Title: What's In a Name?
By: Eligent
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Series: 1) Little Boy Lost
Disclaimer: I'm just borrowing!
Author's Notes: This story is a sequel to my previous story Little Boy Lost, some names and events are mentioned, and some consequences are dealt with, but the base story is a stand alone. And once again; no matter what my spell check program might allege, I'm not English speaking. How you people can manage a normal every day life with all those prepositions running around, I'll never know. And what's with your aversion to compound words? Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story.
Summary: Reid comes back from a long sick leave with a new sense of confidence, which puts a strain on his relationship with Hotchner, leading Reid to question his place on the team. And it doesn't help that the current unsub is highly intelligent and uncatchable.***
"Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names"
Japanese Proverb
He was staring directly into her beautiful pale blue eyes, the very moment she died. Those precious moments when satisfaction turned to surprise and then horror. Her cheeks were dry, but in the corners of her eyes glistened the tears he hadn't given her time to cry. He was that fast. These were his happiest moments, when peace came over him at last and he felt elevated above his unfulfilling mortal existence. He lay still for a while, feeling the warm blood from her slit throat dropping from his chest as he rested on his elbows on top of her. He heaved himself off the bed and dried his hands on a towel he had left by the bed. He then fetched a paintbrush from his backpack and went back to the bed. He climbed on top of it, until he was standing by the headboard, one foot on each side of the woman's head. The blood under his feet was wet and sticky. The depression of his feet on the mattress made her head loll back and open up her neck wound even more. He bent down and dipped the paintbrush in the red blood. Standing up again he carefully wrote the woman's name on the wall, with big block letters.
EVA GLASS
Climbing off the bed he looked at his handiwork and sighed. These moments were much too short for his liking. He headed for the shower. It was time to move on.
Waking up was never Reid's favorite part of the day, and today was no different. He figured it was still early, because he hadn't heard his alarm clock. Either that, or he'd forgotten to set it last night. That thought made his eyes fly open and he turned to his left, looking at the red numbers glaring back at him. 5.45 a.m. Still a half hour away from ringing. He briefly entertained the idea of going back to sleep, but found that he was much too restless.
Today was his first day back at work after his two and a half month long sick leave, and he was so ready to get out of his apartment. The first couple of weeks he'd been too full of painkillers to do much other than eat, sleep and watch the incredibly bad movies Morgan kept dropping off every few days. Then he had to go back to the hospital to have surgery on his knee, to repair some torn ligaments. During his post-operative convalescence he had once again been stuck in bed, eating, sleeping and watching the even worse sequels to the incredibly bad movies Morgan kept dropping off every few days. One of the drawbacks to having a photographic memory was that it was now full of crappy special effects and fake screaming. After that a lot of his time had been taken up by his physical therapy, and in addition, his apartment was now cleaner than it had ever been. He had also written three articles, one for each of his doctorates, and sent them off to relevant magazines in hope of being published. Even though he was no longer an active part of the academic community, he thought it was a good idea to keep his name from being forgotten.
He sat up on the side of his bed and flexed his knee a couple of times, working out the morning stiffness. He flicked the off button on this alarm so that it wouldn't go off while he was in the shower. But before heading to the bathroom he loaded and started the coffeemaker. Once he was showered and dressed he went back into the kitchen. He found a bowl and poured cereal in it and went to the refrigerator for milk and juice. His refrigerator was completely covered with children's drawings, courtesy of Bailey and Cassie Sanders from Fairmount. He'd kept in touch with the Sanders ever since his kidnapping. He loved each and every one of the drawings. They made him feel like he was part of a family, like an honorary uncle or something. The last batch of drawings showed several variations of the same theme; Santa Clause and what they hoped he would bring them. It was two weeks until Christmas, and Reid was really looking forward to playing Santa. The pile of not yet gift-wrapped toys in his living room just kept growing bigger and bigger every day.
As he stood in the elevator on the way up to BAU headquarters he had to take a deep breath to calm the butterflies in his stomach as he was removing his hat and gloves. He was actually nervous, and he couldn't figure out why.
A cheerful cry of "Surprise!" met him as soon as he walked into the bullpen. Reid could feel his cheeks redden in pleasure and suddenly the butterflies were gone. His team gathered around him to welcome him back. His cheeks were kissed and his back was slapped and a piece of cake that was really too sweet to eat this early in the morning was thrust into his hands.
Hotchner let the festivities go on for a half hour or so before he went up to Reid and asked him to accompany him to his office. Reid complied, the butterflies making a return visit. Hotchner let Reid walk in before him and closed the door behind him. He gestured an invitation to sit and walked behind his desk to sit down.
Reid sat opposite him. Looking at all the new baby pictures on Hotchner's desk suddenly made two and a half months feel like a long time as he compared it to Jack's development. Hotchner cleared his throat to get his attention, and Reid obediently swiveled his head to make eye contact.
Hotchner opened a file that lay on his desk and looking very stern he said, "Here I have statements from you physician, your surgeon, your physical therapist and your physiatrist, all declaring you fit for duty. However, I am missing a very important statement."
Reid swallowed. "Which one?"
"Yours." He smiled at him. "Do you feel well enough to start working again?"
"Yes." Reid's answer was without hesitation.
"You are absolutely sure?"
"Yes."
"Okay then."
Hotchner closed the file, crossing his hands over it.
"Will I be evaluated, like Gideon was when he came back?" Reid asked
"No," Hotchner said, rubbing his brow. "Well, no more than usual anyway. Your situations are very different, and according to your physiatrist you show very few signs of PTSD. However, you and I will start the day at the shooting range, just to make sure everything's in order before I let you out in the field again."
Reid could barely hold back a groan.
Reid left the shooting range feeling quite satisfied. His shooting had been just as good, or just as bad, depending on your point of view, as it had been before he had been injured. He had felt a twinge or two in his shoulder at the end of the session, but out in the field you were rarely expected to fire continuously for a full hour. Hotchner had been pleased enough too, and had now officially signed off on his return. Reid was especially glad that his wrist had held up so well. He touched the scar that ran across his left wrist. The doctors had said that it would fade with time, but it would never go away completely. Reid didn't really mind. He had grown rather fond of that scar.
Now he was on the way to the round table room where the team would brief him on their on going case. The whole time he had been on sick leave they had refused to talk about work, saying that it wasn't his concern at the moment, so he was totally out of the loop, not even knowing how many cases they had had.
He walked into the room and saw that he was the first one there. It was obvious that the team was working on a big case. Looking at the many photos tacked up on the boards, Reid concluded that they were dealing with a serial killer.
Though he could not see an immediate link between the victims, other than that they were all women, their deaths had all been the same. The photos from the crime scenes could almost be mistaken for carbon copies. Some creep had slit these women's throats and then used the blood to write their names on the wall above the bed. Reid walked along the boards, where the victims hung in chronological order. Linda Aposini, Susy Care, Gina Deso, Anna Tosino… Suddenly he stopped in front of a picture. 'Oh my god… Ann Shava… It can't really be her.'
"Hey Reid. You ready to cudgel your brains for us?"
Morgan's greeting made Reid jump and twist around, startling Morgan in turn with his extreme reaction.
"Dude, you okay?" Morgan looked concerned, and Reid felt that he had to nip this in the bud to prevent any and all attempts to treat him with silk gloves in the future.
"If you don't stop sneaking up on me, I'm gonna sew a bell into your jacket."
"You can sew?" Morgan deadpanned.
"All right, children, playtime is over." Gideon came in and none-too-discretely steered Morgan to a chair.
Reid also sat down as the rest of the team followed. Hotchner was the last, so he shut the door before taking the seat next to Reid. He handed Reid a file, identical to the ones in front of everyone else. Reid opened it, and made sure he had a pen and a legal pad ready to take notes.
Hotchner opened the briefing. "We've had this case for three weeks, during which one murder has taken place. The murders started a little over a year ago, but we haven't been able to establish a time frame. Two of the murders were only three days apart, and the longest has been seven weeks. All in all we have eleven victims, in eleven different cities, in nine different states."
JJ showed Reid a sketch of a timeline over the murders. "The serial killings were only identified on the death of the tenth victim, Rosa Mentac. She was killed in Amarillo, Texas. The fifth victim, Ann Shava was killed in San Antonio, Texas, six months prior to Mentac. An FBI agent in Texas who was working on Shava's case found the connection and started to ask around other states. He compiled the complete list of ten victims and sent it to us."
"That's a long time for this to go unnoticed," Reid said.
"Yes," Morgan agreed. "Unfortunately, the unsub is smart enough not to leave any physical evidence behind that can be cross-referenced in any national databases, no DNA, no fingerprints. His footprints have been recovered from every scene, so we are positive it's the same killer, but there is no database for footprints."
Reid looked at the pictures from the crime scenes. The unsub's footprints were indeed clearly visible in the blood on both sides of the victims' head and on the floor leading away from the bed.
"You have seen one crime scene, then?"
"Yes," Elle answered. "Victim number eleven, Eva Glass, was killed in Sacramento twelve days ago. We were there within hours of the finding, but everything looked like all the other scenes. All the murders have taken place in rather large hotels, in rooms registered to the victims. We have been checking on the staff of the hotels, and the guests, but as you can imagine, with so many locations, there's a lot of them. None of the victims have lived in the city that they were killed in. The room is undisturbed, except for the bed. The victim's throat has been slit while she's been lying on her back on the bed. Then her name has been written out on the wall."
"Rape?" Reid wondered.
"No," Elle answered him. "There're signs of sexual activity, but as far as we can tell it has been consensual. There doesn't seem to be any physical violence either, prior to death."
"And a link between the victims?"
Hotchner answered him. "We haven't been able to find one. The age span is 17 to 56, they are from different parts of the country, have no apparent common physical traits. They work in everything from a school cafeteria to a high respected law firm. They had different reasons for staying at a hotel. Some were on vacation, some on business trips, or conferences. One was in town for a friend's wedding. Until we find what links the victims together, we're going to have a hard time catching the unsub, as we know nothing about his motive or how he chooses his victims, or where he will strike next."
"What do we know about the unsub? What does the profile say?"
Gideon sighed. "Male, Caucasian, single, late twenties to early thirties. He's probably very good looking, and charming. He is restless, never holds a job very long, but is most likely quitting, not getting fired. He might even be without residence, living on the road. High intelligence quotient. Probably well educated. He has a great need to assert himself and feels superior to others. These killings are a manifestation of something, we just don't know what yet."
"Has he made himself known?"
"No," Gideon said, "But he could be biding his time. Remember that it wasn't long ago that it was discovered to be a single unsub doing all murders. We have also been able to keep this from the press for now, so he wouldn't know where to turn to boast. But I'm rather sure we'll hear from him sooner or later."
Gideon clasped his hands together on the table in front of him and then addressed the group at large, "Should we go public? We have come to a standstill, we're not getting anywhere. There are so many variables to check, we could be spending the rest of our careers on this case if we don't get a break soon. What do you think?"
The team was quite for a while, weighing the pros and cons in their minds, until Hotchner spoke up.
"If we haven't got anything solid in two days time, we'll hold a press conference, to try and lure the unsub out of hiding. Let's give Reid a chance first, though." Turning to the younger man he said, smiling, "A fresh pair of eyes could make a world of difference, especially eyes like yours. Take your time and try to see if you can pick up on anything we have missed."
Reid lowered his eyes, pretending to read the papers in front of him, to hide his embarrassed pleasure at the unexpected praise. The rest of the team filed out of the room, leaving him alone with the material. Even though it was plentiful, it didn't take long for Reid to read through it. When he closed the last file he sat for a while, staring into space, trying to will his brain to make subconscious connections. From what he could see though, his team had done its usual fantastic job, compiling all the local reports into a coherent source of information.
He felt that the profile was a little thin, but understood that that came from the inability to find a motive. They would get there.
The forensics reports made for a conflicted reading. On one hand, the unsub was very meticulous. The room would be cleaned, with no trace of fingerprints anywhere. They never found a hair, a fiber or any other forgotten or overlooked physical evidence. In every room there was an ashtray, full of cigarette ashes, but never any cigarette butts. Those had been removed. But on the other hand, a very clear path of bloody, undisturbed footprints always led from the bed to the shower. The shower itself was always cleaned, even the drain, and all towels were removed. So why didn't the unsub clean up the footprints? It showed signs of dissociative behavior. No murder weapon had ever been found. According to the pathologists the incisions showed that the unsub was right-handed. His shoe size was 8, not terribly big for a man, but not exceptionally small either.
Reid could see no flaws in the findings or in the logics of his team. The profile was as complete as it could be at this stage, and he could find nothing undetected in the crime scene photos either. Switching tactics he focused of the victims.
He drew out a grid pattern on his legal pad and started filling the columns with relevant criteria, age, hair color, occupation, where they lived, where they died. There had to be a pattern here somewhere. He was well aware that this procedure had already been done, probably several times, but he found it easier to see the patterns when he wrote them down himself, instead of just reading someone else's. It was long and arduous work, as he kept thinking of new criteria and had to cross reference them with each victim's file.
Finally, after having filled eight papers with scribbling, he could think of nothing else to check for. Sitting up straight he rotated his neck on his shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness that had occurred. Next to him on the table stood a tepid cup of coffee, a green apple and a sandwich. He frowned. He hadn't noticed anyone coming in. He was really grateful, though. Looking at his watch he saw that he had worked passed his lunch hour. 'They must really be frustrated about this case,' he reflected. In the past his team had been known to threaten bodily harm if he didn't let his work rest at meal times when he got too absorbed.
Unfortunately it didn't seem like his hard work had yielded any results. He kept scanning his notes while he ate his sandwich. Most criteria fit for two or more of the victims. Six had been married, four were blond, two were high school drop-outs, two had been wearing red dresses, five had dogs, five were mothers, three were vegetarians, eleven were dead. Could they really have been chosen randomly? But it was highly unusual for serial killers to choose their victims randomly.
He got up from his chair and started pacing, up and down in front of the boards with the victims' photos, willing them to tell him their secrets. He must have missed something, but what?
Once again he stopped in front of Ann Shava's photo. She looked nothing like he remembered her. She had died in San Antonio, a long way from home. Three weeks later, Lena Norwes was killed in Savannah… Savannah? Reid's forehead crinkled as he felt an idea chase through his head. If only he could catch it. What was significant with Savannah? His eyes went back to Ann, staying on her name, written out in bold letters above the photo. Finally his neurons sparked and the proverbial light bulb illuminated his face. 'No… that must be a coincidence…'
He went back to the first murder and started to trail the names chronologically. The nagging feeling that had been hunting his mind all day suddenly started screaming. For a moment he stood paralyzed. How obvious it was, now that he knew!
He pivoted around and raced out of the room, pushing open the door hard enough for it to bang against the wall, startling his co-workers.
"Reid? Are you okay?" Elle sounded concerned.
"I've got it, I… I… it's…" Reid's hands were flying in all directions, trying to tell the story on their own.
"Calm down, buddy," Morgan said, "Just tell us."
But Reid only waved at them to follow him, and rushed back into the round table room.
Elle and Morgan looked at each other and shrugged as they made their way to the room, splitting up to fetch the others from their offices on the way.
They re-gathered in the round table room where Reid had pulled up a new board where he was hastily writing down the victims' names and the cities where the murders had taken place. Elle thought to herself that it was a good thing that they all knew this information by heart already, since Reid's enthusiasm made his handwriting only barely legible. The list was depressingly long;
1. Cleveland
Linda Aposini
2. Indianapolis
Susy Care
3. Syracuse
Gina Deso
4. San Diego
Anna Tosino
5. San Antonio
Ann Shava
6. Savannah
Lena Norwes
7. New Orleans
Trina Long
8. Arlington
Liv Lashen
9. Nashville
Lila Roma
10. Amarillo
Rosa Mentac
11. Sacramento
Eva Glass
When he finished the list he turned to his team. "Do you see it?"
Five pair of eyes looked at him, questioning, confused looks.
Gideon said patiently, "No, Reid. You are going to have to explain it to us."
"They are anagrams!"
Once again he stood silent, grinning, waiting for them to make the connection.
"Anagrams?" Morgan sounded confused.
"Oh, right, sorry," Reid said. "An anagram is a word or phrase made from another word or phraseby rearranging its letters, for example; smother is an anagram for thermos. See?" He wrote down thermos and smother on the board and crossed off the letters to show how an anagram was made.
"Yes, thank you, Professor, I do know what an anagram is. And what kind of example is that anyway? Most people would have said cat and act or god and dog." Morgan sounded a tad irritated. "My question was really; what do you mean by saying that they are anagrams?"
"The victim's name is an anagram of the city where the next murder took place. See?" Reid's voice was rushed in excitement. "The first murder victim was Linda Aposini, right. Well her name is an anagram for Indianapolis, where the second murder took place. There the victim was Susy Care, which is an anagram for Syracuse, where the third murder took place and so on."
The team looked shell-shocked.
"All the way through the list?" Elle almost whispered, horrified by the implication, which Gideon chose that moment to voice,
"It's a game to him," he said. "Like when you spin a globe and see where your finger ends up. He's using these women as some sort of road map, a where-to-go-next."
Hotchner, however, took a more practical approach. "Does this mean that we know where the next murder will take place?
Reid's answer was immediate. "Las Vegas."
Reid's breakthrough had put his fellow agents in a frenzy, and ideas and theories were bouncing around the room as their well-tuned minds worked together.
"This guy is probably in Vegas as we speak," Morgan said.
"What makes you think that?" JJ asked.
"Well, since he chooses his next location via his victim, he probably feels that his work in that city is done once the murder is done. Plus, we know that Trina Long and Liv Lashen were killed only three days apart, so he would have had to leave New Orleans and gone to Arlington pretty much right after Long's murder."
"I agree," Gideon said, "but I don't think he's quite that fast. He probably stays at least a day, maybe even two. He needs to quit his job through the official channels to not look suspicious. And I think he wants to be there when they find the body, and read the local papers. That's where he will get most coverage."
"This also explains the lack of a timeframe," Hotchner said. "Finding women whose names are perfect anagrams for cities must be really difficult, right?" He looked at Reid, who nodded. "Since he preys on tourists and not locals, it's not like he just sits down with a phone book or anything."
"No…" Gideon sounded pensive. "That would probably feel like cheating to him. He's arrogant enough to think that this…game… he's playing, is no different than doing the New York Times crossword-puzzle. He probably has a set of rules that has to be followed before the actual murder can take place."
"Okay," JJ tried to be pragmatic. "We know he's in Las Vegas., but we don't know when or where. What now?"
"Yeah," Elle said. "Where do we start? Do we try to find him or the intended victim? Because I'm telling you, finding the victim is going to be nigh on impossible. Even if we have Reid sit down and look at all registration lists for every hotel in Las Vegas. Can you imagine how many hotel rooms there's gotta be in that city?"
"124.270."
She turned to Reid.
"What?"
"There are 124.270 hotel rooms in Las Vegas. Give or take. And they have over 35 million visitors every year."
She looked at him for a moment, unblinking, before she valiantly swallowed the "How do you know that?" that was begging to be said. Instead she turned back to the rest of the team.
"Right. So those lists will be changing every minute with people checking in and out and booking rooms, etcetera."
"And finding the killer won't be any easier. He can be at any hotel too, if our assumption that he works in the hotels is correct, and we have no idea what his name is, or what he looks like," Morgan observed.
"But we do know when he is supposed to have started his employment." JJ remarked. "It's a starting point."
Hotchner sighed and stood up. "It's closing in on five o'clock. Let's call it a day and fly out to Las Vegas first thing tomorrow. JJ, can you set us up?"
"Absolutely. Do you want me to come too?"
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. We better get ready to go public soon. I'll call the Las Vegas field office and tell them to expect us. So, good night, sleep tight and we'll meet at the airport at eight tomorrow."
The team stood up and gathered their files and papers. As they were filing out of the room, Morgan threw a casual arm around Reid's shoulder.
"So… can you make any fun anagrams out of my name?"
Reid thought for a moment. "How about Darker Gnome?
Morgan grimaced and glared at Elle who was smothering a giggle.
"No?" Reid asked. "I also have Drake Monger."
"Drake Monger…" Morgan tested the sound of it. "I like it. It can be my new online name. Thanks man!"
***
Reid stepped out of the plane and smiled as the dry desert wind hit his face. But it also brought a twinge of sadness. 'They say you can never go home again,' he thought. And they were right. Someone else lived in his childhood home and his mother…
"It's not very warm," Morgan observed as he slipped on his sunglasses and gave Reid a gentle push to urge him on down the stair.
"It's winter, Morgan, the temperature here averages at 45 degrees in December."
"Oh."
They were being met by an FBI agent from the Las Vegas office. His name was Larry Wentworth, and he was one of the most peculiar people Reid had ever seen. He was over six feet tall, and looked like he had spent every day for the last two decades in the gym. He was in his forties, with a hairdo that rivaled Albert Einstein's, except it was bright carrot red. His eyes were an odd pale green color, almost like sea foam. He wore a very expensive, tailored suit, which clashed horribly with his unkempt hair. Added to that was a nose that looked like it had been broken repeatedly, and a very grim face. They wouldn't see him crack a smile the whole time they were in Vegas.
"Welcome to Las Vegas." His voice was incredibly deep. "Have you been here before?" Without waiting for an answer he turned around and stalked away, towards two parked cars, one with a waiting driver.
Hotchner steered Reid towards the car Wentworth would be driving, Gideon following them, leaving JJ, Elle and Morgan to take the second car.
Hotchner rode shotgun, with Reid right behind him and Gideon sat behind Wentworth as they drove into the city. Reid was torn between looking at the familiar scenes and rereading his
material.
"Our Special Agent in Command Wilmer, has put out a bulletin, to assemble representatives from all LVPD districts. You do of course realize, that if this murder takes place in a hotel, like you say it will, then it's not in a federal building and is therefore not under FBI jurisdiction. We will not be the ones who are called."
