Disclaimer: Not Stephenie Meyer and to be safe, I'm not Jeff Davis either. If was, I'd be thinking up ideas for a new series of Criminal Minds, rather than taking his characters qualities, putting them into Twilight characters and twisting them around for my pleasure.

You all seem pretty sure about what's going on. Will you be so sure at the end of this chapter? Let's see, shall we?

Edward

First thing in the morning, Jasper and I headed back over to the Roper household. We arrived there just after eight in the morning. I doubted that the two of them would have left for anything they had planned yet and our theory was confirmed when we saw that Mr Roper's car was still in the driveway.

We parked on the street, blocking his driveway, on the off chance that he was out back and saw us coming and then tried to make a run for it.

What?

It had happened before.

We quickly walked up the driveway, knocking on the door. We looked at each other, knowing that we had to somehow get Michael away from his father. We'd come to the conclusion that it could be the fact that his father was in the room when we were talking to him.

We'd come to the decision that I would talk to Michael while Jasper would talk to his father. It would be easier for Michael if someone he knew spoke to him. He hadn't met Jasper before but he'd spoken to me yesterday. It might make him open up a little more if he spoke to someone that he had spoken to before.

We were greeted by a bleary eyed Mr Roper, rubbing his eyes, clearly wondering who the hell was at his door at a little after eight on a Saturday morning.

"Mr Roper!" Jasper greeted in an overly cheerful voice and I had to hold back a snort at his demeanour. "How are you this morning?"

"Um . . ." I smiled at his confusion, knowing that he didn't have a clue why we were here.

"We need to speak to Michael again, Mr Roper." I cut in, making Jasper scowl at me for cutting off his little game. I shook my head at him, barely able to hold back rolling my eyes.

"Why?"

"Because we have some questions that need answering and he's the only one that can answer them for us." I gave him a courteous smile. "We should have no problem getting a warrant but we really don't want to have to do that just to ask him some questions."

He looked between the two of us before stepping back and letting us in. We nodded at him, walking past him and towards where we could hear what sounded like cartoons coming from somewhere in the house. We looked at each other, following the noise through into the living room.

"Dad, can I have some-" Michael stopped as he turned around and saw us standing there. He looked behind us to see his dad standing behind us. "What's going on?"

"We just need to talk to you for a little bit." I gave him a small smile and he looked at his dad for a moment before sitting down on the sofa again.

"Mr Roper, I need to ask you a couple of questions." Jasper said quietly, gesturing towards the kitchen. He glanced at his son quickly before looking back to Jasper. "He'll be fine. It's just for a minute." He looked at me again before following Jasper into the kitchen.

"Michael, hey," I sat down on the chair next to the sofa that Michael was sitting on. He didn't look at me, focusing on the TV. "Michael?" Still nothing. I reached forward, grabbing the remote from the coffee table and pressing the power button, turning the TV off.

"Hey!" Well, that worked.

"Glad to see I now have your attention." I raised an eyebrow at him and he huffed, sitting back on the sofa, crossing his arms and not looking at me. "Michael, I need to talk to you. About what we talked about yesterday."

"I told you everything I remember."

"I don't think you did." He glared at me in the most menacing way a ten year old could. Not really that menacing but got to give him props for trying. "Now, tell me," I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, "tell me exactly what you saw the day Annie went missing."

"I already told you." He huffed and I sighed.

"Michael, we know that you didn't go to Adrian's house on Wednesday." He looked over towards me and I sat there, holding eye contact with him. "We spoke to his mom and she said she didn't see you. You didn't go to his house that day. How come you told us that you did?" He shrugged and I sighed, running a hand through my hair. "Michael, you understand how serious this is, right?" He shrugged again. "Four kids are dead. And we don't know who did it. We're trying to find out but we need your help to do that? Now, why did you lie to us?"

"Because."

This was like pulling teeth. I had hoped that without his father in the room, he would open up a bit more. Apparently that wasn't the case.

"Michael, if you don't help us, someone else could get hurt. One of your friends, maybe. You don't want them to get hurt, do you?" I knew it was low and harsh but I had to try and get this kid to open up. What I was saying was true. If we couldn't get him to tell us what he might have seen, we could have another dead child soon.

That was something I was going to try to avoid.

He looked at me, shaking his head and I nodded. "I didn't see anything." He muttered, looking down at his feet that were hanging in the air, his legs not long enough to reach the floor.

