As it turned out, Aitana did not have allergies.
It was the ruddy flu. She was bedridden for a whole week. All she did was stay in bed and feel awful. Her body didn't have the energy to do anything else, not even feed her poor fishes or water her plants.
Penelope Garcia immediately volunteered to visit her first and with her she brought necessities. Aitana saw her bedroom surrounded by oddly colored trinkets and new kinds of plants that Penelope swore were for good luck. Her bedroom began to look more like a botanical garden more than anything else.
JJ was more level headed and brought groceries. She even brought over some cooked meals. Aitana reminded JJ that she had no stomach for anything but JJ never left the house without making sure that Aitana had something to eat, whether it was crackers or soup. Emily was a little more busy to visit Aitana as often as Penelope and JJ. She apologized profusely to Aitana because it was all due to her re-certification. The one day that all three women were able to visit together, Emily explained more thoroughly how her training was going.
"Morgan is making it difficult," she muttered. "He's being an ass, basically. He's going to make me redo everything."
"I think that's probably more the FBI than anything else," Aitana said. She laid in bed with several blankets over, half of which were gifts from Penelope. "I mean, I don't think Morgan made the training booklets, right?"
Emily playfully rolled her eyes and reluctantly agreed with her. "It's still just annoying! And it's the reason I can't visit as often too. So blame Morgan."
"And not the cases, right?" Aitana chuckled, her eyes flickering to JJ and Penelope on her other side. "I get it, you guys. Work is work and our work is even more. You do not have to worry about me right now, alright? My mom's been around and Angel helps me a lot. And besides, you've all been alternating. Penelope," she reached for the blonde's arm, giving it a gentle pat, "came two days ago. Emily," she crossed gazes with the dark haired woman, "was here yesterday. JJ's been here all morning. Morgan dropped by yesterday and Spencer came by after. Rossi says he'll come by with a plate of pasta! I even got a small text from Hotch wishing me well. So trust me, I am all too well. Spoiled, actually."
"Well we can't wait for you to come back," JJ said, "Things are a little hectic at work right now. The boys—"
"Spencer and Morgan," Penelope muttered with a roll of her eyes.
"—are annoying the hell out of all of us with their little prank war," JJ said, shaking her head. "Honestly, not even Henry gives me this much trouble."
Aitana smiled lightly. "They're still doing that?"
"Yes," went all three of the women with the same irritation.
"They don't go that high but it's still super annoying," Emily muttered. "They won't stop until someone pulls the best prank."
"Mm, and what's the wager?" Aitana curiously asked. She had vague memories of her "assistance" on their pranks the last time they were on a case together. She wasn't all that mad about it, maybe just the decent annoyed. She was no stranger to being used for petty pranks since her brothers were notorious for doing it multiple times when she was younger and didn't understand what they were doing.
"Whoever wins owes the other one a favor," explained Emily. "Everyone else be damned, I guess."
"Interesting. You know, I guess this is also partly my fault," Aitana said, "My mind was so foggy the last time I was at work. I helped them one-up each other and I didn't even know it."
"Oh, I'm sure," Penelope said disapprovingly. "And trust me, I almost pulled both their ears for it."
"Well," Aitana hummed ever-so-innocently, "If you're interested in helping me get a little payback, I'd be all for it. Now that I've got all my senses back, I'm planning on letting them know they used the wrong gal." Her words made the other three women curious but Aitana elected to hold off on what she had in mind for the time being.
~0~
Spencer wasn't even surprised anymore that his things were going missing at work. There was no mystery; he knew exactly who was behind it. The only thing is he had to go and find them which was more of a pain than anything else.
"I know Morgan has them," he said seriously while Emily just sat at her desk and shook her head. He was ransacking his own desk in search of his missing items. "He took my stapler, my pens, my stapler remover."
Emily had no intention of listening to the lame list of missing items. She looked away and happened to see JJ and Aitana walking into the bullpen. "Oh, Aitana's back!"
Spencer briefly paused his search to confirm with his own eyes. Soon as he saw Aitana, he went back to opening drawers. "Honestly, this isn't even a prank! It's downright theft!"
"Hey, look who I ran into?" JJ brought Aitana up to pair, the latter chuckling with flushed cheeks.
"Gosh, I feel so special the way I'm being welcomed," Aitana remarked. "Even security noticed."
"Welcome back." Emily got up from her seat to hug Aitana. "Don't mind Reid here, he's going through another session of Grand Theft Desk." She shot Spencer a smirk that he didn't really appreciate.
"What?" JJ asked, watching as Spencer slammed shut another of his drawers.
"Morgan took my stuff!" he cried.
JJ groaned and shook her head. "Oh boy, it's too early for this guys. Can we just — can we have one day off?"
"Yeah," Emily said with heavy emphasis as she sat back down.
"It's not a prank if you're just stealing!" Spencer continued to search through his second level drawers. "And Morgan's welcome to back down at any time!"
"Funny, we could say the same thing about you," said JJ purposely.