"Of course," Hotchner agreed, "But since the unsub has crossed several state lines, the case definitely falls under FBI jurisdiction, and though we'll be glad for any help that is offered, it is our case. I hope SAC Wilmer has explained this to the police."
Wentworth only grunted in response.
They were standing in front of a room full of not so cooperative police detectives. As Wentworth had promised, they had had a large audience, of both policemen and FBI agents. They had just spent the better part of an hour explaining the situation, sharing their profile, and showing crime scene photos, without any noticeable reactions. Reid knew that they were all seasoned homicide investigators, that had probably seen everything between heaven and earth, but he was beginning to wonder if they were even human. They had just been told that a serial killer was about to descend on their city, and they hadn't even raised an eyebrow.
Reid's part of the briefing was long over, and now JJ was finishing up her plea for them to keep this away from the press, and handing out contact information, should they hear about anything or anyone that may be pertinent to the investigation. She finished by asking, "Any questions?"
The room was suspiciously quiet as detectives pocketed the material that had been handed out without looking at it.
Reid bristled. Where was the compassion? The concern for these women? He knew this was Vegas, and he knew the crime statistics. What hotel hadn't had a couple of murders? But still…
"Do they even care? A woman is about to be murdered for no other reason than that her name is an anagram for a city and they look like we've asked them to keep an eye out for some litterer who throws gum wrappers on the street." It was meant to be a whisper to Morgan, but in his agitation it came out much louder and one of the police captains in the front looked up.
"Now, don't think us insensitive, Dr. Reid. But you've just told us that a killer is going to swoop in and commit a murder and then swoop out again, without any of us being able to catch him unless we catch him red-handed, which is highly unlikely, since nobody knows who he is, what he looks like or where he will be. And as to have my men on the look-out for anagrams? Hell, most of them can't even spell the word anagram, much less make one. We'll give you what help we can, but it doesn't seem as if there is much we can do. And we do have our own criminals to take care of."
The room was emptying, leaving only the BAU team and Wentworth who was standing in the back of the room, leaning against the wall, one foot braced against it, with his arms crossed over his massive torso, chewing gum. He had of course been expecting this reaction, Reid thought.
"All right, it's getting late. Let's get some dinner and head back to the hotel. We'll meet with Wentworth here at… 8.30 tomorrow morning to come up with a strategy." Hotchner looked at Wentworth who nodded his agreement, before leaving the room without saying goodbye.
"Pleasant man," JJ mumbled sarcastically.
Reid couldn't help but agree.
Morgan unlocked the hotel door and walked in, tossing his duffel bag on the bed closest to the window, calling "Dibs," as he threw himself after it, spreading out on the bed with a content groan.
"You might not want to do that," Reid said dryly.
"And why not?"
"Did you know that the DNA expert who tested the bedspread from the hotel in the Mike Tyson rape trial found over one hundred unique DNA markers on it? And none of them were Tyson's and that was a seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollars-a-night hotel room. And this is Vegas."
Morgan eyed the bedspread underneath him. "Eww… You're shittin' me, right?"
Reid shrugged, "It might just be an urban legend, but it's very credible. Think about it. How often do you wash your bedspread, compared to how often you wash your sheets?"
"What makes you think I even own a bedspread?" Morgan mumbled, as he got off the bed.
Reid just grinned mischievously at him as he used his fingertips to carefully pinch the corners of his bedspread and ease it off the bed, before getting ready for bed.
As he lay in bed, watching the neon lights shine in through the windows and listening to Morgan's even breathing, he thought about how long it had been since he'd been back here for any length of time. From outside he could hear all the familiar sounds of a city where there was always a party, a club or a poker table that would welcome you, day or night. Then his thoughts strayed to the case. Were they here to catch a killer? Or had they really just come to wait for the next crime scene? He hoped for the former, but suspected the latter. Sighing he twisted around, ending up on his stomach. Wedging an arm under the pillow he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come.
Morgan's bed was empty when Reid's alarm sounded the next morning. A note on the pillow said that he had gone to the hotel's gym and that he would see him at breakfast. So Reid went by himself to the restaurant and discovered that he was the first of the team there. As he was surveying the breakfast buffet, trying to decide between cereal and oatmeal, a strawberry-blond waiter came up to him, carrying a fresh pot of coffee, to replace the old one.
"Good morning," he said.
Reid looked up, unsure if he had been the one addressed. "Morning," he answered.
The waiter switched the coffeepots, but didn't walk away. Instead he stood looking at Reid, a look of anticipation in his face. Reid raised an eyebrow in a quiet question. The waiter seemed to shake himself out of his stupor.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But you're Dr. Spencer Reid, aren't you?"
Reid frowned. "Do I know you?"
"No, but I've read, like, everything you have ever published! I think you are brilliant." His voice was trembling with awe.
Reid was startled. He hadn't expected this, not in a million years. He took a quick look around, to make sure no one had heard them. "Thank you," he mumbled.
"I mean, your article about the behavioral patterns of medicated schizophrenic out patients without an established social network, it was… it was… you must be like a genius, or something!"
"Or something," Reid agreed wryly.
"And you work with the FBI. I read about the Fairmount kidnappings." He lowered his voice to a loud whisper. "Was that crazy, or what? That guy was seriously messed up."
Reid really didn't want to hear anything else the man might have to say.
The waiter looked searchingly at him. "Is that why you are here? With the FBI, I mean. Are you chasing some psycho?"
Over his shoulder Reid saw Elle and JJ come in and chose a table big enough for six.
"I… uh… I have to go now," he said. "It was nice meeting you."
"You too. Wow. Good luck with the case."
"Thanks." Reid spun on his heels and hurried to the table, with nothing but a spoon and small jar of jam in his hands, all the way feeling the other man's eyes burn into his back.
Elle and JJ greeted him warmly. "Is that all you're having for breakfast?" JJ questioned.
"No, not really," Reid said, looking back at the buffet table. The waiter was gone. "Let's go get some oatmeal."
They had been at their temporary office for a few hours, going over their choices, and what would most likely result in finding the unsub, when one of the Las Vegas agents stuck his head in the door.
"There is something you need to see."
They went out into the bullpen, where a TV was showing a local news station.
"…in nine different states over the last year. And now, the Las Vegas law enforcement is holding it's breath, waiting for this brutal serial killer to strike at one of Las Vegas's many hotels. According to our information the FBI has brought in their Behavioral Analysis Unit, a profiling team that is known for finding some of the cruelest serial killers, kidnappers and rapists of our time…" A shaky picture showed the team going into the FBI office, apparently filmed only a few hours ago. "…including the infamous Fairmount kidnappings, the brutal crimes that shocked and outraged this country just a few months ago, where one of their own agents made extraordinary personal sacrifices in order to let the drama end happily for one grateful family. So far we have not been able to reach anybody at the FBI for a comment, but stay tuned for further updates."
"JJ!" Hotchner yelled.
JJ stuck her head out of the office where she had been banging her head against the wall, trying to coordinate their efforts with the police departments. She had her cell phone pressed to one ear and another phone glued to the other.
She shrugged as best as she could. "I have no idea where this came from, but I'm setting up a press conference in an hour. This is going to go national in no time and I want to stay ahead."
Hotchner nodded approvingly, as always proud of his team member's professionalism.
"So, what do you think?" Morgan asked. "Someone from the briefing yesterday?"
"No," Gideon said. "It's him. The unsub. He has been waiting for this. The fact that we are here before the murder means that we have solved his riddle. That excites him. He knows we are here, and he wants us to know that he knows."
"And put a little extra pressure on us," Elle reflected.
"And that," Gideon agreed.
Reid spent the next three days reading guest manifests and staff records and dodging the press, something he had become very skilled at after Fairmount. When they finally calmed down and backed off, the call came.
At 9.53 a.m. a chambermaid had found a dead woman in the Paradise Suite in the Lohan's Hotel and Casino. The police was called and the first detective at the scene took one look at the room and called Wentworth, who informed the BAU.
"Lohan's?" Reid sounded concerned.
"You know it?" Hotchner asked.
"Yeah, my mom was dating the owner, Geoffrey Lohan, for years, until she got… you know… sick. I practically grew up there." He turned to Wentworth. "The victim was a guest, right?" When Wentworth nodded, he felt a guilty sense of relief. He still knew people who worked there.
The drive over was quick, but Reid was nervously bouncing his foot against the car floor the whole time. Walking in through the magnificent lobby doors, he felt like he was twelve years old again. He hadn't been there in years. They were met in the lobby by a police captain, who happened to be the same captain that had talked back to Reid at the briefing. He nodded a greeting at them.
"I've got four detectives interviewing the staff and I have a CSI team waiting to get started, but I figured you'd want the scene uncompromised when you arrived."
"Thank you, captain."
"I'll take you up there."
The elevators were across the lobby and as they walked through the lobby, Hotchner kept looking back at Reid over his shoulder. Suddenly he stopped and turned around, effectively stopping everybody else as well.
"Are you okay?"
Reid took a half-step backwards, surprise clear in both his face and his voice.
"I'm fine."
"You are limping." It sounded like an accusation.
"What?" He looked around and saw only worried faces, then he looked down at his legs, trying to remember if he had been limping. A twinge in his little toe made itself known, and he almost laughed.
"I have new shoes and they're giving me a blister. That's all."
Hotchner looked at him, his eyes piercing Reid's, searching for the truth of the statement.
Appeased with what he saw, he turned again and started walking. But Reid could feel the people behind him stare at his leg as he walked and he felt very self-conscious.
The Paradise Suite consisted of a large living room with a magnificent view over the Strip and two bedrooms, but the victim had stayed there alone. Reid stood in the doorway to the largest, most luxurious bedroom, looking at the dead woman in the bed. Hotchner tapped him on the shoulder and handed him shoe covers. When he had put them on Hotchner mutely pointed to the name written on the wall.
"Atlantic City," Reid said, knowing what was being asked.
The victim's name had been Caitlin Tytac. She was 36 years old and divorced. She had lived off a generous alimony and bred show dogs. She had been in Las Vegas two days. Now she was dead.
CSI had already started processing the rest of the suite, but the bedroom was undisturbed. Except for the unsub's cleaning efforts of course. Reid could see a champagne cork and a glass on the bedside table, but no bottle or second glass. There were no towels left in the bathroom, and the soap and shampoo bottles were gone too. Could he really bring everything he had touched with him, or was he just a kleptomaniac, Reid wondered.
Reid squatted down over the footprints leading from the bed to the bathroom. They looked very clean, like the feet had been very carefully put down, so it wouldn't smudge. What was the point of the footprints, when he was so careful to clean up everything else?
Standing up he found himself staring into the face of the dead woman. He swallowed hard, looking into her lifeless eyes, wondering what the last thing she had seen had been. Had the unsub been happy or angry? Had she been scared of him?
"Guys, you've gotta come see this," Morgan called from the living room, breaking Reid out of his thoughts, returning him to the present.
He went back out into the living room, where Morgan was standing next to a coffee table. He looked up at them. "This is new."
On the table was a full ashtray, minus the cigarette butts, but that was not what Morgan was referring to. Next to it stood an envelope, propped up on a flower vase. It was simply addressed 'BAU'.
As much as their fingers were itching to pick it up and see what was inside, they knew that picking up something at a crime scene that hadn't been photographed and properly processed was a mortal sin. Hotchner waved a CSI technician over to prioritize the envelope, but he knew they wouldn't get it until late afternoon, at the earliest.
A security guard showed up at the door and Hotchner waved him in.
"Here's the information we have about the guest," he said.
Reid eyed the thin file. "Where's the rest of it?"
"This is all the information we have, sir."
"Reid?" Hotchner waited for an explanation.
"This is the Paradise Suite. You don't get into Paradise without putting down some serious floor time. She was obviously a high roller, and most likely a return guest. Lohan's has always made extensive background checks on their high rollers. But maybe not always through the most legal channels. There's got to be a much thicker file on her."
Hotchner turned to the security guard, whose facial expression would have made a Buckingham Palace guard proud. "I'm sure I don't know what he's talking about."
"We could just go and see Geoffrey Lohan," Reid said.
"I can't grant you access to see Mr. Lohan. He's a very busy man."
"Well, I know someone who can," Reid said and turning to Hotchner he said, "I'll take care of this." And then he walked out of the room.
It took Hotchner a couple of seconds to realize that he had actually left, without back-up, during an active investigation and without saying where he was going.
"Gideon," he called, and gave him a come-with-me nod. "Elle and Morgan, stick to the CSIs like glue until they are finished."
"You got it," Morgan said as they hurried out to catch up with Reid.
Reid looked at them as they caught up with him by the elevators, but he had his cell phone to his ear and it was ringing, so he didn't say anything. Neither did Hotchner, for the same reason.
Apparently the person he was calling had caller ID, because she answered with a cheerful, "Spencer, you little rascal, I haven't heard from you in ages! What a wonderful surprise!"
"Hi, Jenny. Where are you?"
"Where am I? At Lohan's of course."
"Well, so am I, and I need your help. Can you meet me in the lobby as soon as possible?"
There was a moment of silence.
"You're calling on official business, aren't you?"
"Yes. Sorry."
"All right, I'll see you in a couple of minutes."
Jenny turned out to be a short, stylish woman in her late forties, but with enough work done to look like 35. Her dark blond hair was expertly styled and she was wearing a crisp business suit, and had a cell phone hands free in her ear with the phone hidden in a pocket.
"Spencer!" she called, arms stretched out to pull him down to her level. He obliged, hugging her tightly, smiling.
"Jenny," he said. "This is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner and Special Agent Jason Gideon. Guys, this is Jenny Lawson. She's a casino hostess and one of my mom's best friends."
They shook hands.
"So, what can I do for you? I assume this has to do with our guest in the Paradise Suite?"
"Yes it does. We need to see Geoffrey."
She grimaced. "Listen, Spencer…"
"Jenny, we are the FBI, and last night you had a serial killer in your hotel. We will meet with Geoffrey, no matter what. We just want your help to save some time. He is here, isn't he?"
"Of course… ehh…" There seemed to be an internal debate going on. "All right then, come on. But if I get fired, you'd better be prepared to provide for me in the style which I have become accustomed to," she said flirtingly.
"Always," Reid said.
She led them through a door that needed a keycard to get into, and then through a maze of corridors. As they walked she talked to Reid.
"How's your mom? I went to see her a couple of months ago, right after the Fairmount— oh, I'm sorry, I completely forgot, how are you?"
"I'm fine, Jenny. Nothing to worry about."
"That's what you said when you came home from school with a broken arm too."
"A broken arm?" Hotchner asked. "What happened?"
Reid blushed, "I fell from the bleachers at the football field."
Jenny snorted disdainfully. "Fell, my ass."
Reid's face became even redder.
"Anyway…" he said, and Jenny took the lead.
"Anyway, she cannot stop talking about you, she's so proud. But…"
"But?"
"She didn't seem to know about what happened…"
"You didn't tell her, did you?"
"No, I didn't have the heart to. But I think you should."
They came up to an elevator flanked by a security guard. He nodded at Jenny and looked suspiciously at the men.
"They are FBI agents, to see Mr. Lohan."
"Has Mr. Lohan cleared it?"
"I have cleared it." Jenny sounded very firm.
The security guard did not look happy, but he studied their badges and produced a sign-in sheet that they dutifully scribbled their names on. Then he and Jenny simultaneously ran their keycard through a double reader and the elevator door opened.
"They are very serious about security here," Jenny explained. "Through here you can also get to the vault and security offices."
They rode up several floors before stopping. They walked only a few steps in a carpeted corridor before Jenny pushed open a door, coming into an antechamber with an empty secretary's desk. The door on the other side of the room was ajar and voices could be heard. Jenny knocked and stuck her head in. "I've got the FBI here to see you."
They could hear mumbling for a couple of minutes, then the secretary came out, looking crossly at Jenny for letting them in without her permission.
Geoffrey Lohan's office was elaborately decorated, mixing old gentlemen's club style with modern technology. Lohan himself was one big, welcoming smile in his well-tailored suit and silk tie.
Jenny made introductions. "Mr. Lohan, this is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, Special Agent Jason Gideon and Special Agent Dr. Spencer Reid."
He narrowed his eyes, and let them roam over Reid. "Not little Spencer? Diana's kid?"
Reid nodded.
"Well, well. I haven't seen you in years. Look at you, all grown up."
"Yeah, well, that's what happens to little kids." Reid said wryly.
"And you went and joined the FBI?" He tut-tutted. "Such a shame really, we had such great hopes for you. You were destined for greatness. But…" he said, turning to the others, "that's not why you are here. I understand that you are investigating the murder of one of my guests?"
"Yes," Gideon answered. "I'm afraid you were visited by a serial killer last night."
"I see." He didn't sound overly upset or surprised. "Well, I will obviously give you copies of all relevant security tapes from last night, and anyone on my staff will be available at any time, should you have any questions."
"Thank you," Hotchner said. "And considering how cooperative you are being, I'm sure you won't mind sharing the extra information we have been told your security people has gathered about Ms. Tytac."
Lohan looked at Reid, his smile disappearing. But he didn't deny it.
"Well, there's some fairly sensitive information in there. I don't feel comfortable sharing that with anybody outside my organization."
"Mr. Lohan, you do realize that we are chasing a man who has now killed twelve women? There is no information that isn't important to us." Hotchner sounded calm, but a telltale wrinkle was showing on his forehead, betraying his agitation.
"I appreciate that, Agent Hotchner, but my responsibility is first and foremost to my guest, Ms. Tytac, and as I said, there is some very delicate information there that I'm sure her family would wish were not made public knowledge."
"We will see that file, Mr. Lohan," Hotchner said sternly.
"Then you will have to get a court order, which I believe you will find difficult, considering that according to official records this information does not exist, and I have done nothing criminal to warrant a search of my business." They were staring at each other with ice-cold eyes, daring the other to push harder.
"We could wait for a court order." Reid's voice made them shift their focus on him, Hotchner noticeably irritated that he was agreeing with Lohan. "But as you said, it will be difficult. It might even take days. In the meantime, we could just wait down on the floor. After all…" His eyes bore into Lohan's, speaking slowly. "…it's legal for me to gamble now."
They could see Lohan's neck turn red in anger and he gritted his teeth hard enough for Gideon's teeth to hurt in sympathy. He seemed to be deliberating with himself, before crossing over to the intercom. "Ms. Reynolds, could you please make a copy of Ms. Tytac's red file for the FBI?"
"Yes sir." She sounded surprised.
"Well, gentlemen, I can't say it has been a pleasure, but I do wish you good luck with your case. Ms. Tytac was a well-liked guest of ours."
He shook hands with Hotchner and Gideon again, before taking a hold of Reid's hand with both his.
"You have a lot of guts, kid."
Reid gave him a small smile. "I learned from the best."
Lohan laughed and pulled him in for a quick hug.
"Just never do it again." His voice was pure steel.
They left the office, picking up the file on the way out. Once they were out of hearing, Jenny slapped Reid's arm lightly.
"Are you insane? Challenging him like that?"
Reid shrugged. "It worked."
"So," Hotchner asked, "You're a gambler?"
"I could count cards when I was four, and I used to help spot cheaters from the control room after school. But I moved away before I turned 21, so I never got to put it to the test."
"Well," Gideon said. "Maybe we should. It's always good to know one's skills."
Reid smiled at him. "Another time, Gideon. Give it ten minutes and I'll be black-listed from every casino on the Strip. They collaborate more than you'd think."
***
Elle and Morgan met them in the lobby.
"The body has been taken away," Elle said, "And everything has been photographed and collected. They are doing the fine-combing now. We'll get the preliminary reports and copies of all photos in a couple of hours."
Hotchner opened his mouth, but Morgan anticipated the question.
"The envelope is their first priority."
"I'm going to go to the personnel office to find out more about those newly hired," Elle said.
"I'll help," Reid offered.
"Okay," Hotchner said. "Morgan, go talk to security and make sure we get all security tapes from when the victim checked in until the body was discovered."
"You got it."
"All right, Gideon and I'll go interview the maid who found her. We'll meet back here in an hour."
Jenny promised to show Morgan to the head of security after making sure that Reid remembered where to go. He and Elle found the personnel office without problem, and after explaining who they were, why they were there and waited while the clerk called for confirmation, they were shown to a computer where they could search the employee database. Elle let Reid do the typing. When his hands danced on the keyboard and his eyes were transfixed on the screen she casually asked,
"So, how did things go with your step-dad?"
Reid looked at her.
"My what?"
"I thought you said your mum was seeing Lohan when you were a kid."
"She was, but I never thought of him as my step-dad. He wasn't really a family man, and he made that clear right from the beginning."
"He didn't like you?" she asked incredulously, upset on her friend's behalf.
"No, he liked me just fine, he just didn't want to be my dad. That was fine, really, I didn't want to be his son either."
"How long where they together?"
Reid turned back to the computer, talking and typing simultaneously.
"A couple of years."
"And you lived here?"
"No, they never lived together, but we spent a lot of time here. I used to love it. Geoffrey gave me the run of the entire casino… except for the bars and the actual casino of course, for legal reasons. I was never much for after-school activities, and didn't really have any friends my own age, so I'd go here instead. There were a lot of people here who liked me and I could get away with almost anything. I had my first driving lesson in the parking garage here, with one of the valets in a guest's 1969 Ford Thunderbird when I was ten. The security detail back then was mostly ex-military and they could fill me up with bullshit stories for hours. There was even this great magician, who trained me to be his assistant for a while."
"Oh," Elle said, "That's where you learned that disappearing coin act."
"Right." He smiled as a memory made its way to the front of his mind. "There were three restaurants here then, I think there are more now, but their kitchens didn't talk much amongst themselves, so they didn't know if or what I had eaten at the others. One summer I ate nothing but ice cream for three weeks before they caught on to me."
Elle smiled. It was rare to get Reid to talk about himself and she was soaking it up. It was also nice to think of him as a little kid who let the complicated math problems rest in order to concentrate on how to get his hands on as much ice cream as possible.
"So…what happened?"
"My mom got sick. The day she got her diagnosis, Geoffrey cut us loose."
