CHAPTER TWO
——— where there's smoke, there's fire
(season 5, episode 16: MOSLEY LANE)
RYNE BECKETT
"So that's it then?"
Frank Lynch blows a small trail of smoke out of his mouth from then cigarette, the nicotine infested roll lit up as he lurked in his driveway sadly, somewhere in a fugue state between longing and angry, eyes downward and lips pursed as he adresses the three agents before him who had just left his home. His hair is unkept and look is completely dishevelled, and it does not take a behavioural analyst to know that he blames himself for his missing daughter, nor that he feels the FBI is not doing enough for his child.
"No, it isn't," Morgan answers back simply. He too, like Ryne, seems upset to leave during a time like this, but all three agents know they're of no use at the Lynch family home anymore.
"Then why are you leaving?"
"Every available cop in the state is out looking for your daughter," Morgan explains as steadily as he can.
"Who's been gone for more than twenty four hours," Frank Lynch let's out another huff, his pessimistic side taking over. Ryne doesn't blame him — his daughter had disappeared right before his eyes, with her hand still in her mother's, the one place she was safest. If she was abducted somewhere like that, what place was really safe for her? The world was a large place, and life was a cruel, cruel mistress. "I think we both know what that means."
"Percentile wise we do, but every case is based on it's own merit," Spencer tries to reassure.
"Well what merit is this case?" Frank Lynch seems to be getting more agitated. From behind them, Ryne can spot a blonde woman making her way up the driveway, from a police car — Ryne recognizes the woman as Aimee's mother, who she had been with seconds before she disappeared. It's possible she's even more dishevelled than Frank, and one look at her tells that she's placed all the guilt of Aimee Lynch's disappearance on her shoulders.
"Sir," Morgan starts. "Aimee was taken at high risk by whoever took her."
"It means it was organized, meticulous, highly planned and likely more than one person," Spencer continues softly, trying to explain to Frank Lynch what the unsub's wanted with his daughter.
"They managed to create a ruse, and they were smooth in their execution of said ruse, which suggests they practiced this more than once," Ryne takes off from where Spencer left his sentence, continuing on his thought. Despite telling Callahan she would hate the BAU boys club, she finds herself liking the way both Morgan and Reid think, a stark contrast already to the way her colleagues in Sex Crimes would approach cases — they bounce ideas off of her, instead of ordering her on what to do.
"And this suggest they intend on keeping her," Morgan finishes the explanation.
"Keeping her?" Mrs Lynch approaches, letting out an appalled breath as she looks to her husband. "For what? Frank?"
Frank Lynch glances at his wife, a thought already in mind before he shares a look with Morgan. Ryne places a comforting hand on Mrs Lynch's shoulder, stabilizing her as she seems to be falling over slightly in worry.
There's a pregnant pause before Spencer speaks up. "Keeping her means that she's alive, and I think that's all you really need to focus on right now."
"Are you leaving?"
Mrs Lynch's voice can only be described in the word of desperation as she clings to the last hope of the agents looking for her child, that they might stay and keep the safety bubble around her that ensures her that Aimee will be found safe and sound, but the three agents, admittedly despite not wanting to, have to leave. When they do, Mrs Lynch's safety bubble will be broken for the first time since Aimee's abduction several hours before.
"Ma'am," Morgan is the one to slowly speak to her, as comfortingly as he can while still remaining firm. Ryne understands while he is a natural leader, charismatic but not undermining. "Our profile remains, as do hundreds of officers and many agents looking for your daughter. Now, if there's any information pertaining to Aimee, then we'll be back."
There's a pause, a silence, one in which the reality of the situation begins to set itself upon the Lynch family, and one feeling that Ryne had become all too familiar with long ago — the feeling of guilt that sits on her shoulders, wishing she herself could do something to make this better, more than she was capable of doing. It's the same feeling that sits on Morgan and Reid's shoulders. Ryne wonders if this is what her father felt like, the way the Lynch parents feel, when she had supposedly drowned in that lane. As the Washington State police scavenged to rescue her body in that lake, only to presume her dead, had this been what her father had dealt with? She may have been twenty one at the time, but she was still his only child. The feeling of Ryne's guilt intensified as she thought of what she'd put her father through, and she knew if she ever got past being Ryne Beckett again, then she would apologize profusely to her father, but no apology could ever derail what she had done to him when she died.
