october , quantico virginia , 2005

AFTER A LATE NIGHT out, the last thing Ruth expected - and wanted to be bombarded with - as soon as she walked into the BAU was a bomber case in Flordia.

She hated bombers. And she hated Flordia.

And she hated coming into work with a hangover.

Ruth had been under the impression it would be just another paperwork day, but JJ walked up to her ten minutes after she sat down at her desk and told her otherwise.

So she trudged into the conference room, a cup of coffee in her hand, nursing a headache, and a sour expression on her face.

"Woah-ho-ho..." Said Morgan as he watched her walk in, a grin on his face. "Someone had a rough night."

Ruth just flashed him a fake, mocking smile as she walked past him towards the roundtable, where Elle, Arnie, and Reid were already sitting.

"My, god. You do look like hell, Ruth." Arnie said, watching her sit down with them.

"How was he?" Elle asked with a smirk.

Ruth turned to her, giving her an 'excuse me?' face. "What?"

"It was a date, wasn't it?" Elle said. "So, how was he?"

Ruth scoffed a little and looked down at her coffee. "I'm not sharing that information with any of you."

Arnie let out a laugh, putting a hand on Ruth's shoulder. "I'll take that as 'he was great'."

"You know, studies actually show that sex the night before work can actually increase productivity, satisfaction, and effectiveness at work." Reid said from the other side of the table, his usual awkward little look on his face.

Ruth shot him a look. "Thank you for that, Reid. Very intriguing." Then she shrugged Arnie's hand off her shoulder.

Before any of them could take another jab at Ruth, Hotch and Gideon walked in with JJ behind them with case files in her hands.

The filed were passed around, as well as dozens of pictures of what bomb fragments had already been found.

"Pipe bombs." Morgan said as he observed the pictures and passed them on to Gideon. "Packed in cardboard boxes."

"Sent through the mail?" Gideon asked.

"No." Morgan told him with the shake of his head. "The other picture in your hand is the off switch that ATF found. Same mechanism for both bombs. Mercury activated."

"What does that mean?" Elle asked.

"There are contacts to a detonator on either end of a bent tube full of mercury." Reid started.

Ruth cleared her throat from where she sat, sitting up a little straighter as she examined some of the pictures in front of her. "What he's saying is all you have to do is tilt the package to detonate the bomb." She explained.

"So they couldn't have been sent through the mail?" Arnie said, looking up.

Ruth shook her head. "The unsub had to deliver them himself."

"Strange way to commit an act of terrorism." Hotch said with furrowed eyebrows. "Why go through all this trouble to kill just a few people?"

"Let's recommend not raising the terror alert level for now." Gideon told them. "No reason to spread panic."

At that moment, JJ walked back into the room. "We got news." She announced, turning on the TV on the wall. "This is just a local channel, but the coverage is everywhere now." She said as she showed them footage of a woman reporting outside the scene of the most recent bombing. "CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, you name it."

"So much for not spreading panic." Hotch crossed his arms.

"...according to doctors, he's badly injured, but in stable condition in the ICU." Said the reporter on the screen. "Now, neighbors say that they heard a blast at about ten thirty this morning, and police arrived..."

"If DHS doesn't raise the terror alert now, they'll look weak." Gideon said with a sigh.

"Make sure Homeland Security knows that this is everywhere." Hotch told JJ, his arms still crossed.

Before JJ could leave the room, they all turned back to the television as another explosion went off down the street from where the reporter was standing. Everyone around the table glanced at each other as chaos erupted on the screen.

Hotch uncrossed his arms. "Looks like we're going to Palm Beach."

Ruth was on her third cup of coffee by the time the jet was flying steadily down to Florida. She sat at one of the tables with Arnie, across the aisle from Elle and Reid. JJ was accompanying the team this time in order to help keep the media at bay, while Morgan had elected to stay behind at Quantico to assemble the pipe bombs and see what he could learn about them.

"The bombings occurred within three miles of each other." Hotch said as he looked over a case file while walking back to his seat from getting coffee. "First victim was a seventy four year old widow, Barbara Keller. Two hours after that, Clurman got hit in his driveway, and fourty five minutes later...well, we all saw that." He said, regarding the explosion on the news. "Jill Swenson, thirty four year old housewife who lived across the street from Clurman. Of the three, only Clurman survived."

Ruth stared down at the file in front of her, looking at the pictures of each of the victims when Reid spoke up.

"Is there any connection between the victims?" He asked.

