Chapter 1: Stuck... at home

" Bruscamente la tarde se ha aclarado / Porque ya cae la lluvia minuciosa / Cae o cayó. La lluvia es una cosa / Que sin duda sucede en el pasado".

– Fragmento del poema La lluvia, de Jorge Luis Borges

"The afternoon has brightened up at last / For rain is falling, sudden and minute. / Falling or fallen. There is no dispute: / Rain is a thing that happens in the past."

– Extract from the poem Rain, by Jorge Luis Borges

Quantico (Friday)

Some of the members of the BAU were standing near the map pinned to a board in the middle of the bullpen, waiting to see if Dr Spencer Reid could figure out the geographical profile of the latest UnSub who was breaking havoc "in their own backyard", as Morgan had phrased it the day before. Hotch looked on with his never-wavering frown, already calling Jessica to ask her if she could stay with Jack a while longer. JJ was on the phone with Will letting him know about the latest development –or their lack thereof– and their impending need of a sitter for the weekend, considering it was a Friday, and the pace at which they were going was not great at all. Morgan was with Garcia in her lair, both desperately trying to find something –anything, really– that will help them with this case. In the meantime, Dr Lewis and Rossi were working with the police at the last crime scene, trying to gather as much information as possible before the black clouds that were looming over their heads decided to destroy the little evidence that was there. Everyone looked –and indeed was– exhausted... and it was only 10 am.

This UnSub was attacking seemingly unrelated 50-year-old men in their own homes and he did not care whether their families were still there or not, or whether it was the crack of dawn or the middle of the afternoon. However scattered his killing seemed to be, this guy knew what he was doing: each victim had been found bound to a chair by expertly-tied knots made with generic rope that was available for purchase at any given store all around the country, and they were all killed execution-style with a single bullet, right in between their eyes. He left no witnesses and little to no evidence other than the bodies. No one saw or heard a thing: not a person, not a car, nothing.

The BAU had been contacted on Thursday after the second killing and had decided they would take a look into it the next day, but that Friday morning greeted them with a very early phone call saying that there was another body... thus making it the third one in the short span of two weeks. The guy was escalating quickly and they only had the places where the bodies had been found and the victims' families to help them figure something out.

And, to add to Agent Hotcher's never-ending list of reasons to frown about, the new intern that was to start that week had called him on Monday saying her father had passed away and that she was to accompany her mother back to their home town in England where her father had asked to be buried in the family vault. Hotch understood the severity of her situation and told her to take all the time she needed to settle everything down, but right now... he wished they had a fresh pair of eyes to help them. Really, no one knew they were lacking a new member, only Garcia did, as she had been the one to escort the new girl to his office, but he made her promise not to tell anyone –not even Morgan– so as not to divulge the reason why she couldn't make it to work for the time being.

Yet, Hotch's problems didn't end there. Apart from the director calling him several times a day to know if there were any developments on the case, the media was outside the building 24/7 to try and get any scoop on what the FBI was doing to catch "the Pro", as they had labelled the UnSub. That morning, when they all got to the building at 6 am and heard the journalists asking them about "the Pro", Rossi started muttering about what an "unoriginal name" it was under his breath all the while instead of helping out with the profile, until Hotch decided to send him and Dr Lewis to the crime scene to stop his whining. JJ had laughed for the first time since waking up when Hotch told her why he had done that, with a smirk plastered on his face: "even senior agents need to be told off and sent away sometimes".

In reality, the whole situation was already complicated enough with the public being in a constant state of sheer panic, but the media being present everywhere they went was an unwanted bonus they needed to get rid of if their aim was to make any progress at all today before another person turned up dead. What they didn't know was, as the two agents came back from the scene of the crime with gloomy expressions on their faces and as Dr Reid called everyone to look at the map, that the UnSub had already found his next two targets.

A/N: Hi! Thank you for taking the time to read my story. This is going to be a slow-paced story, so hang in there if you do enjoy it :D

*Time-wise, this story begins in January; show-wise, it would be right after "Entropy" (S11E11). I'm disregarding everything that happens in the eleventh season after that episode.