"What a jerk!" Elle was horrified.
"He's a busy man. He had no time for a sick girlfriend, just like he never had time to raise a kid."
"But…"
"I know. I was very disappointed in him for a long time and very mad. I had trusted him with my mother, and now he abandoned her, when she needed support the most. Only…"
"Only?"
"Only, he didn't, not completely. He paid for everything, still does. The sanatorium, the specialist doctors, the medication. She's getting much better care than I could ever provide for her and for that I have to be grateful. He never said anything, we never talked about it, he just makes sure all the bills are sent to him."
"What about you? What happened to you?"
"I was going off to collage that fall anyway," he shrugged.
"Did he pay for that?"
"He didn't have to. I had scholarships lined up around the corner. But every now and then money would mysteriously show up on my checking account, until I was 18, so I guess he kept tabs on me."
"But…" Elle was still upset over the man's callousness, but Reid interrupted her.
"I think these are all the matches we'll get. I have found twenty-two male employees that started in the last three weeks."
"Twenty-two? Isn't that quite a lot?"
"It's Christmas season. Lots of extra work."
He printed out hardcopies of all files, as well as making an electronic copy and sending it to himself as well as his teammates and Garcia, with a message asking her to do a background check.
Back in the lobby the others were waiting, Morgan with several DVDs of security tapes in his hands.
"We have identified twenty-two employees who started in the last three weeks," Elle told them.
"All right, I'll call Wentworth. His men can pick them up for questioning." Hotchner said pulling out his phone, but Reid stopped him.
"Wait, I have an idea. We are pretty sure he smokes, right?"
"Yes, there has been cigarette ashes in every room, and according to the analyses, it's the same brand." Elle said.
"Okay, I think I know a way to narrow them down. Follow me. Can you call ahead to let us in backstage?" he asked Jenny, who had followed Morgan back.
"Sure." She stood up on her toes, and pressed a chaste kiss on Reid's lips. "Don't let it be three more years before I see you again, you hear?"
"It won't, I promise."
She punched in a speed dial on her cell and waved as Reid led the team away, with Hotchner right on his heels.
"Where are we going?"
"Out back."
"Why?"
"You'll see."
Reid led them down through a sea of slot machines and turned into a well-hidden hallway. Nearing another door that called for a key card, they were met by a security guard.
"Spencer Reid?"
Reid nodded and showed his ID and the guard opened the door. They entered a brightly lit hallway, with dressing rooms on both sides. Not all doors were closed and Morgan perked right up. He passed Hotchner to sling an arm around Reid's shoulders as they walked past an open door where several scantily dressed show girls were changing costumes.
"So you grew up here, huh? That must have been fun."
"I was just a little kid, Morgan. And they were my mother's friends."
"But still, what a start in life! Your friends must have loved you."
"What friends?"
Realizing his blunder, Morgan's arm slid off his shoulders and his grin faded. "Sorry," he mumbled.
Taking a right they ended up at a heavy door with an emergency exit sign. Reid pushed it open and led the team out, down a steep metal stair, into a wide alley.
"Where are we?" Hotchner asked.
"Behind the hotel," Reid said. "The door we just came through leads backstage, that's were the show girls and other artists are. On the far left," he pointed out towards the street, "is the loading dock for the kitchens, that's were all the food is delivered and where the kitchen personnel come in. The loading dock in the middle is for maintenance, laundry transports etcetera. It's also where the locker rooms for the maids, bell boys, croupiers and so on are located."
"And…" Hotchner still didn't understand.
"And, this is where they all come to smoke. There's no smoking allowed inside, except for some special areas for the guests."
Morgan frowned. "Are we supposed to just stand here and wait for the unsub to come out?"
"No," Reid said, scanning the alley. "It's also the home of Uncle Joel."
"Uncle Joel?" Morgan sounded disbelieving.
"He's not my biological uncle," Reid said, as if that would explain everything. "Give me all your quarters."
Gideon immediately opened up his wallet, searching through the coin compartment, but the others needed more persuasion.
"Why?" Morgan wanted to know.
"Because he doesn't like bills, he likes money with weight."
"And nickels and dimes won't do?"
"They take too long to count."
"Just do what he asks," Gideon said, handing over seven quarters, making the others search through pockets, wallets and, in Elle's case, her purse.
Reid took all the money and the personnel files and made his way over to what Morgan had thought was just a pile of garbage bags. He squatted down and carefully shook an arm sticking out of the pile.
"Uncle Joel," he called. "It's me, Spencer. Remember me?"
A face materialized, two squinting eyes on a bearded face, hidden beneath a knitted cap.
"Spency?" The voice was raspy. "Is that you?"
"It's me, Uncle Joel."
"Hot damn." Two grubby hands caught his face in a death grip and pulled him forward, making him unbalance and he had to put his hands down on the ground to keep from crashing into Joel. A very sloppy kiss was planted on his cheek, before he was released.
"My little boy. You come back now?"
"Just for a visit."
"Did ya… did you bring a little something for your dear old Uncle?"
"I didn't have time to go shopping, but I have this." He disposed the coins in Joel's outreached palms and he grunted in satisfaction at the reassuring weight.
"You always was such a good boy, Spency. Always thought of your fellow man. Bless you, boy."
"Uncle Joel, I have something to ask you."
"Hmm…"
"I'm looking for a newbie. Can you look at some pictures and tell me who you've seen?"
"You can show 'em. You can show me anything."
Reid held the photos up one by one, and Joel grunted yes or no to each. In the end there were five in the yes-pile.
"Most of my newbies has been from over there. Tha's good. Much more Christmas cheer over there." He nodded across the alley where the Mastriano hotel had its loading docks.
"Thanks, Uncle Joel."
"Ya leaving again?"
"Sorry, but I have to go. Take care of yourself, you hear. Don't stay out too long." Reid unwound the scarf around his neck and hung it around Joel's neck. Then he bent forward and softly kissed the man on the forehead. "Merry Christmas."
"Always such a good boy."
His team stood waiting for him, feeling like they had just intruded on a very private moment. Reid waved at them to follow him out of the alley. He handed Hotchner the files.
"These five are the only ones who smoke," he said.
"Are you sure?"
"There's no one sharper than Uncle Joel, he just likes to keep a low profile. If he says so, it's so." He sounded so sure, that Hotchner relented. Getting his cell phone out, he called Wentworth and asked him to have the five men picked up for questioning.
Hotchner and Gideon came back into their office after having interviewed one of the suspects. They found Elle putting a butterfly bandage on a small cut on Morgan's cheek.
"What happened?" Hotchner demanded.
"Our suspect…" he hissed and Elle pressed down on the edges, "Our suspect apparently has a problem with the establishment, as he so colorfully put it."
"Don't be such a baby," Elle chided him, then patted him on the arm. "All done."
Reid came into the room with a coffee cup in one hand, an icepack and a water bottle in his other. Morgan immediately reached for the coffee, but Reid deftly held it out of his reach and pressed the water bottle in his hand instead. He gave him the ice pack too, and then dug out two aspirins from his pocket and placed them in Morgan's other hand.
"Are you okay?" Hotchner asked him as he took a sip of his coffee. Reid had been Morgan's interview partner.
"I'm fine," Reid said, silently wondering just how often he had been asked that question lately, and why it was always Hotchner asking him.
"What about your suspect?" Gideon wanted to know.
Reid shook his head. "No go. He has got a perfect alibi for last night. Apparently he was the keynote speaker at some anti-war/government/authorities/something-or-other pep rally last night. What about your guy?"
"Same thing," Gideon said. "Perfect alibi." He sighed. All five suspects had now been questioned and none had been a valid candidate.
"I'll have Wentworth and his guys check on the alibis of the other seventeen employees as well, just in case," Hotchner said.
Reid frowned, but he knew they had to cover all their bases. But he also knew their unsub would not be found amongst them.
An agent stuck his head in. "CSI sent this over," she said, waving a file at them.
"Great." Morgan took the file and sat down at the table. The others gathered around him. "Okay, let's see," he said, opening the file. On top was a sheet of paper describing what had been done to the envelope. Morgan read it out loud.
"There were no fingerprints on the envelope or the note. It had been closed with water and not saliva, so no DNA. Paper is standard computer paper, can be found anywhere. Same with the envelope. The note was written in Times New Roman 12, printed on a laser printer, no distinguishing marks, no surprises."
It was basically what the team had expected to hear.
"What about the note? What does it say?" Elle asked.
Morgan turned the page and gaped. "You have got to be kidding me!"
"What?"
"This makes no sense, it's just gibberish!"
He put the note on the table for all to see.
MU MT MU TE ML EL LL LM
TM ML ET TL MT TT ML MU MT MU TE ML EE LL TT ML UE TE LL EM ML EL ML ML UT TM LL UE MU UE UT EE LE MT UT UM MT LM EL LM MU EL ML LL TM LL TU ML UE MU MU LL LT ML UU LL EE ML UT UE LM UU MU MT LE UE UT UL LL EE ML UT UE LM UU
ME UE ET TM ML TT ML ML MU LL EE LL UE UT
TL LL ML UL TM LL ET ET LL
"It's not gibberish," Reid said. "It's a cipher."
"A cipher?"
"Yep, from the looks of it, it's a simple substitution cipher."
"Well," Morgan said, "If it's simple, then you can solve it, right?"
"That's not what simple means in this case. It just means that it's a monoalphabetic cipher, rather than a polyalphabetic cipher." Reid said.
"Say what?" Morgan asked, eyebrows furrowed.
"It means that every symbol in the cipher represents a letter and not a word and that every symbol has one and only one counterpart in the alphabet. Only, since the letters in the cipher come in pairs it's probably a kind of diagrapic cipher, but considering that there seem to be a limited numbers of symbols, I'd still call it a substitution cipher."
"Yes," Gideon said. "But can you solve it?"
"I don't know. Ciphers are made to keep secrets, meaning that only those who are privy to the key can solve it, and he didn't provide a key, so I'm going to have to figure it out on my own. I have no idea if I can or how long it might take."
"All right," Hotchner said. "Just do your best. What else's in the file?"
"Preliminary reports," Morgan said and started reading the highlights. "Cause of death was a cut to the throat that severed both arteries as well as the trachea. Death would have been immediate. They have found no unknown hairs, fibers or fingerprints, but the rooms are reported to be exceptionally clean. Do you think he travels with his own vacuum cleaner or something?"
"Just read the text," Hotchner said.
"Signs of sexual activity, but no semen. No trace evidence found that could contain DNA. The writing on the wall is consistent with that on the other crime scenes, and the footprints match also. So it's definitely the same guy. There is nothing different from the other crime scenes. The only thing that stood out was the note. They will most likely not be able to provide us with anything new, but they will keep processing everything they gathered and come back to us with their finding."
They hadn't really expected anything else, but they were still disappointed. They needed an edge, and they needed it fast.
The rest of their stay in Las Vegas did not turn up anything new. Having gathered all evidence and information they deemed possible, they decided to head back home. For, as Morgan put it,
"The unsub will already have left."
They had spent the last morning in the office, making sure they had covered every angle, and said good bye to Wentworth, who seemed glad to see them go. Now they were headed back to their hotel to eat lunch and pack. They were walking from the parking garage, Hotchner on his cell phone, talking to their pilot.
Half a block from the hotel they met a mother with two small children, a girl and a boy, in tow. Unfortunately, and rather incomprehensibly, since it was late December, the children were eating ice cream cones. The woman let go of the little girl's hand to wave at a man on the other side of the street, calling to get his attention. The girl also saw the man.
"Daddy!" she squealed and took off.
"Andrea, no!" the mother shouted, but before the child could run out into the street, Reid intercepted her, lifting her right off her feet, and was rewarded with a high-pitched frightened scream, as well as a shirtfront covered with cold, half-melted ice cream.
The mother was of course both apologetic and very grateful, but Reid shrugged off all thank you's in his usual unassuming way. But that didn't keep his team from congratulating him on his quick reaction.
"Okay, thank you." Hotchner pushed the off button on his cell phone as the team walked into the hotel lobby. Addressing the team he said, "The plane will be ready at nine tonight. So, let's get some lunch in the hotel's restaurant and see what else we can do this afternoon."
"You guys go ahead," Reid said. "I'll just go change my shirt, then I'll catch up with you."
He broke loose from the group and headed for the elevator, which took him to the right floor. He opened the door to his room and unbuttoned his shirt. Looking at the stain he grimaced, and then he tried to roll the shirt so that the ice cream would not transfer to the rest of the clothes in his duffel bag. Looking at his chest he noticed that it gone right through. He went into the bathroom and found a washcloth and washed it off.
When he walked back into the room, Gideon was sitting on his bed. Surprise made him halt for a second, before he went to the bag to find a clean shirt.
"What are you doing here?" he asked with his back to the older man, fearing he already knew the reason.
"It's our last day in Las Vegas. We're leaving tonight."
"I know. I was there when Hotch told us, remember?"
"I thought maybe you would like the afternoon off."
Reid's shoulders sagged. "And why would I want that?"
"I just thought you might want to go see your mother. You don't get to see her very often, do you?"
"No, I don't."
"Have you been back since Fairmount?"
"No."
"And you haven't told her anything about it?"
"Of course not, what would be the point of that?"
"The point would be that she is your mother and she loves you."
"She's sick, Gideon, you can't just tell her things."
"But you can go and see her, right?"
Reid sighed, and turned around, facing the other man as he buttoned the last button in his shirt.
"No, I can't. You can't just visit mom. It takes preparation. You have to tell the staff in advance so that they can prepare her and hope she's having a good day. And…"
"And…" Gideon prompted.
"And I need to prepare. Mentally. Do you think I enjoy seeing my mother like that? In that environment? Knowing that there is nothing I can do to change anything. I'll never get used to that. And right now, I'm too distracted."
"It's almost Christmas."
"I know. I'll fly back soon, but I can't do it right now."
"Are you sure you're not just running away from the problem?"
"So what if I am? Is that the end of the world? Look, I don't mean to be rude, but this isn't any of your business. I will visit my mom when the timing is better. Can't we just go to lunch now, please?"
Gideon gave him a half-nod. "Okay. Let me know if you change your mind."
"I won't."
Reid waited for Gideon to walk out the door and then followed him, locking the door. The whole time he had a searing burn in his gut. Disappointment in himself.
The plane was quiet as most of the team slept. Only Hotchner and Gideon were awake, sitting opposite each other at a small table. Hotchner had several papers spread out before him, but he seemed distracted. Gideon observed him for a few minutes, noticing that the page was never turned, and Hotchner's eyes didn't move.
"What's troubling you, Aaron?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
Hotchner looked up at him and answered in the same manner.
"Do you think he was right?"
"Who?"
"Geoffrey Lohan. Remember in his office, when he greeted Reid? He said that it was disappointing that he was only an FBI agent, when he could be so much more."
"And you think he was right?"
"No… yes…maybe?"
Gideon sat quiet, waiting for Hotchner to continue.
"Maybe he is… maybe we are wasting his talents. He could be so much more."
"Such as?"
"He could discover the cure for cancer, put a man on Mars, become a brain surgeon, win a Nobel Prize… anything. Was there ever anyone who truly could become anything he wanted, it's him."
"And you don't think he wants to be a profiler?"
"He probably does, but he's so young. How can he really know what he wants? I just don't know. Maybe we have been wrong this whole time… maybe Reid doesn't belong with us. And he has changed so much. Did you see how he took charge at Lohan's? He dragged us around, without telling us where we were going."
"We were in his back-yard, so to speak. He knew things we didn't. The information he gathered for us is invaluable."
"I know, but it was the way he did it. It wasn't the normal Reid."
"So? He's gained some confidence."
"You know, someone once said to me that confidence is just the feeling you get before you properly understand the situation."
"That seems like a rather bleak outlook on life."
"I don't know. Sometimes I think it's rather accurate. I just hope he knows what he's doing."
"Have some faith, he might just surprise you."
"I sure hope so."
Reid woke up suddenly. Had someone said his name? He was lying on a short sofa in the back of the plane, with his legs hanging off. One hand rested on his stomach, the other under his head and he had a fad, cottony sensation in his mouth, meaning he couldn't have been asleep long. He kept his eyes closed, but focused his hearing. He could hear Hotchner speaking, quiet words drifting over to him, sometimes hard to hear.
"…maybe Reid doesn't belong with us… has changed so much… how he took charge… he dragged us around, without telling us where… going."
Gideon's answer was too soft to hear properly. "…speak…knew… we didn't… information…"
"I know, but… he did it… not… normal Reid."
"… confidence."
"…confidence is just the feeling… get before… understand the situation."
"…rather bleak…"
"I don't know… rather accurate… hope he knows what he's doing."
"…surprise you."
"I sure hope so."
Reid lay absolutely still, his insides cold as ice, but they were quiet for a long time before Hotchner asked Gideon something about a quarterly report that was due, and then he stopped listening.
His heart was thumping wildly in his chest. They didn't want him anymore! Suddenly he remembered the butterflies in his stomach his first day back. He now knew what they were for. He had been unsure of his welcome. Now the butterflies were back, with a vengeance.
Deep down he had always harbored a secret fear that his time with the BAU would be limited to however long the team's patience with him would hold up, but he had never really believed it. Until now…
***
Reid never got back to sleep on the plane, but neither did he open his eyes or move. He lay completely still, hoping that the turmoil inside him didn't show on the outside.
When the plane touched ground, he was the first one off, not speaking to anybody. Without so much as a good-bye he sped to his car to get home as soon as possible. He barely remembered the drive, but he made it home. Slamming his door behind him and locking it took the edge of his panic away. Here he felt safe. Safe but not happy. What had happened? What had he done wrong?
He went to the fridge and opened the door, then slammed it shut again. Nothing appealed to him, and he wasn't really hungry anyway. He angrily brushed his teeth, got undressed, set his alarm clock and got into bed. He lay there for all of two minutes before he realized that there was no way he would be able to sleep. Instead he got up and turned on the living room lights and started pacing.
He had to be rational. He hadn't screwed up anything important recently, had he? So why had they lost confidence in him? Hotchner had said that he had changed. But apparently in a bad way. And he wasn't sure how, he didn't feel very different. Would he be kicked out? That thought made him stop pacing, and he sank down in an armchair, staring unseeingly at the black TV screen. What would he do if he wasn't on the team? Would he be transferred to another department? Would another department welcome him? Perhaps he should just spare himself the humiliation and quit. Only, he didn't want to quit, and he didn't want to be kicked out. Would they really do that to him? They were his friends… weren't they?
He felt pretty confident that nothing would happen until this case was over. If nothing else, they were expecting him to solve the cipher. And he had been the one that solved the anagrams. He had done good things, he had helped them. That was why it was so confusing, why they didn't want him anymore. But he had heard Hotchner. He had said that he didn't belong with them.
He wondered how it would happen, who would be he one to tell him. Was the whole team in on it? Were they counting the days until they got rid of him? But he couldn't, wouldn't, believe that. They had always been friendly and straight with him. The chess-games with Gideon and Morgan's good-natured ribbing… he liked that. Sure, they could be a bit condescending at times, treating him like a little kid, which he hated. But it had never been in bad spirit, had it? Had he read the signals wrong? It wouldn't be the first time. Maybe they had simply grown weary of him and his awkwardness. It wouldn't be the first time either.
He decided that he would see this case through. There was no way he could walk away from it anyway. He owed it to Ann to find her killer. Funny, he never thought he would owe Ann anything. Maybe he should have told the others about Ann. Would it have made a difference? And it wasn't just Ann. The other women deserved to have their murderer stand trail for his actions too. But he would be watchful, trying to read his teammates, see what was going on. He would work harder than ever before, to prove them wrong. And then, if he saw no other way out, he would quit.
Having made his decision he headed back for his bedroom, but he stopped in the doorway, watching his bed. He was really too agitated to sleep, and he had just vowed to work harder than ever. So instead of getting into bed he got dressed again. The next morning when his alarm clock went off, he had already been at the office for hours. And he was making progress.
When Morgan and Elle came to work the next morning, they found Reid at his desk, staring hollowly at his computer screen.
"Hey, man. You're early." Morgan greeted him.
Reid shrugged without looking at them.
Elle looked searchingly at him. "You look tired."
He didn't acknowledge her statement. Instead he said tonelessly,
"I've solved the cipher."
"You did?" Morgan got excited, but it disappeared just as quickly as he looked at Reid. "But… that's a good thing, right?"
Reid shrugged again.
Morgan and Elle looked at each other. This was a far cry from the Reid who had been overly-excited when he solved the anagrams, not long ago.
"Are you going to tell us what it said?" Elle carefully asked.
Reid didn't answer, he just gathered his notes and walked towards the round-table room.
"What's going on?" Elle whispered to Morgan. He just shook his head, a bewildered look in his eyes. They fetched the others and followed Reid. When they came to the round-table room, Reid was standing at the table, looking through his notes.
"Morgan tells us you have figured out the cipher." Hotchner said.
Reid looked up at him hastily, and then down again, just as fast. The others sat down, but he remained standing.
"Do you want the long version or the short?"
"The long version, please." Gideon said, at the same time as Morgan said, "The short one."
They both looked at Hotchner. "The long version."
Reid picked up a marker and turned to an empty whiteboard, taking a deep breath, steadying his nerves.
"As I said when we first got the cipher, it looked like a diagraphic cipher. The key to a diagrapic cipher is made up by a big square divided into smaller squares, like a chessboard. In this simple variation, every square represents a letter. As you know, the squares on a chessboard have names, so to speak, that you use to describe your moves, A-1, A-2 etcetera. So does the squares in the cipher, and that's what makes up the code. There are 5 times 5 squares."
He drew a grid net with 25 squares.
"But there are 26 letters in the alphabet," Morgan interjected.
"But you can't make an even grid with 26 letters, so you take away the one or ones, depending on your language, that is least used. I took away X." He filled in all the squares from A to Z, leaving X out.
"Another proof that I was on the right track was that the whole cipher is made up by only five letters. When paired up, they can only make 25 different pairs, so I knew the keyword would be a word containing these letters. As you can see, the letters are E, L, M, T and U."
