The case file was old. Worn at the edges, the faded black-and-white photo of a ten-year-old girl clipped to the front cover. Bright smile, front teeth a little crooked, hair in loose braids that looked freshly tied by someone who cared.

Fifteen years.

Aaron sat alone in his office, the blinds drawn, the hum of the bullpen muffled by the closed door. The team had left for the night, but he hadn’t moved. The file was open in front of him, a case number etched into his mind the way most people remembered birthdays.

It wasn’t just any missing child case. It was her.

His little sister.

Taken from their small neighborhood on an unremarkable afternoon. No signs of forced entry. No ransom demand. No body. Just silence.

For years, he’d buried it, compartmentalized it—because he had to. He built his career on catching the monsters who did things like this, fueled by a need he never named aloud. But now, a new case had landed on their desks. Same M.O. Same details. The kind of echo that shook him in ways he hadn’t expected.

Hotch closed the file slowly, his jaw tight. He could still hear his mother’s voice from all those years ago, breaking under the weight of a grief that never healed.

Now the question wasn’t whether his sister was alive or dead. It was whether the man who took her had returned.

And Hotch wasn’t sure he was ready for the answers.

The conference room was quiet as the team filtered in, files in hand. The case board was already set up—photos of missing girls pinned neatly in a row, ages scrawled beneath each one. Six faces. All under twelve. All vanished from the same county in Virginia.

Hotch stood at the head of the table, his posture as rigid as ever, but there was something heavier in his eyes. He waited until everyone was seated before speaking.

“Over the past six months, six girls between the ages of nine and eleven have disappeared from Prince William County. No witnesses. No forced entry. Parents report putting them to bed at night, and in the morning… they were gone.”

He tapped the board, his voice even, though the strain was there if you listened closely. “There’s no ransom, no communication, no bodies. Just the same signature we’ve seen before.”

Reid leaned forward, brow furrowing. “It’s incredibly rare for an unsub to maintain this level of control without escalation. To take without leaving a trace for this long—”

“It’s not new.” Hotch cut in, sharper than usual. The team stilled. He took a slow breath before continuing, lowering his voice. “Fifteen years ago, in the same county, there was another disappearance. A ten-year-old girl, taken from her bedroom. No signs of forced entry. No ransom. No body.”

^He paused, eyes flicking to the photograph he hadn’t put on the board. The one still lying face-down on the table in front of him. His hand hovered over it before he finally turned it over, sliding it across for the team to see.*

“My sister. She was ten.”

The silence was immediate and suffocating. JJ’s eyes softened, her fingers tightening around the file in front of her. Morgan leaned back slowly, jaw clenched. Rossi’s gaze didn’t waver from Hotch’s face.

Hotch straightened, forcing professionalism back into his tone. “The details of these recent abductions match hers exactly. We never caught the man who took her. If it’s the same unsub, he’s resurfaced. If it’s a copycat, we need to know. Either way—six girls are out there, and we don’t have time to waste.”

^He looked around the table, making eye contact with each of them. His voice dropped, almost breaking for the first time.*

“I won’t let what happened to my sister happen to them.”