AN: Here's my next story. It's a case-fic involving the entire team, though JJ plays a slightly larger role than most of the characters. No pairings, on this one. Updates should be frequent as the story is almost finished, then I should be getting back to JJ/Reid stories again. This is just something a little different I wanted to try, an attempt at writing an episode, kind of. Please Review!

Warnings: Violence, a few bad words and potential adult themes. Going to try hard to keep this at T.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. Any other characters I created and are purely fictional.

"Portland, Oregon. Someone is abducting and killing young men and women in the area." JJ began her presentation to the team.

"So far four victims have been found and a fifth one, a woman named Christina Edwards, went missing last night. From what the local police can discern so far, our unsub abducts them, tortures them, and then dumps their bodies within three to four days of their abductions." JJ continued.

"No signs of sexual assault, all of his victims are between twenty-five and thirty-two, so we know he has a specific age range and his methods are purely sadistic." Emily commented as she read the file.

"He obviously performs various forms of physical torture on his victims, as evidenced by the various burns, bruises and markings on the bodies. He may use psychological forms of torture as well, although that would be harder to figure out with what we know so far." Spencer said.

"Do any of the victims have connections to each other?" Hotchner asked.

"I've begun to search through all of the victim's personal information, but nothing has turned up so far, sir." Garcia responded.

"We do know that they are all in a pretty focused geographical area. All of the victims live within a twenty mile radius of each other either in Portland, or its' surrounding suburbs. While it is still a lot of ground to cover, it would suggest that our suspect is a local." Spencer added.

"So we know he is going after young, fit, white men and women, torturing them, and dumping they're bodies. Now we have to figure out why?" Morgan summed up.

"That's the big question. What we do know is we have about three days until he kills Christina Edwards." Rossi said, staring at the picture of the brown-haired woman on the screen.

"Wheels up in thirty." Hotchner said, queuing the team to gather their things.

/

Christina Edwards slowly awoke to a pounding headache.

The last thing she could remember was dropping her five year old son Aiden off at a friend's house for a play date so she could go out on her blind date.

As far as she could remember she never made it to that date. She had arrived home, changed clothes, and was on her way to her car when something hard hit her on the head. That was all she could remember, everything else was blank.

Now she found herself laying on a hard wood floor, her hands tied behind her back and her ankles bound together.

Christina tried to force herself to roll over so she could get in a better position to sit up. She regretted having moved as soon as she tried, her head pounded more and her vision was blurry. She wanted to call out for help in the empty-sounding house, but she still wasn't sure of her situation and she didn't want to invite danger; that would only make things worse.

Slowly, Christina was able to crawl to the nearest wall, and lean against it. She was exhausted from this simple action and closed her eyes, praying that it would also help ease her headache.

She was so scared. And she was worried about Aiden. She had no idea if he was ok, although she hoped and assumed he was, no idea where she was, or what time it was. All she did know was she was not in a pleasant situation.

/

It had been a long plane ride, flying cross country always was even on a private plane, and it had left the team a little tired. The only positive to such a long flight was it gave the team plenty of time to consider the unsub's motive, and for Garcia to do some digging. Unfortunately, they had little information to go on so far, so most ideas were rather speculative.

The team left the plane and were met by a local police officer who took them to the station. The drive was brief as the team peppered the officer with questions about the area to get a better idea of the local environment. The driver pulled up to the station and the team entered the building led by Hotchner and JJ.

"You must be the FBI. I'm Detective Robert Harlan." The man greeted the team as soon as he saw them.

He was an older man of approximately fifty. He was about five feet-ten inches tall, and he still appeared to be physically fit. Harlan had graying, thinning hair, and his eyes looked hardened as if he had seen a lot in his years on the force, giving him an air of toughness about him.

"Jennifer Jareau, we spoke on the phone." JJ shook the man's hand before introducing the rest of the team as they exchanged pleasantries.

"Thank you for coming. As you know the clock is ticking before whoever is doing this kills again, so we are all a little tense around here." Harlan explained as he led them to the area he had cleared for them to set up and operate from.

"Of course, that is understandable." Emily replied as they now found themselves standing in the far corner of the precinct.

"How is the pressure from the locals? Any press?" JJ asked as they began to set up.

"So far not really. Thankfully we have been able to keep things pretty well under wraps, although the longer this goes on the harder that is going to be. I have the latest victim, Christina Edwards' brother in the other room. He has been pushing us to do more and he wants to know every detail of what we are doing to help his sister. He's been a little challenging to deal with." Harlan said as he watched them.

"Does he know anything? Was he the person who reported his sister's abduction?" Rossi asked.

"No he wasn't. One of Christina Edwards' friends, Tracy Bruin, reported her abduction when she didn't show up to Ms. Bruin's house like she was supposed to. I had one of my men interview Mr. Edwards, but he doesn't appear to have any information. He just seems very protective and concerned about his sister, as you would expect."

"That's pretty understandable, all things considered." Emily said as Hotchner nodded.

"JJ, why don't you go talk to him. Try to calm him down and see if there is anything he can tell us that would be helpful." Hotchner said as JJ met his eyes.

"Of course, keep me updated." JJ said as she walked towards the room Harlan had pointed to.

"So where do you guys start?" Harlan asked.

"Well so far we know the unsub has a specific type, and he gets off by torturing his victims. We can assume he kills them once he gets bored with them or they have served their purpose to him. The question we have to ask is why?" Spencer said.

"We have to ask if any of the victims have anything in common, which they appear not to. This means we have to dig deeper until we find the common link between them. Maybe they all wronged him somehow, only they don't know it. Or maybe he is jealous of them for something they have that he doesn't." Rossi explained.

"Such as?"

"It's hard to say. Even what can be perceived as something small to you or me, could be considered something big to this unsub, and act as a trigger for his actions." Morgan chimed in.

"So where do we start?"

"We looked over your files on the plane so we do have some basic parameters, we know the guy is local." Emily said.

"Now, we have to go back and look for details. We have to dig deep into the victims lives, which means interviewing their friends and family, and going through their personal spending habits and daily routines; they all have something in common to this unsub, we just have to find it." Hotchner said.

"We also need to check out where he dumps the bodies, especially the most recent dumpsite." Morgan added.

"Prentiss, you and Rossi will begin interviewing the families. Morgan, Reid and I will go to the last dumpsite and look for clues." Hotchner directed as everyone nodded in agreement.

They had a lot of work ahead, and three days at the most until another body turned up.