"What do you know so far?" Strauss asked. The team were sitting in the briefing room with the blonde wandering round the table that evidence was placed on.
"This morning at roughly 8:45 a man dropped off the box and flowers at the front desk with the instructions that they were for the BAU who saved his children. The parcels were then brought up to the BAU's floor by a desk worker, who was met by Garcia. She brought them to Reid, Prentiss and Morgan by their desks where the parcels were opened" Hotch said in a monotone voice.
"We're still waiting for the CCTV from the front desk but the person who was working at the time the stuff was dropped off said the man seemed relaxed and hadn't made any attempt to obscure his face from the cameras. That either means that the UnSub is confident we won't be able to identify his face or that the person who dropped the presents off wasn't our UnSub" Morgan added.
"Either way the person who sent the stuff would probably have had to know our schedules to make sure each person was there to receive their photo frame" Emily said thoughtfully.
"Couldn't it just be a coincidence?" Strauss asked and raised an eyebrow.
"It would be highly unlikely if it was. The note he added with the flowers saying 'catch me if you can' is a challenge to us. He also made sure that the desk worker was told the presents were for the BAU who saved his children. Most people who have children that are victims of crime find it difficult to talk about, they wouldn't mention it to someone they didn't know. If it was thankful parent he would have written a letter explaining who he was or met with the team personally, he wouldn't have told the desk worker" Reid stated.
"All of that shows that this isn't the type of person to leave something down to chance. He wanted the desk worker to know this was about children and he wanted to place himself above the BAU. Someone like that couldn't do anything if he wasn't absolutely certain it would work as he planned" JJ added when Strauss still looked confused after Reid's explanation.
"Are you sure the children really are missing?" Strauss asked after a small pause.
"Ellie was reported missing an hour ago by her mom. She told the police that when she woke up this morning Ellie was gone. There was no apparent forced entry on any of the windows or doors, there was no struggle and it doesn't look like she ran away" Garcia said while still typing on her laptop.
"What about the other two?" Strauss asked, her eyes fixed on Nathan and Declan's photos.
"Nathan didn't turn up for school today. His mom had a graveyard shift at the hospital that only finished half an hour ago so she didn't notice anything was wrong until she got home and found his school bag still there. All signs point to him just vanishing, same as Ellie" Garcia quickly read off her screen. "Declan was on a camping trip with his school last night. He was sharing a tent with a few of his friends, when they woke this morning he was gone. Mountain search and rescue are combing the forest now but there's no sign of him yet" The blonde explained.
"How can one man kidnap three children in one night and make it back here to drop that off by 8:45?" Strauss asked with an impatient tone to her voice while pointing to the flowers lying on the table.
"He can't" Garcia blurted out without thinking then quickly clicked a button on the remote for the briefing room's presentation screen so that a map appeared. The blonde then stood and walked over to the screen. "Declan was in a gated campground an hour away from the North Virginia border" She began and a red mark came onto the screen at the boy's last known location. "Nathan was three and a half hours away in his home. Ellie was in Ohio. At a push he could have driven from Nathan's home to Ellie's, and stopped off at the campground Declan was staying at within 9 hours but that doesn't even include getting the kids… or what he did with them once he had them" She explained, grimacing at the end of the last sentence.
"So two UnSubs?" Strauss thought aloud after she had taken in the information shown on the screen. In the time the profilers had explained the situation to Strauss, Garcia had pinpointed the missing kids last location and composed three of the most likely routes the UnSub would have taken, the quickest one highlighted green.
"At least" Rossi murmured from the back of the table. "If there's multiple UnSubs there's got to be a leader. He's going to be the one deciding the days of abduction, the children abducted and practically every other detail of his plan. He wouldn't be working with a partner; he'd have workmen carrying out his orders. He'd have at least one other person abducting the children so that he could send another man in to drop off the parcel"
"So how many are we looking at here?" Strauss said with a tired sigh while pulling off her glasses and sitting down on the nearest available chair.
"No more than five knowing participants, including the leader. Any more than that and he would lose the ability to control all of them at any given time" Morgan answered first.
"They would all have to have some investment in this; all would be personal, although the leader's motive would be more obvious than the others. The other men would have probably just been brushed aside by an investigation the BAU were part of. They wouldn't have a reason big enough, on their own, to do this size of an attack on us" Hotch elaborated.
"But together they feel personally vindicated. The leader would inspire them and would have probably left it to one of the other men to suggest getting back at us" Emily finished.
"If he knows so much about you and can control all of his followers, how do you plan to stop him before something happens to the children?" Strauss asked with a world-weary voice.
"This man's strength is that he planned everything down to the last detail. The only way he could get inside the BAU and make an attack like this was to have the ability to make it personal and to separate himself enough to plan. To do something like that he would have to spend every last minute of his time planning. Fortunately for us, that planning will be his one weakness"
I've decided that this will be the story I will be continuing first but the others will get updates soon too. This story should be updated every Saturday and the other two will be updated whenever I have some spare time to write. Also, all three stories aren't going to have any ships so everyone can just enjoy the story without having a pairing they don't like bugging them. Please review if you've got time and I hoped you enjoyed this chapter!