This is a reboot of a much older story that I wrote years ago, in accordance with the guidelines, the old version, which is already substantially different from this one has been removed. Having grown as I writer, I knew that I could do a better job. Any feedback you have is much appreciated.

Hopper: Ghost of Quantico

Chapter 1: Blast from the Unwelcome Past

"We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately" – Benjamin Franklin

[FBI Headquarters, Quantico Virginia, Just after 11:30 PM, March 9th 2010]

It was late on a stormy Tuesday night by the time the six field agents of the BAU arrived home at Quantico's FBI headquarters, after a three-week long series of one case after another. Everyone was exhausted, happy to be back home in Virginia, and everyone was also more than ready to go home. They couldn't though, not quite yet… they had, had no time, flying from one city to the next in the past few weeks, to finish the growing piles of reports. It was the only part of their job that felt mundane, boring, the part that most people tended to do half asleep around two-thirty in the afternoon while dozing off at their desks.

It was only the team's youngest member, Dr. Spencer Reid, who enjoyed this kind of thing… he had an IQ of 187, an Eidetic memory, and could read twenty-thousand words per minute… in short, he was a genius. For him, these reports could hardly be considered an obstacle, and he knew that from the second he sat down at his desk and got to work, he'd be out the door and on his way to catch a train home to his apartment, in ten minutes or less. Or…so he thought…

Just when everyone had settled down, and the sixth floor office that acted as the Behavioral Analysis Unit's headquarters had descended into a state of near silence, as the team quietly went about their work, Reid saw his friend, the friendly, eccentric, blond-haired blue eyed woman by the name of Penelope Garcia, who served as the team's technical analyst, briskly approaching his desk with a look of poorly masked concern all over her face. She shuffled toward him in her purple platform heels, and the room was otherwise quiet enough that he could hear the mother-of-pearl beads of her long earrings clinking against each other as she walked.

He gulped as a knot of worry rose in his throat, he had no idea what news she had, but what he did know, was that whatever it was couldn't be good…and it seemed to be specifically for him.

She was big boned and a notably shorter 5'6 to his 6'2, but standing in front of his desk, looking at him like he was about to be hit by a train and she wanted to push him out of the way, she seemed almost intimidating, no…that wasn't quite right… it wasn't that she was intimidating… the unknown but clearly bad news that she had to share was… She was usually so happy and spontaneous that this change in demeanor from her caught him a little off guard.

"Reid…" she began, putting a hand on his desk, leaning in slightly in an attempt at some level of privacy and locking her eyes on his. "You…you have company…" she told him.

"Who is it…?" he asked, puzzled and growing even more anxious about who would come visit him at work, at this late hour, and what exactly they were here to tell him.

"He says that his name is Tony Dinozzo…and that he needs to talk to you asap…" she

replied.

By then, a few of the others had heard them talking.

"You know him Reid?" Morgan asked, the muscular African American crossed his arms and raised his head, a classic tell on his part that meant if this guy was here to bother his friend he would have no issue with personally removing him from the building.

"Yeah, he's an old friend of mine from high school, and a fellow federal agent, NCIS, not the Bureau, I've known the guy since I was nine…but I have no idea what he's doing here…" Reid replied, giving Garcia a questioning look.

"All he told me was that he was a friend of yours, that something had happened, and that he needed to talk to you as soon as possible." She told him.

"Where is he now?" Hotch asked, he was their unit chief, a man of average height and build with black hair and gray eyes like steel. It wasn't until he spoke that anyone had realized he'd come out of his private office on the landing above them.

"Just outside the glass doors Sir…" Garcia replied, nodding toward the doors that led out into the sixth floor corridor and the elevator.

"Bring him in." Hotch ordered, giving a low voiced, almost gentle command.

Garcia nodded and left the office momentarily, before returning with a red-faced man of average height and build with reddish-brown hair and hazel eyes, wearing jeans and an untucked, dark green, button down shirt.

"Hi Tony…" Reid said, standing to greet his friend.

"Hi Spencer…" Tony replied, he wouldn't look Reid in the eye, instead he kept his eyes cast down just enough to avoid it, and while his voice was composed, there was a sadness and an anxiousness to it that told Reid that something bad had happened.

Reid waited a moment for Tony to elaborate before asking: "So…I take it you're not here just to catch up…?"

"I wish…God do I wish it were that simple, but no…" Tony answered.

"Then what are you doing here?" Reid asked.

"Spencer, I don't know how to tell you this, so I'm just gonna come right out and say it… please don't freak out?"

"I won't freak out…" Reid assured him, though he could feel his own anxiety level rising.

"I came here tonight because…because Tim was shot earlier tonight…" Tony finally explained.

Reid was aghast, his mouth fell open and his eyes went wide with horror. "Oh my God… What happened? Where is he? Is he ok?"

"Tim…that's your cousin isn't it Reid?" Morgan interrupted.

Reid nodded. "Yes but, quite frankly we're more like brothers…" He replied, never taking his eyes off of Tony.

"This happened about two hours ago, he took two rounds to the chest, no vest, no backup, he was practically home already, he had parked his car and he was headed inside the building…. He's at Bethesda, and as far as I know he's still in surgery…" Tony explained.

Reid's eyes darted back and forth, his mind reeled from the implications of what he'd just heard. "But… I live in that building too… Tim's on the second floor, directly below me…" He replied.

"I know…" Tony told him. "and that…brings us to the other reason I came by…besides the fact that knowing how close you guys are, telling you what happened over the phone just seemed like a dick move…"

Reid gulped down the lump rising in his throat. "There's more?"

