The stale perfume of spilled beer and desperation clung to the air in the club, a scent so thick it felt like a physical coating on my skin. I slid my business card across the sticky bartop to a blonde with eyes as blank as her answers.
“If you think of anything, anything at all.” The words were automatic now, worn smooth from repetition. She wouldn't call.
I walked back towards Hotch, my heels catching slightly on the grimy floor. He was finishing with a man whose face was a roadmap of late nights and bad decisions. My own personal bad decision today had been the coffee at the motel. It tasted like disappointment and burnt plastic, an insult to both coffee and the concept of morning. One should never trust a complimentary coffee packet that lists ‘coffee flavor’ as an ingredient. It’s an abdication of responsibility.
Hotch dismissed the regular with a clipped nod. I waited by his elbow, tracing the rim of a water-ring on the bar with my thumb. Three small, distinct taps of my middle knuckle against the lacquered wood. Inhale. Exhale. Just a habit.
"Anything?" I asked.
“He saw our first victim, Robert Anderson, leave with a woman. Couldn’t describe her beyond ‘brunette’.” His voice was flat. The case was a knot, and every fact we uncovered only pulled it tighter. Three married men, all regulars at this sad little establishment on the fringe of L.A., all found bludgeoned in their cars a few miles away. The only commonality was the club and a missing wedding ring.
“Call Garcia,” Hotch said, his gaze already distant, running through possibilities. “Run credit card receipts from the nights in question. Cross-reference with the club’s security logs, if they even have them.”
He was frustrated. I saw it not in his expression, which was as impassive as granite, but in the rigid set of his shoulders. As he turned away to find a quieter corner for his own call, the DJ transitioned songs. A familiar synthesized beat filled the air, the kind of sound that sinks right into your bones.
*It’s me and you…*
Cassie. My brain supplied the artist and title without conscious thought. It was a permanent fixture on my ‘Unwind and Forget’ playlist, a relic of younger, less complicated nights. A stupid idea bloomed, bright and foolish, in the gloom. Hotch was a coiled spring. Maybe he needed a distraction. Just for a second.
He was staring at his phone, a frown creasing the space between his brows. He looked up, about to issue another directive, and his eyes met mine. I took my shot.
“You’ve been waiting so long,” I sang softly, pointing a finger at him with exaggerated drama. “I’m here to answer your call.”
For a full second, he just stared. Not annoyed, not amused. Blank. It was the pure, unadulterated shock of a system encountering data it has no file for. I pressed on, running a hand down my own waist in a clumsy, unserious imitation of the music video. “I know that I shouldn't have had you waiting at all.”
A flicker. There it was. A microscopic widening of his pupils, a shift in his focus from Agent Hotchner looking at Agent Vance to a man looking at a woman. It was gone almost before it registered, buried under a decade of Bureau training and iron self-control.
“I’ve been so busy, but I’ve been thinking ‘bout what I wanna do with you.”
He shook his head, a ghost of a smile touching his lips for less time than a camera shutter. “Vance. We’re leaving.” The tone was blade-sharp, all business. “Your performance can wait until the case is closed.”
In the sterile silence of the SUV, the tension was a third passenger. I could feel him thinking, profiling the unsub, replaying witness statements, dissecting motives. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just stewing. I watched his hands on the steering wheel, knuckles white.
“My performance lacked theatricality, I take it?” I ventured, trying to puncture the heavy quiet.
A low sound left his throat, something between a sigh and a short, humorless laugh. “I’m more concerned with your performance on this case,” he said, eyes locked on the road ahead. “Save the rest for your personal time.”
The rebuke was professional, perfectly within bounds, but it landed with a sting. He was right. We were on a case, chasing a killer. And I was singing R&B tracks in a dive bar. The heat rose in my cheeks. I was projecting, that was all. My own frustration with the dead ends, my own exhaustion. It was easier to focus on Hotch’s impenetrable mood than on the three dead men.
My phone buzzed against my hip. Morgan’s name flashed on the screen. I put him on speaker.
“Talk to me, Morgan.”
“Hotch, Vance, you guys need to see this,” Derek’s voice was tight, stripped of its usual easygoing cadence. He and Spencer were at the latest crime scene, re-canvassing. “We just finished the secondary sweep. Garcia was right, the ME missed it the first time. It was tucked under the driver’s side floor mat.”
“Missed what?” Hotch’s focus was absolute now.
“It’s a bird,” Morgan said. “A little wooden bird. Maybe two inches long. Looks hand-carved.”
A long silence. This killer was methodical, clean. No forensics, no witnesses. He took rings, a classic trophy. A carved bird didn't fit. It was a deviation, an emotional artifact.
“What kind of bird?” Hotch asked.
“I don’t know, man. A sparrow? A finch? It’s not detailed. Just… a little bird.” There was a pause. “It feels different, Hotch. This isn’t a trophy. This is a message.”
“Send a picture,” Hotch commanded.
A moment later, my phone chimed with an image. A small, simple carving, the wood pale and unfinished. The knife marks were clear, tiny facets catching the light from the evidence photographer’s flash. It wasn’t perfect. It was folksy, almost naive. But the shape was undeniable.
“It’s whittled,” I said, leaning closer to the phone. “That’s not done with a power tool. Whoever made this used a knife. Slowly.”
Hotch glanced at me. “You know that from a photograph?”
“My grandfather used to carve things like this,” I said, the memory surfacing unexpectedly. “Duck decoys, mostly. From his workshop in Louisiana. You can see the grain, the way the blade skipped a little near the tail. It’s handmade.”
The information settled in the car, changing the shape of the unsub. He wasn’t just a predator. He was a craftsman. He took his time. He left a piece of himself behind.
The image of the bird stayed on my phone screen, small and innocent and terrifying. It felt like a signature, more personal than any DNA. A chill prickled my arms. This case had just become infinitely more complicated.
I looked from the photo to Hotch. I expected to see a shared understanding, that spark of a breakthrough that lit up a profiler’s eyes. But his face was a mask. His gaze was fixed on the sprawling L.A. freeway, his jaw set. The flicker of the man I’d seen in the club was gone. Only the agent remained, and I suddenly felt like I was the only a person in the car who saw a bird instead of just a clue.