It's a strange world out there right now, my dearest hearts. Look after yourselves and the people around you, stay socially distant, keep washing your hands, and be your lovely selves. If anyone is feeling overwhelmed and needs a chat, I live on the book of face, twitter and instaham under my pen name, Lauren K. Nixon.

As Garcia's bookend quote said, from Penelope: 'Love all, trust a few, do harm to none' – William Shakespeare.

0o0

Essential Listening: Learn to Live, by Alice Merton

By the time they staggered outside, it was raining pretty hard, but it seemed like the majority of the storm had passed. Penelope turned her face towards it, enjoying the cool, shocking sensation on her skin. After the intense weirdness of the events inside the warehouse, it felt reassuringly normal – or as normal as it could be, given she was in her pyjamas, outside, and that was a fairly rare occurrence, by PG standards.

It was also washing some of the plaster dust off, which was a b0nus.

Reid, who was still limping a little, leaned against one of the few sections of wall that had remained upright and didn't seem to be too wobbly, and Penelope picked her way over to him, still nervously clutching her mop.

Grace moved off to one side, holding herself rather stiffly. Trying, Penelope thought, not to look threatening.

She jumped when she heard the first siren, and then again when the first of quite a few patrol cars screeched into view, their headlights cutting through the pre-dawn dark. They parked haphazardly and at speed; it was quite something to see a fleet of law enforcement vehicles (six police cruisers, two Bureau SUVS, two ambulances, an anonymous van probably belonging to the tactical unit and a fire truck) heading towards you at full tilt and trusting them all to stop in time. Which they did, of course, leaving Penelope with the curious feeling that she was very suddenly at the apex of all the emergency services in the area.

She blinked at the flashing lights, feeling that her brain really wasn't keeping up with proceedings, and then five worried BAU agents tumbled out of the SUVs and closed the distance between the cars and the three of them.

"Federal agents! Stand down," shouted Grace, and Penelope realised she was talking to Tactical, who were swarming out of their van like a small army of angry hornets. She held up her badge. "Suspect made off on foot. Don't know which way. I think he was hurt when the building came down."

"Alright, conduct a sweep of the area," the Tactical leader instructed, and the swarm moved off.

Somewhere nearby, a fireman was loudly asking about whether the remains of the warehouse was safe to enter, and someone else – possibly Detective Singh – was yelling something about keeping people back and setting up a cordon, but honestly, Penelope couldn't care because the rest of the team reached them and enveloped her in a many-armed hug.

She could hear them all talking at once, to both her and Reid, but she couldn't process more than the presence of the sound, until Reid pushed himself between her and Emily and said, "Okay, give her some room, you guys. A building just fell on us."

Gratefully, Penelope grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze, as the others backed up, mindful of his usual intolerance for personal contact, and he pressed her fingers in acknowledgement.

"Here," said JJ, gently taking the mop out of her hand.

"Oh no!" Penelope gasped. "I think I stole a mop!"

"It's okay," said Emily. "I don't think they'll press charges." Penelope gaped at her, wide-eyed for a moment, and she gave a sort of half-laugh. "I'm kidding!"

"Let's get you to an ambulance, okay, Babygirl?" said Morgan, moderating his tone to be gentler and keeping a hand on her shoulder, but staying arm's length away.

"I'm okay," she said, though her voice came out rather small. "I'm not hurt. Reid should get his leg looked at, and I think Grace f-fell," she added, shooting the latter a worried glance.

She appeared to be allowing a paramedic to clean a small cut on her forehead, quite purposefully not looking in their direction.

Now that everything had calmed down a little, and the rest of the team were bustling around, Hotch somewhere on the periphery, barking orders and looking tersely at anyone who stepped out of line, Penelope was struggling to believe anything that had just happened. It was like something out of a nightmare.

"We've got Reid," said Rossi, and he and Emily moved to help him.

"I can walk, I'm okay," he said, a touch snappily.

"Alright, Junior G," said Emily, though she kept her tone teasing. "We were worried about you."

