Criminal Minds 1. The Detectives

**Going Wodwo**

**a/n:** This story was inspired by the Round 3 fic prompts on the Chit Chat on the Author's Corner forums. I was assigned Morgan/Prentiss as my characters, and my objects are a camera, a tent, and marshmallows.

The story is AU, obviously, and the title is a direct reference (or rip off, however you prefer) of a Neil Gaiman poem in his anthology _Fragile Things_. As he says in the introduction, "A _wodwo_, or _wodwose_, was a wild man of the woods."

This story is rated M for harsh language. You'll notice it right off the bat, and it doesn't get much better as it goes along. Also, this isn't necessarily an M/P 'ship story; they're just the main characters here.

Thanks to **chiroho** for his always insightful beta'ing skills, though I probably didn't keep as many of the changes to this chapter as he would like. :) Also, I love reviews. That's just a plea to the general reading public.

**Disclaimers:** Criminal Minds and the characters, situations, and plot lines pertaining thereto don't belong to me. Nothing else I reference belongs to me, either. Just the computer I'm typing on and the actual words that come out of it, I guess. :) So, in other words, don't bother suing me.

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**Chapter 1: The Detectives**

kindly and thoroughly beta'd by **chiroho**

**I'm a creeping and intangible sense of loss;  
I'm a memory you can't get out your head.  
If I leave you now,  
You'll wish you were somewhere else instead.  
**-David Gray, "Nemesis"

"'A year later their footage was found.'" Emily Prentiss dropped the newspaper she'd been reading from with a dismissive snort and pinned her partner with a glare. "That's the plot of the fuckin' _Blair Witch Project_, Morgan."

"I know, I know," Derek Morgan said, waving his hands as though to ward off the death rays emanating from her dark eyes. "But there's a difference, Prentiss: _The Blair Witch Project_ was just a movie; the whole 'missing filmmakers' thing was a marketing ploy. This is real." He waved the file under her nose, and she raised a skeptical brow.

"This is a joke, right? You're messing with me? Haha, good one! You almost had me going. Now, can we do some real work before I have to sell myself on the street so we can make rent?" She ignored the thin file he was brandishing and turned back to her own desk. "I was thinking of talking to Mrs. Wakowski again—"

"Em. I'm not kidding. You should read the file." His voice was calm, and it cut through her work-related chatter like a cleaver. He took the two short steps across their tiny office and dropped the file in front of her. "Just humor me, ok?"

She looked up at him for several long, tense heartbeats, but at last she let out a frustrated breath. "Fine. If it's that important to you, _fine_." She opened the anorexic file and began flipping through the scant contents. "There's hardly anything here, Morgan. Just a couple missing persons and some pictures."

"Apparently the locals aren't taking it real serious."

Prentiss caught him with a brief glare. "I can't imagine why," she said, her voice droll. "These are our missings? David Rossi, Penelope Garcia, and Spencer Reid. Oh, pardon, _Doctor_ Spencer Reid. Unlikely looking group." She studied each picture carefully, memorizing the faces. David Rossi was older, probably in his late 50s or early 60s, with dark, penetrating eyes and a thinking man's face. Penelope Garcia had bottle blond hair and cat's eye glasses; her makeup glittered and her smile was at least a thousand watts. Spencer Reid was young, skinny, and geeky, but good-looking in a pretty, almost androgynous way. Calvin Klein would love him.

"A college professor, a professional grad student, and a computer geek head into the woods…no wonder they never came out again," Prentiss remarked.

Morgan let out an impatient sigh. "These people are missing, Prentiss, and the locals don't seem to care. The families are desperate, and they want us to look into it."

"Morgan, this happened in Tennessee."

"Yeah. They were investigating some old Appalachian folktales. They were up in the mountains and—"

"Morgan! That's 500 miles away! We can't travel 500 miles to investigate the plot of a bad movie."

He sighed and ran a hand back and forth over the smooth dome of his skull. "I know it sounds crazy, but listen. David Rossi was one of my professors back at Northwestern. I hadn't even really _thought_ about him in years, and then suddenly the call comes in from his daughter. It's gotta mean something, Prentiss."

She eyed him. He'd been on a spiritual kick lately, ever since…well, just _ever since_…and Prentiss was growing weary of his constant search for signs and miracles and hints from the universe at large. "Maybe he'd talked about you, Morgan," she said, keeping her voice gentle. "Maybe she remembered your name and thought you'd be willing to do what the local cops aren't, despite the fact that they _don't_ have to travel 500 miles to do it." She'd lost the thread during the course of that sentence, and the initial care she'd been taking to spare his feelings had evaporated somewhere along the way.

"I know it sounds crazy, and I know I'm asking a lot, but I think we need to do this."

Prentiss recognized that tone, and it had her closing her eyes and shaking her head in weary resignation. She would cave, she knew, and it was almost better to get it over with and spare herself the headache. "Rossi was a professor at Northwestern, you said?"

Morgan cleared his throat. "Well. I mean. He _was_, when I was there."

"But…?"

"_But_ he left sometime in the late 90s. He had some…theories…that were unpopular."

"So he was a raving nutjob."

He shifted, discomfort written in every line of his broad-shouldered frame. "Nooo, I didn't say that. He just wasn't exactly mainstream."

"Oh God," she groaned, rolling her eyes. "Mulder, Scully, and Eddie Haskell go camping."

"Hey, that's not fair. He looks like a nice kid."

"So did Eddie Haskell. Look, it says here he had three Ph.D.s by the time he was 24. What were you doing when you were 24, Morgan?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but she could tell by the faraway look on his face that he took her seriously. "I'd just met Elizabeth," he said. "I was doing every damn thing I could to get her to look at me, and I was fuckin' it all up."

"A woman who wouldn't look at you? I didn't know such a creature existed in nature."

"Yeah," he said, voice wistful, "she's one of a kind."

Prentiss allowed the moment to linger for only a few seconds more before she cleared her throat. "Right. Well, when _I_ was 24 I was getting the shit beat outta me every night by Timmy Lawson, until one night I got sick of it and kicked him so hard he _still_ has to piss sitting down." She smirked, and he shook his head, face lighting in a quick, amazed grin.

"Emily Prentiss, ball busting bitch. You are one bad motha—"

"Shut your mouth," she interrupted dutifully. She closed the file and drummed her fingers against it in a thoughtful rhythm. "We can't afford a trip to Tennessee, Morgan."

"They're paying all expenses, plus covering for the work we'd be missing. Emily, look, we can hash this out all day, or you can just say _yes_ now and save a lot of time. Which's it gonna be?"

"I have to make a good show of it."

"You want a good show?" He held up a small plastic case, and Prentiss could see it held a memory card like you'd use in a digital camera. "I got you a show _right here_."

She glared at the little bit of plastic, but the expression held more curiosity than irritation. At last she relented. "Let's hear it, Sam."

He booted up his laptop and slid the card into it. A few clicks later and the shaky footage began. Prentiss squinted; leaned closer to the screen. It didn't last long, and at the end of it she sat back in the squeaky desk chair and blew dark bangs off her forehead with a long puff of air. "Of all the detective agencies in all the world, why did David Rossi's daughter have to walk into ours?"

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_Hey, so, do us both a favor and review me! They keep me writing. :)_


	2. The Chief

**a/n:** Thank you muchly for the reviews for chapter 1! I do appreciate them. :)

Yes, Hotch will be here...he's already here! And J.J. will be, too, a little later on.

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**Chapter 2: The Chief**

**I must be nuts. Sense left  
with shoes and house...  
**-Neil Gaiman, "Going Wodwo"

Emily Prentiss was a city girl. She'd been born and raised in Chicago, and the city was bred into every cell and bone and fiber of her being. Long open stretches of road made her antsy. Quiet nights made her jittery. Woods made her _crazy_.

"You owe me for this, Derek Morgan," she said.

He could tell she wasn't really kidding. "Come on, Prentiss, it's pretty. Look, that's like a stream waterfall thing." He pointed to a trickle of water winding down the sheer rock face that the road somehow precariously clung to.

She shot him a dirty look. "I don't _like_ stream waterfall things. I like the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. I like hot dogs dragged through the garden and deep-dish pizza. I like Wrigley Field and the Sears tower. I do _not_ like fucking mountains and fucking mountain people and country fried _steak_!"

He struggled to keep a straight face as he navigated the road's switchbacks. "No one's asking you to fuck any mountain people, Prentiss."

She made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a hiss and slumped down in the car seat. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

"Christ, Prentiss, what crawled up your ass and died? All we gotta do is poke around a bit, hassle the locals some, maybe check out the woods—"

"Stop right there. I don't do woods. You know that, Morgan. You know my strict anti-nature policy."

He counted silently to five before he started to speak again. "We have to check out where they went missing, Prentiss. You know that."

Knowing he was right pissed her off that much more, but she managed to swallow it. "Tell me about this cop we're gonna be dealing with," she said, changing the subject.

"Name's Aaron Hotchner. He used to be some big shot homicide guy in Boston, but he called it quits about five years ago."

"Hhmm. Any idea why he left, or why he chose this backwater?"

Morgan shrugged without taking his eyes off the road. "You ever heard of the Boston Reaper?"

"I'm not stupid, Morgan."

His mouth quirked. "Yeah, well, apparently the Reaper had a real hard-on for Detective Hotchner. Things got personal. It didn't end well."

"How bad?"

"Son of a bitch attacked him, cut him all up. Killed his wife, too."

Prentiss winced. "Ouch. God. That might be enough to get anyone to flee to the sticks." Her mouth formed a little _O_ as it sunk in. "He's _that_ Aaron Hotchner? Caught the Boston Reaper Aaron Hotchner? Holy shit."

Morgan nodded. "By all reports he's a good cop, real thorough. I'm not really sure why he let these disappearances go."

"There's a lot of land out there," she said. On the other side of the guardrail was a sheer drop into a long, sweeping valley. It was shrouded in mist and shadow as the sun sank behind the mountain's gentle, weathered peak. "It's obvious he searched, or they wouldn't've found the video. I guess once they did he figured the case was solved."

"There's a bunch more of it. Rossi's daughter said it's in evidence at the Walter's Gap police station."

"Walter's Gap. This has got to be some parallel universe. I'm going to a place called Walter's fucking Gap!" She shifted in her seat; studied her partner from the corner of her eye. "It's been a year, Morgan. What makes you think we'll find anything at all?"

"I don't know." He shrugged again, restlessly. "It's a feeling I got, that's all."

"We've been partners a while," she said.

"Eight years."

"Eight long, lean years."

"Haven't I earned a little faith in eight years?"

She pretended to consider it. "I guess you have," she finally decided. "Enough to get me on a plane. And into a car. And onto a mountain."

"Enough to get you into the woods?"

"I don't know if that much faith _exists_, partner mine. But I'll think about it."

"Wow. Those musta been some eight years."

She smiled, and for once there was so sarcasm or mocking in it. "The best. In spite of everything, the best."

"_In spite of_? I thought _because of_."

"Eh." She waved a hand. "Don't push it."

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The brief history Morgan had given Prentiss about Aaron Hotchner was true. It was the facts, dry and hard, without any of the wet, squishy, messy _emotions_ that had marked the whole ordeal.

The Reaper – George Foyet – had become obsessed with Detective Aaron Hotchner, and he had named him his nemesis. He wrote him taunting notes. Left little jibes directed at him with the victims. It only made Hotch (as he had been nicknamed way back at the Academy) that much more determined to catch him.

That single-minded determination was what had made him such a great detective, but it was also his major weakness. He was so set on capturing Foyet that he forgot his own vulnerability; he forgot to protect what needed protecting. Foyet, like any good predator, sniffed out Hotch's Achilles' heel, and like Paris guided by Apollo, he attacked it.

First he went after the man himself, slicing him with the care and skill of a surgeon. As he lay bleeding on the dining room floor, Foyet sank back into the darkness and waited. When Hotch's pretty wife came home, small son in tow, he struck again. Luckily the boy was able to hide somewhere, and Haley managed to trigger the burglar alarm before she died, but the look on Aaron Hotchner's face as he watched his wife die had kept Foyet quiet, murder-wise, for months.

Once Hotch recovered from his injuries, Foyet began killing again. He was as careful as ever. As meticulous and as ruthless. What he hadn't counted on – due to his own weakness, the one most hated by the gods: hubris – was that stabbing the detective and killing his wife had only made him more determined, more dangerous, and with his son stashed with some far away relative, the determination was no longer a vulnerability.

Foyet's arrest was Hotch's last act as a Boston Homicide detective, and he tendered his resignation the next day. He applied for and got the job as Walter's Gap's chief of police. He scooped up his son, packed the few things they'd be taking with them, and said goodbye to Boston forever.