Then, through the pause as each person digests, Reid speaks up, reminding Ryne that despite knowing him for a total of an hour now, he is quite possibly one of the most soft hearted members of the BAU. "Mr. Lynch, I think you should know that nothing could have stopped these people from taking your daughter."
"Yeah?" Frank Lynch did not look as reassured as Ryne thinks Reid hoped he would be. He sends a sideway glance at his wife. "Well, I would never let go of her hand."
"Frank," Mrs Lynch looks down, before slowly following her husband as he storms towards the house away from the agents. "Please, Frank."
The three agents turn around slowly, making their way back towards the car and away from the two people having the worst day of their lives.
"We've done all we can."
"It doesn't make walking away any easier," Reid answers Morgan, sighing.
Morgan looks around as they approach the car, shaking his head. "No, it doesn't."
They get into the federal SUV quickly, Morgan in the driver's seat. Reid lets Ryne sit up front, and she relaxes in her seat over the seat buckle, crossing her hands in her lap.
"Alright, this is getting downright depressing," Morgan declares as he takes a left away from the Lynch's street and towards Quantico again. He glances at Ryne, and moths stir in her gut as she knows where this is going. "So, Beckett, where're you from?"
"Here and about," Ryne answers vaguely. "I transferred from the New York office, but I started in Quantico originally."
"Did you know that more than eight hundred languages are actually spoken in New York," Reid starts, voice high. It became clear to Ryne just over the past hour that Spencer Reid is clearly a genius, and often it's easily telltale through the way he spews facts out at a rapid rate, eyes fluttering as he tells them about everything he knows on one specific topic, diverging to the next. "This makes it one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world. It may not seem like that big of a number, but around twenty million people live in the metropolitan area, making it quite the array of bilingual and multilingual speakers. In fact, while sixty five percent of people speak English, a large percent of them also speak Chinese and Spanish, though there is also a high array of Russian, Hindi, Italian, and Korean speakers as well—"
"Alright, pretty boy," Morgan interrupts. "I think what he's trying to ask, Beckett, is if you speak any other languages?"
French, Spanish, and slight bits of the dead language of Latin, Ryne wants to say.
"Nope," Ryne answers cautiously, her eyes on guard, though unnoticeable, surprisingly, to a car of two profilers. "Just plain old English, unfortunately. Though I did take Latin once in high school — it truly was a dead language."
"Ironically enough, Latin isn't actually the oldest language, despite what many people assume since it's dead. For instance, Greek is much older than Latin, but it's progressed past ancient Greek and into the change of modern Greek, so it's a little more distinguishable. Chinese is actually older than Latin as well, and much more widely spoken and is one of the reasons why, compared to other languages, Latin is considered dead," Reid bursts into the conversation like he was on fire. "Technically, however, Latin isn't really dead, per say."
"C'mon, Reid," Morgan contests. "You really expect me to believe people are going around speaking in full Latin to each other?"
"No," Ryne was the one to answer before Reid could, smiling softly through the rear view mirror reassuringly at the boy genius in the back. "But a sufficient number of languages are derived from Latin. In particular, the five romance languages. So, it's technically not dead, it's just progressed beyond it's originality, sort of like ancient Greek."
"Good lord," Morgan groans, swivelling the steering wheel. Ryne had realized within moments of getting into the car the first time around with Morgan that he was more down to Earth, preferring to let things take their course over controlling them, and it showed in the way he drove the FBI vehicle across the rush hour filled roads back to Quantico. "Don't tell me we've got another genius up in here. One pretty boy is enough for me to handle, I can't have a girl wonder too."
