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Avery was impatiently tapping her foot as the elevator went up, floor after floor, file in hand.
She reached the tenth floor, stepping off, marching towards the unit chief's office. Her heels were echoing through the halls as she pushed the door opened, moved through the bullpen, beelining right for his office.
Someone stepped in front of her, a smile growing across her face. "Avery, is that you?"
"Jennifer, hey," she smiled, glancing at Hotchner's office. "How are you?"
"I'm good," she said, hugging the girl quickly. "How are you?"
"I'm good too," she replied, watching David move down the stairs and over to the two. "David Rossi, I thought you retired."
He shook his head in a laugh and hugged the girl tightly. "And I thought you learned how to be quiet, Banks."
"It's actually Walsh now." She replied.
"Married?" Rossi asked, glancing at her hand.
"No, no," she chuckled. "Changed it for career purposes."
"Investigative journalist, right?" Rossi asked as Reid and Morgan gathered around the girl. "Tough job."
"Investigative journalism is actually a hard career to commit to," Reid said, Avery turning his attention to him. "There are only one hundred and ninety of them over sixty-five countries."
Reid watched her face turn from happy to somewhat of an angry expression once her attention turned on him. He furrowed his eyebrows and she clenched her jaw, Reid noticing.
"That's Doctor Spencer Reid," Rossi introduced. "And Derek Morgan."
She shook Derek's hand, Reid awkwardly waving at her. She discreetly rolled her eyes and was relieved when she saw Aaron come out of his office.
She'd known him the longest since he was friends with her father. He moved down the stairs, smiling at the girl.
"Avery, what a surprise!" he hugged her tightly, Avery grinning as she hugged the man. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you." She said as the rest of the team dispersed, watching the two disappeared into Hotch's office.
"Banks?" Reid asked, leaning against Morgan's desk. "As in Director Banks?"
Rossi nodded. "Yep, I haven't seen her since she was about fourteen."
"She's a journalist?" Reid asked.
"Yep," JJ replied, watching Reid furrow his eyebrow in thought. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing," Reid replied, everyone around him sending him a look. "I held the elevator for her a couple of days ago, she was coming off the sixth floor."
"She was visiting her father," Rossi shrugged. "So?"
"She had a file," Reid said. "An FBI file."
"She is an Investigative Journalist, Reid, what are you getting at here?"
"I don't know," he said. "She didn't seem too pleased to meet me."
JJ only shrugged. "I wonder why she's here to see Hotch."
Meanwhile, Avery was thinking of a nice way to tell the BAU to back off her case.
"I've been looking into a case of the dead prostitutes," she said to him. "I've got a potential suspect and yesterday, one of your agents was talking to him."
"Reid," Hotch nodded. "What's the issue?"
"He spooked him," she replied. "He missed school today, which he hasn't done, the murders are tapering off-"
"Avery, he approached Reid," Hotch said as Avery's eyebrows furrowed. "Garcia's trying to identify him."
"I already know who he is, Aaron," Avery replied. "I have his address, his school, his name, an online blog he writes about killing prostitutes."
"Let's bring him in."
Hotch and Garcia prepared to present the case, Avery pacing in the conference room while the others took their usual spots at the round table.
"We've identified the suspect who approached Reid in the subway as eighteen-year-old Nathan Harris," Hotch said as Garcia put the pictures up. "He's a suspect in a case of two murders of prostitutes."
"How did we find out who he was?" Reid asked.
Hotch gestured towards Avery and she stepped forward. "I was looking into new cases at a local police station when I came across two murders of prostitutes that I thought were connected."
"How?" Reid asked and Avery sent him a look for him to shut up so she could finish.
"He chops off their hair," she said as Garcia put the crime scene photos up. "Bodies are found early in the morning, ME deduced their bodies are found only hours after they were murdered. COD of both were the stab wounds."
"Chopping off hair makes me think that the UnSub feels powerless," JJ said. "Stabbing could mean he's impotent."
"Stabbing them is not enough to satisfy him," Avery said, stepping forward. "That why he cuts their hair defaces them. But they're not sexually assaulted."
"It could be he feels impotent in his professional life." Reid closed his file and turned his attention to Avery.
"All right, Morgan, Reid, and Avery, you go give Nathan Harris a visit," Hotch said. "Rossi and I will go visit the local police station, JJ, you stay here and coordinate with Garcia."
Avery followed the two men out and to the trucks, where they headed to the address that Avery found.
Reid was looking through the file, his eyebrows furrowed. Morgan glanced over at the kid and nudged him with his elbow. "Speak what's on your mind."
"I don't know," he said, flipping through the file. "These kills don't seem juvenile. They seem sophisticated."
"We still need to check out this lead," Avery said from the back. "Doctor Reid, what did he say to you in the subway?"
"He asked about why serial killers kill prostitutes, which is a good question because they're actually high risk victims," Reid replied. "But it was something he said that made me suspicious."
Avery cocked her head to the side, looking at the agent. "What was it?"
"Well, is that for sex or because they think they're dirty and need to be punished?" Reid said to her, recounting the conversation between him and the boy. "What could it mean if somebody were stabbing them and cutting off their hair?"
"You remember that?"
"Oh, yeah, I have-uh, an eidetic memory."
Avery smiled at him, watching him return it in a closed-lip smile.