Five years later, he still had zero regrets. Jack was thriving and happy. The town was small and sleepy. He'd built a new life for them here, and the things that haunted his dreams at night were normal, mundane things: a leaky roof; a carburetor going bad; Jack growing up too fast.

He had never forgotten the missing filmmakers, had worried about them from the moment they arrived in town, looking so city and so green. He'd spoken to Dave Rossi, the team's leader, and had warned him about the dangers they might face in the hills surrounding Walter's Gap. Rossi had seemed confident – blithe, even – and Hotch had tried to borrow a bit of the older man's chutzpah.

It had taken a year to find that stupid camera, and that had been an accident. A group of hikers had stumbled across it and brought it back to the Walter's Gap police station. The battery had been completely dead, so luckily they hadn't been able to watch any of the footage the camera had captured.

What Hotch saw had made his blood run cold. He wanted to erase it from his memory; it wasn't anything he wanted to know, ever, but once seen it couldn't be _un_seen.

Darker things than roofs and cars haunted his dreams now, and it was with no little trepidation that he had even agreed to take Derek Morgan's call. The big city PIs had no clue what they were in for, and Hotch wasn't completely sure he was willing to enlighten them. When one of the uniforms poked his head around Hotch's door and told him the detectives from Chicago had arrived, Hotch rose from his desk, straightened his tie, and went to meet the visitors.

It was going to be an interesting couple of days.

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_A review from you, kind reader, would make my day. Yes, you!_


	3. The Meeting

**a/n:** This story is such a wild hair. I hope you guys are enjoying reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it!

If you are, why not drop me a review and tell me so? I'd love to hear all about it. :)

Thanks as always to **chiroho** for the beta'ing! I'm making him work quite hard this time 'round, because I'm writing all this when I'm half asleep.

PS: I realized I originally posted an older version of this chapter, so I've replaced it. It's not very different, but I'm annoyed with myself all the same.

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**Chapter 3: The Meeting**

beta: **chiroho  
**

**Like sweet butter that's spread on toast,  
We fade into mist like ghosts.  
**-Bob Schneider, "Ghosts"**  
**

Walter's Gap, for all Prentiss' mocking, was a nice little town. There was a pretty main street with shops and restaurants that all seemed busy; the trees that lined it were maple, and their leaves were painted in fiery shades of orange and red. It was the County Seat, so it had a Greek Revival courthouse, a jail that had been state of the art in 1965, and a police station that looked like someone's house. Prentiss gave Morgan a look as they pulled up in front. "Should I have brought a casserole?"

"Would you stop? It'd be good to have some cooperation from the locals, so try to be nice."

She looked mildly insulted. "I'm always nice. To cops."

He snorted and rolled his eyes before climbing out of the car and slamming the door behind him. She scrambled after him, stretching her shorter legs a bit to catch up, and fell into step at his side. "So how do we play this?"

"It's a small town. I'll just lay on the charm with the sweet Southern honey behind the desk, and we'll get anything we want."

She didn't bother replying to this, just rolled her eyes and stepped through the door he held open for her. When her dark gaze fell on the guy manning the counter, she snickered. "Go for it, big boy. I'm sure Officer Bubba over there would just _love_ your brand of charm. You do got a pretty mouth."

"That's not funny, Prentiss. Don't you know that movie strikes fear and horror into the heart of every man who's ever thought about going camping?"

"_You're_ the one who wanted to explore the woods, Morgan, not me."

"Hey, y'all them detectives from Chicago?" the desk sergeant called before Morgan could reply.

They exchanged a look, and then stepped forward and offered ID. "I'm Derek Morgan, and this is my partner Emily Prentiss. I believe Chief Hotchner was expecting us?"

"Sir, ma'am," he said with a nod at each of them as he studied their identification.

Morgan gave Prentiss a subtle elbow to the ribs to forestall her cynical snort.

"Yessir," the sergeant was saying, "he told me to look out for ya. I'll just go get him. Y'all have a seat. Need coffee or somethin'?"

"No, thanks, we're fine," Morgan said.

Prentiss watched the man go with a pained expression. "_We're fine_?" she demanded of her partner. "I'm not fine. I would kill for some coffee."

"Copshop coffee?"

"Well I don't know. Maybe in addition to having fine Southern manners they make better coffee than regular cops."

"Cops are cops, Prentiss; manners is just window dressing."

"Actually, Mr. Morgan, I consider manners integral to civilized society. They're what separate us from the apes," a voice said from the doorway.

"Yeah, that and Colt .45s," Prentiss muttered.

"I'm sorry?" the man said, straight dark brows coming together over piercing dark olive eyes.

Unnerved by that look, Prentiss cleared her throat and held out her hand. "Emily Prentiss. You must be Chief Hotchner."

Morgan introduced himself, and they all shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Prentiss, Mr. Morgan."

"Ugh, no _Ms._, please."

"Prentiss is a real old-fashioned kinda girl. It's sweet, really."

She glared daggers at Morgan for a brief second (long enough to shut him up, but not quite long enough to draw blood) before turning back to Hotchner with a smile. "I guess you know why we're here," she said.

"Your partner phoned ahead, yes. Why don't we step into my office?" He led them through the station, past the curious stares of his officers, and into his small, immaculate, utterly masculine office. He offered them coffee, which again Morgan refused for both of them, and all three took seats.

"What can you tell us about the disappearances?" Morgan asked as he and Prentiss both pulled out spiral notebooks.

"Not much more than is in the file. They were first reported missing by Kevin Lynch, Penelope Garcia's fiancé. Apparently she had been calling him every night via satellite phone, and she'd missed a night."

"How long before you launched a search?" Prentiss asked.

"Considering the circumstances, we began searching right away. The missing persons reports weren't filed until the next day, but in these mountains 24 hours can mean the difference between life and death."

Prentiss shot Morgan a quick _I told you so_ look. He ignored her. "Go on," he prompted.

Hotchner raised a brow before pulling out a map. "We started our grid search here, and extended it up through this area," he said, pointing out the locations with a blunt, calloused finger. Those weren't the hands of a paper pusher, Prentiss thought; this man was in the field as much as his uniforms. "We were assisted by the Forest Service, of course. You can contact the district ranger we worked with; her name is Jennifer Jareau." He passed a card across the desk, and Morgan pocketed it.

"That's a lot of territory to cover," Prentiss remarked. "How did you know where to look?"

"Dr. Rossi filed his itinerary with both myself and Ms. Jareau. It isn't strictly necessary, but he knew he and his team weren't as familiar with the woods as they could've been. It was a safety precaution."

"He was expecting to run into trouble?" Morgan asked.

"Quite the opposite, in fact. He was full of confidence. I think it was Dr. Reid's idea, actually. He…well…when I met with them the first time, he kept offering statistics about bears and cougars and rattlesnakes."

"Bears? There are _bears_ here?" Prentiss said as the blood drained from her face.

"Black bears. This time of year they're heading into hibernation, though. They'll be fat, happy and sleepy, so they're really easy to avoid." He seemed slightly amused by her obvious distress.

"Come on, Prentiss; it's just like Winnie the Pooh," Morgan told her with a nudge.

"I'll remind you that you said that when a bear is _eating your face_," she hissed.

Hotchner hid a laugh with a cough and started to roll the map up again.

"Wait," Morgan said. "Where did those hikers find the camera?"

"Here," he said. "There are some old moonshiner shacks out there. We think it's possible Rossi's team sought shelter in them."

"Shelter? Was there a storm?" Prentiss asked.

"No, no storms while they were out. But it was this time of year; fall was moving in pretty hard. It can get cold up there at night."

Prentiss shivered. "What on God's green earth would possess them to go out there in the first place? They weren't hikers or granola-crunching tree huggers."

"No, certainly not," he agreed with a flash of dimples that came and went so fast Prentiss wasn't completely sure she'd seen them at all. "But Dr. Rossi was determined to investigate some of the older stories first hand."

"What sorta stories?"

Hotchner shrugged; kept his expression as mild as possible. "Ghosts, UFOs, strange animals up in the hills. The usual. Everyone has a story, and they're all willing to tell. Those three were eating it up. I don't know that they came to town with the intention of heading out to the woods, but something changed their minds."

"Any idea what?"

"No clue. The skunk ape, maybe?"

"I'm sorry…skunk ape?" Prentiss said.

"Local Big Foot type thing. We get a few sightings a month during hunting season, and then it tapers off for the year."

"Big foot?" she said, voice rising in disbelief; his face remained neutral. "You're serious?"

"I understand your skepticism, and I'm not saying I believe it. But that hardly matters, does it? The people around here believe it, and that's a powerful thing. I just take the reports, and send a uniform out if any damage is done."

Prentiss cleared her throat and snapped her notebook closed. She gave Morgan a significant look, and he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, his phone rang. He checked the caller ID and his head fell back. Prentiss smirked. He glared at her, and shot Hotchner an embarrassed look. "I'm sorry; I gotta take this." He flipped open the phone and accepted the call. "Hey, baby, how's Chicago?"

Hotchner and Prentiss watched his expression change as he listened to the caller. He seemed to squirm in his seat, and after a moment he said, "Baby, I told you I'm in Tennessee on a _case_." He made desperate eyes at Prentiss, and she waved him away. He slunk off to take the call, closing the office door behind him, and Hotchner watched him go with a guarded expression before turning back to Prentiss.

"His wife," she explained. "She thinks the agency is just a front to cover up our torrid affair."

He lifted a brow. "Is it?"

"Yes. We both applied for and received PI licenses; we pay the rent every month on a shit hole office in a crappy building with bad plumbing; and we randomly run around town taking pictures of married men with their pants down, all so we can get some afternoon nooky on that nasty splintery desk Morgan loves so damn much."

Hotch's lips twitched in what might have been a smile. "Sounds like the perfect arrangement."

"Oh yeah. It's heaven. Too bad Elizabeth's wise to our charade."

"I guess that would cramp your style." He hesitated. Then, "I invested as much as I could into the search for Dr. Rossi's team. But it was getting colder and colder, and we eventually realized either exposure had gotten them, or some animal had."

"But you never found the bodies?"

"No. But, again, an animal could have scattered the bones to who knows where."

She shuddered. "So you don't think there's any chance we'll find anything?"

"I didn't think there was before, but those hikers found the camera. I guess there's always a chance."

"Do you think we're crazy to go looking for them?"

He was silent a long time. "I would encourage you _not_ to. Those woods won't be any safer for you and your partner than they were for Dr. Rossi and his team."

Prentiss considered his advice with a slow nod. "Thing is, my partner thinks this case is important. He's so dead sure of it he managed to talk me into coming all the way down here, and I promise you that was a feat in and of itself. So if I'm here already, I might as well be thorough."

"I thought you'd say that," he said. Though his tone was heavy with regret, Prentiss thought she caught the twinkle of something else in his eye. She couldn't place it, though, and before she had a chance the moment passed. "Let me go over their route with you," he said, ducking his head back to the map. "You'll want to follow their footsteps as best you can out there."

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_I'm trying to make sure I have the next chapter written before I publish, so chapter 4 is ready to go. Hopefully that way you guys don't have to wait long for updates. :)_

_Reviews are nice.  
_


	4. The Town

**a/n:** I receive an email every time I get a review, and I get the emails on my phone. I'd only received, like, 4 review emails, and I was a little bummed. Then I stopped by to read the story over (you have to know where you've been to know where you're going), and I had 12 reviews! I was very excited. Thanks, everyone, for all your kind and supportive words!

There seem to be quite a few phone calls in this story; that's normally something I avoid as much as possible, because I find them horribly boring to read. I've tried to keep these short and, as much as possible, interesting.

Oh, I realized I posted an older version of chapter 3. It's not a huge deal, but if you want to, go and re-read it. All the major things are the same; it's just got a bit more flourish to it. :)

Thanks, as always, to my wonderful beta **chiroho**. Your services are invaluable!

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**Chapter 4: The Town**

**True madness takes or leaves us in the wood  
halfway through all our lives.  
**-Neil Gaiman, "Going Wodwo"**  
**

As soon as the detectives were gone, Hotch checked his watch and picked up the phone. It was getting late, but he figured she would still be in. Sure enough, after two rings a crisp voice answered. "_Jennifer Jareau, District Ranger._"

He cleared his throat, feeling strangely nervous. "Ms. Jareau, hello. It's Chief Hotchner from Walter's Gap."

There was a small, amused silence. Then, "_Of course, Chief Hotchner. How are you?_"

"I'm well. Yourself?"

"_Tired. It's been a long day. What can I do for you?_"

"I'm sorry to bother you—"

"_No, it's no bother. I didn't mean—_"

"Oh, well, no, I didn't—" He cleared his throat again; felt like an idiot. "Let me start over. Do you remember that film crew from last year? It was led by David Rossi; they were investigating the local legends and folklore."

