A/N: I'm so sorry it took me so long to update! I just finished my junior year and things were really hectic. I am really happy about all the positive attention this has gotten. This chapter is a bit short in comparison to the others, but I promise that future chapters will be longer. I hope you enjoy and review!
Hotch and Rossi were in the room that had been set aside for them and their team. It was spacious, and had three glass walls so they could see the main part of the police station from inside. There was a couch underneath the window. The table they were seated at was rectangular, and faced a large whiteboard and bulletin board where they had pinned the pictures of the victims. Hotch and Rossi were on opposite sides of the table, Hotch facing the far wall and Rossi facing the inside of the station.
"The victims are all white middle-aged men," said Hotch.
"Fairly fit, would be hard to overpower," added Rossi, "The autopsy report didn't pick up any traces of a sedative, or blunt force trauma to the head."
"Our unsub must be physically strong...who do you think the victims represent?"
Just as Rossi was about to answer, he spotted the rest of the team entering the police station. His eyes furrowed when he spotted a teenager with a black eye walking in with them.
Noting Rossi's expression, Hotch turned around and, spotting the boy himself, spoke, "Do you know who that kid is?"
"No idea."
"He looks about seventeen," said Hotch, "could he be the son of one of the victims?"
"All of the victims had kids, but only three had sons, and none of them were older than fourteen."
Hotch lowered his voice when the team began to walk in the room with the teenager. "What does he have to do with the case then?"
Rossi shrugged.
"Go ahead and sit on the couch," said Morgan to the kid. The teenager sat down and set his bag down next to him. He began to bounce his leg up and down nervously. Morgan, Prentiss, and JJ sat down and leaned in to talk to Hotch and Rossi.
Morgan decided to explain what had happened, "This is Spencer. We saw him on our way here. He was walking alone and it was getting dark, so we told him to go home. We ended up having to tell him about the case, and he told us that he got a threatening letter in the mailbox the other day."
"Why didn't he report the letter when he got it?" Rossi asked.
"He thought it was a prank," Prentiss explained, "He thought that some kids from school sent it to him just to freak him out."
They were whispering, they didn't want to make Spencer feel uncomfortable, but they didn't want to make him wait outside either. JJ glanced over at him and saw that he had taken a book out of his bag. He was turning the pages so quickly that she didn't believe that he was actually reading. She figured he was probably listening to their conversation but trying to look like he wasn't.
"Why would the unsub send a threatening letter to a seventeen-year-old boy?" asked Hotch. "He's randomly attacking middle-aged men. It doesn't fit with his M.O.."
"I know, we think there might be more to this unsub than we originally thought," said Morgan.
"So what's the plan?" asked Rossi, "Question him and send him home?"
"We can't do that, His father is on a business trip and his mother…" Prentiss shook her head sadly. Hotch's eyes widened and he glanced up at the kid to see if he had heard him. He was reading, or rather, turning pages very quickly and scanning them with his eyes, but it didn't look like he had heard him.
Hotch sighed, "Where is he going to stay then? He can't stay overnight here at the station."
JJ spoke up, "I was thinking that Emily and I could share a hotel room and he could have the extra one."
Hotch raised his eyebrows, and looked at Spencer once more. He spoke to the teenager, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible, "Spencer, could you please step outside the room for just a minute? I'd like to speak to my team in private."
Spencer hastily nodded and left the room, taking his book with him.
Once Spencer left, Hotch spoke again, "I'm not sure we're allowed to do that, and even if we were allowed to, we should really hand him over to someone who can put him in protective custody."
"No," said Morgan, "We shouldn't."
"Why not?"
Morgan looked almost surprised Hotch had asked him, although it was inevitable. "I don't know," he admitted, "It just wouldn't feel right. He's seventeen, to be by himself with some people he doesn't know guarding him would probably make him uncomfortable."
"And how is it any different for him to be by himself with us?"
"He's comfortable with us, I'm not sure why, but he is."
"He's so scared, Hotch," Prentiss added, "I don't think we should contribute to that."
Hotch looked to his team, then at the door, then once more to his team, "Alright. Something like this can never happen again, do I make myself clear? We have to follow procedure in this kind of situation from this point forward."
JJ, Prentiss, and Morgan smiled, and Rossi, who had been listening intently for the majority of the conversation, spoke up.
"I don't mean to question the kid, he's probably been through quite an ordeal, but this note seems out of place. It doesn't fit with the unsubs M.O. at all. I don't mean that I think Spencer is lying, but we can't form emotional attachments to him and let it cloud our judgement."
"Dave's right. We still treat this like any other investigation, and trust judgement before people."
Morgan and Prentiss nodded and Hotch earned a "Yes sir" from JJ.
"Let him back in," said the unit chief, "We've kept him waiting a while now."
JJ walked to the door, opened it, and poked her head out to tell Spencer it was okay to come back in.
He walked in, carrying the large book he was reading before.
"Now that we worked that out," Hotch said, "Let's get started."
