CHAPTER THREE:
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
( aka 03x07: identity )

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"A POPULAR THEORY AMONG leading astrophysicists estimates that the hyper matter reactor would need about ten to the thirty-second joules of energy to destroy a planet the size of Earth," rambled Reid, who stopped for one millisecond of air before continuing. "Now, Lucas said it took nineteen years to build the first Death Star, right? But if you look at the New Essential Chronology, there's a test bed prototype for a super laser that's been -- hey, where are you going?"

Dallis, whose ears were still ringing from the echo of Reid's never-ending spiel of words, caught Emily's eye across the aisle and grimaced. "We start too many days like this."

Emily laughed. "You'd miss it."

"Not as much as I miss a peaceful start to my day."

"Morgan," Reid exclaimed, missing their conversation entirely as Morgan -- who'd been forced to sit through the latest topic of Reid's fascination -- set off towards the stairs. "Where are you going?"

"Taking back the last five minutes of my life."

"You got a time machine I don't know about?" Bored, Dallis discarded the file she was looking over and spun around in her chair to watch him. "Rude of you not to share."

"I was saving it for a day like this," Morgan retorted without missing a beat. Impatient, he stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared up at the open door of Gideon's -- now Rossi's -- office. "Don't any of you want to know more about this guy?"

"I do," Emily eagerly rushed to join him. "Come on, Dallis."

"But I'm comfortable here," she sighed, but she soon stopped protesting once Emily had a hold of her hands and yanked her to her feet.

"You know, I've got everything about him memorised already," Reid declared as the three of them started up the stairs after Morgan, who was a man on a mission. "His books, his bio."

"Yeah, books that sold over a million copies," Morgan said.

"So?"

"So, there's a million reasons right there not to come back, if you know what I'm saying."

Dallis wasn't entirely sure what she expected a man like David Rossi would have in his office. The door was painted the same navy blue as standard across FBI offices, his name printed front and centre for everyone to read. Inside, the walls were a plain taupe, but it seemed to fit the picture of him she already had in her head.

"Huh," Emily gazed at the walls curiously. "Taupe walls. That's a negative colour. Cold. Distant. Emotionally, taupe is linked to loneliness and a desire to escape from the world."

Dallis scoffed. "You're starting to sound like Reid. It's just a paint colour."

"The colours you choose to surround yourself with say a lot about you, Dallis," Emily pointed a finger at her.

"Oh, yeah? Then what do Penelope Garcia's rainbow walls say about her life, Em?" She waited with her hands on her hips, fingernails hooked in the loops of her black jeans, but Emily had nothing to say. "My point, made."

"Yeah, yeah," the other woman sighed.

"I can't lie, guys," said Morgan. "I just figured the walls would be covered with plaques and commendations."

"Well, maybe he doesn't want to be reminded of past victories. It's a new chapter for him."

Reid, who Dallis and Emily had left hovering at the door like a skittish cat, finally took one step over the threshold, shoving his hands in his pockets as if he feared he'd accidentally break something. "Whatever happened to the moratorium on intra-team profiling, guys?"

"Come on, Reid, team?" Morgan snorted, shifting out a framed painting from underneath a white sheet. "I don't think this guy knows the meaning of the word."

"That's impressive," Dallis gazed down at the elaborate artwork. "Not so cold and distant now, huh, Emily?"

"Looks like some type of religious art," added Morgan with only vague interest. This encouraged Reid to wander closer, as Dallis and Morgan had both known it would. He couldn't resist a good historical artefact. "Original maybe? Definitely expensive."

"It's Renaissance art," Reid murmured, carefully taking the painting. "If that's original..."

"Is it?" Emily whispered.

"I don't know. It's kinda hard to tell."

"Well, you know what they say," Dallis hummed, slowly pacing the length of the room. "True beauty has no value. Blah, blah, blah."

"What we can confirm is that he's into the classics," Reid remarked. So he'd finally caved. The corner of Dallis' mouth twitched with the first signs of a smirk.

