Grit into Gems

Hotch refused every candidate Strauss sent to replace JJ. So this time she isn't sending a candidate, she's sending a transfer order. SSA Elle Vaughn arrives at the BAU with a motorcycle, a string of pearls they never take off, and a personnel file that is eighty percent black ink. Hotch has read every word of it twice. He doesn't trust what he can't read.

Elle survived seven years undercover by being whoever the room needed them to be, and being useful is so much easier than being asked questions. Solve the cases, win over the team, keep the past redacted: whatever it takes to stay unread, they'll do it. It would even be working, if the unit chief would stop looking at them like the one file he can't close.

What they don't know is that somewhere under all that black ink, something they buried is looking back.