Disclaimer: I own everything. Obviously.
The Act of Lingering.
It makes no sense, Hotch thought, as he sat stoically at one of the station's desks, one that he had commandeered since hearing of Emily's abduction. The UnSub's type is blonde, blue eyed. The only thing that Emily matched about the typology was height. It just flat out made no logical sense. He gazed intensely at their 'UnSub' wall profile. Victims' photographs, scene measurements and year-old ecological reports on the only two dump sites they had knowledge of, a map JJ had made of Alleghany County citing places of abduction; home, work and other. He knew to make the diagram complete he should add another pin representing Emily; he couldn't bring himself to do it. So he chose instead to remove the pin representing Betty Sumner. The girl who'd gone to Richmond for a shopping spree. He was still holding the pin as he began to turn the facts over in his mind. There was something missing from their profile, something incredibly important. Hotch had a flashback to last night, dinner at the restaurant. He'd known even then that Emily was having one of her special brand of UnSub intuition, but she hadn't had a breakthrough with that. Perhaps she was jolted out of her reverie by the 'apple incident'. It wasn't as funny now. Hotch could feel his resolve slipping. He desperately wanted to run his hands over his face and slip his fingers into his hair so he could at least try to relieve a little tension. But that kind of behavior, showing any sort of frustration, would only add to the pressures already felt by this town. The local police seeing the leader of the specialist FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit losing his composure would not help anything or anyone. He steeled his body, sharpened his gaze and focused on his breathing. Garcia had better find something soon. If anyone could pull a rabbit out of a hat at a time like this it would be Penelope.
UNSUBCRIMINALMINDS
Rossi had been the closest to the phone so he got received the honor of picking up. Garcia had found some information on Emily. There was a problem though and she wasn't willing to have it gone over multiple times; her voice sounded odd, disappointed. Garcia demanded that the whole team be together for when she sent the in data and explained. Rossi decided the best course of action was to simply agree. He knew how difficult it was to get Garcia to do something she didn't want to, besides Garcia was back at Quantico and if she didn't want to send the information to them, they sure as hell weren't going to be able to find it themselves. Immediately Hotch had risen, following Rossi without question. They hopped into the car, arrived at the hotel within twenty minutes and were setting up the laptop to connect with Garcia in Hotch's suite when within seconds it seemed the entire BAU team minus Emily had surrounded the laptop like a DEA bust on two drug smugglers cutting forty kilos of heroin.
"So…" Garcia began, flicking a brightly colored rubber band between her fingers, "That place you guys are at, hacker's nightmare."
"We're in Alleghany County, not Columbia." Morgan answered with a pained grin. Pained because of the situation. Grin because of Garcia.
"Look, I've done my best and considering what I've found. I should resign."
"What? Garcia," JJ interrupted.
"No, look. It's my job to bring you guys the best information, the clearest pictures. I'm your 411 on all things digital. I get you guys to places it would take red tape years to even acknowledge. But this…I feel useless. Emily's missing and all I can offer is some piddly four-frame image thirty meters south of the border!"
She looked stressed out.
"Hey baby girl. Whatever you've got for us is going to help us. If this is all you've found, then imagine where we would be without you. Ok?"
"They're not in Mexico are they?" Reid inquired. Garcia smiled a little bit, sneezed and then continued.
"No, the only place within a hundred meter radius of the hotel that had any sort of system I could get into was a car dealership. Old school. It didn't even have a running stream of code; it takes like one photo every twenty or thirty seconds. Luckily, someone had integrated the ancient analogue channel with a pretty…sophisticated is too strong a word; I'd say an above average central processing unit. It was actually pretty ingenious, they'd taken the micro-processor chip and converted the-"
"Whoa, Garcia focus." Morgan jumped in effectively stopping her rant of computer tech-talk.
"I managed to find two cameras that were pointing in the right direction. So I have four viable photos, I'm still looking to see if the UnSub approached from the same angle earlier in the day but I'm not hopeful. As you can or I should say will see, the texture of the photo is not very helpful. It's the best I could do; I'm currently running them all through a pixilation program. I'm hoping it'll clear up the focus. I knew you would all want to see what I've got before then though. These photos, I wouldn't give them out to the press or as handouts for identifying the UnSub or anything, but they should give you at least an idea of what happened once he got Emily out into the street." With that last remark, the laptop screen changed, they were no longer looking at Garcia but at a snowy street with an uninterrupted and angled line of sight to the front door of the hotel. There were a couple of cars parked, one or two in motion, but quite clearly if a little obscurely was Emily Prentiss in a summery white dress leading a man out of the hotel, looking very much like a lovely but freezing couple. The second photograph portrayed a similar scenario; the man courteously opening one of the parked car's doors and assisting Emily into it.
"Those two were from the first camera," Garcia's voice said through the laptop. "This second camera shows a slightly different situation."
The third photograph depicted a similar version of the first, only this time there was a couple of degrees difference in camera angle. The team could clearly see the gun pressed between the couples' bodies, the hand holding Emily's arm tightly. The last and final photo, was taken immediately before the UnSub closed the car door on Emily. In it they could see the dull smudge encircling her arm attaching her to the hand rest on the car door. She had been handcuffed to the car. Even if she somehow managed to incapacitate the UnSub, if he didn't have the keys she'd never get out of the car.
Poor, poor Emily. Everyone should be handcuffed to a car by an UnSub at least once in their life, wouldn't you agree?
Arc