Aitana watched silently as Spencer went through the other lines of drawers. Finally, she made a suggestion. "Did you check the bottom right drawer?"
Spencer moved for that specific drawer when her words hit him. He stopped altogether and met Aitana's eye. She had the smallest of smiles but a knowing one at that. Slowly, Spencer reached for the drawer she said and pulled it open. He froze again.
Emily tried leaning over her desk to see what was inside. Aitana grabbed JJ's arm as the blonde went to do the same.
"Did you find it?" Aitana asked Spencer, still calmly and with a smile.
Spencer didn't say anything. Instead, he reached inside the drawer and pulled out a big plate out of it. When Emily and JJ saw what it was, they burst into laughter.
Aitana remained absolutely calm.
Stunned, Spencer put down the plate of jello on his desk. He had found his things now. They were located inside the bright green jello.
"The girls mentioned you like jello. Was green okay?" Aitana inquired like she hadn't stuffed office supplies inside a wobbly jello herself. She never thought she would have to but she wasn't upset that she got the chance to do it.
Spencer was absolutely stunned. Not even JJ's and Emily's laughter shook him out at first. And they were laughing pretty loud.
"You...you did this?" He eventually sputtered out a few minutes later.
Aitana giggled and raised a hand in the air. "Guilty as charged! I have always wanted to pull that joke but my mother would have killed me if I used her kitchen for these kinds of things so I couldn't do it when I was younger. I guess I should thank you for the amazing opportunity."
Spencer stared at her, both bewildered and utterly confused. To add onto those two feelings, a loud horn broke through the entire bullpen. It stopped JJ's and Emily's laugh and froze everyone else.
Once again, Aitana was calm. "That would be Morgan."
For a second, Spencer was genuinely afraid. And then Morgan came storming out with a bullhorn still having remnants of duct tape on the bottom.
"REID!" He was coming straight for Spencer.
Spencer's hands shot up in front of him. "It wasn't me!"
"Like hell!" Morgan couldn't come down the steps any faster.
"Actually, it wasn't him. It was me," Aitana waved her hand. "Good morning, Morgan." She smiled sweetly.
Like Spencer, Morgan froze altogether. His head turned in Aitana's direction, eyes narrowing as he decided whether or not she was being honest.
Aitana's smile widened. Her eyes flickered to JJ and Emily, both of them struggling not to laugh again. "Ta-da?" Aitana made a gesture with her arms open.
"You did it?" Morgan finally concluded she was very much guilty.
Aitana nodded. "Aha!"
"Why?"
Aitana raised an eyebrow at him, no longer playful. "Really?" She stepped forwards, putting her hands behind her back. "You're asking me why I did such a thing?"
Morgan nodded expectantly at her. He couldn't understand why she would decide to pull pranks herself.
"You," Aitana pointed at him, "took advantage of my state during a news broadcast," she said, watching Morgan lower his head immediately. "And you," she pointed at Spencer next, "used me to get back at him later. Naughty boys. I had to get back at you for that."
"Well done," JJ clapped her hands for Aitana.
"How'd you pull this?" Spencer curiously asked. He wasn't going to even argue against Aitana's statements. They were true and he should be sorry. He was.
"Oh that was easy," Aitana waved him off. "I came in yesterday night, with Hotch's permission of course."
Morgan's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Hotch let you do this?"
"Aha," Aitana nodded. "He's very tired of your little war as is everyone else."
"Yes," went both JJ and Emily together.
"I love watching the Office and the jello prank that Jim pulled was always so funny to me so I figured why not do that one for you, dear old Spencer," Aitana smiled sweetly at him. "A classic, am I right?" Before Spencer could think of an answer, because right now he had nothing to say, Aitana switched to Morgan. "And the bullhorn was something my brothers pulled on each other. That's right, you guys forgot I grew up with two brothers. I was always caught in their pranks so eventually I had to learn. Ladies and gentlemen, I think I win." Aitana did a curtsy bow for the group.
"Nu-uh," Morgan was quick to wag a finger, "You didn't win anything. You are not a part of this."
"I believe the terms were whoever pulled the best prank wins," Aitana pointed at JJ and Emily for their support. "Right?"
"Right!" Emily was happy to agree.
"Nowhere in those terms did you explicitly say that one of you had to be the winner," Aitana went on, flashing smiles at the pair of men.
"I think she won, fellas," JJ said. "Learned your lessons?"
"You didn't win," Morgan insisted. "You—"
The door to Hotch's office opened to let out a striding Penelope and Hotch. Their grim expressions cut the conversation short, but Morgan vowed it wasn't over.
~0~
"We have a child abduction in St. Louis," Penelope started the meeting urgently as the situation demanded for. "Bobby Smith, 9 years old, vanished 48 hours ago from a residential area, where his mother, Marlene Smith, claims to have dropped him off."
"Forty-eight hours and we're just learning about it now?" Morgan asked, slightly irritated. Half of the group suspected his irritation had nothing to do with the case. He kept shooting Aitana glances, clearly still holding his stance about her winning status.
