Essential listening – America's Suitehearts, by Fallout Boy

0o0

Grace was impressed at how quickly the mall, with its many entrances and exits, had been locked down. The Bureau's rapid deployment team had rolled out, got everyone calmed down and contained, and the building locked down in under fourteen minutes.

Then Franklin, who most of the team knew by name or reputation, had called Hotch, who had called JJ, who had got them all out of their back yards and living rooms and into the cars of whomever lived nearest.

It was one of the bonuses of a case coming up in Virginia, Grace thought. They could be on the scene, as it were, after even the barest hint of trouble, and everyone knew how vital the first twenty-four hours after a child abduction could be.

"What've you got?"

Franklin was waiting for them; he and the other members of his team were on high alert, ready to hand them all radios and run through a briefing.

"We've been in lockdown for almost twenty minutes," Franklin told them. "My team's already in motion."

"Another female, same age, same time of day, taken from essentially the same location," Prentiss summarised.

Grace accepted a radio from one of the CARD team members, who peeled off to rejoin the containment team. She clipped it to her hip.

"What makes you sure Katie Jacobs is still in the building?" Morgan asked.

"The mall's got cameras installed at every entrance and exit," Director Franklin explained briskly. "Surveillance video confirms Katie entering the building, but no sign of her leaving. Security paged her over the intercom and the initial sweep came up empty."

"Whoever killed Jessica Davies last week left that mall with her because he wanted time with his victim, and privacy," said Reid.

"Assuming it's the same offender he wouldn't stray from his MO," Hotch qualified. "He wouldn't leave here without his victim."

"Unless he panicked when he heard her name paged," Grace argued.

No-one needed her to finish the thought. They'd all seen the pictures of Jessica Davies; Katie Jacobs was only six.

"Either way," said Hotch, "our priority is Katie, right now."

"And if Katie's still under this roof, so is her abductor," said JJ.

"Garcia, report to the mall security office," barked Hotch, issuing commands. "Reid, Morgan, I want you to find the Head of Security, I need all data from every search team. Pearce –"

Her head raised slightly in acknowledgement.

"I want you to liaise with Franklin's search teams, try to cover as much ground as you can. You guys start with Katie's parents," Hotch continued, modelling to Prentiss and JJ. "We'll treat them all as a neighbourhood," he instructed, as they made to hurry off to their allotted destinations. "We'll separate into areas of control."

He caught Grace's arm as she made to stride away and pulled her to one side.

"Will your – uh –" he glanced at Franklin, who was doing his best not to eavesdrop "– be any use here?"

"Not if she's alive."

"Let me know." He gave her a brisk nod and released her arm. "As much ground as you can."

She nearly saluted.

0o0

The floorplans for the mall – and there were five of them, one for each level including basement and roof – were vast. So big you couldn't lay them all out on one table. Spencer grimaced at the sheer enormity of the task ahead. That was a lot of hiding places.

"One hundred and seventeen stores, sixty-nine storage closets, seventy-three dressing rooms, six men's rooms, six ladies' rooms," Ms Samuels, head of mall security listed, pointing them out. "Access to the roof via the North and South stairwells. Seven restaurants, each with separate kitchen and four elevators."

Morgan nodded, frowning deeply.

"Every team's gonna need a copy o' this," he said.

Spencer hoped the copies would be smaller, for everybody's sake.

0o0

"Katie was last seen by her cousin in the arcade about twenty minutes ago," Agent Valencia was briefing them on the run and Emily appreciated her efficiency. "She was wearing jeans, a green skirt, grey sneakers and ponytails."

Their progress across the food court was briefly halted by a local officer with a sheaf of paper.

"Registered offenders located within a forty-five mile radius," he said passing it to Emily, who looked it over and gave it right back.

"Okay, run this against current and former employees as well," she said, and they took off again.

They didn't have time to waste.

0o0

"You'll be with the Delta team," said her escort, nodding in the direction of the fourth of the CARD teams on the scene.

They were suited and booted, and ready for action; a couple of them looked at Grace as though they suspected that she, in her blouse and slacks, was not. Wisely, they kept their mouths shut.

"You're BAU?" the nearest human tank rumbled. He had a pleasant speaking voice that surprised her. She found herself wondering what he and his team looked like out of all that body armour.

Hell, she'd probably passed them in the corridor.

"Mmm-hmm," she said, eyeing them up. Behind their visors, she suspected they were doing the same. Fortunately, their leader was one of those agents who had been in the FBI long enough to know that anyone with 'SSA' in front of their name was good enough at their job to be trusted.

"SSA Ivan Summers. CARD Delta team Unit Chief."

"SSA Grace Pearce, BAU. General pain in the arse."

They shook hands; the man behind the helmet grinned.

"Got much search and rescue experience?"

Grace tied her hair back in a business-like sort of way.

"You could call it that…"

0o0

"This animal so much as looks at me wrong when we get him," Franklin growled, leaving the statement open, but not subject to any doubt.

Hotch glanced at his friend.

"I read the Jessica Davies report, I know you found the remains last week," he said, as they climbed the escalator, eyes on the crowd.

"Twenty years, never seen anything like it," he said, and Hotch could hear the tension there. Odds were, James Franklin was not sleeping well at night. "Can't get the image outta my head. I joined the Bureau to rescue people, not stand over another dead kid today. I couldn't handle it."

"Well, hopefully you won't have to."

They surveyed the huddles of bewildered, frightened people below them. Any one of them might have taken Katie Jacobs; any one of them might have stashed her away somewhere until the heat cooled off.

Or worse.

