Entering the BAU for the first time in over 17 years, Aaron is overwhelmed with the memories that greet him at the door. As he enters the bullpen, the emotions threaten to spill over. "Hotch?" He hears a cacophony of team members and old friends saying his name with a tone of curiosity and shock. With a mild grin, he is known for his stoicism after all, he greets them. "Hi. It's been far too long." He hears Spencer mutter something that sounds like "You can say that again," under his breath. Rossi's the first one to break the silence and go up to the retired unit chief. "We miss you, Aaron," he says with a hug. Aaron glances around to see a few faces he doesn't recognize.
All at once it seems, everyone notices the other significant presence in the room. "Lia.. so you, uh, you found.." Spencer trips over his words while everyone else stares in shock. "Yup. I found my long lost father. Woohoo. Now can you pick your jaws up off the ground so we can find my mother before this bastard kills her, or is it all up to me and Mr. Hotchner here?" The nonchalant quality in her tone quickly sobers everyone. "Briefing Hin five." Penelope races to gather all necessary tablets and folders.
When they enter the round table room, Lia's the first to start talking. "I'll start from the beginning for the new faces in the room. So Mom went missing on Monday. I found a mysterious letter in her room addressed to Lauren, which makes it seem like she was writing it to someone else, but Uncle Spence has backed me up on the suggestion that it linguistically is nothing like her typical speech or writing patterns. Aunt Pen, you said you found something while I was gone?" Hotch was impressed with his daughter's take-charge approach to the briefing, and he couldn't help but feel a touch of pride as she stood before him relaying information.
"Yes. Yes, of course. About a year ago, Emily asked me to start looking for a man by the name of Ian Doyle. The man on your screens lived in Tuscany for many years, and he was deemed an international threat. When I say this guy was bad news, I mean it. The more I looked into it, the more curious I was as to why Emily wanted to keep tabs on this guy. I had forgotten about it until today, but when I looked, Ian Doyle died in a freak accident two weeks ago. It screams hit job. He just randomly died. Anyway, how he died isn't very important, but Emily also asked me about a month ago to look for a woman named Louise Thatcher. It was tricky to find her because she changed her name when she emigrated to the US, but I found that she died over 20 years ago. Also happened to be a freak accident. It says that she fell down the stairs of her apartment building. 13 flights of stairs to be exact. She wasn't found in time. But, get this, she had legal custody and was in the process of adopting a young boy named Declan. It's unclear what happened to him after Louise's death."
"Okay, do we have any type of working profile yet? Has this man kidnapped or killed before?" Hotch immediately fell back into the rhythm of working with this team.
"We're pretty sure this is the first offense, and we haven't gotten a good hold on the profile. Victimology's pretty straightforward. Mom's an FBI Unit Chief. She's appeared on television and in newspaper interviews a million times over the years. If this was some type of calculated offense related to Doyle, it'd be easy to track her down." Aaron was continually impressed with Lia's skills.
"You're right. If he was looking for Emily, it wouldn't be hard to find her. Our hours are so crazy that he could've taken her from the BAU parking lot though, why her house? Why somewhere so personal? Why bother with the letter?" Morgan, as always, was asking all of the questions to help build the profile.
"Well, he had to have delivered the letter. He obviously knew where she lived. It wasn't just that she's an FBI agent for the unsub. This is more personal than that. It wasn't a random abduction." Reid hated to think about the facts of the case because he knew with every word, they were solidifying the chances that Emily was not okay. "I hate to say it, but this unsub seems to have a personal vendetta against Em. He's gone to extreme lengths to find where she lives and get her to meet him."
"Plus, we have to consider the fact that Emily would have to trust the unsub enough to contact him and meet up with him. She isn't careless, at least she wasn't twenty years ago, and I think that she'd have to know the unsub prior to his letter. The unsub wasn't threatening in his letter. We do need to know why Emily asked Garcia to research Doyle and Louise. We also need to know why the letter was addressed to Lauren. Who the hell is Lauren Reynolds, and why would Emily agree to the man who wrote the letter?" Hotch was more frustrated with her secret keeping than anything. If she had trusted them enough, they'd know where to find her. He needed to find her. For Lia.
"Okay that's a good start. Let's take a break and regroup in thirty minutes. We can try to go from there." J.J. wants to get a second alone with Hotch. Everyone's worried about Lia and Aaron. When are they going to break?
Ten minutes later, J.J. walks into the break room to see Hotch sitting at the table. His head's between his hands, and it doesn't take a profiler to know he's overwhelmed from all the information he was trying to take in. "Hey, Hotch. I'm really glad you're here. We need the help," J.J. says gently with a smile.
"J.J.. Hi. Yeah, it's good to be back. I want to help more than anything right now."
"Aaron, she won't blame you if you go home and get some sleep. We've been working for hours and I know you came straight from work. Go home, Hotch. You're no help if you're exhausted and overwhelmed." She genuinely thinks she's getting through to him, but when he looks up, she sees the amount of pain in his eyes.
"I haven't been there for them for seventeen years, J.J.. I'm not leaving." And with that, Hotch gets up to leave the room. "I'll see you out there, J.J.. I'm going to look for Emily." J.J. sighed, got some coffee for her and Spencer, and followed Hotch out of the room.