"What else?" prompted Morgan.

Dallis had stopped at the door, gazing into the face of the man himself, who the others were yet to notice. Her smirk shifted into a sheepish smile as she dipped one hand in a wave. The other messed with the ends of her hair as she rolled back on her heels to let him into the room. Behind her, the three stooges were huddled around the painting, yet to notice the new arrival.

"It's Italian," Reid gasped in reference to the painting. "Strict Catholic upbringing, probably believes in redemption."

"Oh, I believe in a lot of things," Rossi said, leaning against the door frame. "Catholic? Yes. Italian American? Fifty two years. Strict upbringing? Not so much. Now, the artwork, that's fifteenth century original. It costs more than my first house. And as for the wall colour, it's just a base coat. Painters will come in and finish tomorrow."

"I personally love the wall colour," Dallis cleared her throat, slowly inching towards the door now that Rossi had moved further into the room. The second she got the opportunity, she was ready to flee and pretend this never happened. "It's calm. Chill. Nothing too exciting, sure, but who needs bright colours and... happiness."

Rossi merely blinked at her.

"If you're all finished," he said. "I think JJ and Hotch are ready for us. Isn't that how a team works?"

Dallis couldn't get out fast enough.

"That was horrible," she groaned under her breath as Emily caught up to her.

"'Who needs bright colours and happiness?'" Emily quoted in response.

"Laugh all you want," Dallis crossed her arms, eyes narrowing. "But we are the fools that just got caught snooping in our new coworkers' personal belongings. He's going to hate us."

Emily's eyebrows raised. "I thought you didn't like him."

"I never said that," Dallis lowered her voice to a whisper, conscious of the others a few feet behind them and the door to the conference room ahead.

"Ah, right," Emily nodded along. "You just said 'kinda hot.' You can see where I'd confuse the two."

Dallis shot her a glare over her shoulder, having to bite her tongue as she lead the way inside to where JJ and Hotch were ready to go. As soon as the door shut behind Morgan, JJ started presenting the case.

"Great Falls, Montana. Over the past fourteen months, three women have been reported missing. Michelle Lawford, Jennifer Hillbridge and Darcy Cranwell. All young Caucasian brunettes. After an extensive search, all were presumed dead by local authorities."

"At least we know he has a type," Emily remarked, staring at the three eerily similar faces on the screen. Each was only in their mid-to-late twenties; fair and brown-haired, as JJ had described. Their smiles told Dallis they had no idea what was coming.

"And now there's a fourth woman, Angela Miller," JJ revealed, adding her picture to the group. "This morning, she and her car went missing from a small grocery store while her husband and son were inside."

"This morning?" Reid blinked.

"Montana's requesting our help?" Rossi asked at the same time, his dark brows furrowing.

JJ glanced at him but the sombre expression on her face didn't change as she continued. "Forty minutes later, state troopers spotted Angela Miller's car on the highway."

"And when troopers tried to apprehend the driver," said Hotch. "He blew himself up with a grenade, putting one of the troopers in the ICU."

"Are they sure that she wasn't in the car with him?" Reid raised a good point.

"They went through the wreckage and it appears she's still missing."

"Troopers get a look at the guy?" Morgan asked.

"Caucasian, stocky, brown hair, moustache, early forties. He has a scar on the left side of his face."

"I really hate to say it," Dallis said, and she meant it. "But if he was so willing to end his life and in such a brutal way, he might've already killed her."

No unfinished business, or whatever the belief was.

But Hotch hesitated and Morgan noticed. "You think Angela Miller is still alive?"

"Since the other missings were never found, we don't know," he said. "But he only had her for forty minutes, so we have to assume she is."

