CHAPTER TWO:
GIVE OR TAKE
( 03x06: about face )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

HE WAS WRITING IN that bloody book again. Dallis contemplated hiding it but quickly decided it was above her paygrade. Instead, she waited for the others to return beside Reid, who stared at Rossi in preparation. If he'd looked up for just one second, Reid would've latched onto it like a dog with a bone, ready to start up a conversation.

Fortunately for Dallis (or unfortunately for Reid, depending on how you looked at it), Hotch and JJ returned not long after they did.

"We got anything?" Hotch asked, doing a double-take when he noticed Rossi's book.

At least Dallis wasn't the only one. She wondered if Hotch would say anything. It was clear they had history. Would Hotch let Rossi's solidarity jeopardise the way his team operated just because they were old friends?

"Agent Rossi pointed out that since the victims are weighted down, it suggests the unsub didn't want them found, which suggests some sort of connection between them," Reid said.

Hotch thought about this for a second, then turned to Yarbrough. "Detective, how long was Michelle missing?"

"She was found on the fourth day."

"So if she wasn't in the water long, then he held her for three."

That meant Enid White had just over forty-eight hours.

Before they could ponder on this and what it meant for their investigation, Dallis' phone started to ring. Fishing it out of her pocket, she immediately switched it onto speakerphone so they could all hear.

"Garcia, my love, you've got myself, Reid, Hotch and Rossi," she said. "What you got for us?"

"Well, my sweet, I've been running all of Enid White's credit cards," Garcia jumped straight into it.

"And?" Hotch prompted.

"She made a purchase at 9am this morning in a sporting goods store in Dallas."

"This morning?"

Dallis leaned forward in her chair, checking her watch for the time. It was a little after lunch, so when their plane was touching down in Dallas, their newest victim was at a sporting goods store? That certainly didn't add up to what they thought they knew.

"What did she buy?" Reid asked.

"A shotgun."

Rossi immediately returned to his notebook. Hotch leaned over to hang up Dallis' phone, leaving them reeling with the new information.

Just what would this mean for Enid White? What if their unsub cracked under the pressure of the media coverage and killed her quicker than Michelle Colucci? Or what if it wasn't the unsub, but it really was her? There was no doubt she'd have seen those flyers when she was walking her dog. If she somehow managed to flee before the unsub closed in on her, she could be out there in wait, paranoid, with a shotgun poised to fire.

Dallis could feel their window of time closing in to suffocate them.

"Can she buy a gun that easily?" Hotch turned to Yarbrough for confirmation.

The detective pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing at the stress lines that scarred his skin; from the job or age, it was hard to tell. "This is Texas."

"There's no licence or waiting period for most rifles or shotguns," Rossi added, just to make the situation more damning.

"Is there video surveillance of gun sales in sporting goods stores?" Hotch asked.

"There's supposed to be."

"JJ, call the store. Find out if it was Enid or the unsub using her credit card."

As JJ nodded and rushed off to do just that, Dallis voiced what they all had to be thinking. "If this is Enid, we need to find her before the unsub does. We need to work out the best way to approach this without setting her off. To buy a shotgun... she must be deeply paranoid and scared."

"Detective Yarbrough?" An unfamiliar officer approached the group, interrupting Hotch before he could set anything else in motion. "There's an urgent call from a woman on One."

Dallis shared a look with her team as the detective answered without question.

"Detective Yarbrough?"

The woman's answer was simple but shaken. "My name is Enid White."

"Where are you, Enid?"

Enid hesitated. "The news report said that the police didn't believe that other woman when she saw the missing flyers."

"That was a mistake, Enid," he tried his best to reassure her.

"I have a gun," she said, as if she was preparing herself to follow through with whatever had to be done to survive. "But I don't think I can stay awake much longer."

Dallis jutted her chin at Hotch. Enid was clearly distrustful of Yarbrough and his officers. She had no faith they would help her if she emerged from hiding. They had to intervene before the call derailed and they lost track of her again.

"Enid, this is Agent Hotchner of the FBI," he leaned down to the speaker so she could hear his voice. "We believe you and we want to help you. Can you tell us where you are?"

"El Royale Motel in Dallas. Room Six."