"Tell me what you did see."

"I was walking along the street and I saw Annie. I asked her if she was okay and she told me that she was walking back to her house." He glanced over at me, a slight pink hue appearing on his cheek and I wondered what that was about. "I um, I asked if she wanted me to . . ." he mumbled the rest so that I couldn't hear him.

"What was that? You asked her what?"

"If she wanted me to walk her home?" Oh. I smiled, realising what the little blush was about. Someone liked Annie and didn't want anyone to know that. Of course, at ten years old, girls had cooties and were something you had to avoid at all costs.

Of course, there are some of us that never really grow out of that.

"What did she say to that?" I asked, not bringing attention to the embarrassment over his crush on Annie, moving on with his story.

He shook his head, looking at me. "She told me she didn't need me to. That her house was just there." I nodded, realising that girls probably wanted to avoid boys as well at that age. "So I said bye and walked off."

"Anything else?" I asked and he shook his head.

"I turned around to look at her but she was gone. I thought she'd gone into her house." He shrugged and I could understand why he'd thought that. It made sense to think that she had gone into her house. It was just up the street after all.

"Were there any other people around?" I asked and he shook his head. "Any cars going past?"

He thought for a moment, biting his lip. "A blue car went past as I was walking away. It was dark blue."

"Did you recognise it?" I asked and he shook his head again. "Michael, we know that you didn't go to Adrian's house. Where were you going? Why were you walking on your own when you knew that someone was hurting kids?"

"My dad's been driving me crazy." He moaned and I chuckled gently. "I wanted to be away from him for a while."

"You know how dangerous that could have been, right?" He shrugged again and I realised that to a ten year old, apparently, it wasn't a big deal. His father needed to keep a closer eye on his son. "Okay."

I stood up, walking towards the kitchen and nodding my head towards the door, signalling to Jasper that we were done. He gave Mr Roper a parting smile before following me out of the door. We walking in silence back to the car, knowing that anything we said could be overheard by people that might be behind their hedges doing whatever. People were more vigilant now and we could see people at their windows watching us. We knew that they wouldn't be wondering about our presence, having seen us before.

Sometimes, being one of the investigators had its perks.

We climbed into the car and I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

"You okay?" Jasper asked and I shook my head.

"He says he didn't see what happened." I sighed, turning the engine on and pulling away from the curb. "But he said that he saw a blue car. He didn't recognise it. Didn't seem to care that there was a chance that it could have been him rather than Annie."

We took the drive back to the station in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. As we turned off the street, Jasper's hand drew me out of my thoughts, wrapping his fingers around mine. I glanced at him, smiling and his answering smile was all I needed.

If only it wasn't in the confines of the car or in our hotel room. I didn't want to keep this from the team but we knew that if our superiors found out, even though they couldn't force us apart, they could make things difficult for us.

I liked Jasper and I didn't want to hide that fact. But until we could work something out, it was what we had to do. We would work it out. We had to. I wanted to see where it could go with Jasper and I didn't want to have to hide like it was some kind of dirty secret.

We had to work this out.

I gave his hand a squeeze before we exited the car, walking into the station and straight through to the conference room. The rest of the team were in there and the Chief of Police and his deputies followed the two of us.

"Get anything from the kid?" Garrett asked, not looking up from the papers he was looking at.

"Only that he saw a blue car when he left Annie. Didn't recognise it or anything. He turned around and saw that she was gone but thought that she'd gone into her house." I sighed, flopping down into one of the chairs. A cup of coffee appeared in front of me and I looked up to see Tanya smiling down at me softly. It wasn't what I usually like but it was better than nothing. "Thanks." She nodded in response, handing another one to Jasper. "So basically, we have nothing. Or at least, very little more than nothing."

"Are there any other reports of a blue car driving down that street at that time?" Garrett asked, looking around at us. We grabbed the notebooks we'd all had on the days we'd questioned the people living on the street, sifting through them to try and find any mention of a blue car.

No one other than Michael had mentioned the blue car but then again, only Adrian had mentioned seeing Michael outside with Annie, so it was possible that no one had seen it. But then again, when there were so many worried parents on one street and only one child sees this car, I had to wonder, was he lying to us again.

"What is it?" Jake asked and I looked over to him and found that everyone was looking at me. "You're thinking something."

"Always am, Jake." I smirked and he rolled his eyes trying not to smile. "I just . . . I have a feeling that this little boy might not be telling us the truth. Again."

