" In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. "

— Abraham Lincoln

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11.2 ; UNFINISHED BUSINESS.

"OKAY, THAT'S GOTTA BE a first. A killer actually leading us to another killer!"

Caroline didn't respond to Derek's comment as she twirled a pencil between her fingers. It had been about forty minutes since they found the Keystone Killer's new note and now they were back at the Philly PD station, trying to figure out their next move.

"Oh, come on," Gideon said, his voice tinted with irony, "we all know they make the best profilers. They admire each other's work."

Elle pursed her lips as she leaned back into her chair. "Yeah, but usually from afar."

Caroline's feet made no sound as she tapped them on the thick carpet. The conference room had the kind of muted quiet that only hovered around reception areas and libraries, the air saturated by smell of cheap coffee.

"Well, at least we got Harbin off the street," Hotch noted. Caroline rubbed her eyes. That had been a major benefit in this whole investigation. While they may not have the Keystone Killer, they certainly caught another monster with his help. "Let's review. What do we know about the Keystone Killer?"

"We know that he's not dead or in jail," Caroline offered as she folded her hands in her lap. "He enjoys the taunting, the game. He likes being in complete control."

"He strangled 7 women in the 1980s, stopped for 18 years, and then began again, suffocating them," Spencer began, "10% of all violent crimes are cause by strangulation. It only takes 11 pounds of pressure to fully incapacitate your victim, and if you hang on for at least 50 seconds, they'll never recover."

"But when you suffocate someone," Caroline murmured, "you have less control over their death. It's actually more passive because the killer doesn't feel the life leaving the body."

Elle shook her head slowly as she listened. "He's changed almost everything that he does."

"Why?" Gideon echoed. "Why? What's he getting out of this new M.O.? Where's his payoff?" He rubbed his hands together. "You got Carla Bromwell. She sustains a significant head injury. Blitz attack suggests disorganization, no self-confidence. This is a guy who walks into 7 victims' homes prior to this. There's no forced entry at any of the scenes. Where's the loss of confidence?"

"He would never change the way he kills by choice," Max said. Everyone looked to him in curiosity. "We've been operating under the assumption that he purposely changed his M.O."

"Are you saying he changed because he had to change?" Gideon asked him quietly. Caroline could see the the idea forming in his mind.

"He did knock her unconscious," Morgan admitted slowly, "and it wasn't to scare her."

"Because he couldn't control her physically while she's awake," Caroline said. The pieces started to fit together, like the Keystone Killer's puzzles. "He could be incapacitated, at least partially. Maybe an injury or a stroke?"

Gideon stared absentmindedly at the photos of the victims hanging on the board behind them. "Either way, you're gonna have to have medical records, agreed?"

Morgan shrugged. "Yeah, so what are we talking about here? This had to have happened after the middle of 1988 in Philadelphia?"

Gideon nodded. "Somebody who fits the rest of the profile."

"That's a lot of hospital records," Reid huffed to the older profiler.

"Then we better call Garcia and get to work."

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On the television screen, Caroline watched JJ calmly conduct the press release on the Keystone Killer. Her blonde friend stood in front of the cameras with a cool but polite expression, her face equally as relaxed as she addressed the questions being yelled at her.

Yes, they were working hard on finding the Keystone Killer.

Yes, they had some potential leads.

Yes, retired FBI agent Max Ryan was on the case.

No, it was not his fault the investigation didn't get solved the last time.

She didn't see how the press liaison handled the crowd so professionally and answered their questions with such absolute confidence as they hounded her for information. The BAU really was lucky to have JJ on their side.

Behind her, she heard a scoff. Caroline's head turned and she saw Max Ryan standing in the doorway with a blank expression. She felt a stab of sympathy as she wondered how long he had been standing there and just how much he'd heard. Judging by the look on his face, she assumed he heard enough to know where the press' heads were at.

"I'd hate to be standing out there in front of those jackals," Ryan muttered, his eyes tight.

She reached for the remote and shut TV off, the screen going dark. "JJ can hold her own."

Ryan let out a tired sigh. "You're all better at the press thing than we ever were."

"Well, we have a lot more of it to deal with now."

"Hmm." He nodded as he stepped into the room, his eyes shifting focus from the TV to her. "They need someone to blame. I guess it's me." Ryan didn't sound bitter or upset, like she expected. He sounded more resigned, as if he were accepting a truth he had never known before.

