"Henry! Henry please wait for us," Spencer Reid called out to his seven-year-old godson who was hurrying through the parking lot towards the playground. Reid checked to make sure Henry's younger brother was secure in the baby carrier he was wearing, held the child's diaper bag tightly in one hand, then broke into a light run to catch up. Thirty feet later, he was taking the older child's hand, and reminding him gently not to bolt again.

Baby Michael bounced contentedly against Uncle Spencer's chest, his little fingers clutched Reid's purple hoodie and Reid laughed as he realised the baby had been sucking on a handful of the fleece garment.

"Don't think your mommy would appreciate me letting you consume this," he told the baby, pulling the sweater from Michael's mouth.

They reached the playground and Henry ran gleefully to the jungle gym, climbing into it and instantly making a new friend. Reid rummaged through a pocket in the diaper bag until he found the baby's pacifier, secured in a Ziploc bag. Once again, he disengaged his sweater from Michael's mouth and fingers and offered him the pacifier. Michael cooed happily as he wiggled, pacifier now firmly in place. Reid set the diaper bag down on the ground next to the jungle gym.

He watched as Henry played with his new friend, a little girl with big brown eyes and dark curly hair. She looked to be about three, Reid thought, and wondered for a moment where her parent or caregiver was. He babbled back and forth with Michael, playing with the baby's fingers as he surveyed the playground. There were four other children, Reid noted: a blond boy around six; a blond girl approximately four who resembled him—siblings Reid surmised; and two other dark haired girls who looked to be about eight and ten years old. The siblings were playing in the sandbox with an assortment of tractors and trucks. The older girls were swinging on the swings. Two backpack-wearing women - one blond and about twenty-five, he decided and one dark-haired around thirty- were standing and chatting, next to the sandbox about fifteen feet away from the jungle gym. In the five seconds it took for Reid to profile the scene, the mother of Henry's new friend came running up, calling out her child's name and admonishing her in much the same fashion Reid had just done with Henry. The little girl, Anna, was allowed to return to the climbing apparatus and as her mother turned, she bumped into Reid, losing her balance and falling down. Immediately, Reid bent down to help her up.

"I'm so sorry," she apologized, brushing the sand out of her clothes, "I didn't see you."

Spencer smiled, told her it was okay and commented on how well Henry and Anna appeared to be getting along. She offered her hand and introduced herself, "I'm Melissa."

"Spencer," he replied, awkwardly extricating his right hand from Michael's grip so he could shake the woman's hand, despite the fact that he didn't normally do so with strangers.

"What's the baby's name?" she asked.

"Michael." Reid pulled the top of the carrier aside a little to afford Melissa the opportunity to see him. She smiled and cooed at him and was delighted to get a response as his little hand reached out to take her finger.

Reid looked up and saw a dark red Ford SUV circle around the parking lot in which only two other vehicles—a small compact and a Jeep—were parked.

Henry and Anna were playing a spirited game of tag, racing along the small playhouse interior of the jungle gym and sliding down the little slide, chasing each other and climbing up the ladder back into the playhouse, laughing all the while. Reid watched them while also keeping an eye on their surroundings. Anna's mother watched Reid. She smiled at the ease with which the young man interacted with both the baby and the older child as they chatted about children in general. He kept looking around, she noticed, but not in a distracted way.

"It's too early for your bottle, Michael. Sorry. We have to let Henry burn off some energy and then we'll go back home for your lunch, okay?" he told the baby after Michael had spit out his pacifier for about the fifth time. Reid rummaged through the diaper bag again and found another Ziploc bag. He took out an arrowroot biscuit and offered it to Michael who eagerly snatched it from his fingers and began gnawing at it.

"Teething?" Melissa asked, addressing the question to both Spencer and Michael.

"Yeah, the first molars I think," Spencer replied. "Ouch, if I recall correctly from Henry's experience."

Anna approached, and seeing Michael with a cookie, asked Reid if she could have one too. While Melissa immediately began to admonish Anna for asking, Spencer interjected saying it was fine, and that she could indeed have one too if it was okay with Melissa.

"Plleeeeasssse Mama?" Anna begged and her mother relented.

Henry came down the slide and joined them. Reid knelt down to their level, and quickly gave each child a cookie.

"JJ is going to kill me," he made a face as he spoke. "Filling them with cookies. She'll never let me out with them again," he lamented, as he rose back to his full height.

