Season 6 | Criminal Minds -

Prentiss moved left. Morgan right. Reid stayed back, calculating angles. But it was Hotch who spoke. “You lost your daughter to a flash flood, Mr. Corley. You didn’t fail her. Nature did.”

The flare dropped. Corley collapsed to his knees.

The takedown came at a deserted subdivision, a ghost neighborhood bankrupted by the recession. The unsub, a former water department employee named Corley, stood at the edge of a deep, dry concrete basin. “You don’t get it,” he screamed, holding a flare. “If I can’t fill it, no one can!” Criminal Minds - Season 6

The roundtable in the Quantico briefing room felt wrong. It wasn't just the lighting, or the cold coffee in JJ’s abandoned mug. It was the silence where her voice used to be.

Hotch’s jaw tightened. The irony wasn’t lost on him. The BAU was chasing a man who created voids—empty pools, missing lives—while the team itself nursed the void left by a woman Strauss had exiled to the Pentagon. Prentiss moved left

Prentiss, now the de facto media liaison, nodded tightly. She felt the ghost of JJ’s presence every time a reporter’s flash went off. Across from her, Rossi flipped through case files with a heaviness that said he’d seen this kind of bureaucratic cruelty before.

“Reid,” Morgan said softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You with us?” But it was Hotch who spoke

Hotch stood at the head, his face a granite mask. “Wheels up in thirty. We have an unsub in Tampa staging drownings in empty swimming pools.” He didn't look at the empty chair between Reid and Morgan.