Elijah was laid on the couch with Horatio, honestly trying to have a nap. This whole Maeve situation was stressing him out. Horatio meowed and looked up at Elijah.

"Dont even start, you've already been fed." Elijah stroked him.

Horatio purred and laid down

"That's better." Elijah closed his eyes.

That's when Elijah felt Horatio move onto his face.

"You are.. Impossible." He sighed.

"Elijah?" Reid called as he walked into the house.

"Hm?" Elijah responded, not getting up from the couch.

"I can't get to Meave."

"What do you mean you can't get to her?"

"I've tried calling her, but she won't answer."

"Right- Hang on." Elijah lifted Horatio off his face as he stood up,"So.. She's just gone?"

"Gone." Reid shook his head.

"You don't think.. Her stalker.." Elijah trailed off.

"I..I think we need go tell Hotch."

"Yeah." Elijah nodded, putting a hand on Reid's shoulder,"We're going to figure this out."

Reid nodded slowly.

"I promise." Elijah assured him.

*********************************

Elijah and Reid were waiting in Hotch's office at the BAU, waiting for Hotch to arrive.

"I got here as quickly as I could. What's wrong?" Hotch asked as he hurried in.

"We need to tell you something." Reid sighed.

Hotch looked between them before nodding slowly and closing the door.

"Our correspondence started ten months ago. She wrote me a compliment on my Journal of Behavioural Psych article, and for three months, this is how we communicated because she was scared." Reid handed over the files.

"Scared of whom?" Hotch raised a brow.

"She didn't know, only that he was dangerous. Horribly threatening phone calls, letters, emails, no matter where she moved. It's why I never called her from the same phone Booth twice."

"You don't know what Maeve looks like?"

"Neither of us do." Reid shook his head.

"Or where she works?" He asked.

"No. I know she's a geneticist." Reid answered.

"We don't even know her last name." Elijah sighed.

"Then I have to ask you, how do you know she's missing?" Hotch looked up.

"Because we always addressed our letters to our pseudonyms." Reid told him.

"And you're Dr Joesph Bell?" Hotch asked.

"The real-life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. And that codename is how I know she's in trouble. The voice on the phone indentified himself as Adam Worth. The American criminal that Arthur Conan Coyle based the character of Moriarty on." Reid explained.

"And what did he say to you?"

"Zugzwang. It's a chess term. It describes the point in a game when a player realizes he'll inevitably be checkmated. He has to decide whether to resign or to play through to the bitter end.." Reid informed him.

"If you're right about this, then you two are part of his victimology, too." Hotch sighed.

"We know." Elijah nodded slowly.

Soon enough, Elijah and Reid had explained everything to the team, them standing in front of everyone.

"He thinks he might get away with this, and he might. I have a wealth of knowledge I should be applying to this case. Behavioural patterns of violent stalkers, tactical recovery strategies, victim survival odds. But right now I can't focus which makes me the dumbest person in the room. So..Please.. Help us, help us find her." Reid looked down.

"We don't know if we have a case so we'll be working on personal time." Hotch looked around,"Does anyone want to leave?"

"No." Fleur shook her head.

"Good, let's get to work." Hotch nodded.

*********************************

"Based on Meave's description of the UnSub in her letters, he seems like a classically possessive stalker." Morgan looked at them.

"One who craves validation and recognition." JJ nodded,"Why won't you see me?' 'Do you think you're better than me?' This comes up over and over."

"So does his suicidal ideation." Alex stated,"When I find you, I'm going to kill you, then myself."

"Murder-suicide is the ultimate 'I love you' to these guys." Rossi shook his head.

"When did the UnSub start targeting Maeve?" Hotch asked.

"Maeve said it started out of the blue. My guess is it was some sort of incidental interaction, something she probably wasn't even aware of." Reid answered.

"That's gonna make the UnSub hard to find." Fleur sighed.

"And Maeve, too.. Until we know more about her." Elijah crossed his arms.

"I found her." Garcia blinked,"There are not many geneticists with that name but.. Dr Maeve Donovan took a sabbatical from Mendal University ten months ago."

"That fits the timeline." Blake nodded.

"She's a smart cookie too. She burned her credit history, but her parents rented a loft in the warehouse district five days ago."

"Did the parents sell their house recently?" Rossi asked.

"Nope." Garcia shook her head.

"They might be helping her hide." Elijah suggested.

"Morgan, JJ and Howards go to the loft. Blake and Dave go to the lab. How clear are your heads?" Hotch turned to the couple.

Elijah looked between Hotch and Reid,"Not very clear?"

"I want to talk to her parents, but I want you to observe the interview." Hotch nodded.

"Reid." Garcia whispered to him,"I have a picture of her. Do you want to see what she looks like?"

"No." Reid sighed.

*********************************

The group had found a suspect that could be Meave's stalker and soon arrived at his apartment.

"Robert Putnam. FBI." Morgan knocked on the door.

That's when a female opened the door,"Who?"

"We're looking for Robert Putnam. Do you know where he is?" Rossi asked her.

"He's in the back."

"We need to talk to him." Hotch told her.