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

DALLIS KNEW THE ARMCHAIRS of the jet almost as well as she knew her own bed. She'd certainly spent a few restless nights in them catching a few z's on the way back from a case. Typically, she raced Morgan for the low-lying couch so she could stretch her feet out on one of her poor unsuspecting coworkers' laps, but during their discussions of victimology, she liked to be in the thick of it. This time, she managed to snag the last armchair beside JJ opposite Reid and Emily, leaving a glowering Morgan to perch on the edge of her armrest.

"You know, I could've gotten you a colouring book at the airport," Emily joked as the three of them watched Reid take out a map and a series of highlighters, but her comment went right over Reid's head.

"I'm creating a topographical map, weighing down and geocoding all key locations, looking for algorithms."

Emily blinked at the back of his bent head. "Yeah, that's exactly what I thought you were doing."

Dallis smirked, leaning over to get a closer look at the red lines Reid had just finished tracing. "You found any algorithms so far, Reid?"

"Not yet," he sighed with obvious disappointment. "But I'm nowhere close to finishing it."

"That's the spirit," she nodded, though in truth, Reid's map made as much sense to her as it did to Emily.

"But what exactly does it tell us?"

"It's called a jeopardy surface," Hotch remarked, emerging from the small kitchen area with two cups of tea -- one earl grey for himself and a green tea for Dallis, who'd not-so-politely cornered him into making her one the second she saw him heading for the kitchen. "It's a way of narrowing down where the unsub could reside."

"And by default," said Reid. "Where he may be stashing Angela Miller."

"You know, it says here that the guy had a fully loaded gun, so we know he had options," Morgan rustled through the file he had resting against his knee. "Why the grenade?"

"He wants to be remembered," Rossi declared without looking up from his own work. "And he wanted to be sure to take as many cops with him as possible. He knows he's outgunned, so he waits, times it to the last second. There are some very committed people in those parts."

For once, Dallis saw he didn't have his notebook with him -- at least, not anywhere visible. He was settled in one of the armchairs on the opposite side of the jet, but with each case he spent with the team, he moved closer and closer to the main table. She was too much of a pragmatist to call it progress, but she dared to hope, just a smidge, that he was warming up to them.

Dallis liked to think she had a good relationship with everybody in the BAU. As much as she relished in teasing Reid, they bonded over their love of books -- sure, his were nonfiction and hers were romance, but she'd convinced him to read the first Fifty Shades of Gray book once and he made it out the other side only mildly scarred, so she took it as a success.

As for Emily, JJ and Garcia; they were her girls. They had bi-weekly wine or coffee dates (when they weren't working a case) at each other's houses and often hit the clubs with Morgan, who Dallis just liked to taunt. He reminded her of Austin, who was two years younger than Dallis but played the part of an overbearing big brother a little too convincingly.

Even Hotch had opened up to her. They knew where the line of professionalism blurred, but he remembered what kind of tea she liked, and in return she remembered to check in about Jack, Hotch's little boy who Dallis swore was made of sunshine. Hotch was a boss who cared about his team as people, and for that he had her respect.

Rossi? Well, she was changing her mind back and forth like the changing of the tide. She hadn't found the thing that would bond them yet, but if he was planning to stick around, she would make it her mission.

"Committed people who love their firepower," Hotch muttered, prompting Dallis out of her thoughts.

Rossi nodded. "Almost as much as they hate us."

"Militia," Morgan grimaced. He'd started to lean so his elbow was resting on Dallis' shoulder, but she didn't comment on it, distracted by the square Reid had formed on his topographical map.

"Heavily armed militia," she corrected.

"Yeah, but hand grenades?" Emily frowned.

Reid shrugged, tapping the red highlighter lid against his lip. "It's not uncommon for militia members to have military experience. Oftentimes, they resent the structure, and they get discharged, and they form their own paramilitary governments."

JJ, who was quiet as she messaged back and forth on her phone, broke the impending silence by saying, "Dental records are on their way to Garcia. I'll tell her to check the military first."

"Prentiss and I will go meet the husband," Hotch decided.

