𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞

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𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭𝟵𝘁𝗵, 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟬
𝟭𝟬:𝟭𝟵 𝗽𝗺
𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗴𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘆, 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗺𝗮


𝐀 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 the crawlspace above him had caught Andrew Harrington's attention as he rinsed the toothpaste from his mouth. His dark brows frowned at the ceiling before he sighed, making his way from his ensuite to the floor below. "Honey!" he called, meeting his wife in the kitchen. "That damn raccoon's back." He was headed for the laundry room, searching for a broom to scare the persistent pest away.

"Baby, just leave it," Bonnie Harrington pleaded, rinsing and drying the last of their dishes. "Call the exterminator again in the morning. There's nothing we can do right now."

"No," Andrew returned, broom in hand. "I'm gonna get him. The last exterminator couldn't find anything." He looked at his broom, then back to his wife. "Maybe the axe instead?"

Bonnie giggled at her husband's appearance, her knight in faded pyjama pants. "Put it back, Andy." She then sought to put away the apple juice their kids had drunk during dinner.

"Fine," Andy returned his weapon. "But I don't want to hear any complaining from you in the morning that it kept you up all night."

"Uh huh," she teased. "That's the reason we'd be up so late."

Andy smirked, kissing his wife's cheek as she passed him to get to the fridge.

But he was met with a scolding. "Andrew," Bonnie hissed, removing the empty milk bottle from the door of their stainless steel refrigerator. "I've told you not to put the empty carton in the fridge!"

"Hey hey," he soothed, his hands up defensively. "That wasn't me, Bon. It must've been the kids."

"Oh, likely story." But her smile returned as she deposited the bottle into the trashcan. "You call the exterminator first thing, I'll punish our children." She was joking, of course. Bonnie Harrington would never lay a hand on her kids.

"Whatever you wish, my love." Andy held out his hand. "Come on, you can leave the rest 'til morning."

"But--"

"Bon," Andy insisted, and his wife finally obliged, following him upstairs to their bedroom. The lights were doused and the two crawled into bed, comfortable in each other's arms.

Bonnie Harrington never woke to return to cleaning her kitchen, nor did her husband, nor any of their children. It would take three days for their bodies to be found, all murdered in their sleep.

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𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟮𝟮𝗻𝗱, 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟬
𝟭𝟭:𝟬𝟯𝗮𝗺
𝗙𝗕𝗜 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀
𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗼, 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗮


"𝐈 𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐅𝐇𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐒," Emily groaned, complaining to Cady about the novel she had finished the night previous. "You pick up a book, you want to be able to finish it. You want to be able to close it completely, everything wrapped up in a neat little bow. Now I have to wait until September for the next one."

"Did you know," Reid began, peeking up from his desk with his fingers pinched in his characteristic way as he set forth on a tangent, "that the term 'cliffhanger' is thought to have originated in 1873, from a novel wherein the author ended one of the instalments of the serialised version with one of the characters literally hanging from the side of a cliff by his fingernails?" His hands contracted, mimicking the act of gripping a cliffside.

"Thomas Hardy, 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'," Cady offered, her arms folded over her chest as she leaned back in her chair. "But the term wasn't used until the thirties."

"1937," Reid corrected, "but the device was used throughout early films and literary media."

"Okay, smarty pants," Emily teased, playing with the cat-shaped Post-It dispenser next to Cady's phone handset. "Now I hate them even more."

Cady smiled, glancing at her desk, bordering Derek's and next to Reid. In just over two weeks, it had begun to take on the personality of its owner; neat but frazzled, clean but cluttered. Black and blue pens stood alert in her Greentree Valley High School mug. A frown whittled her brow as she counted; one of her pens was missing.

Morgan walked over, sipping his coffee. "What are you three talking about?" He leaned against the edge of his desk, sharing the partition with Cady's.

"Don't--"

"The etymology of the term 'cliffhanger'," Reid beamed. "Actually, in the 1910s, the cliffs of Fort Lee, New Jersey, that faced New York and the Hudson River, were frequently used for film locations, the most notable is considered The Perils of Pauline, which would end suddenly with the character Pauline hanging from a cliff."

Morgan blinked before looking to Emily, his bored expression unchanged.

"Why did you have to ask?" She placed Cady's Post-Its back on the desk. "Six years, you've known him, you should know better."

"He looks normal sometimes," Morgan shrugged playfully. "I forget he's from outer space."

Cady smiled at the banter. There had been a few colleagues she'd got along with in Michigan, but never like this. She met Spencer's eye, shooting him a wink before spinning in her chair, facing Morgan. "Hey, didn't you have a date last night?"