Hotchner wrinkled his forehead. "There is no word that's made up by those letters."
"In English, no. The keyword is letum, which is one of the Latin words for death."
"You speak Latin?" JJ asked, not knowing why she was surprised.
"A little. Anyway, to keep with the chess analogy, you write the word one time where the A-H would be on the chess board, and then once more where the 1-8 would be. So the first square, that would be called A-1 on a chessboard is here called LL, which equals A, then A-2 or EL, which equals B, and so one."
He had now drawn up the whole figure, and checked to see if the team was following his explanation, which they were.
"Once I figured that out, all I had to do was substitute the letters in the cipher against their correspondents in the key, and fill in the punctuation marks. This is the message I found." He handed out a paper on which he had written down the message.
To the BAU,
Welcome to the game. I have been waiting for you. But be aware, it takes a genius to find a genius.
'Til we meet again,
Caedwalla
"Caedwalla? What does that mean?" Elle wondered.
"Caedwalla is one of the patron saints of murderers. Murderers and converts actually." Reid explained.
"Murderers have patron saints?" Morgan sounded doubtful.
Reid smiled bleakly at him. "Actually, there are patron saints for everything from rope makers to oil refiners to the Internet."
"I hate it when he starts a sentence with 'actually'," Morgan stage whispered to Elle, at the same time as JJ almost choked on her coffee.
"The Internet? There's a patron saint for the Internet?" she asked incredulously.
"Uh-huh, Saint Isidore of Seville. Patron saint of computer technicians, computer users, computers, the Internet, schoolchildren and students. I think Garcia has his picture as a screensaver on one of her computers. Check it out."
"Aren't we somewhat off topic now?" Gideon's gentle rebuke wiped away the smiles as they started analyzing the message.
"'Welcome to the game,'" Elle read, "That means Gideon was right. The unsub thinks of these killings as a pastime, or an intellectual challenge. It's like he's competing with himself."
"And with us," Hotchner said. "The note was addressed to us. We are the adversary, the one to beat to stay ahead in the game. He wants to have someone to compete with, that's why he left the note, but he doesn't want to make it too easy for us, hence the cipher. And that genius remark… This note reads like a movie cliché."
"Lucky for us, we have a genius." Morgan said, grinning at Reid. Gideon also looked at Reid and frowned. Normally, a comment like that would have made him blush and look down, now it looked as if he hadn't even heard it, and he had been unusually quiet. Was he just tired, or was there something else?
"No," Gideon said, turning back to the team. "That's not lucky. That means that the unsub knows us. He wouldn't have given us a cipher if he hadn't been confident that we could solve it. That he is inviting us to his game means that he feels like he has the upper hand. He knows who we are, but we don't know who he is. He is going to recognize us in a crowd or if we come to question him. This is not good."
"Not to mention how much his arrogance shines through," Hotchner said. "This guy is dangerous."
"So," Elle summarized. "The message confirms our profile and even adds to it, but how does it help us find him?"
The team was quiet until Reid almost whispered, dejected, "It doesn't."
"But it will." Hotchner stood up. "All right then, let's…"
"There was one more thing," Reid said shyly.
Hotchner sat down again, and waited for Reid to speak, but he took his time.
"I…" he began hesitantly. "I've been thinking about something Uncle Joel said. He said that there were a lot more new employees who smoked at the Mastriano hotel next-door, than there was at Lohan's. So… maybe the unsub never worked at the hotel where the murder took place, maybe he worked at a hotel close by. He's smart enough to know that the first place the police are going to look is at the staff, especially those newly hired. And quitting the day after the murder will look highly suspicious."
"But if he worked in another hotel, how would he know who the guests at other hotels are?" Elle wanted to know.
Reid shrugged. "The staffs talk to each other. During cigarette breaks, for example. And in big hotel districts there are usually bars that are popular hangouts for hotel personnel, where they can mingle. It's not like they can comfortably drink where they work."
"Who would want to, anyway?" Morgan wondered.
"And," Reid continued. "If he befriended anyone from another hotel, he could probably use that person as an excuse to sneak into other hotels' 'staff only' areas and give himself access to computers, etcetera."
"That's a very good idea, Reid," Gideon said. "That's probably why we haven't been able to find any employees who fit the profile. We just haven't been able to get around the fact that the unsub knows the hotels so well, but if you are right, then that would explain it. We should explore this angle."
Hotchner agreed. "Liv Lashen was murdered in Arlington. It is only 30 or so miles from here. We can drive there today. Have Garcia make a list of all the hotels in the same district as the one where Lashen was killed."
The drive to Arlington was quiet. Gideon had opted to stay in Quantico to help JJ spread the word amongst the other cities, so there were only four of them. Morgan was driving, and in an uncharacteristic move, Hotchner had sat in the back with Reid, letting Elle ride shotgun. Morgan had made attempts at conversations, but had finally given up and turned on the radio instead, as all the rest had their noses buried in paperwork.
Although Reid's thoughts kept wandering during the ride and he kept steeling glances over at Hotchner, wondering what he was thinking about. It was difficult to match this man, who he thought he knew, to the words he had heard last night.
Morgan parked outside the hotel where the murder had taken place. Garcia had marked six other hotels of similar size in the area as likely locations. They got out of the car and Hotchner pulled out the list of hotels. He tore the list in half and gave the other half to Morgan.
"Okay," Morgan said, glancing at it. "Come on, Reid."
"No," Hotchner said. "I'll take Reid. Elle will go with you."
Morgan looked slightly surprised by the order, but made no objection as he and Elle waived goodbye and headed down the street, promising to call if they found anything.
Hotchner started walking in the opposite direction, expecting Reid to follow, which he did. But he kept wondering about Hotchner's choice of words. He'd said 'I'll take Reid', as if it was a chore to be endured. Had it been intentional or just unlucky phrasing? Reid hated that he had started questioning his teammates, but after what he had heard on the plane he couldn't help but wonder.
The first hotel Hotchner and Reid went to gave them nothing, but at the second one they were rewarded. They sat in visitors' chairs opposite the personnel manager, Sara Linden, who was looking through her files on her computer.
"Yes," she said, "We do have a desk clerk who fits your time-profile. He worked here for four weeks and quit the day after that gruesome murder down the street. I didn't think there was anything odd about it at the time. Do you think he's the killer?" There was a curious excitement in her voice.
"We don't know." Hotchner said. "Could we have a copy of his file please?"
"Sure." She hit print and they waited while the machine worked and then she handed the paper to Hotchner.
"Eddie Willis," he read.
"That's right," Sara said. "He was really good at his job too, very polite, very charming. He was well-liked by the guests. And by the rest of the staff. He was very funny. The stories he could tell… We were quite sad to see him go. He couldn't really be a serial killer, could he? He was so nice."
Hotchner handed the paper over to Reid who looked at it. Nothing stood out. Name, address, social security number, résumé. He had no doubt it was all fake. He kept scanning it, hoping to find something that would stand out and scream 'I'm here'.
"Do you have a photo?" he heard Hotchner ask.
"Sure, I'm printing it out now."
A short while later another paper was handed to him. He took one look at it and gasped, his face losing all its color.
"Oh my god, it's him!"
Hotchner looked at him.
"Him who? You know him?"
Reid looked up at him and Hotchner was taken aback by the look in his eyes. They were vast pools of emotions, as if his whole world was crashing down on him.
"I met him in Las Vegas. He was a waiter at the hotel we stayed in. He came up to me and said that he wanted to talk to me about my articles, that he had heard about me and what happened in Fairmount."
"What?" Hotchner couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Reid felt nauseous. "He was just playing me, the whole time. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"You didn't know."
"He was right there! Not two feet in front of me and I walked away from him. I should have known. Who would want to talk about my articles? There was something odd about him, I could feel it, and I just walked away and let him get away."
"Reid… Spencer, listen to me. You had no way of knowing, it's not your fault."
"Tell that to Caitlin Tytac."
***
Hotchner called Morgan. "We've found our guy, so meet us here. I'm going to need you help. Something's happened."
"You need help? Reid? Is he okay?"
"He's fine," Hotchner said, glancing down at the man who still sat in the visitor's chair, tearing himself apart. "I'll tell you when you get here."
Reid felt horrible. No wonder Hotchner felt that he didn't belong on the team. The unsub had practically come up and introduced himself, and Reid had run away from him, because the guy felt creepy. He couldn't help but imagine the glee the unsub must have felt, seeing him retreat like that. He had won and BAU had lost, another woman had lost her life and it was Reid's fault. He simply should have known.
When Elle and Morgan came, Reid let Hotchner explain everything. They were very sympathetic and assured him that it wasn't his fault and that they would have done the same thing, the same mistake. But all Reid could hear was the pity in their voices.
The rational part of his brain was screaming at him to shut up and stop being so stupid, that he couldn't have known, but Reid disconnected it. He simply couldn't help but feel responsible. But his determination to catch this unsub only grew stronger so he swallowed his momentary self-pity and stood up on shaky legs ready to throw himself into his work again.
Hotchner handed Morgan the information about their unsub. "Call Garcia and ask her what she can dig up, okay?"
"Okay." He looked at the paper. "Eddie Willis… huh… that was a great movie."
"What movie?" Hotchner asked.
"The Harder They Fall from 1956. Humphrey Bogart's last movie. He plays a sport's writer called Eddie Willis. Do you think it's a coincidence?"
"I don't know. Probably not. He has to find his aliases somewhere. We'll see when we find out his other aliases."
Morgan turned away and called Garcia.
"Penelope's house of wax. How can I melt you today?"
"Hey Pen, it's me. We have an ID here that we are pretty sure is fake. Can you run it for us?"
"Sure thing, Cookie. Let me have it."
"His name is Eddie Willis…"
"Oh, that was a good movie."
"I didn't know you were a sport's movie fan, Garcia."
"I'm not, I'm just a Humphrey-girl. That voice sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. What else have you got?"
Morgan rattled off the social security number and the other information. "We'll be back in a couple of hours. Can you have it by then?"
"Are you questioning my computer skills?"
"Never."
"All right then, I'll see you in a couple of hours."
They then spent some time questioning the rest of the hotel's staff. They all had pretty much the same things to say. Eddie was a great guy, very funny, very neat, a little flirtatious maybe but not in a bad way. Generous and social. Yes, he smoked. They had to be mistaken, he couldn't possibly be a serial killer, he was much too normal. No one had heard him talk about any family or friends. No one knew where to find him now. He had come and gone and everybody had liked him.
Having found what they were looking for, they got into the car and headed back to Quantico.
Reid and Morgan knocked lightly on the door to Garcia's room and let themselves in and then stopped and stared.
"What are you wearing?" Morgan asked, mouth hanging open.
"My amateur theatre group is putting on 'A Christmas Carol' tonight, and it helps me get into character."
"Funny," Morgan said. "I don't remember Tinkerbell from hell being in 'A Christmas Carol'. Who are you supposed to be?"
"I'm the Ghost of Christmas past. And we're not traditionalists. What do you think?" she asked Reid, twirling around once.
He eyed the black tutu skirt, the fishnet stockings, the bright-red bicycle shorts, the clogs, the Hell's Angels emblem on her top, the black and white feathers in her hair and the glitter on her cheeks.
"Sometimes you scare me."
Garcia beamed at him. "Ah, thanks Bubbles, I adore you too."
"Bubbles?" Morgan questioned.
"I thought I'd try out a new nickname for Reid!" Garcia explained cheerfully.
"Oh fun, can I play too?"
"No!" Reid's answered very firmly, wondering if asking for an immediate transfer to Antarctica would get him far enough from this living nightmare, but Garcia was in a merciful mood and turned very professional, presenting her findings.
"This is a fake, just as you thought. But it's a very, very good one. You would have to know it to see it. This guy is probably as good as I am. But if you follow the trail, you can see that Eddie Willis only existed for four short weeks. He was created on a computer at a hotel in New Orleans."
"Which is where the murder prior to Arlington took place. Do you have the name of the hotel?" Morgan asked.
"Sure thing, Peanut. I already sent it to JJ, who called the FBI office in New Orleans."
"And the photo?" Reid wanted to know.
"Has been sent out to every law enforcement office in the country."
"You're a pearl," Morgan said, kissing her sparkly cheek.
They turned to go when Garcia cleared her throat meaningly. When they turned back she stuck her cheek out at Reid, who dutifully kissed it too and mumbled his thanks.
They gathered in the round-table room, where JJ told them the same things Garcia had already told Morgan and Reid. She had mobilized the FBI in every city where there had been a murder to show the photo around all the hotels in the same district as the one where the murder had taken place. Then Hotchner filled her and Gideon in on what they had and hadn't learned in Arlington.
Hotchner sighed and looked at his watch. "Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Why don't we just call it a day and meet back here on the 27th. We'll fly out to Atlantic City then."
"But…" Reid started.
"No buts, Reid," Hotchner interrupted him. "We chase serial killers all year long, we are going to spend Christmas with our families. You are not allowed to stay here and work. I'll see you all in a couple of days. Merry Christmas."
His Merry Christmas was echoed by the others as they gathered their things and left the room, listening to Morgan brag about his sister's cooking for the holidays. In the door, Gideon turned and noticed that Reid still sat at the table, fiddling with a pen. Gideon went back in and sat next to him.
"Hotchner told me about you and the unsub. Are you okay?"
"Sure." Reid sounded tired.
"It's not your fault, you know."
"I know."
"Is there something else you'd like to talk about?"
Was he imagining it, or did Reid hesitate for a moment before answering?
"No, everything is fine."
"What about Christmas? Do you have any plans?"
Suddenly Reid broke out in a huge grin. "I'm going to Fairmount to spend it with the Sanderses. I'm flying out tonight."
"Really? That's great." Gideon felt relieved. He hadn't actually expected Reid to have any plans, since he didn't really have any family besides his mother or friends outside the BAU. "And you're sure everything is alright?"
"Yes. I have to go now, if I'm going to make my plane. Merry Christmas, Gideon."
"Merry Christmas." Gideon stayed in his seat as Reid exited, hoping that the younger man would be ready to talk about what was bothering him soon. Because Gideon did not believe that he was as fine as he would like people to think.
Reid set down his duffel bag on the floor inside his front door, sighing. As wonderful as Christmas had been, it had also been exhausting. He had offered to stay at a hotel, but the Sanders' wouldn't hear of it. They had met him at the airport and Bailey had immediately thrown himself in his arms. They had come home to a house full of family. There was a grandmother who kept calling him 'young man' and pat his cheek, and an aunt who took to stuffing food into his mouth every time she laid eyes on him, making him start to peek around corners before entering a room. There were lots of little cousins, wide-eyed with awe at being in the presence of a real life FBI agent and a dog that lay down on his feet every time he sat down. He'd helped decorate the tree, eaten gingerbread cookies, built snowmen, had snowball fights and drunk hot chocolate with a little something extra in it, courtesy of Uncle Robert. There had been laughter, caroling, storytelling and lots and lots of hugs and sloppy kisses, and not all from Bailey.
Because of all the guests, all children had been put on mattresses in their respective parents' rooms, but Bailey had promptly moved his mattress into Reid's room, making three other little boys follow his lead. The parents had been apologetic, but Reid had asked them to let it be. The sound of four children breathing through their mouths and mumbling in their sleep had made Reid sleep better than he had in a long time. He had even brought Einstein, the teddy bear his team had given him at the hospital in Fairmount, and Bailey was overjoyed and had slept with both Einstein and his stuffed dog Pox in his bed.
And there was an indescribable joy in being pounced on at six in the morning by a five-year-old shouting, "Get up, get up, there are presents!" And there were presents. All the packages he'd brought had been duly examined and then ripped open accompanied by pleasured shouts. He was accused of spoiling the children, but took it in stride. There were also presents for him. Knitted sweaters and gloves, Kindergarten-projects, homemade cookies and candy. He felt like he was the one being spoiled.
Bailey seemed to be doing well, he was a very happy and healthy child during the day. But at night he'd come out in his pajama and want to sit on his lap with his thumb in his mouth until he fell asleep. His mother told Reid that he had started this behavior when they had moved him back to his own bedroom, but for now Reid was happy to comply. The warm body, heavy with sleep, healed something in his own heart he had not known was broken.
There had been plenty of tears when he left, and he had been profoundly thanked over and over again for giving them the chance to celebrate Christmas as a whole family. He had promised to come back for Bailey's sixth birthday party in April.
But for now he had a whole day until his Christmas break was over, and he knew exactly how he would spend it. An hour later he was at the BAU headquarters, picking up where he had left off a few days ago.
Reports had begun to come in from their national-wide hotel search and Reid read through them all. All FBI offices had been able to find the unsub's records in a hotel in the same district as the murder had taken place. But it was Wentworth's report from Las Vegas that disturbed him the most.
Wentworth had first gone to the hotel where they had been staying, and where Reid and the unsub had met, but the personnel manager there hadn't recognized them man on the photo. So Wentworth had taken his inquiries to other hotels and had found him at the Mastriano, next-door to Lohan's. Reid again felt a wave of failure wash over him. That meant that the unsub had gone to their hotel and dressed up as a waiter just to taunt him. If only he had seen it…
The unsub had used different aliases every time. Bill Starbuck, Tom Garrett, Burt Hanson, Charles Benton… When he looked them up on the Internet he found out that they were all leading characters in movies from 1956. What was so significant with 1956, he wondered. It couldn't be the unsub's birth year. He was much younger than that. A parent's birth year maybe?
He spent a lot of time researching 1956, but couldn't find anything that would be relevant to the case.
The afternoon vanished and turned into night. When became too hungry to be able to ignore it anymore, he went down a couple of floors and found a vending machine that wasn't completely empty. Together with break room coffee and Morgan's secret snack stash, he filled up and went back to work and morning crept up on him without him noticing.
For the second time in less than a week, the BAU team arrived at the office, finding Reid already at his desk, looking just as dejected as he had done the last time. This time he didn't have any good news or new breakthrough discoveries to tell them about, though, and he seemed to be almost ashamed about that fact.
They settled down for a morning meeting. After they had gone through the findings of the other offices, Morgan spoke up.
"I've thought about something," he said. "The bedspreads."
"What about the bedspreads?" Hotchner wanted to know.
Morgan turned to Reid. "Remember what you told me in Vegas, Reid, about the Tyson trail? How much DNA there could be on a hotel bedspread?"
Reid nodded, not sure where he was going with thought. "Yeah…"
"Well, the bedspreads from the crime scenes haven't been tested. And look at the crime scene photos. In every one the bedspread is neatly folded into almost the same size, laying somewhere near the bed. Maybe the unsub did it. We know he's almost pathologically neat."
Elle checked her the files on her laptop. "The bedspread is logged as evidence at seven crime scenes, but have only been cursory checked. There was blood splatter on four of them, but no other tests were done."
"Contact the forensics offices that have bedspreads and have them test them immediately. Tell them to send their findings to Garcia and have her compile it. Good thinking, Morgan." Hotchner patted him in the shoulder.
"I… but…" Morgan gestured to Reid, wanting to acknowledge where the idea had come from, but Hotchner had left the room, and Reid was talking to Gideon and not looking at him. Elle smiled at him though, so his generosity didn't go unnoticed.
An hour or so later Hotchner came up to Reid.
"Can you come into my office, please?" he said quietly.
Reid felt a stab of panic, but got up and followed him.
Hotchner let Reid precede him into his office and then closed the door behind him, but he didn't move, he stayed in the door opening. Did he think Reid was going to make a run for it?
Reid waited, while Hotchner seemed to be collecting his thoughts.
"I… I was just down to the security office and checked your log-in status."
"Why?" It sounded more like an accusation than a question, and Reid winched at his own tone. But Hotchner ignored the question.
"It said that you came here at midday yesterday and hasn't left the building since. Why is that? I believe I told you you weren't allowed to stay and work over the Christmas break."
Reid shrugged, looking away. "I just thought we had a lot to do, that's all. I guess I just forgot about the time."
"Give it a rest, Reid. Take a break. There's no need to work yourself into the grave."
"Yes, there is." Oops, he hadn't meant to say that and he mentally berated himself for the slip.
"Why?"
"It's personal."
"What do you mean it's personal?
Reid didn't want to talk about it, but Hotchner stood firm in the door opening. Reid sank down on a chair, leaning his head in his hands, looking at his shoes.
"I mean that it's private. Please, let it be."
"No. There's no such thing as private in this kind of investigation. You will tell me now, or so help me, I'll have you pulled from the case."
Reid looked up, staring at him. Was this it? Was this what he had wanted to do all along? Maybe he had just been waiting for an excuse. Was he actually serious? The arms crossed over the chest and the little wrinkle between the eyebrows said that he was. He looked down again and said softly,
"I knew her."
"You knew who? One of the victims?" Hotchner uncrossed his arms, surprise written all over his face.
"Yes, the fifth one. Ann Shava. We went to school together."
"Dammit, Reid. You have to tell us things like that!" Hotchner had unconsciously raised his voice, making Reid flinch. Seeing this, he deliberately lowered it again, as he walked further into the room and put a hand on Reid's shoulder. He tensed, but did not pull away.
"Were you friends?"
Reid gave a small laugh. "Oh, no. She was a bully. She used to steal my lunch money at least three times a week. I guess she figured that if she ate with my money, she could spend hers on make-up. She had this goth-look going on. She'd lock me into the girl's locker room too, every once in a while. I couldn't stand her. Luckily I graduated before her. But look at her file. A pro-bono attorney, a foster parent. She grew up and became a great person that I never got to meet."
"And?" Hotchner prompted.
"And… I've never known a victim before, never outside the investigation. It's… different."
"I know. It makes it more difficult, makes you wish even more that you were omnipotent. But you can't let it get to you. I'm not saying to forget about it, but try not to think about it too much. It could distract you horribly at the wrong time. And you can always come and talk to any of us about this. Or go back to your physiatrist. Just don't let it get to you too much."
Reid looked up. "So, are you going to pull me?"
