JJ had been kicking ass in darts for the last hour. First, she had just been practicing by herself with Spencer watching, but then two guys offered to buy her a drink if she'd play with them. She had obliged and Spence had gone off to play a geeky drinking game with some old friends. Jennifer hadn't realized how long it had been since she'd last played darts…she missed the bull's-eye twice! Even with those two fatal throws, she had still dominated both of the guys' scores combined and was feeling pretty good about herself.
Jay picked up a dart and positioned herself in front of the dart board. Despite the two drinks she'd had (and despite the two guys' attempts to get her to drink more), she hit the center straight-on. "OOHHHHH! Another one bites the dust!" JJ yelled as she threw her hands up in the air.
"How'd you get so good at this?" One of the guys asked, laughing.
"Where I grew up, darts was like a national sport," JJ answered.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, we were too small for a bowling alley," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
"Ahhh…"
"I'm up!" The other guy exclaimed, holding up some darts.
JJ heard her cellphone ring and turned around to answer it. She saw the caller ID was from the FBI headquarters and sighed. "Sorry boys, you're going to have to find someone else to humiliate you," she said as she wrapped both of them in a hug. Both of them laughed, and then started scouting out new prospects. She walked out of the bar and when she passed Spencer, she roughed up his hair. He was enjoying himself with that game. She knew that he had probably answered any questions that his friends threw at him, forcing them to drink glass after glass. Standing outside the door, she answered her phone. "I'm so sorry, can you say that again?"
The voice on the phone sounded irritated. "Ms. Jareau, a new case just came in from Atlanta, Georgia that we need you to look at immediately."
"Ok? Um…have the police fax over everything they have so far." She started.
"The team should be notified right away."
Jennifer sighed, "I'll take care of the notifications. Almost everyone's here with me. Thank you." She hung up and turned to go back into the bar. Emily and Garcia were at a table near the dance floor watching Morgan, while Hotch and Haley were dancing together. JJ came up to their table and put her arms around the blonde and the brunette. "Sorry guys, case just came in."
Garcia tore her eyes away from Derek and moaned, "No! He was just getting into it!"
Emily chuckled and downed the rest of her drink. "Let's go grab him before he DOES get into 'it', whatever 'it' is." Prentiss got up and went to go take Derek off the dance floor.
JJ caught Hotch's eye and motioned to her phone. He nodded and started making his way over to the table with Haley in tow. Walking back to get her coat, she patted Spencer on the shoulder. "Sorry Spence, a case just came in."
Spencer looked up and smiled, "That's ok. I was beating them anyway. They thought that Sargon was actually an alien race! Can you believe that JJ?"
She cracked a smile in return, "Wow, how could they get it that wrong?" Spencer moved to get up and she walked out with him on their way to the BAU. Gideon was at the Smithsonian, so she would have to call him on the drive there.
Back at the BAU, Jennifer had some last minute paperwork to do before she briefed the team. Signing some papers and shoving them in manila folders, she grabbed her go-bag from under her desk and briskly walked to the briefing room. She just managed to hear Gideon say that he had a good time at the Smithsonian before she entered the room. "Well that's definitely over." Putting down her things on the table and grabbing the remote to the TV she said, "Georgia. The Kyles, Dennis and Lacey were murdered an hour ago in their suburban Atlanta home."
"An hour ago?" Hotch asked.
"The police were on-scene unusually fast."
"Why?" Derek asked as he stirred his coffee.
JJ looked back at the TV. This case was unusual…"One of the unsubs called them and told them that the other was about to murder the victims."
"You're kidding?"
JJ shrugged her shoulders, "From inside the house. According to the dispatcher, the first male sounded terrified and begged them to get there because the other, who they both identified as Raphael, was about to kill the sinners that lived there."
"Sinners?" Hotch said.
She nodded, "The 911 dispatch is going to send Garcia a copy of the tape."
"How fast was the police response time?" Spencer asked as he leafed through the papers on the table.
She dropped another whammy on the team. "Four minutes, twenty-six seconds." Derek raised his eyebrows. "During which time, Raphael managed to do this." Clicking buttons on the remote, she pulled up photos from the crime scene. Garcia cringed and looked away as the others analyzed them.
Emily set her coffee down, "Four and a half minutes?"
