Hotch sighed tiredly as they walked into the precinct. It was their fifth one in about ten days. Recently, it seemed that they were getting a lot of little cases back to back. Weird ones and somewhat complicated, which meant that the BAU were necessary, but between them could solve at a reasonable rate.

Something most people would be happy to do or were glad to happen, but that wasn't the case here. Unfortunately, none of them had been local or even in the same state. Which meant far too many flights and not enough time in his own bed, in Hotch's opinion. Not that he spent a lot of time there in the first place, but spending even less time than usual wasn't exactly good, was it?

And his team were no longer as fresh as they could be. They were all a bit irritable at the pacing of cases and how they were being handled by local police. Because, of course, they couldn't get compliant sheriffs or police chiefs for these cases. Which just made the usual suspicion that their presence drew all the more annoying. The result was a very guarded and protective team, which was not a good combination. Emily had already terrified three LEOs, a sheriff (though he hid it behind a lot of bluster) and a magistrate. This was thankfully across three states, so none of their cases got thrown out. And surprisingly, neither did they. Reid was spewing even more facts than usual, getting more and more obscure as the days went by. Which the team didn't even try to curb once they realised it helped them get left alone so they could actually get work done. Something Hotch couldn't officially condone (stupid politics) but privately approved. The quicker they solved some of these cases, the better.

This couldn't get any worse, could it? They had to catch a break, right?

He really should know better to even tempt fate like that because, sure enough, a situation happened.

Hotch blinked at the piece of paper one of the LEOs had handed to him. He had read the thing. Read it three times, in fact. But he still couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. This was the last thing he had been expecting and definitely the last thing he wanted.

What sort of person even-? He scanned the letter again and shook his head. Unbelievable.

"Where did this come from?" He asked the man urgently, getting to his feet.

The team, being a well trained and well-oiled machine, also started getting to their feet, knowing that when he used that tone that things were serious.

The police officer stopped at turned around, shrugging yet looking somewhat amused.

"Don't know. A kid dropped it in."

He returned to his seat at that bit of news. A kid. A kid had handed the ketter in. Probably got paid by their unsub and was probably innocent in this whole affair, but he would still have to be tracked down to see if he could tell them what the man looked like. If he even saw the man.

"What does it even say?" Morgan asked, walking behind Hotch in an attempt to see the letter.

"Don't touch it," Hotch warned them. "I don't want anymore fingerprints on it than there already are."

He still couldn't believe that the police officer had just handed it to him like that. At least he he only held the edges, but that still could have made any other fingerprints he had unwittingly put his fingers on illegible.

Morgan nodded absentmindedly and leaned in close to the paper.

"Huh. That's certainly something."

"Let me see, let me see," Emily had now come up from behind him and had started reading over his shoulder. He could almost hear her eyebrows go up. "That's something new."

"What is it?" Reid asked. "A tip off?"

"A threat." Hotch replied. "Possibly from our unsub."

"But we just got here?" JJ said in confusion.

They hadn't even touched any of the case files. Hell, they had literally just got their coffee and a whiteboard set up, which hardly counted as doing something.

"It's written in an extremely satisfied tone," Morgan said, looking up from it.

"It looks like he was calm and collected when it was written out," Emily stated and then nodded at Reid. "You might want to do a handwriting analysis to see if that's right and if you can get anything else out of it.

"He must have wanted us to come here," Rossi said with a nod. "That's why his murders have all been so high-profile."

That's what had confused them about this UNSUB on the way over on the plane. There hadn't seemed to be any rhyme or reason to who he killed, but each of the bodies had been placed in extremely public locations. Tied to a lamppost at the city hall, posed on a bench at a popular park, between the shutters and the door of a coffee shop.

"That much is obvious," Spencer said, trying to get a look at the page. "Can I do a handwriting analysis now? This is the first time he's communicated with us except for his murders."

Hotch absentmindedly held it out from him, and Reid gratefully took it.

He promptly frowned as he thought. It turned out that there wasn't much more to add except for the fact he was left handed and probably had a cut along the side of his hand of the dried blood on certain points were anything to go by. He was also extremely confident in his ability to remain off their radar because he bragged about what he had done, showing little remorse.

"Fantastic," Hotch said tiredly.

"He's probably going to taunt us with another victim," Morgan pointed out. "Now that he knows he has our attention, he's going to want to keep it."

"Then we're going to have to catch him before he can, aren't we?" Rossi said simply.