Erin Strauss had known she was going to get resistance from Hotchner’s team before she’d even called the man. They held a grudge like no other group of people she’d ever met. It didn’t really surprise her. She was arguably the one person that could tear them apart at their seams. Ironically, it something Erin had no intention of doing.
Contrary to popular belief, she didn’t hate Hotchner. She respected him immensely for his work in the unit, but she wasn’t blind either. Hotchner was incredibly smart, the only person Erin thought posed a threat to her job. At least, that was what she believed until he showed up with Agent Prentiss in Milwaukee.
A man who was after her job would have balked at the notion of directly disobeying a suspension and probably wouldn’t have thought twice about pulling another agent back into the fray with him. Then the way he’d coolly handled her display of emotion and his emotionless response to her threat of never moving him proved one thing to Erin: the man was quite content where he was. Erin had no reason to fear her job. Plus, he seemed to understand, at least at some subconscious level, that he did control the unit. Erin played the politics and watched out for snags, but Hotchner truly ran the BAU. Erin didn’t really mind that dynamic in the slightest.
And she knew a good thing when she saw one. She’d made a terrible miscalculation before heading to Milwaukee. While Hotchner did have some amazing leaders under his command, and even better minds, they seemed just as happy as Hotchner to stick to the status quo. She’d also discovered that they worked best when they were together. At least that was the impression she’d come away with in Milwaukee. The giddy school girl inside of her hoped she’d get to see that dynamic again.
The evaluation process was really just a formality. Erin had no plans to split up her best team, not when her sole purpose was to continue making the unit look good.
It didn’t mean she was going to get a warm reception.
JJ hadn’t been happy to hear about the team’s tagalong. The last time the woman had come on a case, it had thrown off the dynamic so severely they’d almost missed a key part to their profile. But Hotch had sounded like it was no skin off her back to have her lurking about, so JJ had made herself a promise: she’d act the same way she would if Erin Strauss wasn’t watching her every move.
Well, almost. She wasn’t absolutely idiotic. She and Spencer would have to play it a little closer to the vest on this particular case, and there was no way JJ was going to leave off worrying about Penelope. The irritation, however, would have to be put on the backburner for the time being.
She also hated take off. Her ears never adjusted well to the changing altitude and almost inevitably popped. Once they were in the air, she was fine.
“Alright, let’s get started,” Hotch said from his place against the window.
Even with Strauss there, some things simply didn’t change and the group around the table was one of them. Strauss had chosen a seat at the front of the plane, Derek at the back. Emily and Hotch had taken two of the seats by the table, Hotch on the inside, and Reid sat across from them. JJ sat across from Derek.
She stood at Hotch’s words, reaching into the bag at her feet for the files. She always carried them, for simplicity’s sake and to ensure no one forgot. Spencer had done that one too many times, his mind already wrapped up in the case to concern himself with a little thing like the file he’d already memorized.
“Nashville always makes me think of country,” Emily lamented, thanking JJ with a smile.
“Tennessee State Fair,” JJ responded as she politely handed a file to Strauss. “My parents took us there almost every year. Family vacation.”
“Too bad we’re not there for fun and games,” Morrow agreed.
“Six boys, all between the ages of six and seven,” JJ said, using Morrow’s comment as an excellent segue. “All missing from malls, all smothered and wrapped in blankets.”
“All left outside the malls they were taken from,” Derek added, scanning the information in front of him.
JJ watched Emily open her laptop, preparing to connect with Penelope. The woman had been put in charge of going over the footage from the cameras in the mall. It was a possibility she had something at least preliminary.
“The parents never reported the children missing,” Morrow said into the silence. “The reports all say that a relative of some sort, brother, sister, cousin, told the parents the kids was missing.”
“Bet those kids feel terrible,” Emily murmured for no apparent reason.
JJ’s eyes darted to Strauss.
“This unsub screams preferential offender,” Reid said, his usual matter-of-fact cadence. “Same blond hair, brown eyes, same age, same type of kid…”
“So he stalked them,” JJ picked up, slowly getting back into the usual swing. Strauss had thrown her off, promise or not.
“Definitely,” Derek agreed.
“Garcia reporting in,” came the disembodied voice from Emily’s laptop.
JJ could already see the stress lines forming around the woman’s eyes and mouth. This one was going to take a toll on the expectant mother, that much was certain. Too bad only she and Emily knew.