JJ nodded, "Mr. Kyle is a millionaire. His company is one of the largest employers in the community. There's gonna be media coverage." She had already spoken with a news caster in Atlanta that knew most of the details already. Turning back to the TV, she clicked another button, "Also when they arrived, the police found this displayed prominently on the bed." A worn piece of paper highlighted in yellow popped up on the screen.
"Revelation. Chapter 6. Verse 8." Hotch said.
Derek took the coffee stirrer he had been chewing on out of his mouth. "They're killing sinners. These guys are on a mission."
Reid looked down at his lap, "Mission based killers will not stop killing."
Hotch read off the paper, "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death…"
"And Hell followed with him." Gideon finished.
There was silence in the room. Emily was staring into her coffee and Hotch was compiling the papers into one folder on the table. "Wheels up in 30."
JJ hurried back to her office to grab a few extra things. Some paper, some extra tea bags because the tea on the jet was awful, and her coat. She looked around and saw the stacks upon stacks of files eating up space on the table behind her desk. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how late she stayed, that pile never seemed to get any smaller. It was hard trying to keep up with the psychos in this world. Gathering her things she locked the door and headed out to the waiting SUVs in the parking garage.
JJ rode with Spencer and Derek to the airport. Emily had had to go get some things from her apartment and Hotch and Gideon had driven her. On arrival, the three agents boarded the lone plane on the tarmac at this hour. Spencer sprawled out on the sofa and opened the folder containing the case file while Morgan manned the coffee machine. JJ sat down by Reid's feet, waiting for the others. Before she knew it, Emily, Hotch, and Gideon boarded the plane and they were off.
After gaining altitude and then leveling out, the team began to work on the case again. "This is a bad one, isn't it?" JJ heard Emily say.
Derek sighed, "Unsubs with a cause are never good."
A voice sounded out of the laptop on the table, "Pets, I just got the 911 call from the Georgia State Police." Garcia started to play the tape as JJ walked over to the table.
"911 what's your emergency?"
Heavy breathing can be heard…"1927 Chestnut Drive."
"I know where you're calling from, sir. What's your emergency?"
"He thinks they're too greedy. They have too much."
"Too much what?"
"Stuff. Possessions. Hurry!" A stutter is barely distinguishable.
"You're calling because these people have too much stuff?"
"No…I'm calling because Raphael…no…wait." A crash is heard.
A second voice comes on the line. "That's enough."
"I don't want to!"
"He's calling because Raphael is going to kill the sinners that live here."
"I'm sorry; did you say somebody is killing someone?" The call ends.
The team just stares at each other. "Well…unsub one definitely sounds frightened. Maybe he's doing this against his will?" Emily states.
Gideon shakes his head, "I doubt it." Emily looks back at him, confused. "He whispered."
"He could have called out to save them instead of calling 911," Hotch continued.
Derek shrugged, "But if he had a gun to his head…"
"If he had a gun to his head, why would he have dialed 911?" Gideon countered.
JJ shifted the conversation, "The second unsub said that Raphael was going to kill someone. Is there a third?"
Spencer interjected in his rambling-random-facts tone-of-voice, "Speaking in the third-person is not uncommon for an unsub. Ted Bundy gave thorough accounts of his murders but he never actually admitted to doing it. He always said 'The Killer'."
Penelope drew the attention back to her little screen, "OK, I'm going to run the name, Raphael, through all of the Georgia state criminal databases as well as our own."
Hotch nodded, "Thanks, Garcia."
"Ever so welcome, my liege," She said before the screen went blank.
Sighing, Hotch said, "We have a killing team on a mission in rural Georgia and we know what that means."
Derek picked up crime scene photos, "They're not going to stop until their mission is complete."
"We need to hit the ground running. JJ, we need an inside picture of the victims. Victomology can be critically important in a mission-based killing."
"Got it," JJ said as she walked to the back of the plane. She grabbed her cellphone and dialed the Atlanta Police Department. Sifting through the facts of this case, she tried to sort out what was most important to ask first from the detectives.
"We land in less than an hour, everyone try and get some rest," Hotch finished giving orders and sat back down on the couch. Everyone else delved deeper into their respective duties.
After having confirmed that an evidence board with key facts about the Kyle family was being made, JJ sat back and closed her eyes. This was going to be a rough one. Pulling her feet up close to her chest and leaning against the side of the plane, she tried to catch a few minutes of sleep before the plane landed in Atlanta and the work began.
