undercover love

Solved

After continuous work on the geographical profile,  suspect pool, and victimology they still don't have any more leads. It's 1 am when hotch instructs everyone to go to the hotel for the night.

after her appointment, Alex has spent the day picking clothes for the baby and cleaning up the house.  she hasn't heard from David all day which isn't too surprising. he doesn't text or call when he's away as much as he used to.

she gets in bed around 10, knowing that she'll be sleeping without David for at least 2 days. she moves to his side of the bed, hoping that she'll sleep well tonight for the sake of the baby. 

the team meets again at 6 am, they gather around in the station while an officer presents their newest lead. Rossi is already on his third cup of coffee. Hotch sends himself, Rossi, Derek, and Emily to check out the officer's latest lead. It's still dark outside when they drive to the potential unsubs house. 

Rossi is driving but he takes his eyes off the road momentarily as his phone rings. He expects his wife's name to show on the light up screen, but its Trish. again.  he silences his phone, directing his eyes back to the road. 

The potential unsub is a 27-year-old gas station cashier with a 4-year college degree on a science major. Without even meeting the guy he looks good for it. On the way over Derek calls Garcia to get her to look into this guy. 

Its only a 20-minute drive to his house, but once they're there, everyone is ready. Rossi and Emily take the back of the house and hotch takes the front. "Ryan? FBI open the door." They hear hotch say. Emily and Rossi move from their spots when they hear a gunshot. When they return to the front of the house they see what happened, Hotch has Ryan in handcuffs and an officer is tending to his partner that was shot in the shoulder. Hotch comes back to the group once Ryan is in the car. "How bad is it?' he asks the officer.

"Not too bad, shoulder graze...should be alright once the ambulance gets here." 

"Rossi, Morgan, come with me to check out the house, we need to make sure this is our guy." 

They follow hotch inside, splitting up once they've cleared all of the rooms. The house seems decently normal until Rossi opens the basement door, revealing an entire lab.  There are substances and lab notes all over, "we're gonna need Reid." Morgan says, looking at the piles and piles of notebooks. 

Hotch, and Emily go back to the station to interview Ryan with JJ, and Morgan, Rossi, and Reid continue their investigation. 

Reid is perched on a stool reading notebook after notebook of information about the chemicals, while Rossi and Morgan look for anything else. "Hey Rossi, look at this." Morgan says after 3 hours of looking around. He walks over to see an entire state map of the gas stations that have been hit. There are green circles over countless other stations in area and they can only assume those were the stations he planned to hit next. "Its a good thing we got here when we did."

They gather their evidence and look around for awhile longer before heading back. Reid had figured out how the gas was made, mixed together, and why it had the effects it did.  It wasn't very useful information AND he annoyed them the entire ride back with useless facts. 

Obviously they got the right guy, Rossi just couldn't figure out why the other 4 suspects still looked good for it. 

When they arrive back at the station JJ is talking to Ryan, they still want to get a confession. "Aaron come look at this." Rossi says, looking at the whiteboard.

"if we got our unsub, why do 4 other people still look good for it? There's got to be something we're missing."

Hotch looks at the whiteboard littered in photos, articles, maps, and notes, and sees to draw the same conclusion. "I'll call Garcia." Hotch leaves the room and Rossi sits down for a second, pulling out his phone. He sees that he has 2 texts from Trish, both asking if he's talked to alex yet. He tosses his phone on the table as the rest of the team walks in. 

Everyone sits down and Rossi explains his theory. Each of the 4 other subjects owned one of the attacked gas stations. They spend the rest of the afternoon coming up with ideas and potential profiles until Garcia calls with case-breaking information.

"Good afternoon my friends, I did some superb deep diving and I discovered that all 5 subjects were in a science club in college. The club consisted of just the 5 of them and apparently, they just created illegal chemicals and planned to 'rule the world.' Each man's phone records are consistent with the story, many calls made to each other, and even more on the days of the attacks." 

"So all 4 suspects owned a gas station and they knowingly helped their friend kill people in their gas station with an illegal gas they made together?" Emily says, slowly putting it together. 

"yep." Reid says.

"So we're charging g everyone? All 5 guys?" the sheriff asks when the team reveals the new information to the officers. 

JJ nods, "we can do that if we get confessions, we have a lot of solid information but sometimes to a judge it can be a little far-fetched." 

The sheriff nods, but he looks pretty overwhelmed. JJ and Hotch stay at the station to continue working on Ryans confession while the rest of the team splits up to find the other suspects. 

After hours, all 5 men are detained and the team is ready to get to work on these confessions and close this case. But its proving not to be as easy as they hoped. After 4 hours of questioning, not a single unsub confesses. 

Hotch calls the team together, "Everyone back here by 6am. We cant leave until we finish this, I'll see you all tomorrow." 

Everyone heads back to the hotel for the night. They're all at least thankful that the hardest part of the case is over. Confessions are extremely time-consuming and really not much fun, but at least they aren't hard or dangerous. 

Rossi enters his room barely able to stay awake. He gets into the shower though before getting into bed. Right before he turns the lights off his phone rings. He prays that its Alex, he hasn't heard from her for awhile. Hes disappointed when its Trish. Again. He doesn't bother to answer right now, he shuts the lights off and goes to sleep thinking about Alex.