"One." Hotch answered. "Clurman was a partner in a ten million dollar condo development deal in which Keller was an investor, and a few weeks ago, the whole deal went bust."

"Went bust how?" Elle asked.

Hotch explained. "Geologists discovered that the land was on methane, the condos never got built, the land became worthless, and Clurman lost a lot of people a lot of money."

"You think one of them was pissed enough to play A-bomb and Hiroshima with Clurman?" Arnie asked, leaning back in his seat with his eyebrows furrowed.

Hotch narrowed his eyes slightly. "You need to work on your analogies." He said bluntly. Arnie just let out a breath and rolled his eyes a little.

"Alright, but Arnie has a point." Elle stated.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Gideon told her. "It's a little too early to theorize about motive."

"Then where do we start?" She asked.

"From the beginning. What do we know about bombers?"

"Most of them are male, they're loners, and they'll almost always have a history of criminal activity, probably for setting fires or vandalism." Ruth said, looking up from her coffee.

Reid nodded. "About fifty percent of all bombings are actually the product of vandalism."

"And more often than not, bombers end up accidentally blowing themselves up," Hotch said. "so the first suspect you always look for in the bombing case are the victims."

"Clurman was the only male." Elle pointed out. "Loosing a large business deal like that could be a powerful stressor."

Gideon ticked his eyebrows and then opened the case file in front of him again. "Well, then there's the crime scene. Clurman was the only victim who didn't get hit at his door. Why? What was different about this one?"

For plenty of reasons, Ruth had never exactly been the biggest fan of Florida.

The excessive heat, the humidity, the marshes and swamps, mosquitoes, the Spanish Moss trees that look like an omen of death from the corner of your eye, Disney World, the alligators and crocodiles that she could still never tell apart, and above all; the crazy people that lived there.

The fact there was a bomber in Palm Beach proved her last bit right.

When they got to the Clurman's house, the local police let them into the crime scene that had become the home's driveway. Clurman's car, the main attraction, sat there blown up from the inside out, windows shattered, interior scorched.

"Before Clurman passed out, what he told cops at the time was that he saw the package sitting on the stoop outside his kitchen door." Hotch said as the team walked up to the car.

"Why didn't he take it in?" Elle asked.

"Why didn't it go off until he got to his car?" Reid added. "It's like fifty feet away."

Ruth listened to the team discuss as they all sat there baking in the sun. The humidity that day was taxing. She had already taken her sweater off and folded it over her arm.

Hotch started talking again before Ruth could make some unintelligible comment about the weather under her breath.

"Joe Reese, one of Clurman's investors, was here before the bomb went off." Hotch said. "The cops have ruled him out as a suspect, but he said he saw Clurman get in the car with the package."

"Okay, so maybe he wasn't receiving the bomb." Arnie said. "He was delivering it."

"But he drops it or tilts it, and it goes off by accident." Reid added.

Gideon, who had been looking between the wreckage of the car and the Clurman's house, spoke up. "I'd like to talk to Clurman." He said. "In the mean time, let's get a warrant to search his house."

With the warrant secured, the team split up to search the house and talk to the only surviving victim.

Arnie stood on the front porch of the Clurman's house with Elle and Hotch as the local detective on the case walked up the steps to greet them.

"Detective Morrison, Plam Beach P.D.." He introduced himself, shaking hands with Hotch. "I'm lead on the case."

"Nice to meet you." Hotch nodded. "These are Agents Greenaway and Dunford." He nodded to the two at his side, who also shook Morrison's hand. "Agents Reid, Gideon, and Ford are at the hospital. I think you met Agent Jareau at the station house."

"Oh, yeah, she's taken over the place." Morrison nodded.

"She does that." Elle said with a nod.

"ATF hasn't found any hard evidence yet." Hotch said as they all made their way inside the house. "Just some kitchen timers, tape recorders, and electrical switches."

Arnie shook his head a little. "It's ridiculous how many household items can be used to make a bomb, if you ask me."

Before the conversation could go on any further, the door to the garage burst open and a flustered, aghast looking Mrs. Clurman strode in.

"Hello!? Excuse me!" She set her bag down at them walked up to the four of them. "What's going on here?"

"Mrs. Clurman, my name is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner with the FBI." Hotch showed her his badge.

"What are you doing in my house!?"

"There's a copy of the warrant on the table. I know that this is hard to believe, but we just need to cover all of our bases." Hotch explained calmly. "We just need to make sure your husband was not involved in any way."

