When Liv faced a loss that would rewrite her entire life, she stepped away from her work. A year and a half later, she returns to the BAU in search of normalcy; so she can finally move on. On a new team, Liv is immediately thrown into the game of ca...
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Their next case had brought them to a gated community in New Mexico, a series of murdered women found all in the same neighborhood. All strangled in their own homes. Hotch huffed in frustration. After a community meeting, they had all returned together to stress over files and evidence again.
"Where are the rest of the files? We're missing four." He asked the leading detective that was accompanying them. They had scrapped every idea they had up until that point, looking at all 71 possible suspects within the community again. Right back at the start. He was trying hard to keep his annoyance to himself.
"Well one of them is me, and the other three are the victims husbands."
"Why would that automatically excuse them?"
The detective set down the other 4 personal files in front of the team, each of them grabbing to pluck one up and review it with their new perspective. They were looking for specific personal details in this unsub; community member, out late at night, very educated in technology. "This is the third victims husband?" Hotch asked the detective, looking up from the mans file.
"Yeah. Actually, up until his wife was killed, he was one of my leading suspects."
Hotch kept himself from snapping as Garcia ran the mans name through the system. The rest of the team shuffled eagerly beside him, knowing if this didn't come back with a lead, they really were going to be back where they started. "Hotch-" Garcia said from the other line, sounding alarmed. "He has a record of assault charges." Hotch let out a breath, feeling stupid for not having realized that he was left out of the suspects earlier. "He used to work in IT."
That confirmed it for all of them, exchanging glances between each other in realization. His eyes searched for Liv among the faces, a secret part of him not wanting to move until she validated that she agreed. Only, when he realized she wasn't there, he was no longer thinking about the man who was responsible for all these deaths. "Where's Tate?"
Prentiss glanced around in response, her eyes quickly falling on a vacant spot on the table. Garcia had been running a scan over the laptop of the third victim to see if there was anything worth mention, which was now no longer there. "She went to return the third victims laptop."
That undoubtedly put her right in the home of the killer. Hotch hurried without a word.
"Hotch, she has a gun." Rossi called out in reassurance. He didn't care. She had no idea she was in the house of a killer and the element of surprise could overturn having a gun at any moment, if she wasn't careful.
It wasn't even enough once they were piled into the car, bound to arrive at the house in a matter of minutes. And for some strange reason, he thought back only to their conversation at the hotel. All the way back to the last case. Ever since then, she had been insistent about keeping her space. Ever since then for him, however, he hadn't stopped beating himself up for sabotaging his own happiness, let alone hers.