Tony nodded. "As soon as we heard about it, Gibbs and Ziva went to go and process the scene…they found shell casings from a long-range rifle of some kind, in the bushes across the street, and two bloodied rounds on the concrete just outside the front entrance, which fits with what the EMTs told us, that the shots to Tim's chest went through and through… but more importantly…Abby ran ballistics on them…" Tony began, not bothering to explain to the rest of the BAU who Gibbs and Ziva were.

"Who's Abby?" Hotch asked.

"She's the forensic scientist attached to our team…" Tony answered.

"She's also my cousin's fiancé…" Reid added, then turned back to Tony he asked: "So what did she find out…?"

"It didn't take her long to get a match…from our cold case files…" Tony replied.

"Go on…" Reid urged him.

"Spencer…the match came from the Hopper investigation…" Tony told him. "You know what that means right?"

Reid nodded in the affirmative, nervously rocking back and forth slightly, shifting his weight from his heels to the balls of his feet and back.

Most of the others just seemed confused; but agent Rossi, an aging, broadly set Italian with graying black hair and a short, trimmed beard, seemed to recognize the case Tony was talking about as well.

"What's the Hopper Investigation?" Morgan finally asked, breaking the tense silence that had descended upon the room.

It was Rossi who answered this time.

"The Hopper was a serial killer here in Quantico who was active from the mid-70s right up into the early 90s… He was a classic family annihilator who appeared to be focused on maternal figures… when he targeted a family he would stalk them for a few weeks and then when the mother, aunt, or grandmother was home alone he would force his way in and kill her in a highly specific and sadistic way… then he would leave her for her family to find. In the coming weeks or even months, he would pick off the rest of the family one by one by shooting them in the heart…"

Tony nodded. "That's right but he got the nickname 'The Hopper' because he seemed to purposely hop the jurisdictional lines between our two agencies… he would target a navy or marine family, which would fall into our jurisdiction, then he'd target a civilian family, which would be for you guys to investigate… he went back and forth like that for seventeen years and that's just what we're aware of for sure…" He added.

"Ok, but, other than Tim getting shot tonight, what does this have to do with Reid? He was like ten, he was still in Las Vegas at the time…" Morgan stated.

"Actually guys… I wasn't…" Reid began. "I never told you guys any of this, because it's not something I like to talk about but… after my dad left, Mom kinda went off the rails for a while so my Uncle Frank, her brother, Tim's dad… convinced her to send me to stay with them here in Virginia for a while… he was…and still is… an admiral, and when he's not overseas, he's assigned to the base here in Quantico…" he explained. "Eighteen years ago tomorrow, the three of us, Tim, his baby sister Sarah, and I, came home from school to find the front door wide open and my Aunt Leah dead in the living room…"

The rest of his team exchanged looks of horror amongst themselves and shot him sympathetic glances.

"And since…as Spencer said before… Tim's father was, and still is, and admiral, obviously the case fell into NCIS territory…" Tony clarified.

"The unsub was never caught?" Hotch asked.

"Nope… and believe me… the agents on the case back then did their best…but NCIS had encountered this maniac's handiwork before, they knew how this worked, so their main focus, was making sure that Leah's kids and her nephew were protected… eventually the trail went cold… Tim and Spencer finished high school and went to college…so did I, and Sarah moved with her dad to California when he was finally reassigned to a base on the west coast, although they've since returned…" Tony explained.

"Now that the Hopper is back, and clearly still after the three of us, even after all these years…you came because he's already shot Tim, and there's a good chance that I'm next…" Spencer replied in disheartened admission of what he'd known since Tony had uttered the word 'Hopper'.

Tony clenched his jaw in anger at the whole situation. On the surface, Spencer appeared relatively calm… but that was his way… if there was one thing he hated, it was showing weakness to his peers; but the fear in his golden brown eyes was unmistakable, which, Tony realized, was probably why he kept his head down, so that his wavy, shoulder-length, light brown hair, fell around his face like a curtain, hiding this from his fellow FBI agents who were standing off to both sides of him.

"So what do we do now?" JJ, the BAU's communications liaison asked. She was a small framed blond woman in her early thirties and one of Reid's best friends of all.

"Well…" Tony began. "Since Tim's the one who has been hurt already, this is still primarily an NCIS investigation…however, given the circumstances, among other things, my orders from my boss were to ask for FBI assistance…"

"You can tell your unit chief that you have it…" Hotch told him.

Tony nodded.

"I'm guessing Agent Gibbs knows about this?" Reid asked.

"Who's Agent Gibbs?" Hotch cut in.

"He's our team's current leader…" Tony replied, answering Hotch's question.

"He was also one of the agents on the original case when my aunt was killed…" Reid added.

"Yes, and to answer your question Spencer, yes, Gibbs knows…" Tony began. "He knows and he's pissed… though whether he's more angry at the Hopper for coming back after you guys, or at himself for failing to get him back in the day…well, you're the profiler, you figure it out."

"I just have one question…" Reid replied.

"What?" Tony asked.

"Where's Sarah?" Spencer demanded. He knew that if the Hopper was after one or two then he was after all three. That meant that Sarah belonged in protective custody too.

"Gibbs sent Ziva to go and get her…she's probably at the hospital by now…and actually, we should get going, just name your destination…just not your apartment, Tim was shot right outside the building, it's safe to say the Hopper probably knows you live there too, even if he doesn't it's way too big of a risk."

Reid nodded, and Hotch gave his team their marching orders.

"Reid, you, Rossi and I will go with Agent Dinozzo to the hospital, the rest of you will dig up our half of the old files and start going over them… We don't stop until we find this guy and bring him down. Reid, this should go without saying, but until this is over, you don't leave the building, NCIS, or another secure area without at least one more agent with you. That's an order. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes Sir…"