A/N: As always, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter.

Chapter 29

When she got to her office on Friday morning, the red light on Emily's desk phone indicated she had a new voicemail. Emily Prentiss was a field agent. She didn't sit behind a desk. The desk phone was primarily used by her to make outgoing phone calls when they happened to be working a case from Quantico. It wasn't the phone number she gave out. It wasn't even on her business cards. It was, however, listed in an internal employee directory. Usually if she had a voicemail, it was from someone within the Bureau, a news reporter who called into the main switchboard and was transferred to her desk phone by the operator, or a solicitor who had somehow gotten a hold of the number.

With an almost bored expression, Emily entered the password to access her voicemail and held the receiver to her ear as she waited. The second the voice that spoke into her ear said her name – her first name – she recognized that the caller was using a voice changer. There were apps for that purpose, some of which were free. Emily sat up straighter, stiffening in her chair, every muscle tense as the message played. She knew what was coming. She didn't know, couldn't know the content of the message, but she knew then that it was the person who sent the pictures.

"Emily. Did you get the picture?" There was a short pause, almost as if the caller was waiting for a response. "Do you know what I could have done to her? Bad things happen to girls when they're out alone after dark. You know that though. You're the FBI. Behavioral Analysis Unit. You think you know what I'm going to do next? See if you can stop me."

That was the end of the voicemail. The tone of it was clearly threatening, but no explicit threat was made.

Shaken, Emily hung up the phone. It took her a moment to be able to think rationally enough to start analyzing the voicemail through the lens of a profiler.

The time stamp of the call was 11:01 pm at night the day before. It seemed significant that it was almost exactly at 11:00 pm, as if the caller had waited until that hour to make the call. Why wait until that late to call unless the caller didn't want her to pick up?

Whoever he or she was, the caller didn't want a profiler on the other end of the phone. If the call came in when she was at her desk, Emily would have used all of her training and skills to try to get under the unsub's skin. If the unsub became angry or defensive, he or she would be more likely to let something slip.

The unwillingness to engage in a battle of wits was a sharp contrast with the smug tone of the voicemail. You think you know what I'm going to do next? See if you can stop me.

Emily would expect someone who thought they were smarter than her - smarter than the whole BAU team - to want to talk to them. Where was the challenge in leaving a voicemail? Anyone could leave a voicemail. There was no one to outsmart if there was no one on the other end of the phone. It was like playing chess against yourself. The feeling of victory was greatly diminished when there was no one to beat at the game.

Emily replayed the voicemail, paying closer attention to the word choice this time. She noted that the unsub didn't use Hannah's name. Was that because the unsub didn't know her name?

At that exact moment, JJ was at her desk listening to the voicemail left for her.

"Jennifer. Did you get the pictures?"

JJ went completely still when the digitally altered voice came across the speaker, listening to the message with a stricken expression.

"If I wanted to, I could have done more than take a few pictures. How long were they outside by themselves? Do you know what could have happened to your little peanut when big brother was busy playing soccer? And I thought the FBI was supposed to be the experts on kidnapping. What kind of an expert are you?"

JJ was seemingly frozen in place in her desk chair. She didn't know how long she sat there after the voicemail ended, feeling powerless against the nameless, faceless enemy, before Emily appeared in front of her.

"JJ?" Emily called the blonde profiler's name for the second time, her eyes narrowing in concern at the lack of response.

JJ finally snapped out of her stupor, blinking in surprise when she saw Emily. "Emily? I – there was a voicemail from the unsub," JJ told her in a shaky voice.

"I got one, too," Emily said, reaching across the desk to put her hand on top of JJ's hand and giving it a comforting squeeze as a physical, tactile way of showing her friend that she wasn't alone. They were all in this together.