"No, but don't take on too much. We're a team, we're supposed to do this together. And don't keep things to yourself anymore. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
But inside he flinched at the lie. He knew he should confront Hotchner with what he had heard at the plane, but at times, like right now, Hotchner behaved as if nothing was wrong, and Reid started second-guessing himself. Maybe he wanted him to stay after all.
He would just have to work even harder, to prove he belonged. To keep the benevolent part of Hotchner appeased.
***
Around lunchtime their plane touched ground in Atlantic City. They were met by their liaison, Agent Louise Fisher. She was a short woman, about Gideon's age, with jet-black hair pulled back in a strict bun. She had an air of no-nonsense about her that the BAU would soon come to appreciate.
As they were walking across the tarmac to the waiting cars, Morgan jogged up to Reid. "So, Reid," he said amiably. "You're not banned from any casinos in Atlantic City, are you?"
He never got answer, however, because at that moment, his phone rang.
"Morgan."
"I've got good news," Garcia chirped in the phone. "Five out of seven labs have found matching epithelial cells on the bedspreads. They sent me the DNA-profile and I ran it through CODIS and got a match."
"That was fast, exceptionally fast actually. How did you do that?" Morgan said as he got into the back of one of the cars that were waiting for them.
"I've got my connections. Ask no more, you'll just get jealous. Anyway, his name is Lucas Heller and he has been in prison twice in the last ten years, both times convicted for rape and assault with a deadly weapon. Last known address… Atlantic City! I'm sending you all the information now."
"Thanks a million, baby. Keep digging on him, would you?"
"You've got it."
When they got to the FBI office and the conference room that had been put aside for them during their stay, the team gathered around a laptop set up on the table and watched as Morgan opened the file Garcia had sent. The face that stared back at them from the screen was familiar by now, but Reid couldn't help but feel like something was off.
"That's him all right." Morgan sounded elated.
"But a convicted rapist?" Gideon sounded doubtful. "That doesn't fit the profile."
"It's enough for a warrant, anyway," JJ said. "I'll find out who to talk to about that."
"If the evidence doesn't match the profile, then which is usually right?" Elle wondered aloud, but nobody answered her, as the same question burned in all their minds.
As soon as JJ handed the warrant over to Hotchner, the team got into the car, with Hotchner driving, Morgan riding shotgun trying to read out the directions and keeping and eye on street signs, and Elle and Gideon in the back seat with Reid between them.
On the drive over to Heller's apartment building, Reid was a ball of energy. His fingers kept tapping against his leg, his foot kept moving and his head swiveled around to look out of every window at the same time.
"Calm down, Reid. Please." Elle said.
"I'm calm," Reid reassured her, making Morgan snort in amusement. He turned his head and looked at the people in the back seat,
"Yeah right, and I'm SpongeBob."
"What's a SpongeBob?" Gideon asked, putting a hand on Reid's knee to keep it from bouncing.
"Seriously, you don't know who SpongeBob SquarePants is?" The look on Elle's face was one of incredulous surprise. "Where have you been for the last couple of years?"
"Out on cases, mostly. And what self-respecting person would call themselves SquarePants?"
"Actually," Reid began, "Did your know that the sponges you can buy in the market are actually skeletons. Once the diver's have picked them out of the ocean they let them lie around until all the tissue have naturally decomposed, after that they just wash it, bleach it and sell it."
"It can't be a skeleton," Morgan objected, "A sponge is soft!"
"That's because the skeleton of the sponges is composed only of spongin tissue and contains no hard spicules and…"
"We're here." Hotchner was more than happy to be able to say those words. He wondered if any other team leaders had to put up with these odd conversation topics, but at least the impromptu lesson seemed to have relaxed Reid a little.
They had stopped about a block away from the apartment building, so that Heller wouldn't be able to see them through a window. Agent Fischer had arranged for a SWAT team from the local bureau to meet them there. They were already waiting for them and Hotchner went over to their captain, Bertrand Greene, to coordinate the operation. It was decided that Elle and Gideon would go with two of Greene's men to cover the fire escape and any other possible back doors, while Reid, Morgan and Hotchner would follow the team that went through the front door. He turned back to his team and frowned. Reid already had his gun out, although it was hanging limply at his side, pointing downwards, and he was still bouncing. Reid was much too excited about this. He would have to keep a close eye on him.
They moved briskly to the door of the apartment building. Heller lived on the third floor. When they got in, Reid suddenly shot off up the stairs, not waiting for anyone. Of course the others weren't far behind. Reid took up position next to the apartment door, anxiously waiting for the all-clear signal. Captain Greene knocked hard on the door.
"FBI, open up."
There was a sudden noise inside, something falling over, and Greene nodded to two of his men, who were carrying the battering-ram. The door splintered, and Reid all but threw himself through it.
Hotchner swallowed his irritated curses and followed the flow of law enforcement personnel into the apartment. He heard Reid shouting.
"FBI, freeze. Put the gun down."
His heart froze as he and Morgan hurried to the bedroom, where Reid stood just inside the door. A man, Heller, was on the other side of the bed, a gun trained on Reid, and Reid was positioned so that they could not come into the door. Instead they had to stand outside, watching over his shoulder.
Heller was moving towards the window.
"Drop the gun and put your hands on your head," Reid shouted, his gun in a perfect two-handed grip, following his every move.
Heller turned his back and went for the latch for the window, only to come face to face with Elle, also with her gun ready, out on the fire escape.
Reid had rushed in as soon as Heller had turned around, Hotchner and Morgan right on his heels. His gun was now aimed at the man's unprotected head.
"Drop your gun, or I will shot."
Recognizing defeat, Heller did as ordered.
"Put your hands on your head." Reid made sure that Morgan and Hotchner still had their guns trained on Heller, before holstering his and taking out his handcuffs and securing the suspect.
Hotchner called for Greene's men to transport Heller, and Morgan opened the window to let Elle and Gideon climb through.
Reid handed over the prisoner to the other agents, looking rather pleased with himself, but Hotchner was livid.
"All right," he said. "Start looking through this place. You…" he stabbed his finger at Reid, "…come with me."
Reid felt that things had gone well. As a part of him working harder he had decided to take a more active part in the field work and this opportunity had been too good to pass up. He had used all the moves he had been trained for, and there was a certain adrenaline induced thrill in storming a residence belonging to a potential serial killer. He had stood firm in the face of a threat, without either his hands or his voice trembling and he had restrained the suspect, something he rarely got the chance to do. All in all he was quite pleased with himself and he hoped that his efforts to better himself hadn't gone unnoticed by Hotchner.
That was when Hotchner ordered him out in the hallway, looking very upset.
Hotchner marched out into the hallway, his strides long and angry. Reid followed, suddenly unsure and insecure, wondering what was going on.
As soon as Reid was out in the hallway, Hotchner turned to him.
"What were you thinking? Were you even thinking? What kind of harebrained stunt were you trying to pull?" He sounded like there should be smoke coming out of his nose.
For a second, all Reid could do was stare at him, eyes wide in shock, but suddenly something fired up inside him and all other emotions he had ever felt suddenly disappeared and were replaced by red-hot anger.
"What I was doing? My job of course! I am an FBI agent, or have you forgotten?" They were both shouting now.
"An FBI agent is a team player and waits for orders before rushing into a situation like that. He could have shot you."
"He could have shot any of us, whoever came in first. And I was wearing my vest."
"That's not the point. You were not ordered to go in like that!"
"Neither was I ordered not to. Why did you even bring me to the raid if you didn't want me to go in? I am supposed to be a valid member of the team, why should my job description differ from the others? You would never yell at Morgan or Elle for taking the lead."
"Again, you are missing the point! How can someone so smart be so dense? Your job is to gather intelligence and assess information, not to go running into unknown situations."
"How dare you?" Reid's eyes were burning. "I am more than just a brain on a pair of legs to be consulted whenever you are too lazy to google something. I have taken the same courses as the rest of you, the same tests. I have passed the firearms qualification and still you don't trust me!"
"Don't trust you? Believe me, if I didn't trust you, you wouldn't be on my team."
"You may think you trust me, Hotch, but you don't. You have demonstrated that over and over again ever since I came back. What other reason do you have for not letting me out of your sight? For constantly checking up on me? I'm barely allowed to cross the street without holding your hand!"
"Are you questioning my authority? I take care of my team the best way I know how. And you have just come back from a long sick leave, caused by a very stressful incident, so excuse me for wanting to keep an eye on you."
"You said I wouldn't be evaluated. Were you lying?"
"That was before I knew how much you had changed. Running around interviewing hobos, withholding information, working 24-hour days, and now trying to take down an armed suspect by yourself. I don't know who you are anymore!"
"I wasn't by myself! I had the whole team and an entire SWAT team with me. I gain a little self-confidence and suddenly I'm a menace to society?"
"A little self-confidence? Superman didn't have this much self-confidence. And why do you think we brought the SWAT team, if not to go in first?" Hotchner's face had taken on a red tone and in between shouts he kept clenching his teeth together.
Reid threw up his hands. "There's just no pleasing you, is there?"
He turned around, merely wanting to pace off a little energy, but Hotchner seized his arm, pulling him back around.
"What do you think you are doing? You do not walk away from me!"
Reid looked at the hand around his biceps before pulling it away violently. "Don't touch me."
"You cannot speak to me like that. I am your superior."
"Oh, my superior. Like the unsub think he's his victims' superior?"
"That's not what I meant and you know it. I am your boss and as such I demand respect."
"In real life, respect goes two ways, you know."
"What do you know about real life? You're just a naïve little kid."
Reid's head snapped back and he looked as if he had been slapped. "You… You have no right…"
His face had gone stark white, and this time when he turned around, Hotchner didn't stop him. He watched him run down the stairs, before his head drooped on his shoulders. That hadn't gone the way he'd planned. He'd wanted to chastise Reid a little, discourage him from taking unnecessary risks in the future. Where had all that hostility come from? And why was Reid so angry? He should go after him, he really should. But instead he squared his shoulders and went back into the apartment.
The team had obviously heard every word. Elle's eyes looked glossy and her cheeks were red. She deliberately kept her head down, searching through a dresser drawer.
Gideon's face, as per usual, revealed nothing, but his eyes made Hotchner uncomfortable as he turned his see-through-all gaze on him.
Morgan wouldn't even look at him. He just waved an evidence bag at him and mumbled something about meeting the forensic people downstairs before almost running out of the apartment.
Hotchner felt desolate. This was not good. It wasn't unusual for there to be arguments within the team, but they were always about a case, differences of opinion. Never personal and vicious like this had been.
Reid was walking so fast that he was almost running, hot tears burning in his eyes. He had really, truly screwed up now. There was no way he would be allowed to stay on the team. What had gotten into him? Why had he said so many stupid things?
Hearing a noise behind him, he saw a city bus come up the street. There was a bus stop right in front of him, and right now he just wanted to be somewhere else. So he flagged down the bus and fumbled a little with his wallet to find change, not caring that a Kevlar vest and an FBI windbreaker wasn't exactly common attire for late-afternoon bus passengers. He was long gone by the time Morgan came out looking for him.
Several hours later Hotchner and Gideon had Heller in an interrogation room. Elle and Morgan was watching and listening from the viewing room, when Reid suddenly walked in.
"Hey… how're you doing? Where have you been?" Elle asked as soon as she saw him. They had been calling him non-stop for the last couple of hours, but his phone had been shut off.
Reid didn't like the pity masked in concern in Elle's voice.
"I'm fine," he said curtly. "How are they doing?" He nodded towards the looking glass.
"Not good. So far Heller claims never to have been in Texas, California or any other place. He says he hasn't left Atlantic City in several months. Agent Fisher is checking out his alibi. What do you think?"
Reid was staring at the man through the glass. "Something doesn't feel right…"
"What do you mean?" Elle asked.
"I don't know… He looks like the waiter… But I don't get the same feeling from him. The guy I met was more… intense… menacing… I don't know, it's just a gut feeling. Can't you call Garcia, ask her what she's found out?" he said, turning to Morgan.
"She'll call when she's finished the back ground check."
"Can't you just call her, please?"
Morgan shrugged. "Okay."
He scrolled through the contacts in his cell phone until he came to Garcia's and pressed yes.
"Candy Land switchboard. Are you in the mood for something sweet?"
"Always am."
"Morgan! You must be psychic or something. I was just about to call you. Do I have news for you!"
"Come on then, spill."
"Lucas Heller has an identical twin."
"Really?"
"Really… mom and dad split when they were three and moved to different parts of the country, taking a kid each. The mother took back her maiden name and so did the brother. His name is Lance Veld, and for the last eighteen months, there's no record of him. No credit card, no addresses, no nothing."
Morgan was frenetically writing down the information. Reid looked over his shoulder.
"Lance Veld? That's an anagram for Cleveland."
Elle immediately picked up on what he was saying. "Where the first murder took place." She went to the intercom. "Hotch, we need to talk."
A minute later they were all crowded into the viewing room. Reid and Hotchner were standing as far apart from each other as possible, neither ready to take the first step.
"Heller has an identical twin who has been invisible for the last eighteen months," Morgan said. "His name is Lance Veld, which is…"
"…an anagram for Cleveland." Gideon finished his sentence, thoughtfully.
"That's right. It's gotta be him." Morgan was adamant.
Hotchner looked back onto the interrogation room. "So we change tactics."
The further interrogation of Heller reveled nothing. He claimed he hadn't seen his brother since before he went to prison. That he was supposed to be in Atlantic City was news to him. Frustrated Hotchner let him go, but ordered surveillance on him, in case his brother made contact.
But even though their unsub now had an identity, they were back to their original method; checking the hotels' personnel and guest lists.
Reid and Hotchner spent the next two days, mostly pretending to ignore each other and waiting. Reid waited for the other shoe to drop, for the consequences that were sure to follow after having blown up at his boss like that. He had said some really bad things, but bad things had been said to him too. Things he didn't think he deserved. Some of the criticisms may have been well-justified, but he strongly felt that there were better ways to communicate them. He was so confused right now. How could this not result in him being fired? Maybe Hotchner was just waiting for the case to be over, and then… The not knowing was slowly killing him and he desperately tried to drown his thoughts in work.
Hotchner was waiting for Reid to apologize, and for himself to find the courage to apologize to him. He just couldn't bring himself to take the first step. He had his authority to think of, after all. And there was also the fact that he was right… well, partially right, anyway. He could admit to that. Whereas Reid had been all wrong. Hadn't he? But deep down, he knew he was just making excuses. And he was still angry with Reid, though he wasn't sure why anymore.
But they still worked together. Hotchner still insisted that Reid would be partnered up with him or be on his team, every time he left the FBI office. The team could do nothing, but stand to the side and watch as their relationship crumbled, and it put them all on edge.
Elle and Morgan watched as Reid and Hotchner exited the elevator in the FBI building after another day of fruitless searching. They immediately separated, walking in opposite directions, without so much as a glance at the other.
Elle sighed. "How long do you think this is going to go on?"
"Until one of them shoots the other," Morgan said dryly.
"Morgan!"
"Relax, it was just a joke."
"Well, it's not funny."
Little did they know that before long, Morgan's joke would become grim reality.
***
The day before New Years Eve, Gideon tagged along with Reid and Hotchner as they once again went door to door among hotels. It was now late afternoon, and after having spent the day in almost complete silence, with only curt questions and answers between them, he was thoroughly fed up.
When they went into their last hotel before dinner he said, "Reid, why don't you go ahead and start looking through the guest registers, we'll be right there." Gideon kept a hand on Hotchner's arm, keeping him from moving.
Reid looked suspiciously between them, until Hotchner gave him a curt nod of approval.
"Okay."
They watched him cross the lobby. Once he started talking to one of the receptionists, Hotchner turned to Gideon, shaking his arm out of his grip.
"What?"
"How long will this go on?" Gideon asked.
"What?"
Gideon looked angrily at him. "Don't try that with me, you know what I'm talking about. This thing with you and Reid. It's messing up the team and it's damaging to the case. You are his boss; you need to be the responsible one and fix this. Not to mention that I can see how much it's tearing you apart."
Hotchner sighed. "What am I supposed to do, Jason? I… I don't know how to talk to him, I can barely look at him without getting annoyed."
"That's your problem, not Reid's. He hasn't done anything wrong."
"What are you talking about? You saw him at the Heller raid. Why would he act like that? It's so unlike him. He was out of line and insubordinate. He was lucky I didn't suspend him!"
"Yes, he was out of line at the Heller raid, and I would have reprimanded him too. I don't know why he acted like that. Something has been troubling him for awhile now, but he won't talk about it. But that's not really what you are punishing him for, is it? Because the things you said? It was so much more. So much pent up anger and worry… We were all there those days in Fairmount when he was missing, Hotch, we know how hard it was, how terrible it felt, not knowing where he was, how he was."
Hotchner deflated, sinking down on a couch, elbows on his knees, hiding his face in his upturned hands. "He could have died."
"But he didn't."
"He could have been killed in the raid too."
Gideon sat down next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, letting his voice go soft.
"But he wasn't. He was just doing his job. He is after all an FBI agent. You cannot keep punishing him because you want to keep him safe. It's not fair and he doesn't deserve it. It's eating you alive too, you care too much about him to let this go on. But I don't have to tell you that, you already know it."
"Yes, I know, I know."
"So, go and talk to him, make life a little more bearable for all of us."
Hotchner sat up straight, drawing a deep breath.
"I guess it's long overdue."
"I'll wait here."
Hotchner crossed the lobby. Reid had his back to him, standing a little stooped over the reception desk, scanning through printouts of the guest list with his usual speed. Hotchner hesitantly walked up to him and stood with his hand hovering over his back for some time, not sure it he should touch him, and what he would say. Reid suddenly stood up straight and turned. Coming face to face with his boss he looked startled.
"Reid…" Hotchner began, but he was interrupted.
"Hotch, look. I found her!" Reid excitedly waved a piece of paper in front of his face.
Hotchner was taken aback. "What?"
"The next victim. Look, Tanya Sicks. That's an anagram for Kansas City. He has to be targeting her! We'll be able to save her." The very idea of being in the position to save a potential victim made Reid breathless.
All other thoughts flew right out of Hotchner's mind as he switched mode from guilty friend to dedicated FBI agent. He turned to the receptionist.
"Tanya Sicks. What's her room number? Is she here with anyone? How long has she been here? Have you seen her with this man?" He pulled a copy of the photo they had been given in Arlington from his pocket and showed it to the man.
He looked at it. "Sure, Miss Sicks is right over there, with him." He pointed over their shoulders and both agents turned to follow his directions. A woman who looked about 25 with curly, brown hair and becoming glasses was walking towards the lounge, hand in hand with a man, all too familiar, carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder.
"It's him," Reid whispered.
Hotchner turned to where Gideon was sitting, and gestured, pointing. Gideon immediately understood the situation and had his cell phone pressed to his ear in a second, waiving them on.
"Come on," Hotchner said, tersely, as he pulled his weapon, holding it at his side.
Reid did the same and they started a half-jog across the floor. They didn't dare call out, as the lobby was full of people. The couple walked into the hotel lounge before they could catch up with them and they carefully approached the swinging double doors. Hotchner pushed it open and took a couple of steps in, all senses at the ready, with Reid right behind him. Hotchner immediately knew something was wrong. Many heads were turned in his direction and over the music he could hear an eerie silence. So it came as no big surprise when someone spoke behind him.
"Welcome, Agent Hotchner, Dr. Reid."
Reid and Hotchner both turned, guns in a two-handed hold in front of them. With his back to the doors stood Lance Veld, with a terrified Tanya Sicks in front of him, a gun firmly pressed against her temple. He had a hand over her mouth, which he now took away, letting her sobs be heard. She wore a small cross on a chain around her neck. It trembled with every sob. Veld reached behind him and found the locking mechanisms for the doors, trapping them all inside. He then put his arm back around Tanya's waist.
Hotchner swore under his breath. He'd been sure they hadn't been seen.
"Let her go, Veld," he said.
"Ah, you know my name. I'm touched."
"Let her go."
"And why would I do that?"
Hotchner did not like this. He had not anticipated a gun. A knife, yes, but the gun went against the unsub's established pattern.
Veld smirked at him, wiggling the gun a little. "I know what you are thinking, it goes against my profile, right? Truth is, I've always had it with me, a little extra insurance. I just never had to use it before."
Hotchner was very aware of the people in the room behind him. Were they blocking the only way out? He didn't dare turn around and look. The door rattled as someone tried to open it. Gideon, Hotchner thought. But besides the regular lock, the doors had latches at the bottom, which connected directly to the floor. The doors could not be opened from the outside until those latches were released, and Hotchner had just seen Veld stomp them securely down.
"What are you hoping to accomplish here, Veld?"
"Accomplish, hmm… that's a mighty big word, Agent Hotchner. It seems you are more than just a governmental gun-for-hire after all. How interesting. As to what I want? Why, my freedom of course. This seems like such a dreary place to stay for any extended period of time. What do you say? Shall we let bygones be bygones and just walk our separate ways?" His jovial tone was grating on Hotchner's nerves, but he refused to let the baiting get to him.
"You know I can't let that happen. Why don't you just put the gun down and we'll walk calmly out of here."
"To what? Several years of trials in different states and a couple of lifetime sentences, if I'm lucky? No, I think we can do better than that."
"Even if you were to leave this room, where would you go? Outside these doors are a dozen more FBI agents, and outside this hotel, all of Atlantic City PD will be waiting for you. Just put the gun down."
"That is a though one, I'll admit. But I'm sure it will all come together nicely. Good things come to those who wait, Agent. Now, if you and Dr. Reid would be so kind as to put down your weapons."
"We can't do that."
Veld turned to Reid.
"It is nice to see you again, Dr. Reid, but you are being awfully quiet. Do you really trust Agent Hotchner to make the right decision here? I heard you had a rather nasty falling out."
Reid stood firm, not acknowledging the obvious taunt. Instead he repeated Hotchner's earlier request.
"Put the gun down, please."
The doors rattled again, but to no avail.
