Spencer finished answering a few more questions for Derek and then bid him good night to go join Kris. She was in bed, but she wasn't sleeping. She was watching a late night newscast and he could see in the glow of the TV that a few tears had escaped her eyes. He got ready for bed without either of them saying a word, and even got into the bed in silence. He knew that if she wanted to talk about what was bothering her (other than the obvious), she would bring it up.
After the current story on the news ended she turned to him. "The theater on Milton Avenue burned down earlier today," she told him without any emotion in her voice. She was trying to hide whatever she was feeling from him. He wasn't sure if it was fear or anger.
"I liked that theater," he said, equally emotionless. He was trying to get a better read on her emotions and he didn't want his own mood to influence her. She didn't say anything else so he tried again to get a reaction. "You and Gracie used to go there a lot." Gracie was the younger girl she'd worked with at the bookstore, the one who'd had a crush on Spencer. Kris had taken Gracie on as a little sister of sorts, but she hadn't mentioned the younger girl in a while. She stayed silent. "You haven't gone out with her in a while. Have you heard from her since school let out for summer?"
"Do you really want to talk about Gracie right now?" Kris asked him. There was uncertainty in her voice that Spencer couldn't understand.
"What else do you want to talk about?"
Kris was quiet for another minute, but she finally broke the awkward silence. "I hate him," she whispered. She usually took her necklace off when she slept, but Spencer noticed that her hand was at her neck again, holding the small ring.
"Who?"
"My dad."
"It's not like you to hate anyone," Spencer told her. He wasn't sure she even had the ability to hate. There were people she didn't like, but not many. Even in those few people, she tried her hardest to find something good in them. It was one of the things Spencer loved most about her.
"I hate who he's become," she amended. "He was my hero growing up. It was all a lie."
"We don't know for sure that he's behind this," Spencer reminded her.
"It doesn't matter. The fact that I could even think for one second that he could be capable of something like this is proof that he isn't who I always believed he was. I'll never trust him again...if I ever see him again."
Spencer knew a thing or two about estranged paternal relationships. He hadn't spoken to his own father in several years. He probably never would again. He could understand Kris' disappointment in her father, but he hated seeing her hurting the way she was.
XXX
The next morning was quiet. A soft rain kept the birds at bay and Kris wasn't in the mood to do much talking. Spencer gave her as much privacy as he could. He worried about their relationship though. She'd been distancing herself little by little all week. He didn't want what was happening to cause her to push herself away enough to let her leave. She'd been running from her past for four years. She was good at running.
Derek could sense the tension between Kris and Spencer. He could tell that Spencer would have a hard time with the next few days. Nothing too serious had even happened yet and a rift was already forming between the couple. If something managed to rip them apart, Derek wasn't sure what effect it would have on his friend.
Spencer knew that Kris would be safe at work. Her stalker hadn't done anything to make Spencer think he was bold enough to make a move in a public place so close to the FBI building. He dropped her off on his way to meet with his colleagues, which meant he was the last one to arrive.
Penelope hustled into the conference room as soon as Spencer took his seat. She threw a stack of files onto the table and flung herself into a chair, pouting. "Please do not make me do any more research on this creep," she begged.
Spencer took one of the files. It was a police report on Dominic Jenkins, Kris' father. He'd been the lead suspect in an arson case, but he'd been able to dodge the charges.
"Did we get anything from organized crime?" Emily asked.
"No," Aaron sighed. "They have an ongoing case against Dominic and they can't risk blowing it over a stalking case. The detective I spoke to says that if everything goes according to plan, they could be taking down his entire organization in a matter of months. I have JJ working on getting more information from them, but in the mean time, we'll have to use what we can get from their computer system."
"Hotch, I don't know that I can take much more. This man is ruthless. He takes puppies, cats, fingers, and in one especially evil display of creepy power, he even went as far as to steal a baby and hold it hostage until the parents could pay him back the money he'd loaned them," Penelope recalled from what she'd read that morning.
"I talked to Kris last night. Based on what she told me, I don't think her dad is behind this," Derek explained. "She's lived in six states in four years. She'd had three jobs just since she moved here. She has an outgoing personality and has been a bartender in more than one state. Thousands of people must have come in contact with her in the last four years."
"This isn't a personal stalking so far. It still feels mob related to me," David argued.
"We should look into the two men that moved next door to Kris when she lived in Florida. They had been working with her dad for a number of years but when she was fifteen they stopped coming around. She didn't see them again until she moved to Florida. She thought they must have started working for one of her dad's competitors who wanted to keep tabs on Kris," Spencer added.
"Garcia, I want you to look into the neighbors in Florida. Start a time line on Kris from the the time she left home until now. Pay special attention to neighbors, room mates, and co-workers that might have been arrested for similar crimes," Aaron ordered. "Reid, take Morgan and Rossi to Kris' apartment. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Find any letters or pictures that could be from the stalker. He may have contacted her in the past and she wasn't even aware of it. Prentiss, you and I are going to talk to Kris."
