"I do not know how you gentlemen might be involved, but I am very familiar with the miscreant responsible for this," Ezra said from the doorway, his soft accent doing little to mask the inner turmoil he felt. Vin hovered protectively behind him, not liking the way the Southerner still trembled.

"You know who did this" Simon asked, gesturing at the trashed room.

Ezra rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Yes, I do."

Considering the state Ezra was in, Chris knew this was not going to be a short answer and this was not the place to discuss it. "Is there some sort of lounge or something on this floor?" Chris asked the room at large.

"I believe I saw the hotel manager in the hallway, Brother."

Chris yanked open the door and glanced around the hallway. Spotting the manager he demanded, "Is there some sort of lounge or something on this floor?"

"Yes there is, Agent Larabee," the hotel manager jumped forward, nervously wringing his hands. "I can have it closed off and put at your disposal for however long you need it. The hotel is very sorry about this unfortunate occurrence. Please accept..."

Chris held up a hand cutting the man off. "That'll be fine. Go make sure it's empty. We'll be there in a minute." Once he was gone Chris turned to look at his undercover agent who was looking at the floor. "Could you guys give me a minute with Ezra here?"

Reluctantly, everyone but Vin filed out of the room. Jim paused in the doorway, watching the silent exchange between the three men. Vin touched Ezra's shoulder, earning a sad fleeting smile and a brief nod. Another brief, almost imperceptible, nod was exchanged between leader and sharpshooter. Seemingly satisfied, Vin followed Jim out the door, closing it behind them.

Chris waited for Ezra to look at him before speaking. "You okay, Ezra? You're not going to try and bolt again?"

"No, and I do apologize for that, Mr. Larabee. It was purely a protective gesture."

"Hell, I don't blame you, Ezra. If I knew in no uncertain terms someone was trying to kill me my first instinct would be to run too."

"You mistake my meaning. He will kill me eventually, but I will be last."

It took Chris a moment to understand what Ezra was trying to say and when he did an icy hand gripped his heart. "You sure about that?"

"I spent most of my career in the FBI studying this monster, trying to bring him to justice. Yes, I'm sure. This isn't the most pleasant of topics for me so I would prefer to only have to tell it once."

"Yeah, of course." Chris paused a second, allowing Ezra to precede him to the door. "You do know we'll stand by you no matter what happens, Ezra?"

"I know, Chris," Ezra nodded, then turned and stepped into the hallway. His voice was low so Chris didn't hear his next words. "I know and it gives him that much more power over me."

Stepping into the appropriated lounge, Ezra wanted to take a step back when all eyes swung to look at him. Only Chris's presence at his back kept him from bolting. He was guided to one of the plush armchairs where Vin pushed him down into it and Josiah handed him a cup of coffee. After a moment of allowing the six men he'd come to consider friends to hover, he said, "I'm fine, gentlemen. Y'all can stop hovering now."

Sheepishly they all took a seat on various chairs and couches that had been pulled into a rough circle. Vin perched on the right arm of Ezra's chair, folding his arms over his chest and raising his eyebrows when Ezra slanted a glance up at him.

"So how do you know who trashed your room and why is he after you?" Jim asked once everyone was settled.

"Straight to the point, Mr. Ellison."

"Standish," Jim growled.

"Right. Jim." Ezra amended. He pulled a photo in a plastic bag out of his inner jacket pocket and placed it on the table. Josiah picked it up and handed it to JD next to him. He'd seen the photo earlier but was still uncertain as to it's significance.

"Hey! This is you, Ezra," JD said, then frowned. "Well, a younger you anyway."

"Yes, Mr. Dunne. That photo was taken the day I graduated from Quantico."

The photo continued on it's way around the room until it reached Carlos. He finally voiced the question most of them wouldn't. "Is this the guy who's after you?"

Ezra snorted. "Hardly. The young man in the photo with me was murdered about a year after that taken."

"Oh. So who is he?"

"Pardon my rudeness, but who are you and why are you here?" Ezra demanded. It was hard enough talking about this with people he knew, let alone people he didn't.

"Sorry. Forgot you weren't here for introductions. I'm Carlos Sandoval. Formerly with the Dallas PD, now I'm a PI with Trent here. We're in Cascade because of a threat made against Trent, Detective Ellison, and Agent Tanner."

"I'm Trent Malloy. Former Lieutenant in the Army Rangers. Now I'm a PI and martial arts instructor." Trent nodded his head in greeting to Ezra.