"Cohen and I can walk the other abduction sights," Morgan offered, glancing down at Dallis for confirmation, who nodded along.

"Everybody else will set up base. Work on geographical profiles, establish contact with the locals, and tread carefully. They'll be watching us."

Great, Dallis thought as the plane started to dip downward. Why is it starting to feel as if we're walking into the warzone?

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"WELL, THAT WAS A serious waste of two hours," Dallis decided as she settled into the passenger seat of their SUV.

As soon as her door was closed and her seatbelt was situated around her, Morgan swung the vehicle into reverse and was off down the road away from the prying eyes of the previous victim's neighbours. Dallis was immensely grateful for the reprieve of their tinted windows. No one had approached them, but Great Falls' opinion of their presence was felt strongly in the air.

Each of the other abduction sites had left them walking away empty-handed. There were no new insights into what the local police department had already poured over meticulously. No stone had been left unturned, no potential witness left in the dark. This town wouldn't rest until Angela Miller was returned to her husband and son. If only they could see that the FBI wanted the same thing.

"No," Morgan agreed with a grim sigh. "I didn't think we'd find much, but I thought fresh pairs of eyes might turn up something."

"Heard anything from the others?" Dallis lifted her sunglasses to scan the screen of her phone. Apart from a photo her brother had sent of Mei sitting across from him in a café, her inbox was empty. She quickly hearted the photo, downloading it to her camera roll before pocketing her phone again and pushing her Raybans back down the bridge of her nose.

"Nothing," Morgan said just as his own phone started to ring. "Actually, hold that thought. Answer that for me?"

Dallis expected to see Garcia's name on the screen but she was pleasantly surprised to see it was Rossi.

"Well, hello, Dave," she answered with a grin she had no doubt he could hear. "What can we do for you?"

"You can meet us at an address," he replied in lieu of a greeting.

"You've got something?" Subconsciously, she sat forward in her seat, staring at the traffic lights ahead as Morgan quickly punched the address Rossi was reading out into the GPS system.

"Here's hoping," Rossi said, then wasted no time in hanging up.

The place was several miles away -- right on the border of Reid's topographical map, if Dallis remembered right. Thankfully, with the assistance of the flashing SUV lights and the siren where needed, the roads cleared enough for them to reach the property in record time. The police department were out in force as they parked and hurried to find the others, who looked to be getting there at the same time.

"Sheriff, let me know when they've swept the house for explosives," Dallis heard Hotch saying as she joined Rossi by the passenger door of their SUV. "In the meantime, check the perimeter. Let's find her."

"How didn't we know about this place?" Dallis scanned the seemingly-never ending fields with apprehension.

Rossi set the pace down as close to the house as they could get with police combing the area, forcing Dallis into a power-walk to keep up with him. "It's in his wife -- or should I say, ex-wife's -- name. Angela!"

Dallis took this as her cue to join in, their collective voices echoing the woman's name for miles. The distant hills seemed to bounce the sound back to them, but nobody answered their call. Dallis was really starting to believe she was dead. Yes, Hotch had said to think otherwise, but this was the type of man whose determination fuelled him to no return. Finding Angela alive would feel counterproductive.

Just then, Morgan shouted their names from a few yards away. Dallis rushed over to find him kneeling beside Angela Miller's body. She had blood splattered across the front of her green shirt, her arms posed peacefully on her stomach. The ground around her had been dug up as if to form a shallow grave. There were flowers in rows on either side of her.

"Does she have a pulse?" Dallis kneeled beside them, reaching out before Derek could answer to press her fingers against Angela's throat. Slowly, she sat back, shaking her head when Hotch said her name in question. "She's gone, but--"

"Two exits wounds to her upper torso," Derek remarked, cutting off whatever she was going to say.

The sheriff had to turn his head away. "I promised her son we'd find her alive."