Penelope didn't know what was going on so she just nodded. "Yeah. That's because mom didn't know her son was gone. She assumed that he was with the grandmother and just left him there."
"So, she's not exactly on the short list for mother of the year," remarked JJ. "What about the father?"
"Uh, he was convicted of embezzling from his workplace 2 years ago. Currently cooling his heels in state prison."
"If it's a stranger abduction, the first 24 hours are critical," Spencer said, not that they didn't already know how high the stakes were.
"This kid's already been missing twice that long," Rossi said, checking the file for the original time the mother had called it in.
"Which is why we shouldn't waste any more time," Hotch said, prompting the team to close their files. The jet was leaving almost immediately.
"Hey Hotch," Morgan called as he hurried to catch up with Hotch before he walked out of the room, "A word?"
Aitana snorted a laugh as they disappeared. "He's going to ask Hotch about the bullhorn."
"That was you?" Rossi gave her a pointed look until Aitana nodded proudly. He smiled. "Good. I was getting tired of it." On his way out, he looked directly at Spencer.
"Seriously, well done," Emily reached over to give Aitana a congratulatory pat on the arm.
"Well done with what?" asked Penelope, head turning between the women fast enough to make her dizzy.
"Aitana put an end to the prank war," JJ said, eyes glued on Spencer. Unlike Morgan, he had yet to give his opinion on the matter. "Isn't that right, Spence?"
"Um," Spencer cleared his throat, hands reaching for his file on the table, "I don't really think we should be discussing that during a child abduction."
"Mhm, you still lost," Emily said, "Women can multitask."
Spencer grabbed his things and left in a hurry. The women high fived Aitana afterwards and they began offering ideas on what Aitana could ask of the pair for winning. Penelope hated that she had missed the whole thing but after Aitana suggested to go through the camera feed, Penelope seemed more inclined to help celebrate the triumph.
~0~
"Who do you think he's talking to?" JJ whispered the question to the others while Rossi entertained some kind of conversation over the phone. It had been going on almost as soon as the jet had taken off.
"Isn't it obvious? A special friend," Emily giggled but immediately stopped when Rossi ended the conversation and turned around to see all of their collective smiling faces.
"What?" He cluelessly asked.
"Nothing…" Emily said, clearly struggling not to say more but in the end she lost. "Just somebody's got a lot of extra pep in their step this morning, that's all."
"Probably doubled up on his vitamins," remarked JJ.
"Oh, he doubled up on something," Morgan chimed in with a smirk.
"Garcia's back on," Aitana cut in suddenly, unknowingly getting a grateful look from Rossi for her timing. She was pointing to the screen where Penelope's face had come through. "Hey, did you get something on the mother?"
"Oh," Penelope's mouth pulled together in an 'O' shape, "I have so much on the mother, and try as I might, none of it is good. Marlene Smith has a history of erratic behavior, seriously clinically depressed, two suicide attempts in the last 5 years."
"Was she being treated for her depression?" asked Hotch.
"Oh, my gosh, yes. Like more pill-popping than Elvis. Yes!"
"Depression is one of the few things that can overwhelm the maternal instinct," Spencer said. "What about the grandmother?"
"I don't have anything on her yet, but don't reach for your remote. I'll be ba-a-ck!" Penelope exclaimed before the screen went pitch black.
"Two suicide attempts…" Rossi remarked with a shake of his head. "Why hasn't child services intervened?"
"Probably talked her way out of it," Emily said, "Most social service organizations are overworked and underfunded. Things slip through the cracks."
"If this boy's mother tried to commit suicide and he's from a chronically unhappy household, maybe this wasn't an abduction at all," Morgan theorized. "What if Bobby simply ran away?"
"When 9-year-olds run away, they're usually home for supper," Aitana said. She really doubted a nine year old would have the guts and the smarts to formulate a good running away plan.
"JJ, you and I will talk to the mother," Hotch started giving the instructions, "Morgan, Reid, and Serrano, go to the boy's house. Prentiss, you and Dave assess the site where the mother claims to have dropped him off."
From behind her file copy, Aitana flashed a sweet smile at Spencer and Morgan. They had yet to speak to her about the incident.
~0~
The victim's house was closed off for the time being while the mother resided at the precinct for questioning. The first thing Aitana, Spencer and Morgan noted was the clean lawn. However, although the lawn was indeed clean, it was clear that it could still use some attending to. There were patches of yellow all around. Inside, the story was almost the same. The trio lounged about in the living room taking note of the neatness of the furniture. While Morgan and Spencer wandered upstairs, Aitana took the rest of the downstairs.
She was most surprised with the kitchen's state. She only had one nephew close to her but she knew what a kitchen with children would typically look like. Every kitchen she'd been inside of where a young child lived, it was always clear of anything potentially dangerous. No knives, no open outlets, nothing sharp. Everything was up and out of reach for a child.
This kitchen was the complete opposite.