"I know, I'm sorry," he said, subsiding. "That was just –" He shared a glance with Penelope. "A lot."

"Mm-hmm," she agreed, letting Morgan put an arm around her shoulders and escort her towards the ambulance.

"Which is why they need to check you out, Mama," he said gently. "You might be in shock, and I need my Goddess of wisdom and miracles in tip top condition, okay? For me?"

"For you," she agreed.

"Good girl."

One paramedic wrapped her in a foil blanket, while the other checked out Reid's leg.

"It's mostly bruised pride," the doctor said, with a grimace, and the paramedic nodded.

"You'll have some real bruises, too, and it's going to be uncomfortable to walk on for a little while. I can give you some codeine, if –"

"No, I'm good, thanks," he said. "I – uh – don't like taking opioids."

He bit his lip, avoiding their gaze, but the paramedic didn't appear to notice. Penelope looked away.

Minutes passed in a strangely muted rush. People came and went outside the ambulance. The paramedics left to confer and make notes for their reports – and presumably to decide whether to keep their patients.

Morgan crooked his finger under Penelope's chin and gently raised it until she was looking at him. She hadn't even realising she was zoning out, but she supposed that was what shock did to a brain.

"Hey," he said softly. "You okay in there?"

"Um, I think so?" she said, but truthfully, she wasn't sure.

Being specifically targeted and hunted by a skin-flaying maniac was bad enough without also discovering that both he and one of your best friends wouldn't have been out of place in the Triwizard Tournament. It was, as Reid had so eloquently said, a lot.

"I gotta go check in with Hotch and the others," said Derek. "Are you gonna be okay in here?"

Penelope nodded, even though she wanted him to stay and give her another hug, and maybe never go away.

"Alright. Pretty boy?"

Reid glanced up from the max-strength ibuprofen packet the paramedic had thrust in his hand. "Yeah, man. I'll look out for her."

Derek patted him on the shoulder. "I'm glad you guys were there."

Reid nodded slowly, watching their friend detour towards the other ambulance to check on Grace. As soon as he was out of their eyeline, he climbed clumsily up and sat beside Penelope.

"Garcia, the – the others – don't tell them about –"

"About how we just watched our friend throw a bunch of green fire, and split herself in two, and break a man's arm with her mind, and make some kind of shield thing out of mist, and –"

"Yes," he said, urgently. "And the rest."

"There's more?" Penelope exclaimed. She looked at his pained expression and narrowed her eyes. "Oh my God! You knew. This whole time – you knew she was a – a…"

Her brain couldn't quite make the word 'witch' come out. It was too weird, even in an ambulance, beside a flattened building in the middle of the night.

Reid ducked his head. "I – I knew she was a witch," he admitted, and Penelope couldn't do much more than gape at him as he glanced outside. "I didn't know she could do that."

"I – what if she's a risk to the others?" she asked, though the thought sounded ridiculous to her even before it finished coming out of her mouth.

"She's still Grace," Reid insisted. "She didn't just learn magic overnight. She's always been able to do this – and we've always trusted her. I still trust her." He took her hand, very gently. "Do you?"

He looked so earnest. Penelope could understand his need to think well of the woman he was quite clearly (to Penelope, at least) in love with, but then, he was right: Grace was their friend, and had been for years. But she had also been hiding a lot.

She thought of the way power had seemed to crackle under the woman's skin, and the cold way she had reached out with her mind until a man's arm snapped.

Penelope shivered.

But there had also been the bubble thing that seemed to behave like a shield, and the way she had physically stood in the way at whatever Blaize had tried to throw at them – and the effort she had put into keeping them safe as the building collapsed.

"Please, Penelope," he pleaded, and she cracked.

"Ugh, fine," she said. "I promise not to tell."

Relief crashed over Reid's face like a wave. "Thank you. I promise she'll tell you all about it, when we're back home. Or, I'll ask if I can, if you prefer," he added, hurriedly, as Penelope swallowed hard.

"Okay," she said slowly. "And she was protecting us, right?"

"Right."