"Involved?" Mrs. Clurman looked exasperated. "My husband's in the hospital with his leg blown off. What are you talking abou!?" Her voice raised at the end in the way that it does when someone's overwhelmed.

"Mrs. Clurman," Elle said calmly. "There are some questions that your husband needs to answer. And the sooner that we talk to him and clear him, then the sooner we can find whoever's responsible."

Before Mrs. Clieman could question what was going on any further, a man from ATF stepped up behind the agents.

"Agent Hotchner?" He called. They all turned to him. "We've got something."

They all followed the man down to the basement, where a few more people from ATF lingered around a toolbox in the middle of the floor.

"We found this buried on the back of that shelf." The man from before knelt down to pull the top of the toolbox off and reveal it was full of different colored wires, a hot glue gun, a little jar of what looked to be some sort of black powder, and beneath it all, a paper back book titled The Arsonist's Companion.

Arnie knelt down beside the man to examine the contents of the toolbox. It was all standard materials - stuff you could find on the net without doing much research. It didn't exactly seem too harmful, and certainly didn't seem to match the brutality of the previous three bombs, but better safe than sorry.

So Arnie looked up at Hotch, Elle, and the other's before standing up to face Mrs. Clurman.

"Mrs. Clurman, do you know anything about this?" He asked.

The look on her face said it all; this surprised her as much as it surprised everyone else.

"What can you tell us about the package Mr. Clurman?"

The hospital was full of monitors and machines beeping, nurses talking in the hallways, and the smell of disinfectant lingered everywhere.

Mr. Clurman laid in his hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and various machines, and he looked utterly exhausted - sounded like it too. Ruth and Reid stood just behind Gideon as the older man leaned over the side of the bed to speak calmly to the victim and potential suspect.

"I thought I knew what it was." Mr. Clurman answered Gideon, his voice creaky and exhausted, his eyelids heavy. "Pot for an orchid, I collect them. I ordered the pot through the mail."

"Why didn't you take it inside?" Asked Gideon.

"It was for my office. I was going there anyway. Thought I'd take it with me. That's the last thing I remember."

"You had an arguement with Joe Reese." Gideon told him. "Do you remember that?"

Clurman's eyebrows furrowed a small bit. "Joe was there?"

"He was angry. He accused you of blowing him off."

"Huh..."

"Any reason he'd wanna hurt you?"

"Joe? No." Clurman said, almost immediately. "I mean, he's a confrontational guy, but if he wanted to kill me, he'd just beat me to death." He let out a huff that was supposed to be a laugh, but turned into a little sound of pain.

"I lot of people were angry about that deal falling apart, and they were angry at you." Gideon continued. "How did that make you feel?"

"I felt awful." Clurman said. "I thought those condos would make a lot of money for a lot of people, myself included. I thought that geologist was legit. He didn't even take samples. He scammed us. All those investors who lost their money...Barbara..."

"Barbara Keller?"

"The first victim."

"What about her?" Gideon asked.

"It's just suck a shame. Such a nice lady, you know. It was such an easy sale. Sometimes...I felt like I took advantage of her, because she was old and lonely...Now she's dead. Well...I feel terrible." As Clurman finished, his face screwed up in pain and he let out another pained noise.

"What is it?" Gideon asked him.

Clurman let out a pained breath. "My foot." He got out.

The only problem about that was, his foot was gone. Blown off in the explosion. And what was left of his leg was elevated on a pillow at the end of the bed, wrapped in bandages.

Gideon ushered Ruth and Reid out of Clurman's room after that.

"I'll get him a nurse. Call Hotch." Gideon told the two younger agents before walking off down the hall.

Ruth watched him go for a moment before she pulled her phone from her pocket and called Hotch.

"Yeah?" The older man answered.

"It's Ford. Listen, Clurman's not our guy." Ruth told him. "His answers were coherent even while he was sedated. He had a sense of humor, displayed empathy-"

"Not to mention he has a hobby unrelated to bomb-making." Reid cut in.

"This is nothing like a typical bomber profile."

"What about the materials we found?" Hotch asked.

"Well...we'll have to see if the fragments match the ones from the bomb scene, but...I don't think that was Clurman's stuff." Ruth explained.

"Okay." Hotch nodded to himself. "Where's Gideon."

"Fetching Clurman a nurse...he's having phantom pain where his foot was. We'll head back to the precinct after this, meet you there."