The jovial expression suddenly vanished from Veld's face, and before any of them could react he had turned the gun outwards and fired. The patrons in the lounge screamed and dove for the floor, but Veld's target had been the stereo behind the bar. It sparkled and cracked for awhile, but it efficiently killed the music.
Veld turned the gun back on Tanya, who whimpered as the hot barrel made contact with her skin.
"Tell me, Agent Hotchner, how many people in here do you think I can kill before you work up the courage to take me out here behind my little cover?" he said, his face half-hidden behind Tanya's bushy hair.
Hotchner stood firm a few moments more, before recognizing his defeat. As reluctant as he was, this was already a hostage situation, and it would have to be worked out from the outside. He relaxed his stance and lowered his gun, signaling Reid to follow his example. Reid did not look happy about it, but he complied.
The smile was back on Veld's face.
"Good, now we're getting somewhere. If you would be so kind as to back up a little and put the guns on the bar?"
They did as he asked, and Veld shadowed every step they took so the space and angle between them wouldn't change.
"Take off your jackets please, and turn around."
They did, putting their jackets on barstools, and then spun around slowly, with their hands away from their bodies to show nothing but their empty holsters.
"Lift up your pant's legs."
Hotchner swore mentally but complied, revealing and consequently removing his back-up piece.
Once both agents were weaponless and had backed away from the bar, Veld released Tanya, instead pointing his gun at Hotchner and Reid. He raised his voice, "I would like everybody to please sit down at a table behind the dance floor. Mr. Bartender, and Miss Waitress, could you also find a table, but turn on the lights first, please."
Hotchner looked behind him. The lounge was made for couples, with small tables, candles and red leather-upholstered chairs, ideal for looking deep into each other's eyes and sharing drinks. In the middle of the room an area had been cleared for slow dancing to the romantic music, which was now quiet. There were no windows as the room was in the middle of the hotel and only one door. The sudden transition from semi-darkness to harsh fluorescent light made most guests blink and squint as those in the front of the room got up to move behind the dance floor. Hotchner counted 23, including himself, Reid and Tanya.
Tanya stood between Veld and the agents, hugging herself, tracks of mascara on her cheeks, unsure of what to do, when Veld spoke to her.
"Tanya, my dear. Please fetch me my duffle bag."
It had been left by the doors when they had advanced through the room and Tanya scurried back to get it. It appeared to be rather heavy as they watched her heft it over her shoulder and hurry back. She put it down in front of Veld.
"Now, in the side pocket, there's a roll of duct tape, take that out, please."
When she held it in her hand, he asked her to go around the room and secure all hostages by taping their arms to the armrest of the chairs, but first she was to bind the agents' arms behind their backs. She looked apologetically at them as she circled around them. Both Hotchner and Reid crossed their arms behind their backs and let her tie them up.
As Tanya moved further into the room, Veld also circled them, testing their bindings.
"We don't want any surprises, do we?" he whispered in Reid's ear as he tugged on the tape. Apparently pleased with his findings he prodded him in the back with the gun to get him moving. He and Hotchner were moved to a table right next to the dance floor and sat down. He stood with them, waiting for Tanya to finish tying up the other hostages, before he secured her arms behind her back and pushed her down in a chair next to Hotchner.
At that moment Hotchner's cell phone rang, in the pocket of his jacket, by the bar.
Veld smiled. "Now, who might that be?"
He fetched the phone and looked at the display before pressing the on button.
"Agent Gideon, what a pleasure. How might I help you today?"
They could not hear Gideon's side of the conversation, but Veld did not seem to be intimidated or unsure at all. He behaved as if he was talking to an annoying telemarketer who called in the middle of dinner.
"No thank you, I'm fine where I am… uh-huh…no, no, that won't be necessary… Of course, but you don't have to take my word for it, do you? I believe you are watching me right now, aren't you?"
He turned around and waved to a security camera, before raising his gun and shooting it right into the lens, shattering it.
'He's obviously an expert marksman,' Hotchner reflected.
"How about a few words with your colleague?" Veld said into the phone, before pressing it against Hotchner's ear.
"Gideon."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
"Reid?"
"He's fine," he said, glancing over at Reid to let him know he had been asked for. "We all are."
Gideon sighed, partly in relief, partly in frustration.
"We're doing everything we can, just hang in there." Gideon, as well as Hotchner, knew that they were no longer to be considered FBI agents, they were now hostages first and foremost, and their only responsibility was to stay alive in order to be rescued.
Veld pulled the phone from Hotchner, once again deadly serious. "Agent Gideon? This will be our last transmission initiated from you. From now on, I will call if and when I want to talk. Do you understand me?"
"And why is that?"
"Because I like peace and quiet around me," he said sarcastically. "Make no mistake, Agent Gideon, the next time this phone rings, I will kill two hostages before answering."
He hung up, tossing the phone on the table in front of Hotchner, where it lay still, taunting him.
Hotchner felt disappointment burn in his gut. He had not anticipated this move. If Veld wouldn't negotiate, they were all doomed.
Outside the room Gideon clenched his teeth, looking grim. He had just been efficiently blinded and deafened. From now on, it would be anybody's guess what went on inside the lounge.
The rest of the team came closer, having heard the whole exchange on the speaker phone.
"That's never happened before," Elle observed. "What do we do now?"
"We let the SWAT team get ready, and then we'll find another way in," Gideon's answer was tense and clipped.
"I'll talk to the local office, get them to send a surveillance team," JJ said.
"Yeah," Morgan agreed. "It's the 21st century. There's technology we can use against him."
"Do it." Gideon's eyes were still glued to the small monitor, where there was now only static.
Veld pulled up a chair and sat opposite Reid, fixing him with his eyes. It didn't take long for Reid to become uncomfortable with the attention. He twisted a little, wanting to look away, but he didn't want to give Veld the upper hand.
"Spencer," he said. "Do you mind if I call you Spencer?"
"I prefer Dr. Reid, actually."
"Ah, but why so formal, my brother?" Reid raised an eyebrow at the epithet, but said nothing as Veld continued. "We have so much to talk about. I have so many questions for you. I'm actually quite glad this little opportunity has presented itself."
"Why?"
"I meant what I said when we met in Las Vegas. Do you remember? I do think you are brilliant. That is why it is so incomprehensible why you would choose to conform to a society that has nothing to offer people like us. You can outthink, outsmart, outtalk any person in here, except yours truly of course."
"Of course," Reid mumbled.
"But, in spite of your intelligence, you let them govern you, tell you what to do, shape your life. You should be with us, not them."
"Us? There's a league of homicidal psychopaths I don't know about?"
The backhand was vicious and unexpected. It toppled Reid's chair, sending him sprawling on the floor, his ears ringing.
Before he had a chance to recover Veld grabbed his arm and dragged him out on the dance floor. He was surprisingly strong. Reid struggled to get his feet under him, but didn't have time before Veld threw him back onto the floor.
"On your knees."
Without the use of his arms it took him longer than usually, but he managed to sit up on his heels.
"I said, on your knees."
Veld grabbed his hair and pulled up, making Reid rise up on his knees.
"And stay there."
He started pacing to and fro in front of Reid.
"You are a traitor to your peers," he spit out, contempt evident in his voice. "You could rise so high, be a leader, someone with respect. But instead you fraternize with the commons, the low-lifes and make your living by chasing down your brothers to force them into the same unnatural life you lead… Don't you see? Don't you understand? We could govern the world, make it out own! You just have to wake up and see your true potential."
"Maybe my megalomaniac gene just isn't as well-developed as yours."
This time the blow to his head was expected, but he had no way of parrying it, so it again sent him sprawling on the floor and again Veld pulled him up until he was on his knees. A trickle of blood was running from a cut on his lower lip. Veld stood right in front of him with the gun leveled between his eyes. He cocked his head and looked at Reid, a snide grin on his lips and a hint of curiosity in his eyes.
"You work for the FBI. Isn't this what you do every day? Isn't risking you life for others in the job description?"
"Well, it's getting close to quitting time. Would you mind coming back tomorrow?"
Veld smiled mirthlessly. "You've been held hostage before, haven't you?"
"Yes…"
"What was that like?"
"Like a trip to Disneyland, what do you think?" Reid said, his eyes narrowed with a sneer.
Veld smiled again, lowering the gun and fishing up a cigarette pack from his pocket, lighting one up.
"This… aura of insolence against you captor, does it ever work? Because…" He squatted down until they were face to face and blew smoke in Reid's face, making him snort and cough as it got into his nose and eyes. "… I don't believe it. It's not you. You are a small, insignificant agent, who'd rather hide under your bed than stand up to a confrontation. So tell me, little Spencer. Who are you trying to impress? Me… or him?" Veld's eyes went to Hotchner and Reid's gaze followed. For a moment Hotchner's and Reid's eyes met for the first time in days, before Veld took a hold of Reid's chin and turned his gaze back.
"Because either way, it's not working."
He stood up and went around Reid to stand behind his back and Reid tried to turn his head enough to keep him in his line of sight.
"Poor, insecure Spencer," Veld said. "So desperate for a little respect and appreciation, but what do you get? You get burned at every turn."
And with that he took a strong hold of Reid's hair, turned his head to the front and pushed it down. He then pushed the burning cigarette against the skin at the nape of his neck.
Reid screamed and tried to pull away, bucking his body, but Veld's grip on his hair kept him where he was. Veld kept the cigarette on his neck until it was completely put out. Then he slowly released Reid's hair.
Reid's trembling thighs could no longer hold him upright and he slumped down on his heels, torso leaned over as he panted harshly and tried not to throw up. He could hear other hostages crying around him.
"Sit up!" Veld barked, and Reid tried. He straightened up, but his knees screamed in pain from the prolonged pressure and didn't want to cooperate. This time Veld took a hold of the back of his shirt and pulled, and Reid had no choice but to sit up or be suffocated.
When he was once again balancing on achy knees and tired thighs, Veld placed the barrel of the gun on top of Reid's head, pointing straight down.
"You think you know me, don't you?"
Reid wanted to deny it, but Veld forestalled him.
"No, no, the truth now. You think you know me."
He slowly dragged the gun along Reid's skull.
"You have profiled me."
He jabbed the gun into the skull.
"You have studied my habits."
The gun moved again, slowly downwards.
"You have anticipated my actions."
The gun was jabbed into the back of the head.
"You have mapped my personality."
The gun moved to the base of the neck, resting on the bright-red cigarette burn, making Reid hiss between his teeth.
"So tell me, great Dr. Reid, who knows me so well…"
Veld took a step back, the gun lifting off Reid.
"…will I shoot you?"
Reid hesitated only a millisecond before answering.
"Yes."
And he did.
***
"No!"
Hotchner's panicked shout drowned in the other hostages' terrified screams and cries as the gun went off.
But Hotchner could not possibly care about anybody else right now. He had stood up, but then suddenly he couldn't move, he was frozen. His eyes were glued to Reid, who lay motionless on the floor. Blood was blossoming on the shirt on his back and pooling underneath him. His sightless eyes stared out into nothingness.
Hotchner was heartbroken, his stomach felt like it was full of knots. How would he tell his team? What would he tell Reid's mother? Could he ever forgive himself?
When Veld had first focused on Reid, Hotchner thought it was a good thing. Veld felt that Reid was his peer, his equal, and more beyond that. It was obvious that he felt threatened by Reid like no other in the room. Why else would he have forced him into the submissive position of kneeling? The rest of the hostages, himself included, were no more than annoying bugs on a hot summer night. Reid was really the only one who had a chance to influence Veld and to change the outcome of this drama. The only one he might listen to. Veld barely acknowledged the other hostages, only looking briefly at them from time to time to make sure they hadn't gotten loose.
So Hotchner had sat back and let Reid run the show, just like Reid had sat back to let Hotchner handle the situation when they had been held hostage by Dowd in Des Plaines. Hotchner had thought that Veld would spend his energy trying to turn Reid around to his point of view, but he had unexpectedly exploded into violence. Hotchner knew that his arrogance would not stand to be contradicted, and he knew Reid knew that too. But Reid was too honest, and not a good enough liar to play along. He knew Veld would not buy it and it made Reid vulnerable. The taunting showed how much Veld enjoyed having a power position over Reid. Reid was also influenced by his personal vendetta with this man, making him talk back, challenging him unduly. The smacks to the head, as much as Hotchner didn't like them, he could live with them, but the cigarette torture was torture for him too. Oh, how much he had wanted to stop it, but his protests were drowned out in Reid's and the other hostages' screams, not to mention that Veld ignored him. When it was over he was tense, but relieved. He still believed that Veld thought that Reid was too important to harm him too much.
But now it was clear that he had made a fatal misjudgment of the situation and he felt a great sorrow blossoming in his body.
Then Reid blinked.
Hotchner drew a ragged breath. Had he imagined it?
Reid blinked again, and groaned, shifting a little, coming alive again.
Hotchner felt a giddy laugh rise in his throat. He was alive! It hadn't been a neck shot. Veld hadn't killed him. Right here, right now, that was all that mattered.
Then Veld was with him. He picked Reid up by his arm and dragged him up until he was once again standing on his knees, swaying, but more lucid, shaking his head to clear it. Hotchner could see that the shot had been through the left shoulder. That shoulder wasn't having a very good year, he thought irrationally. Hotchner tried to catch Reid's eyes, but he didn't look his way. Instead he looked down at the floor, or up at Veld.
Veld stood, head cocked to the side, and studied Reid, who couldn't stay on his knees. He sank down on his heels, and this time Veld let him stay that way.
Hotchner yearned to go to his agent, but he didn't dare move. The acrid smell of gunpowder still hovered in the air.
"Agent Hotchner," Veld called, and beckoned him forward with a finger.
Hotchner broke out of his temporary paralysis and hurried over to them, almost slipping in the blood on the floor. Veld motioned for him to turn around, and the next thing he felt was the tape around his hands being cut apart with the knife that had killed so many women. He wondered what Veld was planning as he turned back again. Veld once again had the gun in his hand, turned on him.
"Spencer here needs a little bandage of sorts and you get to patch him up… I'm having far too much fun for him to die already."
Hotchner looked down at Reid and gave him a shaky smile when he found him staring at him with tired eyes, before he hurried to the bar and found a pack of clean bar towels on a shelf behind the bar, but no first aid kit. He stuck his head up behind the bar again and saw that Veld was leaning down, saying something to Reid.
His and Reid's guns still lay on the bar disk...
Taking a leaf from the new Reid, he decided to gamble. Keeping a watchful eye on Veld, who looked up at him once, but then back down as Reid started talking, almost as if he knew Hotchner needed a distraction. Carefully Hotchner reached out and quickly picked up a gun, hiding it behind the bar.
Veld suddenly looked at him suspiciously, putting a hand on Reid's injured shoulder, clamping down. Reid cried out, shying away from the grip.
"Are you coming back or not?" Veld called.
Behind the shelter of the bar Hotchner slipped the reassuring weight back into his ankle holster, hoping he would be able to get to it later. He then picked the towels up and hurried back. He squatted next to Reid.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." Reid's voice was thick with pain.
"Don't worry, we'll fix this," he said, diverting his eyes downwards, to his feet. Reid's gaze followed his eyes and Hotchner hoped he'd understood, like he had before.
Hotchner sat down on his heels for better balance and tore the towels into long strips, and then folded them into thick squares. Veld took a firm grip on Reid's shoulders as Hotchner pressed two make-shift compresses to his wounds, one in the front and one in the back. He didn't think it looked too bad. It was a straight through-and-through, but it was bleeding heavily.
Reid grimaced, hissing through clenched teeth, sweat running down his forehead. He was holding his breath to keep from crying out.
"I'm sorry," Hotchner whispered, unsure if he was apologizing for hurting him now, or for what had happened before.
"It's okay," Reid reassured him.
Veld took over the compress on the back as Hotchner began winding duct tape tightly around them to secure them in place. His necessary actions elicited more groans from Reid. When he was finished he patted Reid's knee, hoping to give him some small comfort. This was neither the time nor place for long conversations. He really wanted to stay here with Reid, healing and supporting him, but he knew it wouldn't be allowed. So he stood up and faced Veld.
Veld studied his handiwork. "Very good." He let him dry his hands on another towel before motioning him to turn around so he could tie him up again.
When he was done, Hotchner turned to Veld. "Listen-"
But Veld interrupted him. "Listen…" he said with a taunting voice. "Do you hear that, Spencer? Do you hear how full of his own perceived authority he is? How he expects everyone to automatically do as he says, just because he says it?" Turning back to Hotchner he asked condescendingly, "So, what is so important, Agent Hotchner?"
Hotchner refused to be sucked into his game. "You need to start communicating with the agents on the outside if you want to get out of here. You can't stay here forever."
Veld cocked his head and appeared to be studying him, but Hotchner didn't budge or look away.
"Once again," Veld said, "You're expecting everything and everyone to think and behave by your norms, as you would. It's somewhat entertaining to see the single-mindness you and the likes of you demonstrate at every turn… and you are supposed to be a behavioral analyst. No wonder you depend so heavily on Spencer and agent Gideon. Tell me, agent Hotchner, have you ever stopped to wonder why I never show up on any security tapes from any of the crime scenes?"
Hotchner didn't answer, instead he let Veld keep up his oration, which he seemed to enjoy.
"It's because I do research. A foreign concept for you perhaps? Now, don't give me that look, I know you are an educated man, but true research is an art form only few can master. Isn't that true, Reid?"
But Reid did not want to participate in the man's games if it meant insulting his coworkers and friends.
"Once I have found my next girl, I look at the blueprints of the hotel she lives in. And not just the current blueprints, but the ones from when it was built and every remodeling in between, with electric, water and ventilation schematics, so that once I'm here, I know where to go and how not to be seen. It's amazing how many records are public. And I can tell you right now, that I know of at least two ways out of this room that aren't through the door. There are ventilation shafts above us large enough to fit a man and behind the paneling on the wall behind the bar I have access to an abandoned dumbwaiter shaft that will take me down to a cleaning supply storage room in the basement, from which there are only a few steps into the underground garage. Granted, this wasn't where I had intended on ending my evening, but I am a thorough man. I know every escape route there is from this hotel."
"So why are you still here?" Hotchner tried to stay calm, but this was really bad news that he hadn't anticipated.
"Let's call it… unfinished business." Veld put his hand on Reid's head.
"No," Hotchner shook his head vehemently in denial. "No, just leave now while you still can."
"No," Veld said. "According to my research," he pulled the last word out, making it sound very condescending. "These walls are soundproof, so I figure I still have a couple of hours before they manage to get the necessary surveillance equipment into the ventilation shaft. I intend to use the time I've got left."
Suddenly Reid spoke up. "It's okay, Hotch, we're just going to talk for awhile. I have some questions myself actually."
They both looked down at him as he turned his brown eyes up on them.
"Reid…" Hotchner started, but Veld interrupted him.
"You heard the man. We're just going to talk for awhile." He had a snide grin on his face. "So why don't you be a good little FBI agent and sit down again and stop disturbing us."
Gideon stared at his cell phone, willing it to ring. Veld hadn't called once, and that scared Gideon to death. He hadn't made any attempt to negotiate, had made no demands. He was much too comfortable in there, since he didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. What could he be doing in there?
Agent Fisher came into the security room just off the reception area where the team was gathered. She was accompanied by Captain Greene from the SWAT team and the manager of the casino/hotel. His name was Alex Brubeck and he had none of the authority or poise that Geoffrey Lohan had commanded. He was a short, balding man who looked as if he was almost drowning in his expensive suit and he was very nervous.
Introductions were made before Gideon turned to Greene and asked, "What can you do?"
Greene looked apologetic. "Not much, right now. The room has been soundproofed…"
"That's right," Brubeck chimed in. "We fixed it a couple of years ago. It's supposed to be a place to go to where you can't hear the casino. A romantic hideaway. Also, we give private concerts in there sometimes. It's very popular."
"Thank you," Greene said, "Anyway, there are no other ways in and the doors are barred. We need to cut through them to get in, but it'll be noisy."
Brubeck squeaked, "There must be a way to fix this without damaging my hotel."
They all ignored him.
"What about surveillance?" Morgan asked.
"The only way to get it into the room is via the ventilation shafts. They are big enough for a man to get through, but…"
"It'll be noisy," Morgan finished.
"Right, our only option is to send in a robot equipped with a fiber optic camera and a microphone."
"But…" Elle probed.
"But we don't have one. It has to be flown in from Washington. I've already made the call, but it's going to be a few hours, at least."
"So we're in for a long wait," Gideon summarized.
"I hate this," Morgan muttered.
Reid was in trouble. His shoulder hurt and he felt dizzy. Having to stay upright was an incredible challenge and he felt pressured to stay focused. Veld kept talking to him and there were a lot of things that he wanted to know too. But Veld had been talking about his utopian world order for ever by now, and it was hard for Reid to keep up with him. The man obviously loved the sound of his own voice and apparently his megalomania crack hadn't been too far-fetched.
Wishing he could push his sweaty bangs away from his face he looked up at Veld, interrupting his rant. "How did you come up with the anagrams? What's the significance of those?"
"Significance? You shouldn't read too much into things, Spencer. Always keep things simple, that's the way to do it. But it's really a nice little story behind it. You see, I always knew my name was an anagram for the city I lived in. It's why I let my mother change my surname when my parents got divorced. I thought it was funny. Then one day after work I was out at a bar and met a girl whose name was an anagram for Indianapolis. Great conversation starter, huh? And during the night I started to think, if you could find Indianapolis in Cleveland, then who could you find in Indianapolis? Indianapolis was only in town for a job meeting, so I followed her to her room, and killed her. It was very spontaneous of course, but very invigorating. I've been able to perfect my technique since, but the first is always the first... I was bored at work anyway, so I quit and went to Indianapolis, and it only took a week or so before I met Syracuse. It was so exciting, and I decided to see how far I could take it."
The way he kept referring to the women by their anagrams rather that their names made Reid uneasy. It was so degrading, and they didn't deserve it. "But why did you kill them?" he asked.
"What else was I supposed to do with them? Take photos and make a scrap book? Besides,what's a life or two in the grand scheme? Haven't you heard? The world is vastly overpopulated."
