Spencer opened his eyes when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Lou's face looked peaceful, inches from his, and he realized they must have fallen asleep sometime during those soft kisses. He looked at his phone – six-thirty in the morning and a missed call. He flipped the phone closed and scooted out of bed as quietly as he could. He was still dressed in his t-shirt and jeans from the day before. There was coffee to be made and he hadn't taken a shower the night before so he began his morning routine. He took the shortest shower of his life pulling on jeans and an old shirt Lou had made him buy last year before Christmas that said 'Not a Real Doctor'. Once his coffee was poured he opened his phone again to see who had called him so early.

The last time he had seen that number was last December. It belonged to Josh. He glanced at Lou, still sleeping soundly, and stepped out into the front courtyard with his phone and coffee in hand. Before he had a chance to make up his mind about calling back, his phone began buzzing again.

"Hello?" he answered cautiously.

"Spencer. Hey buddy. This is Joshua Callahan."

"Josh."

"Hey, Stella gave me your number a while back." I highly doubt that, Spencer thought. "I'm sorry to call so goddamn early, man. Stella's phone is off and I just want to make sure she's ok. You heard from her?"

"Why? Where are you?"

"I'm supposed to be in San Francisco for the weekend, Spencer. Obviously I'm about to cut my trip short. If you could help a guy out and just tell me if you know where she is, I'd appreciate it."

"Why would I know where she is? I mean, why wouldn't she be at home? Isn't everything alright?" There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds before Spencer heard a long, strained sigh.

"I figured you already knew. Stella is pretty unstable. I mean clinically. She makes up stories. Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming at me not to touch her. I say, 'Baby, it's just me. I'm not hurting you,' but it takes me hours sometimes to get her to believe it's just one of her delusions. I mean, the things she's probably told you are no more real than Hansel and Gretel in the woods."

"Wow," Spencer said flatly. "I never knew she had delusions. She seems extremely lucid to me."

"Well, don't let her fool you buddy. She's broken a lot of hearts that way. Just… you can see why I'm worried about her. So give me a call if you hear anything. I wouldn't want her to do something she'll regret." The last part was clearly meant as a threat, each word holding more and more malice.

"Yeah." Spencer left his response at that and closed the phone. Whether Josh wanted to end it or not, their conversation was over. He sat on the hood of his car drinking his coffee and thinking until the temperature began to climb uncomfortably.

He walked back into the apartment quietly, his eyes adjusting to the dark. They itched, and he realized he had forgotten to remove his contacts last night. Lou was still sleeping and he retrieved his glasses from his desk drawer and headed into the bathroom. As he removed his contacts and placed them in the lens solution, he thought back to the small house he had shared with his mother before she had gone into the hospital.

"Well I don't see why it's such an awful thing to wear your glasses, dear."

Spencer stood in front of the mirror, his left eye red and streaming with saline.

"I think they make you look distinguished," Diana smiled at him from her seat on the edge of the bathtub.

"They make me look twelve, Mom." He leaned forward ready to try placing the lens a fourth time. His right eye was starting to clear up and it had only taken fifteen minutes.

"Are you trying to impress a girl?"

"No," he answered flatly. None of the girls would notice him anyway. He was a sixteen year old walking around the Cal Tech campus with a crowd of graduate students. The goal was to not attract attention. The younger he looked, the more attention, the more out of place he felt... the more homesick he let himself get. That was the problem. He was convinced his mother was doing well on her own - he wasn't going to upset her routine by coming home more than was necessary.

That illusion hadn't lasted much longer.

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and walked back out into the living room.

A few hours later, Spencer was trying to log in to his student e-mail account when Lou began to stir. He shoved his chair back from his desk and turned to watch her. She turned towards him, her eyes still closed, reaching both of her arms above her head and stretching all the way down to her toes. It reminded Spencer of the apartment's 'stray' cat stretching out after a nap in the warm sun. "Good morning," she said, stifling a yawn. She opened her eyes and smiled.

The prospect of discussing last night and the phone call he had received this morning, quickly wiped the smile from his face. He hoped Lou wouldn't notice and take the action as a sign of regret.

"Hungry?" she asked, somewhat subdued.