"And she didn't start protecting us before, because?"

Reid paused and looked at her. "She was protecting us the whole time, Garcia – and the people in the hotel. That's why those fire doors wouldn't open, so he didn't have any other targets – and why every door we needed to get through, did."

0o0

"… and then he brought the whole warehouse down on top of us," Pearce reported, in the London Metropolitan Police bland statement tone that was peculiar to her 'I don't want to be here but I have to be' vernacular. "He made off; I protected Reid and Garcia."

They both glanced towards the other ambulance, where their friends were being treated for shock and a nasty bruise to the shinbone. Reid looked briefly in their direction, and then looked away, clearly uneasy.

"And they saw all of it?" he asked. "Both of them?"

"Hard for them not to, sir," she said, in a manner so completely detached that Aaron knew that this was killing her. "Sorry, making the report not be weird is going to take some mental gymnastics."

Her tone, her body language, the way she was deliberately meeting his gaze – it all told him one thing: she had shut down; it was her best defence against whatever fallout there would be from Garcia witnessing the kind of weirdness that he had seen before Christmas in Oregon. Aaron wondered whether he could persuade their technician not to bring it up with the rest of the team. At the very least, it would be unhelpful for team morale, and at worst he'd have to consider Pearce's future at the BAU.

And he didn't want to do that.

"I broke his arm, and he can't have got through the building without taking some hits, so he may be seeking medical attention," she continued. I pretty much drained all his energy – and I broke this. Admittedly, not on purpose, but it takes a lot to stop that much falling concrete – and the staff was not designed for my use."

She handed him the cane, which someone had given her a large evidence bag for. It didn't look much different to a normal walking stick up close, though closer examination revealed intricate silver chasing across the lacquered surface of the wood, a central metal core and an unpleasant looking silver wolf's skull handle. It was also split almost entirely in two, all along its length.

"There might be a usable print, but honestly, I had to have my hands all over it," she said, without sounding particularly apologetic.

Aaron nodded.

"He should be a lot less dangerous, now, but we don't know if he has access to other resources. I'd recommend maintaining the do-not-approach order and letting me have the first crack at him."

"Understood," said Aaron; he frowned. "Do you think you can take him out safely?" he asked, eyeing the rubble behind her.

"Yes," she said, without emotion. "He's drained and he was a bit of a one-trick wizard, if I'm honest." She shook her head. "No imagination."

"Don't underestimate him," he warned her, an echo of their earlier conversation.

That got a response.

"I'm not," she said tartly, raising an eyebrow and meeting his gaze with a lot more focus and a lot less blandness. Suddenly he remembered her description of the arrogant young officer she had once been. Aaron could see her now, clear as day. "I vastly outclass him, and he found that out just now. He won't risk engaging with me if he can help it. He's more likely to go for other law enforcement targets. I can keep him occupied – and I think I can do that without others seeing – but the most likely outcome here is suicide-by-cop."

Aaron regarded her silently for a moment, and she appeared to realise how she might have sounded. The air of operational blandness settled around her features once more.

"I need your head right for this," he said, lowering his voice. "Can I count on you?"

"Yes."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Yes," she repeated, sounding annoyed – but then, that wasn't unexpected.

Aaron relented. They both knew the stakes, and he had to trust that she would keep that in mind, no matter what Garcia said to her or to the others.

"Alright. The paramedic released you, so – hey." She had already started to move away, so he stopped her, one hand on her shoulder. "I want you to tell me, right now, if I should send you back to the hotel to sleep."

"No. I couldn't sleep right now if I tried," she told him.

"You said you drained Blaize's magic," he pointed out. "Won't the… 'altercation' have an impact on you?"

"Yes, but as I said, he was vastly outclassed." She let out a sharp sigh on his expression. "It'll hit me, but not for a while – and I promise to tell you when it does, if we're still on the case by then."

"You'd better," he half-joked, but she didn't crack a smile. "Alright, well, I'm glad you're okay – and I'm glad you were here."

