A/N: Thank you all very much for the reviews of the last chapter. They mean a lot - every single one of them...

One week turned into two, and when Penelope still didn't show after being gone for almost two weeks without any word or notice the team started to get suspicious. They had wondered already quite early in this, but figured if it was some sort of family emergency Penelope would surely have her thoughts scattered all over the place- everywhere but calling back her friends. But when two weeks came around something just didn't feel right.

"Have you heard anything about Penelope?" Emily was the first to ask on Monday, when walking into the briefing room.

Hotch just shook his head. "No, she hasn't contacted anyone. I tried seeing if HR had heard anything without raising too many flags, but it looks like she never called in to extend the week personal leave."

"That just isn't like her," Emily muttered, seeing everyone look at her. "What? You tell me that doesn't seem weird and suspicious to you? She just disappearing without any notice, word, message? Anything? Come on, you must have thought the same…."

"The old lady at her apartment building had mentioned something about Penelope visiting her brother. Maybe we should just check in with him and see what's going on," Morgan suggested, seeing everyone agree with his idea.

"Does anyone know him?" Hotch asked, seeing all his colleagues shake their heads.

"I know she has four. And I know one of them is called Parker. He had been visiting her a few years back. But that's all I know. Surprisingly she actually hadn't said much about either of them, or her family for that matter," Emily said.

"Okay, I'll get a tech on it. They should be able to find them fairly quickly and then we can bring this behind us and get clarification on what's going on," Hotch said, gathering all of his papers and leaving the room.

Two hours later and all of the available techs of the Tech Pool had to admit defeat.

"It is… as … well, it is as if they don't exist," was all Alyson said. "I mean, there is nothing in the system that would tell me who they are. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. No credit cards, no credit histories, not even driver licenses. No Utility bills. Just…. Nothing. If I wouldn't know better I'd say someone made them just… 'untraceable'. It actually is an old hacker trick, which requires skills. But if you don't want someone to be found, you can just kinda erase them in certain ways."

"I thought once it is online it can't be deleted. At least that's what Penelope has been saying all these years," Hotch answered slightly irritated. How could it be that none of the twenty techs in that pool could find any sort of information about their tech's brothers or family?

"She isn't completely wrong. But there are certain … um …ways to wipe someone off the net. It requires a bit of work and takes a bit of time, and a lot of skill, plenty of it, but you can do it…"

"So none of you techs can give us anything?" Hotch asked.

"Well… I mean, we can't tell you where her brothers live or what their names are, but one of us was able to trace her in regards of the flight she took when she left a little bit more than two weeks ago," Alyson announced and Hotch felt for the first time some sort of silver lining.

"She flew to Phoenix. We tried to maybe narrow it down, but with almost a million people having the last name Garcia and Arizona being one of the three states with the highest quantity of the last name Garcia it didn't really go far…" Alyson explained, handing him several loose sheets of papers with their results and seeing Aaron Hotchner's expression. She certainly wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

Most of the tech's the FBI recruited were IT graduates from university, or people with similar degrees. They all were good, but it was no secret that Penelope had no degree in IT, but was a hacker. They all were good, but Penelope was better. Even today, after almost eight years with the FBI, she could still teach all of them a thing or two. And Alyson was certain that if Penelope didn't want to be found, she couldn't be found. Not through the regular IT ways anyway.

The female tech was about to leave SSA Hotchner's office, when she heard him speaking to her one last time.

"I know this might sound strange, but I would appreciate it if you could keep this all under wraps for a while longer, Alyson? At least until we have some sort of an idea what is going on…" she heard him say, and was surprised for a moment. Technically she was required to report any sort of unusual tracing or follow-up, but then again Penelope was one of their own and she could feel that Aaron Hotchner didn't just ask her to keep quiet about this for the sake of the department, but for the sake of his friend.

"Certainly, sir. I'll inform the other techs as well. It shouldn't be much of a problem," she said, before leaving his office, hoping he would be successful in finding her.