"Aw, I think you're doing a great job with your sons," Melissa said sympathetically.

The SUV made another circuit, slowing behind the Jeep. Reid noted there were two people in the vehicle, both wore sunglasses and had dark hair. They appeared to be looking for something. Or someone, he thought.

"I'm sorry. Um, they're not my sons, they're my godsons actually," he told her. As the SUV came around again, Reid spoke.

"BT1537," he said aloud. Melissa, who had been asking him how old Michael was, realised his attention had shifted to the vehicle in the parking lot.

"What?" she asked.

"BT15-," he started to repeat and his eyes suddenly widened. He grabbed her and threw her to the ground, at the same time shouting out to the others in the playground,

"Get down! Everybody get down!" In the same instant, Henry and Anna came down the little slide and landed almost next to Melissa and Spencer. He grabbed the children and forced them down into the sand next to Melissa, and moved to shield them with his own body, taking care to cover Michael.

Shots rang out. Melissa counted six, but as soon as the first one sounded, chaos ensued. The other two women and four children started screaming but quickly followed Reid's example, hitting the ground. The SUV's tires squealed as the vehicle fled the parking lot and drove off in an easterly direction.

Anna was crying and instinctively, Melissa meant to go to her and found she couldn't move. Spencer was lying across her back face down in the sand. She reached out and found Anna's hand and held it, and her daughter began to calm down. Melissa heard Michael's muffled crying and then she heard Henry's piercing scream. Spencer was eerily silent and she soon discovered why.

"Uncle Spence! Uncle Spence!" Henry was distraught and terrified. Melissa managed to crawl out from underneath Spencer and was horrified to find that there was blood, a lot of it, streaming from his head and along his back.

She ripped her own sweater off and pressed it against the wound on the back of his head, turning his head a little so the sand could be moved from his mouth and nose. The other two women in the park, along with their four frightened but uninjured children, came running to help. Linda, the brunette woman directed her daughters, Nikki and Vikki, to comfort Anna while she gathered Henry in her arms, speaking soothingly to him.

"Call 9-1-1," Melissa commanded, as she brushed sand away from Spencer's face and checked to see if he was breathing. Finding that to be the case, she turned his head just enough to keep his airway clear of the sand.

"I don't have a—" the blond woman began.

Melissa motioned with her chin to a spot just behind her on the ground where Spencer had first shoved her, "In my purse!"

"Anna, honey, can you and the girls help Mommy help Spencer?"

Anna nodded her head. The three girls all awaited Melissa's instructions.

"I need one of you to press down on the sweater here, to stop the bleeding from his head. Can you do that?" Nikki, the older girl bravely took the position and did as directed. Melissa quickly unclasped the baby carrier; the clips over Spencer's shoulders were easily undone.

"Ok, I'm going to move him just a bit here, and I need you two to get Michael out."

Behind her, she could still hear Henry's plaintive cry. It broke her heart but she couldn't let that distract her. Carefully, she pushed Spencer up out of the sand, just enough so that Anna and Vikki could tug Michael free of the baby carrier. He'd stopped crying and this worried Melissa.

"Ambulance and police are on the way," Stephanie, the blond woman, told them, putting the cell phone back in Melissa's purse. Her two children stood beside her, sniffling but otherwise still; well behaved considering the circumstances.

Relief of sorts spread through Melissa when she heard Michael resume crying as the girls liberated him from the carrier. Stephanie took charge of baby Michael, using bottles of water from their backpack to wash the sand off his face and out of his mouth and nose. She handed a bottle of water to Melissa, who used some of it to clear the sand from Spencer's face.

"The baby's okay, just a little sandy. Unhurt though," said Stephanie.

Henry calmed down a little when he saw his younger brother was all right, but his uncle's condition still scared him.

"Uncle Spence?" he whispered between sniffles, looking up to the brunette holding him.

"He's gonna be all right, honey," she told him, even if she didn't know the truth herself. "The paramedics are on the way."

Anna held her sweater out to her mother. "Do you need mine for there?" she asked, indicating the wound on Reid's back.

"Oh, sweetheart," Melissa was moved to tears. Her daughter's favourite Dora the Explorer sweater was about to become a bloody compress and the sacrifice wasn't lost on anyone. Anna put her hand on top of her mother's and moved the sweater to the hole in Spencer Reid's back. They held it in place together and waited for the ambulance.