"How are you so okay?" JJ wondered, basing her assessment that Emily was okay on her outwardly calm appearance. JJ knew it took a lot to rattle Emily Prentiss, but a threat to Hannah would be enough to do it. Sure, Emily was new to Hannah's life, but Hannah was still her child. JJ knew Emily loved the girl fiercely already. And yet, somehow, Emily managed to maintain her almost annoyingly perfect composure. How could any mother be that calm and collected when her child was in danger? Emily's stoicism made JJ feel like she was overreacting. It didn't feel like they were in the same boat.

"I'm not," Emily admitted. "I'm afraid for Hannah. And I'm afraid that even if I can keep her safe, her dad won't let me be a part of her life after this."

"Has he said anything?" JJ asked, realizing for the first time that, out of all of them, Emily had the most to lose. The stakes were higher for her than for any of the other parents whose kids were unequivocally theirs. Emily had just been suffering in silence, as per usual.

"Not in so many words," Emily replied.

Knowing there was something Emily wasn't saying, JJ looked at her with a sympathetic expression. "You know you can't take anything he said when he was scared out of his mind too seriously," she told Emily reassuringly. "He'll calm down when this is all over."

"Maybe," Emily responded doubtfully.

It was actually less what Steve said to her and more just a feeling she had. It was the way he had looked at Emily when he walked in and saw her sitting at his kitchen table, checking his daughter's homework - a darkly accusatory look that said far more than any words could have. It was the carefully civil way he spoke to her like it took everything he had to control his temper.

Emily had a feeling the only reason the adoptive father was tolerating her continued presence in Hannah's life was because he knew he needed her help to keep the girl safe. He knew that, and he hated it because she was the reason Hannah wasn't safe to begin with, but she was also the one best suited to protect her now. That had to be difficult for him to accept.

Whether it was because she didn't want to think about what Steve would do when he didn't need her to protect Hannah anymore or because it was just in her nature to put others first, Emily deftly transitioned the subject back to JJ. "How'd Will take it?"

"About as well as can be expected," JJ said with a heavy sigh.

Will couldn't cut her out of the boys' lives, and JJ knew he would never do that even if he could, but he sure knew how to make her feel guilty about the effect her job had on Henry and Michael, whether it was because she wasn't there when one of them was sick and wanted her or…well, this. And this was bad. Really, really bad. This was so much worse than not being there to read a bedtime story or tuck them in at night. This was literally their lives they were talking about. This was not letting Henry ride the school bus with his friends in the morning because someone could grab him at the bus stop. This was not letting the boys play in the front yard of their dream home with the white picket fence because someone could take one or both of them. This was living their lives in fear because of her job.

If it were up to Will, JJ would never have gone back to the BAU after Strauss forced her out. Her job was and always had been the main source of contention between them. That aside, they had a happy marriage, but the strength of their relationship was being tested now more than ever before.

JJ had always justified being away from the boys to herself because she knew they were safe at home with Will, but this time she felt like a bad mother because her boys weren't safe in their own home - and that was on her. Honestly, Will didn't have to say much about it because she already felt terribly guilty.

Fortunately, William LaMontagne Jr. was nothing if not a Southern gentleman. No matter how upset or frustrated he was with the situation they were in, he was still soft-spoken, chivalrous, and almost deferential to JJ. He was a good father, a good husband…just a good man. Their arguments never really escalated to fights, but they did argue about the same thing – namely her job – over and over again.

Emily winced sympathetically. "That well, huh?"

JJ nodded slowly. "Pretty much."

"I'm sorry, Jayje," Emily said sincerely.

They were in the same boat, and it felt to both of them like they were up a creek without a paddle. They just had different coping skills and coping mechanisms - a result of very different upbringings.

Half an hour later they replayed the voicemails in the conference room with everyone, Hotch and Derek included, sitting around the table. By the time the team was finished dissecting the voicemails, Emily and JJ would be able to recite the words that were haunting their every thought from memory.

"Claire Bates used a voice changer when she called the parents of the boys she had," Hotch pointed out the similarity in MO.