Dallis was quick to snatch up the nearest bit of paper -- which just so happened to be Rossi's notebook, not that he seemed to mind given the circumstances -- and wrote down the address the woman gave. Poor Enid was breathless, exhausted, begging them to get to her in time.

"I saw the flyers," she said, sounding hollow. "Hurry, please. He's going to kill me."

"Don't move, Enid. We're on our way."

But as their cars sped down the road and entered the foyer of the El Royale Motel, Dallis couldn't shake the sinking feeling they were too late. It was quiet despite the piercing whine of their sirens. Dallis' heartbeat seemed to echo in her ears as she followed Yarbrough, Hotch and Rossi towards the door of Room Six with her gun raised.

Enid had known they were coming. Surely the sirens would've assured her that it wasn't the unsub. Why was she still hiding?

"FBI," Hotch yelled out.

No answer.

"We need to get in there," Dallis urged.

Hotch nodded at the detective, who tried the lock. The door swung open with a suspicious amount of ease. The four of them pushed inside to find the room empty. Dallis had known the second they arrived what they would find waiting for them. Her stomach still dropped like a stone. On the bed were dozens of flyers.

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

"She's gone," Emily sighed as she and Morgan raced in not long after them.

Dallis turned away, unable to bear the sight of the plain white mask lying in the middle of the shrine. Number two. The bright red ink seemed to taunt them. "Damn it!"

They were so close.

"Come on," Emily laid a hand on her shoulder. "Let's wait outside."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

WHILE YARBROUGH'S MEN CLEARED the room, bringing out Enid's few belongings including her poor dog, Yarbrough paced in front of the room, red-faced and slack-jawed.

"Twenty minutes," he exclaimed. "We were here in twenty minutes. I can't believe we lost her."

"We may not have lost her," Hotch said. "He kept Michelle for four days."

"But we've got nothing!"

"That's not true. Look at the difference in the scenes."

"What do you mean?" Yarbrough finally stopped pacing to stick his head through the open door. "There's a mask, there's flyers."

"Yeah, but these flyers weren't tacked up, they were just thrown around the room," Emily countered.

Wearing white latex gloves, she'd carefully taken one of the flyers off the bed. Now, she held it up for each of them to see. As expected, they were the same as the ones on the fence that Enid first stumbled across.

"So?"

"He left in a hurry like he knew we were coming," Hotch said, grim-faced.

"Okay, this was under the bed," Morgan bought out a mobile phone for them to look over. "It's got a 972 area code."

"That's Carrollton," Yarbrough frowned, taking a look at the most recent number dialled. "It's the hotline number."

"She used a cell phone," Dallis sighed as realisation settled in.

The unsub must've been waiting for her to slip up. For the exhaustion to bear down on her so much that she lost her wits. The second she made that call for help, the second she revealed her address, he was ready to take her. She stood no chance and neither did they. Twenty minutes wasn't a long time, but it was enough for someone with motivation.

"You can get a cell interceptor at any electronics store," Morgan pointed out.

"You can?" Yarbrough looked confused.

"Yeah, they don't cost that much. He probably sat right out here and heard everything she said."

"That's the part that doesn't make sense to me," Dallis murmured. This time, she'd grabbed a hair-tie before leaving the station, keeping her hair back from her face in a low ponytail. A few flyaways fell in front of her eyes, but it was much less bothersome now. "If he followed her here and knew she was here this whole time, why did he wait until she called us? Did he want us to know? Was he seeking the thrill of almost getting caught?"

"It has to be about the mask," Emily said. "He wanted the police to find it."

"We need to gather your men and give a profile," Hotch said, signalling for them to start clearing out.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"HE'S A WHITE MALE," said Morgan, standing with his hands on his hips. He could feel Yarbrough staring at him, at the whole team (Rossi excluded, he was off doing whatever he liked, apparently), but Morgan continued to lead the profile with a sense of confidence built up across years of experience. "His shoe prints have been examined and put him at about 5'11", one sixty-five."

"So we've narrowed him down to anyone of average weight and height?" Yarbrough scoffed.

"Exactly," Morgan confirmed.

"There's a sophistication and patience in what this unsub does that suggests a level of maturity," continued Emily. "We believe this puts his age in the mid thirties to forties range."