There were no safety locks on the fridge and when Aitana opened it up, it was fully stocked with everything that a child could possibly want. And in multiple pairs. Individual water, orange juice and milk bottles—everything plastic—were filed on the door. Fruits were stocked inside the drawers, along with cut up vegetables. Even the stove was accessible to the child. Aitana remembered a moment in which her nephew had been deeply reprimanded for attempting to move their stove's knob. Bobby was left at ease with the stove and the microwave. The latter was also placed on what would be his level. To top it off, Aitana found the key ring hole set up at the entrance of the kitchen. She was baffled. She would never let her nephew go in and out of the house, even if he was 9 like Bobby.
Later on, Aitana headed upstairs to see what Spencer and Morgan had found so far. It seemed like they were bickering and somehow she walked into it again.
"Hey Serrano," Morgan called as soon as she walked into the mother's bedroom, "How many pairs of shoes do you own?"
Aitana's face scrunched in confusion. "First, you don't talk to me and then you ask me that? You see how it looks, right?"
"I'm making a point here!" Morgan motioned her to answer the question. Beside him, Spencer seemed more or less puzzled as well.
Aitana rolled her eyes. "I don't know, 30?"
"What?" Spencer openly gaped at her. Aitana lifted an eyebrow at him. "Why do you have so many?"
"Because I need them?"
"You can't possibly need 30 pairs of shoes!"
"I most possibly can!"
Morgan cleared his throat, eyes on Spencer and hands gesturing in Aitana's direction.
Aitana stomped her foot on the ground. "Stop using me like that, dammit!"
"I was making a point," Morgan said as he walked out the room, leaving the other two to follow. "No woman has just 4 pairs of shoes in their closet. And the kid's bedroom is fully stocked with everything he'd need."
"She even set up a separate area so he could do his homework," Spencer said, going in full detail about the desk they'd seen in Bobby's room.
"You should see the kitchen then," Aitana said, "That thing's more organized than my entire house."
"Mom has serious financial issues, denies herself even the smallest luxury, and yet…" Morgan had listed off his fingers, "She splurges to take her son to an expensive theme park and then buys a pricey picture frame so he can remember the experience."
"No way, those things are easily $30," Aitana said out of her own experience. Her parents hardly bought those things for that reason.
"He had several," Spencer said for her benefit.
"Well then, I guess we can cross her off the suspect list," Aitana concluded. "Which makes this even harder…"
~0~
When the trio returned to the precinct, they joined JJ, Rossi and Hotch just Hotch were discussing the interview JJ conducted with the victim's mother. They, like Aitana, Spencer and Morgan, were beginning to disregard the mother as a suspect.
"The concern for her son was genuine. Her tone of voice, body language," JJ was saying, "She didn't once ask if she was in trouble, under arrest, 'where's my lawyer?' None of that." The woman behaved like a genuine concerned, scared, mother.
"That's pretty much what we found at home too," Aitana said, glancing back at Spencer and Morgan for their agreement.
Spencer was making his way up to one of their evidence boards. While they were gone, the others had added new details under the mother's name.
"Home environment points in the same direction," Morgan said, "The money's tight, but mom did whatever she could to create a nice world for her son. Whatever cash she had she spent on him. Only 4 pairs of shoes in her closet."
"And she taught her son to be self-sufficient," Aitana said, barely holding the urge to make a comment about the pairs of shoes. "The kitchen was scaled down to a 9-year-old's level so he could microwave his own meals, get food and utensils from the pantry. He even had his own little key ring so he could come and go as he pleased. That's a hell of a lot of liberties for a 9 year old if you asked me."
The others agreed.
Shortly after, Emily and Rossi returned.
"It took a while, but grandma's alibi checked out," Emily announced, "She was with two lady friends in Seneca, on the other side of the state."
"Acquaintances, relatives, teachers. So far they've all checked out," Rossi added.
"This is starting to look more and more like a stranger abduction," Morgan said what many of them were beginning to think.
"Yeah, except the area Bobby disappeared from has a decent amount of foot traffic," Rossi said, having seen the site with Emily. "If he'd put up a struggle, chances are someone would have noticed."
"My guess is Bobby knew his abductor or trusted him," Spencer then theorized, "The trip to grandma's house was a spur-of-the-moment decision. The unsub must have been staking out the mother's house, saw them leaving, and followed. The only thing I don't understand is how the unsub got into Bobby's life in the first place. Self-sufficient kids learn to trust their own judgment."
"Well at the end of the day, he's still only nine," Aitana reminded them. "He's going to fall for something." It was the inevitable and now they were dealing with it.
~ 0 ~
The next morning, the team were informed that Bobby's mother had been found murdered outside a convenience store the previous night. The team gathered in their room to go over the pictures of the new crime scene and their victim. As far as they knew, Bobby had yet to turn up dead.
"There's something strange about the body," mused Spencer as he went over a couple photographs, "She was slaughtered by someone completely out of control, yet on her wrists there are precise wounds on top of where she already cut herself, only deeper. Like he was trying to replicate her suicide attempts but then lost control."
Beside him, JJ grabbed one of the pictures in Spencer's hands. "Maybe this was never about the kid at all, but about the mother. Make her suffer for a few days by taking the child, then kill her?"