Ryne let out a laugh — she hoped it didn't sound nervous. Morgan would certainly never find Ryne Beckett on a Mensa society list, though Katherine Berkeley had certainly been on it at one point. "Don't worry. There's no way I can measure up to boy wonder back there, he's a certifiable genius."
Reid lit up in a bright smile in the back, cheeks turning pink as Morgan teased him the rest of the way back.
Back at Quantico, Ryne finds herself among a sea of agents in the conference room, everybody from Reid and Morgan to JJ and Prentiss, as well as two new faces — that of renowned author David Rossi, who she finds herself sitting next to, and who smiles knowingly at her, like he knows all her secrets before she even knows them herself. The other face she meets is the technical analyst Hotch was speaking of earlier, Penelope Garcia, and Ryne has to admit, she thinks she might be in love. Garcia is a bubbly woman with brightly dyed red hair, bangs that hang on her forehead who's dressed so colourfully it should hurt Ryne's eyes, but in a place where all the agents are walking around wearing suits and ties and dark, dreary colours, Garcia's style is a mood booster straight away, and Ryne finds herself drawn in.
She's drawn in even more when the technical analyst happily bounds over and introduces herself, complimenting Ryne's style (which she finds slightly bizarre, considering she's dressed in dress pants and a maroon turtle neck, dreary like everybody around her) and then goes in for a hug. The hug is warm and welcoming, something that Ryne hasn't had in a very long time, and she momentarily sinks into it.
"Look," Hotch is the one who speaks up first once they've all settled, looking down, lips drawn in a line of seriousness and professionalism. "We all think that Aimee could be alive. No one's given up on her. That's why there's hundreds of volunteers and officers combing every inch of the county."
"Yeah, but they're dragging the rivers and digging up the woods. That's not going to help us if Aimee is still with the unsub," Prentiss points out, and Ryne finds herself agreeing with her. "If she's still alive out there."
"What about Charlie?" Morgan's voice holds the slightest bit of a condescending tone, and Ryne doesn't like the way he's staring at JJ one bit. She's only known him a very short time, both of them, but she's quickly come to realize two things: JJ's son, who she spoke so happily about, is her entire world, and Morgan believes nobody should censor anything from the other on this team (something that makes Ryne let out what is either a sob or a chuckle, because she's been lying to them all in the few hours she's known them, and Callahan for years). "Is he still alive?"
"Sarah believes it," JJ retaliates lightly, shying away from her own opinion. She crosses her arms over her chest, as if she's shielding her opinion from Morgan's scrutiny.
"Eight years she's been saying the same thing, JJ," Morgan starts quietly, glancing around. "Have you thought about why you suddenly believe her? Do you think it might be because your a mother?"
Ryne feels like jumping out of her seat, because while she likes Morgan very much, he's quite blatantly telling JJ right now that she's not able to be both a parent and an agent, and decipher truth from lie, and Ryne is sure that's not the truth.
"It's because another woman just walked in here with the same exact ruse used eight years ago," JJ states quietly, defending herself. She looks offended, and honestly, Ryne would be too if she were a mother. "I can't deny that. Can you?"
"All I'm saying is, if we go from a single abduction to multiple abductions, over ten years, that changed everything." Morgan sanctifies. "We all have to be convinced that's what it is, based on an unbiased profile."
"Okay," Prentiss jumps in. "Distraction of a lost child, eight year old victims taken from a public place with little to no security. That's not just the same ruse, that's a signature. And I am not a mother."
"Neither am I," Ryne starts off, finally adding on. "But it's obvious that Charlie and Aimee's cases are both connected in some way. These unsubs have had time to perfect their signature, they did it smoothly, quickly and without mistake. The only way they could have done that is if they had victims before Aimee, such as Charlie."
When Morgan seems a bit more agreeable after Prentiss and Ryne both speak their part, digesting what the two women have said, Ryne tosses JJ a soft smile from across the conference table, as if to tell her that she completely supports JJ's theory.
"Charlie would be sixteen now," Hotch starts, looking up. "We all know that preferential offenders typically dispose of their victims before they reach puberty."