"Yeah, but anyone can use a voice changer these days, Hotch," Derek said somewhat dismissively. "There's software and apps for that. Isn't that right, baby girl?" Derek looked to the tech analyst for support. He really thought Jeremy Sayer was behind this and didn't want the team discounting him because of a voice changer anyone could get off the Internet.

Penelope lit up instantly at the old nickname coming from those luscious lips. "Oh, yes, there is an app for that, sugar lips," she said with the harmlessly flirtatious smile reserved just for him. Oh, how she missed him. She wished he was there for a different reason, but she was glad he was there. Was that bad? "There's an app to make your sexy voice sound like a robot or Darth Vader or – and this is my personal favorite because who doesn't love an Australian accent? – Chris Hemsworth. The point being that there is no shortage of apps for that very purpose. Some of them only work if you record your voice before you make the phone call, but some work in real time. Our mystery caller may have been using the kind where you pre-record your voice."

Garcia had already given a highly complex explanation as to why she couldn't pinpoint the location of the caller, but she'd lost them all by going too deep into the technical weeds. Suffice it to say, they didn't know where the calls were made from. What they did know, thanks to her, was that there were actually four calls that came into the main line from an unknown, untraceable number even though only Emily and JJ had voicemails. The other two attempts must have been for Hotch and Morgan, neither of whom were current employees, but there was no operator to confirm that. At night it switched over to an electronic directory where callers entered the first three letters of the last name of the person they were trying to reach and were connected to that person's extension automatically. The unsub may have gotten frustrated when he or she couldn't find Aaron Hotchner or Derek Morgan in the electronic directory.

"There's also the fact that Claire Bates didn't leave voicemails," Rossi clarified. "She actually talked to the parents of the boys she had. That's an important distinction here."

"With the timing of these phone calls, I think it's safe to assume that the unsub didn't want to talk to us," Emily said. "Why wait that late to call if not to increase the chance of being sent to voicemail?"

Reid's brow was furrowed in contemplation as he re-read the transcripts of Claire Bates' phone calls and compared them with the notes from the interviews with Jeremy Sayer's living victims, paying special attention to the words they used. It just reinforced what he was thinking. He looked up from the papers that were spread out in front of him. "I think it's a male. He's talking like he's smarter than JJ and Emily. Smarter than all of us. He's emphasizing the competition aspect."

"So you think it's Jeremy?" Derek questioned, going back to the only male suspect they had left.

"Maybe," Reid replied distractedly, his brain working at a rapid speed.

"But didn't Claire Bates tell the moms they were bad mothers?" Luke spoke up somewhat hesitantly since he was nowhere near as familiar with the case as Reid was. "Isn't that kind of what the unsub's doing now?"

Penelope immediately went on the defensive with the fierceness of a rabid dog. "Luke Alvez, you better not be saying my girls are bad mothers!"

"I'm not," Luke said quickly, eyes wide as he looked around the table, relieved to see that the feisty tech analyst was the only one who seemed to take offense to it, and that was probably only because he was the one who said it. Actually, on second thought, JJ had an almost pained look on her face even though she hadn't said anything. Crap. Was she really upset because of him? The poor guy started trying to backpedal instantly. "I'm just saying that's what the unsub was saying." He decided to just stop talking before he made it any worse and let his voice trail off.

"JJ, do you actually call Michael your little peanut?" Reid asked suddenly. Although it had the unintended effect of bailing Luke out, Reid had been so lost in his own thoughts that he didn't even realize Luke needed bailing out.

"Uh, no," JJ said, a little surprised by the random question. "Why?"

"It's just that Claire Bates referred to Ethan Hayes and Michael Bridges by name or by the pronoun 'he,'" Reid explained why he was asking. "She never used pet names."

"Jeremy did. Oh, what was it he called his sister?" Emily said, trying to remember. "It was like he was mocking his mother. Mommy's little angel?"

"That's it," Derek told her, remembering the moment he heard it.

