Annabel Lee ─ emily prentiss

two

SHE hadn't told them anything besides her name and age, but already it was clear that if it was the UnSub who tried to grab Olivia Rand, he made a grave, grave mistake by choosing her as his next victim. Olivia was even taller than Hotch, who was 6'2", and her skin-tight athletic shirt accentuated her toned arms. She radiated an almost unsettling level of confidence for a teenage girl, unfazed as she sat across from two FBI agents in a police station conference room.

"Kids were saying they saw the FBI in town about the murders, and then Sharon Green, the woman who I guess kind of saw it happen, posted on Facebook telling people to watch out for someone in a white van who snatched some girl." Olivia looked Hotch right in the eyes. "I realized maybe it was the same guy who tried to grab me."

The police told that woman not to spread the word like that because it would cause mass panic. She did it anyway. The police shut it down, but apparently not soon enough. Nobody spread news quite like small-town moms.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Hotch asked her. She nodded.

"I was walking home from school yesterday. I live pretty far from all our schools, so there wasn't anyone around. I remember checking my watch a little before and seeing it was three-eleven. This white van parked maybe ten feet ahead of me, which already had me on edge. The guy came around and opened the back. First he asked me if I wanted a ride. Obviously I didn't fall for that. Then when I tried to get past him, he pulled on my wrist and wrapped his arms around me. When he tried to lift me, I slammed the back of my head into his face. I guess it caught him off guard, so he loosened his arms enough for me to shove him off. Then I, uh...I hit him pretty hard in the stomach and ran through Willow Park as far as I could." Olivia's eyes traveled down to her hands, which sat folded on the table. "I should've said something sooner."

Her story made sense with Annabel's. This would have been about fifteen to twenty minutes before the 911 call about Annabel. It would explain why the UnSub hastily grabbed Annabel in the middle of a residential neighborhood. He had to maintain his pattern of abducting a new girl two days after the last body dump and got knocked off his game by getting sucker punched by a teenage girl. It also supported the evidence that the victims were chosen at random.

"But you're here now," Morgan said. "What did he look like?"

"He was tall, but not as tall as me. Probably a few inches shorter. I'm six-three." She unfolded her hands and drummed her fingers against the table, doing her best to recall everything. "He had curly brown hair, and he was white, like freaky pale. His face had a lot of acne scars."

"How old did he look?" Morgan kept pressing.

"I'm really bad at guessing ages, but I think mid-thirties? I wasn't really paying attention to that when he was trying to kidnap me."

"How about the van he was driving? Was there anything identifiable about it?"

"It was white?" Olivia shrugged again. "I don't really know anything about cars. There were no windows besides the front ones and the ones on the back door. Uh..." She leaned forward. "There was a sticker on the back window, if that's helpful. It was pretty faded, but it was definitely a cross. A crucifix."

A white male in his mid thirties, and the sticker pointed to religious official. So far, the profile was dead on.

"Would you be willing to sit down with a sketch artist?" Hotch stood up. Olivia and Morgan did the same.

"Sure, yeah, anything." Olivia nodded. She rubbed her left forearm with her right hand. "Please catch this guy before anyone else dies."

"We'll do everything in our power," Morgan reassured her, a little more confident after that conversation. "Thank you for your help."