"Michelle Colucci was taken from the primary crime scene and disposed of at the tertiary crime scene four days later," Reid said. "That means she was held somewhere for at least three days. You can't really just hold a victim anywhere for days on end, so he most likely has access to a house of some kind."

"And he's also fairly tech savvy. The flyers were made on a computer and it's probable that he used a device to intercept Enid White's phone call," said Morgan.

"Witnesses in Enid White's neighbourhood say they may have seen a white man putting up flyers, but none of them could describe him," Hotch emphasised. "Even with all the media attention this case has received."

"Great," sighed one of the officers.

"Actually, this helps us," Dallis spoke up. "It confirms what we already suspected. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about this man. He blends into a crowd. We're not searching for someone that strives to stand out -- at least, not anymore. We're looking for someone who has started using what he lacks to his advantage."

"As you said, Detective Yarbrough," Morgan addressed the detective directly. "Average height, average build."

"It extends to his professional life as well," added Reid. "He most likely works in a field where he doesn't stand out, doesn't really make a mark."

"His lack of distinction is part of his psychopathy," Hotch said. "We have hundreds of interactions with people everyday. Most of those involve someone overlooking someone else. Most of us don't pay any attention to being ignored, but to this kind of unsub, each oversight is intentional, especially when it comes from the object of his sexual desire. He begins to obsess over her until she's all he can think about, and the rage builds until he has to attack that person."

"So he's pissed off that nobody notices him?" Yarbrough surmised with indignant disbelief.

Morgan raised his eyebrows, quoting the words they'd all memorised by heart. "'Have you seen me?'"

"Wait, that's not about the women?"

"No," Emily shook her head. "The masks are about the women. Number one, number two. But the flyers probably refer to him."

"He's asking them a question," Dallis stated. "One they can't answer and part of him knows it. In a way, it justifies what he does to them."

"Removing his victim's faces transfers his feelings of being ignored into a mission and it gives him a sense of power," Reid said.

"And the power can make him arrogant," said Hotch. "But it doesn't make him notable."

"So how the hell do we catch an invisible man?" Yarbrough voiced the question the rest of his men seemed to also be thinking. They looked unsettled by this new information, hesitant to face the task ahead.

"I'm pretty sure we can get him to contact you," Hotch answered.

This took Yarbrough off guard. "What?"

"Well, the crime scenes show he wants to deliver his message to the police," Emily pointed out, referencing the display of the masks. "He isn't going public."

"Hopefully, by playing on his anger--" Whatever Hotch was going to say went unsaid as he spotted the television playing a live coverage of the news. Front and centre was a photo of a plain white mask. "JJ. How'd they get that?"

"Not from me," JJ exclaimed, already pulling out her phone to initiate damage control. "Hotch, I called the local police departments and I stressed withholding the mask."

At last, Rossi returned from whatever he'd been doing. He didn't seem bothered that he'd missed most of the profile. When he realised what they were worrying over, he shrugged and announced, "I called them."

"What?" Both Morgan and Dallis demanded at once.

"Why would you do that?" Dallis pressed.

"I said the FBI thinks the masks mean he's impotent."

Dallis couldn't help but scoff, something hot surging through her veins. Just who did this man think he was?

"May I speak to you for a second?" Hotch asked, but he left no room for argument as he lead the way back outside.

With both of them gone, the team put a pause on the profile with Yarbrough dismissing his men.

"How are we supposed to work with this guy?" Morgan asked the moment they were out of earshot. While Yarbrough previously gathered his men for the profile, they'd set up everything they'd need in the station's main conference room. Behind the safety of that door, Morgan stood in front of the large board, staring at the strung-up pictures of the crime scenes and the 'have you seen me?' flyers.

"We should still try to give him the benefit of the doubt," Emily remarked as she poured herself and Dallis cups of coffee. Dallis wasn't a huge fan of the bitter drink. Typically, she drank tea, but sometimes the coffee's bitterness was something she needed to keep her alert. "He hasn't worked for the BAU in years. A lot must have changed."

"Prentiss, there's people's lives on the line," Morgan frowned.

Dallis merely listened, tucking one ankle over her opposite knee as she settled in at the table. As the others moved to join her, leaving Morgan to pace back and forth, hands on hips, the landline in the centre of the chaos started to ring.

"Ladies and gents, you're going to want to be seated for this," was all that Garcia said.