"Maybe he serves another purpose," JJ theorizes.
"Aimee's mom said the unsub was slight," Rossi says from beside Ryne, adding on. "Wouldn't be easy to keep a teenager under her thumb."
"Except that she's had him since he was eight years old. By now, he's completely submissive to her," Prentiss debates, playing with the pen in her hands. Ryne notices the way she moves her hands around as she speaks, as though she's both explaining it to everybody and to herself.
"Keeping him could explain why Charlie's body was never found," Spencer chimes in.
"That's true. If Charlie's captors were preferential offenders instead, they would have dumped Charlie's body within days of the abduction, when the dogs were still searching, and we would have found it by now," Ryne nods.
Hotch pauses for a moment, considering everybody's points of view before looking up.
"Garcia?"
"Sir?" She looks a little upset, probably due to the fact that children are involved in this case. Personally, Ryne hated the fact that the first case she worked with the BAU, and it had children involved.
"Go back ten years. Nationwide. Start with abductions in target rich environments. Rule out any with bodily recovery, dead or alive."
"I'm gonna let Sarah know," JJ motions her hand to the door, about to hop out.
"Okay," Hotch pauses. "Beckett, go with her. The rest of us need to look at Aimee's abduction sight with new eyes."
Ryne hates silence.
She's hated it for as long as she can remember, since she was a little child. Her house had always been filled with loud noises, between her mother working from home, her father doing renovations around the house in his spare time, and her best friend Lily constantly coming over, as she lived two houses down. Ryne's childhood had been loud and playful, full of life and love, and even when she had gotten older and moved away for college, she had three bright roommates who enjoyed partying more often than not. There was not a moment of silence in Ryne Beckett's life.
Not until she had been plunged into that Tacoma lake, at least.
The second she had flown out of the car and into the lake, it was like every single sound around her had dulled. Ryne disliked silence in her childhood, but the second she had gotten out of that lake, she had absolutely despised silence. There was nothing comfortable about it, but unfortunately for Ryne, she spent most of her days surrounded by silence now, alone in her house after work, not many friends, nowhere to go.
"So...you have a son?"
Ryne glances at JJ as they drive towards Charlie's mother's house, drumming her fingers against her leg in between the silence.
JJ glances her way, nodding her head, eyes lighting up slightly. They light up the same way that Ryne's own mother's used to whenever Ryne did something funny, like make a joke or accidentally burn some of the food she had been trying to make as a surprise mother's day breakfast. That look is all Ryne needs to instantly know that JJ is quite possibly a great mother, if not just good.
"I do, yeah. Henry," She explains. She gestures under her phone, where a photo of a small child with blonde hair who's happily smiling at JJ.
"Cute name," Ryne smiles softly. "How old is he?"
"He just turned one a few months ago," JJ smiles. "It feels like just yesterday he was born, and he's already growing up so fast."
"They tend to do that," Ryne laughs lightly, thinking back to the night she'd crashed into the Tacoma lake. She had been on her way to her best friend Lily's house for her baby shower, the girl right months pregnant. Now, by her calculations, the baby was nine years old. Lily had gone into labour that night, after she'd picked up Ryne out of the lake and evaded the cops long enough to bring her home — Ryne had only gotten to spend twenty four hours with her goddaughter, and that was the last time she'd ever seen either of them. "Or so I've heard, at least."
"Do you have any kids?" JJ questions. Ryne saw JJ glance at her left hand in a curious way, as if to gauge if she might be engaged or married, but finds her ring finger to be empty. Ryne doesn't mind all that much — JJ might not have been an official profiler, but she had been with the BAU long enough that she had picked up exactly where to look for signs of a person's story.
"I don't," Then to brighten the mood, Ryne smiles brightly. "I do have a dog though, although he definitely isn't as cute as you're kid. Man, you lucked out, he's absolutely adorable."
When they reached Charlie's mother's house, JJ took the lead, slowly walking towards the door and knocking, having known the woman for quite a while. Ryne follows behind trying to keep her distance, hoping to not overcrowd the woman. She wasn't sure exactly why Hotch had sent her here, because to be honest, she had a feeling the woman would probably be more comfortable in just the company of JJ, an agent who she had known for a long, long time.