"Wouldn't that mean the unsub knew Marlene's personal history?" Aitana inquired. She stood in front of their evidence board, her eyes falling over the details they'd written about Marlene under her picture. "And that would put the unsub somewhere in the medical department?" She turned around to meet the others' gazes.
Morgan could see why she would think that automatically. It was the sensible idea. "Not just medical, it could be friends…"
"Yeah, but as far as we knew, she didn't have any friends," Aitana reminded them then asked JJ, who had conducted the interrogation with Marlene yesterday, if Marlene had said anything about friends.
"None," JJ said.
"So what about the people who walked into the house?" Spencer suggested. "Anyone who walked into the house would immediately know there were problems. That the child had to be independent for most of the day."
Morgan liked the idea and for that, he called Penelope to get further on it. "Hey, baby girl, whatever you're doing, drop it!"
"Oh, yes, and with pleasure," Penelope was sarcastic right off the bat, amusing everyone who was listening in, "Let me tell you something, sweetheart. This is a Lamborghini you are talking to. You have to drive me. You can't just leave me parked in the garage collecting dust or I will wilt."
The others nearly laughed with Penelope's tidbits. She had no idea she was on speaker.
Morgan smiled but nowhere near surprised. He long ago lost the surprise when it came to Penelope. Going along with things made it more fun anyways. "Please forgive my neglect. I need you to rev up that fine-tuned Italian engine of yours, then."
"Where do they come up with this stuff?" Aitana quietly whispered to the others while the pair continued. "I mean, is it in, like, books or something?"
"Not in any books I've read," Spencer remarked, causing a quiet round of snickers.
Their research was cut short when they got word that another child had been taken. It was clear the unsub wasn't going to lengthen gaps between abductions and kills.
Aitana and Spencer were sent to the park where the child's mother was. She was a frantic woman, a natural response given the situation, but it was making her explanations fast paced and incoherent.
"I was sitting on the bench, and he was playing right there," she flapped an arm towards the playground still filled with other children. "I looked away for two seconds."
"And you were you by yourself?" Aitana asked. Mrs. Tanner nodded quickly. "So you told the police you live in McKinley Heights but that's almost an hour away. You drove your son all the way out here just to play?" Aitana took another scan of the park for any outstanding features that would draw parents in but to her it looked like any other park.
"I was doing things, shopping" Mrs. Tanner reasoned. Spencer noted the constant tapping of her fingers against her leg as well as the other hand taking her hair every now and then.
"Mrs. Tanner, please don't take this the wrong way, but exactly what drug are you addicted to?" Spencer abruptly asked, stunning both women with him. Aitana's eyebrows raised at him, unprofessionally bemused with his directiveness. "You're displaying symptoms of withdrawal."
Mrs. Tanner dropped both her arms on her sides. "Are you crazy?"
Spencer disregarded her offended tone. "Ma'am, we saw two deals going down on the other side of the park when we arrived. You were here to buy, weren't you? That's what had you distracted."
Mrs. Tanner was outraged. She glanced at Aitana as if waiting for the female agent to come to her aid.
"He's hardly ever wrong," Aitana said. "So it's best if you just tell us the truth unless you're not interested in finding your son?"
"I can't believe that you actually think I would—"
"And yet we're still talking about this instead of what exactly happened here," Aitana continued, her expression growing flat as the mother insisted on denying things.
"Your child is missing, Ms. Tanner. Every minute, every half-minute counts," Spencer said, "You need to tell us the truth and you need to tell us now."
The mother looked between the two agents helplessly, still holding onto her story for another minute before giving in.
Half an hour later, Spencer was calling Hotch to inform them of the new pattern they were discovering. When Spencer returned to the car, he found Aitana leaning against the hood of the SUV, looking out at the park.
"What is it?" Spencer asked, presuming that he'd learned enough about her to recognize her thinking face.
"I've been watching the kids," Aitana started, eyes combing over the children using the slide again. "And the parents. They're mostly vigilant but of course they would look away for a couple minutes. It's natural."
"Right…" Spencer agreed, patiently waiting for her to reach her point. He leaned against the SUV as well.
"Maybe it's just because I have a nephew, I…" Aitana smiled lightly and glanced at him. "Do you have nephews or nieces? Little ones?"
"Neither, actually," Spencer admitted. "It was always just my mother and I."
"Oh, well, I have several in Mexico but I do have Logan here. Remember him?"
"Hard to forget," Spencer tapped the side of his head, making Aitana laugh.
"Oh right, my bad." That was stupid of her to forget. "My nephew Logan is five and even though he's pretty young, he understands the stranger-danger concept. My brother, being a detective, has drilled that into Logan. We've all taught him that he should never talk to anyone he doesn't know even when that person says they're a friend of his parents, or a friend of his auntie's and uncle and grandparents—the whole shebang."
"Right, children are more intelligent than most adults give them credit for," remarked Spencer. "Their brains are like sponges at this point in their life."
