.
He was gone now, he always left after he finished with her… she couldn’t stop crying, it was like this time he meant to hurt her, the finger shaped bruises on her thigh were enough to show he was starting to get tired of her taking it like a ‘good pet.’ How much longer until he tired of her completely? Her tattered shorts were draped over the wooden chair He had in the room for when she was bathing, when He wanted to watch her. But it was all the way over on the other side of the room… the chain around her neck barely let her get that far, but maybe…
Crawling forward, dragging herself across the pine needle covered floor as they stuck to the blood and sweat on her body. She swung her body around until her rear was pointed toward the door and extended her leg all the way out. She never hated be short so much than she did in that moment, the collar was angled cutting into her chin, tears springing into her lashes and making her gag, but she got it by wiggling her foot in just the right way… and hooked the pants, kicking them up onto her calf and bring her leg in with the pants, what passed as pants anyway, and quickly managed to put them on, hiding herself.
Just before she settled down for something resembling rest a loud screech jolted her awake, choking her with the chains, but as the tears managed to blur her vision she looked up toward the damp ceiling, to a corner hidden in the dark room. She couldn’t see because her glasses were taking away, so she didn’t know that there was something there in the corner, a metal pipe… The noise sounded again, a loud caw, a bird. “… H-help me… help me, please…” she whispered to the bird, hearing a scrabble and another caw, very mute… but there was no more from the creature, and she curled up on the mattress and just finally, finally let herself cry.

Another body was found on the side of the lake. Time of death was a little hard to put, but it was estimated a week before the BAU unit had flown to Pennsylvania, the day before the letter was sent. The team were divided at first but came to a similar conclusion later in the day that the body wasn’t that of the girl he had spoke so earnestly about in his letter, because he would have had to kill her before writing it, if he did indeed write it by the postmark and there was no reason to say that he hadn’t. This, however, had been one of the harder bodies to see. Like the others she showed long signs of abuse and ligature marks, as well as the broken hyoid bone and violent strangulation, but there was something new happening that worried the team even more. Not only was her neck broken when her neck was wrong, but a brand was burned into the young girl’s thigh, almost unnoticeable from the water damage and practically missed for a tattoo, the only thing that made the coroner take another look was the parent’s. Their daughter never had a tattoo, and certainly not one like this. It looked like a crude little cross, but at the same time had an eerie elegance in shape and size, with a circle, a band like a ring around the intersecting arms. Half of it had rotted away but the time that the team had found her, but she was only 17. “Is he escalating?” J.J. sat at the head of the local police conference table, they used the large office as a home base for the investigation, normal occupying something of the sort in any other town they came to, her blackberry in her lap, foot tapping impatiently as she waited for another of LaMontagne’s updates with the baby, this was one of her first times back since he was born after all. “The Unsub did refer to her as his ‘new favorite pet’ in the letter, didn’t he? Maybe it’s his way of marking them now, his first attempt failed and none of the other girl’s were perfect enough” Morgan spoke up from across the room at the coffee maker, Reid standing next to him with a cup already in hand. “True, but he was already doing something like that with the collars, the bruising on the victim’s necks didn’t get there over night, and it was almost like when you see animal abusers. Dog’s are statistically the most abused animal, most commonly found either starved or with their collar’s left on and cutting into their neck as they grow.” The 27 year old genius piped in, walking over to a board lined with photo of the girls and the map of their locations “See here, the victims all appeared to be malnourished and the black bruising sometimes had cuts around it.” “Like they were tugging or trying to get away?” Prentiss was poring over a large file a few chairs down, but she lifted her head for that. “Yes that’s one possibility, but more likely it could be that they are kept chain down somewhere, like the Unsub’s basement, a cabin in the woods, somewhere where they couldn’t be heard or seen. He’s not like Eugene Watts who, even though he killed nearly a hundred women, he would sometimes never touch them. For our Unsub, he wants to be able to keep them there, alive.” “When do you think he’s going to toss this girl away? If he’s going to before we find him” Prentiss’s dark hair shifted like a theater curtain over her face, marking her distaste for the man in question as Reid sipped his extra sweet coffee, he hadn’t slept since they’d gotten there the day before. “I’m not sure. Part of me thinks that it’s just a matter of time before she ends up thrown down that hill, but there’s a more irrational part in the back of my mind telling me that there’s something different about the girl he currently has, like he made a mistake marking this one… Though logic may not suggest it I honestly believe that he’s going to hold her for as long as he maybe. Maybe forever, in his mind.” From the back corner of the room, leaning heavily against the wall Agent Hotchner