"Alone we are smart but together we are brilliant"
-Unknown-

Maya sat at her office and laid her head down. She barley for any sleep last night and since Hotch hadn't called for a meeting, she figured she could get some shut eye.

"Wakey wakey" Derek says as he taps Maya's arm, jerking her awake. "Oh, god. I hate you" Maya says as she rubs her eyes tiredly before her vision adjust clearly and she sees Derek holding a coffee, about to hand it to Maya.

"I enjoy your company" Maya states, putting a smile on her face as she carefully grabs the coffee from Derek's hands and sips it in big gulps, needing the pick me up.

"Someone didn't get sleep last night" Derek notices and Maya sighs as she relaxes in her seat. "That's an understatement" Maya groans before going back to drinking her coffee while Derek wonders why she was up late last night.

Did she have a male friend over? Or just simply couldn't sleep? "Why couldn't you sleep?" Derek asks and notices how Maya's body goes tense at the question.

"Uh, you know, I was up late last night watching tv" Maya states and it's clear she's lying. "Why did you just lie to me?" Derek asks, seeing right through her. Maya scoffs and shakes her head before she rises to her feet, making her way to the conference room.

"I'm not lying. TV keeps you up a long time" Maya says as Derek follows behind her. "Maya-". "It's not that big of a deal. I just couldn't sleep, okay?" Maya snaps as she turns around harshly, looking to Derek who raises his hands in surrender, not wanting to push Maya's buttons even though he clearly knows somethings wrong but she refuses to say anything else as they enter the conference room.

"Hey, everything alright?" JJ asks as she leans closer to Maya. Maya sets her coffee down on the table and nods her head, but not meeting JJ's eyes.

"Perfect" Maya sighs as she grabs a note pad from the middle of the table.

Rossi and Garcia walk into the conference room and Garcia is trying to convince Rossi to take his 30 vacation days before they expire, and the team debates the best possible destination for him.

Rossi claims that he doesn't want a vacation at all, but everyone else thinks he desperately needs one. In the end, Alex suggests that he donate the days to an FBI agent who needs it more than he does.

Maya rubs her eyes tiredly as she feels the room getting hotter. She leans back in her seat and sighs softly while everyone else talks amongst themselves.

"I love this song"Joseph whispers as he sways back and forth with Maya in his hold while music plays throughout his room. Maya was in her bra and underwear with bruises on her thighs. A single tear slid down Maya's cheek as she was continuing to be swayed. She felt weak and disgusting. All she wanted to do was throw up during the moment and multiple times after it. She didn't want his hands on her body... ever but he broke that boundary and did it anyway. He promised to protect her from men like that but he became the very man he was supposed to protect her from. Maya felt betrayed and beyond upset but there was nothing she could do... there was no way she could get out of this situation.

"Is everyone ready?" Hotch asks, breaking Maya out of her trance. Derek looks over at Maya concerned, noticing how she's sweating slightly from the top of her forehead. Garcia begins to talk about the case and the team discovers that two victims were killed the same way that night, one in San Diego, and another in LA.

Each one was texting with someone who was using a disposable cell phone, went to meet them, and then was knocked out and dragged to their deaths.

It's pointed out that dragging people behind cars is generally associated with hate crimes, but since the people killed were white and straight, there doesn't seem to be a clear connection. Unless, of course, the killer didn't know them well enough to guess their sexual orientation.

Reid pipes up with the utterly useless bit of trivia that in Ye Olde Englander, drawing someone behind a horse was the first part of a punishment that involved disembowelment, beheading, and quartering.

"Maybe this is just a serial killer who crosses city lines" Rossi declares as Maya is still trying to keep her mind on the situation at hand even though her mind is wandering elsewhere. "I don't know. Two victims in 3 hours? That's a spree" JJ states while the rest of the team agrees and realizes the unsub may claim another victim soon.

The team start to pack up and gather onto the plane. Maya stays behind and lifts up her coffee, but the coffee slips right out of her hands. "Great" Maya groans as she bends down, to pick up the cup.

"Here" Hotch says as he grabs napkins off one of the tables and begins helping Maya clean up her mess.

