A week had passed since Hale's envelope, and the mornings at the Criminal Division moved slowly, each report and stacked case file forming a quiet rhythm Evan followed without pause. He spent the early hours arranging spreadsheets and maps, sketching connections that layered over the work already in progress, letting the patterns emerge in their own time.
The office hummed around him. Keyboards clicked in syncopation. Phones rang at intervals. A printer rattled nearby as it spit out a report. Footsteps echoed along the hallway. Agents moved between desks with the ease of routine, discussing minor traffic stops and court schedules. Evan noticed it all without looking up.
He paused over an old file, one he had reviewed a month prior. The case had gone cold, the leads thin. A faint pressure settled over his chest, a reminder of why he had chosen this line of work. Observation alone wasn't enough; he wanted to make the difference he couldn't yet reach from a desk.
Around mid-afternoon, a voice broke the rhythm.
"We've got another one," an agent said. Three missing girls, Washington, D.C. Ages thirteen to fifteen. Reports of trafficking. Scattered across multiple jurisdictions.
Evan leaned back, letting the pencil hover. The summaries were brief: last known locations, hours between sightings, minimal witness statements. He scanned them, then compared them against previous cases he'd worked on, noting slight variations in timing and geography. Not enough to be definitive.
The office continued in its low hum. A janitor pushed a cart down the hallway. Two agents laughed quietly at a joke by the water cooler. Evan barely registered them. A subtle unease settled over him. He could see the patterns, map the probabilities—but without access to the field, without the interviews, without the evidence, he could only guess at the human side.
By the end of the day, he had produced everything he could: mapped probabilities, highlighted potential linkages, suggested investigative angles. It wasn't enough. Field agents were already pursuing other leads. He packed his bag quietly, keeping his focus, as if maintaining that order could preserve the control the day had threatened to strip away.
He left the annex and walked the short distance to Grayson's Books, a cramped store where stacks of novels spilled into narrow aisles. The smell of paper and varnish mingled with the faint aroma of a café across the street. The bell above the door jingled.
"Back again, Mercer," called a raspy voice from behind the counter. Mr. Grayson, spectacles sliding down his nose, leaned against a stack of crime thrillers. "Tough day, eh? Or just Tuesday being rude?"
"Trafficking case," Evan said softly.
Grayson shook his head. "Hah. Heavy stuff, kid. You young ones and your serious faces." He pushed a loose stack of books toward Evan. "I've got something that might ease that knot in your chest. Or at least make you forget it for a bit."
Evan wandered the aisles, letting the ambient hum of the store settle over him. Grayson's commentary trailed behind him—snappy jokes, snippets of history, teasing advice. "Maps and patterns, eh? My uncle used to say, 'If the dots don't line up, change the angle.' Made no sense to me then, but it stuck."
Evan let himself smile faintly. The tension he'd carried all day loosened. He ran his hand along the spine of a worn urban geography book, feeling the texture of the paper, the faint give in the binding. It wasn't that Grayson solved anything—he couldn't—but the old man offered perspective, grounding him in a world outside spreadsheets and maps.
"Don't let it eat you alive, kid," Grayson said as Evan headed to the counter. "A mind like yours is good for seeing patterns, sure. But don't forget the world isn't just numbers. People live in it. Messy, complicated, frustrating—like you sometimes, eh?"
Evan nodded. "I'll keep that in mind."
He left the bookstore carrying a thin volume, the streets quiet beneath the soft haze of streetlights. The city hummed around him: a distant siren, the clatter of a late bus, a dog barking in a courtyard. Somewhere out there, lives were moving faster than he could track from his desk. Observation alone wasn't enough.
Back in his apartment, He leaned against the counter, letting the faint glow of streetlights filter through the blinds. He remembered the first time his father had given him a pocket watch.
"You can't control the second hand," his father had said, voice gruff but steady. "But you can decide when to start. And you can choose to keep going, even when it feels slow. That's how things add up."
The memory pressed against him. Observation alone was slow. Calculation alone was slow. Action—that required him to step closer.
He lay on his bed, letting the quiet of the apartment settle around him. The names, the ages, the scattered locations—they had been dots on a map all day. Now they felt heavier, more immediate: faces, voices, lives interrupted. He realized that being part of the process meant more than watching from the sidelines.
Somewhere out there, someone's life depended on him moving faster than he ever had. The city outside continued its quiet rhythm, unaware of the decisions being made in the rooms it passed.
He couldn't stay on the outside. Not when speed, not patterns, but action could make the difference. He knew he wouldn't turn back. He picked up the envelope from the desk. The papers inside were neat, typed, official—the kinds of files the BAU handled regularly. Case summaries, victim profiles, timelines, notes from interviews. He had seen fragments of similar information before, but here it was all together: a small cross-section of the work the team did, the lives they intervened in, the precision and speed required to make a difference.
As he held it, he felt a quiet sense of responsibility. It was not about finding new patterns. It was about understanding what it meant to be involved, to move from just watching to taking action, and to see people, not statistics, at the heart of every line and every timeline.
At last, he put it down and let the thought sink in. He decided he would not remain on the outside.