"I don't know?" he watched her stand and maneuver her way into the kitchen. "I could eat if you want to cook. There's coffee... probably cold," he heard her pour out the remnants and prepare to make a new pot.

He frowned at her abrupt silence, then turned back to the computer monitor. "Damn," he cursed under his breath for the fifth time this morning.

"What's the matter?"

"It's nothing. I'm trying to log in to my student account... My Thesis Advisor – I can only ever get messages to him through email."

"I thought it was done," she said, stepping out from the kitchen.

"What?" He looked up at her wiping her hands on a kitchen rag. "Oh, the thesis! Yes, but I just want to meet with him one more time before deadline."

"Spencer, you know more on the subject than half the department combined - and they've probably forgotten some, which is a disadvantage you don't have to worry about." she leaned across him to better access the keyboard. ".edu? Remember that your password is case sensitive."

"I think I'd remember that..."

"I also would have thought you'd remember to turn off caps lock," she smiled and headed back to the kitchen.

He pecked his password in the field again. "Thank you," he mumbled. By the time Spencer was done sending the proposed meeting time to his advisor, breakfast was ready. Fried eggs over medium, fresh cut cantaloupe wedges, toast and fresh coffee.

"Wow, what's the occasion?" He regretted asking the question almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"It's not an occasion, Spencer. It's breakfast. Don't you eat breakfast?"

"Do pop tarts count?"

"Eh," she shook her head. "Sometimes you look younger than you act and others you act younger than you look."

"How old are you?" He suddenly realized that she had never told him her age or birth date. He knew it was in March, though.

"I'm surprised I got away with hiding it this long... I was twenty-two on March third. I'm scandalously older than you."

"Only eighteen months." As soon as he said it he could feel her eyes on him like a judgment – something he'd never felt around her before. Just then his phone rang. "That's my mom," he told her as he flipped the phone open.

Shower, she mouthed as he greeted his mother. He nodded at her and watched her stand and take her dishes to the kitchen counter, then fish clothing out of a bag and head into the bathroom.

"Spencer?"

"Sorry, Mom."

"Is that girl there, Spencer?" He had begun writing about Lou in his daily letters to Diana a few weeks after he had last seen her in December. It was clearly agitating his mom so he quit mentioning her around February, but Diana still asked every once in a while – At first I thought she was a stupid, mean girl, Spencer. But I see now she must be in trouble. Has she called you yet?

"Um…" He wasn't sure he wanted to leave room for any implication in front of his mother.

"She was in trouble, wasn't she? A mother knows."

After a shortened conversation with Diana, he decided he needed to get out of the apartment. The water was off in the bathroom and he moved near the door, fist hovering ready to knock, when it opened to a teary-eyed Lou.

"Whoa. What happened?" Spencer instinctively reached for her, but she pulled back and maneuvered around him to sit unceremoniously in his desk chair.

"I just checked my messages." She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. "He said… uh, it doesn't matter what he said. It doesn't matter." She was near regaining her composure now. "What were you doing at the door?"

"I was going to see if you wanted to get out. I'm feeling… I could use some coffee… some Etch coffee. I wanted to see if you would come? I've got the meeting with my thesis advisor later, but you could hang out at the coffee shop or in one of the campus libraries till I'm done. Would you… do you want to come?"

"I think I'd like to hang out here. Get some rest, you know."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.

"No."

"Please?"

"Go, Spencer. I'm a big girl," she forced a smile. "I'll keep the door locked."

Four hours later, Spencer was back at Etch. He had met with his advisor and the conversation had been short – if not rushed on the part of the professor – so he had returned to the coffee shop, not ready to be back at his small apartment with Lou. His phone had been turned off for the past two and a half hours. After the first five calls, his jaw hurt from the clenching and grinding and he could no longer stand the phone buzzing in his pocket, and off it went. He sat cross-legged in the back sofa at the coffee shop, several books in his lap, starring up at the dimly lit ceiling. The book that lay open in his hands was titled Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of Psychopaths Among Us. He had already read The Gift of Fear and Reading People: How to Understand People and Predict Their Behavior. It had only taken him a few minutes to make his selections at the campus bookstore, and although he felt odd standing in front of the female clerk ringing up his purchases, he hadn't been able to shake the uneasy feeling that had been nagging at him since he'd turned his phone off.