"Why do you say that?" Tanya sat down next to Jake, her brow furrowed.

"Because no one else mentioned a blue car. One that they knew or one that they didn't. No one else saw any vehicle going up or down that street, which isn't strange, considering that apart from one couple, all of them have kids. I don't know." I leaned back in my chair, running a hand through my hair again. "There's just something that doesn't add up."

"You don't think the kids covering for someone, do you?" Victoria asked and I shook my head, shrugging.

"I don't know. But I can't be the only one that feels that something's not right."

"You're right." Jake leaned forward, resting his head in his hands before looking up at us, clasping his hands in front of him on the table. "Edward's right. There's something that doesn't make sense about all of this."

"Maybe we're going about this the wrong way." Jasper suggested, sitting down next to me. His knee touched mine gently and I had to fight not to smile. To anyone else in the room it might look just as though there wasn't enough room at the table for both of us but to me it told me that he was there. He was behind me. Thankful that the table wasn't a glass top, I quickly pressed my knee against his, letting him know that I knew he was there.

"What do you mean?" Garrett was watching the two of us, clearly wondering what we were on to.

"Maybe instead of focusing on him, we should focus on the children."

"Victimology." I sighed, nodding along with Jasper's idea. "He's right. Most children have select activities that they get into. After school activities, sports, things like that. If we can find out if they were linked in any way, we'd be able to narrow down the suspect pool."

"That's a good idea." Garrett nodded. "Right, we need to speak to the families. Find out what the children were involved in and get Bree to get a list of everyone involved in those activities."

We all nodded, everyone suddenly in motion. It was decided that we would all split up, Jake, Garrett and Victoria heading out to speak to the victims' families. Garrett would be going to speak to two of the families, considering they lived on the same street. From a gathering of information point of view, it made more sense. Jasper would get the local PD up to speed with the route we were taking and make sure that they were ready to go when we had it narrowed down. If we could narrow it down. It had been determined that because I was staying at the station, the others would contact me with the information that they found out about the children and then I could relay that to Bree.

I continued to thumb through the files that detailed the victims, shaking my head as I read what had been done to the children.

They had all been bludgeoned to death. Blunt force trauma was the official cause of death given by the ME. There was no sexual assault on the children, which in this type of crime was unusual. When someone took children, the majority of the time, there was some kind of release for the unsub but there was no evidence of that at all.

This case was making my head spin.

The others started to send me messages letting me know what the victims were involved in. Two of them weren't involved in any activities, after school or otherwise.

I called Bree, getting her to gather lists of the students in each of the victims classes and Jake and Garrett would be heading to the baseball field where one of the victims played Little League and to the soccer field where another one of them played on the weekends.

Everyone quickly convened back in the conference room, lists of the members of the sports teams and Bree had sent through the class lists that she had found. We each had a print out, combing through them, trying to find any links between the children, the parents and the staff that came into contact with them.

I a copy of the lists of the children's names in front of me, as did Jake. Victoria and Jasper were going through the parents and Tanya and Garrett were going through the members of staff. I felt my brow furrowing as I grabbed a highlighter, noticing one common name appearing on the sheets of paper in front of me.

"What you found?" I looked up, seeing Jake looking at me. "You've got your 'I've found something that doesn't make sense' face on."

"Look careful at your lists Jake and tell me if there's someone on each and every one of them." He looked down, his eyes scanning the lists as comprehension dawns on his face. "You see it?"

"See what?" We had the attention of everyone.

"Right, with the school classes, each grade is pretty much too big so it's split into two different classes. Now, only two of the victims were in the fourth grade, both of them being ten. One of them had just turned nine so he was in the third grade below the other two and the fourth was only seven, meaning that he was in first."

"So while they all went to the same school, only two of them were in the same grade." Jasper shook his head, looking slightly confused.

"Right but remember what I said about the grades being split because of their size?" They all nodded. "They were in different classes. The only common class," I held out a separate print out of the class list, "was gym. That was the only class where the two sides were combined."

"So that was the only time they came into contact with each other." Tanya said softly.

"Exactly." Jake took over, scanning his lists. "The other two didn't come into contact with each other or any of the other victims at all but they did both play sports."

"So?"

