BY THE TIME MAY ROLLED AROUND, almost everyone knew of Spencer and Katharine's engagement. Hotch had figured it out right away, surprisingly, and vouched for the both of them when it came around to gaining Strauss's approval.

Professionalism, their Section Chief had stressed before congratulating the two and going about her day. Now that had surprised Katharine, seeing as she had viewed the older woman as nothing more than an emotionless old lady that liked to stomp on everything fun. Turns out the woman actually did have a heart.

The next person to find out was Garcia if not for pure snooping. She'd noticed the ring on Spencer's finger right away but somehow managed to go a whole case without saying anything, which was quite possibly a new record for the blonde.

It wasn't until they landed back in Quantico did Garcia pull Katharine into her office and forced her to spill the beans.

Katharine had laughed, seeing as they hadn't exactly meant to keep their engagement a secret. It just happened that way. She told her bubbly friend that in the name of professionalism, she had to keep it on the down-low. It wouldn't be any fun if Spencer or she lost their jobs over it.

Rossi found out after Garcia, catching Spencer and her talking about wedding plans on the way out of the offices. After telling the older Italian man that they planned on just going to city hall and signing the papers, he insisted on hosting their sending-off party with the rest of the BAU in attendance.

They had agreed, promising to tell him when they'd be going off for their honeymoon, before bidding him good night.

Somehow, Nina found out before Derek did. It was mid-April when Nina came barging into the bullpen. She had a cake in her arms and balloons practically falling out of her ass to congratulate them on their engagement. That was the moment Derek found out.

When Katharine said she had never seen her cousin more upset than at that moment, she wasn't joking. He looked at her with the most disappointment she'd ever had to endure from him before eventually easing up on his disapproving looks.

"Why keep it a secret?" he had asked, one arm slung around her shoulder while the other held a small plate of half-eaten cake.

"We figured everyone already knew," Katharine had shrugged before shoving the rest of her cake into her cousin's face. Garcia had managed to capture that moment for her on her polaroid camera, immortalizing the moment.

Katharine smiled as she remembered that day, swinging Spencer and her interlocked hands as they walked through the parking lot at two in the morning. There were still four hours before the sun was set to rise.

While she absolutely despised her boss for forcing them to wake so early, she understood that time was of the essence. She listened to Spencer's ramblings, smiling and nodding at the correct times. She was too tired to tell him that her brain was only absorbing half of the information he was feeding her at the moment.

They exited the elevator on the BAU's floor, Spencer walking slightly ahead of her so that he could open the glass door for her like the gentleman he was. She thanked him with a kiss on the cheek before they were waved into the briefing room by Garcia, who looked way too energetic for the hour.

"Did you see Hotch on the way up?" she asked them as they sat in their respective chairs.

They both answered negatively, saying neither of them saw their boss in between the parking lot and the bullpen.

"Any minute," Rossi said, trying to get Garcia to calm down.

"I didn't get a file sent to me," the blonde stressed anyway. "Did a case go directly to him?"

"Don't know," Rossi replied, shrugging slightly.

Katharine rubbed her temples in circular motions. "When's the last time he called a meeting this early?"

Spencer's answer was immediate. "Three years, eight months ago."

Katharine stopped her circular motions and looked to the man sitting next to her.

"God," she breathed. "I love your brain."

Spencer gave her a cheeky smile before pressing a kiss to her knuckles. Since she proposed back in February, he'd become a lot more affectionate, especially in public. Of course, Katharine practically bathed in the attention. Derek didn't call her an attention-seeker for most of her childhood for nothing.

She wished she could have beaten his ass when they were younger.

Shaking Katharine from her vivid and arguably violent, but well-intentioned, daydreams, Spencer warned Katharine of their boss walking through the door.

"I appreciate everyone coming in early," he said, walking around the table until he came to the seat next to Garcia. Katharine sat up straight as Hotch addressed the room. Her mind sidetracked, thinking: Aaron Hotchner is the only man she would wake up this early for.

Well, he and Spencer, but her fiance didn't need to know that he was an afterthought.

"What's going on?" Rossi asked.

"The Director called a meeting last night to discuss budgets," Hotch told them.