was fixing the board of evidence with a truly unsubtle glare, but in some ways that was his default expression “I agree, I think that this girl is still alive, and going to be the longest of the girls so far. He’s probably had her just as long as he had the last victim, the branded one.” “What are you getting at Hotch?” Morgan was sitting on the table now, listening to the activity around him, the room buzzing with dozens of questions but so few answers. “I’m saying that he may be keeping two or more women at a time.” Their leader signed; bring a hand up to his temples and looking thoroughly exhausted. “Wait,” Spencer put down his cup of sugar and did an about face to the missing persons reports “Wait that just might… make sense…” “What do you got smarty pants?” Morgan tilted his head, raising a brow in thought. “My pants are smart only in their ability to keep me clothed and warm, Morgan.” his reply was quick and with a deadpan expression, like it was nothing to say something of the sort, “If he’s keeping more than one girl at a time that might be why he’s so hard to find. He’ll be someone that the town’s used to not seeing for a few days, maybe even weeks-“ “A job that keeps him away from the family, like a trucker, real estate, or even just someone expanding their business?” “Right Morgan,” the young man’s eyes lit up for a moment as he tucked long strands of soft brown hair behind his ears, the circles under his eyes becoming a little less noticeable in his excitement, “He’d also have to have a large secluded space, but he said that he wouldn’t dump the girls in his own backyard… it wouldn’t be here in town, but maybe the next town over, typically an old warehouse or perhaps even just a large unoccupied house, somewhere where he could keep them tied up where no one would notice, where no one would hear.” “But Reid,” J.J. looked up, confused for a second “The woods I understand, but if they were in a town they‘d be screaming, how would he be keeping them quiet? According to the Tox-Screens the girls didn’t have enough of anything in their systems to keep them out of it; they’d be awake and aware.” “Part of his job could be something that would cover the noise, like heavy construction or renovation. The Unsub could have also built the places where he hides them, kind of like a customized space or something sound proofed perhaps.” Reid went on, pacing the floor in front of their Unsub’s canvas, his handiwork “You hear that Garcia?” Hotchner turned to the monitor where their marvelous hacker queen had set up a video connection. “Got it good, give me a minute honey and I’ll check all construction related topics in the county” She practically purred, fingers whirring over the keyboard so fast it was a miracle she didn’t have to replace it every ten seconds. “Good, and Garcia?” “Yes, oh mighty one?” “Don’t call me honey” Hotch smiled a little, but it was gone in a flash as he walked to the door “I’m going to check with the locals, see if they now anyone that’s been missing lately and haven’t noticed.” “Aw, come on sugar, you still got me” Morgan smiled to their blonde tech nerd, opening his arms in what looked like he was waiting for a hug. “Of course I have you, lollipop, wrapped around my gorgeously painted little pinkie.” she held up her hand, not looking from the screen where there was light reflected on her glasses, her nails a neon green for the day to match the new streaks in her hair, contrasted brilliantly with a cute little black and bubblegum pink dress ensemble. She’d be showing of her heels if the timing was appropriate. “Oh come on.” Morgan pouted a little, but he was laughing at the heart of it. It probably sounded like a ridiculous moment, but there were so few of those in their lives, especially on cases, they needed them from time to time. While the others milled around the room checking on men with rap sheets in the area or trolling through missing person’s for young women of the Unsub’s type: Petite, Caucasian brunette with minimal piercings and green eyes. They generally weren’t from the area so there wasn’t a huge stir when they left a hotel without checking out properly, or were just there getting gas on the way, a tourist heading up the mountain. The only thing that had alerted anyone to this small town area was the bodies constantly showing up on the shores of their reservoir, leading to the conclusion that if the Unsub hadn’t wanted them to be found, they honestly wouldn’t have been. Reid reached back and grabbed the arm of a chair, sliding into it without taking his eyes from the board. Brenda Johnson, Taylor Mitchell, Charlotte McGhee, Katherine Lima, Krista Dubai, Margaret Collins, Kyrie Neilson, Alexis Michaels… he looked at their pictures, the missing girls that had yet to be found, would they ever be found? “Hey, what’s up little man?” the elder BAU members always called him something like that, Gideon was probably the only one that stuck with Dr. Reid over the years, but he didn’t mind, they were his own weird little family. “They all look like sisters Morgan… I want to find her.” Spencer leaned back heavily into the chain, leaning on one arm, chin on his palm “She deserves to go home.” “Yea man, they all do.” Morgan looked on, picking up the picture of Margaret, a school photo from her senior year, “that’s why we keep doing this, even if the outcome isn’t what they want, each of these girls needs to be found, alive or dead, so they can at least rest somewhere where their family can bury them, keep them safe.” he looked down to his younger colleague who was still scanning the photos, his eyes always coming to rest near the middle at one or two of them. “Hey. We’re going to find her, Reid, ain’t no doubt about