"_I don't think I could forget. Have you found anything new? Since the camera, I mean._"

He had called her when the hikers found the camera; they'd debated launching a new search, but had decided against it since the group had been missing almost a year. "No, nothing new. I just wanted to let you know there's a pair of PIs down from Chicago. They've been hired by David Rossi's daughter, and they'll probably come see you before they leave town."

He heard her long, thoughtful exhalation. "_Are they planning to go into the woods?_"

"Yes, definitely. I couldn't dissuade them, even though they're perhaps even less prepared for it than Dr. Rossi and his crew." He fiddled with a pen on his desk and imagined the look on her pretty face: her delicate features would be set in a small frown, and she might even be chewing her lip – something she only did when she was really annoyed or perplexed.

"_Have they seen the footage?_"

"No," he assured her, "at least not what we have here. I believe Dr. Rossi's daughter had a portion of it, so I'm sure she gave them that much."

"_They've come all the way from Chicago? A year later? This is strange, Hotch._"

He'd forgotten that she'd started calling him that during the search last year. His mouth flicked upward in a brief smile before he focused again. "If they do go in – not _if_, but _when_ – _when_ they go in, we should go with them."

He could hear her drumming her fingertips against the desk. "_I agree. We don't need two more big-city missings. How about I call you after I speak with them? Hopefully I can nail down their plans more definitely, and we can figure out the best approach together._"

"That sounds good. I look forward to speaking with you, Ms. Jareau."

"_Me, too. Oh, and Hotch? Call me_ J.J_._"

He grinned. "J.J., of course. Have a great night."

"_You, too. Goodnight._"

He returned the phone to its cradle. Attempted to do some paperwork. Clicked the pen in his hand again and again. Giving up after only ten minutes, he rose from his desk and headed toward the evidence room. He didn't know why, but he had to see that footage again. Maybe he had to reassure himself that he hadn't imagined things the first time, or was misremembering now.

He knew eventually Morgan and Prentiss would ask about seeing it, and he wasn't sure what he was going to tell them. The case was still officially open, so he could claim it was evidence in an on-going investigation. They would see right through that feeble excuse, though, and he didn't really have anything else to offer them.

Sighing, Hotch plugged the memory card into his laptop and wondered what the hell he was going to do about Emily Prentiss and Derek Morgan.

* * *

"Meatloaf—? You're seriously going to _eat_ that? It's loaf. Made from _meat_." Prentiss stared at her partner's steaming pile of gravy-smothered food with an expression that perfectly mingled horror, fascination, and disbelief.

"I like meatloaf, Prentiss. My momma made the best meatloaf when I was growing up. Didn't you eat it as a kid?"

She offered him a sour smile. "My mother was too busy looking for either her next boyfriend or her next fix, depending. No one made meatloaf at Chez Prentiss."

"Now's your chance to make up for it. Come on, Prentiss, it's _good_." He loaded his fork with meat and potatoes and moved it toward her with an absurd buzzing noise. "Open up, Emily! Yum yum!"

"You're ridiculous," she said with a snort. "I'll stick to my salad, thanks."

He eyed her plate with skepticism. "I don't know how you live off that rabbit food."

"It's actually pretty decent. Fresh, like maybe they grow it around here."

His eyes widened. "Gosh, you mean like in the _ground_? Who woulda thunk…?"

She rolled her eyes and speared a tomato; popped it into her mouth to smother a laugh. "So what did you think of the famous Aaron Hotchner?" she asked after swallowing.

"He seemed pretty solid."

She was amazed to note that he'd already cleared half the plate. "You think?" she said.

"You didn't?" he asked, pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth to fix her with a puzzled stare.

"I don't know." Her eyes were unfocused and she toyed absently with her knife as she considered. "It's not that I don't trust him; I just feel like there're pieces of the story he's not telling us."

"Hhhmm," he said around a huge bite. He washed it down with a big gulp of sweet tea, then, "We should ask him about that extra footage tomorrow. Rossi's daughter said the cops kept most of it."

"It's evidence, you know; he may not show it to us."

Morgan waved that away. "Technically it is, yeah, but it seems like Hotchner basically considers the case closed. They're dead, the end."

"And yet here we are, ready to risk life and limb and fucking _Big_ Foot to find what, Morgan? _Maybe_, if we're extremely lucky, a few bones?"

He lowered the roll he'd been devouring; sighed. "I don't know what we're gonna find, Prentiss, if anything. I just know there's something not right about this whole thing, and I wanna figure out what."

She studied him across the table for a long, silent moment. They'd been partners eight years, and she'd always trusted him; had followed his hunches and his 'feelings,' and found he was usually right. At the moment, though, her gut and his weren't in very close agreement, and she wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. "We should talk to some of the locals," she finally said with a wave around the restaurant that encompassed the whole town. "Hotchner said everyone knows the legends, and everyone has a story."

"It might be the best way to figure out what Rossi was chasing," he agreed.

"If it's Big Foot, you're in deep shit, buddy."

"Skunk ape, Prentiss; skunk ape. Try to acclimate."

She pinned him with a death glare and reached across to steal the last roll. "Acclimate this," she offered with a sweet smile and a rude gesture.

He laughed, and they spent the rest of the meal discussing the case with their usual friendly, affectionate bickering.

* * *

Somewhere in Walter's Gap, a small, sweaty man was bent over a telephone. It took him three tries to dial the right number, and the voice on the other end made him shake so hard he almost fumbled the phone in his slick hands. "It's me," he said on a gulp.

"_I can read the Caller ID. What do you want?_"

"Look, we maybe got trouble. There's some people—"

"_Private investigators. From Chicago. Yes, I know. Is that the reason you're calling me?_"

"Well, I just…I thought…"

"_There's your mistake. It isn't your job to think. There's nothing left for them to find, is there?_"

"No. No, there ain't, I just—"

"_Enough. If you did your job as you claim to have done, then we don't have a problem. Do we have a problem?_"

"I guess…no, I guess we don't."

"_Good. Don't call me again._"

The call disconnected with a sharp _click_, and the man wiped his damp forehead with a blue kerchief. "God damn! God damn, what the hell I got myself into?" he asked the universe at large. Still shaking and sweating like a jonesing addict, he tucked the phone back into his pocket, mopped his face again, and tried to forget the whole fucked up mess.

* * *

_Well that was ominous. Tune in next time to see some more of what idyllic little Walter's Gap is hiding!_

_Also, reviews make me smile big time.  
_


	5. The Matriarch

**a/n:** Wow, thank you all so much for the reviews! I'm glad you're having fun with the story, because I am, too! Keep the reviews coming, because they definitely help inspire me. :)

As always, a big thank you to my beta **chiroho**.

* * *

**Chapter 5: The Matriarch**

**Take a walk to the edge of town  
Where the viaduct looms,**  
**Like a bird of doom  
As it shifts and cracks.**  
**Where secrets lie in the border fires,  
In the humming wires.**  
-Nick Cave the Bad Seeds, "Red Right Hand"

"Yeah, I seen ol' Skunky. Smelly ass sumbitch – pardon the language, ma'am."

Prentiss' smile was more like a grimace. "I've heard it all before."

It was bright and early the next morning (Prentiss had admitted, grudgingly, that the sun looked kind of pretty coming up over the mountains), and the detectives were interviewing residents about some of the legends Hotchner had mentioned the evening before. Their current subject, Homer – like the poet, not the Simpson – Miller, was regaling them with tales of the local wild man of the woods, the skunk ape.

"I think he was more scared of us, though," he continued. "We was up in a high hide, but I swear on my grave he knew we was there. Looked straight at us, then turned tail and skeedaddled."

"What were you hunting?" Morgan asked. "Deer?"

"Naw. Skunky ain't usually around durin' deer season; he got more sense than that. We was out after some cougars been hasslin' folk."

"So you're saying this, um, _Skunky_, as you call him—"

"Well it ain't like he never stopped to introduce hisself. We just call him that made-up like."

"Right. But you're saying this creature is intelligent?"

Homer shrugged. "Seems to be. I ain't never had no chat with him, but he sure does know how to keep hisself scarce."

"You said you talked to Dr. Rossi before he took his team into the woods," Morgan said.

"Yep, sure did. That man had _city_ writ all over him. Kinda like y'all, pardon me sayin'."

"I take it as a compliment," Prentiss said.

"Did he ask you about the skunk ape? Is that what he was looking for out there?" Morgan said, ignoring her.

"Naw, least I don't think so. We talked about ol' Skunky, but he asked about a bunch other stuff, too. He knew all about the ghosts down in the Gap."

"The Gap? You mean, uh, _Walter's_ Gap?" Prentiss said.

"I mean Cumberland Gap, 'bout five miles south a-here. You got everythin' down there: ghosts, aliens, skunk ape, Melungeons."

"Me-what-ons?"

"Melungeons. They live up in the hills, real secret like. No one knows where they came from. Some people say they's part Cherokee, or maybe part Turk. Some people say they's Spanish, or even African." His weathered face split in a grin. "My momma was part Melungeon, so they're my people, too."

Prentiss got him to spell the word, and she wrote it down in her notebook, promising herself she'd Google it later.

"Did Dr. Rossi mention anything specific he and his team were studying?"

His eyes squinted as he thought it over. "Welp, I can't say as he told me much anything. You should go talk to Troy Meechum, him as owns the hardware store." He jerked his thumb toward the other end of Main Street. "They woulda stopped in there before a-headin' out."

"We'll do that. Thanks for your time, Mr. Miller." Morgan offered his hand, and the old man shook it.

"You kids better be careful in them woods. They ain't safe for city folk. There's worse things than Skunky out there."

"We'll keep that in mind, sir," Morgan assured him.

He gave them another long, squint-eyed look before jerking his head in a quick nod and continuing on his way.

Prentiss let out a low whistle. "We hit the jackpot this time, Morgan. Is crazy in the water around here?"

He shot her an irritated glance. "I wouldn't be so quick to judge, Prentiss. These guys are seasoned hunters. He's been exploring these woods his entire life, and he knows the wildlife; if there's something that didn't fit, he would recognize it."

She held up her hands in surrender. "Ok, I get it. He's a mountain man, and mountain men know their mountains." She glanced restlessly up and down the street. It was still early, and most of the shops were closed. The town was peaceful and quiet; it made her twitchy. "Have you heard of this Cumberland Gap place?"

"Yeah, a little. When I Googled Rossi, there was a lot of stuff about Cumberland Gap. It's pretty much the hotbed for local folklore. It's not a town, like Walter's Gap – it's a, ya know, geographical feature. I don't know if Walter has his own Gap, or if he just shares one."

Her mouth twisted in a brief smile. "Too bad we can't ask Walter."

"Damn shame. I guess we'll just have to settle for Troy Meechum, hardware entrepreneur."

"Lead on, partner mine."

* * *

"I'm here to see Chief Hotchner."

The morning desk sergeant swallowed nervously and nodded in a swift, whip-like motion. "Yes'm, Miz Walters. I'll just call him up—"

"No, no, I'll go back. I know the way."

"Well, actually, that ain't—"

"Thank you, Sergeant Todd. Tell your dear mother I said hello. Good day." With that, the little old lady was blazing a path across the station to Hotchner's office. Todd didn't even have time to call ahead and warn his boss before she knocked on his door.

Hotch glanced up at the knock and called for the visitor to enter. A moment later he was blinking in surprise at the sight of Rosalie Walters, the town's matriarch, filling his doorway with her bird-like frame. She was tiny, not even five feet, but what she lacked in size she made up for in gravitas. Even Hotch got the sweats around her. He rose to his feet and hurried around the desk to offer his greetings. "Mrs. Walters, what a surprise. If you'd told me you were stopping by—"

"Nonsense, young man, I haven't time to phone ahead all over town. Sit down, sit down, I hate it when people fuss. I'm old, not feeble."

"Of course not, ma'am. Please, have a seat. What can I do for you today?"

She settled herself in one of Hotch's chairs, and he returned to his spot behind the desk. Her eyes captured him in a long, penetrating stare, and he fought the urge to squirm. She always made him feel like a misbehaving schoolboy; he couldn't really fathom how she managed it. "Chief Hotchner, something rather bothersome has come to my attention."

He searched his mental database, but he couldn't place anything that might be disturbing her. Her grandson had been behaving of late; her son had moved from the Gap nearly a year ago. "I'm sorry, ma'am. Perhaps I can help."

Her smile was thin. "Perhaps you can. It _is_ why I hired you, after all."

Dark brows drew together, and olive eyes narrowed a fraction. "Excuse me, Mrs. Walters, but I believe the town council hired me."

She waved a dismissive hand. "I am the town council, young man. If I hadn't wanted you for our Chief of Police, you would still be in Boston right now."