"It's all chance, really," Franklin observed, bitterly. "Wrong place and the wrong time. No logic. No sense." He sighed. "How's a parent reconcile that?"

Hotch frowned.

"They never do."

0o0

He was looking at her like she'd grown a second head. While she was aware her general aura of awesomeness was too much for some people to handle, Penelope didn't think that this was the case in this instance. The guy was verging on the sarcastic and she knew she'd wounded his professional pride by asking, but really there was no time for niceties right now. Somebody's baby was missing.

"You want every inch of surveillance footage?" he asked, incredulous.

Penelope felt like smacking him around the back of his head, but instead she pressed her lips together and took a breath before replying, in an effort to bolster her karma.

"Yes," she said, exasperated. "Because I need to examine it frame by frame to see if there's anything in the background you guys missed." She didn't have time for this. She marched over to her equipment and started setting it up. "I also need a joystick controller, video transmitters, a coaxial cable and a programmable port*." She paused. Her spider senses were telling her nothing was happening behind her. "And I don't mean that hypothetically."

She snapped her fingers at him, hoping he got the message, and got to work.

0o0

"Mrs Jacobs' cell phone had Katie's picture on it," said Agent Valencia, handing a copy to them both. JJ felt her stomach clench. The girl in the photo looked so small. "Mall security helped us make copies."

"Okay," said Emily. "We need to get one of these to every search team, every officer, every patron – potential witnesses need to know who we're looking for, too."

Agent Valencia nodded and hurried away.

JJ watched her go, glad they had CARD on the ground this time.

"The problem is," Emily mused, looking around. "Our UnSub could be any one of them."

JJ shook her head. A situation like this was impossible to call. Her eyes lighted on several adults clustered around one of the columns, alongside a teenage boy. All five of them looked like they were under extreme stress. One of the men had an arm around his wife, who was crying through sheer terror. JJ glanced at Emily, knowing she would follow her.

"There's her parents."

They reached them roughly as the local officer who had been with them stepped away, which was good. It meant they had their full attention. She took a deep breath. Keeping them all on track in a situation like this was going to be an uphill struggle.

"Hi, we're agents Jareau and Prentiss, with the BAU," she said, trying to keep her voice in that golden range between professional and compassionate that kept people listening. She nodded to the two other adults; there was enough similarity between the men to be brothers. "You must be Katie's aunt and uncle. This can't be easy. We're here to walk you through this."

0o0

The full scale reproduction of the mall blueprints was going on all around them. Derek studied the maps with a sinking heart.

"Well, aside from the stairwells, storage closet and hundreds of shops, there's a whole underbelly beneath our feet." It was hard not to sound too defeated, but realistically the mall was an abductor's dream. If he kept out of the way of the search teams and kept moving through the service areas he could probably stay hidden for a week, and all the while, little Katie Jacobs would be at his mercy. "Subterranean levels, air ducts, boiler rooms…"

"Realistically, it'll take at least three hours to cover this place," Ms Samuels told them.

Damn.

"Realistically, we have less than half that," he said aloud.

It pulled Samuels up short.

"How do you figure?" she asked with greater anxiety than before.

"Ninety-nine percent of abducted children who are killed die with in the first twenty-fours hours," Reid explained. "Seventy-five percent with in the first three hours, and last week – as law enforcement knows – Jessica Davies joined the forty-four percent of children abducted and killed with in the first hour."

Derek's phone went off and he answered it, hoping for good news.

"Yeah, whaddya got?"

0o0

"Okay, so this is surveillance footage off an exit camera outside the arcade," Garcia told him as he leaned over her screens.

"Well, can't you get a better angle?" he asked, staring at the black and white image.

"Sugar, I'm not London here," Garcia told him, huffily. "I can only work with what they have – and believe me when I tell you the 1980s just called. They want their security system back. Okay," she took a breath and pointed at the screen. "Look in the far right middle section, see the two ponytails?"

"Yeah, that's Katie," said Derek, heavily.

"Angle barely got an image of her, let alone who she was with."

"Can you enhance the image for me?"

Garcia stared at him like he was a crazy person and he guessed that this was one feat of technical wizardry too far, even for the sorceress that was Penelope Garcia.

"I can start the process," she told him, balking a little, "but we don't have that kinda time."

Derek sighed, staring at the last, grainy image of Katie Jacobs.

"Oh you are breakin' my heart baby girl," he said, heavily. "Where are you goin'?"

"And who are you with?"

0o0

"Katie?"

"Katie Jacobs?"

"Katie?"

They jogged through the basement level of the mall, checking air ducts, cupboards, even under desks. They couldn't afford to leave any stone unturned.

The CARD team were thorough and efficient, and Grace would have felt proud to know them, if she'd had time to think. Her world was fast becoming a maze of anonymous service tunnels. How much engineering did the underside of one shopping centre need, anyway?

"Katie Jacobs?"

"Katie?"

Moving swiftly through the packed, grimy service rooms, every member of Delta team listened out for any response, however weak, but all they heard was their own footfalls, echoing off the walls.

They passed by the door to the next section, an arbitrary demarcation of an area searched; SSA Summers called it in as clear. He caught Grace's expression.

"What?"

She shook her head, frowning. There was a lot of ground to cover here.

Too much.

"I just keep worrying that she might not be able to call out," she said slowly, glancing up at Ivan Summers' worried face, just visible beneath the visor. "Has the rapid deployment team got access to any K9 units?"

0o0o0o0

*My other half assures me that this list of stuff would not do what she makes it do. I'll put it down to her overwhelming aura of awesomeness :)