Finding the Sun

Chapter 25

To anyone else, the conversation Aaron Hotcher was having over the phone would have looked totally normal. They would have seen a parent cordially talking to the school administrators, appropriately concerned and disappointed that their teenager seemingly decided to skip class today.

Hotchner's acting skills were very impressive, because it would take a profiler to notice the way his hands clenched, his breathing picked up, and how his face seemed ever tenser than usual. Very impressive acting skills indeed.

"No, thank you. Yes, I understand, I'll make sure to talk to her. Goodbye," he concluded as he hung up the phone. It went against his every instinct not to immediately ring every alarm bell, alert every nearest police station, get every agent he could to be on the search for his daughter. But he knew it was for the best that he kept this news between the demigods and the BAU.

"Aster never made it to her first class. The school just called to report her for skipping class," he said, confirming the team's worst fears.

"But," Spencer interrupted, "why did they automatically assume she was ditching? Shouldn't they just have called it in as an unexcused absence?"

A valid question, the team thought. Aaron braced himself to deliver even more bad news.

"She was spotted in the hallway talking to another student before first period. Apparently, absolutely no one has any memory of where she was last seen in the school, even though they were spotted talking in a semi-crowded hallway." Aaron scoffed, mostly out of frustration rather than exasperation. Seemingly, Jackie Nakamura had some mind-manipulation powers up her sleeve that she hadn't thought to use up until now. Aaron supposed her desire to strike fear into Aster had taken precedence over a need to keep things quiet.

The team confirmed what Aaron had yet to tell them.

"I assume," Rossi said, "that the student in question is Jackie Nakamura?"

All Aaron could do was nod.

The team watched as their boss turned away from them, rubbing his forehead aggressively with his hand, almost like he was trying to wipe the reality of the situation from his brain. They then watched in mild horror as he violently chucked his phone across the room, before sinking into a chair, his head going between his knees as if he was trying to prevent himself from being sick . Such a display of emotion from their boss was essentially unheard of, but it wasn't hard to remember how Aaron acted the last time one of his children's lives had been threatened.

Aaron had apprehended George Foyet himself, and beat him to death. Granted, Aaron had also just heard the real-time death of a woman he had still been married to for years, and was probably motivated by that as well. Regardless, the team knew that the only reason Aaron hadn't gone completely unhinged the very second Foyet had threatened his family was because Foyet had been an active BAU case, and Aaron still had to follow the letter of the law as best he could.

Now however, he had no such obligations. As far as Struass and the rest of the FBI knew, Aster Carr-Hotchner was not a missing person, and this case had been cold for almost two weeks. And David Rossi had every intention of taking advantage of this fact.

"Right," he began, glancing over at his friend who was still obviously not doing well, "Reid and Garcia, I want you to start looking through cameras. The schools, street cameras, malls, anywhere Nakamura has gone in the last few weeks, find it. Follow her, see if she has any regular hangouts, see if she has any friends, every move she's made recently we need to know. Anywhere that could point to where she might have brought Aster. I don't care if we don't have warrants for cameras on private property, I know that you can get in them anyways Garcia."