[JUNEBUG]↣ criminal minds

|two| : ghost hunters

"What?" Hotch said into the phone. He sat up in bed, and looked at the time flashing on his digital alarm clock. 5:04 AM.

"Bella is missing," Reid repeated. He was already at headquarters, and he already called the rest of the team.

"How do you know that?" Hotch asked. He was already on his way out the door.

"We'll go over the case when you get here. Drive safe, Hotch," Morgan said from somewhere next to Reid. Hotch flipped his phone closed and climbed into his sedan, speeding all the way to his office.

He walked into the round room table and found his team waiting. Morgan, JJ, Prentiss, Reid, and Rossi. His team, minus the seventeen year old with long ginger hair and a bubbly laugh. Minus Bella Adams.

"What's going on?" He asked slowly.

"Bella's roommate called me about twenty minutes ago. She said Bella left the dorm last night and didn't come back, and wanted to know if she was down here," Reid said quickly.

"Maybe she's just... taking some time for herself?" Morgan offered.

"This close to her audition? No, that's not something she would do," Rossi countered. Everyone nodded in agreement. Her audition was a week away. Bella would never jeopardize that, ballet was everything to her.

"They found her phone and her earbuds in central park. They're running it for prints now," JJ said.

"Tell me we have something to go off of," Hotch said, sitting down and running his hand down his face. Bella was definitely missing.

Morgan's phone rang. "Talk to me, Garcia," he said quickly, putting the phone on speaker.

"It's not good news. The other set of fingerprints on the phone belong to Asher Ives," Garcia said.

"The gang leader?" Reid asked, "He's been on the run for years."

"I found video footage of it, too. She's alive. Didn't hurt a hair on her head."

"Good," Prentiss mumbled.

"Not exactly good. He knew her name, he knew where she would be."

"Send the video, babygirl," Morgan said. Garcia responded, saying she was already working on it. Morgan ended the call.

"He must have been watching her for some time. This definitely wasn't an opportunistic kidnapping, not if he knew her name. This is very out of his profile," Rossi said.

"He must have had some kind of motive. But what?" Reid asked rhetorically.

"Guys," Prentiss cut in. Everyone looked up at her, and followed her gaze to the TV. There, they found the video footage from last night, timestamped 2:54 AM. It was fuzzy and in black and white, but the team could have recognized Bella anywhere.

Bella was dancing. Her headphones were in, her eyes were shut. She knew the piece by heart, but she definitely wasn't willing to make any mistakes at this audition. Not with so much riding on it. In the video, she sat down to adjust her prosthetic leg. It must have been rubbing or something. She looked up at something in the distance.

The team leaned in closer to the TV, looking for what she saw.

And then the group of gangsters walked into the frame. Bella stood and pulled her headphones out of her ears, her chest visibly rising and falling in the tape. The men formed a cluster in front of her, and then one man stepped out. The UnSub, Ash Ives. He asked her something. Bella was visibly uncomfortable, but tried to keep her composure.