"They skipped over Strauss?" Rossi asked, which was exactly what Katharine was thinking.

"She's away," he told them. "The Bureau is facing a lot of changes and this unit is no exception. Over the next few weeks, each of you is going to be asked if you'd like to stay with the unit."

Spencer and Katharine exchanged glances.

"Why wouldn't we?" Spencer asked, confusion written over his face.

"There are other options for you out there," he replied. "And while I want the unit to stay together, I understand completely if you want to see what the alternatives are. Morgan, there's renewed interest in you from the New York office."

Derek shrugged. "Nobody's called me."

"They will."

"That doesn't mean I'm gonna go."

"Oh, I know," Hotch said, distributing their tablets from his seat. He handed Katharine's hers. "And there's been talk about Stark hiring you full-time."

Katharine took the tablet and the accompanying materials.

"Rumors," she said, turning the device on. "Are you staying here?"

"It's my intention," he said. "All I ask is if you are contacted by another division that you let me know."

They all nodded as Hotch's phone rang, waiting attentively as he answered the call. "Hotchner. Yes. Right. We can be there in twenty minutes." He hung up. "Virginia State police believe they've uncovered a serial killer. They need us at Zacha Road and Route 7 as soon as possible. Morgan, you and Dave get out there."

Derek and Rossi stood from their seats as they were dismissed. Alarmed, Garcia frantically tried to pull the conversation back to where it had been.

"What about this?" she asked, desperate to know about the future of the BAU.

"We can talk about it later," Hotch concluded the briefing, leaving them all worried about what the next few months would look like.

Katharine sighed as the team dispersed, watching as Hotch retired to his office and her cousin and Rossi left the building. She shared similar looks with Garcia before standing up herself.

"Well, gang," she clapped, "we've got work to do."

ONCE THEY GOT OVER THE INITIAL SHOCK OF THAT MORNING'S NEWS, Spencer and Katharine spent the next few hours pouring over anything and everything they had on the case so far.

As she tacked up another photo, she couldn't help but voice her disbelief.

"Can you believe that the only reason we have this case is because of an accident?" she said, making sure that the thumbtack was pushed securely into the board.

"You know the odds of that?" Spencer asked, tacking up another photo next to her.

She grinned. "Pray tell."

"Well combined with the chance that this is his first time dumping bodies," Spencer thought it over, ultimately deciding to spare his fiancee the actual numbers, "I'm gonna say pretty slim."

Katharine took a break from pinning things up, using her arms to prop herself up as she leaned against the round table.

"Do you think he was working alone?" Katharine asked, pushing herself up so that she was sitting on the table. She kept her arms out to stabilize herself as the table shook slightly. Spencer reached out his arm on instinct, insurance in case the table broke and she did fall.

She waved him off as soon as the piece of furniture stopped shaking.

"What do you think?" he asked her as soon as he was sure the table was sturdy enough to hold her weight.

Katharine thought about it for a moment before shaking her head.

"I think it's unlikely," she said. "It's already high-risk to move one body out of state, but two?"

"Paige was abducted months after having Jake in captivity, and he traveled with both, which means he's criminally sophisticated," he said, building off her thinking as well as providing a bit more insight into the case. "It seems more like an organized operation as opposed to an individual offender."

"Then he's probably done this before," she said, taking in what he was telling her as well as using the information she'd learned over the past months of learning to be a better profiler. "I think there are more victims out there. You?"

Spencer shrugged. "It's impossible to say until we figure out how those two were targeted."

Katharine swung her legs back and forth as Spencer tacked up the last photo. He stepped back so that he could view their hard work from a distance.

"I say we make a kick-ass case board," Katharine said, reaching behind her to grab one of the mini water bottles the office had to offer. She undid the top before chugging half of the bottle, offering the rest to Spencer.

He took the bottle and finished it off before recycling the empty bottle. Katharine grinned, oh how she loved men that recycled.

They talked a bit more about the case, mainly Katharine having a question and Spencer answering it before she even finished talking. It was insane how well he anticipated her questions like he was some sort of mind reader.