She bit the corner of her lip. "Are you ok with that?"

He shrugged. "Well, the fact is I haven't been able to solve the case, so I'm an easy target, but if I..." He paused. "If we do close it, that'll all go away."

"And you think you'll be able to? You know, just walk away?"

Ryan glanced over to her, his eyes analyzing her. Then, they grew softer, which took her by surprise. He almost seemed...sad.

"I won't have any choice," he admitted, his voice quiet.

She frowned. "But don't you want to? I mean, don't you get to a certain point where you'd want to relax, maybe spend some time with your family?"

Her voice grew shaky when she said the word "family".

"Family?" He whispered, his eyes focusing on the floor. "I lost that a long time ago. I haven't even seen them in years."

Caroline felt a sharp stab in her chest. Years. That's how long Max Ryan's obsession cost him. Not his sanity, not his well being but time. Time that he could never get back.

"As far as relaxing," Ryan continued, "the BAU doesn't employ too many agents with a 'relaxing' mentality, do they?"

He gave her a knowing look and Caroline averted her eyes, focusing her gaze on the carpeted floor. She suddenly found herself thinking back, trying to recall when she took a couple of days off or went on vacation. She couldn't remember.

"Well, we've got some records to go through," Ryan told her as she stared at the floor, "I'll see you in the conference room."

She whispered a soft, "Yeah" as he left the room, the door closing behind him with a quiet click.

Slowly, Caroline's hand reached into her jacket pocket and she pulled out her cellphone. She thumbed through her contacts until she found Rebecca's number and her finger reluctantly hovered over the call button. She bit the corner of her lip.

She tried to think of something she could say, anything, but nothing came. Deep down, a small part of her told her to dial the number, to talk to one of her best friends and plan the wedding and just forget about the case. She kept telling herself that she could do it, that she hadn't let her job, her urge to make things right, take control over her life. That she wasn't anything like Max Ryan. That she could stop herself whenever she wanted.

But the truth was, she couldn't. Her mind kept going back her past, forcing her to remember the horrifying terror she felt. She could remember sounds, sights and feelings. She remembered coming to the realization that she was going to die and she would never see her family again. And that was something she never wanted another human being to feel.

The images of Carla Bromwell's body laying peacefully with a plastic bag over her head flashed into her mind. Slowly, she closed the lid on her phone and slipped it back into her pocket.

Caroline told herself she could call her family later because, right now, she had a serial killer to catch.

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An hour past as the team sifted through records and records of medical files and incident reports. So far, they didn't have much except the dawning realization of just how many trees they killed in order to have that many files. It didn't help that they were a profiler short either—Elle has left go go research injuries of college campuses in the area. The Keystone Killer was well-read, and so he may have been a professor.

Caroline didn't think it was likely, but it was better to cover all of the bases then for it to come back and bite them later.

She heard Spencer sigh beside her. She glanced up from the file she was reading.

"There are just too many hospitals, clinics, long-term care facilities," Reid claimed, glancing over all of the stacks of paper cluttering the conference room table, "We'd be sitting through records for weeks."

"Come on," Derek said as he sat his file down on the table. "There's gotta be some way to narrow down a search, right?"

"We've ruled out a stroke," Hotch said, "and half the hospitals don't even say how the accident occurred."

Spencer paused and she could see the cogs in his mind begin to turn, fueling his beautiful mind.

"Accidents..." Reid said slowly, "in America, someone's involved in a car accident once every 10 seconds."

Caroline nodded. "A car accident with injuries would all be reported by the police."

"We've profiled him driving a late-model American-made Sedan," Ryan said.

"So how about I get Garcia to check Philly PD records for accidents involving American-made sedan and serious injury?" Derek suggested.

"It's a long shot," Ryan warned.

"But it's still a shot," Gideon replied before turning to Morgan. "Start with 1988. If it was an accident, it stopped him in his tracks."

Derek nodded and left the room, his cell phone in hand. It hadn't even been five minutes when he came back, a small stack of paper in his hands and a satisfied look plastered on his face.

Garcia found something.

Morgan began passing out the reports in his hands as he explained what Garcia had dug up.

"Walter Kern had a military background," he began, "ROTC in high school, 4 years in the Air Force."

Caroline scanned over the files completely. Walter was 48 now, which put him at about roughly in his late twenties in 1988, just as Ryan predicted. The more she read about him, the more she saw of the earlier profile.