"Hold on," interrupted JJ, heading for the door. "Let me get Hotch and Rossi."

She returned just a minute later with the two men right behind her.

"Okay, Garcia, talk to us," Morgan said as Hotch sat down between Dallis and Emily.

"Michelle Colucci recently drew up the plans for a remodel of three floors of a company called Techco Communications. It's a high-tech communications company in downtown Dallas."

"And Enid White?"

"Worked there until two months ago."

"There's the connection," Dallis mumbled, absent-mindedly chewing on the lid of her pen.

Yarbrough rushed through the open door, exclaiming, "He's on Two!"

"The unsub?" Hotch sat to attention.

"Demanded to speak to the FBI."

Dallis risked a glance at Rossi, dropping the lid from her teeth at the smug look on his face. He might've succeeded in goading the unsub this time, but it wouldn't always work. Risk-taking didn't always play off how they wanted it to, and Dallis wasn't prepared to wear the blood on her hands. Frowning, she forced her attention back to the phone as Rossi put Garcia on pause and switched to the unsub's line.

"This is FBI Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi."

At first, there was silence only broken by heavy, erratic breathing; then, "You called me impotent."

Rossi arched an eyebrow like the man was in the room staring him down. "Did I?"

"I am not impotent," his voice suddenly dropped to an insistent whisper.

As if he feared someone would overhear him.

"Why are you whispering?" Rossi asked.

"You lied. You lied."

Rossi ignored him. In the background, Dallis swore she heard a phone ringing, closely followed by a muffled voice offering a greeting. It sounded like an office space. "Is someone around you? Are you at work?"

The unsub hesitated, then said, "You have to tell the news the truth."

"I'll get you on the news and you can correct me yourself," Rossi baited, offering him just what he'd want -- attention. Frame. To step out of the shadows that had consumed his life. Would he take it?

"No," he exclaimed, his voice rising the slightest bit. "No, you correct it."

But Rossi wasn't ready to concede. With everyone else listening closely, he continued to lead the conversation. "By the way, I was looking at the police security tapes for the day Michelle Colucci went missing."

"What?"

His voice had softened. If Dallis was listening right, he sounded shaken. She didn't know if Rossi was bluffing, but with every word, he wormed his way deeper beneath this unsub's skin. She hated to admit it, but maybe her initial outburst wasn't entirely justified.

"You watched her long enough to know she didn't have visitors. She was a loner," Rossi said. "Yet you knew that Detective Yarbrough was coming over. You must have been right here in this station when he told her. Now, your face is going to be on one of those tapes. And when I find it, I'm going to paper this city with it, just like you did with those women. Everyone will see it. They won't be able to ignore you now."

Or not.

It seemed to her that David Rossi just liked inspiring confusion. He was on his own rampage, ignoring Hotch's raised hand of warning. He just kept going.

"But you won't inspire fear. You'll inspire hatred and ridicule, because the only power someone like you has is a mask, and once that mask is removed, you'll be insignificant as you've always been. A loser!"

Finally, he stopped. The glint in his eyes dimmed back to coffee brown. He sat back in his chair. Waiting. Dallis couldn't bring herself to remove her hands from her face as the unsub spoke.

"You just signed Enid White's death warrant."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS WAS USED TO the sound of police sirens. They were undoubtedly a popular sound in the discography of her life. Sad country music crackling through the speakers of a bar, the strum of her old man's acoustic guitar, the loud crash and bang of her younger brother's beat-up drum set. The clatter of a keyboard at work or a phone ringing. Her mum's living room television with the volume set on the louder side because she was a tiny bit deaf in her left ear and too stubborn to admit it. Police sirens, the squeal of tires on a road open to them, they didn't fit. But they weren't new to her.

The backseat of the SUV felt too cramped even with the seat between herself and Rossi. He sat with his knees apart, hands folded in his lap, unphased by Hotch's wild driving or the occasional distrustful glower that Morgan cast over his shoulder from the passenger seat. Even Dallis pressing her shoulder to the window so she had just a bit more room seemed to escape his notice.

"Lieutenant, I need you to lock the Techco building down tight," Hotch commanded through the two-way radio. "Nobody in, nobody out. It's vital."

The next time Morgan glared over his shoulder, he said, "Rossi, you really think the unsub's still going to be there after that call?"