After a bit more questioning, Hotch wandered into the room with a woman Katharine vaguely remembered. Spencer had to write her name on a sheet of paper for her, seeing as the light-skinned woman's memory seemed to get worse by the day.

They got the polite chatter out of the way quickly, realizing that time really was of the essence with this case.

"Do you know who did this?" Katharine asked after talking with the woman a bit longer.

"I've been two steps behind an organization that abducts college kids throughout the US," Andi Swan told her, crossing her arms over her chest.

"How long have you been tracking them?"

"Three years," the woman said. "But this is the first time there's been an identifiable body."

"Do you think this is their work?" Spencer asked next, trying to gain as much information about this as he could.

"It's definitely their type," Swan said. "Stressed-out, vulnerable kids."

Katharine picked up one of the documents the woman had brought them.

"It looks like they're all from good families," she said after reviewing the summarized sheet, "making them low-risk for abduction."

"Young innocents are worth more money," Spencer added.

"And they're harder to lure," Hotch said. "So they hold on to them for a longer period of time."

Katharine frowned. "How many victims are they holding at once?

"That's hard to say," Swan told her, "but from what I can tell, there's a lot of turnover."

"Customers don't want to see the same faces twice," Hotch said. Katharine frowned at that.

"We don't think they travel with more than a handful of victims at one time."

"They hunt all over the country," Katharine said, hopping off the table. She grabbed Spencer's arm for balance. "All they need is a car."

"They might be low-tech, but they're organized," Hotch said.

"And profitable," Spencer tacked on as Katharine regained her balance on both feet.

"The rumor is that they hold events for two days in metropolitan areas and then they disappear," Swan told them.

"What kind of events?"

"Where top-paying customers can do things like this and worse to the victims," the woman said, causing Katharine's frown to deepen.

"It seems impossible to trace."

"We study their behavior," Swan said. "They're not a good breed, but they're still human. They make a few mistakes. We've also recently established an undercover unit."

"As targets, right?" Katharine asked, already knowing how these things went. Swan nodded, a grim look overtaking her features. "Your agents can exactly commit crimes to become customers, but they can act vulnerable enough to go in as victims. Do you have anybody under now?"

"Locally a few," Swan replied. "They're still establishing the backstories."

"They might be able to help," Hotch said, looking across the table at the woman.

Swan nodded, already taking out her phone and crossing to the door on the opposite side of the room. "I'll call."

The three adults in the room continued to peruse the documents Andi Swan had provided them with. As Katharine read, she couldn't help but think about the number of agents Swan's unit currently had undercover at the moment. The work that Swan conducted was not unlike the work she had to do while with SHIELD.

It was almost nostalgic, the way she thought about undercover work now. Would she ever return to it full-time? That was highly debatable. But did she miss the thrill of pretending to be someone she wasn't for the benefit of her country? Absolutely.

"This group needs space and solitude," Hotch said the moment Swan returned to the room. "Especially if they're holding multiple victims."

"These two lived thousands of miles apart but were somehow both targeted," Katharine said, referring to the two victims that had been found in the wrecked vehicle earlier that day.

"They send scouts to campuses, malls, clubs..." Hotch trailed off.

"Yeah, they go with a shopping list," Swan confirmed, "but rarely do they take more than one victim from a city."

Spencer rifled through some papers. "The victims are assets. Why would the unsubs kill their profit?"

"Maybe the victims are escaping," Hotch suggested.

Katharine almost scoffed. "Or their clients are adapting."

"Adapting?" her boss asked for clarification.

"Well these clients are extremely depraved," she said, her hand subconsciously traveling up to her arm. "When the act of sex isn't enough for them anymore, they may be demanding more... extreme forms of release."

"Which was my fear," Swan said, looking at Katharine sympathetically. Katharine avoided her eyes, not wanting to be seen as a victim. She knew what these college students were going through because she herself had lived through it.

Thankfully, Katharine was spared the looks as Swan's phone rang, prompting the older agent to leave the briefing room.

Spencer offered to refill Katharine's mug, which she thanked him for, leaving Katharine and Hotch alone in the room together.

She sorted through a few files, clearing out space in front of her while Hotch helped, moving some of the boxes under the table.

