A/N: So I've kept my word, it's been a week and I'm updating it again! Thanks for all your opinions on who's the better hacker. Some of you might not be happy with this chapter but I have a plan to make it all better. I've finally chosen a day to update on once a week and I've picked Monday, but I won't be able to have the next chapter ready for the 19th because I don't have enough time to write the chapter, so the next one will be up on the 26th. Happy reading :)
Disclaimer: they're not mine and you know that.
Garcia sat in her brightly coloured lair, talking with her team via webcam. They were currently trying to scrounge up a profile to give to the locals.
"Reid were you able to come up with a geographic profile?" Hotch questioned from somewhere Garcia couldn't see.
"Well, the first two murders took place in the next town over on the same day, then for some reason our UNSUB came here to Univille. This town isn't really large enough of find a comfort zone for our killer, plus the UNSUB just left the bodies where he killed them." Reid said.
"Okay, so why don't we look at the timeline," Morgan suggested.
"The first murder took place at night in the victim's home, the woman lived alone and there was no evidence of a sexual assault," Prentiss stated. "Then about twelve hours later a second victim, a man this time, was murdered in broad daylight on the street."
"And nobody saw anything?" JJ sighed.
Garcia saw Prentiss shake her head.
"Did you try security cameras Garcia?" JJ asked and leaned into her line of sighed.
"Sorry my lovelies but there aren't any to be checked," replied Garcia feeling guileful.
"It's fine Garcia," Rossi responded. "So then our UNSUB waits two days and comes here and commits three murders, all of the victims male. What would make him move towns? There must be a stressor somewhere."
"Well that must be one hell of a stressor," Prentiss voiced. "Because on that night he killed two men in the street and one more in their home. Then again last night; one man on the street and one woman in her car."
"He certainly doesn't discriminate based on gender or age, though all the victims are Caucasian," JJ deduced.
"And there was no forced entry at any of the victim's homes either," Morgan added.
"Why don't we figure out the things we do know?" Hotch suggested.
"Well he's obviously a psychopath," JJ started off.
"He doesn't seem to take a trophy," Prentiss added.
"Or have a signature," Rossi spoke.
"Wait a minute," Garcia butt in. "I thought you said you had a female suspect in custody?"
"We do," Morgan confirmed.
"Okay I know that I may not be as tired as the rest of you but I'm a little confused here," Garcia voiced. "Why do you keep calling the UNSUB a 'he'?"
"Oh, sorry Baby girl," her Chocolate Adonis said and scrubbed a hand over his face. "We don't think that she's the one doing the actual killings, but there's definitely something going on there. They all keep acting so... unusual."
"Oh you mean our delightful friends, the Secret Service agents?" Garcia clarified.
Garcia received a chorus of agreements and an eye roll.
"Alrighty then. Please continue my fearless warriors." Garcia nodded to the agents she could see-Prentiss, Morgan, JJ and half of Reid.
"With the home invasions, there was no forced entry," Rossi said. "So maybe our victims knew the killer."
"It's a small town so that's very probable," Reid agreed.
"Did you find any connections with all of our victims Garcia?" Hotch asked her.
"There are no personal ties to each other, other than living in the same town. It doesn't appear that our first two vics from Feather Head knew the five from Univille. I did all the digging I could and even though they didn't know each other, they all lived the same way; alone. Victims three, five and seven were from out of town but have live in Univille for at least five years." Garcia replied while once again checking for connections.
"Anything else Baby girl?"
"None of them had any pets, if that helps," Garcia said timidly.
It wasn't unusual that none of their vics had any connections with each other, but she still felt bad that she couldn't find anything. They had no new leads even with the two latest victims. Even though Garcia wasn't a profiler, she knew there was something wonky going on with this case.
"So the home invasion and knowledge that our vics live alone would suggest an organized offender," JJ proposed.
"Right," Prentiss confirmed. "But on the other hand, the blitz attacks, compulsive kills on the street would also suggest a disorganized offender."
"So basically the only thing we know for sure is that the UNSUB's weapon of choice is a knife -that we can't identify- and that his timeline is accelerating," Morgan said frustrated and threw his pen onto the table. However the pen didn't stop when it hit the table, it bounced off the wood and smacked right into the computer screen they were talking to Garcia through.
"Morgan!" Garcia squeaked. She imagined it looked as if he had hit her in the face with the pen, and by the looks on the other agents faces, her suspicions were confirmed. "Baby you know the rules; anywhere but the face. I'd be no one if I didn't have my looks," she added slyly.
That put her team over the edge; they all started laughing uncontrollably. Garcia even swore she caught a glimpse of a rare Hotch smile.
Through all the laughter, Garcia never heard the beep that emanated from one of her many babies. Suddenly the webcam shut down and Garcia gasped. She glanced at a screen to her left and saw that someone was trying to break through one of her many firewalls.
"No, no, no, no, no," Garcia said defiantly as if that would stop the hacker. Her phone rang which made Garcia jump.
"Hey PG." It was Prentiss. "What happened?"
"Someone's trying to get into my system," Garcia said in a panicked voice.
"Can you tell who it is yet?" Hotch asked.
Garcia fingers immediately started flying across her keyboard. The person hacking into her system had already gotten past most of her easy firewalls and they were now up against some of the more difficult ones Garcia had installed.
"Not yet," Garcia replied to Hotch's question. "I can try and put a trace on their system but they're bouncing off so many proxy servers that I don't know their original location."
"Who would want to hack into Garcia's system?" Rossi asked no one in particular.
"Who would be stupid enough to?" Morgan countered.