JJ knocks on the door, but finds it to already be unlocked and wide open. She furrows her eyebrows and glances at Ryne, who gives her a cautious look as she slowly steps inside the house, where the two women can hear the news playing on a median volume inside, detailing Aimee Lynch's case so far.
"Sarah?" JJ calls out cautiously, moving in more and glancing around. "Sarah, it's Jennifer."
The more they move inside, they find a TV on within the living room with Aimee's bright and bleary eyes picture on it, streaming on national television.
"The family has not put out a statement yet as the authorities are handling the case. Anyone with information about Aimee, please contact the hotline..."
Ryne bites into her cheek sadly as they leave the TV and move further into the house, JJ making her way up the stairs.
"Are you sure she's here, JJ?" Ryne mutters towards her. JJ nods defiantly, as if she has a feeling, and leads Ryne up the staircase. They stop in front of a room, with a large white door that creaks as it opens — on the front in big block letters, the name CHARLIE is written in coloured pens on a whiteboard.
Inside, it almost looks like the room has not been touched in eight years. The bed is still as unmade as Ryne assumes it first was the day Charlie went missing, there's legos scattered across the table, and the walls are covered in plastic football stickers. It's the room of an eight year old, a time capsule, a memorial to Charlie and the one thing left to hang onto by his mother, Sarah. Ryne feels an overwhelming amount of pain for the mother who had her child taken out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason as to why or where he was.
JJ glances at Ryne with a shocked look, just as surprised to see the room so memorialized and the same as the first day Charlie had gone missing.
"Not hard to profile, is it?"
Ryne jumps as she hears a voice behind her and JJ, but finds a slightly shorter woman standing in the doorway smiling sadly. She has on a rustled plaid shirt, her hair is slightly messy, brown and short, cut into what is essentially a bob, and she's holding a cigarette in one hand, and a glass of what Ryne assumes is the exact opposite of apple juice in the other. "You think I'm insane?"
"No," JJ sighs after glancing at Sarah for a moment.
"What do you think?" She blows a puff of her cigarette.
"I think the same thing you do. We both do."
To see the look of Sarah's face as she realizes what she has dreamed of may be coming true is truly astounding. The cigarette almost drops from her hand but Ryne sees her tighten her grip around it, and she stands up a little straighter — the small details that she is attentive and listening despite being slightly buzzed already, that a little hope is being bought back to her soul.
"What do you mean?"
"I think same people who took Aimee took Charlie," JJ admits quietly. There's a pregnant pause as she glances at Ryne, gesturing to her. "This is Ryne, and she thinks the same thing we both do as well."
There's a moment of silence, Sarah brightening slightly with hope as she meets Ryne's eyes — Ryne gives her an encouraging nod, as if to tell her that this is indeed real. "I wanna show you something," Sarah mutters, telling JJ and Ryne to follow her.
When Sarah had said she wanted to show JJ and Ryne something, Ryne had not expected what she saw. She had honestly expected something like a sort of memorial to Charlie, maybe a picture of the day he went missing, something to instil some type of guilt in the two agents that Charlie still needed to be found.
What Ryne finds instead is a wall.
A wall, but not just any wall. A wall filled with photos and flowers, a wall tracing back kids who had been abducted years prior, connecting the dots, connecting them to Charlie. It was sort of like an amateur version of the boards agents created to map out their cases.
"What are the flowers for?" JJ questions, glancing around the wall.
"They we're all found dead," Sarah explains. Ryne thinks it's sweet that in some way, she's found a way to pay her respects for the kids who were killed. "But all the rest are still missing. Like Tracy Cain, nine. She vanished from a park. Both parents present. And then Jake Wusman, abducted September 29th from Rock Creek Park. He was with his entire family, they were at a picnic. And then there's..."