"So you killed them for environmental reasons?"
"Of course not, what do I care about the environment? I killed them because I could. It's really too bad that my little game has to end. Who knows who I might have found in Kansas City, and beyond that... I was thinking about branching out, going to other countries. But it's not like I'm getting reimbursed for my travel expenses, am I?" He smiled a crooked smile, one that Reid found it impossible to return. Had the man no conscience?
"Don't look so disapproving. That's just hypocritical of you. After all, you've killed too."
Reid hated that this man knew so much about him. "That was different," he said.
"Different? Oh, I've heard this before. Because it was a righteous shooting, it's okay. Killing is allowed in self-defense and defense of others... You know what I hear, Spencer? All I hear is that government sanctions make it okay to do things that are forbidden to others, as a way of establishing power-patterns and belittling those not in the inner circle. And you have been so indoctrinated into their mindset that you buy into it. You think that you are better than I am. But you know what? That does not change anything. A man is dead, because of a decision you made. You, Spencer, killed a man and he is dead and nothing will change that. It is no different from what I do."
Reid looked up at him, eyes ablaze with fury.
"No, Lance," he stressed the name to make is sound as accusing as Veld had just done. "The difference is that I did not want to kill him. I found no pleasure in it. I got no kicks out of it. The difference is that I went to that man's funeral and looked his mother and his sister in the eyes and stood up for my actions."
Hotchner was taken aback. He hadn't known that Reid had gone to Dowd's funeral. He had thought that Reid had been okay with the shooting. Had he been wrong?
But Veld wasn't moved at all. "You keep telling yourself that, Spencer, whatever makes you feel good. But some day, you'll come out of your protected environment and see things my way. You just need a better influence, that's all."
Reid did not want to go down that way, so he changed the subject.
"Why did you leave the footprints?"
"Artistic reasons. I thought they'd leave certain flare of noir. Also they'd keep you guessing."
"And you wrote their names on the walls, cleaned the drain… leaving signatures all over."
"I take pride in my work. I wanted people to notice. I have never been one to skulk around in corners."
"You wanted to be caught?"
"Well, hip hip hooray for the deduction skills of the FBI, but you are wrong. I merely wanted to be challenged. But it took forever for anyone to notice and even longer for anyone to figure it out. I assume you were the one. I was hoping there would be someone out there to match me, but you surpassed my wildest dreams. I thought you were a little slow when we first met in Las Vegas, that's why I left the cipher, to see if you really were the person I had read about. You see, I read up on you, as soon as I heard the BAU had my case. You were on sick leave then, which was a major disappointment. But you more than made up for it, you were very fast once you got started."
"What about 1956? What's the significance of that?"
"Oh, you picked up on that as well. Bravo! Well, 1 plus 9 plus 5 plus 6 equals 21. You grew up in Las Vegas. You must know that 21 is always the winner."
"And you think you'll win this game?"
The question was left hanging in the air.
Hotchner was in hell. There was no other way to describe it, having to sit here, waiting while Reid was bleeding at the mercy of the man who had hurt him, and not being able to do anything about it.
He thought that Reid was amazing. He could see how hard he was struggling to stay upright, to stay coherent, to stay conscious. He hated seeing him like this.
'Keep him taking, Reid,' he thought. 'Keep him talking and in a good mood, and maybe, just maybe, this won't end too badly.'
But he couldn't quite see how that was going to happen. His make-shift bandages were doing their job, but not well enough. Hotchner could see fresh blood on Reid's shirt. The cigarette burn glared angrily at him and his face was bruised. Reid was swaying a little and his chin kept dropping down to his chest, but it came back up every time and he kept talking, asking questions.
Hotchner was amazed with the young man's strength. But he hated that he had to be so strong. Sure, being an FBI agent was always connected with certain risks, but this was too much. It wasn't long ago that Hotchner had had to go to a hospital when he wanted to see Reid, and he didn't relish having to repeat the experience. And he most defiantly didn't want to visit his grave.
So far they had only talked, just like they had said, but for how long? Hotchner did not want to see Reid get hurt anymore, but how could he stop it? He was taking advantage of the fact that Veld didn't appear interested in his other hostages, so his hands were busy behind his back, trying to free himself. It was just tape, god dammit. If he could just get a tear somewhere… It was frustrating work, but looking at Reid made it feel easy.
Reid's head was swimming and it was difficult to concentrate. His body was pounding with the desire to lie down. He tried to listen to Veld's ranting, he really tried. He knew it was important. But odd thoughts kept popping up in his mind, good, bad and mundane all mixed together, and he couldn't stop them. He'd forgotten to water his plants before he left for Atlantic City… the book he'd read the night all his classmates were at their senior prom… the thick braid of auburn hair he always sat behind at his psychology class his junior year in college, what was her name again?… his freezer ought to be defrosted… the trick candle on his 24th birthday cake… the view from his mother's hospital window… the Flintstone socks one of his college roommates had worn for luck during midterms… He could feel himself starting to drift away.
"Are you even paying attention? How dare you be so insolent?"
Reid roused just in time to feel a hand close viciously around his throat. Veld had one large hand wrapped around Reid's throat and was squeezing. Reid's eyes widened as tried to draw breath, but Veld's hand tightened even further, putting pressure on his larynx. Reid started to struggle, but had no traction and nowhere to go and Veld was relentless.
Hotchner watched with his heart in his throat. His father's heart that had been awaken by a precious little soul just a few months ago, now screamed at him not to let one of his other kids get hurt. He couldn't sit still anymore.
"Stop it!" he shouted. "Stop it, he can't breathe!"
He stood up and took two steps in their direction.
Veld turned to him, gun pointing straight at his chest, the other hand still squeezing Reid's throat and Hotchner froze mid-stride.
"Sit down, agent Hotchner."
"Let him go, please." He didn't care that he was begging.
"As soon as you sit down."
Hotchner looked at Reid's face. His lips had taken on a tinge of blue and his eyes were panic-stricken. He stepped back again and sat down.
Veld released Reid who fell coughing and wheezing to the floor and then he descended on Hotchner. A powerful right-hook snapped his head around on his neck and pain immediately blossomed in his jaw. Veld grabbed his shirt and pushed him back until his chair was teetering on its back legs, threatening to topple over and pushed his face right into Hotchner's.
"Who do you think you are, to tell me what to do? I am your better and should be treated with respect!" He was so upset that he was spitting as he talked.
Hotchner had an uncomfortable flashback to his argument with Reid. Had he sounded like that?
"Do not interfere."
He then shook him again and released him. The chair toppled backwards. Hotchner's head bounced painfully against the floor and he gritted his teeth against the pain and the strain in his shoulders as his bound hands were caught underneath him.
When he looked up again Veld had left him. He was talking to Reid, dragging him up from the floor, wanting him to kneel. But Reid didn't have it in him anymore, though he put up a valiant effort.
Seeing something in his peripheral vision, Hotchner turned his head and saw a red purse, left on the floor by a hostage. It was lying on its side, and Hotchner suddenly had a flash of what Haley would keep in her purse. Nail file, keys, eyelash curler, and other sharp objects. He needed to get into that purse to find something to help cut the tape.
He looked back at Veld. He had gotten Reid up in a sitting position and was just pushing the gun into the waistband on his pants. Instead he pulled out his knife. "Guns are rather impersonal, don't you think? I've never really cared for them. A knife on the other hand, it becomes an extension of your arm, and extension of your mind. You can feel it as it tears through the flesh, unlike a bullet where you can only see it. There's a certain beauty in it…"
Hotchner closed his ear, hoping that Veld would stay theoretic and not want to demonstrate. The purse was only a couple of inches away and he sat up and started to wiggle towards it. Turning so that his back was towards the purse he bent back and searched for it with his hands, the whole time keeping an eye on Veld. When he felt the purse with his fingers he tried to get it into a position where he could reach the locking mechanism with his fingers. It appeared to just be a snap button on the side but it was difficult to get to it without dropping the purse. He began to sweat as he strained his arms ever further. The sound when it snapped open was so loud he thought it must have been heard in Timbuktu. Looking around he saw that many of the hostages were watching him. He glared angrily at them until they turned away. The last thing he needed was for Veld to look up and realize that he was the focus of attention. He'd might as well shout out, "I'm trying to escape, please catch me."
He slipped his hands into the purse, praying that he would find something in there to help him. After having gone through a lot of knick knacks he did indeed find a nail clipper. Bringing it up and extending the nail file on it, he began the slow work of sawing through the tape with his hands in an impossible angle.
When the robot arrived it came with a surprise.
"Have no fear, your fairy godmother is here!"
"Garcia?" Morgan was astounded. "What are you doing here?"
"They needed a technician to go with the robot and I volunteered. I have been known to work in the field every now and then, you know. Besides, I've worked on this baby, written new software for example. Making it bigger and better. Or rather smaller and better."
She put a special-made case on the table and lovingly opened it. From it she picked up the robot, about the size of a cereal box with caterpillar treads. She powered up her laptop and then pushed a couple of switches on the robot. A light was switched on in the front and on Garcia's laptop they could see an image of Garcia's midriff before she put the robot down on the table. Pushing different keys on her keyboard she made the robot move in different directions. Satisfied that everything was working, she tied the end of a string from a kite-handle at the back and handed it over to Greene.
"Have you figured out where it's going in?"
"Sure. The schematics are over there." He nodded to another table, and Morgan hurried to fetch them for her as Greene left the room.
"Keep hold of the string!" she called after him. "We have to be able to pull it back if it malfunctions."
"Malfunctions?" Gideon said skeptically.
"It almost never happens," Garcia said cheerfully.
Reid was tired. He hadn't slept much the night before and he'd been up for close to twenty hours now, not to mention that he'd been shot. He couldn't figure out why Veld was still here. He must know that time was running out, if he wanted to make an undetected escape.
Reid hoped that Hotchner would make his move soon. He hadn't quite understood his hint, but he knew him well enough to know that he was planning something.
"Hey, wake up!" Veld grabbed his jaw, digging his fingers in painfully, shaking his head until Reid was once again looking into his eyes with what he hoped was a steady gaze.
He wanted to scream at Veld to go away and leave him alone. To get his twisted little game over with. But instead he said, "What?"
"You sound irritated," Veld noted.
'No shit, Sherlock,' Reid thought, but his only answer was a glare, showing just how fed up he really was.
But Veld just laughed at him, and started regaling him with stories about the, in his opinion, stupid people he'd met during the last year. How they had all swallowed his rouse without blinking. The gullibility of the human race was apparently a pet subject of his.
Reid wondered what Veld really wanted from him. A slap on the back and a "Good job, partner"? Well, he was going to have to wait a long time for that.
Hotchner, however, could see very well how fed up Reid was and he was worried that Reid would soon do something incredibly stupid, just to get a reaction.
But at least he was making progress. The nail file had dug through most layers of tape and every few minutes he kept pulling his hands apart, hoping that he could tear the rest apart with brute strength. When the moment finally came he froze for a moment, making sure Veld hadn't heard or suspected anything.
Because of his extensive work with the nail clipper, circulation in his hands were not a problem. His shoulders, however, felt as if they had been ripped from their sockets. The other hostages still stole furtive glances at him, but they were not a threat. Veld was.
Hotchner waited until Veld had his back turned to him before he grabbed the gun from his ankle holster and quickly stood up.
He would never know if Veld had sensed the motion behind his back, if he'd seen him out of the corner of his eye or if had simply been expecting him to do something. But before Hotchner could even say something, Veld had pulled Reid up with an arm that he had treaded under Reid's bound ones, and then hooked around his torso He then pushed the knife firmly against Reid's throat, balancing on his jugular vein.
"Agent Hotchner," he said. "Have we not already done this once today? I don't know where you got the gun, but you would do best to put it down."
But Hotchner stood firm. This time, he vowed, he would not relent. This time he would come out the victor and Reid would be fine and there would be a happy ending for all those involved. Except maybe for Veld.
"Let him go, Veld," he growled.
"Or what?" Veld taunted him? "You'll shoot me? That will only result in Spencer's death as well. Is that what you want? Put down you gun and stop playing a hero."
Reid felt the cold steel bite into the skin next to his Adam's apple and it forced his chin up and his head back as he instinctually tried to get as far away from the knife as possible. But Veld was relentless, and the knife followed his movements, keeping the threat very real.
Besides the cold fear in his gut, Reid also felt very exposed and humiliated. He was standing helpless with a madman behind his back, staring at his boss, who was facing him with a loaded gun. Hotchner was trying to reason with Veld.
"This hotel is surrounded by FBI agents, where will you go?"
"Wherever I go today, I will take Spencer with me. You just have to ask yourself, is it worth it? Which do you want most? Me in prison, or him alive? You can't have both."
He illustrated his point by driving the knife through Reid's skin. Reid gasped as he felt the stinging pain, and the blood that started running down his neck.
"No," Hotchner said, inching closer. "There are other choices. We will find a solution that is satisfying for all of us. Let him go and I'll look the other way while you go down the dumbwaiter shaft you were talking about."
"I don't believe you. The moment I let him go, you'll kill me." Suddenly there was a hint of panic in his voice. Hotchner looked menacing and perhaps he had underestimated him.
"No one will die here today." Hotchner kept speaking to Veld, but for his last statement his eyes locked with Reid's.
"Please, trust me."
And Reid did.
Hotchner fired his gun.
***
The whole team, except for JJ, who was at the other end of the hotel, looking at evacuation plans with the hotel's security guards, stood crowded around Garcia as she announced that the robot had reached its goal.
"How're we supposed to see anything?" Elle asked. "Does the camera turn?"
"No," Garcia said, typing in a command. "There's a second camera underneath it on a small winch that can be lowered down."
They watched as the image on the laptop suddenly split in two. One half kept showing the ventilation shaft, while the other showed a grid with light shining through the slits and then Garcia let the latter image show on the whole screen. She moved the robot back a half-inch until she found an opportune placement for it. Then the camera dipped down, making the audience feel as if they were watching a tape of a rollercoaster ride, but it soon stabilized. At first they only saw a wall, but Garcia maneuvered it to turn, sweeping the room.
The image that filled the screen stayed burned into their retinas forever.
"Oh god," Elle gasped. The black-and-white image didn't hide the blood on Reid's shirt, the blood on his neck or the light reflecting off the knife at his throat.
"Gideon, we have to get in there now." Morgan's voice was full of rage.
"Garcia, sound please," Gideon said calmly, not showing any of the nervousness he felt.
With a shaky finger Garcia pushed a key and a surprisingly clear sound came from the speakers. Over the noise from the ventilation and the disturbed murmur from the hostages they heard Hotchner's clear voice.
"Please, trust me."
Then the shot rang out.
They were too late.
Aaron Hotchner was a good shot, and he knew it. He had a perfect stance. He rarely, if ever, missed his intended target. He knew how a gun felt in his hand and how it felt when it was fired. He knew how strong the recoil would be and how to counter it. He knew what kind of sound it made and what a bullet hole looked like when the bullet tore through the flesh. He knew how freshly fired gunpowder smelled. He knew what color the blood turned when it slowly dried on your clothes. He knew the screaming of the one who was shot, and the screaming of those who loved the one who was shot. He knew how to wound and how to kill. He knew what it felt like to go home at night knowing he had killed someone that day. But he had no idea how much it would hurt to have to shoot a friend.
When he had assessed the situation he had weighed all his options. He knew he could not let this go on any longer, he couldn't give Veld back power over the situation. He'd lost sight of his escape and instead focused on Reid, which made him dangerous. An unsub who didn't care about escape wasn't concerned about getting out of the situation. He might not even care if he came out of it dead or alive. And those did not care about the lives of the hostages either.
He could just shoot Veld in the head, but that would mean that he would fall backwards, dragging Reid with him, still trapped between Veld and the knife. The result could be disastrous. He needed to get the knife away from him, but he couldn't shoot it out of his hand without hitting Reid's neck. So he took careful aim at Veld's wrist.
The bullet shattered Veld's right ulna, making him drop the knife immediately. But on the other side of Veld's wrist was Reid's right shoulder and the bullet continued right through it and didn't stop until it was lodged into Veld's shoulder.
The mewing sound that escaped Reid's lips would haunt Hotchner's dreams for a long time to come. What he didn't know at the time was that the bullet had broken Reid's collarbone.
Veld did fall to the floor, and he did take Reid with him, but without the knife it wasn't dangerous. Hotchner hurried forward anyway. He knew that Veld had the gun stuck into the back of his waistband.
He grabbed the front of Reid's shirt and hauled him up, lifting him off Veld, just enough so that he could roll the man over and grab the gun and throw it out of reach. His handcuffs were over at the bar with his jacket, so he had no way of securing him. He patted him down briskly, but found no other weapons.
"Stay right there," he warned. "Don't move."
Veld did move, however, rolling back onto his back so he could grab his injured wrist in his other hand. His eyes were shooting daggers and he was cursing wildly.
Hotchner immediately moved back to stay out of Veld's range, should he try anything. He grabbed Reid by the scruff of the neck and dragged him back with him.
"Do not move," he repeated and Veld obeyed, staying seated, clutching his hand to his body, rocking slightly to counteract the searing pain in his wrist and shoulder.
Reid ended up sitting on the floor, leaning heavily against Hotchner's legs, panting harshly. His head hung limply and he seemed only semi-aware. Hotchner didn't dare move his eyes or his concentration off Veld, but he needed help.
The hostages sat in a shocked silence, and since they were all tied to their chairs they could not help him, except…
"Miss Sicks," he called.
"Yes?" Her voice trembled a little as she stood up, her eyes darting between the gun in his hand and the bloodied Veld on the floor, who had now gone quiet, satisfied with staring Hotchner in the eyes, daring him to break the connection first.
"Miss Sicks, would you be so kind as to open the door and let the other agents in?"
She stood still for a moment before realizing that it wasn't really a question.
Hotchner could hear her behind his back as she hurried across the room, could hear the rattle as she released the latches in the floor, the trouble she was having with trying to turn the lock with her hands still bound behind her back and finally her voice as she timidly told someone,
"Agent Hotchner says it's okay to come in now."
He heard the trample of feet and could sense the rest of his team as they came up on both sides of him.
"Have you got him?" he asked tersely.
"Hotch, you okay?" Morgan asked.
"Have you got him?"
"Yes, we've got him."
The second he got confirmation he holstered his gun and sunk to his knees, taking hold of Reid, giving his tired body extra support. When Reid felt the safe arms around him his body relaxed and slumped even harder against Hotchner, his forehead resting against Hotchner's neck. Hotchner could feel hot blood soak through his shirt. He was heartsick when he saw all the blood. There was so much of it… For a moment, but only a moment, he allowed tears to form in his tired eyes, before he resolutely blinked them away.
"Hey, how're you doing?" Hotchner asked softly into Reid's hair.
There was no reply, no reaction.
"Reid?"
Crooking his arm around Reid's neck he tilted his face up. His eyes were closed, his mouth partly open. Hotchner pressed two fingers to the pulse point on his throat and held them there. When he finally realized he wasn't going to feel anything, no matter how long he waited, he became frantic.
"Gideon! Gideon, help me! He doesn't have a pulse!"
He desperately tore at the tape around Reid's wrists, needing to be able to lay him down flat. One single thought was running through his head. 'Please, please, please, please, please, please, please…' The tape was slick with blood, making it difficult to get a grip, but it finally tore apart under his desperate fingers, and he gently lay Reid down on the floor, holding a hand under his neck to support his head. He ripped his shirt open in one move, buttons flying all over the room.
Someone was calling for an ambulance, he wasn't sure who. Maybe it was him?
Gideon fell to his knees on the other side of Reid, tilting his head up, holding his own breath as he listened for Reid's, but he couldn't hear anything. Hotchner's trembling fingers were tracing Reid's ribcage, finding the xiphoid process of the sternum and measured two fingers up. Putting one hand on top of the other, duct tape still clinging to his wrists, he began compression. In the mean time, Gideon had pinched Reid's nose, opened his mouth by holding his jaw and was giving him mouth-to-mouth. Together they got into a pattern with five compressions, then a breath, five compressions, then a breath…
Elle had been helping free the hostages, but left one of them with only one arm free and rushed over when she heard Hotchner's desperate plea. She was left standing over them, with her arms wrapped around her own body, not being able to tear her eyes from Reid's lifeless face.
Morgan, who was almost sitting on the squirming Veld, trying desperately to secure him, started yelling for back-up. Fisher and Greene hurried over, grabbing hold of Veld to free Morgan to go to his team. Seeing that Reid was being taken care of, he did the only thing he could think of. He wrapped his arms around Elle, pulling her close, feeling her tears against his neck as she twisted her head to keep her eyes on Reid.
"Come on, Reid. Come on, buddy," he chanted under his breath. "You can do it."
Garcia sat riveted, staring at the black and white image on her laptop, unconsciously gnawing on a thumbnail. She wanted to go in there, be in the room, hold someone's hand. But she couldn't move. She was deadly afraid that something would happen on the way from here to there, that she'd miss something, that she'd be too late. She one-handedly fumbled with her cell phone and called JJ.
Several agonizing minutes passed.
When Gideon suddenly swayed and had to put his hands on the floor to support himself, Morgan pushed him out of the way to continue the mouth-to-mouth. Gideon had given Reid all his oxygen and kept none for himself, and now he sat panting next to him, a hand on his head, unwilling to relinquish the physical contact. His thumb moved in soothing circles over Reid's hair.
Elle fell to her knees next to Gideon, clutching his other arm. Gideon turned his head and kissed her temple, not knowing if he wanted to comfort her or himself. Together they kept a silent vigil, watching their teammates fight to save their friend.
In the middle of everything JJ came rushing in. She came to a sudden stop at the heart wrecking sight, and clasped both her hands over her mouth in horror, as if to stop the silent cry building in her chest. Elle looked up and saw her, extending an arm to bring her into their midst, where the team clung together, seeking solace in each other's presence.
