The flare dropped. Corley collapsed to his knees.
Reid was the worst off. Without JJ’s grounded optimism, his anxiety spiraled. He’d started tapping his fingers against his thigh—a rhythmic, frantic Morse code only he understood. They took her. They took her. They took her.
Then Garcia’s voice crackled over the comm. “I, um… I got a postcard today. No return address. Just a photo of the Washington Monument.”
On the jet ride home, the team sat in exhausted quiet. Reid pulled out his worn copy of The Odyssey . Morgan stared out the window. Prentiss scrolled through a blank phone—no messages from JJ. Even a coded one was too risky.
Hotch stood at the head, his face a granite mask. “Wheels up in thirty. We have an unsub in Tampa staging drownings in empty swimming pools.” He didn't look at the empty chair between Reid and Morgan.
The roundtable in the Quantico briefing room felt wrong. It wasn't just the lighting, or the cold coffee in JJ’s abandoned mug. It was the silence where her voice used to be.