"You'll let me know if this case gets to be too much," Hotch said, not exactly leaving room for argument.

Katharine looked up at her boss. "With all due respect, sir, these kids need me more than I need to be coddled right now. I'll be okay as long as we get at least a fraction of these kids home safe."

Hotch rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly, letting her know that he was there for her, before leaving the room. Katharine let out a shaky breath, steadying her hands against the table.

She allowed her to relax for a moment before diving into more research about the organization they were tracking down.

"Here are the missing coeds since 2009," Garcia announced her presence, setting her own box in an empty space on the table.

"Ok, let's see," Katharine said, rolling over to her. "We still need to narrow this down. Have you looked at last-known locations for any overlap?"

"I have," Garcia replied. "They're from all over the place."

"These guys hunt in target-rich environments," Katharine opened the box and started pulling out folders, counting as she went.

"Right. Clubs, malls, that kind of thing."

Spencer chose that moment to waltz back into the room, breaking Katharine's concentration. She scowled at him before restarting her counting.

"What are Morgan and Rossi finding?" he asked, setting the mug of coffee on the coaster in front of her.

"Uh, a lot of mud on the car and the victims," Garcia told them.

"Mud?" Spencer asked. "Did it rain here?"

Katharine gave up on counting and just removed the rest of the files from the box, dropping the empty cardboard container on the floor once she had.

"No, not here," Garcia shook her head. "South. Morgan has a theory that based on the gas mileage, they must have filled up within seventy miles of the accident."

"Gotcha," he said, taking a sip of his tea. "How many gas stations did you find?"

"Forty-two."

Katharine took a sip of her coffee. "How'd you narrow that down?"

"I didn't."

"Why not?" they teamed up on her.

"I didn't have any more parameters," Garcia said weakly, messing with the pen she had in her hand.

"Never stopped you before," Katharine said, raising an eyebrow. She took another sip of coffee as her friend pointed at her with the feather end of her pen.

"I'll be right back."

Katharine grinned. "That's my girl."

WHEN THE REST OF THE CREW RETURNED TO THE BAU, Katharine had already worked her way through one cup of coffee and several mini water bottles. It was a wonder she wasn't going to the bathroom every two seconds.

"Renee's done a lot of homework," Spencer said, referring to the notes one of Swan's agents had written up. "These people have all been to clubs over the weekend and vanished within three days, including this morning's victims."

"So why didn't she share her theory?" Katharine asked, looking up from the page she had just been reading.

"She's a perfectionist," Swan reasoned. "I'm sure she wanted to gather enough intel to prove it."

"Using the club as a template," Spencer said, doing the calculations in his mind, "there are potentially sixty-three others who were taken by the same offenders."

"There's no way to know which ones are still alive," Swan said, looking off into the distance dejectedly. Katharine pursed her lips, pressing the palms of her hands together before bringing the tips of her fingers to her lips.

Sixty-three students were a lot more than she had originally thought.

There was a bit of commotion out in the hallway as Derek and Rossi returned. Katharine dropped her hands and sat back up in her chair leaning forward as Rossi and Swan greeted each other.

"What'd you find?" Hotch asked the two new arrivals.

Rossi and Derek separated from each other, Derek coming to stand near Katharine while Rossi just moved about ten inches to the left.

"We tracked the driver to a gas station outside Culpepper," Rossi said.

"He used a payphone to call another one in the same town," Derek added on.

"So they're close," Swan said.

"And careful," Derek continued. "What's their budget on location?"

Swan shook her head, moving back toward the table.

"Not much," she admitted. "They pay cash, no questions asked. Security's top priority."

"So this guy's found a place to hold, what, a dozen victims?" Derek asked.

"So we're looking for a secluded spot in rural Virginia," Rossi said. Then, as an attempt at a joke, he added on, "Well, that shouldn't be hard to find."

Katharine pushed herself away from the table and put to use all the information she had managed to gather within the past few hours of just reading and note-taking. After the first few minutes, it started to feel a bit like college all over again, if Katharine was being honest.

"I thought traffickers concentrated in port cities," Rossi voiced after she finished outlining the cities that their victims had been going missing from with the help of Swan.

