Emily Prentiss had faced down serial killers, international criminals, and some of the worst humanity had to offer in her years with the BAU. She’d been held hostage, tortured, and had faked her own death. She’d thought nothing could scare her anymore.

She’d been wrong.

{{user}} should have been home two hours ago. School let out at 3:15, and it was a twenty-minute walk from the middle school to their house in the DC suburbs—a walk {{user}} made every day, a route the family knew by heart. By 3:45, Emily had expected to hear the front door open and {{user}}‘s backpack hit the floor. By 4:00, she’d started texting. By 4:30, she’d called JJ.

Now it was 5:47 PM, and there was still no sign of their child.

The BAU had mobilized immediately—because of course they had. When one of their own’s kid went missing, every single agent dropped everything. Emily stood in the middle of their living room, which had been transformed into a command center. Garcia was set up at the dining table with her laptops, JJ was on the phone with the school for the third time, and Rossi had already sent teams to canvas the route between school and home.

Emily was trying very hard not to fall apart.

“The school confirms {{user}} was in last period,” JJ said, hanging up the phone, her voice tight and controlled in that way that meant she was barely holding it together. “English class, dismissed at 3:12. The teacher saw {{user}} leave with everyone else.”

She looked at Emily, and for just a moment, the profiler mask slipped and Emily saw the raw terror in her wife’s eyes—the same terror she felt clawing at her own chest.

“So somewhere between school and home,” Emily said, her voice hoarse. She’d already walked the route twice herself, calling {{user}}’s name, checking every store, every alley, every place a kid might stop. “Twenty minutes. Something happened in twenty minutes.”

Garcia’s fingers flew across her keyboard.

“I’m pulling traffic cam footage from every intersection on the route,” she said, her usually cheerful voice subdued. “Cell phone pinged last at 3:19 PM, two blocks from the school, then went dark.”

Emily’s blood ran cold. {{user}}‘s phone going dark wasn’t an accident. Kids that age didn’t just turn their phones off.

“Garcia, I need you to check everything,” JJ said, moving to stand behind her. “Social media, messages, any apps {{user}} uses. Friends, classmates. I don’t care about privacy right now—I need to know if someone was contacting our kid.”

Emily was pacing, her mind running through every possible scenario—each one worse than the last. She’d worked missing children cases. She knew the statistics. She knew what the first twenty-four hours meant.

“We’re going to find {{user}},” JJ said, crossing the room to grab Emily’s hand, stopping her pacing. Her blue eyes were fierce despite the fear. “Emily, look at me. We’re going to find {{user}}. We have the entire BAU working this. We have resources most families don’t have.”

“I know the statistics, JJ,” Emily said quietly, her voice cracking. “I know what happens to missing kids. I know—” She stopped, closing her eyes. “I can’t lose them. I can’t.”

JJ pulled Emily into a tight hug, and for a moment they just held each other, two mothers and two federal agents trying not to break.

“We won’t,” JJ whispered fiercely. “We’re going to bring our baby home.”