She stepped to the side, letting them in.

"And who are you?" Morgan asked.

"I'm Diane, his girlfriend." Diane blinked.

"Hey, sweetheart, who is it?" Robert walked in.

"Robert Putnam, we'd like to-" Reid stopped.

Robert squinted as he looked between Reid and Elijah,"I know you."

Hotch looked at them before ushering them out rhe room,"Out, out."

"Wait, we need to talk to him, Hotch." Reid pointed.

"Why did he just recognise you two?" Hotch blinked.

"A couple of weeks ago, Maeve agreed to meet with us. He was at the restaurant." Elijah sighed,"We caught him looking at us and something felt.. Off about him."

"You're telling me this now?" Hotch scoffed.

"I didn't know who he was, and then a friend of his sat down, so I just assumed that I overreacted." Reid shook his head.

"Reid, if he's the UnSub, you both are material witnesses. Neither of you can be in there. You know that, stay here." Hotch walked back inside.

Soon enough, those remaining inside had Robert sat on the couch.

"Look, what's going on? Where's Maeve?" He asked.

"We were hoping you knew." Fleur crossed her arms.

"Why would I know?" Robert questioned.

"The same way that you knew that she'd be at that restaurant two weeks ago." Hotch suggested.

"Care to explain?" Rossi raised a brow.

"When she went into hiding, she broke off the engagement. I needed to see her, to make sure she was alright. So I hired a private detective and he found her through her parents. When she made the reservation, I showed up, too." Robert explained.

"Why did you bring a friend?" Hotch asked.

"Because there was a psychopath after her, that's why." He answered.

"Fore someone madly in love, you sure moved on in a hurry." Rossi pointed out.

"Meave told me to.. It looks like she took her own advice."

"Did that make you mad? Mad enough to hurt her?"

"Mad enough to stalk the men she wad meeting?" Hotch suggested.

"There's something over there on that table that I'm gonna go get. Don't shoot me." Robert looked at them before he got up and grabbed some photos from the table, handing them to the agents,"He sent these to us in the last month of our engagement. The fact is, I was being stalked too."

Meanwhile outside, Diane walked out to Reid and Elijah.

"Dr Reid and Mr Deans? Um- Agent Hotchner said he was done with me upstairs. Can you tell me what's going on?" She looked between them.

"Uh, we'll be in touch, Ma'am. Thank you." Elijah nodded slowly as Morgan walked out.

Diane walked off with a sigh.

"Alright, kids, talk to me. I can tell Reid's adding something up in his head. What is it?"

"2,412." Reid sighed,"It's the number of hours we spent communicating, counting phone calls and lettets."

"That's about one hundred days." Morgan nodded.

"100.5. What if that's all I get?"

"Well, it's not." Elijah shook his head.

"You can't say that." Reid sighed.

"Yes, I can. Because when we find her alive and you finally get to see her face, what's the first thing you're going to say to her?" Elijah put his hand on Reid's shoulder.

"A couple of months ago, she said.. Send my love to you both. And hung up. Just like that." Reid nodded,"I just..I want her to see how great you are, Eli."

"And she will." He assured him.

*********************************

"Okay, we know numbers on female stalkers are minimal. Only 10% of all cases are female." JJ began.

"Alright, what tops the list of motivators?" Hotch looked around.

"Prior sexual intimacy." Morgan suggested.

"Erotomania?" Rossi raised a brow.

"No, go the other direction. Think female scorned." Derek nodded.

"Reid, could that fit Maeve? Could she have possibly been in a relationship with this woman?" Hotch asked.

"No, no." Reid shook his head.

"Spence, this morning you didn't know she was engaged." JJ sighed.

"The answer is no. And what's the second most common motivation?" Reid asked.

"Celebrity stalking." She answered.

"That fits better."

"How?" Blake questioned,"She's not famous."

"Maeve's a star in her field, though." He shrugged.

"It's a stretch." Rossi hummed.

"Celebrity stalkers are usually nonviolent." Fleur agreed.

"You wanna tell that to John Lennon, Fleur? What was it that Mark David Chapman said after he shot him?" Reid stood up,"It was like all of my nobody-ness and all of his somebody-ness collided'.collided. Maeve is somebody and this.. Bitch is a nobody!"

"Spencer." Elijah sighed.

"I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from." Reid stopped,"I can't be helpful right now, I should leave."

"Reid. Reid, yes, you can. You have 100.5 days of communication with this girl, and your brain lets you recall every word verbatim." Morgan pointed.

"She probably revealed details about the UnSub to you, and neither of you even noticed." JJ sighed.

"There's too much of it, and I can't sort through any of it with clarity." Reid shook his head.

"Then pick one of us, and we'll go through it with you." Hotch nodded,"Elijah can stay, too."

"Blake." Reid spoke quietly.

"Okay." Blake nodded,"Let's get out of here."

*********************************

"Her name is Diane Turner. She worked as a research assistant at Mendel University while Maeve was there." Garcia told them.

"Did she apply for a PhD there?" JJ asked.

"Yeah. She was one of a bunch of internal applicants that got rejected." She nodded.