Grace shook her head, glancing at the ambulance their friends were in; again, Reid looked briefly in their direction, panicked when he saw her looking at him, and turned away. She chewed the inside of her mouth.

"I wish I hadn't had to be."

Aware that there wasn't much that he could say to help, he left her to her own devices. The paramedics were conferring outside the ambulance, so he trusted they would be busy enough for him to assess how bad the team dynamics were about to be, and what he might have to persuade his junior agents to leave out of their reports.

However, the first thing Garcia said when he reached them was, "I think I stole a mop!" and from there, everything he had planned to say was entirely derailed.

"You – sorry?" he peered at her, confused.

"From the hotel," said Reid, in his 'I'm totally okay, honest, boss' voice. "She had it when she realised Blaize was in her room."

"I just picked it up! And I didn't put it back! And I think JJ took it away. Is that a felony? It's got to be a felony. I'm going to go to jail over a cleaning implement. I'm –"

"Garcia –" he began, but then recognised the opening strains of a verbal panic attack when he heard one.

Her voice was rising with each syllable.

Aaron climbed into the ambulance and gave her a hug.

Garcia burst into tears. "I – huh – um… Hi, sir."

He drew back a little. "The mop isn't a problem," he said gently. "Okay?"

"Okay," she sniffled. "Sorry – uh – it all sort of hit me at once."

"It's fine," he said.

Reid rubbed her back. "So, how are you liking the field?" he asked, in a calculated undertone.

Garcia giggled. "I hate it."

"You're doing brilliantly," Reid assured her.

Aaron sat across from Garcia and she brushed away her tears with a plaster-stained sleeve.

"Can you talk about what happened?" he asked. She immediately froze, so he added, "We don't have to do this now."

"No, it's okay," she said, with a glance at Reid, who had suddenly gone very still. "Um, I had a nightmare, and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went to get snacks."

She told him, haltingly, of her discovery of the intruder, contacting the team, Reid and Pearce collecting her from the broom cupboard and their flight from the hotel. When she got to the part where the phone had cut out, she sent Reid a frightened sort of look and gulped.

"G-G-Grace tried to keep him talking, and it worked for a while," she said, lying so transparently that it was almost reassuring. "And I didn't see what, but – but – I think he threw something at us, and then everything sort of exploded."

He waited for a moment, to see if anything else would be forthcoming, then turned to Reid, who swallowed.

"Sir?"

"Anything you want to add?"

"Nothing we can put in a report," he said carefully, then patted Garcia's hand. "Hotch knows. The others don't."

"And I would prefer it to remain that way, for the moment," Aaron added, gently.

Their technical analyst's mouth formed a perfect 'o'.

"She recognised that whoever was in Garcia's room had magic, so we decided to leave the hotel to protect the other guests – given the profile," Reid told him, sounding very tired indeed. "Grace stopped anyone else getting into the fire escape. He did something to the fire door when it close behind us that propelled it through the air and into a car. I didn't see what it was.

"When we got to the warehouse, I think she unlocked the padlock on the door, because the chain pretty much fell off in my hands." He frowned. "I think the change in pressure was her, too – did your ears pop?" he asked Garcia, who nodded, still deeply shocked. "I'm pretty sure the weather is a – a side effect," he said, nodding upwards at the rain-laden clouds. "It wasn't raining before we got to the warehouse."

"No, the skies were totally clear!" Garcia exclaimed. "I thought that was weird! I thought the unsub was doing it to show off – and then I thought I was insane. Turns out, not so much…"

"I – uh – I read about it in Lemuel Grey," said Reid.

Aaron nodded. "It's on my list," he said, motioning for him to continue.

"Well, according to Grey, when someone who is – uh – particularly powerful gathers, um… magic, ready to cast, the weather can go a little nuts. Especially for practitioners who are instinctive…" He trailed off. "Um, which Grace is."

"What does tha-" Garcia began, but Aaron shook his head and she fell silent. There would be time for that later.

"Do you want me to describe the fight?" Reid asked, biting his lip.

"Yes."