"Hospital records show that he lost mobility in his right side due to severed nerve damage to his spinal cord," Spencer noted, "He never got his strength back."

"Kern's been a county worker, a claims adjuster and, get this," Hotch said, "he installed home alarms with Scott Harbin."

"Takes one to know one," Gideon murmured.

Spencer shook his head incredulously. "All this jobs allowed him access to people's homes."

"Explains why there was no sign of forced entry," Morgan remarked. "He had a legitimate reason to knock on the door."

Caroline tapped on the file in her hand with a pencil. "It says that he got a degree in criminology from Villanova in 1988. It explains his knowledge of law enforcement."

"This looks like our guy," Hotch agreed, "Anybody got a current address?"

"575 Wight Street, southeast Philadelphia." A triumphant grin spread across Ryan's face. "I got you, you son of a bitch."

The room began to collect their things, scrambling to leave. The excitement in the room was palpable.

They did it. They found the Keystone Killer.

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The air in the dark room was stale. The wooden steps creaked under her shoes, careful to watch where she stepped in the dim room. The only light in the cellar was by a small lightbulb hanging in the middle of the room, connected to a chain that would turn it on and off. But even with the small yellow light that encased the room, Caroline could see the photos. All of the photos of the Keystone Killers victims, bloodied and limp.

Her stomach rolled.

When they first got to Walter Kern's residence, they were greeted by his wife. She was a frail woman with dainty wrists and pearl earrings. She told them that her husband was out volunteering with the local Boy Scouts. Caroline had chuckled at that.

Mrs. Kern had fanned herself with knobby fingers when they told her that her husband was a serial killer. After that, she was more than helpful and directed them to her husband's "dark room".

It wasn't the dark room Mrs. Kern expected. It was the Keystone Killer's shrine.

"Looks like he collected every article written about him," Ryan muttered, nodding to the short newspaper clippings tacked to a cork-board on the wall. All the headlines contained the Keystone Killer this and the Keystone Killer that. It seemed Walter had grown obsessed with his serial killer persona.

Gideon stood by a dusty bookshelf in the corner. He reached forward and pulled out a book, tossing it to Ryan, who caught it with a confused expression.

"He's got your book," the older profiler told him. Ryan slowly opened the cover and he growled.

"Dammit!" He exclaimed. "I signed it!"

He held the book up for Caroline and Spencer to see. Sure enough, written in black pen, was Ryan's sprawling signature on the front page. He snapped the book close and tossed it back into the bookcase in frustration.

Reid's eye's roamed over the dark room, his focus particularly on the pictures hanging on the walls and the ceiling. "Hotch was entirely correct about the photography—his cellar's where he developed his photographs."

Caroline ran a hand over the work bench nestled in the corner. Despite the musty smell in the cellar, the dark room was surprisingly clean.

Obsessive compulsive disorder, she thought to herself, just like in the profile said.

As she investigated the bench, the scrapbook resting on the corner of the desk caught her eye. She picked it up gently, running a hand over the thick leather.

Spencer glanced at the book in her hands. "What's that? A scrapbook?"

The three profilers gathered around her as she slowly lifted the heavy cover and began flipping through pages. The book was filled with photos of the victims—when they were alive and when they were dead. Walter had even went as far as to tape in trophies from his kills: IDs, locks of hair, leaves from bushes outside their homes, and wrappers from chewing gum. Everything he could've taken, he did and put them into his scrapbook.

"There's a chapter on every woman he's killed," Caroline whispered as her fingers turned the pages slowly. Their whole lives were in these pages, all for the killer's enjoyment. She felt absolutely sick.

"These entries are detailed enough to let him relive the kills for years," Spencer said, his breath against her ear. "He has candid photographs of the victims at the park, grocery store, outside of church, driver's license, clothes, jewelry."

He had been stalking them for weeks. She swallowed.

As she neared the end of the book, the crisp pages were blank.

"There's chapters in the back that are not finished," Caroline said as she ran her fingers over the blank pages. "I'd say the photographs are at least 20 years old. The hairstyles and clothing are different."

Behind her, Spencer let out a small gasp.

"His recent themes of communication have been about 'old friends'," he said quickly as his brain processed his thoughts. "Unfinished business. His car accident was in the Fairmount District of Philadelphia. That's exactly where Carla Bromwell lived."