"International ones do," Katharine said, capping the marker. "Unfortunately, domestic traffickers abduct all over the country."

"It doesn't seem like they stay in one location long after an abduction," Spencer squinted at the map she had marked up.

"They move quickly and efficiently," Swan said. "My guess was in a nondescript car, and until this morning that was just a theory."

"They've lost their driver now, so they're in jeopardy."

"It's all about survival for them," Rossi said. "They'll move out tonight."

"But they've got customers and victims lined up," Hotch reasoned against Rossi's thinking. "They don't want to lose the money."

"Plus, their location hasn't been compromised yet," Katharine said, pointing at her boss with the end of the marker.

Swan crossed her arms, exhaling deeply. "Who knows where they're gonna end up?"

"Based on Reid's theory," Derek said, "we need to see if Renee had been to any clubs before she disappeared."

"She went to the local clubs," Swan supplied. "She'd report back if anyone suspicious approached her. We followed the leads, nothing panned out."

Katharine set the marker back down on the whiteboard tray. "What was the last club?"

"Scotty's in Georgetown," she said, looking at Renee's picture tacked up on the wall. "If they find out she's an agent, she's dead."

Katharine grimaced, not wanting to think about that. The smartest thing Renee could do would be to keep her mouth shut. Trust no one, was Katharine's policy. Even if she thought she knew someone, she probably didn't.

She just hoped it was Renee's policy as well.

"WE NEED TO LOOK AT THIS FROM THE LEADER'S POINT OF VIEW," Hotch said after stewing over the information they had. So far, they've analyzed Renee's every move pre-abduction and Hotch was right, they needed to look at it from another point of view. "A group like this requires a strong leader."

"Yeah," Swan said, backing Hotch's statement up, "this guy's in charge of some unstable personalities."

"Do you have any theories?" Rossi asked.

Katharine raised her hand halfway into the air. 

"Uh, if I may, she interjected. "In my experience, these types of guys lead through fear. This guy, whoever he is, most likely has dirt on his whole team for blackmail purposes."

"Look at the progression of this network," Spencer said, branching out from what Katharine had said. "They started abducting victims for sex and then adapted to killing."

"Because he saw the growth potential in his assets," Derek reasoned. "Instead of just disposing of them, he made it into a show."

"And that's why the victims are so young," Katharine added with a look of disgust. "The customers will pay top dollar to see them tortured."

"The average guy doesn't have that kind of money lying around," Rossi said. "So they're successful."

"And incredibly deviant," Derek tacked on. "That's their big secret. If it was revealed, they'd be ruined."

"Wouldn't they have to criminally prove themselves to join the club?" Spencer asked. He looked over at Katharine for approval. She nodded. "If they're upstanding citizens, how do they do that?"

"It could be a white-collar crime," Derek offered. "Like money laundering."

"Which is often done through real estate," Katharine said, leaning forward in her seat.

Hotch was on that lead in an instant.

"Garcia," he said, pressing two fingers into the tabletop, "who owned the clubs where the victims went missing?"

Katharine watched intently as Garcia's fingers flew over the keyboard, gaining an answer not even a moment later.

"Bruce Harmon owns the club in Arizona," she said, her eyes scanning the screen.

"And in Ohio?"

"Bob Moore."

"And Scotty's in Georgetown?" Swan prompted.

"Bob Moore is a partner in that."

Katharine was already standing from her seat.

"Do any of them own property in Virginia?" she asked, looking at her side and making sure her gun was fully loaded.

"Moore also is a partner in the development of a private facility," Garcia supplied.

"What happened to it?" Hotch asked as Katharine started tying up her hair.

" It looks like bad guys go through hardship, too," Garcia said after a quick search. "Financiers pulled all the money out in 2009, so it's not anything."

"What was it?" Swan asked.

Garcia's eyes scanned over her screen quickly as she fed them the next bit of information.

"It was supposed to be a tough-love rehab center, but now," she typed a few things, "now it's just an abandoned factory in the middle of nowhere."

Rossi leaned over her shoulder, viewing what Katharine suspected to be a satellite image of the building.

"With a lot of acreage and mud," he said.