it.” “I know…” Spencer felt the lie tumbling off his tongue; they had no way of guarantying her safe return, not even if there was going to be an ending to her sad tale, whoever she was. Morgan grabbed his shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze before moving on; there was work to do anyway. “…Would you forgive me if I couldn’t find you in time?” he whispered to the wall of pictures, suddenly tired to his core. He was beginning to understand the reasons for Gideon and his cabin in a way that wasn’t purely logistical, but he was beginning to relate. “… I wouldn’t forgive myself.” There was the sound of banging, no, something… like it was being thrown. There was a brief glimpse of a memory, of a time when she was little and had accidentally dropped the laundry basket when she was taking it back to her room, jumping and watching it as it tumbled down the stairs and out of sight. That was it, something bigger though, that’s what the sound was. Something big and heavy falling down a flight of stairs. She jumped and clung to the throw pillow her captor had finally giving her, a ‘present’ for being well behaved, backing herself into the corner in a crouch position. She could never hear anything through the walls of this mini prison, but she sometimes, if they were loud enough, could hear through the door, especially on days like today when He left the door cracked just a little, probably to make sure she wasn’t trying to escape, making sure the chains weren’t rattling. But there was something different today. Two voices started shouting. Two? Two men now? Her heart started racing and she felt her breathing stop, what if he was going to bring a friend to see his ‘pet?’ what if he was going to share her?! That couldn’t be it, no, it couldn’t, and she couldn’t take it! When they didn’t go straight to her room she started to relax, something like a cat coiled to attacked suddenly dropping her guard and curling into a ball to nap, but she wouldn’t nap, she was only listening… “…the f could you be such an…!” He was screaming, moving though, it was going in and out “….-should have seen! Could have found out where we are!” “…sorry, sorry! Please…” this one was new, meeker, but he was a man too… she was certain of it. “Wait! Ssh….” Him again… she laid down and pretended to be asleep, but jumped when suddenly her door was slammed all the way shut, yelping out a tiny pathetic scream. Now she couldn’t make out the words, but more doors slammed, and there was more yelling and… another scream? She wasn’t alone?

“Ah yes, my dear agents,
“Have you found her yet? Well I don’t think so since I’m watching over her at this very moment, she’s beautiful you know, even more so than the last time we talked. “Of course, the little brat that I dumped at your feet just days ago was not as perfect as my pet; she decided to mark me, something… unforgivable, as you do not bite the hand that feeds you.
“Forgive me that I must keep this letter short, but I feel that you’re not doing your jobs to your full potential, so I’ll just see to make you up your ante, I think that you’re not going to like this next one.
“Ciao, my agents.”
“The Unsub is an escalated sexual sadist whom not only inflicts emotional harm upon his victims with sexual abuse, but has escalated to serial killer status with the high amounts of victims attached to the lake and the surrounding area.” Taking the lead, Agent Hotchner was pacing briskly back and forth in front of the collected police officers of Stuttgart County, his face a mask of malcontent that the man they were speaking of wasn’t already in their custody. “Uh, wait,” a blue uniformed male leaning on a desk spoke up for a moment, “What exactly is an Unsub?”
“It stands for Unknown Subject,” ever the one to answer the question, Dr. Reid spoke up from behind the officers, near the entrance to the conference room that was framed like a museum with the faces of the woman that were missing “Unlike previous sex related serial killers, most infamous the Green River Killer or Ted Bundy, who ironically helped police in the investigation and capture of the Green River Killer, our Unsub doesn’t come back to the area where he dumped the bodies to revisit them later, to relive the experience he had with them, in a way. ”
“Instead, he keeps them hostage until they don’t satisfy him anymore.” Morgan held his black FBI issue cell phone in his hand, flipping it closed after looking at a message from Garcia “And from the wounds on the girls, even though they range in how long they were abused, the goal has been one thing to this person” “Making them suffer.” Gideon was the last to say anything, but it was probably the most impacting words of the entire speech, filling the room with an odd, awkward silence.
“O-Of course, though terrible in nature, it also means that we have an advantage over him…” Reid broken the moment, giving a little bit of comfort in the rather dark time they found themselves. “Unlike other sadists of this mature, his keeping them means that he’s looking for someone that he’s trying to find the perfect creature. Most likely this means someone that both fights back and relents, that he controls with psychological tortures.” Continuing with his speech, Spencer swallowed a little hard, he was tired and his nerves were shot, and doing these talks under the watchful eye of everyone here just wasn’t helping at the moment, “He likes to see them in pain.”
“There were a few victims that we determined through the rate of decomposition,” Prentiss looked like she wanted to gag on the word, “were tossed a long time ago, and they seemed to take the most severe beatings and injuries, one woman had her right collar bone snapped cleaning in the middle.”