XXX
Kris' heart stopped when she saw Aaron and Emily enter the coffee shop. Why hadn't Spencer come with them? Had something new happened? Was Spencer okay?
Aaron stayed close to the door, scanning the room, while Prentiss approached Kris at the counter. "Is Spencer okay?" Kris asked immediately, before Emily had a chance to speak. Her face was white and filled with concern.
Emily hadn't thought about what it would look like to Kris for them to visit her at work without Spencer. "Oh! Yes! Reid is fine," Emily assured her quickly. "He's at your apartment with Morgan and Rossi. Agent Hotchner and I just wanted to ask you some questions."
"Sure. We can talk in the back."
XXX
Derek and David waited in the parking lot of Kris' apartment building while Spencer went to the office to ask for a key. He returned quickly, which led his friends to believe he'd been at her place enough times for the office staff to recognize him. They would tease him relentlessly as soon as this ordeal was over. They followed him up two flights of stairs and around the corner to the last unit on the back of the building. The door was wide open and the place was trashed.
All three agents immediately drew their guns and entered the apartment. No one was there, but everything was in ruins. The frames and mirrors were all smashed and thrown to the floor. A hole had been smashed into the wall in the bedroom. The baskets she stored DVDs in were dumped out and her jewelry had been spilled.
Spencer called Aaron. "Is Kris with you? Is she okay?"
"She's shaken up, but she'll be fine," Aaron assured him. He was curious though. "Why? What's happened?"
"Her apartment is trashed. It looks like the door was kicked in."
"Have you called a crime scene team to check for prints yet?"
"Morgan is on the phone with them now. I wanted to make sure no one had tried to contact her again," Spencer explained.
"We'll bring her over there with us."
XXX
Spencer was waiting in front of Kris' apartment when she came rushing around the corner, Aaron and Emily right behind her. "How bad is it?" she asked him, breathless from her anxious run.
"Bad," he told her. "You need to try to stay calm and see if anything is missing."
"Okay," she said, but her eyes told him she was already freaking out. He knew she would put on a brave face in front of his colleagues but she would break down in private, later, probably trying to hide it from him as well. She liked to be honest with him, but she hated to make him worry.
Spencer didn't take her hand as they entered, which Emily found odd. If she were Kris, she thought she would have wanted her boyfriend to try to comfort her, to hold her hand or pull her close. Spencer and Kris walked next to each other, but they didn't touch or even look at each other. They definitely weren't a typical couple.
Kris stood in the middle of her living room to survey the damage. She didn't own too much that meant a lot. She'd moved in a hurry when she was 18 and had left most of her belongings behind in Georgia. She was heartbroken to see that the few things she had kept with her over the years seemed to be destroyed. The picture of her and her sister together at Christmas when Kris was sixteen had been pulled off the wall. The frame was shattered and the picture had been shredded. The coffee table book her brother had made of pictures of Kris and her niece was ripped to pieces and scattered across the room. The keepsake box her dad had given her for her birthday one year looked like it had been thrown against a wall and shattered.
"Some of my trinkets are gone," she said finally. "They were in the box over there. It was mostly small toys and jewelry from when I was a kid."
"Is anything else gone?" Spencer asked her.
"Not that I can see." Kris walked down the hall to her bedroom. It wasn't that different from the living room. Her clothes had been tossed out of her closet. Some of them were ripped apart. She noticed the hole in the wall and the pile of ripped up books in the corner. Her bathroom vanity was cleared off, the bottles of perfume and make up broken in the floor. She surveyed the damage to her jewelry and realized that her bracelet was missing. "Wait. Has anyone seen a bracelet? It's white gold with emeralds."
No one had found it. "Does it have some sort of significance?" Derek asked her. It seemed weird that someone would break in and take trinkets with no monetary value and one bracelet with emeralds but leave the TV, sound system, and gold and diamond jewelry.
"It was my mom's," she whispered so softly that the others could barely hear her. She turned away and started to walk out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Spencer asked.
"I need some air," she told him. Her face was white, like she might be sick. Spencer followed her outside. She disappeared around the corner and he found her in the parking lot with her arms wrapped around herself protectively.
"What happened?" he wanted to know. She'd seemed fine until she realized the bracelet was missing.
"I'm sorry." She seemed a little calmer already and he had to wonder if it had something to do with his bipolar theory. "I just felt like I couldn't breathe anymore. Spencer, how does someone know so much about me? I have a huge TV and a ridiculous sound system in there. He could have taken the two karat diamond necklace that was hanging from the jewelry stand on my bathroom counter. He didn't. He took my childhood treasures and the only thing of my mom's that I've ever owned. You said the letters weren't personal. Well, it's personal now."
A/N: Sorry that this chapter is sort of basic and whatever. I'm having an issue with writer's block today. It might have something to do with the large amount of cold medicine I took a few hours ago. Hopefully tomorrow I can update with chapter five and make up for my lack of creativity today.