Derek stood from his seat then, too, doing the same checks his cousin had done two seconds prior.

"How close to the gas station?"

"Eight miles west of it," Garcia said, looking up at her teammates.

Hotch dropped the files in his hands onto the table, checking his weapon as well before they rushed toward the door. Katharine paused at Spencer's chair, kissing him briefly as he told her to stay safe before she left the briefing room.

Derek tossed her the keys and she caught them as they hustled toward the elevator doors. Katharine strapped on her Kevlar vest as they descended, double, and then triple-checking her straps as the elevator let them out at the bottom floor.

They made their way to the waiting SUVs in a hurry, Katharine clicking the unlock button and getting into the one that flashed its lights at her. 

Without waiting for the rest of their team, Katharine tore out of the parking lot, anxious to cut the hour and a half drive down to thirty minutes with the assistance of the sirens and the fact that she was legally allowed to drive one-hundred miles per hour.

True to her speeding record, she arrived at the warehouse thirty-three minutes later, hanging back as Hotch gave orders to the SWAT team that had joined them on location.

When given the okay, Katharine went in first, neutralizing the first guard they came across with no hesitation. She silently thanked Hiram Percy Maxim, the credited inventor of the first firearm suppressor.

They made their way into the building's lower levels, guns out in front as they passed a woman passed out on the ground. Motioning for one of the SWAT members in the back to check on her, they pushed forward with Derek in the front.

Then, from out of nowhere, a man came out of one of the side hallways and tackled Derek, causing Katharine to bite her lip in an attempt to not scream.

She pointed her gun at the brawling du before realizing she wouldn't be able to get a shot in edgewise.

Katharine holstered her weapon and jumped on the larger man, swinging herself around his body until her thighs were wrapped tightly around one of his arms and his neck, squeezing even as the man got up and slammed her into the fence.

Using the fencing to her advantage, she grabbed onto the metal links with her hands and forced them closer into the barrier, tightening her legs until the man stopped fighting and passed out.

She let the man drop with a loud thud as she used the fencing to keep herself up. Katharine pushed off the fence and landed in a crouched position in front of her cousin. She straightened up before offering the older man a hand, helping him to stand.

"Where'd you learn that?" he gasped while stumbling over to where he had dropped his firearm.

Katharine shrugged, looking back at the man on the ground.

"A friend," was her short answer.

They worked on getting all the captives free, Katharine personally helping one of the women get above ground and into an ambulance after seeing the woman nearly collapsed into the asphalt due to the injuries she had sustained.

Once all seven captives had been brought up, she made her way to where Rossi and Hotch were standing with Andi Swan.

"You ever think of transferring units?" Swan asked her after hearing about what she had done to the man from the basement. Katharine just gave her a smile.

"I like the BAU too much to leave," she admitted, looking at her two bosses.

The squealing of wheels interrupted whatever Andi Swan was going to say next. Katharine whipped out her gun, almost relaxing as the car swerved into the side of one of the police cruisers.

She rushed over with Rossi, wrenching open the door with her weapon raised.

There, a sobbing brunette raised her hands. The woman was shaking, which made Katharine suspicious right off the bat.

"They were gonna take me away," the brunette lied, causing Katharine to narrow her eyes. Katharine holstered her weapon and reached for the woman regardless, helping her out of the car.

"We need to get you some help," she said, leading her away from the wreckage. She gave Hotch a look over the woman's bowed head. She could handle this. "What's your name?"

"Lucy," the woman answered, sniffling a bit. "A-and I'm fine."

Katharine put a comforting arm around her shoulder. "We know what happened here."

"No, you don't," Lucy said. At least that wasn't a lie.

"You're right," Katharine said. She looked up as Rossi came to Lucy's other side. "I can't imagine."

"I just don't want to get strapped down again," Lucy sniffled.

Rossi gave Katharine a look over Lucy's head.

"Strapped down?" he asked.

They made their way into the center of the courtyard, Rossi still asking Lucy questions in an attempt to get a bit more information.

When they came up to the SUV that Rossi and Hotch had ridden up in, Rossi offered to give the liar a ride.

"You don't have to come with me," Lucy said, trying her best to get away from the two overbearing agents.

