Caution to the Wind

Chapter 31

Chapter Summary: Wedding planning is stressful enough without unsubs getting in the way. Follows S15E6-S15E8.

With a wedding on the horizon, Tara and Emily had planned to spend their day off checking out caterers and florists, but before they could even leave the house, Emily's phone rang with an urgent new case. A father and a daughter had been abducted outside a movie theater, and the kidnapper had contacted the FBI directly. That alone would have been enough to make Emily call her team in on their day off, but there was one more detail that made the case even more urgent, and she knew that Spencer in particular would have a hard time with it, which was why she had him come in before most of the rest of the team.

"Catch me up," he said.

"Early this morning, Garcia got an email from an anonymous server," Emily said, pulling up the photo the kidnapper had sent.

"She's not obscuring her face, telling us she's got nothing to hide," Rossi said.

"Any ideas on the victims or unsub?" Spencer asked.

"No, only the unsub's demand," Emily replied, "That we release Catherine Adams in 24 hours. I'm having her transferred here for questioning, but we have no illusions. This is just a game to her; we know that. The question is, do we want to play it or not?"

They'd played her game twice before and won twice before, but this time, she didn't want another round of 20 questions. She wanted to go on a date with Spencer. Emily wasn't going to play along; Cat was just wasting their time, and they had a father, a daughter, and an unsub to find, and at this point, they knew that the kidnapper was Cat's former cellmate, Juliette Weaver. But as the hours ticked by without a lead on who or where the victims were, Emily began to realize that they might need to employ a different strategy.

"We have less than 12 hours left, and we're getting nowhere," she said, "If we give Cat what she wants, we can profile what she says on the date. She always trips up—she always reveals her Achilles' heel. And she always does it with you, Spencer."

Spencer went on a date with Cat, chaperoned by Luke and a SWAT team. The rest of the team stayed behind to figure out Cat's game and make sure she didn't win.

"Where are we on Juliette Weaver?" Emily asked.

"Dead end," Matt replied, "We've looked into her and Cat's known locations in D.C."

"So our best bet would be to get Cat to call Juliette or text her, and maybe Garcia could trace the signal," Emily said.

"There's no way we could force Cat to make that move," Tara said, "She'd see us coming a mile away."

"Find a way she won't," Emily replied.

There was a reason why Cat picked now to torment Spencer again. He'd just started seeing someone new. Cat's game revolved around Spencer's new girlfriend, Max. The victims were her father and sister. If the team could find Max and tell her what was going on, that might be their way in, but that meant their whole plan rested on an art teacher with no experience and no training in dealing with psychopaths like Cat. She was with Cat and Spencer in his apartment, and Luke was monitoring the situation from outside.

"Well, this went from bad to worse," Tara said.

"Yeah," Emily sighed.

"Female narcissists destroy their competition," Tara said, "Maxine Brenner shouldn't even be in there; we're putting her life at risk. I still think the play here is to get Cat and Juliette to contact each other, but...I have no idea how."