"Life brings tears, smiles and memories. The tears dry, the smiles fade, but the memories last forever"
-Unknown-

"Right there!" Maya shouts as she points to the car her, and Derek are in a high-speed chase. Derek finally uses a pursuit interruption technique to stop the sedan they're chasing, but they wind up in the middle of the road- with a huge truck about bearing down on the passenger side of the SUV, the side Maya is on.

"Derek!" Maya shouts outs loudly, her eyes widening in shock.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

"Ah!" Maya grunts as she uses her fist to punch the punching bag multiple times, sweat pouring down her face and chest. She lifts her leg up, delivering a quick kick to the bag before staying steady and doing 4 jabs at a time.

Her phone begins beeping and Maya grabs the punching bag before it moves around and uses her forearm to remove her boxing gloves. She looks down at her phone and sees that the team has to head in for a case despite them having the weekend off.

"Ugh" Maya groans as she spits out her mouth guard and pushes her very sweaty hair that is sticking to the sides of her cheeks out of her face.

_____

Then it's over to Quantico, where everyone is complaining about their plans for the weekend being interrupted by a call into work. Maya arrives last, freshly showered and in a new outfit but new bruises on her knuckles.

"Still boxing?" JJ asks, looking down at Maya's knuckles. "Yeah, a lot" Maya answers as she walks past the rest of the team and starts heading towards the conference room.

"Hey, hey" Derek calls out, catching up with Maya and placing his hand on her back reassuringly.

"Are you okay? You've been boxing a lot recently" Derek wonders and Maya sighs as she rests her hand on Derek's bicep, looking up at him. "I tell you every-time that I'm fine. Boxing just helps me not think about it" Maya states as she pats Derek's arm and proceeds to the conference room where the team gives a rundown of the case.

Two women were abducted and found in a park posed in a praying position. Hotch and Derek start off with some analysis, pointing out that the brutal rape and murder can't possibly be about robbery, since the victims' jewelry was left on their bodies.

"Maybe this is a religious thing. He makes them pay for their sins" Maya declares as she shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

"I doubt that. These women had pretty clean backgrounds" Alex states and Maya scratches that off the list. "Since the posing was done postmortem, maybe it's a representation of the way in which he made them beg for their lives" Reid states and Rossi sighs because they've definitely seen that before.

"He's getting off on the power. Wheels up in 30" Hotch states before he exits the room, the rest of the team packing up their things.

Maya stays behind and closes her eyes, taking deep breaths.

"Zug...Zwang" Thomas breathes out before he let out his last words. His last breath. His last glance.

Maya shook the dark memory out of her head before she grabbed her case files and proceeded out of the conference room to join the rest of the team so they can all make it to the jet.

______

On the plane, Maya took a seat first before Derek came over and handed her a warm cup of coffee and took a seat beside her. "Boxing seems to be helping a lot" Derek declares and Maya nods her head in agreement as she looks down at the coffee, not having an appetite so she just sets it down in front of her.

"Uh, yeah" Maya says softly. "You didn't call me last night after I dropped you off" Derek states and Maya rolls her eyes annoyingly.

"Please, don't be that type of guy" Maya begs and Derek knits his eyebrows in confusion, "What guy?" He asks. "The one who gets mad because I didn't call you after every little thing. I was fine, you literally watched me walk into my house" Maya states, trying to prove her point.

"And what if you weren't fine-". "He's dead, Derek! Thomas is dead, so, I promise he won't ram into the plane before it takes off and kidnap me" Maya argues, not realizing the rest of the team was standing behind her.

She sighs defeatedly and shakes her head before clearing her throat, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself. She stays quiet and leans back in her seat as the team hesitantly takes a seat around her.

Hotch changes the topic, moving the discussing to talk about victimology and points out that the woman was physically similar, and also both single with professional careers. "Other than appearance, the women had nothing in common." JJ responds before she looks over at Maya who refuses to lock eyes with anyone as the team starts to think about the possible symbolism of the parks and the prayer pose.