"Just stop," JJ interrupts quietly, sighing. Ryne glances at her, knowing she feels the same as Ryne does — it was one thing for Garcia to search all these names up in her system, but to see the pictures of each missing kid that the bureau hadn't found over the years hanging up on the wall, their front teeth missing as they smiled happily as if they weren't gone, was absolutely saddening.
JJ slowly turned to Sarah. "If you're gonna help us, I need you to do something for me."
"Anything!"
"Stop drinking," JJ whispers, pointedly looking at Sarah.
"I can do that," Sarah mutters. "I—I can do that."
JJ sighs, both her and Ryne turning back to the wall again.
When Ryne finds herself back at Quantico, she sticks to JJ's side as they leave Sarah Hillridge in the conference room momentarily. Prentiss and Hotch have just made their way back, and they're still not on the BAU's floor, but have asked everyone to gather in the conference room.
"For the record, I don't think you believed her because you're a mother," Ryne says out of nowhere when she finds JJ looking down at her desk sadly. The blonde woman glances up curiously. "I don't know you that well, but I'm sure that Morgan was wrong about that. You saw something nobody else did because you had a unique perspective on it — that doesn't make your opinion bias, it only makes it more informed."
JJ smiles lightly, eyes sparkling — Ryne can't tell if they're with light tears, or if she's just happy. "Has anyone told you you're sweet?" She questions softly. "Because you're really sweet...I don't know, I guess I just wish I had seen it earlier. I mean, these unsubs have been in play for over eight years, maybe even more. How did none of us notice that this was happening?"
Ryne only shakes her head, because to be honest she doesn't know the answer. Eight years ago, while Charlie Hillridge was being abducted the identity of Ryne Beckett had just come into play — she knew better than anyone that the FBI let things slip through their fingers more often than not.
"You can't catch them all, sadly," Ryne mutters lightly, squeezing JJ's shoulder.
When Hotch and Prentiss arrive into the conference room, JJ is the first to reintroduce Hotch to Sarah. She shakes his hand, smiling shakily.
"Thank you for coming in. Have a seat," Hotch gestures towards the chairs. It doesn't take a genius to see that while he's good with victims, he doesn't empathize like JJ does, or even like Ryne knows she does — Callahan had always said she suited his unit best because people felt comforted around Ryne, like they could tell her the story they had dreaded telling others. Ryne made them feel heard. Hotch seemingly had a separate aura, one that was slightly intimidating, even to Ryne.
"All right," JJ gestures to the board's map. "These represent kids taken from public places. Locations are never hit more than once, but there's similarity in each. Different malls, toy stores, carnivals, theme parks, parades."
"Places where families should feel safe," Prentiss mumbles.
"And there isn't much security," Hotch adds on, staring at the board. "That's twelve children in ten years? We should interview other families."
"I know a few of them," Sarah chimes in. "We had a support group. Most of them have moved on."
"But you're here," Prentiss stares at Sarah quietly.
Sarah pauses, glancing up at JJ, then back at Ryne. It seemed that the fact that JJ trusted Ryne meant that Sarah had as well in a short period of time.
"I saw Charlie three years ago," The woman bursts out. Ryne stares at her curiously, wondering why she hadn't mentioned this earlier.
"You didn't tell me that," JJ crosses her arms once again, a trait Ryne has noticed she does when she's trying to keep a reaction at bay.
"Well, my husband didn't believe me, why would you?"
JJ pauses, swallowing quietly as guilt starts to sink within her. "Tell us what happened," Hotch prods, wanting to know.
"At first, I saw him all the time. I thought I did. And from what I understand, that's normal. But you can't survive like that, so Jake and I promised we would move on. But a few years later I saw him! And it was different — I mean, in my mind, he had never aged. But this was a teenage Charlie crossing the street. And as quick as he was there, he was gone again, but I know I saw him," Sarah pauses as an influx of emotions go through her, and Ryne shares a look with JJ, knowing all too well everybody would hav probably believed Sarah had she told them this earlier. "Jake didn't believe me. That was the day he left me."
"What did you do when you saw Charlie?" Prentiss questions.