With a drawing horror, Caroline realized what Reid was trying to say.

"He was on the alway to kill her when he had his accident," she said.

Spencer nodded. "It's not about finding a new type of victim. It's about a specific target."

"Because he was such a perfectionist," Ryan remarked, "and is a perfectionist, he had to finish what he started years ago."

"These aren't new victims, Max," Gideon told the retired agent slowly. "They were already targeted...right from day one."

Ryan turned to Caroline with eyes an urgent look. "Who's in the last chapter?"

She flipped to the back of the book and showed him the black and white photos of a petite woman in her sixties with the name Sylvia Goodman scrawled at the bottom of the page. Ryan nodded to Gideon and they ran out of the cellar to go catch the Keystone Killer.

That left Caroline and Spencer, standing in a musty dark room, with the scrapbook of dead women in her arms. Slowly, she closed the book and gently set it back down on the workbench. She took a couple steps back from the book and wrapped her arms around her body, shielding herself.

"You're not going with them?" She heard Reid ask from behind her, sounding surprised.

She shook her head slowly. "No. They'll catch him, I know they will."

There was a brief pause. Something besides the stale air hung between them.

"Care?"

"Yeah, Spence?"

"Is everything okay?"

She calmly turned her body to face him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Me? Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. You just seem out of it."

Caroline let out a short, breathless chuckle. "Just thinking of things, I guess."

"Like what?" He asked her, his face open and inviting. His coffee brown eyes stared into hers and a soft sigh escaped her lips.

She was a sucker for those eyes.

"Have you ever taken a vacation, Spence?" Caroline asked him softly. "Like a true vacation—no work, no victims, no serial killers."

He opened his mouth to reply, then paused. He closed his mouth, a thoughtful look passing over his face as he tried to remember. He frowned.

"No," he admitted sheepishly, "I've never really wanted to though. You?"

She exhaled loudly. "Me neither. Don't you think that's...odd?"

His frown deepened in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"That we don't want to take a break. We chase monsters and, for any normal person, they'd want a break from that every now and then, right?"

"Well, if we were normal, we wouldn't be doing this job in the first place." Spencer gave her a worried look. "Seriously, Caroline, what's this about?"

"Haven't you ever thought about it?" She asked him, biting her lip. "We're at this job day and night. Don't you miss the time you spend with your friends back at home?"

He shrugged. "No."

She blinked, startled. "What?"

"My closest friends are at work." He smiled at her. "You're my best friend. That's really all I need."

Her cheeks flushed. "Really? You would be content to just spend time with me?"

"Well, yeah."

"Don't you think you'd get sick of me?" She chuckled lightly, nervously. Her heart was fluttering wildly in her chest.

He shook his head slowly and gently said, "Honestly...I don't think I could ever get sick of you."

Suddenly, she had the overwhelming urge to touch him, to hold him. It wouldn't have been hard. She would just have to close with space between them with three steps, maybe four, and she'd be in his arms, the one that made her feel so safe. Maybe she'd kiss him. Maybe she would actually get the courage to tell him how she felt, that she cared about him as more than just a friend. As more than her best friend.

And yet, as much as she craved to be near him, to feel his hands holding her close, she stayed rooted in place, unable to say a word.

An awkward, heavy silence hung over them. The tension of what both of them felt, what both of them wanted to say filled the air. Suddenly, the room felt warm, almost stifling. Caroline cleared her throat.

"Well," she said, "how about we get started here so we can go home?"

Spencer gave her a lopsided smile that caused her heart to race.

"Sounds good to me."

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"Did Jason ever tell you about the time that he found the director's itinerary in a bomber's car?"

Morgan, Elle, JJ and Reid all leaned forward, listening intently to Ryan as they sat on the plane. Beside the retired FBI agent, Gideon covered his face with his hand with embarrassment.

"What?" Spencer grinned excitedly, eager to hear the story about his mentor.

"Max, come on," Gideon said sheepishly.

Morgan rose an eyebrow and grinned. It wasn't everyday they saw the Jason Gideon embarrassed. "No, no, he never said anything."

"Well, let me fill you in, then." Ryan leaned forward in his seat, his face open and animated. "We had this bomber case. It was one of Jason's first, so we had him go over and search the bomber's car which was in the Quantico garage. Except for me and the guys had planted this piece of paper that had all these times and locations of where the FBI Director was gonna be over the next 48 hours."