He digested this in silence, and she watched him like a miniature hawk as he did so. This time her smile was more predatory. "I see we understand one another," she said. "I brought you here to enforce order. I like Walter's Gap the way it is, and it's your job to maintain the status quo. Now, tell me about these detectives from Chicago."

As much as this tiny woman intimidated him, Hotch refused to be bullied. He'd never been one to jump through bureaucratic hoops, and he wasn't about to start now – no matter if the bureaucracy took the form of a little old lady in a giant hat. "Mrs. Walters, the detectives are nothing for you to worry about. They're in town to investigate last year's disappearance of David Rossi and his team of filmmakers."

"Yes, that's what concerns me. Nasty business, that. We don't need it stirred up again."

He folded his hands on the desk and offered her with a bland stare. "Wouldn't it be better to know what happened?"

"Why? It's over and done. It's been a year; surely we should move on. I'd like you to send the detectives back to Chicago. Walter's Gap is a nice town with a good reputation; we don't need people whispering about _disappearances_ in our woods."

"I don't have any control over what they do. I've given them what little information I have, and if they want to stay in town to investigate further, that's their business. They aren't disturbing anyone."

"They're disturbing _me_!" she said, her composure cracking for the first time. She blinked several times before smoothing a hand over her wool skirt and letting out a small sigh. "Chief Hotchner, I know you like your life here. Your darling son is doing well, and you're both recovering after all that nasty business in Boston. I would hate for you to have to start over somewhere else just as little Jack is getting comfortable."

Hotch's brow furrowed further. "Are you threatening my job?"

She raised her hands in an elegant shrug. "I would never do something so low as _threaten_, young man. I'm merely illuminating the possibilities."

He smoothed his features; fixed an accommodating look onto his face. "I understand, Mrs. Walters. I'm sure I can point the detectives in the right direction."

Her smile was brilliant. "Of course you can, Chief Hotchner. Your discretion and dedication are two of the reasons I hired you." She rose. "I'll just see myself out. Thank you for your time."

"Of course, Mrs. Walters. My door's always open."

She smiled again before closing the door behind her.

Expensive perfume lingered in the wake of her departure. Hotch sat at his desk for a good fifteen minutes mulling the brief meeting over in his mind. Finally he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card; dialed the cell number written there and listened to the ringing.

"_Morgan_."

"Mr. Morgan, this is Chief Hotchner. I was wondering if you and your partner could spare some time for me today. I have some video footage you might be interested in."

"_Rossi's footage?_"

"Exactly. Shall we say eleven o'clock?" It was nine now, Hotch noted with a glance at his watch.

Hotch heard a short, muffled conversation before Morgan returned to the phone. "_We'll be there._"

"Thank you. Oh, and Morgan? Please don't tell anyone in town about the video."

"_Any particular reason why not?_"

He hesitated; a million and five reasons popped into his mind, and he discarded them all. "Small towns have ears," he finally decided. "I'd rather keep the footage between the three of us."

Hotch could sense his hesitation, but at last the other man relented. "_No problem. We'll see you in two hours_."

* * *

_Stay tuned for chapter 6, and finally see what the much-discussed footage actually shows!_

_Reviews, loves, are a writer's happy place. :)  
_


	6. The Footage

**a/n:** Once again and as always, thanks for the reviews for chapter 5! Here, as promised, is the long-awaited footage...

Beta'd by **chiroho**, who this time saved me from a pretty silly and embarrassing typo. :D (or maybe a Freudian slip...)

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Footage**

**Unmarked helicopters hovering;****  
They said it was a weather balloon.****  
I know the truth;  
****I know the whole shebang.**  
-Soul Coughing, "Unmarked Helicopters"

The footage hadn't been edited, and it consisted largely of long, rambling interviews with townspeople, and then even longer, more rambling reflections by the filmmakers themselves. It was one of these taped reflections they'd seen back in Chicago, and now they were beginning to worry that this much-vaunted footage was just more of the same. Morgan gave a jaw-popping yawn and rubbed his face with a large hand. Prentiss elbowed him in the stomach, and he struggled to pay attention.

"I know it seems pretty dry," Hotchner said, "but I think it's important. These interviews show you who they talked to before they made the decision to hit the woods."

"Does it show what prompted that decision?" Prentiss asked. She had her notebook balanced on her knee and a cup of coffee at her elbow. As to that, Morgan had been correct: copshop coffee was copshop coffee, nice Southern manners or no. Hotchner had been kind enough to provide doughnuts and Danish from the local bakery, though, so Prentiss wasn't complaining.

"I don't think there was any one thing, necessarily. Or maybe I'm just looking at it wrong."

"Hhmm," Prentiss said noncommittally. She doubted it.

"_This town is like a blast from the past. I mean, I was expecting _The Beverly Hillbillies_, I guess, and I was wrong about that, but—"_

Prentiss tuned out what on-film Penelope Garcia was saying and concentrated instead on the woman's face. She was happy, animated, and she seemed to be in her element. Despite her wild fashion sense, Prentiss had noticed that she had the easiest time drawing people out in the interviews; they seemed to connect to her almost instinctively. Prentiss drummed her pen against the lined, empty page. The irregular rhythm helped her think, and she knew it would keep Morgan awake.

The interview with Garcia ended, and the time stamp jumped several hours. Morgan sat up like he'd been electrocuted. "It just skipped the entire day. That interview was filmed at 8:15 in the morning; now it's after 9 at night."

"I'm sure they had other cameras," Hotchner said. "The additional footage might be on one of those."

"Buried out in the woods somewhere," Prentiss said glumly.

Morgan shushed them both and leaned closer to the computer screen. "They're already in the woods here. Something happened in that 13-hour period that made them decide to head out there. They didn't even wait for morning."

Hotchner pointed at the distinctive-looking tree in the center of the frame. "That tree's about an hour's hike outside of town. They left after dark."

"_Dave, wow, look at this!"_ Spencer Reid's boyish voice said. _"This tree has got to be over 800 years old! Can you believe—"_

"_Quit messing around, Reid; we gotta make camp before the moon rises. Come on," _Dave Rossi told the team's youngest member.

"Do you need a permit to camp out there?" Morgan asked.

"Yes, and that spot isn't a designated campsite. They're a fair way off any marked trails."

"If it's not on a trail, then how to do you know the tree?" Prentiss asked.

"It's called the Hanging Tree," a new voice said. "It's pretty famous around here." The three figures hunched in front of the small computer swiveled as one, and Jennifer Jareau eyed them with a mix of amusement and consternation. "I thought we were going to discuss showing them the footage," she said to Hotchner.

"The situation changed," he explained succinctly. "Jennifer Jareau, this is Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss. Prentiss, Morgan, Jennifer Jareau with the Forest Service."

They all shook hands, and J.J. found a chair. Hotchner offered her coffee, but she refused. She did take the last bear claw from the pastry box, and Prentiss thought she was a pretty smart cookie for that one.

"So…Hanging Tree. Like witch trial hanging?" Prentiss said once they were all settled again.

"No, not exactly." She hesitated; considered. "Mountain people are extremely superstitious," she explained after a moment. "To them witches are very real, but for the most part they're helpful; they cure illness, provide small charms, help women in childbirth."

"Sort of the wise woman type, rather than the dark-pact-with-the-devil type?" Morgan said.

"That's it," J.J. agreed.

"Well if the tree wasn't used to hang accused witches…?"

J.J. shifted in her seat; she looked desperately uncomfortable. Hotchner came to her rescue. "Like she said, superstitious. No one knows if anything was actually hanged from that tree, but tradition has it that humans were sacrificed there years ago. Now it's considered one of the more haunted sites in the area."

"Who supposedly sacrificed these humans?" Prentiss asked. "The Indian tribes that lived around here weren't into that sorta thing."

Morgan glanced at her, eyebrows raised. _Someone's been doing her homework, _the look said.

Prentiss' answering expression read more along the lines of _bite me_.

Hotchner, ignoring the silent exchange, spread his hands in a shrug. "That part of the story is left vague."

"It wasn't just humans," J.J. said. "Animals, too. They say you can still hear the dogs barking at the moon."

Hotchner's eyebrows furrowed. "Coyotes," he said. "These hills are lousy with coyotes."

"Cougars bark, too…sort of," J.J. said. "It sounds like a bark when the males are looking to mate."

"But cougars don't mate in October, do they?" Prentiss asked.

"No, that's a springtime thing."

"Then what's that noise?" she said, indicating the laptop with a hitch of her thumb.

J.J. leaned closer; a line formed between her light brows. "Coyotes probably, like Hotch said."

"_Are you hearing this?" _Garcia hissed into the mike. _"Reid, do you hear that?"_

"_Yeah, Garcia, I'm not deaf."_

"_Coyotes?"_

"_No, coyotes make noises more like…yiip yip yowwl!"_ he demonstrated.

"_Reid, quiet!"_ Rossi ordered.

"_It sounds like dogs to me,"_ Reid said softly. _"Possibly wolves."_

"Aren't wolves extinct in this part of the country?" Morgan asked J.J.

"Back in the early 90s they tried to reintroduce red wolves to the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, but they failed; now they're all out on the NC coast," she said.

"Could be hunting dogs, maybe," Prentiss suggested.

"That really isn't the most interesting thing on here," Hotchner said. For the first time he leaned forward and skipped ahead. At Morgan's look, he explained. "It's mostly just them tromping around in the woods finding nothing. They never once mention what they're out there looking for."

"Is that the moonshine shack where the camera was found?" Prentiss asked as Hotchner stopped the video.

"Yes. You can see where the still was over here, with the pipes leading down this way." He pointed the apparatus out to them on the screen, and they squinted to make it out amidst the deadfall and overgrowth. He had skipped past the point he wanted to show them, so he backed it up. "Now," he said, "is when things get interesting."

The camera was shaking like the person holding it was running full-tilt through the trees. Occasionally they could see flashes of the other filmmakers – Garcia and Rossi, so it was Reid who had the camera. Garcia had one, too, and that at least partially confirmed Hotchner's theory about the missing footage. Rossi yelled something over his shoulder to Reid, but the mike didn't pick it up, and the image was too shaky to read his lips.

"I don't understand," Prentiss said. "What happened? Why are they running?"

"No idea," Hotchner said. He rewound a little, and they saw a low battery indicator before the screen went black. When the picture came back again, the group was running. "Maybe it's on that other camera; I don't know."

"Are they chasing something?" Morgan asked.

"I don't think so," Hotchner told him. "Look at Rossi's face." He paused it on that moment, when the professor was looking back at his young student to offer advice or a plea, and they all understood what Hotchner meant.

"Keep going," Prentiss urged after a moment.

He hit _play_ again, and the action resumed. The camera's jostling was making Prentiss slightly seasick, but she couldn't look away. The young doctor wasn't even bothering to aim anymore: they were all getting a great view of his mismatched socks and completely impractical brown shoes.

As abruptly as it had begun, the running stopped. Reid lifted the camera again, and the sound of his heavy panting filled the small room. _"Think…lost them…not sure…Dave!"_ This last word was an urgent almost-whisper: he was afraid to shout, but he was desperate to locate his companions.

"_Reid!"_ a voice hissed very near the camera. They watched the picture jump as he jolted.

"_Garcia, where's Dave?"_

"_No idea…we can't stay here, though."_

The image moved to show Garcia's face. She held a video camera in her hand, but she wasn't filming. Her hair was full of leaves, and she'd lost her glasses somewhere. There was a long, thin scratch along one cheek.

"_Spencer, come on. We have to get somewhere we can use the sat phone."_

"_Shhh! What was that?"_

Garcia's eyes widened in desperation. _"Run. Don't stop. Just run!"_

She took off in one direction, and he went the opposite way. There were several more sickening minutes of staring at one purple sock and one yellow striped one before he stopped again. Now when he lifted the camera they could see the image Hotchner had shown them earlier: the moonshine distillery. He hovered on it for a few heartbeats before he turned the camera on himself.

"_I don't know if this is what Dave was looking for. Maybe I should've asked more questions."_ He glanced over his shoulder like an anxious animal. _"My name is Spencer Reid. Penelope Garcia and David Rossi are my friends. If you find this, keep looking for us. Please don't stop looking."_

There was a flash behind him; he whirled and the camera caught an instant of Garcia. Her own camera hit the forest floor with a soft bounce, but Reid didn't pause to grab it. He moved toward the still, and they watched as he filmed himself again.

"It looks like he's hiding the camera here," Hotchner explained; Morgan and Prentiss nodded in agreement.

"_I'm not afraid,"_ he said into the camera; his young, awkward face filled the screen, and even the cynical Prentiss felt her heart twist. He spun around and began running again, away from Garcia. Her camera could still be seen at the top of the frame.

"Is that everything?" Morgan asked; only the woods were in view now, and all looked peaceful and quiet.

"Wait," Hotchner said, holding up a hand. "Just wait."