Because the unsub has possibly already chosen his next victim, when the team hits the ground, they'll spilt and go to different locations.

_____

At the police station, Maya goes with Hotch, JJ and Reid. Reid points out to the cop in charge of the case that this kind of ritualized behavior usually leads to a rapid series of kills. JJ nudges Maya's shoulder and points out she hasn't talked since what happened on the plane.

"You don't have to keep things bottled up. What you went through was tough" JJ declares friendly.

"You're going to help me get through it?" Maya asks coldly as JJ looks around at her surroundings, making sure no one is listening. "I told you that you could come to me with anything. You know I've been playing a role" JJ argues and Maya scoffs, her hands resting in her back pocket.

"Is that the role where you pretend to hate me so the whole team doesn't really find out that I knew you before I got this job?" Maya asks and JJ widens her eyes and looks around again, even though nobody is around.

"I'm the reason you got this-". "I got myself this job because I put in the work to do so. What happened back in 2010 was my ticket out of there and I took it so, don't sit there and pretend you were my fairy godmother and granted me access to this job" Maya states as she pushes JJ's shoulder slightly before walking past her and meeting with Hotch and Reid and there, they get word that another victim has been found at another park.

JJ and Maya talk to the husband of the second victim. They were separated, and she was having an affair. Could that be linked to why she was targeted by the killer? Were all of the women cheaters?

They ask Garcia to find out who the lover is, but Garcia draws a blank, because apparently the victim never phoned or texted the man, she was having an affair with.

The team decides it's time to give the profile after they got word of another victim. Hotch and Alex went to check it out and found out that the last victim had a human tooth in her stomach. It seems that the killer is carrying around the severed head of his first victim, and feeding her, piece by piece, to his new victims.

So, they base the profile on he's religiously obsessed because of the prayer pose and maybe he was hurt emotionally by someone because of the shot to the heart. Perhaps he thinks the women are guilty of something, also because of the prayer pose.

_____

In the bathroom at the station, Maya takes deep breaths as she looks at herself in the mirror.

"Stop-" Maya begs before she was hit with another punch to the face, this one harder. Thomas wanted to cause damage. He wanted Maya to feel the pain of 10 years of abandonment. He wanted her to feel anger, the sadness, the loneliness that he felt.

Maya sniffles in her tears as she uses the sleeve of her jacket to cover her nose sadly.

It's been months since the kidnapping and Maya couldn't get a single detail out of her head and she didn't know if she ever would. She wanted help but for years she was getting through things on her own and trying to be head strong.

Recently, she even stopped seeing her therapist and refuses to tell Derek about it to avoid a lecture. Maya felt as if she was pulling away from everyone and the friendships, she was starting to grow her were soon fading away because she was fading away. Her happiness was fading, her energy was fading, and she didn't know how to handle it all at once.

Maya comes back into the conference room at the station where the team is gathered around. She takes a seat before the cop walks in and announces they've got a parolee who fits the profile, and he is in his early-30s who likes religion and recently had his heart broken.

"Okay, Maya and Morgan can head out there to check it out" Hotch states and Maya scoffs before she tiredly raises to her feet and follows Derek out of the station.

"Don't be so excited you have to work with me" Derek states as he and Maya get into the SUV. "Can we just not talk" Maya declares as Derek scoffs in annoyance as he starts the car.

"Maybe instead of pushing people away and acting like what you go through is normal, talk to someone about it. I'm right here, Maya" Derek states as Maya looks out the window, biting down on her lip as she holds in her tears.

"Just talk to me" Derek begs and Maya shakes her head as she looks over at Derek. "Okay, you want to talk? I had to kill my brother for my own safety- my brother. I had to look my abuser's daughter in the eyes and apologize to her for shooting her twelve years ago. I- I had to go back to the house my father beat my mother to death in because my brother wanted to prove a point" Maya rants, hitting her hand on the dashboard as she talks, looking into Derek's eyes.