"Alright." As Hotch ended the call with Ruth, Elle and Arnie came up to him in the kitchen of the Clurman's house with a framed photograph.

"Look at this." Elle said, handing Hotch the picture. It was Clurman standing with his arm around a young boy. "This is their nephew in Texas."

"According to Mrs. Clurman, he's been staying with them for a month, but he just left last week." Arnie said.

Hotch looked up from the picture. "Mercury switches are a little sophisticated for a twelve year old kid."

"We're not saying he's the unsub, but boys his age like to blow stuff up." Elle told him.

Hotch nodded, understanding where they were coming from. "I'll call Morrison. He'll contact local P.D. in Texas, they'll pick up the kid and talk to him."

"Have Gideon and them cleared Clurman as a suspect?" Arnie asked.

"They have." Hotch confirmed. "So now we're back on square one."

Once everyone had met back at the precinct, they all gathered in a room together with Morrison accompanying. A laptop was opened by Hotch, who pulled up a series of pictures.

"Morgan emailed these over. The three on the left are the bombs from yesterday. The one on the right is from the evidence room at Quantico." Hotch said.

"They're all identical." Reid said with a furrowed brow. "Made with steel reinforcement rods."

"Adrian Bale." Arnie muttered, and they all glanced over at him, then at Gideon, who was staring intently at the pictures.

"Who?" Morrison asked.

Hotch took in a breath. "He uh, held our agents in a standoff in Boston last year. He took out six agents and a hostage with one of his bombs." Hotch explained.

"So you're thinking he's behind this?" Elle asked.

"Possibly." Arnie muttered again, not tearing his eyes away from the pictures. "But he's in prison...there's no way..."

"He's got kind of a cult following." Reid cut in. "Like Charles Manson. Could just be a copycat."

"There's one way to find out." Morrison said. "Let's put the screws to this guy."

"No, no, no. Bale's too smart." Gideon, who had since taken a seat, said immediately. "If we want information from him, we have to handle him carefully. Even then you have to assume that road will lead nowhere."

"You're saying the connection to Bale doesn't help us at all?"

"No. I'm just saying let us handle Bale." Gideon told Morrison.

"Look, we just heard from local Texas P.D. You were right about Clurman's nephew." Morrison said to Arnie and Elle. "He admitted the bomb stuff was his, which is great for the Clurman's, but it leaves us with zero suspects. So what do you suggest my men do now?"

"Proceed from the profile." Gideon said.

"I didn't know we had a profile."

"When we're dealing with a bomber, we're talking about someone who's non-confrontational." Gideon began. "If you bumped into him in a café, he'd apologize. Even if it wasn't his fault."

Hotch took over. "We would classify this bomber as highly organized, based on the meticulous design of his bombs. It means an above average intelligence. He probably had a skilled job, a trade, one that allows him to work alone. That's how he was able to make a sophisticated device without raising suspicion."

In the back of the bullpen, behind the officers taking notes, Ruth, Reid, and a Elle sat together on one of the tables, listening intently as Gideon, Hotch, and Arnie stood at the front of the room delivering the profile.

"Examples can vary. Furniture maker, a jeweler, someone who works on cars out of their own garage. Hell, even a self proclaimed writer." Arnie said.

"Background in explosives?" Morrison asked.

"Not necessarily." Arnie answered. "See you're thinking of a kind of person just likes to blow stuff up. In that case, it gives them an emotional or sexual release. Death is secondary to them."

"So then what's this guy doing?" Asked a witnessing officer.

"Murdering." Gideon said. "Bombs are just weapons. And these attacks, they are not random."

Morrison crossed his arms. "Well, how do you know that?"

"The process of elimination." Hotch answered. "We know bombers fall into a discrete number of categories according to motive."

"First we've got the terrorist. His prime goal is to strike fear." Arnie explained. "We'd expect this kind of guy to strike a populous area, like a subway or a mall. Then we've got the politically motivated bomber. He would make a statement by striking a symbolic target like an abortion clinic or an old Confederate monument."

"Then there's our unsub." Hotch continued. "He made bombs designed to kill and he chose his victims specifically by placing the bombs at their stoops. That tells us he has a direct motive. Statistically he bombs for profit or to conceal a crime. And it tells us how we're going to find him; through the people he killed."

"Somewhere among the three victims there is a direct motive." Gideon told all. "Keep digging."

"If you have any questions, we'll be around." Hotch said and with a nod, ended the little conference. The officers started to disperse.