Several silent minutes passed; Morgan tried not to fidget. Finally his patience was rewarded, and the two detectives leaned toward the screen once more. Two feet had appeared in the top left of the frame, and they moved slowly but purposefully toward the right. The man – surely it was a man – seemed to be looking for something, and after a moment he paused. In a movement almost too fast to believe, he bent and retrieved Garcia's camera.

Apparently satisfied, the feet moved off to the right; Reid's abandoned camera kept filming, but no one was there to notice.

Morgan sat back in his chair and let out a long, low whistle.

"Fuck me gently with a chainsaw," Prentiss muttered.

"That's a pretty accurate summation," J.J. agreed.

* * *

_Chapter 7 is proving slow going, so a review might help my muse along a little. :)_

_Thanks for reading!  
_


	7. The Plan

**a/n: **Finally a new chapter for "Going Wodwo." :) Big thanks to **WallofWeird** for the encouragement, and of course to **chiroho** for the beta'ing. "Walters's" makes my skin crawl, too. :D

Reviews, please, if you've waited this long!

* * *

**Chapter 7: The Plan**

**I'll leave the way of words to  
walk the wood  
I'll be forest's man, and  
greet the sun.  
**-Neil Gaiman, "Going Wodwo"

To outsiders like Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss, the small town of Walter's Gap looked idyllic and peaceful. It was pretty; quaint; the type of place one might vacation if one needed some tranquility far from the hustle and bustle of city life. There weren't any ski slopes nearby, and the main tourist draws were camping, hunting in season, fishing, and the local ghost stories – though even that action was concentrated a bit further south in the Cumberland Gap area. Unemployment was relatively low, literacy was relatively high, and the town generally defied most "hillbilly" stereotypes.

Of course, the particular outsiders in question were trained to look beyond appearances. Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss had made careers (though albeit not great ones at the moment) out of digging. They understood that the big shot CEO with the shiny Rolls, the expensive Rolex and the postcard-perfect family could be an embezzler with a mistress on the side and a high-class call girl on retainer. They were the ones who kicked over the rocks to examine the crawly, slimy things underneath, and after watching the footage and listening to Aaron Hotchner's story about his visit from Rosalie Walters, the two detectives were wondering what sort of nasty secrets lurked beneath the picturesque illusion of Walter's Gap.

"If the town is named after Rosalie Walters' family, why is it Walter's Gap, apostrophe _s_?" Prentiss wondered. They were in Morgan's hotel room with their notes spread across his extra bed. Prentiss sat propped against the cheap headboard with thin hotel pillows, and she was munching on a slice of pizza.

"What are you talking about?" Morgan asked around a mouthful of pepperoni and extra cheese. He refused to allow rabbit food onto his pizza, and Prentiss refused to have, as she called it, a butcher's shop explosion on hers. They compromised with pepperoni.

"I _mean_," she said with a huff, "her name is Walters, with an _s_, right? So shouldn't the town be named Walters' Gap, _s_ apostrophe?"

He rolled his eyes. "Sure, I guess, if the place were ruled by grammar Nazis like you."

She sniffed. "I feel about grammar the way our esteemed Chief Hotchner feels about manners." With a sigh she dropped her half-eaten slice back into the box and shut the lid. "What is it about this place, Morgan? What are we missing? Why would Rosalie Walters have such a damn hissy to get us out of town? What was chasing those people out in the woods?"

"There's only one way we're gonna find out, Prentiss."

"Please don't say it."

"We gotta head into those woods."

"What did I just tell you?"

He wiped his hands on toilet paper commandeered from the bathroom and took a long swig of beer from the bottle on his nightstand. "What other choice do we have? They found something out there, something they weren't supposed to find, and they got it on film. That's why Paul Bunyan went after Garcia's camera."

"Why didn't he look for Reid's? Didn't it occur to him Reid might've stashed it somewhere around the distillery?"

"Maybe it was Garcia they caught filming, so they didn't know about the other camera."

"We're already making leaps when we say 'they.' We don't know there _was_ a 'they,' just one really big, really fast guy with scuffed boots." She was drumming her pen against her notebook again. "What do you think they found out there?"

He shrugged. "Who knows? Pot farms are pretty big up in the mountains. Or it coulda been a meth lab. Hell, even a dog fighting ring."

Prentiss nodded slowly. "Big money stuff that people are willing to kill over." She studied him with concerned dark eyes. "But you don't really think it was any of those things, do you?"

He rubbed a hand back and forth across his smooth skull, something he only did when he was especially agitated. "Well I don't think it was Big Foot, if that's what you're worried about." He tried to make it sound light-hearted, but she wasn't buying it.

She frowned down at the page of notes on her lap. "Right now Big Foot's pretty much the least of my worries."

Morgan stared at the piece of pizza he'd just pulled from the box as though all the answers could be found in the arrangement of greasy meat and stringy cheese. Finally he dropped it back into the box without taking a bite and reached for his phone. "I'll call Hotchner and let him know the plan."

"It's a terrible plan, Morgan."

He gave her a long look. "Probably. But right now it's the only one we've got."

* * *

J.J. was back at Hotch's office at 8 sharp the next morning. She'd brought the pastry this time, along with coffee, and they were both munching on cinnamon rolls when Morgan and Prentiss arrived. Prentiss eagerly accepted a cheese Danish and began doctoring her coffee. Morgan grabbed a jelly doughnut and took his drink black.

"Our first stop," J.J. said after morning pleasantries had been exchanged, "will be at Meechum's Hardware and Outfitters. He'll have everything you'll need for the hike."

"We were by there the other day," Morgan said. "Homer Miller told us Troy Meechum was likely the last person to talk to Rossi and his crew, so we went to ask him a few questions."

"Anything interesting?" Hotch asked. His men had interviewed Meechum last year, of course, but it was possible he'd remembered something new.

"Not really," Prentiss said. "He remembered who they were and most of what they'd bought, but that was about it."

J.J. pulled out a notebook and began making a list of things they'd need. She glanced down at Prentiss' feet and frowned. "Did you bring any boots? Hiking boots?"

"I brought Chuck Taylor's."

Her brows flicked upward. "We'll have to buy you some boots, then, and they won't be broken in. I'll add moleskin to the list…" She scribbled a moment longer, then, "Of course between Hotch's office and mine, we have most of this stuff. Basic camping gear, packs, walkies. Any idea how long we'll be out there?" she asked Hotch.

"At least one night. It'll take a full day to reach the distillery, and we won't want to hike back at night. Do you guys have vests?"

Prentiss swallowed a bite of Danish and felt it settle on her stomach like concrete. "Um. Yeah, we brought them just in case."

"Good. If we stumble on a meth lab or a marijuana farm, there will probably be traps. We'll pull out and call for backup. I know the DEA would love a big bust around here."

"Wouldn't be bad press for you, either," Morgan offered.

Hotch shifted, looking uncomfortable. "Something like that would probably get me fired and drummed out of town, in all honesty. Rosalie Walters was pretty clear yesterday."

"You think that's why the town does so well? Sketchy funding?"

Hotch shook his head. "I don't know. If I truly suspected something like that, I would've been looking at it harder."

"You don't have to come with us," J.J. said. "I don't want you getting in trouble."

"She's got me curious now. And that footage seems to show some sort of foul play, making this my responsibility."

"Your call, homey," Prentiss said as she finished off her coffee. "But if you'd rather play CYA, we understand."

She didn't even blink under his perturbed glare. "I'm not that kind of cop," he grated out.

She looked away with a shrug, but he thought her lips were curving in a satisfied smile.

"Great," Morgan said. "Then let's quit chit-chattin' and get this show on the road."

"I'll meet you at Meechum's," Hotch told J.J. "I'm going to grab some weapons. Do you have carrying permits?" he asked the detectives.

"In Illinois," Prentiss said. "We don't have permits to fly with weapons, so they're gathering dust back home."

"What do you carry? Nine mills?"

"Yeah, and Prentiss keeps a .22 on an ankle holster most of the time."

He offered a brief, appreciative smile. "Smart. I can bend the rules a bit, given the situation, and loan you something. You both know how to fire a rifle, right?"

They exchanged a glance. What exactly _was_ he expecting to find out there? "I was a cop, before. And Prentiss is…" Morgan shrugged; grinned. "She can handle herself."

She rolled her eyes. "He means my mom's a crackhead and I don't know my daddy's name. G-H-E-T-T-O. Yeah, I know my way around a rifle."

"Good. I'll meet you at Meechum's," he repeated as he pulled a key from his desk drawer. His dark olive eyes sought J.J.'s blue ones; a look of understanding passed between them, and she gathered the detectives and rushed them from the office before they managed to ask any more questions. Sighing, Hotch stared down at the little brass key in his hand.

He was a rational man. He didn't believe the stories every local knew by heart and delighted in telling. He believed in meth dealers and pot farmers and a world gone dirty and out of control. He refused, utterly refused, to believe that the filmmakers had run afoul of anything less mundane than pissed off drug dealers. Still, whatever they would be up against in the woods, he wanted to be ready.

* * *

_I know I promised you woods, and that this chapter is quite short, but you shouldn't have to wait nearly as long for chapter 8, and there WILL be woods then. I promise._


	8. The Woods

**a/n: **I know what you're thinking: _what's this? A new chapter to Going Wodwo! It can't be!_ Oh, but it is, my faithful readers! I know I promised this ages ago, but...sorry... :( It's here now!

I finally have an idea of what's out in the woods, so hopefully the last few chapters will go more quickly. I know: you've heard it all before. I really mean it this time!

I'd love some reviews, if anyone's still hanging on. :)

This story features the happy return of my much-missed beta, **chiroho**.

* * *

**Chapter 8: The Woods**

**I'll find a tree as wide as ten fat men  
Clear water rilling over its gray roots  
Berries I'll find, and crabapples and nuts,  
And call it home.  
**-Neil Gaiman, "Going Wodwo"

"You're gonna want this," JJ said as she passed Prentiss a can of bug spray. "Also, make sure you tuck your pants into your socks. That way ticks can't crawl up your legs."

"Ticks?" Prentiss looked faintly green. She thought she'd been coping pretty well so far. They'd been hiking for a little over an hour, and she was extremely grateful for all the hours she put in at the gym. The woods around them were quiet; the leaves were just starting to turn; and it was all actually rather pretty—not that Prentiss was becoming a _nature_ _lover_ or anything absurd. But she had been relaxing a bit, and now JJ was throwing the idea of icky, crawling, blood-sucking _ticks_ at her.

"Don't worry; it's a little late in the year for ticks," Hotch assured her.

"Right," she said. Not feeling much better, she let the group pass her on the trail as she bent to do as JJ suggested. She sprayed almost the entire contents of the can all over, concentrating especially on her ankles.

Hotch had stopped the group at the next bend in the trail; he didn't want to lose sight of Prentiss. They waited, sipping water from canteens and chatting, and Morgan almost choked as Prentiss' sharp, sudden cry pierced the peaceful morning.

"Emily!" he called, pulling his gun and hurrying toward her, Hotch and JJ right on his heels. "Prentiss, what's wrong?"

She was sitting on the trail as though she'd been crouched and had fallen backwards. She sat up and brushed dirt and loam from her palms. "I…nothing…it was nothing." Her eyes were wide and her face was pale. It didn't look like _nothing_.

Hotch offered a hand, and she accepted gratefully. Morgan narrowed his eyes; that wasn't normal.

"I know this isn't your usual territory, but something obviously startled you," JJ said.

Prentiss took a long pull from her canteen. "I feel like a dumbass."

"Uh huh. So what's new?" Morgan flashed her a grin when she glared. The smile faded when he noticed the hand holding her canteen was shaking. He reached out and took it from her; she let him, and his concern returned all over again. "What happened, Em? Something."

She let out a breath; indicated a tree just off the trail. "I was looking at this."

Hotch's eyes narrowed as he leaned closer. There was something carved into the bark, a symbol like—maybe, if he squinted—a fang-filled mouth as rendered by a five-year-old. "What the hell is that?" he asked.

"No idea," JJ murmured from beside him. "I've never seen anything like it."

"That wasn't what scared me," Prentiss said.

Hotch felt JJ jump at the sound of Prentiss' voice. They were all wound too tight, he thought; someone was going to get hurt if they didn't calm down.

"I'd hope not," Morgan commented.

Prentiss gave an impatient sigh. "I was standing here looking at it, and I swear I saw something move out there." She gestured toward the woods.

Hotch and JJ glanced at each other and then cast a long look toward Prentiss.

"I know, I know. It's the woods. Bears and wildcats and shit."

"Squirrels," Morgan offered. "Rabid, scary squirrels."

"Would you _shut up_?" she snapped. "It wasn't a fucking squirrel. I saw a face, a man's face. He was just standing out there…_staring_ at me. He had this giant beard and crazy eyes. I know crazy eyes when I see them."