"It's possible his mother called him her little peanut," Reid suggested tentatively.

"I don't think so, kid," Derek shot that idea down. "Jeremy's twin died in the womb. Mrs. Sayer blamed him."

"She was very religious," Emily added as further explanation.

"She thought he was born evil," Rossi surmised, not sure he entirely disagreed with the mother. Born that way or not, at just thirteen Jeremy Sayer was evil incarnate.

"It's unlikely she would have used terms of endearment when she was talking to him," Emily stated matter-of-factly.

"But he would have heard her use them when talking to his sister," Tara pointed out. "And it would have made him jealous. His mother probably wasn't affectionate with him. She may have been downright cold and distant toward him. Until his sister was born, he probably thought she was incapable of love, but seeing how different she was with his sister would have made him incredibly resentful of Carrie."

"Right or wrong, a lot of parents have favorites when they have more than one kid," Hotch said. Both Matt and JJ were quick to deny it, but he ignored their protests and continued, "But this is different. This is extreme. Mrs. Sayer would have taken Carrie's side in every fight."

"And with good reason," Derek interjected. "Hotch, he broke Carrie's arm. That's not normal sibling rivalry."

Hotch barely glanced at Derek. "Mrs. Sayer may have let Carrie get away with things that Jeremy would have been punished harshly for. Any time anything went wrong, she would have blamed Jeremy whether he was responsible or not. Imagine a vase is broken. She didn't see who did it, but she automatically blames him. To say she wasn't always fair to him would be an understatement," he finished the point he was trying to make.

"That degree of favoritism is a form of emotional abuse," Tara told them.

"But not all kids who are abused try to kill their mothers," Rossi reminded everyone.

"He's been out for a year already, and he hasn't done anything wrong yet," Luke spoke up again, apparently feeling brave.

"Only because he doesn't know where to find his mom and his sister," Derek countered easily.

"Let's assume for a minute that it is Jeremy doing all this," Rossi began pragmatically. "Last known location is Nebraska. How does he get from there to here? Does he steal a car? Take the bus?"

"Garcia, can you find out if there were any stolen vehicles with Nebraska plates found in D.C. in the last two weeks?" Hotch asked.

Nothing came up on a stolen car with Nebraska plates, but Penelope finally got a hit from the APB on Claire Bates in the early afternoon.

Penelope Garcia ran – okay, really she speed walked, which was as close as she came to running in a dress and heels – from her lair to the BAU conference room where the profilers were still gathered. "I have news," she announced as the burst through the door, immediately attracting the attention of everyone in the room. "I don't know if I'd call it good news, but, in a weird, twisted way, it's good news for us because it means there's one less evil person in the world who could have it out for all of my precious babies."

"Garcia," Hotch said with just a hint of impatience creeping into his voice.

"Sorry. Um, the locals in sin city found Claire Bates' body. She killed herself," Penelope told them as feelings of sadness at a death that didn't have to happen and relief that the woman who once killed a five year old little boy wouldn't get anywhere near her godson warred inside her simultaneously.

"She killed herself? How?" Reid inquired with morbid curiosity, the genius inside him always wanting to know everything so he could make sense of it.

"Okay, this is where it gets really messed up – like scar your kid for life messed up," Penelope said, making a face. "You know how Jamie hurt his wrist falling off the monkey bars at school? Well, she hung herself from those same monkey bars. School was out for the holidays so she wasn't found until Wednesday. They just called me because of the APB."

There was a brief moment of silence as the agents in the room contemplated that, some of them like Reid and Emily feeling empathy for the dead woman in spite of the fact that she took a little boy's life back in 2008.

Claire felt like she was losing her own son all over again. Her last visit with him ended early, with Jamie upset and not wanting to spend any more time with her.

The process of involuntarily terminating Claire's parental rights was under way. It was only a matter of time before the foster parents became Jamie's new parents – people who not only refused to let Claire see her son when she showed up on their doorstep, but who also called the police on her.

