It took them two more weeks to get any solid lead that would get them that much closer to their missing colleague and friend. By now the whole FBI more or less was aware of their situation. And how couldn't they be? Hotch was a good Unit Chief, but even he could not explain the disappearance of his Tech for more than four weeks and why he and the rest of the BAU team was frequenting the Tech Pool with all sort of requests.
After an initial issue with Strauss, who seemed to think that Penelope was involved as an accomplice, they got the go-ahead to do everything they could to get to the bottom of this.
"I found them…" one of the tech's one morning more or less happily announced.
"Who did you find?" Rossi asked carefully. Too many times over the past few weeks had they ended up with allegedly some break-through which ended nowhere.
"Lefèvre?" Emily asked, and saw the tech shake her head.
"Penelope?" Morgan asked hopeful, but Victoria shook her head again. Over the past few weeks Morgan had been at Penelope's place almost every night, figuring it was the only place he really wanted to be right now. Not because of the very small and slim chance that she might just one day end up in front of her front door again surprisingly, but because he somehow felt good when he was laying on her couch, and looking at old pictures of them.
When Victoria was shaking her head at Morgan's suggestion the team once again figured this was something that wouldn't get them anywhere again.
"So, what did you find?" Hotch asked, half absent-minded, focused on the files in front of him.
"Payton Garcia," Victoria simply said and saw all of a sudden five heads look up at her in surprise.
"How did you do that?" Emily asked excitedly.
"I'm not sure you really… um… want to know the details of my slightly … um… illegal activities in regards of this…" Victoria started, but was interrupted by Hotch.
"Probably the less we know the better it is." He smiled encouragingly at the tech.
"Long story short, we found old college yearbooks from three of the four Garcia guys and it turns out Payton had a very strange nickname during college. Apparently – and don't ask me why, because I don't know – he was known as Payton 'Lancelot' Garcia. Out on a whim I just wanted to see whether there are any credit cards registered under that name and there is. One to be precise and it was used just a few times, the last just a few days ago," the tech explained and saw the BAU team looking at her with a mixture of expectation and impatience.
"Getting access to the video surveillance – which is stored online – for the day the card was used, I got a positive match to one of the guys in the pictures from Penelope's computer. It definitely is her brother," Victoria announced.
"Where was that?" Rossi asked.
"Small town in Utah, close to the Arizonian border."
The tech put the pictures she got from hacking the surveillance system of the store on the table, together with copies of the pictures they recovered from Penelope's computer. "There is no sign of Penelope though. I checked the footage a few days back and forth, wanting to make sure that she wasn't there as well. No such luck.
Hotch just nodded at the new information.
"Put a trace on the card, so the next time it is in use we get notified right away," he directed at Victoria, before turning towards the team.
"The rest of you get your go-bags. We are heading for Utah. Takeoff is in half an hour," he said into the round, before heading out of the door, hopeful they finally got closer to finding their missing tech.