"Where?" Hotch asked.

Prentiss pointed again, and Hotch and JJ stepped away from the trail to investigate. "Here," JJ said. "These branches are broken, and look."

Hotch knelt to examine the torn moss; it was still damp. "Fresh. But there aren't any tracks leading away."

She crouched beside him. "An animal, maybe? And she got spooked?"

Hotch glanced over his shoulder; watched Morgan and Prentiss watching them. "Those branches are broken off pretty high. What kind of animal is that tall, except maybe a bear on its hind legs?"

"If a bear were rearing, it probably would've charged her," JJ agreed. "And we'd smell bear. Or cougar, or even buck. No way a doe's that tall."

Hotch rubbed the back of his neck and looked around in irritation. "I'm not in the mood for games."

"Did you find something?" Prentiss called. She wondered what they were whispering about.

Hotch and JJ shared another look before they rose and went to rejoin Morgan and Prentiss. "Something was there, but there aren't any real tracks," she said before explaining what they'd found.

"So what does that mean?" Morgan asked.

"Someone knows how to cover his trail, I guess," Hotch said after a brief pause.

"Right…but…if he were that good at it, why is there any evidence he was there at all?" Prentiss asked. "Why break branches and scrape away moss where he was standing if he could move through the woods that well?"

"Pretty obvious, right?" Morgan said. "He wanted us to know he was there, but he also wants us to realize we won't see or hear him comin' and goin'."

"In other words, he could be anywhere," Prentiss said.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Hotch cautioned. "He didn't threaten you, did he?"

"No. He just stared, like bug-eyed and freaky as hell."

"Maybe he lives up in the mountains somewhere, and he's not used to seeing people. You might have scared him as much as he scared you," JJ said.

"Great. From _Blair Witch_ to _The Hills Have Eyes_. It just keeps on gettin' better," Prentiss said with a shake of her head.

Hotch shifted his weight and checked his watch. "We should keep going. It's another half mile to the turnoff to the Hanging Tree, and we need to get there by dark."

"Yeah," Prentiss said. "I want a nice big fire going by the time the sun goes down."

Morgan snapped several pictures of the strange carving, and Hotch stepped off the path to get a few shots of the broken branches and scuffed moss. "Let's get moving," he said as he pocketed the digital camera.

Prentiss hitched her pack a bit higher and, with a last glance over her shoulder, followed Hotch and JJ along the trail.

* * *

The so-called Hanging Tree was even more impressive in person than it had been on film. It was a huge oak with a trunk split like it had been struck by lightning at some point in its ancient history. Both sides were distorted with knobs and protuberances, and even city-girl Prentiss found herself awed by its sheer _presence_.

"How old is this thing?" Morgan asked as he rested a palm against the rough bark.

Hotch glanced up from the tent stake he was pounding in. "There used to be another tree about that same size, but it fell a few years ago. They put a slice of it up in the town hall, and they have the rings dated. About three-quarters in, the date Columbus landed is marked. Something like 800 years, from acorn to that."

"It doesn't look like there'd be any limbs low enough to hang someone," Prentiss remarked.

"It's just a legend," JJ said as she returned with an armload of deadfall and kindling. "I doubt it has any real basis in fact."

"But isn't that how legends are made?" Morgan said. "Rossi always said nothing grows without a seed. That means trees," he nodded toward the enormous oak, "and stories, too."

"You knew David Rossi?" Hotch asked.

Morgan knelt to help him with the next peg. He'd never pitched a tent in his life, but how hard could it be? "He was one of my professors at Northwestern. He taught folklore."

"I can't see you in a folklore class, Morgan," Prentiss said. She was helping JJ sort the firewood (with copious guidance from the ranger), and keeping one eye out for ticks and wild men of the woods.

"I was a freshman; I hadn't decided on a major, so I just took a bit of everything." The whole tent situation was proving far more difficult than he'd anticipated, so with a little grimace he ceded the field to Hotch.

"We have to dig a pit, like this," JJ was explaining to Prentiss. "And we should line it in flat stones. I'm surprised there aren't any still around here; Rossi's team had a fire."

"Maybe they just didn't know," Morgan suggested.

"No," JJ said. "In this county, no one is granted a camping permit without passing a basic safety course. Fire safety is the main part of it."

"I thought they didn't have a permit to camp here," Prentiss said.

"They had a permit to _camp_," JJ clarified. "This just isn't a designated camping area. But this time of year…it's pretty dry up here. There's no way they'd have a fire without taking basic precautions."

Prentiss had been digging through her bag, and she emerged with a triumphant smile. A plastic bag dangled from her hand. "We better find those rocks," she said, "or these'll all go to waste."

"Marshmallows? Where the hell did you get those?" Morgan said.

She shrugged. "I don't know much about camping, but I've seen enough movies to know it's not really a campout without marshmallows." Her face went pensive. "I'm not sure about the stick thing, though. Is that really sanitary?"

"I think I found our missing rocks," JJ said from across the clearing.

Something in her tone sent them all scurrying to join her, and they found themselves staring in uneasy silence. The collection of flat stones were stacked in a neat pyramid, and the capstone sported the same carving as they'd seen on the tree earlier that day.

"Well that…I mean, Rossi or someone in his team might've done that. After they…put out the fire and whatnot," Prentiss suggested with a decided hitch in her voice.

"If that were the case, don't you think they would've fallen over by now? It's not exactly Roman engineering," Morgan said.

"The carving's fresh," Hotch said. "The rocks are blackened from the fire, but the lines of the carving are pristine."

"Relatively fresh," JJ said. "It wasn't done yesterday, but it was done after these were used in a fire pit."

Prentiss let out a long breath; wrapped her arms around her chest and tried to suppress a shiver. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

"Ditto," Morgan said grimly.

The warm afternoon was waning into a cool evening. Shadows were beginning to pool beneath the trees. And somewhere far away, an animal gave a long, bone-chilling, mournful howl.

* * *

_bum, bum, buuum! Tune in next time to see what fate awaits our heroes. And where the heck are Rossi & co. anyway?_


	9. The Dark

**a/n:** Well you didn't have to wait AS long for this chapter, did you? And I was writing something else at the same time, so it's actually pretty good time for me...

I've already started chapter 10, so keep your fingers crossed. ;)

Thanks for the lovely reviews. They're always welcome!

* * *

**Chapter 9: The Dark**

**Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,  
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;  
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token...  
**-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"**  
**

Prentiss' eyes opened with an abrupt _snap_ sometime in the middle of night. She didn't move. A childhood like hers had taught her one doesn't suddenly wake from a sound sleep unless there's danger, and only a fool goes bumbling into danger in the name of curiosity. Frozen, she waited and listened.

While she was certainly no woodsman, she remembered falling sleep to assorted night noises: the hooting of owls, the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth, and the call of night insects. In contrast, the woods were now silent, the only sound the barely-perceptible susurrus of wind through trees. Prentiss glanced over at her tent-mate, but JJ's breath was heavy with sleep, and her face—as illuminated by Prentiss' watch—was peaceful.

Letting out a brief sigh, Prentiss grabbed a flashlight and wiggled out of the tent. She felt stiff from a combination of rigorous exercise and sleeping on the ground, and she took a moment to stretch her sore limbs. She tried to peer into the brush surrounding the clearing as she did so, making it look casual, but it was too dark to see anything. The nearly-full moon was obscured by scuttling clouds, and when it did appear, it gave everything a silvery dream-like quality that helped neither her peace of mind nor her abilities of perception.

Prentiss hesitated to use the flashlight. Not only would it ruin her night vision, but it would also pinpoint her in the dark for anyone (or anything) who might be looking. The hairs at the back of her neck were standing on end, and she felt the chill of something more than the cool night air as goose bumps began to pucker her skin. She felt primitive and new, and she suddenly understood how the first men and women had felt when they left the safety of their caves: hairless, claw and toothless, and utterly alone in the dangerous wild.

The wind changed, and she detected a new scent in the air: it was rotten-sweet, like decaying flesh (she'd seen plenty of dead bodies in her time), accompanied by a strong note of musk. She knew enough to realize it was an animal she smelt, a large predator of some kind, but she wasn't really eager to find out exactly. The good thing, she also realized, was that if _she_ could smell _it_, _it_ could no longer smell _her_. Finding itself suddenly downwind, it would probably leave off the hunt.

Apparently all those hours watching Animal Planet were paying off, she reflected absently.

Another part of her wondered why she was so sure it was hunting.

She opened her mouth and took a deep, fortifying breath. Her thumb found the button on the heavy flashlight, and a moment later the beam illuminated the clearing. There was a sudden commotion in the bushes, a sort of alarmed grunting, and she swept the light that way with a burning, instinctive urgency.

As the light brushed the spot, something shot out from the trees and rocketed across the campsite toward Prentiss. The flashlight rolled across the loamy ground, illuminating the area in disorienting explosions of bright and dark, and she caught little more than a brief glimpse of furious eyes and that overpowering carnivore smell before the creature was gone.

Fear kept Prentiss rooted to the spot, shivering in the dark. It was the age-old terror of the hunted, and even though she could hear stirring from both tents—the noise had woken the others—she felt lonely and defenseless. A rabbit in the headlights, eyes stretched wide, mind stunned by the incomprehensibility of what she'd just experienced.

* * *

"To be honest, I don't know what it was," JJ said to Hotch, her voice soft so that Morgan and Prentiss wouldn't overhear. "It's really too late in the year for bears, and there's no bear sign. I guess it could've been a cougar, but they usually hunt from trees and fall down onto their prey; this doesn't seem like a cougar's style. Those are the only large predators in these woods."

It was just after dawn the next morning, and the soft early light filtered through the trees like falling snowflakes. They had examined the creature's hiding spot and the trail it had left through the campsite last night, but the darkness had left more questions than answers. Unfortunately, sunrise had illuminated matters very little.

"But you can smell it," Hotch said, drawing the air in deeply through his nose. It was still quite cool, and despite the musky odor he felt his mind clear with the bracing breath.

"Oh yeah. There was something here, no doubt. It was big, and it was a carnivore." She shook her head. "It was dark and she was scared and half asleep. Maybe she—"

"I know what I saw, Ranger," Prentiss interrupted with a scowl. "I know it sounds crazy, and I'm sorry you can't figure out what it is, but I wasn't half asleep. I wasn't confused. It _was_ big—Morgan's size, maybe, or bigger—and it had huge eyes that caught the light like an animal."

"Coulda been Skunky, lookin' for a date," Morgan offered with a lopsided smile.

"That would be my luck," she said as she rolled her eyes, "but I doubt it. Isn't that skunk ape thing supposed to be hairy, like Bigfoot?"

"Most of the reports describe it that way, yes," Hotch agreed blandly.

"Uh huh. Well this thing wasn't really hairy at all. Its skin was sort of grayish, and definitely smooth."

"Did it have big black eyes? Did it ask you to take it to your leader?" Morgan again, of course, and this time he got a full-on Death Glare.

"I'm not saying it was fuckin' E.T., Morgan! I'm just telling you what I saw. It was big, it stank, it had shiny eyes, and it was gray and hairless. It was also fast as hell. And I think…" Here she hesitated, and her gaze turned inward as she remembered. "I think I maybe scared it about as much as it scared me. It didn't like the light at all."

"A nocturnal predator," JJ said. "It showed eye shine and sensitivity to light. Judging by these tracks, you're right about it being fast. The ground here is a mess."

Her tone was logical and straightforward, as though she dealt with mysterious night stalkers every day. Hell, maybe she did, Prentiss thought.

"Do you think, uh…do you think it's what got Rossi's team?" Morgan said. Sweat popped out along his brow at the thought.

"It wasn't wearing boots," JJ muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"What? Oh." She looked up from the tracks with a shake of her bright head. "We saw a booted man take Garcia's camera. This thing wasn't wearing boots, so I doubt it's what was chasing them."

"And it's not the same thing I saw on the path yesterday, either," Prentiss said. She wrinkled her nose. "I'd recognize that smell anywhere."

"So we've got two things following us now? Great."

"Maybe not," Hotch said. He gestured toward the rock pile. "We saw that mark on the trail yesterday, and now it's here. Maybe it's a warning, and maybe the man Prentiss saw wasn't hunting us at all."

"Those do look like pretty big teeth," Prentiss said. "I didn't get a look at its mouth, though."

"You're sayin' Grizzly Adams is after E.T., and E.T. is after us." Morgan's tone implied that it wasn't really a question.

Hotch's shoulders rippled in a slight shrug. "It's possible."

"Or we're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Grizzly Adams could have made these marks to indicate E.T.'s hunting ground; we stumbled into the wrong area, and he wants to make sure we don't become dinner," JJ suggested.

"How many people go missing from these woods each year?" Prentiss asked.

