Rossi entered Hotch's office briskly, barely knocking his knuckles against the wood of the door as he went, to signal his arrival. Hotch looked up from the mountain of files that surrounded him.
"It's an emergency."
Hotch nodded, he trusted Rossi and didn't need to hear anymore, "Tell everyone to get ready, we'll get caught up on the way."
Rossi let out his breath, relief flooding his veins and turned out the door, rushing to tell the others.
"An old buddy of mine from college rang, he's a sheriff now, twenty dead bodies in three days. There's a killing machine on the loose in his town. They thought that they could handle it but when 12 were killed on day three, Grady knew they needed help."
"Twenty?" Prentiss asked in disbelief, her brow furrowed deeply in grime fascination.
Rossi merely nodded as Morgan spoke up, "How were they killed?"
JJ answered as she turned her laptop screen to face the gang, "I just received the files."
Images popped up on the screen; bodies, badly beaten and disfigured. Blood and bruises littered the bodies of men and women, differing races and ages.
"They were all beaten using bare hands and surrounding objects." JJ read.
"Surrounding objects? Where were they attacked?" Reid asked.
"Homes, bars, the street and a graveyard."
"So, the M.O.s are all different, the locations are different and so is the victim pool," Prentiss said grimly. "Who, or what, the hell could do this?"