"She's got the kids out on a field trip. The children just love Sunday drives. Uh, I can get her back here."
Roger is sweating because he's nervous. He hopes you can't pick that up about him but you can pick up almost anything. Derek senses that he's not acting normal which means he's hiding something which means he has something he doesn't want the FBI to know about.
"Please, if you don't mind."
"I need to step outside. Excuse me," you say and leave the house.
"Why don't you go on ahead and make that phone call?" Derek asks, not letting him get out of this one.
Derek and Roger leave the house but stay on the porch while you're by the car with Hotch on the phone.
"Hotch, we've got him. We are at 2115 Mosley Lane. Only Roger is here. I don't know where Anita is. I feel the children here and I've seen their energies come from the floor. I think they're in the basement but I think the door is locked. I can't do anything without a warrant. They have extra locks on the doors, there's a minivan in the driveway, and a photo of a boy who looks a lot like Charlie."
"Is he onto you?"
"Without a doubt."
"I'm on my way with a warrant and some dogs. Y/N?"
"Yes?"
"Good work."
You smile when you hang up. You're finally seeing the woman you used to be before going to prison. You feel good for the first time in a long time. You walk back to Derek and Roger who hangs up the phone nervously.
"Uh, voicemail again. I suppose y'all could come back later?"
"I think we both know that's not gonna happen," Derek says and crosses his arms.
"You know my friend, Ashley?" you ask and Roger looks at you. "She's in jail for something she didn't do. Do you know anything about that?"
Roger gulps knowing he isn't going to get out of this one. He has no choice but to wait until the rest of your team gets there with local police and bloodhounds that already have Aimee's scent. You walk over to Derek and Roger who are on the porch.
"Well, I guess you got your warrant," Roger says.
"With ground-penetrating radar. We will find where you buried them."
"Will that hurt the roses? The radar?"
"Derek, I feel the dead here by the roses," you whisper.
JJ and Rossi come out of the house after looking through it and look at you.
"Didn't you say they were in the basement?"
"Yeah, I felt them there. Why?"
"They're gone but there was evidence suggesting they'd been there. We found these."
JJ hands over pictures of a lot of children with their names on the back. Every child they kidnapped and either killed or kept. Your phone rings and you step off to the side when you see Abel is calling you.
"Hey, I got more evidence of the children Roger and Anita kidnapped. We found their house. We're here now."
"Send me everything you have. The judge is granting her a retrial which is going to happen in two days."
"Thank you," you breathe a sigh of relief.
"No, thank you. Like I said, I hated seeing her go to jail for something she didn't do."
You wrap up your conversation and head back to your team. You go through each of the pictures and come across one of them that looks to be Aimee.
"Is that Aimee?"
"They dyed her hair."
"There's none of Charlie."
"He's probably the one who took the pictures."
"For what?"
"Proof. It's his way of telling us how many kids they took," you say. "I felt the kids earlier and now they're not here. That means they got away through a secret entrance." A lightbulb goes off in your head. "Wait, Anita's family owns a funeral home. What if... what if that's where she kills them? What if they're not burying the bodies but cremating them?"
"Where is it?"
Derek gets Penelope on the phone and places her on speakerphone, away from prying ears.
"Her family owns a funeral home in Leesburg. You're less than ten minutes from it. Oh, God. The funeral home's been in Anita's family since she was a little girl--hearses, coffins, vans--a million ways to hide the children."
"We can't dig up ten years of coffins."
"Like I said, they have a crematorium. They were cremated."
Half of your team heads over to the crematorium where they find three children and Anita dead. When news of it spreads back to Roger, he steps off to the side to grieve the loss of his wife. There's no way out of this. You find him in the upstairs bathroom hanging from his tie on the shower rod. Okay, there is one way out of this.
Spencer went with you to the courthouse where Ashley was having her trial. You didn't want to interfere so you stayed outside until the verdict.
"Do you think they'll find her innocent?" you ask Spencer.
"Yes."
Spencer waits another hour with you until you hear back. She's innocent. You almost fall back into Spencer's arms from how happy you are when she comes out of the courthouse with tears in her eyes. You immediately go over to her and bring her into a hug, and she sobs happily on your shoulder.
"I told you I'd get you out of there."
"Thank you for everything you've done for me," she sniffles and pulls away.
"No, thank you. You were the best part of prison. You're one of the ones who kept me from drowning."
She wipes her tears and looks between you and Spencer.
"What do I do now?"
"Whatever you want. Go live your life. Go see your parents. Be whoever you want to be. You're free."
"So are you," she smiles.
At her words, you feel a weight being lifted from your shoulders. A weight that you thought would never leave. A weight that was preventing you from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all." - Emily Dickinson