“This was most likely because, unlike some of the other girls, this young woman wasn’t afraid of him, it threw him off his game and eventually he was thrown into a rage, killing her instead of trying to keep her” Hotch stopped his pacing to look over the faces in the room before him, “He can’t get off on their pain if they aren’t at the least afraid of him.” As he spoke Morgan hopped down from the desk he was sitting on. “Look, the guy’s sick, he thinks that there is some form of love in it for him if he can get that bond with these girls. Most likely the one he refers to as his pet in the letters he’s sent just happens to be the one girl being subservient long enough to find a way out of there.”
“Though she may be staving off his hunt for other girls in the meantime, we don’t know how long she is going to last, or any of the others for that matter.” there was a clatter as a female cop in the room dropped her clipboard in response to the words of young Dr. Reid. “What are you saying?!” the general uproar in the room was something Reid and Morgan didn’t expect, but a reaction that Hotchner had seen way to many times.
“What I mean,” Spencer stood up a little taller, taking a gulp of air as the nervousness washed over him again, rather reasonably, “Is that according to his letter, the girl he refers to as his pet is still alive, but we’ve found more bodies.” “It’s clear that he’s no longer taking one girl at a time, but it seems there may be several he has locked away.” Hotch took over, “He’s become flippant, blaming us for not being able to save them instead of himself for killing them, something of a delusion.”
“He seems to be suffering from quite the narcissistic personality, a dominant person, our Unsub is very smart, confident, probably someone very well liked in his circle of friends and family, that he’ll have mostly for the act of keeping appearances. He didn’t get this way overnight though, he had practice.” “Reid’s right.” nodding, Morgan took out his phone, presumably to text Garcia, “he took awhile to get this way, if we look back into his history we’ll probably find a juvenile records of peeping or sexual aggression.”
“And if you go back farther than that, you’d most likely found that as a child he harmed animals, smaller creatures, killing and most likely dissecting them while they were still alive.” Reid put a hand to his temple as if by will he could banish the headache beginning to rage in his skull. He took a few steps back and walked into the conference room to get away from the crowd as the rest of the team finished up giving the profile. Over fifteen pairs of green eyes were watching him as he came back into the room, and he couldn’t help but sigh, hands in pockets as he looked back at them. Was she one of these that they knew were missing? So many different girls, a runaway, a couple arrested for prostitution, college students, a music teacher, which of them were alive and which were already… “Gone…” Reid said the final word out loud before collapsing on the couch where his leather bag was sitting, laying down and burying his head against it as exhaustion shook him, the day was long and like after Tobias the job was beginning to feel like it was a little too much. It reminded him that he was going to miss his weekly visit to Adam, Amanda, and that was just another thing to make him feel worse.
Spencer didn’t know if, but as he laid there he finally fell asleep after two whole days without it. Prentiss was standing next to the doorway and watched him as he went in, then kept looking in as he slept. The police were milling about looking through their databases for men who matched the profile of their killer and abductor, honestly she should have been, but she felt the need to guard the youngest member of their team, if only for a short while. “How’s he doing?” she looked up, her long black hair swishing a little from the motion, to find Morgan standing next to her handing her a bag of chips from the vending machine, Prentiss didn’t even realize how long it had been since she’d eaten properly until that moment, and she reached for the bag as her stomach growled.
“I don’t know, he looks so sad lately. I didn’t want to wake him up since this is the first time I’ve seen him close his eyes since we got off the plane.” Morgan grinned a little as she opened the bag of cheese flavored doodles, whatever they were, she didn’t care she just wanted food. “What about you, holding up ok?” “Better than genius there, that’s for sure.” as if in response, or most likely coincidence, Reid mumbled something from the couch, but his hair was over his face and eyes shut tight, so he was still sleeping “I hope that doesn’t mean he’s having a nightmare.” the elder man poked his head in the room, but all Spencer did was curl in a little tighter against that leather bag of his and seemed to settle down.
“I keep forgetting how young he really is…” Prentiss mumbled, nibbling on a cheeto as she gave Dr. Reid one last glance, thinking he was really adorable when he slept, and how she’d never say it out loud because Morgan wouldn’t let her hear the end of it. Garcia might be able to get away with it though. She might have thought further on it, but there was a flurry at the other end of the room as the tip lines lit up, and this time it wasn’t a dead end they were getting. “Um, Agent Hotchner!” a rather flustered looking police woman jumped up from her seat, stumbling and a little flushed “Agent Hotchner! We might have something!”
Hotch, looking grumpy as usual, called from across the room where he and a few other officers were looking through rap sheets of potential Unsub’s. “What is it?” “It’s a doctor calling from Memorial Hospital up the room, a girl was just brought in from the highway, her feet were bloody from running and a man picked her up on the way into town-” “Officer, what is it?” the tension in the room grew about ten fold in that one little moment, and the officer steeled herself. “She said she was abducted from her car by a young man, but she kicked and clawed until she got away, Catherine Davis, brown hair with green eyes.”