The team's various holiday plans are thrown into disarray when a killer sends them each a clue that might help them save his next victim.It's about time the BAU team took a holiday, and everyone is glad of the chance to get as far away from the Quantico office as possible.Morgan and Elle are on their way to a swanky resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica; Gideon has plans to entertain a lady friend (Diane Venora, The Insider) in his secluded cabin in the woods; Hotch is looking forward to spending some quality time with his family and Reid is off to visit his mother (Jane Lynch, A Mighty Wind) at a Nevada psychiatric facility.JJ and Garcia, meanwhile, are still at the office but Garcia is having the time of her life playing an online computer game.Crime, however, rarely takes a holiday and its not long before the team are reunited again.First to be disturbed is Hotch, who receives a sinister phone call from a man who tells him: Please disregard the first two deaths they were unrepentant bad men... The girl is the one who is important... the youngest holds the key. You must help him save her.In Jamaica, police find a decapitated body with a blood trail leading straight to Elles door.Garcias computers are hacked into with the message All work and no play, and a severed head is delivered to Gideons cabin.
JJ receives a package containing a rare butterfly; and Reid gets an envelope with a key inside and a note reading She will die unless you save her, Dr Reid. Call Gideon. He knows.
The baffled team regroup at Quantico and compare notes.
It turns out that the dead man in Jamaica had a roommate, Frank Giles, who had already left on a flight to Virginia.
Giles, according to Garcia, is also the person who hacked into the BAU computers but when the team get to his apartment, they find him dead, impaled with a sword through his chest.
On the wall above him is a message written in blood: Here thy quest doth begin.
This clue leads the team to a music box concealed inside the wall, containing a lock of hair and a DVD marked The Quest.
The DVD features a shadowed man, apparently injured in some way, who explains that there is just one rule that they must follow on this quest: only the members of the team can be involved.
After identifying each of them by name, the man announces that they now have everything they need to complete the quest except a book that inspired many an adventure like mine.
Analysis of the hair identifies its owner as Rebecca Bryant, a woman who had gone missing from Boston two years previously.
Then Hotchs wife Haley (Meredith Monroe, Dawsons Creek) arrives with a package that was delivered to their home by a man who told her a girls life depended on it.
Despite the instructions that only the team should be involved, Gideon tells Hotch to summon a sketch artist this delivery man could lead them to the unsub (unknown subject).
He also tells JJ to arrange a press conference in the hopes of identifying the man who is taunting them.
While the rest of the team attempt to decipher the strange contents of the package, Hotch tells an exhausted Elle to go home and rest.
After feebly protesting, she agrees but when she gets inside her house, Elle is greeted by the furious, armed unsub, who has a few questions to ask her about the press conference.
Is Gideons insistence on breaking the rules of the quest about to have tragic consequences?