Ezra frowned, "Your Sensei Malloy, Mr. Tanner?"

"Yep. He's the one what taught me all those fancy moves I use to kick your butt with."

"Last time I checked we were still even on that score." Ezra looked up at the Texan who just grinned.

"You know martial arts, Agent Standish?" Trent asked. Vin had been one of his best pupils in the Rangers. The Southerner just shrugged.

"Ez here is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do," Vin answered for him, easily blocking the shove that was meant to knock him off the chair.

"If we could get back to the case at hand, gentlemen?" Simon interrupted. He gestured to the dark-skinned man standing next to him, "This is Captain Joel Taggert. He's part of my Major Crimes Unit."

"Ah, Capt. Taggert. How was your daughter's recital?"

"Fine, thank you. How did..."

"Sandburg," Jim supplied, then; "Quit stalling, Standish. How do you know who is after you from that picture and why?"

Team 7 bristled at Jim's blunt questioning. Ezra hastened to reassure them. "It's all right, gentlemen. I am stalling. My past is not exactly something I have ever been eager to discuss and this particular bit is painful. To understand this monster I need to give you a little background information."

Ezra set aside the coffee mug and leaned back in his chair. Everyone watching was amazed and a little shocked by how easily he wiped all traces of emotion from his face. "To start with, the young man in the photo with me was Devaney Goldman. A cheerful fellow, half-Irish, half-German Jewish. He was my roommate and best friend at Quantico. We'd both been recruited straight from College. He'd graduated from NYU and I from Browns. When we graduated at the head of our class he was my first partner. We managed to prove ourselves quite adept at working back-up on several cases, in a couple of instances finding the crucial clues to solve the case. We were given lead on a case with two older agents as back-up. Our superiors believed it would be an open and shut case. Follow the clues, nail the bad guy. They were calling him the Valentine Stalker."

"Valentine Stalker? So he was stalking people around Valentine's Day?" Buck asked.

"Not precisely. He was called that because he would send the person he was stalking a Valentine card with a poem inside. We then had six hours to find his latest victim before they were killed."

"I don't understand," JD interrupted. "If the victim got the card six hours before they were to be killed why weren't they just put into protective custody?"

"Because they weren't going to the person to be killed. They were going to whomever the Stalker had fixated on," Trent answered.

"And the people who were killed were somehow close to or possibly related to the fixation," Blair put in, figuring out the second piece of the puzzle.

"You are both correct. The Stalker wasn't satisfied with the usual games. He needed to have ultimate control over his victims."

"Why'd he use Valentine's Day cards?" Nathan asked. "They're not exactly easy to come by unless it's just before Valentine's Day."

"True, which is part of why the media was so eager to pick up on it, that and his first two fixations were people of a certain amount of fame. The first fixation was a woman from one of the more affluential families in Atlanta. Sybil Deveraux. She'd married into another moneyed family. Her husband was a well-known and respected surgeon. Everyone also knew that the two of them hated each other. Lived in separate wings of the mansion; lived separate lives, and made no pretense at hiding their infidelities."

"Infi-whats?"

"Affairs. The Stalker killed the eldest of her two sons, her only brother, and her current lover before kidnapping her. She was violated and then her throat and wrists were slit so that she bled to death painfully."

"Were they able to get any kind of samples from the rape? Anything to help identify this sicko?" Carlos asked.

"I didn't say she was raped. I said she was violated. There's a difference."

"What kind of difference?" JD asked, but before anyone could tell him he made the connection and paled. "Oh. That's...that's really gross."

"Who was the second fixation?" Josiah asked.

"A local congressman, John Patrick Harrington, up and coming," Ezra answered. "He'd just put in his bid for State Senate. The Stalker was particularly brutal with him. It was his second family. His first wife was quite insane, had been in a mental hospital for years with little expectations of recovery. He'd divorced her but continued to pay for her care. The only other family she had was their daughter. The Stalker took the two children from the second marriage first, shot and killed the nanny in the process. They were found in a rental car on a deserted road. They'd been given poisoned candy. Thankfully it was a painless death. We tried to track him through the rental agency but the whole thing had been conducted over the phone. The next victim was the second wife. She had become distraught at the deaths of their children and had to be hospitalized. There were two guards at her door, but for a period of five minutes one was in the bathroom and the other was called away to help deal with a disorderly patient just down the hall. When the guards returned an empty syringe was found in her arm. Air had been injected directly into her bloodstream.