"Yes!" Aitana nodded. "So if somebody walked up to Logan with that crappy excuse that they're his parents' friends and tried to take him with them, Logan would make a fuss. At the very least, he would keep saying 'no' until someone inevitably notices. If that happened in, say, a park," Aitana gestured to the scene before them, "then somebody would have noticed a kid being fussy. Even if it was just a parent handling a fussy child, someone always looks over."
"But that didn't happen here…" Spencer said, studying the various parents still around. They were all focused, perhaps more now since the abduction, on their children.
"Yeah, because Tommy didn't make a fuss," Aitana presumed, "And if he didn't make a fuss then that meant he knew the person who took him. Trust him. That won't be your local plumber or your I.T. guy…"
"No it would not be," Spencer agreed. They were circling back to Aitana's original belief that their unsub was someone in the medical department.
"Question remains...which one makes rounds to the parks and houses?" Aitana leaned off the car and made a clear gesture that she was waiting for Spencer to give her the answer.
"Well—I don't know it on the spot," Spencer made a face, earning another small laugh from her. She shook her head at him and went around the car for the passenger's seat.
"So are you saying that with a little bit more time you would know the answer?" Aitana pulled the car door open.
Spencer made his way to the driver's side. "I mean, maybe? I don't know…?"
"Just like Morgan," Aitana said as she climbed inside. "You can't admit defeat!"
"What—that's not what I meant!" Spencer exclaimed and quickly got into the car.
"Mhm," Aitana crossed her arms. "Drive, Dr. Reid," she instructed, her tone laying down the finality of the conversation.
~ 0 ~
With what the team now had, they were confident they were ready to deliver the profile to the rest of the precinct. Hotch sent Morgan to collect the new victim's mother because, if they were right, the unsub would soon be attacking her. But it all turned into a rather sharp confusion when, only a couple hours after the profile was delivered, the second victim turned up at a random adult party.
Further down the evening, Penelope called the group back with very few findings. Even though Emily and Rossi had figured out that their unsub had to be a 911 dispatcher, they weren't able to single out the unsub.
"I'm literally going as fast as I can," Penelope huffed after Morgan asked her if she was closer. "There are literally hundreds in the great St. Louis area. Can you help me narrow this down?"
"Refine your search to males between 25 and 30 years of age. And our unsub probably has abandonment issues, so look for backgrounds that reflect that," Morgan was more than helpful, at least that was his opinion. "A history of foster care or someone who was farmed out to other relatives by his own parents."
"Can you trace individual 911 dispatchers based on calls they would have received?" Spencer thought to ask and almost shrunk in his chair when Penelope answered sharply.
"Ok, look, let me make this clear. There are a quarter of a billion 911 calls annually. That's like 10 calls every second of every day. And non-emergent calls are disposed of quickly!"
"Okay, well let's look at it this way," JJ tried her shot, shooting a small smile at Spencer in the process, "This operator would have been on duty when both calls came in from the Smith and Tanner families. And he would have been off duty at the times of the two abductions and Marlene Smith's murder."
"Oh, my God. This brings the needle in a haystack to a whole other dimension, but I will go to that dimension and I will cross-reference and I will call you back!" Penelope promptly hung up with her promise.
"I'm actually afraid to answer that call," Aitana mumbled under her breath. She pushed herself out of her seat and announced she was making a coffee run and by that, she meant right in the bullpen.
She was tired, this case was touching home for her. All she saw with these kids were her nephew and she knew that was completely unprofessional. And yet, she had the big urge to call her sister-in-law right now.
"Hey, want some help?" Morgan startled her into nearly dropping the cups in her hands.
"Uh, yeah, thanks," Aitana handed him the cup that was more likely to slip out of her hand first. "Penelope call back yet?"
"She's good but she's not that fast."
"Oh, don't let her hear you say that," Aitana said, causing a laugh between them. Aitana grabbed another of the coffee cups on the table and handed it to Morgan. She would take the last one. "So, you're talking to me again? Did you finally accept that I won?"
Morgan hummed. "More like I'm putting pause on that until we're done with the case."
"Right," Aitana started the way back to the conference room, "But you do know that I won, right?"
"Uuh, no," Morgan looked at her crazily, "You did not."
"I thought my tricks were pretty classic..."
Morgan scoffed. "Classic? You nearly took my ears off!"
Aitana smirked. "A classic."
They returned to the room shortly later, letting the others hear the ending of their conversation.
"Hotch, I cannot believe you allowed this," Morgan said, shooting Hotch a mock glare.
"You and Reid were getting out of hand," Hotch said simply, eyeing a decently guilty Spencer at the end of the table. "And I made Serrano promise me that she wouldn't go overboard and disrupt colleague's work."
"She used a bullhorn on me! How is that not distracting?"
"I wasn't distracted."
Aitana barely covered her mouth before an unladylike snort slipped out. Who said Hotch couldn't be funny?
~0~
Penelope called the them back about an hour later and she was nowhere near happy. "First off, you are on restriction from my inner Lamborghini!"
