NO GOOD DEED || S. REID

3.13

WAKING UP THE NEXT MORNING FELT MORE LIKE A PUNISHMENT THAN A REWARD. After what she had discovered about her coworker the night prior, Katharine nearly suited up and left to end Ian Doyle right then and there herself.

She had dressed in her usual mission blacks, armored up and everything when she was stopped at the door by Spencer Reid himself. He had eased the AK-47 out of her hands and gently taken the bandolier off her shoulders. In less than two seconds flat, he had managed to make her anger subside.

He'd asked her what was wrong and she had answered as best she could without revealing much. Spencer couldn't know about Ian Doyle, at least, not yet. After figuring out who Emily was, who she had been, she figured that the woman had also known about Ian Doyle's return for a long time. She'd wait on Emily's call, whether or not she'd want to reveal anything at all.

After all, it was Emily who was Doyle's main target at the moment. The way the man had talked, he had made Katharine seem like an afterthought.

Good, Katharine had thought. Keep it that way. The way she saw it, as long as Katharine was an afterthought, her family was safe. Spencer, Derek, Nina, her mom... they were all safe. The moment Doyle thought of Katharine as a threat would be the day that not even Spencer would be able to stop her murderous rampage.

"Two DC homes torched, two families, on the same night, last night," Garcia said, bringing Katharine back to reality.

Right, she was at work. She allowed the scowl to slip off her face, instead, returning her attention fully to the new case at hand.

When she and Spencer had arrived that morning, it wasn't a surprise to find Emily's desk empty. Spencer had asked around for the two of them but no one seemed to know where the woman was.

Katharine tried not to dwell on it too much. She channeled her energy into not glaring at Emily's empty chair at the round table that morning. They had started the briefing without her, figuring that she could play catch-up when she did arrive.

"I'm surprised it still hasn't hit the news," Derek commented about the case. "It's already mid-day."

"Yeah," Garcia said, turning in her chair. "All anyone's talking about is this storm that may or may not hit. I managed to find an online article about the fires written by this guy Jeff Hastings, but no one's running with it."

"How strange," Rossi said. "They usually thrive on tragedy."

"Yeah, and it gets weirder."

"Ron and Lauren Cosenza and their ten-year-old son were found in the master bedroom of their home, each shot through the forehead," Hotch told them. Katharine winced at the thought. "The gun belonged to the father."

"Murder-suicide?" she guessed.

"Well, it looks like Metro PD's investigation is going that way," Derek said, not exactly confirming or denying her suspicions, "but it's still within the first forty-eight hours. They want our help."

"Kerry and Frank Fagan, like the Cosenzas, were found in their master bedroom from a suspected gas leak," Spencer said, reading from the paper document in his hand.

"It had to be massive to cause that," Rossi said, viewing the document on his tablet. "How does the news miss a house explosion?"

Katharine looked between her work-issued device and the screen.

"Any connection between the families?" she asked. Katharine took a sip of coffee, frowning when she realized it had gone lukewarm. She couldn't say that she was surprised, though. The coffee had been made at seven, it was nearing noon now.