They were yet to notice that Dallis had kept her hand on the dead woman's skin. Something wasn't right. There was no pulse, yes, but Angela's skin was warm. It could've been the sun -- the trees didn't shield the body enough to protect it from the heat -- but Dallis would've been entirely unsurprised if Angela's death hadn't only just occurred.

"Rossi," she reached for the man's hand, moving his fingers to rest against Angela's vacant pulse point. "Do you feel it?"

"Feel what?" the sheriff asked.

"She's still warm," Rossi confirmed Dallis' suspicions.

"And look at the blood," Morgan pointed out. "It hasn't dried yet. This was recent. Very recent."

"How is that possible?"

"Goehring didn't do this," Dallis said, pushing to her feet. "Unless he's risen from the dead..."

"He's got a partner," Hotch declared.

A partner who they'd missed by the skin of their teeth. Were they out there, watching them? Savouring the discovery of Angela's body? Had they fled as soon as they saw the red and blue lights cresting the hillside?

There weren't many places to hide with the police on their doorstep, but the property was vast and unexplored, as was this unsub. They'd poured over Goehring's life, fitting each of these abductions into the type of person he was. This unsub was a blank slate, one that was capable of kidnapping and killing right under their noses. The town of Great Falls had more to fear.

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG for news to reach the rest of their team. Reid, Emily and JJ came down from the police station, joining them as they poured over the map Morgan had laid out on the front of a police car. Dallis scanned the twisting lines with rising apprehension. They had a significant amount of ground to cover -- nine acres, Rossi had informed her along with what else they'd discovered about Goehring while she and Morgan went on their goose chase -- and with each passing minute, the unsub had more opportunity to escape and find their next victim. They couldn't let that happen. They had to find him.

"Angela's been dead for no more than half an hour," Hotch quickly surmised for the others. "The partner was just here."

"He can't have gotten far," the sheriff -- Dallis should really try to learn his name at some point -- insisted. "We'll set up roadblocks within a 40-mile radius."

"We don't know anything about this guy," Dallis pointed out, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest. "You can set up roadblocks by all means, but you'll have no way of knowing who it is you're catching."

"You're right, but somebody around here has to know who he is," Hotch claimed.

"We should try Goehring's pals, the militia," Rossi suggested. "Maybe they can help."

The sheriff considered this. "The militia leader is Harris Townsend. He owns a bar called the Horse Post."

"Creative," Dallis snorted.

"It is," Rossi agreed with her. "I'd suggest sending Morgan."

That took her -- and the others, too -- by surprise. Morgan stared at Rossi for a moment before his defensive side took over. "All due respect, Rossi, but you've got an entire team to pick from. You're choosing me? Are you serious?"

"No offence, but you really wanna do that?" The sheriff couldn't seem to believe it either.

Rossi merely looked at Hotch, who must've seen something of significance in his expression. "Take JJ with you."

But Morgan was still waiting for an answer. He took a step towards Rossi, who finally met his eyes, saying, "They know we're here, but you're the last face they'd expect."

Whether or not Morgan agreed, he didn't argue. He and JJ left in one of their SUVs. Once the dust had settled and the car had turned out of the drive, Dallis turned to Rossi, eyebrows raised.

"This could go horribly wrong, you know."

"Weren't you the one who told me to trust my team? Or something along those lines?" Rossi matched her stare with one of his own. "Well, I'm trusting they can handle themselves."

"Touché," Dallis nodded her head.

"Sheriff, we need to get into the house," Hotch gazed across the yard at the boarded doors and windows. They taunted them with their shield of secrecy, reminding them of everything they were yet to discover.

"Not until I get the all clear," the sheriff disagreed. "Goehring blew himself up. God knows what else he's got in there."

"Alright," Hotch sighed. It would do no good to put the sheriff off-side. "Search what you can until we can get in. Anything to build a workable profile."

The team split off into groups. Emily followed Hotch around the back of the house while the sheriff returned to his officers. Naturally, Dallis fell into step next to Rossi. This time, they moved side-by-side towards the large shed opposite where Angela's body was being carefully manoeuvred into a bag. Reid was quick to chase after them, hanging back as Dallis and Rossi each took hold of a metal handle and swung the large wooden doors aside.