"Garcia—"
"I mean it! This high-performance engine may purr like a puma on the prowl, but this time, Derek, you have seriously overheated my engines and I will require some cool-down laps upon your return, if you know what I mean by that—"
"Baby girl, you're on speaker," Morgan finally managed to break through Penelope's rampage. The others were very close to laughing.
"...I knew that," came Penelope's voice a moment later. This time, she was able to hear some chuckles on the other end. "Okay, um, so I'm calling to tell you, sir, there are eleven 911 dispatchers in the greater St. Louis area that were on duty when the calls were placed but not working during the murder and abduction. Of those 11, there's one that fits your profile—George Kelling, age 27, 1181 Clay Street, apartment 8. Sending his picture right now."
"Do you know where he is now?" Hotch inquired. Aitana and JJ hurried to collect their tablets and see the photograph that Penelope was sending their way.
"He was scheduled to work today. His supervisor said he showed up for his shift, but then he left early."
"Can you get the log of all the calls he took tonight?" Spencer walked over to the landline.
"Yeah, of course. But there are a lot."
"Skip to the last one!"
"Last one is a domestic disturbance at 788 4th Avenue, number C. Attempted sexual assault of a young girl. Kelling dispatched the police and then he took off."
"Meaning we need to hurry," Emily said to the others.
They divided into two teams, one going to the site of the last 911 incident and the other to Kelling's home. Both groups came to the same empty conclusions. They had to call in Penelope for help again.
"Hey!" JJ found Aitana in what seemed to be the unsub's bedroom. The brunette was shopping around and had been since they realized Kelling was gone. "What are you doing? Hotch has Garcia on the phone tracking other possible sites."
"That's good. I was just looking for some clues," Aitana shrugged as she turned away from a disorderly bookshelf. "With the amount of dust on this furniture, it's safe to say that Kelling hasn't been here in a while."
JJ nodded. The room did seem pretty still in place.
"But check it out," Aitana hurried towards one of the bedside tables. She picked up a portrait of Kelling with an older woman. "Parents?"
JJ hummed. "Maybe." She looked around the room again and found no other portraits except for the one Aitana held. "They're the only people important to him," she assumed.
Aitana put the portrait down and hurried out of the room with JJ. Hotch and Spencer were in the middle of a talk with Penelope outside the house.
"...Kelling entered the foster care system and I don't know why…" Penelope said in a hurried ramble.
"Oh, that must have been the picture we saw then," Aitana cut in, her eyes slightly wider. "Kelling has a photograph of an elderly woman in his bedroom. It's the only picture he has in that entire room."
"Makes sense," Penelope said, "His father abandoned the family when he was a baby. I can't figure out what happened to mom yet."
"All right, we need the address of the foster family he was placed with," Hotch instructed as he led the way back to the SUV."
"I know. He bounced around a lot. Give me a second!" Penelope exclaimed. " I'll call you back!"
"Okay, what I don't understand is why would he keep Bobby but release Timothy?" JJ started once the line was dead. "If he wants to get rid of the parent, why not kill them first and then take the child. It's so much riskier to wait."
"Unless the children are a crucial part of his killing ritual," Aitana said off-handedly.
Hotch turned to her, head tilting.
Spencer followed her idea and tried to develop it as quickly as he could. "He needs something from them before he can murder the parents."
"What could a child possibly give him?" JJ made a face.
"Their approval," Hotch concluded first.
~0~
"Deja vu all over again!" Penelope's voice rang in the SUV. "So, get this. George Kelling's mom committed suicide when he was 10! She jumped off a bridge. Before that, she attempted to kill herself multiple times, cutting her wrists. This sounds really familiar, huh?"
"Did you find the foster home address?" Hotch asked, fingers tapping along the wheel as he waited for the answer.
"The foster family lived on a farm 10 miles northwest of the city on Parkhill Road!"
The engines went on within the second.
"So what happened to the foster parents?" Aitana curiously asks from the backseat. "Kelling didn't have anything else but a picture of those people."
"The father died years ago. The mother just died last month—heart attack!"
"That must have been the trigger," JJ said, "The last person who rescued the unsub was gone. He assumed the mantle."
"And now he suddenly has a house to take these kids to," Aitana shuddered. "Childhood house gone wrong."
"Wait," Spencer leaned forwards from the back seat as well, "Garcia, you said the mother jumped off of a bridge, right?"
"Yeah," Penelope said. "Why?"
JJ recognized the look on Spencer's face. There was something not adding up for him. "What are you thinking?"
"Suicidology is an imperfect science, but it's uncommon for women to kill themselves so violently," Spencer explained, "For lack of a better word, they tend to choose more feminine ways to die. Men shoot themselves, jump off of buildings onto pavement. Women are less messy. They take pills and drown themselves."
"Oh...don't tell me…" Aitana was looking at him in full fledged horror.
~0~
Morgan, Emily and Rossi were already at the secondary location when the others arrived. Once more, they split between the front and the back of the house. As far as they knew, Kelling had at least two of his hostages in the same room.
Hotch led the way into the only room making a noise and sure enough, Kelling was inside holding a woman at gunpoint.
