"Welcome back," he murmured. "Where'd you go?"

Now or never. "Dave, I have to tell you something, and you're not going to like it. Just promise you'll let me finish before you say anything."

"That's what my first and second wives said right before they told me they wanted a divorce." His smile vanished as a tear spilled down her cheek, and she turned her face away. He immediately reached for her hand, squeezing it penitently. "Christ, Jordan, I'm sorry. Of course you can tell me."

"I know," she whispered, still keeping her gaze on the clouds whipping past. "It's just, I need your help, and this isn't easy for me. Please just let me get it out." He obediently said nothing, only squeezed her hand more tightly, and she managed to turn her eyes back to his. "It's my father," she began. "He's not a good man. He's a criminal, and... he's been in jail ever since I could walk. But he's out now, and I'm scared. He hurt my mother, made her suffer more than I think she's even admitted to me. She attempted suicide twice, when I was 8 and again when I was 13. I'm worried what he'll do, what she'll do if she sees him again. And I don't know if he remembers me. He was always drunk or stoned, or both, when he was around. But what if he does? And what if he wants to see me?"

"Over my dead body." Jordan shivered at his tone. It was low and cold and completely devoid of mercy. She hadn't known he could sound like that. "Before you say it, yes, I know you can take care of yourself," he continued in his usual tones.

Jordan smirked, paradoxically relieved by both his declaration and his step back from its sinister promise. It's only what I wanted in the first place. "I didn't tell you so you could tell me I can take care of myself."

Rossi laughed. "Understood. Count me in, kiddo."

"Us, too." Jordan looked up. Reid's head was poking over the back of the seat in front of her, and as she glanced at the others, she saw that although they hadn't moved, they were all looking in her direction. Morgan's headphones had even taken a header and were curled lifelessly around his ankles. Jordan sniffed and leaned back in her seat, relaxing under their eyes. She could feel the icy stranglehold on her insides dissolving, the warmth of Rossi's hand in hers, the press of his shoulder against hers, and she allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

Jordan spent the next few days with nerves so on edge she thought she could hear them buzzing beneath her skin, sizzling through her until she bubbled with restless energy. She knew the others were always watching her, although they were so subtle it would have gone unnoticed if she hadn't been in hypervigilant mode. With one exception. Rossi was open and unashamed of his scrutiny. He followed her nearly everywhere, although she was relieved to see him stop short of accompanying her inside the ladies' restroom. Either he did have some sense of decency, or he thought her father did. Jordan gave an involuntary snort. Yes, the man would tyrannize his wife and child until they cowered at the sound of his voice, but he would certainly shrink from compromising a woman's right to pee in private. Right.

Aside from the constant fear of seeing her father pop up around every corner, Jordan had the added inner whirlpool of being warmed one minute and infuriated the next by Rossi's mother bear act. They nearly came to blows one day; or she did, anyway.

"Damn it, Rossi!" She'd just grabbed some files from her desk with the intention of heading to Garcia with some ideas for narrowing down the suspect pool, and when she turned back to the door, he was standing two feet away. The files went flying. He said nothing but contritely bent down and began gathering them up. "Ok. Ok. We need to talk."

"Sorry, Jordan, I didn't mean to scare you."

"I know, Dave, but you did! You are! I go for coffee, you're there. I go to Hotch's office, you're there. I can't go put on lipstick without feeling that if I look up at the mirror, you might be standing behind me. I wouldn't be surprised if you started following me home and standing guard outside my bedroom door. Dave, I know you're just trying to help, but at this rate, it's not my father that's going to get me; I'm going to die of a heart attack from the stress of worrying about you worrying about me!"

Rossi silently picked up the last of the scattered papers and dropped them back on Jordan's desk. He turned to face her, and Jordan took a step back at the expression of deadly earnestness in his eyes. "Listen to me, kid," he practically growled. "You are terrified of a man you can barely remember. I am not leaving you alone. Put a bell around my neck for all I care. But if this piece of crap thinks he's getting within fifty yards of you, he'd better think again. Or else my gun and his tonsils are getting a formal introduction."

Jordan had spent a lot of time growing up wondering what it would be like to have a father. A real father. Not the mistake, the cosmic joke she actually had, but someone like the other kids' dads who helped them with their homework and took them to games and asked them how their days had gone. She'd wondered what it would look like if God ever stepped up and corrected his mistake. And it had taken Him long enough, she thought, but here was her answer.

She did not cry. She wouldn't. She only draped her arms around his neck and squeezed. His arms circled around her in return, but his voice sounded bewildered. "I missed something here. Not surprising, when there's a woman involved, but this seems like a big something."

"I'm sorry."

"Ok, that part is new. And you've completely lost me."

Jordan laughed. "Alright, how's this for familiar: shut up, Rossi! I meant I'm sorry for yelling at you. Because I do want you in my corner, always. And I won't forget it ever again."

"Well, good. As long as we understand each other."

"And I'm not forgetting about the bell, either."

Jordan didn't make him wear a bell. But she did get more skilled at perking up her ears just before she moved anywhere, which did a great deal to prevent any further close encounters and flying paperwork. On the other hand, now her concentration was suffering from her epiphany when she really would rather it didn't, during team briefings and investigations… All the time, really.

With the result that a case came to her desk and sat, buried, in a large pile of similar folders, for a day and a half before she re-read it, and read it a third time, and finally realized what it meant.

This was one of the rare moments when Rossi wasn't haunting her doorway, so she raced off to find him at top speed, and predictably, found him at top speed, although both were, luckily, empty-handed this time.

"Dave." She couldn't say anything else for a little while, so they waited through her pulse hammering and her lungs burning. "It's him. Look." And she thrust the folder at his chest.

"Slow down, kiddo. What am I looking at?"

"Three women. In and around Baltimore, never far from my hometown. I didn't see it before, I'm such an idiot. In their homes, raped and murdered. There's very little physical evidence, but all of them look a little bit like my mother. And…there's this." She pointed to crime scene photos from all three murders. There were cuts on each woman's left hip. And they spelled…"It. Do you see that? The detectives thought he was just objectifying them, saying they were just things, objects. But they're not words; they're his initials. He's – he's signing his work."

Dave's face was grim. "It's a good possibility. If your – if he has graduated after long years in prison from abuse to serial murder."

Jordan nodded. "I'd bet on it. He enjoys inflicting pain on others, watching them suffer, and he's incapable of remorse or compassion. And now, he's out and about where he has access to potential victims."

Dave's expression tightened. "And the means of carrying out revenge scenarios. Your mother would have been his first target, but for some reason, he didn't feel up to confronting her right off the bat. This first one was messy; lots of hesitation and insecurity. And hatred. A practice run. The kills get cleaner and more calculated. He's gathering his control, gaining confidence, finding out what he likes best. Making sure he has the patience to draw out the pain. He wants the one that matters to be perfect."

He finally seemed to realize what he was saying and to whom; he snapped out of it and instantly folded in on himself when he caught sight of her staring at him, wide-eyed and shivering. "God. This isn't… Come on, come with me. I'm parking you in my office, and then I'm briefing the team."

"Dave, no, I'm—"

"In danger. Which is why, after you miss the briefing where I tell everyone in detail what this son of a bitch has in store for your mother, and you get half of Baltimore PD sitting on her house, we'll get out there, grab the other half and find the bastard."