JJ and Hotch shared a glance; the latter shook his head. "Very few. But…"

"Yes, but?" she prompted.

"This area is supposed to be off-limits for campers," JJ said after a moment. "And the trail we were on yesterday isn't generally used by the public; it's a Ranger trail."

A silence fell. It was heavy with unspoken implications.

"We should get going," Hotch said. "I don't think there's anything more we can learn here, and it's at least half a day to the still."

No one moved.

Finally Prentiss gave a mechanical, jerky nod. "He's right. We came here to find out what happened to Rossi's team. We're not going to accomplish anything standing around scaring ourselves with half-baked theories."

Another few moments' hesitation, and then the group scattered and began packing up the campsite. All four sets of eyes studiously avoided the churned-up ground running through the clearing, and despite the bright morning, the silence of the forest around them was eerie and oppressive.


	10. The Still

**a/n:** I'm writing like a fiend here, people. See the note at the end. :)

* * *

**Chapter 10: The Still**

wonderfully beta'd by **chiroho**

**Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,  
nursed a hard grievance.  
**-from _Beowulf_ (86-87)

It was a gorgeous fall day, perfect for a hike. The trees blazed with color at these higher elevations, the sun shone in a cloudless blue sky, and the air was cool without being cold. Despite being pure city folk, Morgan and Prentiss _should_ have been having a wonderful time. Unfortunately, neither of them could shake the feeling of being watched. Though the usual woods noises had resumed once they got away from the campsite, and though the day was almost blindingly bright, a general sense of eeriness hung over the small group.

Each one tried to dismiss it in his or her own way. Prentiss chalked it up to her abhorrence of nature. Morgan attributed it to "fish out of water" syndrome. JJ decided that an unknown predator in her woods _should_ make her nervous; it was at least partially her responsibility, after all. Hotch, for his part, attempted to ignore the whole thing: he was a logical man, and he didn't believe in getting worked up over nothing.

Hotch had predicted half a day to reach the still, but it was nearly mid-afternoon before they arrived. Prentiss and Morgan knew they were slowing the other two down, but neither the Ranger nor the Chief mentioned it. The moonshiner's still was hardly recognizable, resembling nothing so much as a jumble of rusty-looking pipes and scattered broken glass that glinted in the slanting sun.

"I would've missed it completely," Morgan admitted as the woods opened around them into a natural clearing.

"This is where Dr. Reid hid his camera," JJ said. "The guy with the boots came from that way, and he picked up Penelope Garcia's camera about here." She pointed out each location, and Morgan and Prentiss studied the woods from the various vantage points. They looked like woods.

"There's nothing here," Prentiss said with a sigh. Frustration tinged her voice, and she felt a strange sense of…what? Disappointment? All the buildup for nothing, she thought. Just more trees.

"Did you think there would be?" Morgan said. "It's been a year. The woods swallowed any evidence a long time ago."

"Just like they swallowed Rossi's team." Prentiss ran both hands through her dark hair. "We came all the way to Tenne-fucking-see, Morgan. We can't go back to Chicago with nothing."

"It would be pretty humiliating," he agreed.

"So what do we do? You dragged me out to these damn woods. So far I've been nearly scared to death—_twice_—but we haven't found jack."

"This might be something," JJ called. She had been methodically walking the clearing, and now she stopped within the shadow of the still. "It looks like the remains of a fire. Fairly recent, too."

The other three, their footsteps muffled by a thick layer of fallen leaves, hurried to join her.

"No traffic cameras out here, I guess," Prentiss said with a wry glance at the surrounding trees.

"Not usually any _traffic_," Hotch replied.

"I get the feeling no one really pays attention to those rules," Morgan said. "The Hanging Tree's supposed to be off-limits, too, but Rossi and company found that."

"Maybe they wouldn't've disappeared if they'd stayed on the proper trails," JJ said with a trace of irritation. "That's how most accidents occur, and how people get lost—they wander off the marked trails and go flailing about through the woods like…like…."

"Us?" Prentiss suggested.

JJ's mouth quirked. "Something like that."

"But you knew where Rossi would be. That's how you knew where to search," Morgan reminded her.

"It didn't help much," Hotch said. "When was the last good rain?" he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"A week ago. The fire's fresher than that," JJ said.

Morgan had moved away, closer to the still, and he suddenly let out a whistle. "Look at this shit. Is that what I think it is?" he asked Hotch as he waved them over.

The expression on the normally stoic Chief's face answered Morgan's question.

"_That's_ been there longer than a week," Prentiss said. To disguise her suddenly shaking hands, she crossed her arms. Her lips were pressed into a thin line.

Sticking out of the leaves and loam was the end of a bone. A leg bone, they all guessed in that first glance. Though dark, stringy bits of muscle and tendon still clung to it, it had clearly been gnawed by something with very large teeth. The bone looked human; luckily the tooth marks didn't.

* * *

"It might be an animal bone," Morgan suggested, but he didn't really believe that.

They were gathered around it, staring down like they'd never seen a dead thing before—though of course they all had. The forest had fallen silent around them once again, as though Nature herself were shocked at their discovery.

"I'm rethinking that vegetarian thing," Prentiss said. "I mean, really; I'll never look at a chicken leg the same way again."

"And chickens everywhere rejoiced," Morgan muttered.

"I don't think it's an animal," JJ said. "It's not the right size."

Hotch rubbed the back of his neck and let out a long sigh. He pulled the digital camera from his bag and began snapping pictures of the bone and the area immediately around it. "I'll have to call this in. It's a potential crime scene. We can get someone from UT in to do the forensic work." The University of Tennessee was home to the infamous Body Farm, and its forensic anthropologists were some of the best in the world.

"How long will that take?" Morgan asked.

"A day. Two." His tone was grim, and Morgan could tell how much the delay irritated him. "They're the best, though, especially at this sort of thing. If it turns out to be animal, or ancient…." He trailed off and went back to taking photos.

"Will they be able to figure out what left those marks?" Prentiss asked.

"Yes, definitely," JJ said. "That is, if…if they have a record of the animal's teeth." She cleared her throat and looked away; she seemed embarrassed at her own implication.

Prentiss lifted a brow. "Don't they have most of the common carnivores in Tennessee?"

"All of them, as far as I know."

"What are you thinking, JJ?" Hotch asked.

She fidgeted. "Whatever Prentiss saw last night had really big teeth—teeth big enough to make marks like these."

"You can't be serious," Prentiss said.

"_You're_ the one who saw it," the other woman shot back.

"Well, yeah, but—"

"But what, Emily?" Morgan interrupted. "You don't think it could've done this?"

"We don't even know if something _was_ 'done!' This could be the body of our moonshiner. Or maybe somebody's grandmother who really loved her hooch, so the grandkids buried her out by the still."

"Those are both possibilities," Hotch agreed.

"Or it could be one of the people we're looking for. The guy with the boots got the camera, and he decided to finish covering his tracks," Morgan said.

"We're getting really wild with our speculations here," Prentiss protested.

"We won't even know for sure it's human until the guys from UT get here," Hotch said. "And if it's just this one bone, an animal could easily have dragged it from a grave to this location. Or, like Prentiss suggested, it could be someone buried here by friends or family. It's not _legal_, but neither is moonshine; considerations of legality rarely stop mountain people from doing what they want to do."

Hotch stashed the camera back in his pack and pulled the satellite phone off his belt. He raised the antenna and began turning dials and pushing buttons; a frown began to crease his forehead as he fiddled with it.

"Hate these stupid things," he muttered. Several moments passed. With a frustrated sigh he passed it to JJ. "See if you can figure it out," he told her.

She hid a smile and took the phone from him. "It's not as complicated as it looks," she said. "You just…." She trailed off, and her expression was troubled. "That's strange. Let's try mine."

"On the video Garcia told Reid they had to…how'd she put it? _Get somewhere to use the sat phone_," Morgan said.

"They were running from someone, Morgan. She just meant—"

"Yeah, but what if she didn't? What if the phone wasn't working out here?"

"Hotch's just has low batteries or something. Right, JJ?" Prentiss said.

"I don't…no, I don't think so. Mine's not working, either. No signal."

"Did all the satellites fall out of the sky while we were in these damn woods?" Prentiss said, using irritation to cover her sudden spike of fear.

Morgan, sure his heartbeat was audible across half the county, rubbed his chest and swallowed hard. "So we can't call out, you're saying. Where was the last place we had a signal?"

Hotch and JJ shared a glance. "The Hanging Tree for sure," he said.

"It's already after three, and the tree's six hours' hike that way!" Prentiss cried with a wild gesture.

"I could probably make it in four," JJ said, squinting up at the sky. The bright blue was darkening like a bruise.

"You wouldn't make it before dark, and we shouldn't split up. There's no way I'm letting you go alone anyway," Hotch said.

"So what do we do?" Morgan said, asking the question they were all thinking.

"We don't have much choice," Hotch said after a moment. "We'll have to stay the night here, head back at first light."

"Can't we start back now?" Prentiss said. "We could stop somewhere along the way."

"No," JJ said with a slow shake of her head. "There isn't a good stopping point along that bit of trail. It's pretty dense woods all around."

Though she didn't look happy about it, Prentiss nodded reluctant agreement. "You're the expert," she said.

"Let's get started," Hotch said. "I want the tents pitched and the fire blazing before the sun sets."

Night came fast in the high country, and none of them wanted to be caught unawares in the dark.

* * *

_I know I've made a lot of promises about this story before, but I really, really mean it this time. I've got the next two chapters already written, and I'm writing a chapter a day. There will be a slight delay in posting the next chapter b/c my beta is busy for the next day or two. But, intrepid readers, your wait will soon be over! (for real)_


	11. The Watcher

**a/n:** See? I told you!

* * *

**Chapter 11: The Watcher**

beta'd by **chiroho  
**

**"[T]here could be other places, where ... the land waited, bitter and granite, and a thousand years was an eyeblink to the hills..."  
**-Neil Gaiman, "The Monarch of the Glen"

Something watched them from the darkness. Had one of them—JJ, perhaps, on a routine assessment of the clearing; or Prentiss in her paranoia—swept a flashlight in just the right direction, the beam would've caught the gleam of eyes in the night. But no one did, and the silent observer was unmolested and undiscovered.

The watcher sniffed the air and sorted through a multitude of scents that all added up to one thing: _human_. They spoke in hushed voices and moved on quiet feet. Huddled around their fire, cowering away from the wild woods that encircled them and seeking the warmth and light the flames offered; the trappings of civilization; the illusion of safety.

The watcher was nervous. People meant noise. They meant violence and shouting and pain. Frightened humans were the worst, the most dangerous, and these humans positively _reeked_ of fear. They tried to hide it, but scent didn't lie. The watcher hunched closer to the ground, as though trying to disappear into it, and sniffed again. Something new had joined the mingling odors of human being, and the watcher went stiff with terror.

People made the watcher nervous, but _this_ scent—and the creature that went with it—caused a whimper to catch in the watcher's throat. The acrid odor of its own urine suddenly blotted out everything else. Baring razor-like teeth in an impotent snarl, it retreated back into the safety of the woods and left the humans to their fate.

"Last one," Prentiss said as she speared a marshmallow with a stick. "Who wants it?"

No one spoke. Prentiss' attempts to inject a bit of levity into their situation were falling flat, but she wasn't going to let a perfectly good marshmallow go to waste. With a shrug, she stuck it into the heart of a flame and watched it catch fire.

"I like it when they get all black and crispy."

JJ stirred. "Me, too. I'll split it with you."

Prentiss smiled, appreciating the effort, and blew on the blazing marshmallow to extinguish it. "I bet you were a Girl Scout, weren't you?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Scouting teaches girls to be independent and resourceful, and it encourages them to take leadership roles when society in general would rather women be passive and genteel."

"The cookies ain't bad, either," Morgan said.

That broke the tension of the moment, and they all laughed softly. "What's your favorite Girl Scout cookie?" Prentiss asked him as she carefully pulled the molten marshmallow apart and offered half to JJ.

"Thin Mints. They're the best. That's an easy one, Prentiss."

"Tagalongs," Hotch said with a slight smile. "I love peanut butter."

"Trefoils," JJ said. "What?" she asked as everyone stared at her. "They're simple, but delicious."

"Hhmm," Morgan muttered. "It's all about the Thin Mints. Damn, I could go for a Thin Mint right about now."

"I have some in my freezer at home," JJ told him.

"There's a reason to get back to civilization if I ever heard one."

"I guess," Prentiss said, "_if_ you can call Walter's Gap 'civilization,' and I have doubts."

The Ranger offered her disagreement, and the two women launched into a discussion about the merits of small-town versus big-city life, with Morgan chiming in from time to time in support of one or the other. Hotch, meanwhile, leaned away from the flames and scanned the edges of the clearing. The fire dulled his night vision, and he wasn't sure if the rustling he'd just heard had come from the trees around them, or was just the settling of a log on the fire.

