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With the latest victim, much had changed. First, the unsub changed victimology. The girl they were on their way to try and save right now wasn't a runaway teenager living on the street. She was a fourteen-year-old, student living in a middle-class home with her family. His change of victimology hadn't made any sense to any of the agents.
As they kept driving Maggie's thoughts went to that recording they had played after following Detective Moore to the front desk where the envelope had been delivered by mail. The envelope and its contents had been examined for prints or any traces of DNA by the techs but they had come up empty-handed, just like the others.
The words of their unsub kept running through Maggie's head.
"Hi, guys! You find me so hard to catch that you call in the big shots? The FBI. One of their elite teams, nothing less. Well, seeing you fibbies was a blast, don't you think?" The voice had paused to laugh at its own joke before continuing.
"Now onto business. Now that I have seen how the elite work, I know what to expect. By the way, I have to admit I'm impressed. I clearly underestimated you when I first heard you were brought in. Only too bad you didn't get there three minutes before, then the woman would be safe at home by now. Too bad, too bad. But that's life my friends; you can't always win. Anyhow, since the local police decided to change the game, so have I. You will now only have eight hours until the girl will get what I like to call well done. Let's see who is the winner of this round. Shall we?"
They sent the recording to Garcia and they were all wishing that she should work some of her magic on it.
Maggie was abruptly brought back to the present when Morgan accelerated. He pressed his foot against the pedal, forcing it closer to the floor of the car which caused Maggie to reach out for whatever she could find to stabilize herself.
Ten minutes ago they had been back at the station, frantically trying to come up with a location to where their unsub might be holding his victim. It was Reid, not to their surprise, who finally had managed to narrow it down to three possible locations. By then their deadline to find the missing woman was almost upon them, making it impossible to search one separate location at a time so Hotch had split the team into three and ordered them to grab some officers to help with the search.
After a total of sixteen minutes, the agents had arrived at the location. It was a remote house in the middle of a forest with no neighbors in a five-mile radius, a perfect location for a killer to bring his victims to. The house they suspected the woman to be held in looked like it was about to fall apart. The front door was ajar and the windows were cracked or broken. The yellow paint that had once covered the house was long gone and now only flakes remained. The roof was covered in rotting leaves. The stairs leading up to the front door were missing steps and on the porch, pots, which had once contained flowers, had cracked because of the cold winter.
Morgan and Maggie exited the vehicle, their bulletproof vest already strapped on, and looked at the house. The officers hadn't arrived yet and knowing their time was limited, Maggie concluded that if they were about to enter the house, they would have to do it without any backup.