"Put the gun down! Drop the gun!" Hotch gave the first round of orders.
Kelling was nothing if not frantic. "You have to let me finish! Nobody else can do it. Nobody's strong enough!"
"Like you were strong with your mother?" Spencer called.
"Don't talk about her," Kelling snapped. "She was weak. She killed herself and left me alone."
"I don't think so," Hotch said, "Because she tried to kill herself before, nobody would question it. But you did it. You pushed her off the bridge. You killed her."
"No. I helped her!" Kelling made the mistake of moving and was shot along the arm. He dropped to the ground, clutching said arm.
Spencer and JJ rushed to collect him before he would get up.
"The boy's in the closet!" cried one of the hostages.
Hotch ran for the closet and pulled the door open to find Bobby trapped inside. Meanwhile, JJ and Spencer pulled Kelling up, now handcuffed behind his back.
"We'll need medics," Spencer called it in. And perhaps a mouthpiece because Kelling would be yelling for hours to come.
~0~
"How about 10 pairs of shoes? I mean, that has to be enough, right?" Spencer thought as logically as possible despite feeling the topic of shoes was more than redundant. If anything, it was Morgan's fault for bringing up the topic again. In an attempt to make fun of him again for not realizing there was something off about the lack of shoes in Meredith's closet, he told the story to Penelope which then brought on the attention of the others.
"Ten?" JJ made a face. "Ah, Spence, it's different with the ladies. We need them to match our belts, our handbags, our skirts, and the fashions change with the seasons."
"Oh, what are we talking about?" Aitana found the group coming towards the elevator. She'd gone a little ahead to use the restroom first before they left.
"Reid's still trying to guess the right number of shoes women usually have," Morgan said, swinging an arm around Spencer's shoulders and downright ignoring the mini-glare Spencer fixated on him.
"Ah, sweetie, there's no exact number," Aitana mocked a little pout, causing the rest of the women to laugh.
"Yes. Boys are so boring," Penelope groaned sarcastically, "Pants, shoes, out the door."
"Although it's not like men don't have their things," Emily remarked, "I dated a golfer once. He had 12 putters in his closet. But this conversation is reminding me I need new boots."
"They're having a sale at DeMille's on those tall-shaft kitty heels," Penelope was quick to say, "You like those. Do you want to go?"
"Yeah," Emily nodded.
"You getting all this, kid?" Morgan quietly asked Spencer while the others started making shopping plans.
"No," Spencer said with the deepest frown marking his face. Essentially, nobody had answered his question.
"I don't know what you're all smiley about," called Aitana as they began making their way towards the elevator, ""You two still owe me."
The smiles had indeed dropped from Morgan's face. "Oh, not this again!"
"Oh, this time I have backup," Aitana promised, gesturing towards Penelope, JJ and Emily.
"Save it, you didn't win!"
"But technically she did," Emily said with a pointed finger in the air.
"Yes," nodded JJ, "You two said that whoever pulled the best prank would win but you never said it had to be one of you two. Essentially, anyone else could have joined if they wanted to...and I wanted to."
Spencer's eyebrows knitted together as he went over that conversation in his head. "Technically speaking…"
"No," Morgan sharply cut him off, "Don't you start because then she'll really think that she won."
"It's just...that is what we said," Spencer said, still making a face. "And I can't really say that I ever expected to have my stapler inside jello." He knew he couldn't truly forget anything anyways but that had been completely memorable for him.
Aitana grinned. "You can thank Jim Halper for that one. So then," she clapped her hands together, "Ready to admit defeat? And perhaps apologize for using me while I was sick?" Her expression dropped flat.
"Yeah, that was very naughty of you two," Penelope wagged a finger at the two men. "Shame on you!"
"We didn't mean to do it like that," Morgan tried to explain but the way all of them were glaring didn't leave him with a lot to say. "Oh, alight. You win!"
"Thank you," Aitana mocked a curtsy, "And now that it's out of the way, we can get to the good part. You two owe me."
"What do you want?" asked Spencer curiously.
"Oh, I've been thinking about it during the case," Aitana said, glancing at the other women, "And I think I'll be doing you a favor too, Spencer."
"What?" Spencer made a face. "Me?"
"Yea, you're going to find out how many shoes a woman typically has," Aitana chuckled. "You and Morgan can come by to my house this Saturday to clean and rearrange my shoe closet."
JJ, Emily and Penelope nearly lost it on the spot.
"Of course you're all invited too," Aitana told them, "I'll give Hotch and Rossi a call."
"You are one evil woman, sprinkles," Morgan declared.
"Don't mess with me," Aitana winked. Her laughter, combined with JJ's, Emily's and Penelope's, would echo through the floors on their way out.
A/N:
All hail the prank queen, Aitana! She's won ^.^
As always, I have AO3/Wattpad accounts under "noblecrescent" and a tumblr account under "saiilorstars" if you'd like to follow :)
For the reviewers:
Thank you so much! Truly makes me happy knowing people love the story! I hope you liked this chapter as well! :)