Chapter 8

Hotch and JJ met back in the conference room to discuss their findings. JJ's emotions were still fresh after her conversation with the very tearful Riley.

"How was it?" JJ asked Hotch to make sure the question wasn't directed at her first. She needed a second to calm down, to be professional again. This wasn't the first time since having a child that she found herself in a state after speaking to people. 'Lucky for me, its not a missing child again.' She thought to herself as Hotch flicked through his notes. His stern face observed JJ's body language, noticing that she was a little tense. Nevertheless, he ignored the questions swimming around in his head wanting to see that she was alright and answered her question.

"Keeley's parents said everything was like normal before she disappeared. She had called her boyfriend just to double check the time they were meeting and then said goodbye to them... But she never showed." Hotch answered. "Keeley was otherwise quite quiet and secretive, she never told anyone other than her parents when she was going on dates and was always home on time, checking in with them as she left the date." JJ nodded as he spoke, taking in every detail. "It was when they received the phone call from the boyfriend about her not turning up that anyone of them knew."

"Hmm, thats interesting..." JJ added. "Riley told me before Penny and Grace left, Penny had called both Riley and Grace telling them the times of the trains and the meet up times." JJ hesitated. "Would it be silly to think that someone was monitoring their last phone conversations? Or tracking at least one of the phones?" Hotch's stern face let out a small smile.

"Its vague but it could be a big part of our profile." He pulled his phone out and dialled Garcia, putting it on loudspeaker.

"Hello you are through to the queen of everything, how may I help you?" JJ let out a small giggle.

"Garcia, its Hotch. Could you look at the phone records, debit and credit card records of all the victims and the last people they called to see if anyone of them had a phone repaired or if the phones were stolen but returned?" Typing could be heard on the other side of the phone.

"I'm on it now, sir. I sense someone is onto something?" She pried.

"Yes, JJ wondered if someone's phone got tapped into or traced while it was in for a repair or while it was stolen and that enabled our unsub to listen to the phone calls and plan his attacks." Hotch said, his voice still in the same tone as it had been throughout.

"What a horrible thought! You'd never know what was coming..." Garcia said sadly. "I shall call you back when I have my answers for you." She said.

"Thanks Garcia." He said as he hung up the phone. He walked over to the board that Reid had written on and underneath the drug cocktail, Hotch added that there was a possibility the victims phones were repaired or stolen, giving the unsub the chance to play with the phone and track their conversations and possibly their movements. Hotch turned to JJ to speak but she was already marching out of the room, rushing back down to Riley before he got out of the door. Riley looked at her with confusion but stopped, his arm holding the door to the police station open.

"Riley, sorry, I have one more question to ask you if that is okay?" He sighed but nodded.

"Sure."

"You guys seem like a close group of friends. Would you say you knew a lot about each other?" JJ pried. She didn't want to ask the question straight away.

"Well yeah. I mean I was always closer to Penny but there wasn't a problem between Grace and myself, we just kept some of our business to ourselves. Penny however knew everything about me and I knew everything about her. Thats why Grace assumed we would end up dating at some point." He sighed and rubbed the back of his head with his hand. JJ could tell he was struggling.

"Thats really nice. Its so good to have a few friends you can always rely on!" JJ let out a small smile. "Now, I just need to ask this question routinely, as we do with any victims of kidnapping, did they notice anyone following them around recently? Mention vehicles they saw a lot but never before? Had their phones or any items stolen or put them in for repair?" JJ covered the question up with a few others. Riley thought deeply for a second.

"Grace never mentioned any of those things to me, she had told me about a guy in her block who always tried to talk to her but nothing like that. She definitely didn't have anything stolen or fixed, she'd just bought a new phone the weekend before last..." He thought more. "But..." He hesitated, his eyes widening in shock. "Penny took her phone in for repair at the beginning of the week after some idiot walked into her and she dropped it. She needed a new screen... You don't think...?" He paused, already coming to the conclusion the phone guy did it. His jaw clenched and his body tensed up, he balled his hands into fists.

"No, not yet. We just want to keep all our options open as the best way of finding these girls, okay?" She said calmly, placing a hand on his arm. "Riley, I know this must be so difficult for you but please dont try to solve it yourself, it may make things worse or stop our investigation working as well as it can, ok?" Riley's tensed body relaxed slightly and he unclenched his hands.

"Please just find them." He said solemnly as he left the building, leaving JJ by the door with his last sentence going round in her head over and over. She slowly went back to the conference room and looked over to Hotch, who looked at her a little bewilderedly.

"Penny got her phone repaired at the beginning of that week. Hotch, I really think we're onto something!" Within moments, Hotch's phone rang and he put it on loudspeaker.

"You've got Hotch and JJ." He said before anyone spoke. The silence in the room was almost chilling.

"Yeah its Morgan. Prentiss and I have had a look around and we can only find one place he would have been able to hide. The walk to this park is very open, shops and houses on both sides and the road is pretty busy. They said they were meeting at the park, the gates of that park are open until late so they most likely would have stood in front of them, meaning the unsub must have parked whatever vehicle in the park and grabbed them from behind. We're currently looking for any tyre tracks."

"That's great, Morgan. You guys keep on that. JJ and I have something too. We think there's a possibility the victims phones were tampered with a week or so before the abduction and they put something in the phones to trace their phone calls and track them. Garcia is looking into it more for us." JJ scribbled on the board about the tyre tracks in the park as Hotch finished the conversation.

"Wow this really is a lot more planned than we expected." Prentiss added in. "I think we had this guy all wrong!"

"Finish up what you are doing there and then I need everybody back here to sort out this profile. Its already been a day that these girls have been missing and if they dont act along, it may nit be much longer." Hotch said in a depressing tone.

"Alright, we will be back soon." Morgan replied and hung up the phone.

"Do you think we will get to them on time?" JJ asked quietly as she sat down on one of the chairs at the table. Hotch looked over at her sympathetically and let out a half smile.

"These girls are clever and confident, as soon as they've worked out he is nice when they play along, they should be fine." He kept his answer short which unnerved JJ.

"Have you had cases like this before?" She asked carefully.

"Yes, and its difficult to compare any of them to each other. The manner of the whole thing differs with each one. Some just want the power and dominance, others just want the love and company, it depends a lot on the unsub himself." Hotch spoke confidently as if delivering a speech. "I'm confident that as soon as we work out the traits of this guy, it wont be long until we find them."

"I hope so..." JJ sighed. "I really hope so."

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