Claire Bates probably felt like everyone was conspiring to keep her son away from her – Social Services, the foster parents, the court system, the police. In a rapid downward spiral, she went to the one place where her ten year old son spent more time than anywhere else – his school - in an attempt to feel closer to him at a time when she felt desperate and alone. In the dark of the night, she wandered to the empty playground that was part of the elementary school campus and hung herself from the monkey bars her son had fallen from.

Emily could imagine the despair Claire must have felt when the foster parents kept her from her son. The profiler had felt just a fraction of that despair any time she thought Steve was going to tell her she couldn't see Hannah anymore. To the adoptive father's credit, he had yet to actually deny her access to her daughter, but there were times when he had been close. Emily couldn't help but wonder if this would be the last straw for him.

"With Danny Murphy at home with his parents in Jersey and Claire Bates dead, we're down to one suspect. Jeremy Sayer," Derek said.

There were times when they all just knew something, and this was one of those times for him. Call it gut instinct. He knew it was Jeremy Sayer. He could feel it.

He hoped he was wrong, but if he was right, it was going to be really bad.

Jeremy killed nine people, and that was when he was only thirteen.

Derek didn't even want to think about what Jeremy would be capable of now.

The way he saw it, if Jeremy went after Emily, it would be because mother and teenage daughter were surrogates for his own mom and sister. It fit the profile. But the profile also said Jeremy was a kid filled with intense hatred and rage. He would terrorize anyone who got in his way, and Derek Morgan had been an immovable object in his path to revenge. Yeah, the kid may go after Emily, too, but he was the one who actually slapped the cuffs on the kid. He was the one who dragged the kid out of the house, practically kicking and screaming. He was the one who showed up at the kid's first parole hearing and made damn sure the kid didn't go free.

There was no question in Derek Morgan's mind that the little bastard would have it out for him.

With no new evidence and no other suspects at the moment, they agreed to focus their efforts on Jeremy Sayer and went back through every detail of the case with a fine-tooth comb.

They discussed at length how the profile could have changed. Jeremy was only thirteen when he was arrested. He was twenty-one now. How would the last eight years have changed him?

The brain wasn't fully developed until age twenty-four or twenty-five. One of the areas of the brain that matured late was the prefrontal cortex, which was important in impulse control, risk-taking behavior, and judgment. That area of Jeremy's brain would still be maturing.

There were various theories on personality development. Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow were just two of the many scientists who had their own theories on different stages of development. Many of them agreed that personality was already defined at an early age, some saying as early as three years old, and that it usually stayed the same although it was possible for life experiences to change someone's personality.

Reid went into professor mode as he spoke about the science of it all, with Tara weighing in on the psychological aspects.

The profilers also had to take into account how spending his adolescence imprisoned amongst convicted criminals, some of whom had committed crimes even worse than his, would have affected Jeremy. Inmates bragged about their crimes. Even though they were behind bars, they boasted about all the times they hadn't been caught, all the bodies the cops would never find. Jeremy would have learned things from their stories and may be a more sophisticated killer now because of it. He would be more dangerous than ever before.

Emily decided to send Tara and Luke to Nebraska to talk to Jeremy's cellmate, the prison guards, and the warden. Her hope was that they would leave the prison with a lead.

They still had no actual proof that it was Jeremy. They couldn't prove he was in Washington. They couldn't prove he sent the pictures. They couldn't prove he left the voicemails. All they had was a working theory. It was a good theory, but they needed evidence to back it up.

They had painstakingly gone through every single case the four agents targeted by the unsub worked where the person convicted either had children or targeted children and was now free. Danny Murphy, Claire Bates and Jeremy Sayer were the only convicted killers who seemed to be likely suspects.

But what if they were wrong? What if they missed something?

It was going to be a really long weekend for all of them if they didn't get a break in the case. There was no school or daycare over the weekend. Would the unsub decide that it was the perfect time to finally make a move?