Caution to the Wind

Chapter 22

Tara and Emily's plans to take the next step in their relationship are temporarily put on hold when the discovery of a former agent in a storage locker leads to a cult, a kidnapping, and a blast from the past. Follows S13E22, "Believer," and S14E1, "300."

Tara knocked on the door of Emily's apartment, and let out a frustrated sigh when there was no answer. She knocked again—still nothing. She figured Emily must have her headphones in or something, so she let herself in with her key; that was why she had the key, after all, even if she wouldn't be needing it much longer. But when she opened the door, she found that not only was Emily not packing up her things to move in with Tara, but she wasn't even home. Tara pulled out her phone to call her girlfriend.

"You know, when you asked me to come over and help pack up your apartment, I kind of thought you'd be here, too," she said teasingly.

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry," Emily replied, "I'm at the office right now. Reid called me; he said it was urgent."

"Reid called you?" Tara said, "Isn't he still on sabbatical?"

"He is, but he got an email—"

"He never uses email!"

"I know. That's what made it so weird," Emily said, "And I really don't want him getting into anything questionable by himself, because last time..."

"Yeah, I get it."

"Look, it's probably nothing," Emily said, "You relax, hang out; there's leftover pizza in the fridge from last night. I'll be home soon, and then we can start packing."

It wasn't nothing, and Emily didn't come home that night. Instead, Tara and the rest of the team were summoned to the office, where they learned that Spencer and Emily had gone to a storage unit in Congressional Heights and found former Special Agent Owen Quinn lying on the ground, apparently dead, but as the paramedics were loading him into the ambulance, he suddenly came to. Quinn had been an agent in ViCAP, but he always wanted to be a profiler. He was obsessed with a theory he had about a serial killer he called the Strangler who took his victims' hyoid bones, but the evidence just wasn't there to support it, and when the BAU wouldn't—couldn't—investigate his theory, he quit in frustration, and they hadn't heard from him since. The email Spencer got was from an anonymous sender, with a picture of Quinn's badge and directions to the storage unit. Whoever sent it wanted the BAU to find Quinn and investigate, but they were still left with more questions than answers. Spencer talked to Quinn while JJ and Matt tracked down his family, and Luke and Tara searched the storage unit.

Quinn told Spencer that he'd been held captive by a husband-and-wife killing team in what appeared to be a normal suburban house in a normal suburban neighborhood. The couple kept him tied up, and they burned off his fingerprints. Their teenage son, Theo, on the other hand, had been kind to Quinn. Theo fed him, talked to him, treated him like a person, but he never had the courage or conviction to release his parents' hostage.

At the storage facility, Luke and Tara found out that the unit was rented in Quinn's name two days earlier by someone who paid cash, and Quinn had been dumped there that same day. Also in the unit, they found what appeared to be the contents of a girl's dorm room, but that wasn't even close to the weirdest thing in there. Tara opened a box, expecting to find more of this college girl's belongings, but instead, she found seven hyoid bones.

"I'm gonna need an evidence bag," she said, "Actually, I'm gonna need seven." She held up one of the bones and showed it to Luke. "Quinn said the Strangler removed these from the necks of his victims and kept them as trophies."