Chapter Two

"Jayje. Jayje sweetie. Time to get up and at em, our flight is in an hour and a half." Penelope Garcia, the BAU's technical analyst, frowned as she gently knocked on her best friend's hotel room door. It wasn't like JJ to be late, as she prided herself on always being prompt. She was supposed to show up in the lobby with her stuff packed ten minutes ago, and Penelope was concerned.

Garcia went to the hotel's front desk and, after explaining the situation, got a spare key to JJ's room. She had kept JJ's absence in the lobby quiet because she knew from JJ's location last night that she had been drinking again, and she figured that JJ just had a bad hangover and had slept through her alarm. As she slid the keycard into the lock and swung open the door, she became increasingly concerned to see that her friend's luggage hadn't been packed. Garcia opened the door to the suite's bathroom and expected Jayje to be hunched over the toilet, but she saw no one. Garcia was becoming increasingly alarmed. She rushed back down to the lobby and called Hotch over.

"Hotch. JJ went out to drink last night and never got back to her hotel room. Have you seen her since yesterday?" Garcia's tone was grave, the antithesis of her usual bubbly one.

"No, and I've already asked Rossi, Morgan, and Prentiss. Why didn't you tell me she was out drinking?" Hotch admonished Garcia with his usual brusqueness.

"I was worried you all would think less of her. She's been having a really tough time lately. But right now, she's gone." Garcia was on the verge of tears.

Ever calm and collected, Hotch asked "Have you checked her location recently? Maybe her phone is still on."

In Garcia's panic, she hadn't even thought to check JJ's phone. When she did, she saw that JJ had left the bar, then seemed to be in a moving vehicle for about a half mile before her phone's signal abruptly stopped. This was bad. This was very bad. Someone had taken JJ.

A single tear spilled over Penelope's eyelid, smudging her carefully applied mascara and eyeliner. Her best friend was gone and she could have prevented it.