"You'll be around." Gideon said to Hotch. "I'll be in prison. Somebody's got to talk to Bale." He turned to Arnie. "You're with me. Let's go."

Arnie's eyes widened in alarm at that, and he stood up a little straighter. "What? Gideon, I don't-"

"You know how Bale ticks. He'll want another familiar face."

Arnie let out a huff, shaking his head. "Well I don't. I don't want to see him. Not again."

Gideon gave him a look. "Nonsense. Why not?"

"Why not?" Arnie's voice was exasperated. "Jason, are you-"

"I'll go with you." Reid suddenly said, standing up from where he'd been sitting with Ruth and Elle. The other's all turned to him. "I'd be more useful there than here."

Gideon stared at Reid for a moment before glancing back over to Arnie, who's jaw was set with what was a mix between anxiety and exasperation. Finally Gideon turned back to Reid with a nod.

"Let's go."

Once Gideon and Reid had departed from the precinct, the rest of the team sat in one of the conference rooms going through documents and records, looking for anything at all that might connect the victims to each other.

"How we doing?" JJ said as she walked into the room, seeing the papers strewn across the table and the agents inside looking just short of miserable.

"Frusterated." Elle answered. Ruth just huffed in agreement.

JJ gave them a look of sympathy before furrowing her eyebrows and looking around. "Where's Arnie?"

Ruth looked up again, then glanced at Hotch, who had also paused. After a moment, she turned back to JJ with a sigh. "Said he was going to the bathroom...but really, I think he just needed a minute to himself...This whole Adrian Bale thing has been eating at him."

JJ sighed as well and nodded a little in understanding. "I know that he was never as bad as Gideon but...do you think he's gonna be okay?"

"Honestly, I don't know." Ruth said. "Arnie's sensitive, but he's good at compartmentalizing...I think if this does affect him...it'll hit him later."

"Arnie is one of the strongest men I know." Hotch said, and they looked over at him. "If anything, he'll use his anger at Bale to compel him to work this case harder."

Elle seemed about to say something, but as she opened her mouth, the door opened back up and Arnie came walking in letting out a breath. "Did you guys find anything while I was gone?" He asked.

Ruth cleared her throat. "No. Nothing. Elle?"

The other girl glanced at her, looking a little irritated at being thrown under the bus to make something up. "No. I can't see why anyone would want to kill a little old lady who collects cats and coins."

"Unless somebody wanted the coins." Hotch added, playing along. "I spent a good chunk of my childhood looking for a 1944 penny worth thousands." Ruth raised an eyebrow at his statement, fighting of a smirk. Hotch caught her look. "Yes, I was a little bit of a nerd. Is that so surprising?"

Ruth was failing to hide her shitty little smirk. "Not to me." She felt Hotch kick her foot under the table. She kicked him back.

The phone on the table ringing ended the conversation. Hotch hit the speaker button. "Morgan?"

"Yeah, I just got the lab results from the powder residues on the bombs." Answered Morgan back at Quantico. "Ammonia nitrate, potassium chloride, and aluminum powder. Nobody uses that mixture, Hotch."

"Nobody but Bale."

"That's right. And the closer I look at these things, the more they're the same. Same weld pattern, same switch assembly, same thread sizing. It's weird, man. This guy's not building bombs, he's forging them. That's the other reason I'm calling you. Bale wrote addresses on his packages in block letters with blue ink. I'm thinking our guy's doing the same."

"Okay." JJ pulled out her phone. "I'll set up a press conference, make sure the public knows."

"Thanks, Morgan." Hotch said before ending the call as JJ walked away. Then Hotch's personal phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket. He checked the caller ID before standing up. "Excuse me."

Ruth watched him go before looking over to Arnie, who had finally sat back down next to her, grabbing a few papers to sift through them. "...You okay?" She asked after a moment.

Arnie looked over at her, furrowing his eyebrows a little. "Yeah. Why?"

"Well, I...I mean...you know." She gave him a look.

He sighed a little, looking back down at the paper's. "Yeah. I know."

"...So, are you okay?" She asked again.

Arnie paused. "I will be." He answered after a moment. "Once we catch this son of a bitch."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

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so i hate florida and i hate this episode
there's not a lot of ruth and spencer in this chapter and there probably won't be much more in the next, but im gonna add another jet scene where they talk a little to make up for it :)
also i didnt go back and edit this chapter bc im tired so sorry if it was bad *cries*

- Dan<3