"Of course. He thinks he has all the time in the world."

"But he's angry -- no, he's furious," Dallis remarked. "We've already seen what his rage does. He might not be thinking clearly."

Rossi had a retort for that too but Hotch didn't give him a chance to share it. "You think they got an image off the police security camera yet?"

"The security camera doesn't work. I lied about that."

"Seriously?" Dallis scoffed, gripping the door with white knuckles as Hotch swerved around the next corner in a state of disbelief.

"What?" Rossi shrugged. "He doesn't know."

"Dave, that was incredibly reckless," Hotch shook his head.

Rossi rolled his eyes. "Come on, Hotch. He didn't weigh the body down well."

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't want Michelle to be found so quickly. He screwed that up. This kind of guy, when he plans something, if he has the time, if he's in control, he's meticulous. But being on the edge of the river, out in the open, he was not in control. He was in a hurry and he made a mistake."

"That's what you're hoping," Morgan clenched his jaw.

"Trust me," Rossi muttered.

"You've given us literally no reason to," Dallis couldn't help but laugh. "You might be right about this unsub needing control, but the mistake you're anticipating could cost us more than we can give."

"Guys, with an unsub like this, you need to throw him off his game," he persisted, not quite ready to admit he might've been too impulsive. "His hand needed to be forced."

"I know that, Dave," Hotch said. Dallis was ready to argue with him, too, until he continued. "The point is, you did it by forcing ours."

"Without asking us," she couldn't help but add under her breath.

For this, he had nothing else.

Their flashing lights and sirens landed them on Techco's doorstep a few minutes later. The foyer was filled with pissed-off employees evacuated from their offices. The heavy police presence and the group of suits marching through the glass doors did nothing to phase them. Their whispers followed Dallis and the team to the centre of the room. At the lead, Hotch was on the phone with Garcia.

"Which floors did Michelle Colucci remodel?" Dallis heard him ask. Once he had Garcia's answer, he hung up and turned to face them. "Morgan, take seven. We're looking for a rank-and-file employee who made a scene in the last twenty minutes or was here and gone. Prentiss and Cohen, eight. Reid, nine. Don't approach him. Just try to get a name, maybe a picture."

The four agents shared the elevator up their respective floors, then separated with a knife of anticipation hanging over their heads. Dallis and Emily didn't talk much. They split the eighth floor into two sections based on the long winding corridor, returning to each other ten minutes later empty-handed.

"Anything?" Emily asked.

Dallis sighed. "No. You?"

"Nothing. We should head back down to the others. Maybe they'll have something."

When they made it back downstairs, the foyer was in chaos. Max Pool had been hiding in plain sight after escaping the ninth floor where Reid had been sent. Just in time, Reid had given Hotch his name, allowing Rossi and Hotch to corner him as he approached the elevators. Morgan had been on his way out, nearly finding himself at the end of a smiling Max's gun, when Rossi fired at him and saved Morgan's life.

This case ended on a rare fortunate note. Enid was found at Max's house and returned to her family. They got to witness her being loaded into the ambulance, alive and breathing, just with a few more scars (both physical and mental.) It was an end Dallis strived for, but they didn't always get.

The sight of the jet waiting for them at the airport was a welcome one.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Dallis caught up with Morgan at the front, elbowing him jokingly out of her way. "I've got dibs on the window seat."

"Okay, Cohen," he raised his hands in mock surrender. "Anyone would think you don't like your hometown."

"My hometown?" she frowned as they boarded the plane. Nobody argued with Dallis' play for a window seat, allowing her to stretch out with her head resting against the shuttered frame. "You mean Dallas? I was born in Michigan..."

Morgan huffed out a laugh. "And your brother, Austin?"

"Oh, he was actually born in Austin," she nodded along. "Mama always thought he would be a girl so she had no names picked out for a boy. She took one look at a billboard outside the hospital window and thought 'well, this'll do, I guess.'"

Speaking of her brother. He'd messaged her earlier in the day that he and Mei, his new girlfriend, would be waiting to pick her up when she got back. She quickly sent him a reply before switching off her phone, a content smile on her face as she blocked out the noise of the others with her headphones and settled in to read her latest book.

All things victims like Michelle Colucci taught her to never take for granted.