It took some time, but between them, they gave an account of the events in the warehouse that led to its collapse. Aaron took some comfort in the fact that it tallied exactly with Pearce's account, except where they had guessed at a motivation and she had provided terminology.

"Alright," he said, when they were finished. "I'm going to check whether the paramedics are happy to release you, and then I want –"

"I am not staying at the hotel," Garcia insisted flatly.

Aaron smiled. "I wasn't going to suggest it. Morgan and JJ will stay with you while you get cleaned up, then you can leave your things in JJ's room and come back to the station. You can sleep in the break room. You, too, Reid. I don't really want anyone out on their own."

"Agreed," he said emphatically. "Hotch," he added, as Aaron made to leave. "If – if Grace hadn't been there, we would both be dead."

Hotch grasped his shoulder, feeling very old indeed. "I know."

0o0

Grace left her room more slowly than she had intended to.

She hadn't actually lied to Hotch: the fight hadn't been something she couldn't handle, and she'd had worse in the training rooms with her old team, but it had been a long time since she had fought anyone with magic, and she was out of practice. Her mind and body were currently in that state it got to after you had just been swimming for the first time in a while: slightly heavier than usual and weirdly cool in odd places.

She didn't feel like dealing with anyone just now – particularly as she was ninety percent convinced the life she had built for herself in America was about to come crashing down around her, so when Spencer's door opened she had to fight the urge to turn and run.

The image of him standing protectively in front of Garcia, a wildly fearful look on his face and his gun half-raised in her direction surfaced in her mind. She felt faintly nauseous.

For a moment, they surveyed one another silently, then he handed over her belt and phone, which she had abandoned in his room when the morning had felt sharp and dangerous.

Wordlessly, she took them, putting the belt on as he locked his door. To her surprise, he waited for her and they set off together, though neither one said a word.

0o0

Dave stirred a horrible cup of coffee, wondering for the nine millionth time why he had ever come out of retirement.

Because you missed it, he reminded himself. And there is still work like this to do.

Hearing Penelope Garcia sound so frightened and vulnerable had been the mental equivalent of a bucket of icy water to the brain, galvanising every member of the team into something resembling full alertness; even now, two hours after they had all reassured themselves that she, Reid and Pearce were alright, everyone was a little over-wired.

Dave watched the latter two agents out of the corner of his eye. They were working through a stack of reports from the tip line each, at opposite ends of the room. They weren't not talking, not in the way they had been when everyone had wanted to stab them repeatedly with a pencil – or lock them in a supply closet and let them work all the sexual tension out so the team could get on with their lives – but they weren't exactly giving off the same air of cosiness they had been, of late.

He, Prentiss, JJ, Morgan and Hotch had feared the absolute worst when Garcia's phone had cut out. The rumble of the building collapsing – which Dave had initially thought was an earthquake – had reached them in the SUVs, and that had badly unsettled everyone, too. He wasn't sure his heart could have taken it, if –

He stopped that train of thought before it could develop too far.

But they had been alright, if a little bruised and damp, and very unhappy about the whole thing. And that was what you had to cling to, in the end: the people you cared about being alright this time. There wasn't anything else you could do.

"Derek, will you listen to me? I. Am. Not. Sleeping. Until. We. Get. Home."

Dave turned to see Penelope Garcia, looking much more herself in a flippy fifties dress covered in green and orange spiders, creating her own personal whirlwind as she strode through the outer part of the office. Morgan and JJ were trailing rather helplessly behind her, trying to get her to go to the break room.

Well, Morgan was. JJ looked like she was fighting laughter.

"Hot stuff, you're not invincible –"

"Let it go, Morgan," JJ advised. "You're going to lose this one."

"But –"

"No, Derek! This guy messed with me and he tried to mess with my babies, and I am done. I am so done. I am going to scrape away the layers of his digital obfuscation until he's naked and crying, and then I'm going to send all of you after him, and then we can go home."

"They jet's okay for sleeping in, too," Reid said, without looking up. "Just make sure you grab the bench seat before Morgan hogs it."

"Before I hog it, Pretty Boy?"