Emily playfully gasped, picking up Cady's train of thought. "Oh yeah! How'd that go?"

Morgan was smirking into his coffee, looking over the rim at the two women. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Are you going to see her again?" Cady teased.

Morgan cleared his throat. Truthfully, he didn't plan on pursuing anything serious, but he didn't want to give Emily and Cady the satisfaction. "Uh..."

"Maybe she's the one who changes him," Emily acted dramatically, fawning with the back of her hand to her forehead.

"Guys," the announcement of JJ from the landing caught their attention. She pointed to the briefing room. "Case."

"Saved by the bell," Morgan grinned, hurrying up the stairs.

Cady and Emily exchanged a giggle before standing, followed by Reid. "Hey, do we have a statistic on how many second dates he has?" Emily asked, directed at Reid behind them as they climbed the stairs in front of Rossi's office.

"We did," he answered. "Until he found out we were counting."

"What did it get to?" Cady was curious now.

"One hundred and thirteen dates in just over two years," he offered, quick-stepping to catch up with the women. "Only twenty-three of those with a woman he previously dated. That we knew of."

Cady grinned. "Percentage?"

"Ninety different women in two years, twenty-three progressing to 'second date' stage," Reid was rattling off the numbers in his head. "Just over 25 percent chance of getting a second date with Derek Morgan."

"Hey!" Morgan scolded, overhearing as they crossed the threshold into the room. "At least I can get a date."

"I date," Reid countered, sitting beside Emily, with Cady now on his right.

"Oh, yeah, one date in twenty-eight years," Morgan scoffed. "What's that percentage, pretty boy?"

Cady saw that Spencer wanted to say something that would prove him wrong, but he was holding it in, tight-lipped. She looked to the doorway as Hotch and Rossi finally joined them, and the room was ready. "Let's get started," Hotch instructed, taking the seat between Morgan and Cady.

"Montgomery, Alabama," JJ began, handing the team their files. "Three families have been killed in their homes over the last month."

"Three?" Morgan questioned, taking one of the folders and opening it. The chronological events presented themselves; the first family consisted of a father, a mother, twin teenage girls, and their younger brother. All five had been killed in their beds while they slept and found four days later.

"The first occurred on May 24th and they thought it was a single event," Reid instead answered, reading faster than the others. "Botched robbery."

Cady flipped through the file, frowning. Nothing noticeable had been taken from the home. If it were a robbery, they'd definitely failed, even when the family was dead.

JJ then continued. "The second on June 14, and now the third on Saturday. They hadn't even found the second family, the Yates', until yesterday, then the Harringtons this morning."

"They're the latest?" Rossi clarified, turning to the back of his folder.

JJ nodded, pressing her remote directed over her shoulder, changing the screen behind her to now show a family photo. "Andrew and Bonnie Harrington, aged 36 and 34 respectively, were murdered either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, along with their kids; Peter, 9, Jake, 6, Lucy, 5, and Molly," JJ paused, "eight months."

"They were found after three days?" Hotch asked, a dark brow cocked.

"The three eldest children had been absent from school without explanation," JJ continued. "The school called the house, and when they got no answer, called police. Then Detective Baulder called us. She's going to meet us on scene at the Yates' house. Her partner, Detective Hollins is at the Harringtons'."

Cady and Emily flicked through a series of evidence photos as Reid turned a page. "They were all killed by axe wounds to the head," he noted.

"It looks like Andrew got the worst of it," Morgan added, viewing his own set of the same photos.

"Aggression to the father, that certainly says something," Emily theorised, examining the wounds. "Could be angry at his own."

"But he doesn't identify with the children," Cady countered, now unable to look at the photos, "doesn't protect them. He murdered them too."

"Wilkinson," Hotch announcing her name almost made her heart lurch, "Morgan, Reid, I want you three with Hollins and CSU at the Harrington home. Prentiss, Rossi, you two meet with Detective Baulder at the Yates residence. JJ, you and I will set up at the precinct."

Picking up on a line in the report of the first event, Reid spoke up. "Montgomery Police determined the axe used in the Fording murders didn't belong to the UnSub." He searched for another page that might have contained the rest of the information, but there wasn't any.

"Who did it belong to?" Emily pondered, reaching over for the sheet of paper Reid was holding, noticing too the absence of an answer.

"JJ?" Emily asked again as the team looked up, noticing JJ's face almost drained of colour. "Whose axe was it?"