During all this time Reid lay motionless on the floor, his features lax, not responding to their efforts, a blood pool forming under him. No one had bound his second gunshot wound yet.
Hotchner was blind to the world. He didn't notice his teammates or the other people moving around them. No sounds reached his ears, no other sights reached his eyes. All he was aware of was the harsh elasticity of Reid's ribs as they moved under his hands, the red blood that covered his chest and Gideon's fingers repeatedly seeking out Reid's pulse point, but never finding the positive response they were hoping for. 'Please, Reid,' he kept thinking, 'Please, please, wake up. I'm so so sorry. Please, Reid. Please.'
Had it been an eternity yet?
***
When the paramedics finally came it took the strength of both Gideon and Morgan to drag Hotchner away from Reid to give them room to work.
One of them expertly forced an intubation tube down Reid's throat with more force than Gideon thought was necessary, but Reid's throat was swollen from the near-strangulation and difficult to intubate. The paramedic was just glad he didn't have to do a tracheotomy. He connected the tube to an airbag which he rhythmically squeezed, feeding oxygen into Reid's uncooperative lungs.
The other paramedic placed two orange conductors on strategic places on Reid's chest and turned the defibrillator on, doing manual compressions as he waited for it to charge.
The team flinched in sympathy with every shock that disturbed Reid's still body, but at the same time they hoped and prayed that they would have an effect. The fifth shock finally did, and the paramedic triumphantly shouted out, "I've got a pulse!"
Hotchner's rigid body posture sagged in relief and JJ couldn't hide her sobbing breaths. They carefully moved Reid onto a stretcher. He was still unconscious, his eyes closed to the outer world.
Another team of paramedics were working on Veld and as much as they didn't want to care, Morgan and Elle took on the responsibility for him, Morgan riding in the ambulance and Elle driving herself and JJ to the hospital, fetching Garcia on their way to the car.
Hotchner desperately wanted to ride with Reid, but the paramedics turned him away, wanting more room to work. They desperately needed to stop or at least slow the bleeding down, and they wanted to spare him the sight, should they not be able to.
Agent Fisher threw her car keys to Gideon, who steered Hotchner to her car. Turning on the red and blue lights he skillfully shadowed the ambulance as it sped through the early New Years Eve morning.
Hotchner was looking down at his bloody hands and his bloody shirt. He could feel it dry against his skin, a crust already covered his cuticles.
"He's going to quit now, isn't he?" Hotchner didn't look at Gideon as he spoke, and Gideon kept his eyes on the road.
"I thought he would be a goner after Fairmount, but he came back. And now this? He's only been back at work for three weeks. How can he get over this? He shouldn't have to expose himself to danger like this. Maybe it's better if he quits." Hotchner wasn't sure anymore who he was talking to, or who he was trying to convince.
"He won't quit," Gideon said.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know Reid, and so do you. There was a time when this job wasn't for him, but that time is long gone. He has seen what is out there, he has seen what evil can do to his fellow human beings. And now he can't walk away. He can't forget or pretend that it doesn't exist, and it would drive him crazy to know that it was out there and he wasn't doing anything about it. He'll never quit."
They were silent for awhile, before Hotchner suddenly spoke again,
"I shot him."
"You did what you had to do."
"I killed him."
"He isn't dead, Hotch."
"He was… and who knows how he's doing now." He stared at the back of the ambulance, wishing he could see, or rather be, inside.
"I never got to apologize."
"There will be time."
"I never figured out why he was so troubled."
"Hotch, there will be time," Gideon said firmly.
One by one the team gathered in the private waiting room they had been shown. They clutched Styrofoam mugs from vending machines and stuffed themselves with chocolate bars. They read articles they weren't remotely interested in. They paced and sat still and paced and sat still. They talked to each other and were quiet. They hunted down nurses who all told them that someone would be out to talk to them soon, but no one ever came. They cried and bit their nails and prayed and hugged. They slept and paced some more. Morning turned to afternoon and afternoon became night. It was 11.25 p.m. before a doctor in bloody scrubs with tired eyes came to see them.
"Hello," he said. "I'm here to tell you about Spencer."
Waking up was never Reid's favorite part of the day, and today was no different. He hurt. His head was pounding, and he dreaded having to open his eyes. To put off the moment he tried to take inventory of his body; what hurt, and what didn't? The didn't proved fairly easy. His left big toe felt normal, as did one of his left molars, everything else hurt.
Even though he felt like it would be easier to track down a live Sasquatch than to open his eyes, he still managed to pry them open. There was no mistaking, he was most definitely in a hospital. Good. That meant the good guys had won. It appeared to be night, because the only light came from an overhead lamp and the monitors' greenish glow, and there was little sound from outside. On his left stood a pretty, blond nurse in her mid-thirties, looking at the monitors, recording vitals in his chart. He spoke to her, his voice rough.
"Don't you have any good drugs in this hospital?"
Later he would feel sorry for making the nurse shriek, but in the present it was a little funny to see her standing with her hand on her heart, frightened by him, in this condition.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not usually this jumpy. I'm Leonora. How are you feeling?"
Reid grimaced. "Like a psychopath beat the crap out of me."
"That would be rather accurate, or so I've been told. I'm glad to see that there's nothing wrong with your memory, or your sense of humor for that matter."
Reid swallowed and grimaced at the grating feeling. Leonora caught his reaction.
"You're pretty sore, I'll bet. We only extubated you a half-hour ago. Let me get you some water."
Reid looked around while she poured the water. Besides Leonora, the room was empty, and the fear and loneliness he had lived with the last week flared up. Leonora caught his eyes.
"Your team is still in the waiting room. You were brought down from recovery only a few minutes ago. The doctor is still briefing them. Personally, I can't wait to get them out of there. I mean, I know they are worried and all, but still! That boss of yours, Agent Hotchner, he has been terrorizing the nurses so bad that two of them have sworn that they'll call in sick until you are discharged, just so they won't run the risk of meeting him again."
Reid blinked, completely stunned and took a sip from the straw that now rested against his lips.
"But don't worry," Leonora continued, "They will be here soon. We just didn't expect to see those pretty eyes of yours for quite some time yet, not until well into next year anyway."
The water hit his stomach, which made a roll, saying 'Hello and welcome to nauseas-'r-us.' When Leonora's words penetrated Reid's tired brain, he gave the fuzz presiding there a mental push. "Next year?… It's New Years Eve then?"
"For another 15 minutes or so! I'll go tell your team you're awake, and to see if I can't hook you up with some of 'the good drugs'." She air quoted the last words and smiled at Reid, walking towards the door.
"Wait," Reid called. "Can you help me sit up?" He hated lying down while talking to people who were standing. It made him feel so vulnerable.
Leonora slowly raised the head of the bed, giving Reid time to get used to the new position, but it didn't stop him from grimacing and sweat broke out on his forehead. Leonora carefully wiped it away and offered him another sip of water.
"Your friends will be here soon, hang in there," she said softly, patting his leg comfortingly.
She turned on the room's lights as she went, leaving Reid alone and hurting.
He looked at himself. He was in a single room with an IV pole by the foot of the bed. IV lines snaked in under his blanket and he could feel a pinch in his ankle where it entered his body. He squinted, trying to read the labels. Antibiotics and saline. There was also a port on the line through which he hoped they would administer painkillers soon. Another IV pole by the head of his bed supplied him with blood through a catheter in the crook of his left arm. A nasal cannula was hooked around his ears. His right arm was strapped tightly to his chest in an uncomfortable sling. His torso was bare, but the massive bandages around both shoulders covered most of it anyway. There were electrodes taped to his chest, but they were half hidden under the bandages. His chest felt like an elephant had taken tap lessons on it. What had happened?
It didn't take long before the door was again carefully opened and Morgan stuck his head in, grinning like a madman.
"Hey buddy, how're you doing?" He came into the room, staying by the door to keep it open as the rest of team came through. The whole time he kept one hand hidden behind his back, and Reid was immediately suspicious.
They gathered around the bed. Elle approached him carefully. "I'd hug you," she said. "But I don't know how." She settled for squeezing his hand and pecking his cheek and JJ followed suit.
Gideon and Hotchner stood by the foot of the bed. Reid noticed that Hotchner was wearing a hospital scrub top.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine."
He didn't really sound fine, but he was standing upright and while the bruised jawbone looked painful, it didn't look like it had done much damage. Reid looked at Gideon, who nodded in confirmation, and Reid relaxed a little, a weight off his chest.
Garcia stood on his other side, her arm linked though Morgan's, who was still grinning. When he got Reid's attention he pulled his hand out from behind his back and showed what he was hiding. A teddy bear. A fluffy white thing with a red bow around its neck.
"For you, buddy!"
Reid raised his eyebrows. "Thanks, I guess… Why?"
"Because, a wise young man once told me you have to have a teddy bear to keep you company when you're in the hospital and you don't seem to be traveling with Einstein. You really should, though. For my sake, if nothing else. Hospital gift shops are not cheep."
He held the bear out to Reid. "His name is Posh Tail. That's an anagram for hospital." He looked ridiculously proud telling him that, which was the only thing that kept Reid from laughing. Morgan turned the toy around. "See, he even has a little tail." And sure enough, there was a small bump on its rear end, which could be mistaken for a tail.
Reid made a reach for the bear, and realized too late that neither of his arms were in working condition. Cold sweat broke out all over his body and he had to take several deep breaths to keep the nausea down. When the pain finally subsided enough for him to be aware of his surroundings again, Hotchner was at the door, yelling for help, and Morgan was clutching the bear so hard to his chest, Reid thought the poor toy's head would pop off.
Leonora came in briskly, a syringe and a vial in her hands. "Hi Spencer, I scoured you some goodies. I'm sorry, but you are all going to have to leave now, this will make him sleepy and he needs to rest."
"No, wait," Reid begged. "Let us have some more time, please. I'm feeling much better, really."
Leonora looked hesitant, but relented as seven sets of puppy dog-eyes turned on her.
"Fine, but just a few more minutes. I'm going to have a New Year's toast with my colleagues, then I'll be back."
She left the medicine on the bedside table and exited.
"Speaking of New Year…" Elle said, finding the remote control for the TV and turned it on. The ball at Times Square was still a few minutes from dropping.
"So," Reid said, addressing the group, "How am I doing?"
"Aren't we supposed to ask you that?" JJ asked, looking to the others for support in her claim, a nervous smile playing on her lips.
"Leonora said the doctor has talked to you, but no one has told me anything. I want to know what's going on."
"Well," Gideon said, "Your biggest problems are blood loss and the subsequent dehydration. They have given you a lot of blood already and they will keep doing so over the next few days. Also, your first gunshot wound got infected. You are running a pretty high fever and you'll probably feel rather washed out by it for a while, but they are giving you some pretty strong, broad-spectrum antibiotics and are rather confident that they'll conquer it soon enough. The second gunshot wound broke your right clavicle pretty badly. They had you in the OR for several hours, repairing it with pins."
"So now you'll beep every time you go through the security control at Quantico," Morgan chimed in.
Reid smiled weakly at him, appreciating his friend's positive attitude. It made life less scary. He turned back to Gideon.
"Loss of mobility?" he asked.
"Maybe," Gideon said. "But if so, no more than 20 percent… But let's cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?"
Reid nodded, and Gideon continued.
"Other than that, the gunshot wounds only caused tissue damage. They spent all afternoon repairing blood vessels. You'll be without the use of your arms for quite some time and you're going to need a lot of help the next couple of weeks. Sorry about that." Gideon knew how fiercely private and independent the young man could be. "You were hit over the head a couple of times, but that's nothing to worry about."
"No concussion?" Reid asked, evaluating his sore head.
"No, you dodged that bullet," Morgan said, biting his lip at the inappropriate wording.
Gideon glared at him, before saying, "Your jaw is rather bruised, but nothing's broken. You've got a cracked tooth and knocked out a filling, so a trip to the dentist is in order once you're out of the hospital. You'll probably not be interested in solid foods anytime soon anyway. Because Veld tried to strangle you, your throat is swollen, but at least you're breathing on your own now. They had to intubate you at the scene, which is bound to have made your throat even sorer."
"I stopped breathing?" Reid sounded surprised.
"And you went into cardiac arrest," Gideon confirmed seriously.
"I went into cardiac arrest? You mean I died? Why?" That felt so surrealistic. Being unconscious was one thing, being dead was extremely different.
"Well," Gideon said, "Massive blood loss and shock will do that. Your systems failed. Your body just gave up."
"But you didn't," Reid said, seeing the residue anguish in his teammates' eyes.
"No," Hotchner said, thinking of their combined efforts to revive him. "We didn't."
"You'll be okay, though," Elle smiled at him.
"I just need more sick leave and more physical therapy," Reid sighed. "It's getting really old, you know… What about Veld?"
"He's here too, but at the other end of the hospital, and he is heavily guarded. Don't worry," JJ said.
"I don't. He was really out of it, wasn't he?"
"Yeah," Hotchner agreed. "Much more than we had expected. He took us all by surprise."
"It's because of the way he chose his victims," Gideon said. "He had to wait for them, there were few of them and he was tied down by their names. Normally when a serial killer escalates, he projects traits on his victims to make them fit his profile. Veld couldn't do that, so he couldn't escalate, even though he felt the need for it, so he couldn't leave the signs for us to see."
"But still," Morgan said, "What an ego! I know most of our unsubs are really full of themselves, but this guy really takes the prize."
"Yeah, well," Reid said sarcastically, "What's the point of being a genius, if you can't rub it in people's faces?" Realizing what he just said he stuttered, "I… I mean…"
"It's okay, Reid," Elle reassured him. "We know the difference between the two of you."
"Do you think he'll go to trial or get off with an insanity plea?" Morgan asked.
"Depends on what kind of lawyer he gets," JJ said.
"He'll get a top-notch attorney," Hotchner said darkly. "This is a high-profile case. They'll be fighting each other to get it."
"I don't know," Garcia said. "When I did his back-ground check, I noticed that he had a law degree. Who here thinks he's going to try and defend himself?" She raised her own hand.
"Hey, look," Elle pointed to the TV. "It's started."
She and Garcia started counting down with the TV, Morgan joining them around four.
"Three, two, one… Happy New Year!"
JJ and Morgan pulled streamers from their pockets, blowing them out over the bed, and Elle pulled up a handful of confetti from her pocket, dropping it over Reid's head. He smiled widely as the paper snowed down on him. Looking at the torn-up paper, he saw that it seemed to be torn out of a magazine.
"Where did you get all this?" he asked.
"We raided the nurse's lounge," Elle told him.
"No wonder the nurses don't like you."
Garcia had a noisemaker and even a party hat, but knowing her, she probably traveled with such items on a regular basis. And while Gideon looked mildly amused, Hotchner still looked very serious.
Not long after Leonora came back.
"Okay, time's up. Go home and get some sleep. You can come back tomorrow."
"I'll just put Posh Tail over here," Morgan said, putting the bear down at the foot of the bed. The team gathered their coats, except for Hotchner.
"You go ahead, I'll stay awhile longer."
Leonora narrowed her eyes but didn't say anything. Gideon nodded approvingly and ushered the others out, with promises that they would be back the next day.
Hotchner and Reid watched silently as Leonora filled the syringe and then emptied it into the IV line. "It'll take about five minutes to work, then you won't feel a thing," she promised.
Five minutes wasn't a very long time, so Hotchner decided to just jump in and get it over with, but Reid beat him to it.
"I heard you on the plane. I didn't mean to eavesdrop or anything. I just overheard."
"You heard us?" Hotchner looked confused. "When? What did we say?"
"On the way back home from Vegas. You told Gideon that you weren't sure if I belonged on the team, that I had changed too much." Reid kept his eyes stubbornly on his blanket, so he missed Hotchner's dumbstruck expression.
"Not belong…" Hotchner whispered. "Oh, god. No wonder you've been acting so strangely." He took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to phrase himself now, to avoid further misunderstandings.
"Reid, please look at me," he said. When Reid looked up he looked straight into his eyes, hoping to convey his sincerity.
"That conversation was about me wondering whether being on the team was keeping you from bigger and better things. If anything, I thought you were too good for us. But much of it was also my desire to keep you safe. You rarely get shot working in a lab or at a university. But… and this is important, so listen and remember… if I ever, for whatever reason, wanted you off the team, I would come to you first and talk about it. I have that much decency. And no mistake you'll ever do will be so bad that you won't deserve a second chance." He smiled at him.
Reid felt a wave of shame wash over him as he remembered the distrust he had felt against this man, who had never been anything but fair and patient with him.
But Hotchner caught the look in his eyes. "No, Reid. This isn't your fault. It was a misunderstanding that spiraled out of proportion. And I'm just as much to blame. I should have been more observant of your feelings, and I should've dealt better with mine."
"So we both screwed up…?" Reid said.
"Big time." Hotchner sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Is that why you were so gung-ho at the Heller-raid?"
Reid nodded. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to prove to you that I was as good an agent as any of you. But I shouldn't have run off like that. I don't have the experience you have with raids, and I've never led one."
"Which is partly our fault," Hotchner confessed. "You don't have any experience, because we haven't given you a chance to try. We'll talk about it as a team when you come back."
"When I come back…"
Hotchner felt a stab of panic. "You do want to come back, right?"
"Of course I do. I just wanted to hear it said out loud. And I'm really, really sorry about the things I said to you. I had no right."
"Neither did I. The things I said were vicious and… You were right about one thing. There was a part of me that didn't trust you."
Reid looked down again, not sure if he wanted to hear this.
"I always trusted you as an agent. I always knew you would do your job under any circumstances, I trusted you with my life. I just didn't trust you with yours. You were too important to be trusted to anyone else than me. Something happened that made me believe that you needed to be looked after and protected, and I am sorry."
He sighed, knowing that what he had to say next could turn into a catastrophe, but it needed to be said.
"This is going to sound really weird, but there's a part of me that's resentful at you for rescuing yourself in Fairmount."
Reid's eyebrows shot up. He had not expected to hear anything of the kind.
"What?"
"I know, it's completely irrational but… You don't know what it was like. You disappeared, you were gone and we couldn't do anything. Our leads were slim, our chances even slimmer. It was heart-rending and despairing work, and it got us nowhere. Then, suddenly, we had a breakthrough and we were all ready to run to your rescue when you showed up. You looked horrible, bloody and pale, but you were such a beautiful sight. At first I was overjoyed, but then it crept up on me, from nowhere. I had done nothing to help you, and you came back so… broken. I wondered what I could have done differently, how I could have spared you your ordeal and I wished so hard that I could have saved you. But since I couldn't, I guess I have been trying to save you from everything else since. Only, I wasn't so good at it was I?"
Reid smiled at him. "You did just fine. I'm here, aren't I? A little worse for the wear, maybe, but I'm here."
Taking the absolution to heart, Hotchner sank down in the visitor's chair on Reid's left.
"How did things get so messed up?" he asked rhetorically, but Reid felt compelled to answer him anyway.
"After I had gotten my first two PhD's, I quit school to start working, but just like Veld I never stayed long anywhere. I never really fit in. I was too young, or too smart, or too shy. My social skills were underdeveloped and my co-workers didn't get me. After several months I went back to the university and went for my third PhD. And the whole time I was sad and angry and scared. Scared that that was all life would have in store for me. That I would stay at school forever, doing research and writing papers. I could have easily gotten tenure at many different universities and become the quirky old professor who lived alone and talked to himself. No one would have thought it strange, isn't that what geniuses do? Write books and give obscure lectures? I was angry, because I didn't want that. I didn't want to settle in a niche that had been chosen for me and not by me. And I was sad because the world outside was closed to me. I didn't fit in and only looked foolish trying to.
"That's when I went to one of Gideon's lectures and I found something I'd never known existed. And I talked to him afterwards and he promised he'd help me if I wanted to become a profiler. Suddenly I had a proper goal to work for and someone to look up to. When I started at the BAU I finally found a place where I fit in and could make a difference and help others. I learned the awesome powers of compassion and righteousness, and I learned that responsibility goes way outside your own person. And I had great role models that helped me, help me, become a better me, while I get to help others. And when I thought you didn't want me anymore, I was both furious and heartbroken, because I felt that I had given everything in my power to do the best I could do in every single situation.
"I don't have friends, Hotch, and with my mom being where she is, I don't really have a family either, to go to for the holidays and weekends. I don't have a family to vacation with. I don't have a family that I go home to at night. But I do have a family that I go to in the morning. And you tease me and chastise me and encourage me. You let me be myself and accept me and I don't want to lose that."
Hotchner blinked hard to stave off the tears that were threatening to fall, and in a moment of tenderness he leaned over and grabbed Reid's hand. Reid twisted his hand so that it lay palm up and Hotchner was left with his thumb resting on the protruding scar on Reid's wrist and he let his thumb tenderly ghost over its length.
"I like that scar, Hotch. Do you know why?"
Hotchner didn't trust his voice, so he just shook his head.
"It proves to me everyday that I have become the man that I always wanted to be. That I am strong and have the ability to protect those who need it. That I can accomplish whatever the situation demands of me. That I'm like you. And like Gideon and Morgan and Elle and JJ and even Garcia. You guys are my heroes, and I fit in with you."
Reid yawned, and his eyes blinked a few times as the medicines took a hold of his body.
"I don't want to lose that," he whispered.
"You won't. I promise, you won't." Hotchner reassured him as Reid slowly lost the battle with sleep.
He waited until he was sure Reid was sound asleep before letting go of his hand. He stood up and carefully lowered the head of the bed until Reid was lying flat. He then pulled the blanket up higher, tucking his arm under it. He sighed as he looked down at the young man, the words he had just spoken still ringing in his head and in his heart. He pushed an errant strand of hair away from Reid's eyes before once again squeezing his hand comfortingly.
He then turned off the lights and made himself comfortable in the chair, vowing to himself to keep watch over this special young man, tonight and forever.
"Live your own life, for you will die your own death."
Latin Proverb
The End
Author's Notes: Hmm…I seem to have a tendency to end my stories with Reid asleep in a hospital bed. Maybe I should be nicer to him. Although two are really a pair and not a pattern.
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