He reached into his jeans pocket and fished the phone out, now needing to hear the multiple messages that no doubt filled his voicemail box.

"Spence, this is Joshua Callahan. I need to get in touch with Stella. I'd appreciate the help, buddy."

Next.

"Spence, man. If you were any kind of a friend you'd be worried about her too. I just need to talk to her. You help me find her. It's the right thing to do. Call me back."

"Spencer. Call me."

"Tell Stella to get her ass home. Now!"

"I know you have her hidden away. You think fucking someone else's woman makes you a man, you little piece of shit? You won't get away with this!"

"I know you two have been plotting against me for months you little snot. But she's just using you. That's all she's ever been good at. She uses and manipulates. She'll use you and throw you away. You stupid bastard."

"You need to tell Stella I'm very worried about her. I love her and I'm willing to forgive her for everything she's done to me. You tell her that. Tell her that, kid. She'll call me. She'll come home."

"Last chance, Dr. Reid. Last chance. You won't like meeting up with me after this."

Eight messages and thirteen missed calls in all. It was safe to say Joshua Callahan was exhibiting dangerously obsessive behavior with, Spencer would venture to say, bipolar tendencies. He flipped his phone closed. He had been harassed. He had been threatened. But no significant harm had been done to him. He could go to the police and what would they tell him? Nothing had happened yet. He could take the tapes to the Dean of the art school where Callahan was a TA. That might get some results. Or it might just piss him off even more. Either way he had to talk to Lou. Things would be much easier if he could convince her to press charges for the physical abuse – though from what he'd seen of her last night, any remaining bruises were old and fading, and would do little in the way of physical evidence to back up her claims. He had to try anyway.

He sat forward and shoveled the small pile of books into his book bag, paid his tab at the coffee bar, and headed down the street toward his car. It was getting late in the evening, and in summer, the student populous that normally filled the streets near Etch had dwindled. The street in front of him was nearly deserted but for a few kids sitting on the curb, passing around a joint, and a man heading towards him and the coffee shop, still a few yards ahead. He stopped a few steps past the stoners, something nagging at his subconscious.

"Want a hit?" a young girl asked in a slurred dreamy sort of speech, holding the hand rolled 'cigarette' out to him.

"…No."

Just then he realized what had been nagging at him and sent a few chills down his spine, straight into the tips of his chucks. The man walking towards him and the coffee shop was none other than Joshua Callahan. He picked up his feet and continued moving forward, trying his best to appear un-phased. Josh was wearing a plain black t-shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a cruel grin.

"Doctor. Spencer. Reid."

Spencer forced a small smile. "Hey, man. I, uh… Sorry I didn't answer you there this afternoon. I was meeting with my Thesis Advisor. In fact I think my phone's still off. So what are you, uh, doing out this way?" He reached his hand out as he approached the older man and Josh took it willingly. Holding it in a firm, even painful grip he pulled Spencer closer.

"Where is she?" he whispered vehemently.

"Let go, man." Spencer croaked, cursing his voice for betraying him. They were standing beside his car now and Spencer reached into his pocket with his free hand, grasping for his keys.

Josh squeezed harder until he heard a faint sound of discomfort from Spencer, before obliging his earlier request and letting him go. Then he circled, forcing Spencer away from his car door, his back now facing the street.

"I said you wouldn't like meeting me again."

Spencer stepped wide to his right, trying to reach around for his door handle, but Josh sidestepped and blocked his attempt.

"Come on, man," Spencer half whispered, half croaked. He was getting really angry now, and more than a little bit scared. He could hear the kids still on the curb behind him, making commentary on the obvious altercation taking place.

"I'm not leaving until you Tell. Me. Where. She. Is." He was forceful but not loud enough to draw more attention than he already garnered from their small audience.

"Get out of my way, asshole." It felt good to say it, but words didn't mean much – sticks and stones, etcetera. So to emphasize his point, Spencer stepped forward towards his car door and placed his left hand on Josh's left shoulder attempting to clear his path. The next second a hot light exploded around his left eye and his head slammed into the blacktop pavement of the street behind him. His vision remained white for a few seconds as he heard hurried footfalls approaching.

"Have it your way," the monster growled from the darkness above him before walking back the direction from which he had come.