Sergeant Abigail (Abby) Laurens transfers to the BAU after an operation in Iraq goes horribly wrong and she loses the one man she's ever truly loved. Desperate to escape her guilt she throws herself into her new position but when someone comes back...
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Abby was the last one to board the private jet, following Garcia very closely. As she boarded the plane she jumped quite noticably as the door closed behind her, another gift she'd got from her years of service - paranoia. Thankfully, she was blocked by Garcia so no one saw her jump but as she appeared from behind the blonde she felt the stares before she saw them. Unbeknownst to her, Hotch had told the rest of the team about her joining before she got to the plane, he figured it would be slightly more reassuring for the new member of the team if the rest of them weren't completely shocked by her entrance.
"Laurens, perfect. This is SSA David Rossi, Jennifer Jareau, Derek Morgan and Doctor Spencer Reid. Come and take a seat." Hotch introduced each member of the team to Abby, to which she just offered a small wave to them all collectively, it was returned with smiles and a similar wave from Spencer. The doctor stood and moved to the longer sofa at the side of the plane to allow Abby to sit at the four seated table in the jet, next to Hotch and opposite Morgan and Rossi. Garcia sat under a TV screen at the front of the plane whilst Jennifer sat next to Spencer.
Once they were in the air Garcia stood and coughed to get the teams attention before she started briefing the team about what they were walking into; she wasn't kidding this one was going to be hard for all of them. It was a missing child.
"So, crimefighters, new and old," she winked at Rossi as she said 'old' to which he scoffed and the others chuckled, "You get the pleasure of travelling with me today, that of course means that this case is not one that I shall be adding to my pile called 'cases for Hotch's retirement', ie the weird and oddly wonderful, much like myself," she clicked a button on her laptop and the screen behind her showed the image of a small, beautiful baby girl. Abby's heart immediately dropped, that baby could not be more than days old. "This is baby Bella. She is just two days old and was taken from the family car in the hospital parking lot an hour ago, by the time we land, Bella will have been missing for coming up on three hours."
"We don't need reminding of the statistics for missing children, we have twenty hours left to find Bella or it is likely we won't find her at all." Hotch told the team.
Abby was staring at the photo of Bella on the tablet that Garcia had, quite literally, thrown at her earlier; she was trying desperately to push down the feeling that she shouldn't even be on this plane.
"Where were the parents? Nurses? Patients? Hell, they were at a hospital!" Morgan said, clearly agitated; they all were. How does a baby just disappear from a hospital?
"Her mother was coming out of the hospital, she was still in a wheelchair and a nurse was bringing her out, and the husband was walking out of the hospital entrance just feet from the car. Also this is a very small rural town, the population is barely in it's thousands, everyone knows everyone."
"But the baby was alone in a car?" JJ (she insisted Abby call her by her nickname) asked, shocked.
"Well, even though there are an average of about ten thousand births per day in the US, the majority of missing children cases are of young children so there isn't actually that much that we know about the abduction of babies. However, roughly eight hundred thousand children are reported missing each year in the US - roughly two thousand per day. Of those, only one hundred and fifteen are stranger abductions. However, the probability of a child actually being abducted is around one in three hundred thousand, so Bella's parents didn't need to worry that much, especially since they were in a hospital." Spencer rambled on with his facts, everyone other than Abby did not seem slightly surprised at his rambling.
Abby coughed quietly, urging her mouth to release the words that her brain was thinking.
"So, given Spencer's odds, is it likely that the uh, uh-"
"Munroe's." Garcia finished for her.
"Thanks. The Munroe's knew Bella's abducter?" Abby managed to stutter out.
"Not neccessarily knew them well but it's very likely that they had contact with the abducter prior to the kidnapping. Given the small town it's most likely an outsider." Spencer replied.
"An opportunistic kidnapping then?" Abby asked.
Spencer nodded, smiling gently to Abby. He was impressed. She returned it gratefully, thankful she had someone to bounce her thoughts off.
"Just to play devil's advocate, how do we know for sure that Bella was abducted?" Rossi asked.
"When Mrs Munroe came to the car she couldn't see her husband or her daughter and the car seat was not in the car. She panicked and the nurse took her back inside, much to her disagreement. Once she had gone back into the hospital, however, Mrs Munroe stood from her wheelchair and ran back to her bed thinking her husband had gone in to find her, when she returned to the wheelchair both it and the nurse had gone. She ran outside and saw her husband but with no Bella she asked him where she was, he said, and I quote: 'I dont know. she was here and then she was gone.'" Garcia explained, clarifiying that the 'she' he was referring to was his daughter.
"I don't know about anyone else but it seems that Mr Leonardo Munroe is throwing off some pretty bad vibes." Morgan said, the thought that he was involved somehow had been preying on everyone's mind since they heard that he was alone, but that was the last thing Abby was thinking about now.
At the sound of the father's name, Hotch felt Abby physically stiffen next to him; she looked as though she had seen a ghost. This had also not gone unnoticed by the rest of the team and as Abby exchanged a seemingly desperate stare with Hotch everyone else exchanged extremely confused and worried glances with one another.
"Do the parents know that the FBI is coming? If the dad is involved it may spook him, force him to take action to quickly hide Bella. Or worse." Abby asked, desperate to take the attention away from herself and back onto Bella and desperate to relieve the aching that had started in her chest.
"No, they don't. Media presence is essential in these cases, JJ set up a press conference as soon as we land and get the parents to give a statement if you can. We need to work on the assumption that the father isn't involved and in that case we have a very sick unsub that we need to appeal to."
A thought suddenly struck Abby.
"What about the nurse?" she asked.
"What nurse?" Rossi asked her, he knew where she was going with this and he was impressed that she had noted the lack of information given on that subject.
"The nurse that took Mrs Munroe to the car. Has anyone interviewed her?"
"Uh, oh my god. No. How could they not?" Garcia asked, her voice filled with sadness.
"Morgan, Reid and Laurens go to the hospital, see if you can find the nurse that took Mrs Munroe out and, actually, see if you can find out who put Bella in the car. Myself and Rossi will set up at the police station. JJ will then assist us in speaking to the family." The unit chief gave out his directions, everyone nodded.
There was something very off about this whole situation but no one could figure out what.
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