JJ watched him from the corner of her eye as she chatted, and his body language alarmed her. Her hand moved almost casually to rest on the weapon at her hip. Morgan and Prentiss caught the gesture, and though the conversation kept flowing, all four of them were now alert for the slightest sound or movement from outside their circle.

"I gotta take a leak," Morgan announced.

"Geez, Morgan, could you be a little more uncouth?" Prentiss said with a roll of her eyes.

"Sure. I coulda said I have to take a piss, but there's a lady present." He waggled his brows at JJ, and, gun in hand, he stepped away to see a fictional man about a metaphorical horse.

"Think it'll work?" Prentiss said, _sotto voce_.

"If there's someone out there, he would want to split us up," Hotch said.

"I'm just glad it's not me," she said. "I'm sick of having the living shit scared out of me by the local wildlife."

A gunshot suddenly ripped through the night, and Prentiss almost got the living shit scared out of her anyway. They were on their feet and moving across the clearing in a stooped run before any one of them could consider doing anything else.

"It came from this way!" Hotch said over his shoulder.

Prentiss paused to grab one of the rifles. She checked to make sure it was loaded and hurried after JJ to bring up the rear, covering their backs with her finger tense on the trigger. The blood was roaring in her ears, and her numb lips formed one word over and over: _Please, please, please_.

Fucking woods. Fucking nature. Give her a good dark alley any day of the week.

Hotch and JJ scanned the tree line with their flashlights, but nothing moved. Had Morgan left the clearing? Hotch glanced back at the Ranger, and she shook her head: she wasn't sure; it had all happened too fast.

"Morgan!" Prentiss called. "Say something! What the fuck did you shoot? A chipmunk?"

Silence was her only answer.

"Here," Hotch called. He lowered his weapon, trusting JJ and Prentiss to cover him, and knelt to read the signs in the leaves. "How did we not hear the struggle?" he said. The area was a mess.

"Where's Morgan?" Prentiss said. "I don't see any blood."

"Look at that," JJ said. A nearby tree had a strip of bark missing; the wound was fresh and oozing sluggish sap.

"Shooting at trees. Fucking city boy."

"How did someone disable a man his size without making a sound? And how did he get away with him so fast?"

"I guess the whole splitting us up thing really worked out," Prentiss remarked. "We shouldn't have let him go."

Hotch gave a grim nod. "It should've been me. I know the woods better; he might not have gotten a jump on me."

Prentiss lowered the rifle with a sigh. There was no point in worrying about that part of it now. Her partner, in typical Derek Morgan style, had put himself on the line for them, and now they had one job: find him. Find him before he ended up like the owner of that bone by the still.

"Any tracks?" she asked JJ in a clipped tone.

Hotch watched in appreciation as a cool, professional mask replaced Prentiss' stricken expression. A missing person, whether in the city or the woods, was familiar territory, and the tough PI would set aside her own fear and worry to focus on finding her partner.

"We'll find him, Prentiss," he told her.

She met his gaze squarely and the corner of her mouth lifted. "I know we will," she said. "And I'm not fucking around with any skunk ape, either."

He lifted a brow and gave the rifle in her hand a pointed look. "Understood" was all he said.

"I've got something!" JJ called.

She cast a glance over her shoulder at Hotch and Prentiss, and they caught the impression of huge dark eyes in a pale face.

"It's blood," she said. "Fresh blood."

An unearthly howl, eerily like the sound they'd heard on Garcia's tape, drifted on the night air. Prentiss clenched the rifle's stock and gritted her teeth.

"The trail leads that way," JJ told them. Their eyes followed the line her pointing finger made, and dread filled them as they realized they'd be heading straight toward whatever was making that unsettling, mournful cry.

* * *

_Reviews would be lovely, dear readers. :)_

_Expect chapter 12 very soon, as it's written and beta'd.  
_


	12. The Family

**a/n: **Things are really heatin' up now, kids! Toss me a review if you're enjoying it. :)

* * *

**Chapter 12: The Family**

beta'd by the lovely **chiroho  
**

**...No one  
Waited for reparation from his plundering claws:  
That shadow of Death hunted in the darkness.  
**-_Beowulf_, 157-159

"What did you do? I told you to _watch_ them, not kidnap them!"

"You wanted 'em taken care of, dintcha? I left a trail a blind badger could folla; they'll be along soon to git him."

Morgan wasn't sure if he was dreaming, except he thought his head hurt too much for this to be a dream. The two quarreling voices seemed to be coming from far away, and his aching skull felt like it was wrapped in cotton. His hands were bound in front of him, and a few half-hearted tugs showed him the ropes were solid, the knots tight. He started to open his eyes, but the light was blinding, and he screwed his lids shut with a whispered curse.

Carefully slitting open one eye, he tried to take stock of his surroundings. A cave, maybe? But snug and warm, lit with old-fashioned oil lamps and roughly furnished. He couldn't see the two men who'd been arguing over him only moments before, and he supposed they'd either stepped outside or moved deeper into the cave. It looked like a wooden partition separated the space into crude rooms.

A howl floated in from outside. Whatever was making that noise was close, Morgan thought; closer than he liked to consider.

"You are a _trial_ to me, boy!" the first voice barked. "Get out there and shoot that damn thing. It's carryin' on fit to wake the dead."

"Cain't git close enough," the second, sullen voice returned. His accent was thicker; the first man spoke as though rigorous schooling had purged most—but not quite all—of his Tennessee mountain twang.

"It's clever. I tole you that. And, Pop—"

"Right," the older man interrupted, "it's clever and you aren't, that's what you're sayin'?"

Silence. Then, the hard _crack_ of flesh on flesh, and a whimper. "Kill it, or don't come back. You hear me, boy?"

"But…." The objection trailed off. Finally, "Yeah, I hear ya."

There was a scrambling sound, and Morgan saw a dark figure scuttle from the cave. One on one: the odds were improving.

"I know you're awake," the man said. Suddenly he was looming over Morgan, a dark silhouette in the quiet room. "What's your name, boy?"

Morgan flirted with the idea of taking offense, but he didn't think the man meant it _that way_. It was just his preferred form of address. "Where am I?" he asked, refusing to be intimidated by the man's size—or his smell. He struggled to sit up. "Are you the guy my partner saw in the woods yesterday? And what the _fuck_ is making that noise?"

The man's head cocked toward the howl. "Nothing to concern you. Though if that boy of mine left a trail like he said, it might be of some concern to your friends. You think they'll come after you?"

"You know they will. And they're armed."

He laughed, and Morgan caught the glint of lamplight on teeth. "You gonna tell me your name so we can talk like civilized men, or am I gonna have to get pushy?"

"Morgan," he said between gritted teeth. "Derek Morgan."

"City boy name. I'm Earl Walters."

"Chicago, actually. But I have a feeling you knew that." He kept his voice steady; he knew the man was looking for a reaction to his name, and Morgan refused to cooperate.

Earl took his time settling into one of the solid wooden chairs that sat around an equally solid-looking wooden table. "What brings you all the way to Tennessee? Sight seeing?" He annunciated the last word carefully, exaggerating the _g_ in an affected way.

"I have a feeling you know that, too," Morgan said. He didn't flinch away from the penetrating stare, and after a while the other man grunted.

"You should know—that professor you're looking for's dead. Been dead. Y'all wasted your time comin' up here."

Morgan blinked. "Are you planning to kill me?"

"_I_ didn't plan any of this. Problem is, your friends are on their way here now, and I can't have that. If they…." He trailed off; shook his head. "I might have to," he said at last.

"My wife knows where I am. Chief Hotchner's men know where he is. Ranger Jareau's do, too. You think no one'll come looking for _us_?"

He sighed. His eyes drifted toward the cave's entrance, and he said musingly, "That boy ain't got two brain cells to rub together, but he understands the most important thing: we protect our own. Chief Hotchner, Ranger Jareau, they don't get that; never have. Around here, you either play along, or you punch out."

"What's he hunting out there?" Morgan demanded.

Another long, steady stare. "You don't want to know. Trust me on that."

* * *

"Trap," Prentiss voted.

"Absolutely trap," JJ said.

"The trail was way too obvious. Definitely a trap," Hotch agreed. "But what choice do we have?"

"We can't just go rushing in there, guns blazing," Prentiss said. "I'm usually all for that approach, but it's too dangerous this time. We have no idea how many people are in there, or how deep that cave goes. We're deaf, dumb, and blind, and there's not a pinball machine in sight."

"I agree," Hotch said. His brow furrowed as he stared across the small clearing toward the cave entrance. "Let's split up," he said. "We can scout the area and meet back here in ten."

"Splitting up didn't work so well for us last time," JJ said.

"I don't really think I should go blundering around in the woods on my own," Prentiss said. "I'd probably end up wiping my ass with poison ivy or something."

"This is a recon mission, not a bathroom break…but point taken. You stay here and keep an eye on the cave. If we're not back in ten minutes, get the hell out of here. Follow the trail back the way we came, and then keep going toward the Hanging Tree until you get a signal on the satellite phone." He handed his over to her and pointed out the direction she should go.

"Ten minutes. Got it." But she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"I'm serious, Prentiss. You said it yourself: it's way too dangerous to rush in there, especially alone."

Finally she locked her gaze with his and nodded. "I'll give you fifteen, and then I'm outta here."

"Good. JJ, let's go."

The Ranger gave Prentiss' arm a parting squeeze before they disappeared from sight. She strained to hear, but after only a few moments the sounds of their passage were gone. She settled in to wait, eyes trained on the cave entrance and senses alert for any signs of movement around her. The only sound was that damned howling, and it had been coming far less frequently in the last few minutes.

Prentiss did a quick weapons check. She fidgeted. Stifled a yawn. Adjusted her sock. Glanced at her watch. Less than five minutes had passed during what felt like an eternity of waiting. What if they were torturing him in there? What if he were already dead? Or, worse, being killed _right now_ while she stood outside staring at the cave like an idiot?

Hotch would kill her if she tried to go in there alone. But Hotch, for all that she'd grown to both like and respect him, wasn't her people. Morgan was. They'd been partners a long time, and the thought of just standing here while something horrible was happening to him…. Gripping the rifle, Prentiss made up her mind. She darted quick glances around the clearing, but it seemed deserted. With a deep breath, she took a step out into the moonlight—and was promptly hit by a runaway locomotive.

Or at least something that felt like one, she thought dimly. The rifle had flown well beyond her reach in the fall, and there was no way she could get to her ankle holster from where she was, especially with that _thing_ on top of her. She had the impression of gnashing teeth and the overwhelming tang of animal. She tried to grip the creature, to throw it off, but its skin was smooth and she couldn't find a hold. It screamed, an almost human-like sound, and Prentiss realized she was whimpering. Its teeth moved closer to her face, and she cringed away in disgust. Hot breath bathed her skin; warm wetness dripped from its mouth and ran down her cheek.

Emily Prentiss knew for a certainty she was going to die, and she'd just begun to accept it when the shots rang out.

* * *

The man went still. "You hear that?"

"Shots. Sounded like two of them." The sound had been muffled, and Morgan realized they weren't as close to the cave entrance as he had thought. The howling had been misleading.

"Shit. Maybe that boy shot the little bastard after all!"

"Or maybe that was one of my people, shooting your boy," Morgan offered.

He looked briefly disconcerted before his expression smoothed and he grunted again. "Would serve him right if he were that stupid."

"He's your son?"

"That's what she said, but with some women, you just don't ever know. Know what I mean?" He leered.

Morgan decided to keep his mouth shut on that particular subject. "Don't you think you should go out there and check?" he said.

"What, and leave you alone? You got ideas about escaping, _boy_?"

Now Morgan was offended, but he refused to let it show. "Escape how? Come on, man, I'm tied up. I don't see any sharp surfaces around here. Plus, I got no idea where I am, and I don't know jack about the woods."

"I'm not goin' anywhere, so just get that idea outta your head." He sat back in his chair as though to reinforce his words, but he kept casting glances toward the front of the cave. "Besides, he should be back with that thing's nasty gray hide any minute."

_Gray hide_, Morgan thought, _like what Prentiss saw last night_.

The man squirmed a bit. Suddenly he rose and grabbed Morgan roughly by the shoulder. He pulled a rifle down from a shelf Morgan hadn't noticed before and pressed it against his neck. "One move and you're dead. Hear me, boy? Nod if you hear me; I don't wanna hear your voice again."

Morgan nodded. The man grunted and pushed him forward. "If my boy's dead, so're you. You better start prayin'."

He wasn't generally a praying man, but a rifle to the back of the neck just might change his mind.

* * *

_Reviews? Pretty please? :)_


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Criminal Minds, Mystery