Criminal Minds

Townspeople are holding a pep rally for the soccer team in North Mammon, Pennsylvania. Three teenagers, Polly, Brooke and Kelly, are on their way home in a car, with a pizza. Brooke has a mild cough and Polly asks if she is okay. When they arrive home, Kelly takes out the garbage before joining her friends, but a masked man grabs her from behind. He drags her into Polly's house, who is taking a shower, and says she has to do what he say or Brooke and Kelly will die.

The man takes all three the girls and locks them up in a windowless room. Brooke's cough has worsened and she is not feeling well. They plan to attack the man, all three of them together, but he can hear them and tells them that he wants them to choose. Two of them will make it out alive. One will not.

Meanwhile, back at Quantico, JJ gets a visit from the mother of one of the girls. JJ's aunt had told the mother that she should go see her. The mother is very worried because the girls have been missing for five days, and yet no one is looking for them. The BAU team looks at the situation a little closer and takes the case.

Two of the girls had left messages on their parents' answering machine, with the exact same text, which sounded scripted. And, as JJ points out, there is no way they would have gone away on a trip, missing soccer practice, and risking their future. Their message states they will be home by Friday so there are two days left to find them. So it's "wheels up."

The local police are supportive, but also points out the girl's mother has a history of "mental problems," which turns out to be depression.

The team goes to investigate Polly's house. There is no sign of forced entry or a struggle. The team determines the unsub had been able to get them to cooperate by threatening to use force or there was previously established trust, which could mean it's likely the unsub could be a close family friend or a stalker. An outsider would definitely have been noticed, so it has to be someone from the community.

The team finds cigarette butts on the ground in a location with a clear view of the windows of the girl's house. They also receive a call that Brooke's car has been found abandoned, but with a cap inside with the initials KE, which belongs to Kip England, Brooke's boyfriend. He had been at the pep rally and has an alibi, so he is eliminated as a suspect.

Meanwhile, the three girls are still in the room, which appears to be basement. Brooke is getting sicker, and as Kelly points out the whole sensory deprivation plan of the unsub is working. They are fighting, and the lack of food, water, and daylight is making it worse. He will break them.

The team now has a clear idea of what the unsub probably is like. He is intelligent, patient and cautious. He fits the profile of a predatory abductor, and he will have made a nest for his victims, which will make them extremely hard to find. He also would not have been at the pep rally because that was the time the girls left the messages. So they exclude people who were there by watching video footage of the event. As it turns out, it was Coach Dan Haas' DNA that Garcia found on the cigarette butts, but he denies leaving them there. Brooke's dad, Pete, thinks Coach Haas is behind it, and attacks him at the football field with a crowbar. He says Haas did it before; he once helped him out by keeping off his record that he was charged as a sex offender for being with an underage prostitute while going through a divorce. Surprisingly, Coach Haas escapes with only a few bruises. And since he was at the pep rally – as seen on two different tapes – he has a watertight alibi. So it's not him.

Then a garbage man finds one of the girl's soccer shirt in a dumpster behind the Saginaw Motel. The manager of the motel tells the team that Peter Chambers aka John Sherman, Brooke's father, stays in the motel once a month. But he admits that to the team, and continues by confessing he meets with a man named Glenn Donahue there once a month. He'd been keeping the secret because North Mammon is a small town and he is married with children.

Gideon has a bad feeling about this case; they have nothing and the unsub is way ahead of them by trying to implicate Haas and Chambers. They must find out what he has against them - they are his targets - as well as the girls.

The girls are still locked up in the room and Brooke is getting very sick. Kelly tries to convince Polly, successfully, that sacrificing Brooke is the best way to go. No one will ever know; it would be like the team that crashed in the Andes. She's already dying. So Polly shouts out that to the unsub that they have decided. And then two hammers fall to the ground. It is clear what the unsub wants them to do.

Back at the police headquarters, the parents and friends of the missing girls have begun to fight, insulting and mistrusting each other rather than actually helping. JJ becomes angry with them.

Two girls are now being led out of the basement, wrapped in blankets. One has blood on her face.

JJ and the team plan to split up the fighting people to figure out which common acquaintances they have. When Polly gets her phone back and it is activated, Garcia immediately gets her location. They are right outside. They find them, but Hotch warns them to get the parents back since there are only two girls.

JJ figures out the unsub must have been on the football team long ago, and asks Polly to point him out in a picture that is in the police station. It's the garbage man, he blew out his knee in the championship game, lost a scholarship to Notre Dame, and everyone forgot about him. Brooke admits to killing Kelly (who otherwise would have killed her). "He said we had to choose."

The team rushes to the unsub's house, where they find him, smiling, in the basement with Kelly's body. "I didn't do this, they did, I never even set foot in here."

On the flight back home, Hotch asks JJ if she ever thought about taking the classes to become a profiler since she did such a good job. She replies that, although it is nice to be noticed for a change, the job she has now is the one that makes her happy.