Garcia didn't bother to listen to the rest of the conversation; she needed to focus of the threat to her babies. The unknown hacker didn't get through the next firewall fast enough, so Garcia was able to start a trace on them. Just as she was almost done with the trace, her screens went black.
Garcia's fingers froze and she looked rapidly from one screen to the next. All of them black.
"Okay, this Garcia woman is a technical genius!" Claudia exclaimed.
"How so?" Pete inquired, completely lost as to what was going on.
"You wouldn't get it and I don't have time to explain it." Claudia shrugged.
"She's got a point there," Myka scoffed.
"Hey!" said Pete.
"Enough you too," Artie snapped at them. "Claudia what are you doing? Don't run that through there! It's a trap." He pushed Claudia out of the way and started typing away on the keyboard.
"Excuse me! I know what I'm doing!" she defended from her chair a few feet away. She got up and ran back to her computer. She tried to shove Artie away from her computer with no avail, he wouldn't budge.
"Hey, what are you..." Artie glanced at Claudia. "Stop that!" he said and pushed her away with his elbow.
"No you stop that. This is my computer," Claudia replied and started swatting Artie's hands away from the keyboard.
"Hey no don't press that!" Artie exclaimed.
Artie and Claudia both froze as the laptop, along with the warehouse's main computer started beeping frantically.
"Oh now you've done it," Claudia remarked.
Artie moved over to the warehouse computer and starting muttering.
"Artie, don't touch anything I can fix this," Claudia said.
He ignored her.
"Artie!" Claudia snapped.
"Okay, okay," he surrendered. After a few moments listening to the clicking of the keys, Artie asked timidly, "What are you doing?"
"She was trying to put a trace on me so I locked her out of her own system."
"Well I get that, but is taunting her really necessary?" Artie queried.
"In case you haven't noticed, it's kind of my thing," Claudia shot back.
Garcia sat dumbfounded, staring at her Screens.
"They locked me out," she said, the fact sinking in. "They locked me out," she repeated more angrily.
Suddenly, the screen in front of her flashed and a word appeared on it.
"Knock, Knock," it said.
"Oh no you did not!" Garcia growled.
She couldn't just sit there while some over cocky hacker poked around in her system. Just as she was about to regain control of her system, the computer screens came back on. But instead of Garcia controlling the mouse, it was the hacker.
"Oh you little devil! As soon as I find you, you are so-" Garcia was interrupted by Hotch.
"Did they get in Garcia?"
'Yes Sir and they completely hijacked my system." Garcia pouted.
"Can you see what they're doing?" he asked.
"Yeah, why?"
"I know you have a pen, so get some paper and write down what they're looking at," Hotch instructed.
Garcia was confused at first but the realization soon dawned on her.
"Good idea there Boss man. If I see what they're looking at I might be able to figure out who it is," Garcia said excitedly.
"Let us know what you find," Hotch said before hanging up.
Garcia stared intently at her screens. At the moment, the hacker didn't seem to know what they were looking for. It bugged her to no end that they had gotten into her system and then they didn't even have the decency to know what they were after. Garcia grumbled to herself as she watched them go through her recent searches, stopping when they got to the part of the murder weapon.
"Now why would you be looking at that?" Garcia said out loud, even though no one was going to answer.
She quickly scribbled down the links that the hacker opened then watched as they moved on to other things. Whatever they were looking for it seemed like they couldn't find it. Finally the coroner's reports popped up on the screen and the hacker stopped what they were doing. Garcia could imagine some sick and twisted killer reading over the reports, living over the murders again and again. Garcia shivered at the thought and quickly wrote down that the hacker looked at the reports. The hacker started flipping from one report to another.
Garcia got an idea of how she could find the hacker's IP address and energetically set to work.
"Garcia, what did you find?" Hotch asked her. There was no 'Hello' or any other form of greeting; there was no time for that.
"Well, I did what you said to do and a little more," she said excitedly. "I got back into my system and but a trace on the hacker. I'm running back through all the proxies as we speak."
"Good. Did you see what they were looking for?"
"Yes indeedy. First they checked out our research on the murder weapon," Garcia paused waiting for the comments of her team.
Sure enough Morgan said, "If it was our UNSUB, why would he do that?"
"Maybe to see if we had any leads?" JJ suggested.
"Alright, what else did the hacker look at?" Hotch said, wanting to keep the information coming.
"They looked at the coroner's reports. Like I could literally see them comparing the reports."
"So maybe the hacker's not our UNSUB," Rossi stated. "I don't see why he would go to so much trouble just to relive the murders."
"That's a valid point," Hotch agreed. "Did they look at anything else?"
"Surprisingly no," Garcia replied.
"Okay, so how long were they in your system Baby Girl?" Morgan questioned.
"Eighteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds," Garcia admitted. She hated every second of those eighteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds. She found it was a good method of torture for her.
Morgan whistled in response. "Okay Garcia, thanks for taking one for the team."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are you guys thinking?"
"It's probably not our UNSUB," Hotch stated. "So who else would want information on this case?"
"What about someone working with Wells?" JJ asked. "Maybe they want to see if we have anything on her?"
"Well we still have forty three hours to charge her with something," Prentiss said.
"Right. Rossi why don't you go see what our suspect has to say about this?" Hotch instructed.
Garcia heard no response so she imagined the two had obliged and left the room.
"Thanks Garcia," Hotch said. "We'll keep you updated."
With that Hotch hung up the phone and left Garcia to track the Hacker.
"I will find you!" she said with a fierce determination in her voice.