Dave smiled into his cup as Morgan applied himself to winding Reid up, allowing Garcia to reach her temporary fortress of digital shenanigans and settle in without him hovering around her. Which was, presumably, exactly what the kid had intended, given that he was more likely to be the first to curl up – and the bench seat was really the only place he fit.

He waited until Morgan detached, gave Garcia up for a bad job and went to find Detective Singh, before looking up from his stack of files to give the technical analyst a small smile. Penelope blew him a kiss.

"Anything?" JJ asked.

"Not really, not yet," said Reid. He yawned. "Sorry. Um, just the usual things – uh, 'my neighbour's nephew wears a lot of black clothes and make-up, it's suspicious'; 'the guy at number eleven looked at me funny'. That sort of thing."

"The last victim's apartment didn't have CCTV," Dave put in. "And none of the residents appear to have seen our guy."

"Well, they wouldn't," Pearce grumbled.

"Why's that?" Prentiss asked.

"He's too smart to let anyone, that's why," Pearce snapped.

"That's a little surly, even for you," Dave observed.

The look she shot him was so far from friendly it was almost startling. "Maybe I don't like my judgement being questioned."

Prentiss' mouth fell open. "Wha– I wasn't questioning your judgement," she said, in a placating tone. "I just thought since he messed up so many aspects of the last kill, maybe he got careless when he approached the victim's apartment."

Before Pearce could open her mouth and put her foot in it, Dave intervened. "Maybe you could do with some fresh air? Take a few."

She glared at him, but that part of her that still behaved according to the strict hierarchy of the London Metropolitan Police Force made her get up and head sulkily outside. They watched her go, pensively.

"Well, I guess she didn't get much sleep," JJ remarked, flicking her eyebrows up.

Garcia made a high-pitched non-committal sound in the back of her throat that suggested that she was far from over her recent brush with terror; Emily shook her head and got back to the files; Reid's gaze followed Pearce to the door.

Dave half expected the kid to go after her, but he didn't, which was a little weird. Perhaps he, like Dave, had simply realised that what she needed right now was a little space.

Seconds of quiet stretched into minutes. Hotch appeared from his interview with the most recent victim's sister with nothing new to add. Detective Singh appeared with a large box of takeout breakfast food, which cheered everyone up immensely. Everybody looked up as surreptitiously possible when Pearce reappeared, but she didn't appear to notice. She put a cup of takeout coffee next to Emily, with 'SORRY I'M A DICK' written on it in marker pen, which made the other agent snort so loudly she had to pretend to have a coughing fit.

Pearce retreated behind her stack of reports without looking at anyone human, which wasn't a particularly encouraging sign. Dave exchanged a glance with Aaron, who inclined his head just enough to let him know he was aware that she was behaving like a scornful teenager and would either intervene or wait for it blow over, depending on her next move.

Dave watched out of the corner of his eye as Reid used the tip of his pencil to push a carton of eggs and bacon in her direction; either she didn't notice, or she ignored it.

"Okay," said Morgan, coming back in with the kind of spring in his step that made everybody perk their ears up. "The manager at the hotel emailed me their security footage." He put his laptop on the table.

"Wh- but I usually –" Garcia sputtered.

"I know, Mama, but you were on a mission and I didn't want to take you away from it," said Derek, gently. "And starin' at CCTV footage doesn't take your kind of exquisitely honed skillset."

"Well, okay," she said, preening a little. "I forgive you. This time."

"What did you find?" Hotch asked, though Dave spotted the very slight upwards quirk of his mouth.

He thinks he's so hard to read, he thought, chuckling inwardly.

"I checked all the entrances and exits, and there's nothin' leadin' up to the time you sent your text," he said.

Garcia visibly shuddered, and JJ put an arm around her shoulder.

"But," Morgan continued, "I got this from the camera in the elevator. Here's me leavin' and you guys arrivin' at seven…"

The team watched as a steady stream of people rode the lift at a speed that rendered their movements ridiculous.

"And here, at two thirty-eight…" He returned the video to normal speed.

