A/N: Before you guys get going with this fic: POSSIBLE VIOLENCE AND GORE, AND ALSO FOUL LANGUAGE! And I don't live in or have ever been to the USA so everything in here is based off what I could find on Google so please tell me if I use the wrong term or talk about something that doesn't exsist in America or something like that! Okay you may now continue, and you have been warned :) And can I just say I'm super thrilled to be back here and writing my second Criminal Minds fanfic. This might be a little longer than In Blood, possibly more in the realm of 15-20 chapters but not too long (I hope, I can't write sustained fanfics to be honest). Thanks to you who are here after In Blood! I look forward to reading your reveiws, and also I might get chapter one up as well tonight but I have no idea...
Spencer Reid may have been the biggest technophobe in Virginia, but there was still something so very comforting to him about sitting in Garcia's tech den and reading through stacks of printed out records. It was a slow and sluggish day, and far across the state line, churning across the sea, an Atlantic storm was bearing down upon the coastline of the southern United States. The air was thick as it waited for the electric tension to break, but in the heart of Garcia's office everything was silent and calm. Currently the team were in Washington as they investigated a series of hit-and-run bank robbings; with each attack resulting in the security guard shot and the only thing stolen... whatever cash the civilians inside had had on them at the time. On the morning of the case, Reid had been laid low with a splitting headache and a dreadful cough- and so it had been decided by Hotch that the younger agent would work from HQ with Garcia.
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb. Only that morning, Morgan had been in contact to tell Spencer that their UnSub had left a bomb threat- breaking clean away from MO and plunging the team into confusion. That confusion had only deepened when the Unsub had arrived, unmasked, breaking into the middle of the bank and firing a round of warning shots into the air. He had been arrested at the scene, and so the team hoped to back by afternoon- or at least, that's what Morgan had said.
Now, there was a feeling of deep foreboding brewing in Reid's stomach; coupled with the broiling storm outside, it was almost unbearable. It didn't fit the profile that the UnSub would make an empty threat, and then allow himself to be arrested... It was like an irritating thorn in Spencer's side that he couldn't identify the missing link. He pored over the maps and notes scattered across his little designated workspace again and again, but there was nothing else to be dredged up from the information that he hadn't already analysed.
"Reid..." The pure trepidation in Garcia's voice caused Reid to turn his head almost at once. On her screen, there was a passport-type picture of the man they were on their way to arrest.
"Yeah?" He peered over her shoulder; it took only a few seconds of frowning at the screen to see what Garcia was seeing: this man had no prison record, no previous involvement with the police, he was well-off— a private physician— and respectable. Everything in his file ran against the grain of the profile Reid had so carefully helped to construct. His gaze flickered to the security footage of the arrest, and suddenly his mind was set alight like a rocket flare had just exploded out of his sub-consciousness. Every warning bell and nerve was set alight, and he shakily keyed in Hotch's number. He was met at the other end by nothing but voicemail, but as he turned around to inform Garcia the words stuck in his throat. The mobile fell lose between his slender fingers, and both his eyes and mouth widened in horror. A tremendous rush of blood to his ears drowned out Garcia's horrified gasp, and his stomach rose up and then plummeted all within the space of a millisecond- although to Spencer time dragged its laboured footsteps along until his limbs felt like lead.
Garcia's little TV screen was showing media footage of a massive explosion at a bank... a Washington bank... and parked outside, sitting there in the shadow of the great smoke plumes billowing up from the carnage...
Three black SUVs, and not a team member in sight.