He doesn't judge her or interrupt her. He doesn't want to run away and never speak to her again and Maya couldn't figure out why. "I am still keeping so many secrets" Maya states as she looks to Derek who nods his head assuring.

"Why are you not walking away from this- from me?" Maya asks softly, starting to choke up over her words as a single tear slides down her face.

"Because I don't care what you haven't told me and what I already know. I care about you and I'm not that easy to push away" Derek declares as he reaches his hand up to swipe Maya's tear away, making heat rise to her cheeks.

Even in her weak moments, Derek still found a way to make her special weather it was with a glance, a touch or a smile. He had such a huge effect on her.

Meanwhile, Reid has decided that the killer is obsessed with praying mantises. Because female praying mantises occasionally eat their sexual partner's heads during copulation, he thinks the whole 'raping women and feeding them pieces of a head' is a recreation of that act. Because he sees all women as treacherous mantises and wants to kill them before they kill him.

Later, Maya and Derek get back to the station and find out the team finally gets a lead - they find a missing woman, Heather Clarke, who used to live in the area, and disappeared a short time ago. Right after it was announced in the news that she'd gotten engaged. So that's the heartbreak that drove him to this deeply stupid obsession.

Luckily there's a DNA sample on file that her mother had given to test against a random body the cops found, in the hopes that it was her daughter.

Once the team has identified that Heather is, in fact, the person whose face is being eaten, they look into her background and immediately discover that a man, Wallace Hines, was arrested for destroying her car with a baseball bat when she broke up with him in high school.

"What happened to Wallace?" Maya wonders, asking Garcia who is on the phone. "He was hospitalized and has been in and out of institutions for over a decade" Garcia informs before she gives the team Wallace's recent address.

The team rushes to arrest him but finds that his apartment is empty. "Empty" Maya scoffs as she shakes her head, holstering her gun.

Turns out, Wallace was already at work, and he brought the severed head with him so he can feed pieces of it to everyone. All the people in the restaurant notice the teeth and flesh in their meals. It's a bridal shower he's feeding, so it's full of women for him to hold hostage and torment. Which is exactly what he does.

Wallace wanders around the room seeing Heather everywhere until a security guard arrives and points a gun at him, but he manages to shoot the guy and run away.

_____

Now in the car, Maya and Derek drive down the road, looking around for any sign of Wallace until..."Right there!" Maya shouts as she points to the car her, and Derek are now in a high-speed chase with Wallace.

Derek finally uses a pursuit interruption technique to stop the sedan they're chasing, but they wind up in the middle of the road- with a huge truck about bearing down on the passenger side of the SUV, the side Maya is on.

"Derek!" Maya shouts outs loudly, her eyes widening in shock. The truck's about to hit Maya, when... Derek backs up and it doesn't hit them. Maya lets out a breath of relief before she looks to Derek who grabs his gun and they both exit the car, their guns raised towards the person inside the black sedan they were chasing.

"Out of the car, now!" Maya demands as Derek opens the car door and Wallace, who looks surprisingly frighten, gets out of the car slowly with his hands raised. Maya narrows her eyes at Wallace before turning him around and letting Derek handcuff his wrist together before placing roughly in the SUV to be arrested.

The killer is arrested, and the team is now on the plane for the ride home, Derek and Maya are haunted by how weird the killer was after he was arrested. When he was holding the women hostage, he freaked out all over the place, but once he was at the station he was eerily calm.

"Well, Richard Farley was like that after his rampage" Rossi tries to reassure but Maya shakes her head, still feeling like something is off while the team continues to praise them for doing a good job on their arrest.

Maya sighs and looks to Derek who places his hand on hers, thinking they should let it go and they did a good job until the cops in Arizona find out within a matter of hours that his fingerprints don't match those at the hostage-taking scene.

Why? Because they arrested the wrong guy.

Case not closed...

TO BE CONTINUED

"Always trust your instincts"
-Unknown-