Doctor Spencer Reid was not someone who panic, or even someone easily spooked. But getting to Emily's apartment and finding the door open and the apartment empty made his stomach sink.
He looked around making sure not to touch anything. He found her purse on a side table close to the door and inside her phone, keys and wallet. He quickly pulled his phone out.
"Garcia speaking."
"Garcia, we need a forensic team on Emily's apartment now." He didn't wait for a reply and continued. "I'm going to call Hotch and get someone else here, we will need to divide. Emily is in trouble."
"What happened?"
"I don't know, but Emily isn't here but all her personal items are left, and the apartment door was left open. And as we know, Emily is trained not to make silly mistakes as leaving the door open."
"OH MY GOD. I should have called her and told her about the tracking warning notification, I just didn't want to panic over nothing. And I had to let Hotch know before taking classified information out of the bureau, and it could be..." Spencer stops her.
"Garcia, I need you to focus, it could be nothing, but it could be something. You need to get a team here as soon as possible" He waited to see if she understood and when she agreed he continued. "I'm going to call Hotch and decide on what to do with the current case and Emily and I need you to focus on putting a tracker on everything from Emily so that if she contacts anyone of if any of her accounts are accessed, we know."
"Okay…okay."
"I'll talk to you soon."
Spencer knew his next call would be harder, but he needed Hotch to know, and he knew he would probably be here as quick as he could get a flight over.
"Are you with her yet?" Hotch answered the phone.
"Hotch, she isn't here. I found her door open, her purse and all personal items are still here." Spencer explained. "I'm about to go to her landlord to ask for the security cameras." He was sure Emily would only have chosen a new apartment that had a high security system.
"Damn it." He heard the slam of what he imagined was Hotch's fist on a table. "Reid, I'm taking the jet or the next flight I can get back, I'm leaving Rossi with the team. We will be working with Garcia and ask the bureau for an analyst for the Saint Luis case."
"Hotch, what is happening?" Spencer was trying to be logic about everything that was happening, but he couldn't find any connection on why the bureau would go after Emily. Or even why Barnes would personally launch a vendetta against Emily with so flimsy evidence.
"I don't know Spencer. I really don't know." He heard Hotch exhale on the other side of the line. "I'll brief everyone here and I'll talk to you as soon as I land."
Hotch looked up from the phone and saw that Rossi and Tara were looking at him anxiously.
"Garcia received a notice on the tracker she has on our information that someone inside the bureau looked for Emily's address today." He started to explain. "In the time that it took Reid to leave her apartment to go to the office and back, something might have happened as we can't locate her."
"What do you mean might have happened?" Rossi exploded.
"You can't locate her?" Tara had one raised eyebrow which showed very much what she thought about all of this.
"We aren't sure, her purse was still in the apartment, untouched, Garcia is sending a team and Reid is going to check security cameras. Rossi, I need you to stay as unit chief of this team while I go back." Hotch started to gather his things.
"Can't Garcia track who looked for the address?" Tara questioned while he checked his bag.
"No, it's either someone who was able to mask it, or someone with high clearance enough to have a bureau authorization to mask their IP."
"This doesn't make any sense." Rossi expressed as he ran his hand over his hair.
"I know, I just hope this is either a misunderstanding or she just had an emergency and had to leave." Hotch said but not believing either of those things were true. "I'll call when I have any information." He started walking to the door.
"I'll tell the team and we will finish this as quickly as possible. As you can imagine no one will be comfortable working this while we don't know about Emily, but we have to make sure Barnes doesn't have any other issues with the team." Hotch eye's widened as he realized he didn't even remember the fact that the rest of the team might have issues with staying behind, and Rossi was right with his plan of action. But Hotch's mind was only of getting back quickly and finding Emily.
"Yes, thank you." He couldn't find anything else to say.
"How could this happen?" JJ's voice could be heard from outside of the conference room the BAU team had been using in Saint Luis. Only the BAU team was in the room for Rossi to
"The notification could have meant nothing. Garcia probably gets them all the time when we are researched for a bunch of reasons." Rossi reasoned. "But this time…" JJ cut him off.
"But it meant something, she had just been fired, the bureau is clearly trying to make an example out of her or even worse for all we know they are trying to pin something on her." JJ was walking from side to side of the room to the other. "She couldn't have ignored the notification, and now we don't know where Emily is."
"JJ go take a walk."
"What?"
"We are all frustrated and angry right now, but we all know we need to keep our heads in the right place to finish this case so we can go home and help Emily. So, I need you to go take a walk and cool off to be in the right space to help us do that. Okay?" JJ looked at Rossi angrily but didn't argue and just left the room.
"I know we are all concerned and not as focused as we would usually be in a situation like this, but we need to close this case so we can go home help Emily. Aaron, Spencer and Garcia are focused on that right now and they will let us know if there are any updates."
"Let's do this." Matt said getting back to his file.
"Yeah." Luke agreed and got up to go talk to the
Hotch was walking into the bureau building three hours later and went straight to Garcia's office, where he found Garcia and Reid looking at the screen.
"Any updates?" He asked walking in.
"No, the cameras were turned off before we could get a glimpse of anything clear. The only thing we can say for sure is that a white man in a suit entered the building before eventually all cameras shut off." Garcia concluded.
"Can we see his face?" He asked.
"No, he probably knew where the cameras were. I'm sorry sir."
"Hotch, we need do something. Garcia and I can continue looking over the tapes to check if we can find anyone with the same description on the previous days, but we need to try and find out who accessed the information from inside the building."
"I know that, but I can't jump over Barnes, and you know very well that right now she is our biggest suspect. I'll have to start there, you both keep checking the tapes and text me if we have any updates."
He turned and left.