On the video, the doors of the elevator slid open, then closed. No one got on – at least, no one appeared to. The car was entirely empty; nothing moved at all on the floor, or through the air. The doors opened again and then closed, as if someone had exited, but no one had.

"Morgan –" Prentiss began, but he waved her into silence.

"I know, I know. Look again. Watch the mirror."

He drew the video back to when the doors first opened. Nobody stepped inside, but the bottom left of the mirror darkened.

"What is that?" Detective Singh asked, as everyone bunched closer to peer at the image.

"Keep watching," Morgan advised.

The dark spot intensified, then grew, and a few frames later they were looking at the reflection of a man in dark clothes, carrying the cane Pearce had picked up at the warehouse. He was scowling at the mirror, his face as clear as day.

"How the hell is he doing that?" Prentiss asked.

"Could he have hacked the hotel's cameras?" Detective Singh asked.

"No – not externally," said Aaron. "That's what Closed Circuit means."

"He'd have to get into the security office," said Garcia shakily.

"And the security guards swore up and down they hadn't been disturbed," Morgan added.

"They could have been lying," Dave pointed out.

"I'll have my guys re-interview them," said Singh, making a note on his phone.

JJ turned to their technical analyst. "Can you take a still of that and blow it up, Garcia?"

"Uh-huh," she confirmed, in a small voice, and scurried back to her computer. "As long as Morgan – yep, got it."

"We can get his picture out," JJ exclaimed. "I'll set up a press conference."

"Wait," Pearce said, squinting at the screen. "What's that? Garcia – can you enlarge this bit here – where his pocket is?"

"Um…" Garcia frowned at the screen. "This?" she asked, turning her screen around.

There was a square of something yellow sticking out of the black, and on it, a blur of blue.

"Can you enhance it?" Aaron asked.

"Yeah, you know how in movies when they ask an analyst to enhance something and it comes out perfectly clear? That's not really a thing," Garcia complained, but she had already turned the laptop back around and was typing hard. "I can enlarge it, and change the sharpness up a little, but you're not going to get much more than… this."

Everybody craned to see: the blur of blue had resolved somewhat, into a sort of composite shape, made up of a rectangle and an oval. It looked like there was something white in the middle – text, maybe.

Detective Singh shot out of his chair, upending a carton of pancakes. "I know what that is!" he half-shouted, and then scrambled around the table to Morgan's computer.

The agent got out of his way as the detective typed hurriedly. "Here. Bole's Hardware and Repair. It's a computer repair shop on South Seneca! My sister works at the day care across the road – oh no…"

"Garcia," Dave began, but she was already looking it up.

"Owned by a Dale Bole –"

"Same initials as Draven Blaize," JJ pointed out.

"Well, we knew that name would be bogus," reasoned Reid.

"It's been trading since '02," Garcia continued, her voice going up a notch with every word. "It's been investigated by the IRS three times, and it went into administration two months ago."

"That's a stressor," Prentiss put in.

"It stopped trading three weeks ago," Garcia continued. "And there's – there's a picture of the owner." She stood up really fast and her chair fell over. "It's him! Oh my God! That's him!"

"Home address?" Hotch asked, but Garcia didn't appear to hear him.

She was staring at the screen, white fingers pressed hard to her face.

"Garcia, does he have a home address listed?" Pearce asked, then reached out and gently touched her arm.

Garcia shot about a foot in the air and yelped.

"Home address," Pearce repeated, as if nothing had happened.

"Oh, yeah, right," she said, her face the colour of milk. "Uh – uh – 216 German Street. Looks like he lives alone – um, I can look in his bank records, just give me a –"

She sent a look of sheer terror at Pearce, who simply righted her chair for her.

"Tell us over the radio," Aaron ordered. "We'll gear up – Garcia?" He waited until she was staring at him. "Check his phone and internet activity. We need to know where he is. I want two teams, ready to go in five. JJ, stay here with Penelope. Pearce…" He looked at her for a full twenty seconds before adding, "You're with me."