"What's going on with you?" Hotch asks and Maya sighs as she throws the cup and lid in the trash before patting the napkins down in the carpet to get all the coffee stains out. "Uh, nothing. Just tired" Maya sighs as she uses her arm sleeve to wipe the sweat that beams from her forehead.

"You haven't talked to that therapist the BAU assigned for you after what happened at the auditorium with Joseph Perez" Hotch realizes and Maya clears her throat as she flinches at the sound of his name.

"I told Strauss and everyone else, I don't want or need a therapist. I got through things on my own before so I can do it now" Maya states as she squirts hand sanitizer on her hands after cleaning up her coffee mess.

"We all need help. Even the ones who refuse it" Hotch states before grabs his files and exits the conference, leaving Maya to her own thoughts.

_____

On the flight the team finds out that the woman was a suburban teacher, the man was a drug addict, and the two had no obvious connection to one another. They lament that they don't know what the killer was saying to the victims when the unsub called each one twice a day, but it's unclear why they haven't gotten the texting history yet.

They talk for a little while about how awful the dragging behind a car was and Alex Blake declares that's it's uncharacteristically high-risk behavior.

"It was torture. The skin was, uh, scraped off and the bones were broken" Maya says as she shakes her head, eliminating the awful thoughts that cloud her mind. The team addresses how unusual it is that the killer was able to commit both crimes on the same night, but Reid assures them that so long as the killer was speeding, knew the route like the back of his hand, and faced no traffic whatsoever, it's just barely possible.

What's considerably less possible is that no one saw this dragging-to-death, especially since at least one of the victims screamed the whole time...

_____

Now off the plane, Derek, Maya and JJ check out the drug store parking lot. "Hey, you alright? You seem to have a lot on your mind" JJ says as she walks next to Maya who wears sunglasses to cover her eyes from the bright sun above.

"I'm fine and I wish people would stop asking me that" Maya sighs before her, JJ and Derek go back to checking out the crime scene.

They discover that the place was under renovations and closed. So, the killer picked a location less likely to have accidental foot traffic. But then the unsub dragged a body three blocks down a wide street before detaching it from the car.

Maybe the killer could know that the cameras were dead in the parking lot, and there wasn't anyone going to the drug store- but that assurance wouldn't be possible for the rest of the drive.

JJ posits that both people could have been meeting a drug dealer - that's someone who people from vastly different backgrounds/socioeconomic classes could have in common.

Garcia gave some neat information - it seems the murdered man had changed his name recently to get out from under his scandalous history.

It seems that he was charged with the rape of a missing 8-year-old girl, Kelly Taylor, since then, they couldn't find a body so he couldn't be charged with murder. But 10 years seems a little light for that crime.

_____

While JJ and Maya neatly set up the board, Maya starts to feel unwell as memories, bad memories, start to cloud her mind. She didn't know why they were coming back but they were and she hated it.

"You're disgusting! No one will ever love you!" Maya shouts as Joseph holds his hands around her neck, not letting go. "Shut up!" Joseph cries out.

"So, I talked to victim number two's father," Reid states, bringing Maya roughly out of her thoughts.

"He said as far as he knew, no one was trying to get back at Mark for the rape. He got out of jail last month" Reid states and Maya says as she rests her hands on her hips. "Him being released could've been this unsubs trigger" Maya declares to which JJ agrees.

"And I compared photos from the first and second crime scenes... the cars used to drag were different" JJ states and Maya turns around, looking at the crime scene photos seeing JJ is right.

"Maybe the killer switched cars?" Reid wonders. "It's either that or we're looking at two unsubs" Maya says as she turns back to face Reid, seeing Hotch behind him.

"What did you two and Morgan find?" Hotch wonders. "At both crime scenes, the nearby stores were either closed or being remodeled" JJ starts off, "So the killer would have had to scope the area, lure and drag the victim without being caught" Maya adds to which her and JJ nod their heads in unison.

"How can you do that twice in one night in cities over 100 miles apart?" Reid asks, raising a very difficult question. The team decides to run with the theory that between the two killers, one must love torturing their victims, and the other is unsure.

The FBI team tries to figure out what the killers could have in common. Derek points out that since the dead guy had changed his name to hide from his crimes, perhaps the dead lady also had something to hide. Hotch's plan: start digging.