"Keeps everything neat," was Rossi's initial observation.

"That's an understatement," Dallis was careful to stand in the centre of the room, not wanting to disturb anything before they'd memorised where most of Goehring's items were kept. "This is obsessive. Was his trailer like this?"

"It was organised but this is different," Reid said.

The walls were lined with tools grouped by various shapes and sizes. The workbenches were cleared and dusted down. Drawers were closed and locked. In the corner, several bags of dirt were lined up from smallest to largest. But it was the imposing metal cabinet that caught her attention.

"Well, this isn't good," Dallis swung the door open, allowing Rossi and Reid a better look. "Notice anything missing?"

There were dozens of bullets packed away in boxes for several different types of guns, but the hooks where Goehring kept his arsenal were glaringly empty. Their unsub was out there and he was armed to the teeth.

"Uh-oh," Rossi winced.

"Yeah, we should get this to Hotch and the others." Dallis reached with a gloved hand for the nearest box of bullets, throwing them to Reid, who fumbled to catch them before they hit the ground. "You're getting better, pretty boy."

"Thanks," Reid said, then frowned. "I think."

Hotch and the sheriff were back out front by the time they closed the shed again.

"We found some cartridges and different casings," Reid announced, holding up the bullet box as evidence.

"But the gun racks are empty," Rossi concluded. "He took his entire arsenal with him."

The sheriff, slack-jawed, read the writing across the front of the box. "7.62 millimetre. He's got an assault rifle."

"And I've found two sets of men's shoes in different sizes," Hotch revealed.

"We found fresh tyre tracks, a small pickup truck..."

"I know it doesn't narrow it down much, but let the troopers know they're looking for a man in a pick-up."

"If he's as prepared as Goehring, he'll have a police scanner and a two-way radio," Rossi argued.

The sheriff huffed in frustration. "We can tune into the state geological survey frequency. Nobody ever listens to that."

"That's assuming this unsub is like Goehring," Dallis commented. "He has the weaponry but we know nothing about his behaviour. Goehring was determined, arrogant, a proud member of the militia. He might've been the dominant one, the one who called the shots, who thought about things like police scanners and radios. We don't know for sure what this unsub is thinking."

"We can't take the risk," Hotch furrowed his brows, deep in thought, but was interrupted by Emily calling out from inside the newly vacant garden.

"There are three sections of roses, different heights, different levels of maturity," she said, gesturing to the rows of flowers Dallis had only briefly looked over as she'd pushed her way through them to Angela's body. Now, as she stopped to take them in, her heart sank.

"Three different women," Hotch murmured.

"These appear to be the most recently planted," Emily kneeled by the closest rosebush. "The tags are still on them, but guys..."

She pulled back the roots, revealing a cluster of beetles that Reid eagerly named but Dallis was too busy shifting her body behind Rossi's arm to pay attention. She'd gotten used to seeing blood and gore on a day-to-day basis, but Dallis despised bugs. Just the thought of one crawling anywhere near her made her body convulse in rejection of the thought.

"Scared of bugs, Dallis?" Rossi smirked. "That's surprising."

"There's something about them that makes me want to hurl," Dallis held a hand in front of her mouth for emphasis.

"They're just carrion beetles," Reid frowned at her.

"Don't care," she said. "Still bugs."

"Yes, bugs that are in a cemetery," he stated.

The truth of where they were standing momentarily distracted Dallis from the beetles wriggling around in the dirt. She turned around, slowly scanning the overgrown garden. Three fresh rose bushes. Dozens with leaves long dead, concealing bones long buried.

They were looking at many more bodies than just the four they knew about.

"Sheriff Williams, get some shovels," Hotch said. "We need to start digging."

At least she knew the sheriff's name now, Dallis thought miserably.