"I called for him," Sarah whispers airily. She recounts how she had called for him but a truck had gotten in the way, and how he had looked back before disappearing. Her husband had not seen him, however, and ended up not believing her.
"...I lost him all over again!"
Ryne finds herself in a conundrum of the sort.
Not because she's feeling conflicted, because despite how welcoming JJ and Morgan and everybody else has been to her, she still feels like she doesn't belong in the BAU boys club. She's in a conundrum because it's one thing to take statements of the worst night of someone's life, to prod a story out of a child who doesn't know what's going on, but it's another to talk to the parents who had lost their child while they were right beside them.
"So, the last time you saw Mae was on —"
"April fourth, two thousand and six," Mr Hall interrupted, leaning his arms on the desk as if it would support him. Ryne sat in front of him, one leg crossed over the other and a large file in her hand as she listens to him speak. "I couldn't forget that date even if I tried."
Around her, other couples are everywhere, parents who have lost their children. Each is being interviewed by an agent, and Ryne can spot JJ upstairs, in the conference room with Sarah, working with a sketch artist to draw a more accurate version of Charlie from what she saw three years ago.
"I understand that this is painful to recall, Mr Hall," Ryne starts, placing her file down and clasping her hands in her lap. "But if you are able to, can you tell me one more time exactly what happened on April fourth — particularity in the moments before Mae was taken?"
"What do you mean, moments before?" Mr Hall's eyes widen in confusion.
"Was there anything unusual you noticed, something that may have momentarily drawn your attention away from Mae for even half a second?"
Mr Hall sighed, his hands tightening together. "I—I'm not really sure. Mae was a little while away from me when she was taken. My wife...she was with Mae, they had been looking at fish in an aquarium tank, my wife was reading to her all about the one inside that tank using the small information signs they place in front of them, you know?"
He closes his eyes momentarily, recalling his experience. "I was a few tanks over, looking around for something that would really make Mae happy, you know? She had just gotten her first bad grade on a spelling test, and I didn't want her to feel crumby about it. Grades weren't really big with us as long as she tried hard. All of a sudden, I heard a woman — she was screaming, looking for her kid. I glanced around trying to figure out where it was coming from, and I think my wife did too. But when I looked back...my wife was screaming for Mae after that."
Mr Hall looks down sadly, fidgeting with the wedding band on his left ring finger.
"My wife...she couldn't take it after that, you know? She tried for a year, to move on, to...get over losing Mae, I guess. But the stress was too much, and she ended up in the hospital about a year ago. The doctors tried to explain it to me, but the only thing I could really understand was...her body just gave out on her. She couldn't live without Mae." Mr Hall pauses, sighing.
"...And then I was left all alone."
"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr Hall," Ryne says after a moment. Truthfully, she knows there's more she can say — she's also pretty sure if she gets anymore compassionate, Hotch might fire her on the spot, Callahan's endorsement or not paying no mind to him. "For both your losses."
"Just, please...is there a chance that Mae could be alive, agent Beckett?" He looks hopeful. So, so hopeful.
Ryne sighs inwardly, clasping her hands tightly together again and leaning forward. "Mr Hall...we profiled these guys as professionals. They use a ruse to lure their victims in, and they're quick and efficient. We believe they've taken a sufficient amount of children in the last ten years alone, and if we're correct, there is a chance that they've kept these children alive. But I have to stress Mr Hall, profiles can be inaccurate. They aren't total science. I can't promise you that Mae will be alive if we find her."
But the smile that covers Mr Hall's face softly tells Ryne that he has faith in the BAU, in Mae to stay alive through all of this.
"If you can even give me an ounce of hope, agent Beckett, then I'm already indebted to you for life."
Ryne hopes more than anything she can give him the hope he wants.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
ok one more chapter with mosley lane, and then s5ep16 is over. most of the other cases will cover about one chapter and not be as in depth, but mosley lane is definitely important to ryne's development into the team, especially with jj who'll be an important person to her, so i wanted to flush it out a bit.