"The next day we found Harrington dead. He'd shot himself. There was a letter explaining he couldn't go on anymore with the loss of his wife and children, and his career in shambles now."

"What about the daughter? From the first marriage?" Blair asked. "Was she ever a target?"

Ezra shook his head. "No. Not that we'd been able to tell. She was in Europe the entire time, backpacking across the Continent. I never met her until her father's funeral. We'd briefly considered her a suspect but she was a small woman and had an alibi for all the murders. We never caught him. Never even got a description or an identity."

Everyone was silent; digesting the information Ezra had given them. He sat there turning the cup in his hands, looking down at the floor. Vin broke the silence.

"You said the first two. Who was the third and how does it connect to your friend?"

Ezra carefully put the cup on the closest table before rising to his feet and crossing to the window. He stared straight ahead for a moment, not really seeing anything, then turned back to the room. His voice trembled slightly when he spoke. "There was a third person the Stalker fixated on. Me. Devaney was murdered to get to me, as well as a young woman I was currently seeing. Luckily, I suppose, Maude and I were not speaking at the time. She was off in Europe somewhere with husband number 4, calling herself Magdelena. As my associates are aware I find it very difficult to make friends, to allow people close to me. I don't know if the Stalker thought it would be a challenge or he just felt like mind-fucking one of the agents in charge of trying to capture him. Eleanor was killed first, then Devaney. The Stalker...what he...their deaths were quite brutal."

Ezra turned away from them, unable to say any more as his breath hitched in his throat. Vin was by his side in an instant, a comforting hand on his shoulder. The rest of Team 7 were also on their feet but gave the two men some space. They all knew how good Ezra was at hiding his emotions. For him to be this shaken, whatever had happened had been bad.

"I hate to have to ask this, but what happened to them? How were they killed?" Simon asked, trying to be as gentle about it as possible.

Ezra still flinched. He couldn't talk about it. Even now the memories threatened to consume him, to destroy him. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run before this monster killed his friends one by one. Vin's hand tightened on his shoulder at the same as he heard a low growl. Startled he looked to Vin who was glaring at Simon.

Understanding what was happening, Blair quickly intervened. "The case file would have all that information wouldn't, Simon? Everyone's tired so now probably wouldn't be the best time to try and go over it anyway."

Jim nodded at Simon, letting him know he agreed with Blair. Questioning Standish on something obviously so painful could wait until morning. When he got Jim's answering nod, he said, "You okay, Standish?"

"I have been better," Ezra answered honestly.

Jim grunted in reply. "Everyone take a seat again." He ignored the way Larabee bristled at him taking charge. "I think it's time Trent tells Vin why it is he's here in Cascade."

"Captain?" Trent looked up at him wide-eyed. He'd been hoping Jim would be the one to tell Vin.

"Yeah. Why are ya here, Sensei?" Vin asked as he guided Ezra back to the chair he'd been sitting in.

Trent nervously licked his lips waiting for Vin to sit down before he spoke. "Uhm, my younger brother, Tommy, was, uh, kidnapped after-school today."

That got everyone's attention. Vin frowned. "I'm real sorry to hear that, Sensei, but what does that have to do with me?"

"I'm getting to that. Around six a van pulled up in front of my mom's house and dumped Tommy out before speeding away. He was pretty badly beaten, but the doctors say he's going to be fine. The ones who took him weren't trying to hurt him badly. They were sending a message."

"What kind of message?" Chris asked, getting the sinking feeling he was not going to like what was coming.

Reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket, Trent pulled out the two newspaper articles in their plastic bags. He handed them to Vin. "That he was coming for us. He escaped two days ago."

Vin stared down at the clippings Trent was holding out to him. A trembling hand came up as if to take them, but then Vin snatched it away, shaking his head violently. "No. No! It ain't him. It ain't. He's in prison. It ain't him!"

"Vin," Trent said gently, glancing to Jim. "I had a friend in the Texas Rangers check..."

"No. The bastard's in prison. I checked! First of every month I check! He's in prison!" Vin had risen to his feet, his whole body trembling as he tried to deny what Trent was trying to tell him. Everyone else was on their feet as well, uncertain of what to do.

"My friend checked, Vin. He escaped two days ago. I'm sorry."

"No," Vin whispered harshly, starting to back-up. No one liked the wild, lost look in his eyes. Chris approached him slowly, Ezra a step behind.

"It's alright, Vin. We won't let this guy get near you." Chris spoke softly, loosely grasping Vin's arm in case he tried bolting.