"Looks like she left not long after Maeve." Rossi read the file.

"Yeah. She now works at a local Junior College." Garcia told them.

"Dave, you, Reid, Elijah and JJ take the residence. Blake, Morgan and Howards take the campus." Hotch nodded.

"..What was her doctoral thesis about?" Reid asked.

"It says here, spontaneous cellular death in suicide patients." Morgan looked up.

"There's her suicidal ideation again." Elijah sighed.

"Except cells don't behave that way. Why is she so obsessed with it?" Reid wondered.

*********************************

"She's spoofing the IP address and encrypted the feed. In other words, like layman's terms, this is gonna take a while." Garcia sighed.

They had found Maeve through a video feed, she was with Diane tied to a chair.

"What are you doing?" Rossi looked at Reid.

"Making a deal." Reid told them as he scribbled something down on paper and held it up to the camera.

'Me for Her' he had written. Although now, Diane and Maeve were on the roof of the building, Diane pointing a gun at Maeve before looking at the phone. Before long, Reid's own phone rang and he picked it up.

"Hello." Reid quickly answered the phone.

"It's me." It was Maeve.

"Are you okay?" Reid asked.

"She killed Bobby.."

"Are you okay?" He repeated.

"Yeah.. I've got a concussion and some bruising, but I'm okay." Maeve nodded slowly.

"Can I talk to her?"

"..No. She's listening."

"Good. But I want to meet her. I need to see her face to face." Reid sighed.

"She has a message she wants me to give you." Maeve told him.

"What is it?"

"The message is, she left you a present. And if you want to find it, it's easy as pie." She informed him.

"What does that mean? I don't understand what that means." Reid shook his head.

"Neither do I. Spencer, it's a trap. If you come here, she's gonna kill you-" Maeve was cut off.

"I need a map of D.C." Reid turned to them

*********************************

"This is Diane Turner's apartment. This is the nearest cell tower her phone call to me pinged off of, which means this us the circle Maeve was telling me about." Reid circled a spot on the map.

"What circle?" Hotch blinked.

"It was a clue in Diane's message. Finding her would be 'as easy as pie. Only she wasn't referring to the food, she was referring to.." Reid explained as he wrote down the first few numbers of pi.

"Pi." Fleur realised.

"Why would Diane give you a clue?" Hotch asked

"Maeve made a similar pun once. Now Diane wants me to see her in a similar way, but brilliant, the smartest girl in the room. I believe that Diane thinks I'm in love with Maeve, it explains everything." Reid told them.

"Alright, assuming that Diane has a secondary location where in the circle would she hold Maeve?" Hotch raised a brow.

"She'd need a building that would allow for privacy and control, a closed garage for prisoner transfer-"

"If she's copying Maeve's life, it might be someplace close to Maeve's apartment." Elijah nodded slowly.

"There's nothing in Diane's name." Garcia typed.

"What about in Maeve's name, or even in Bobby's. Maybe she forged his signature." Hotch suggested.

"Nope."

"What about Diane's parents?" Reid asked.

Garcia typed,"Yes! Yes. Diane rented a loft right next to Maeve's in her parents' name."

"Reid. I can't let you be part of this takedown." Hotch turned to him.

"We don't have a choice. If I don't go, then Maeve is dead." Reid sighed.

"And if you do, you're dead." Hotch shot back.

"Hotch, we've known from the beginning she's on a murder-suicide mission, but we never stopped to ask why she's on that mission. We know now it's because she wants recognition, the type of recognition she thinks Maeve gets, and I can give her that." Reid explained.

"How?"

"I'm going to tell her that I love her."

*********************************

The team were waiting outside of the building where Reid was inside with Maeve and Diane.. That's when they heard gunshots.

Everyone rushed inside to where Reid was on the floor, holding his arm,"Stay back! Stay back!"

Diane had Maeve in her arms, pointing a gun at her head.

"Diane, there's still a way out of this." Elijah spoke slowly.

"He never wanted me. Never!" Diane cursed,"You lied, Spencer!"

"That's.. You're right, he did lie." Elijah nodded,"But Spencer isn't in love with Maeve either."

"Elijah." Fleur looked at him.

"Yes he is." Diane scoffed.

"Diane, he's in love with me." Elijah told her, looking back at Reid,"Tell her, Spencer."

Reid looked at Elijah,"Elijah, you need to go."

"I'm not leaving." He shook his head.

"Thomas Merton." Maeve whispered to the boys.

"Who's Thomas Merton?" Diane questioned.

"They know.. He's the one thing you can never take from us three." Maeve answered.

"No.." Diane raised her gun.

"Wait!" Reid shouted.

Diane then shot towards Elijah before turning the gun onto herself, shooting through her head.. Into Maeve's as they both fell to the floor, dead.

"..Shit." Elijah bit his cheek as he clutched his shoulder.

"Elijah." Fleur ran up to Elijah.

"We need medics right now." Hotch ordered through his comms.

"Flo, I'm fine." Elijah told her.

"Kid... Reid." Morgan took his arm.

Elijah looked over at Reid who was on his knees sobbing.. He'd let him down.