Morgan, JJ and Elle began to chuckle as Spencer leaned forward in anticipation, casting an amused glance at Gideon, who was smiling.

"Anyway," Ryan continued, "Jason takes one look at this piece of paper, and before we could stop him, he takes off, runs up 25 flights of stairs to the Director's office, barges in, interrupting a meeting with the attorney general himself."

Ryan patted Gideon on the back teasingly as the group laughed. Morgan clapped the older profiler's knee like he was proud. The girls laughed, amused, as Spencer stared at his mentor with his jaw dropped.

"The director didn't find it very funny," Gideon's admitted, running a hand over the back of his neck.

Ryan snorted. "Yeah, he was the only one who didn't!"

Caroline glanced up from her cup of coffee, watching the small group gathered at the back of the jet, all smiling and happy. Today had been a good day for the team. Gideon and Ryan had captured the Keystone Killer before he murdered Sylvia Goodwin and she was confident he was going to prison and wasn't going to get out anytime soon. After they had caught Walter, Ryan even loosened up a bit and began telling stories from his days in the BAU. Truth be told, she thought the retired agent had gotten used to the team now, maybe even liked them.

He wasn't so bad himself, once he relaxed a little. In a way, she would miss the man. Despite his faults, he was passionate about his job and he cared. He was just like them, wanting to save the world one serial killer at a time.

She sighed quietly, a soft puff of breath that escaped her lips, as she watched them joke and tease each other. A small part of her wondered why she wasn't over there, laughing and spending time with her friends. Instead, she sat beside Hotch, who had been silently working on his report, the whole night. Neither of them said a word to each other.

It was as if Hotch knew she had something she wanted to say, and he was giving her the time to say it.

Caroline turned back around and tucked her legs onto the couch, taking a small sip of warm coffee. She glanced at Hotch.

"You know he has no one, no family," she told him quietly.

"Who's that?" He murmured, distracted.

"Ryan. I mean, technically, he's retired, but he hasn't seen his kids in years."

Hotch set his report on his lap and looked over at her with her knees tucked to her chest and her toes wiggling anxiously in her socks.

"Divorce is not uncommon in the BAU."

Caroline huffed. "You know, the other night when you called—Saturday night—did you think it was weird that we all just were able to drop everything and go to the office, that we're available to you anytime you call, day or night?"

Hotch's eyebrows furrowed. "No, not really."

"How do you do it?" She asked him softly. "How do you do this job and still have a wife and a baby?"

"Well, when I'm with them, I try to focus 100% of my attention there. And when I'm with you guys, I try to do the same thing." Hotch sighed. "It's about priorities, Caroline. It's about setting them and keeping them."

She took a shaky breath as she tightened the grip on her knees, pressing them harder against her chest as if she were trying to keep herself together.

"I'm just so scared that I'm going to turn into Ryan," she murmured, her voice weak and tired. "That one day I'm going to look up and see that my life has passed me by while I was changing monsters. That I've let what happened to me in my past rule over my present."

Hotch paused, his stoic expression softening into the Hotch she knew outside of work—the kind, caring man that she admired and looked up to.

"It's hard," he admitted. "This job will eat you up if you let it."

"So what do I do?"

"Find a way not to let it."

Caroline sighed, setting her mug down on the table in front of them. She wrapped her arms around herself and laid her head against the couch tiredly, her mind racing.

She wanted so desperately to find a way to be free of her demons and the memories that kept her trapped, that kept her from moving on. She felt like her insides were tearing and ripping, turning herself inside out. She hugged herself tighter and wondered if the pain would ever go away.

Then, she felt Hotch's hand rest on her shoulder, steadying her. She closed her eyes.

They stayed like that until Caroline eventually drifted to sleep.

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iT's BeEN eigHTY-FoUr YeArS!!

AN UPDATE LMAOOOOOOOO WHAT A SHOCK.

sorry for the long break, I had some family and personal stuff to get through, but i'm back. i hope to get more chapters up before school starts back in a couple of weeks!

anyway, what did you guys think about the chapter? we're approaching the end of part 1 pretty soon so what are your predictions?

DOES ANYONE ELSE WANT CAROLINE AND SPENCER TO DATE BC IM DYING THEY ARE TOO SOFT!!

don't forget to vote and comment!

love, adaline