"I promise you, Mr. Tanner. This vile miscreant will not be allowed to harm you," Ezra said fiercely, taking Vin's other arm.

"Ya promise, Ez?" Vin asked, his voice so low they had to strain to hear it.

"By everything I hold dear, Mr. Tanner. I swear."

"Same goes for me, cowboy."

"Me too."

"Damn straight."

"We won't let him near you, Vin."

"You have our word, Brother."

"And ours, Runt," Jim added, getting their attention. "I won't let Moran hurt you again."

"Would somebody please tell me what's going on now? Who is this Moran person and why would he want to hurt Tanner?" Simon demanded gesturing with his unlit cigar.

Jim sighed. "Moran is a nutcase from our days in the Rangers."

"Tell me something new," Simon muttered sarcastically.

"All right, try this. Drill Sergeant Andrew Moran along with three of his flunkies take six new Ranger recruits on a standard six day training mission. A sort of capture the flag. Only the second they set foot on the training grounds Moran decides to change the exercise objective. He decides they need some POW training. He took six green recruits who hadn't had the proper psych evaluations and tortured them for two and a half days before a squad rescued them. Three days. Tanner was the only one to remain on active combat duty. One of the only two not to take a medical discharge. One of the four who left the Army blew his brains out six months later. Moran is supposed to be serving six consecutive life sentences with no chance for parole. How's that for something new?" Jim growled.

"Oh," Simon said stunned.

"Yeah. Oh," Jim muttered. Rubbing a tired hand over his face, Jim looked around at the others who were now all staring at him. "Look. It's late and we're all too tired to deal with this right now. I suggest we all get some sleep and meet up again in the morning. From now on anyone who is a possible target for Moran or Standish's Stalker should not be alone at any time. Moran's targets will be me, Vin and Trent. Besides you, who else will this Stalker target, Standish?"

"Anyone on our team. He will go after my friends first, long before he comes for me," Ezra said tiredly.

"All right. No one goes anywhere alone." Jim looked to Chris to see if he agreed. "You have any comments or suggestions, Larabee, or does that sound good? You know your men best."

"Works fine for me. Boys, you know the usual pairings. It'll be Ezra, Vin, and me. Sleeping arrangements stay the same, except Ezra and Vin will bunk in with me. I've got an extra bed. Josiah, I want you on the phone first thing in the morning with the FBI in Atlanta. I want everything they have on this Valentine Stalker. Ellison, can you get the file on this Sergeant Moran?"

"I've still got some contacts. I'll have it some time tomorrow."

"Good. Let's go to bed, boys. We'll meet in the lobby at 7?" Chris glared at Ezra when he made a face.

"Look at it this way, Ez," JD said smiling, "7 AM here is 9 AM home."

"That is most reassuring, Mr. Dunne," Ezra said starting to roll his eyes, but stopped himself.

"7 it is, gentlemen," Simon said, heading for the door. "I'll probably bring Connors in on this. She has a penchant for psychopaths."

Blair snickered, then muttered when Jim propelled him towards the door with a hand between his shoulders. "Night, guys."

Good-byes were quickly said as the men dispersed. Chris, Vin, and Ezra followed by Nathan headed towards Chris's room. Despite their protests, Nathan checked them both over. Satisfied, he pulled a small packet with two pills in it out of his pocket.

"If either one of you can't sleep I want you to take one of these. It'll put you out for a good eight hours."

"Nathan..."

"Mr. Jackson..."

"Shut up you two," Chris snapped with a glare. "I'll make sure they take it if necessary, Nathan."

"Good. I'll see you all in the morning."

Once Nathan was gone Chris glanced at the two men sitting side by side on the edge of the bed looking like two little boys. "You ladies need a personal invitation or are you planning on getting ready for bed any time soon?"

Vin scowled at him before getting up and going to his duffel bag. It had been put in Chris's room when it was determined it hadn't been touched. Ezra watched him move then turned back to Chris, his face as unreadable as ever.

"All of my clothes have been put into evidence."

Chris sighed, stalked over to his own bag and pulled out a pair of sweatpants. He tossed them to Ezra. "Here. These should be a little big on you."

"Black. Why am I not surprised?" Ezra caught Chris's glare. "Thank you for their loan, Mr. Larabee."

A grunt was the only response he got as the man set about getting ready for bed. Ten minutes later Ezra and Vin were sharing the one bed while Chris took the other and turned off the night table lamp.

Part 12