_____

The next day, another body is found and Hotch, Rossi, Alex and a cop meet in the common area outside a hospital to talk about the latest victim, one Paul Montgomery. Garcia then calls to reveal that Paul was the dead guy's college friend, who even testified as a character witness in his trial. The prosecution had physical evidence and a confession. Garcia hasn't turned up any details on the dead lady, who seems to have led an exemplary life. So, Hotch asks if she has a sealed juvenile record, which, of course, she does. Garcia chides herself for not thinking of that.

Literally three keystrokes later Garcia has broken a bunch of laws and unsealed the woman's records, revealing that she caused an accident in which a 2-year-old was killed...

Maya and Hotch wait for the cop to get her lunch and meet JJ outside the LAPD where she just interviewed the father of Sam Dolan. "His mother committed suicide a few years ago. What about Kelly's parents?" JJ asks, looking to the cop on the case.

"We've left them messages, but we might send an officer to their house and places of employment" Hotch answers and JJ sighs.

"I think we should also check out the support group Sam's mother belonged to" JJ states as Derek and Reid walk up to join the conversation since they have some intel. "The calls the unsub made to the victims- twice a day at night. That shows incredible persistence" Reid declares as he hands the paperwork to Hotch who looks over it.

"The first victim, Brenda, was a happily married teacher, so why would she take calls from a random man late at night?" Derek asks and Maya knits her eyebrows in confusion as she removes her sunglasses that shielded her eyes from the sun, "Doesn't make sense. If she was cheating, she wouldn't meet someone at a restaurant that's right near her house" Maya declares as she looks over at the paper work in Hotch's hands.

The team finally figures out that the victims were both going to meet women. JJ manages to say something, announcing that the killers being women explains the blitz attack. It's not because the killers were nervous men, but because they were weak women that the victims had to be subdued before being tied to a car.

_____

Time for the profile. They believe the killers are two women who are killing people convicted of heinous crimes. But unlike most, they're planning and executing coordinated attacks and they probably learned about the crimes they're avenging through the media.

They declare one woman is more frightened while the other is more dominant in these situations.

Garcia is called by Derek, and she looks up the support group that the dead boy's mother was obsessed with and finds out that just two people on there were talking about the dead boy after her death.

Despite it being a theoretically anonymous website, both murderous moms used their real first name and last initial as their usernames, which makes it unbelievably easy to track them down. Ellen Russel is one of them.

Ellen works at a boat shop, so she must have access to hitching equipment. "Who did she interact with in this support group?" Maya asks and Garcia continues to click away on her computer and finds out in the last year, Ellen was speaking to a women named Darlene Beckett, which is Kelly Taylor's mothers name.

The women were so desperate for revenge that they actually talked about using a disposable cell phone to start calling dead guy once he was out of jail, 'posing as a friend'. The team then talks about swapping murders in hopes of getting away with it.

Then they start talking about Paul's murder - why kill him, if he was just a character witness at the trial? But maybe he was more than that. Apparently, Paul drove out to see dead guy once every week. And it was a three-hundred-mile trip which is weird because friends usually distance themselves from rapists and murderers.

"Unless they are a rapist and murder" Maya rephrases which the team agrees to.

_____

The team get to Darlene's house way too late to catch her and discover that Darlene and her husband divorced some time back, over the stress of their daughter's disappearance. The loss of a child either brings you together or breaks you apart.

Rossi wanders around the room, looking over all the evidence that the mother hasn't changed a thing since her daughter vanished. He focuses on a picture of Mexico, seemingly tacked up to raise anticipation for a trip that the daughter had already packed for.

But what significance does it have now?

The rest of the team try to figure out who else might have been in on the rape, since the other DNA was never identified. It turns out that Paul and dead guys were on a relay team together, so naturally the next logical suspect for a gang-rape participant would be the people who ran with them in amateur athletic events.

Garcia checks it out, and discovers that Jason, one of the other members of the team, still lives in the area, and also regularly visited dead guy in jail. He must be next on the list.

The team finally gets to Jason's house but finds no one. They decide to look around, attempting to find a clue to where the killers took Jason. "Hey, are you alright? You've barley talked to
me all day" Derek says as he and Maya look around Jason's home.