Katharine took a subtle step forward.

"No, it's ok," she said, reaching out for the woman playing traumatized.

In an instant, Lucy had her gun pulled on the two of them. Katharine was quick to react, the fight from earlier still providing her with enough adrenaline to grab the barrel of the gun and attempt to wrestle the weapon from the shorter woman's grasp.

Lucy put up more of a fight than she anticipated, forcing Katharine to trip both of them in an attempt to get the weapon out of her grasp. Katharine kept the weapon in between the two of them, eyes widening as Lucy's finger settled over the trigger.

The brunette underneath Katharine gave her a maniacal grin as she pulled the trigger.

Katharine yelled out as she heard the gun go off... as she felt the gun go off, but when she was pulled up and off the limp woman, she realized Lucy had shot herself instead of Katharine. 

How the woman had managed to confuse the direction of the gun was beyond her, but as the blood bloomed from her stomach, she knew that it wasn't an accident.

Katharine felt like the entire ride back was an out-of-body situation. In the midst of the fight, her vest had ridden up enough that if Lucy wanted, she could have ended Katharine's life right then and there.

Derek helped her out of the SUV upon their arrival at the BAU. They leaned on each other as they made their way back up to the briefing room where Spencer and Garcia were waiting on them.

As they stumbled into the room, Spencer was the first one at Katharine's side, wrapping his arms around her waist as Derek used the table as a temporary crutch.

"What happened to you guys?" Spencer asked, allowing Katharine to use him as her crutch.

"That guy was huge," Derek said, still hunched over from his fight. Katharine laughed slightly. The adrenaline had worn off which meant her thighs were really feeling it. "Seriously."

"You weren't even the one that took him out!" Katharine complained, rubbing her sore inner thighs.

"You should start working out," Spencer said, obviously enjoying the fact that the two fittest members of the team were in pain. Katharine slapped his chest lightly as she giggled regardless.

"Oh, you got jokes now?" Derek asked, pretending to throw a pen in Spencer's general direction.

Katharine calmed down a bit, digging herself deeper into Spencer's side. She felt a wave of sadness wash over herself yet again, causing a look of absolute despair to appear on her face.

"What is it, kid?" Rossi asked, taking note of her shift in mood.

Katharine's frown deepened. "Lucy... she had every chance to pull the trigger on me yet she still chose to end her own life. Why?"

"Best not to dwell on it," Rossi said, giving her a look that said that he knew exactly what she was grappling with. "You did good today."

"We all did," she replied, allowing her head to rest on Spencer's shoulder.

"Yeah," Garcia said, closing the top of her laptop, "if we weren't so exhausted I would toast us."

Katharine managed a grin at that.

"Good work, everybody," Hotch said, appearing in the doorway. "Go home and get some rest. Nobody needs to come in till nine... thirty."

Katharine breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Wait," Garcia said, calling after their boss. "We were supposed to talk ab--has he ever left before us?"

"Baby girl, I don't blame him," Derek said, pushing himself off the table with visible effort. "It's been a long-ass day."

"Well, you heard the man," Rossi said, packing up his things. "Go home."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Derek said, already on his way out the door. Garcia followed next, bouncing after the muscular man.

Spencer looked down at his fiancee, noting that she was practically half asleep on his chest.

"You hungry?" he asked, waking her up. She blinked the sleepiness out of her eyes.

"Starving."

"Great," he beamed as they left the briefing room. "There's this super good Indian restaurant. It's a little ways away, but it's open twenty-four hours and they have amazing chicken tandoori."

Katharine smiled at him and unraveled herself from his arms, taking his hand in hers instead.

"How about we do take out and spend a reasonable time in the bath together before going to bed," she said, tempting him with the idea of a warm bath and possible sex in a bathtub.

He poked her side with his free hand, eliciting a giggle from her as they waited for the elevator to arrive. 

"Only if I'm driving," he compromised. "I don't want you falling asleep at the wheel."

Katharine swatted his hands away from her sides, pulling him onto the elevator as soon as the doors opened.

"You've got yourself a deal, doctor."

She squealed as he attacked her sides once more, grinning into his kiss as the elevator doors closed.