“The cameras at the exits have nothing on our boys.”
“I’m sorry?” Hotch questioned.
“Exit cameras didn’t catch the kids going in or out of the building. At least in four of our cases. I’m just looking through five and six now.”
“What about the mall cameras?”
“Inside the mall, there are glimpses, but nothing concrete. According to video there’s no record of any of our little boys leaving any of the malls they were taken from.”
Penelope’s voice was flat, nothing close to the usual happiness necessary for a case like this. JJ’s heart went out to her. “He has to know the malls,” she said, knowing she was pointing out the obvious. “Knows where every camera is, knows where everything in that mall is.”
“In every mall?” Emily asked, shaking her head. “He does his research.”
Hotch’s eyes were fixed on the file. “The kids, the malls… Nashville’s his hunting ground.”
Rick Hooper, homicide detective for Nashville Tennessee swore in his twenty plus years on the force he’d seen it all. Nothing, he often claimed, surprised him anymore. His partner, Maggie Houldsworth, the woman who had proven to him the fairer sex could indeed be fantastic officers, agreed with him. Ten years of partnership meant they knew each other all too well.
Until they’d encountered this case and the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit.
Rick and Maggie stood on the tarmac where the private jet had landed not five minutes before. Rick was holding his breath. He expected standoffish agents, people who were more concerned with the glory than with the process and he’d prepared himself to be patient. Chances were they were going to have to make a stop at the hotel to give them a chance to settle in and get acquainted with the atmosphere.
SSAIC Hotchner seemed to have a different idea all together. The man was the only consummate agent that deplaned. The rest, were a ragtag group of serious people, people who could have very well been cops from the way they dressed and conducted themselves. They’d looked almost like a team of superheroes as they’d strolled purposefully across the tarmac, bags in hand. And they seemed to travel surprisingly light. Rick even heard Maggie gasp from beside him.
Much to his further surprise, it was the blond agent that stepped up first. “Detective Hooper?”
“Yes ma’am,” Rick responded almost dumbly as he shook the proffered hand. She didn’t have the delicate grip of the wisp she looked like.
“Agent Jareau. This is Supervisory Special Agent In Charge Hotchner and the rest of the team, SSAs Morgan, Prentiss, Morrow and Dr Reid, as well as Section Chief Strauss.”
“Thanks for coming. Where to first?” He braced himself for the expected answers.
“We’d like to split up,” Hotchner said, his voice cold, calculating. If he wasn’t an agent Rick was sure the man could be the most cold-blooded killer the States had ever seen. And he was surprised by that.
“You don’t want to stop at the hotel? Drop your things off?”
Agent Morrow waved absently to two black SUVs that had been parked alongside the plane. “We’ve got our rides, now we just need the crime scenes.”
“We’d prefer to just get on with the case if that’s okay,” Jareau spoke up in her sweet voice. “The faster we get started, the faster we can catch this guy.”
“By all means,” Rick sputtered. “Where to?”
“JJ, Morrow, why don’t you head over to the Huxley’s, talk to them about their son,” Hotchner suggested, though it sounded to Rick more like an order.
Jareau seemed to take it as such. “And the cousin, see what the last minutes were before he realized Jason was missing.”
Not only was Rick struck by the way Jareau seemed to finish Hotcher’s thoughts, but also by how thoroughly they seemed to know the case. “Mags?”
“I’m in. The father I can stay away from those malls the happier I’ll be.” Maggie had a young son of her own. Just eleven, if Rick remembered right. Rick watched the women head off and then turned back to the rest of the team.
“We’ll take the malls. There’s four of them?” Hotchner asked.
“Yeah. All four of you?” Three of them exchanged a glance and Rick felt a little bit out of the loop on a private conversation.
“Yes. We’ll follow you, if that’s okay detective?”
The way Hotchner deferred to him also struck Rick. He liked these agents. Or, at least, he liked their work ethic. “We’ll start with the furthest one out. Work our way in.”
“Sounds good,” Hotchner agreed.
Rick climbed into his car a little shell-shocked and slightly intimidated. The way the agents had hit the ground running was something that had completely baffled him. He had been originally skeptical of bringing in the FBI, but now it didn’t seem so bad. That didn’t mean he was any less skeptical of the process though.