"So, I'm supposed to talk to you every day?" Maya asks as she turns to face Derek.

"No, but- you usually do. You seem off and I just want to make sure you're okay" Derek says reassuringly and deep-down Maya feels bad for being snappy with him for the last two days but there's just some things that don't need to be said. Or maybe they do.

"I- I can't talk about it right now. Not when we have something to do" Maya sighs as she continues to look around the apartment for any clues.

They then find Jason's self-help books and pictures he's taken with his girlfriend.

But while continuing the search in Jason's place the team finds his rape/murder trophies. The team realizes he's a full-on psychopath and worries that the vigilantes are overmatched.

_____

The team meets up at the recent crime scene where a man was shot while he was driving, but luckily, he's alive and give a story. "He says he was shot by a white woman. She was with a black woman and a white guy" Derek informs after he finished speaking with the victim who was being wheeled to the ambulance as they spoke.

"Well, we know Jason is a psychopath. Maybe this white woman is the dominant one out of the two women and Jason noticed so he tries bringing her on his side. He made her do that" Maya rants and Rossi agrees.

"He could be holding them hostage" Derek suggests. "But then if the women had the gun, she could've shot Jason dead. She didn't" Maya states and Derek nods his head.

"I agree, he's got to have something keeping them alive" JJ says and the team goes quiet as they try to figure out what could Jason possibly have on them. "Kelly" Maya says as she snaps her fingers.

"She was never found. Maybe he knows where it is" Derek adds.

_____

Meanwhile, the team was right, and Jason has brought them to the dump site where they could supposedly find the little girl's body. Something the mother has been yearning for and after hours of watching him dig, they watch him pull out the skull of said little girl, and somehow Jason isn't executed a single second later.

He tries to buy time by saying that the parts other than the skull are buried elsewhere. "You scattered her bones?!" Darlene shouts, tears staining her face as she watches her daughter's killer laugh in her face, only pushing her over the edge.

So, instead of waiting for the police, instead of waiting for someone else to do something because something wasn't done before, Darlene takes matters into her own hands and she bangs the shovel against Jason's head, cutting off his laughter and never stopping. Not for a single second.

_____

Garcia searches for the kind of dirt from the shovel and its proximity to running trails that Jason might be familiar with, and literally seconds later Maya and Derek are arriving at the dump site.

They didn't lock down the area, so the murder moms had time to get away. The only thing left was the body of Jason. A dead body.

Case closed... sort of.

_____

On the plane ride back home, Maya looks out the window when Derek takes a seat across from her. Maya waits for the lecture, but Derek doesn't give her one. He gives her space. But maybe, just maybe, Maya needed someone to talk to.

And maybe Derek Morgan was that someone.

"I didn't sleep last night because... I've been having nightmares" Maya confesses and Derek raises his head, looking to her in shock as he sets his phone on the table in front of him. "What?" Derek asks, as if he didn't hear Maya the first time.

"I've been having nightmares. They just came recently so don't think I've been hiding this from you forever" Maya jokes, trying to make light of the situation but there's just no way she can when she knows how much Derek cares about her.

"I don't know if I can call them nightmares since I'm not really scared to see them. I just- I want them to stop. I don't understand why I'm seeing them again after all these years" Maya says softly as Derek leans over, placing his hand on Maya's, giving her comfort in this situation.

"I don't want you to feel bad for me and hover over me but- I- I think I need help" Maya confesses, her eyes becoming glossy with tears that she refuses to let out. "Then let's help" Derek says as he lifts his hand up to touch Maya's cheek reassuringly.

_____

Meanwhile, In Mexico, it seems Ellen and Darlene have seemed to travel farther away, trying to get rid of their past. Darlene is constantly looking over her shoulder, while Ellen seems more relaxed and thinks what they did was right. They got justice and that's all that matters.

Once Ellen and Darlene are spilt up, it seems Rossi has also decided to take a vacation, except this isn't a typical vacation as he finds his way to Ellen and takes a seat next to her and once Ellen takes a good look at her surroundings, she knows the end game. She gets arrested, but her friend... her partner... gets away and that's how it was supposed to be.

Case Closed.

"Sometimes in life we just need someone who will be there for us. Someone who will listen. Someone who will understand"
-Unknown-