sweet honey | aaron hotchner

7 - our first unsub

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"Good morning everyone!" Olivia said as she walked into the bullpen at the BAU.

"Morning Liv." Spencer mumbled distractedly. He was filling in some paperwork at his desk.

"Good morning." Derek replied.

"Hey Olivia." Emily said as she reached her desk. "What do you have there?" She asked when she saw a garment bag and a little packet in her hands.

"Just some of Hotch's stuff. Can you all meet me at the round table in ten?" Olivia asked as she headed to Hotch's office.

"Morning sir." She said as she knocked on his door.

"Morning Olivia." He said, he too was filling in some paperwork.

She set a tote bag on his desk as well as a garment bag with his suit in it. "Your suit and socks and everything else. I didn't wash the suit because it needs to be dry cleaned but your dress shirt and socks have been cleaned."

"Did I leave it at your house? Thank you."

"Yeah, they were all neatly folded on the bed in the guest bedroom, I guess you must've forgot to pack them."

"Probably." He replied.

"Oh and sir, we have a case." She told him.

He nodded and stood up from his desk. The two of them walked together to the conference room in silence. Once they got there, he took a seat and she started with her presentation.

"This is Kathy Graham. She was abducted in Folsom, Sacramento and reported missing on the third of March. Her body was discovered a week later in a ditch." She began as she showed them pictures and news reports on the screen. "Five days later, Georgia Blake was abducted from the same town and was found a week later partially buried in a park."

"Partially buried?" Derek questioned.

She pulled up the pictures and explained. "She was buried in a very shallow hole and the dug up dirt  was scattered over her body haphazardly. Her hands were visible as well as some of her face."

"Moving on. Two other girls were abducted and one was found dead, the other is yet to be found. The three girls cause of death was from two stab wounds in their upper thighs, which led them to bleed out. They had ligature marks on their wrists and their rings were missing."

"Rings?" Emily asked.

"Um their engagement rings. All four of these women were engaged."

"How long has the fourth woman been missing?" Hotch asked as he flipped through the file.

"Veronica Yates was reported missing two days ago." Olivia answered as the screen changed to show a picture of her.

"I guess we're going to California." Rossi said as he watched Hotch stand up.

He nodded, "wheels up in thirty." And walked out the room.

After spending several days under the hot Cali sun, the team was only just ready to give a profile. The detectives and officers working the case assembled at the station as the team prepared their profile.

"This unsub is organized and meticulous. He plans everything out before hand. From the moment he sets eyes on his target, he knows exactly what he's going to do with her. From her abduction to the fantasy he acts out with her." Derek started.

"We think the unsub has experienced the loss of his fiancé or significant other. This is why we believe he creates scenarios to act out with the woman he has abducted. These scenarios would be ones he never got to spend with his fiancé before her untimely death." Spencer carried on.

"Our unsub is a white Caucasian male in his early twenties to early thirties. He most probably works out to keep some form of attachment to the day he met his significant other, or he tailors himself into something he knew she liked." Hotch added.

"He's outgoing, the nice guy in the crowd. He doesn't shy away from speaking to girls and he definitely is the loudest person in the room. However, he can be a little paranoid. This stems from his untreated trauma he had experienced during the loss of his significant other." Emily finished. "He always sits near a point of exit and he makes it a point to show off something. Be it an item of jewelry, his body, his job, anything."

Once they had finished with the profile. The team called Garcia.

"Speak and you shall receive." She said as she answered the phone.

"Garcia, check for any sudden violent deaths of females in their early to mid twenties going back six months. The woman would most probably have brown hair and blue eyes." Spencer asked her.

"On it." She replied and they could hear her clicking away on her keyboard. A few minutes later she replied, "Okay, I found four violent deaths of brown haired blue eyed girls in their early twenties in Sacramento County. I'm sending their files over to you now."

"Oh and Garcia?" Spencer said again, "Could you find out whether any of them were engaged or in a relationship."

"I'll call when I find something. Garcia out." She replied and disconnected the call.

The team surveyed the files she had faxed over.

"They all look partially like the victims. Some have lighter brown hair. Some have darker brown hair. But the same basic physical features, such as eye colour, hair colour, even their face shapes aren't wildly different." Rossi pointed out as Spencer pinned pictures of the four women on the wall.

Seven minutes later the phone rang.

"Hello my lovelies, your local IT god speaking." Garcia's voice could be heard from the phone.

"Garcia, what did you find?" Hotch asked her.

"Victim number two, Casey Johnson had a boyfriend. Umm Alex Farley. And victim number four, Hannah Logan was engaged to a successful lawyer by the name of Thomas Brown." She told the team.

"Okay Casey Johnson was shot twice in the abdomen. Surely his MO would reflect the crime and his doesn't correlate at all with that." Spencer pointed out.

"But Hannah Logan was tied up, raped and shot once in the stomach. She bled to death." Derek read from the file. "Guys this makes sense. The unsub ties them up, but instead of raping the victims, he stabs them in twice in each of their upper thighs. Ensuring that they bleed to death."

"Garcia you still there?" Hotch asked.

"When am I not. What do you need?"

"I need a last known address for Thomas Brown." Hotch said as the team got ready to arrest the guy.

The team boarded the jet, anxious to go home after finally arresting Thomas Brown. Olivia was sitting alone and staring out a window when Hotch came and sat next to her.

"Everything okay?" He asked her.

"I just don't know how you face what you do everyday and sleep at night." She said and smiled painfully. "Every time I close my eyes, I see Georgia Blake's dead body. Does it ever go away?"

"You learn pretty quickly in our line of work to not let things affect you. It will take time but sooner or later, you'll find that nothing affects you as much as it used to." He replied.

"Doesn't that make you less human?"

He thought for a second. "If anything, it makes you more human. Considering what we see every time we work a case, choosing to remember every detail of every dead body we come across would be suicide."

She nodded.

"It gets better, I promise." He said and gently squeezed her shoulder.