"There's only one common name on all of these lists, bar one side of the fourth grade." I looked at them all, looking at Jake who had seen who I was talking about. "Michael Roper. He was in class with Damien Grey but had gym along with Annie James. Now he wasn't in classes with the other two victims but he did play Little League with Nicholas Brady and was on the soccer team with Robert Johnson. He's the only one that's came into contact with all of the victims."

"Excuse me, agents?" I looked over to see one of the local officers at the door, looking slightly worried. "There's been another attack."

We looked at each other, quickly gathering up what we had and walking out of the room. "Where did it happen?"

"Freemont Street." I looked at the officer. He looked at me sadly, knowing that it was the same street that Annie James had disappeared from.

We quickly made our way to the street, putting on the lights and sirens to make sure that upcoming traffic knew that we were coming and to get out of the way.

Not obeying traffic laws, we arrived at the street, jumping out of the cars and making our way towards where there were several police cruisers parked outside one of the houses. I took a breath, feeling a sickening feeling rising in my stomach.

"Agent Cullen." I turned, hearing Mrs Grassier calling my name. Upon seeing her appearance I knew instantly who it was that had been attacked. "Agent Cullen, they wouldn't let me go with him." She practically collapsed in my arms and I looked at Garrett who nodded at me.

"Come on." I wrapped an arm around her, gently manoeuvring her towards the car I'd just gotten out of. Jasper handed me the keys before making eye contact with me and making his way over to the officers. I helped her into the car and quickly walked around to the drivers' side. "Mrs Grassier-"

"Please," she sniffed, "call me Beth."

"Okay, Beth, you can call me Edward." I took a breath, pulling out of the street and following her directions to the nearest hospital. "What happened?"

"I don't know." She sat there, tears running down her cheeks. "He went out to get something from the car on the driveway and when he didn't come back in . . . I . . . . I went to find out where he was and . . . he was there . . ."

"It's okay. I understand." I sped up, flicking on the sirens as I made my way through the traffic that moved out of the way upon hearing the noise. I turned them off as we pulled into the hospital parking lot. I parked near the entrance, knowing that the Federal plates would stop anyone attempting to put a ticket on the car. We walked into the reception area and I led Beth over to the chairs before making my way up to the desk and asked about Adrian.

The woman behind the desk was dubious about who I was until I showed her my badge and informed her that Beth was his mother. She told me that he was in surgery and let me know that we could head down to the family room down the hallway.

The wait was excruciating but I had to stay with her. I had to know that he was okay. I spoke to Garrett on the phone who told me that they were trying to figure out if anyone had seen anything. I asked him to let me know if they found anything out and I hung up as a doctor came in, asking for Beth. She looked at me, a desperate look on her face. He looked at me and I explained who I was. Unfortunately, I'd been in this situation before and I knew that doctors had to be careful about who they divulged information to. I explained to him that Adrian was the fifth victim in what was happening to these children.

He told us that Adrian, while he wasn't out of the woods, would be okay. We both breathed a sigh of relief at the news and she asked if she could see him. He nodded, making to lead her out of the room.

"Doctor Morgan, can I have a word?" I asked and he nodded, telling Beth that a nurse could take her to her son. She looked at me, knowing that I was going to try and find out some answers that led to whoever had attacked her son. Of course, once he woke up, we would know for certain but I wanted to try and find out beforehand if I could. The more time we lost, the harder it would be to find him.

"What can you tell me about Adrian's injuries?" I asked and he sighed, running a hand through his hair.

"There was a lot of blunt force trauma. He had a couple of broken ribs and his arm was shattered. There's a tear in the muscles of his knees and internal bleeding."

"He's going to be okay?" I asked and he nodded. I nodded along, knowing that that would have to be enough for now. "Any head trauma?"

"No," I felt relief at that news.

"Any ideas on the weapon?" I asked and he thought for a moment.

"I can't be sure but there were several bruises on his torso, long, straight. I couldn't tell you what they were." He looked at me, clearly sorry he couldn't be any clearer.

"Long and straight? Like a baseball bat perhaps?" I asked, stiffening.

"Could be."

"Fuck." I cursed quietly before looking at the doctor and apologising. He gave me an understanding smile and I thanked him for his help before making my way out of the hospital, pulling out my phone as I walked, not caring about the dirty looks I was surely getting from the staff.

"Garrett? I know who our unsub is."

. . . . . . . . . . . .

So, still certain of who it is?

I know there's not been much Edward and Jasper in the last couple of chapters but there will be more of the boys bonding coming up soon.