Chapter seven: Home
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." -Helen Keller
Derek was watching her. She could feel his eyes as she wrote up a report, he at his desk and she at hers. She was trying to ignore it and every time she looked up he looked away, then a few minutes later would begin sneaking glances again. While sweet that he was worried still about the 'trauma' her train hostage situation caused, and the fact that Tessa wanted to think that wasn't the only reason he kept looking at her, she now just wanted him to stop. Tessa grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair and stood up, and both Spencer and Derek stood up too.
"Going to lunch?" Spencer asked.
"We'll go too," Derek said with a smile that made her feel sick in a good way.
Spencer looked at him appreciatively. "Yeah, I, uh, I could go for some pizza."
"No!" Tessa stressed. "Look, guys, I appreciate you both being worried about me, but I'm fine. Ted Bryar is locked up, my wrist is healing, stop smothering me. If I see either of you anywhere near the vicinity of the Pizza Joint for the next hour I will handcuff you to each other and give you both to Garcia as a gift. Am I understood?"
She didn't wait for a response, leaving quickly so she could get away. Spencer hated pizza, just like he hated trains, but she was not willing to force him to eat some because he was being a borderline stalker. It was raining outside when she emerged from the building and out into the parking lot to her Jeep. Tessa ducked under her umbrella and ran across, throwing open the driver side door and clambering into the sweltering summer humidity that was her car.
"That was some speech you made back there."
Tessa screamed and looked over to see Gideon sitting in her passenger seat. She took a breath and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. He had been just the same as before, though perhaps a little more... there. She leaned back and started the car.
"What do you want, Gideon?"
"Well, for starters, you should probably lock your car when you leave it."
Spencer always made that same argument, but she didn't have anything in her car worth stealing and it drove him crazy. Plus, she liked not having to dig in her purse for her keys until after getting in and out of the weather. "Yeah, well, that's not likely to happen."
"How about lunch?"
Tessa groaned. "Is this because you want to have lunch, or because I was hostage on a train for a day?"
Gideon frowned. "Both."
Tessa frowned too. "Okay. But it has to be pizza."
She ate pizza at least twice a week, but only because Spencer argued that it wasn't healthy to eat it every day, but... what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
"Do they have to add this much cheese?" He asked, looking a bit confused at the long strings of cheese from where he had picked up a piece.
"Yes," she told him. "They have to add this much cheese because it's perfect. Try it."
He knitted his eyebrows and smiled. "I'm old, Elisabeth, I might go into cardiac arrest."
She rolled her eyes. "Just eat the damn pizza."
"Yes, ma'am." And he took a bite, his eyebrows going up and he nodded his approval. "Okay, it's really good."
"I'm glad you braved the cardiac arrest threat." She put her own slice down on her plate and wiped her fingers on her napkin. "Gideon, are you okay?"
He looked startled for a moment. "Yeah. I'm fine. I just... how's your wrist?"
"Healing."
Gideon took a sip of his water, something healthy, he said, to counteract the staggering amount of cheese. "You know, I have a son." She had known that. He had that look that said he had children of his own. "Stephen and I, don't see eye to eye, I suppose. And I-"
"Feel guilty because you're feeling rather paternal to my brother and I but you haven't spoken to your own son in some time for the reason that you are closer to your team family than your actual family."
He blinked a few times. "You know, it alarms me how well you read me when-"
"You're usually the one that reads the rest of the team so well."
"Stop that." Then, "Yes."
"Call your son," she said. "Introduce him to the team and merge the two."
Gideon nodded. "Yeah. We, uh, should probably get back."
She smiled. "Okay. Derek and Spencer are probably going insane anyway, kind of makes me want to be late."
"Yes, I've noticed that they seem a bit, needy, lately."
"I don't know what's going on between them. One minute, they're friends. Then Charlie hates him. Now it's like they're not so much friends as they are allies against an enemy. I'm starting to feel like the enemy."
"They're just worried about you. You should have seen them when you were on the train, I've seen rabid dogs less confrontational."
Tessa nodded as they went to her car. It had stopped raining, but left the world feeling like a dark, humid blanket had been left behind to cover the world with dark clouds and rain puddles. "I understand that and Charlie's always been a bit over protective, but not like this."
"You honestly don't understand what's going on?"
She frowned. "Why? Do you?"
He sort of chuckled. "I'm going to let you figure that one out yourself."
"Tessa!" Spencer said when she and Gideon came in together. Then she was almost tackled in a hug from Derek and she pointed when Gideon looked back as if to say, do you see what I have to deal with? But he just laughed and went to his office to make a phone call...
Tessa frowned at the little piece of card-stock in her hands with bright, vibrant colors and bold lettering. A class reunion. Had it already been ten years? It didn't feel like it and there was no way she was going. Why hadn't Ash told her about it coming up? It would be nice to see her again come to think of it, but there was no way she was going alone. Spencer would never agree to come with her, or he would if only because of what happened the last time he didn't, and that wouldn't be right. He would hate it.
"What's wrong?" Derek asked, coming in through the front door. The team was meeting up for dinner and she, Derek, and Spencer were riding together since Spencer had more or less all but moved in to her guest room.
Tessa took a breath and looked up. "Um, high school reunion. It's strange, it feels like yesterday. No where near time for one."
"Are you gonna go?"
She set the invite on the counter. "I don't know. My automatic reaction is definitely not, but I do miss Ash. It would be nice to see her again."
Spencer was just coming around the corner of the hall way when Derek came to stand beside her in order to get a better look. "You should go. Prove to all those jerks how far you got. That's the whole point of reunions, right?"
"Reunion?" Spencer asked with a sniff of disdain. "That's ridiculous."
"I don't know. There were good times. Remember Ashleigh? You had a crush on her. I remember she'd come sit at our table in the library and you'd blush and hide your face behind a book or make that existentialist light bulb joke."
A pale blush bled to his cheeks when she brought this up. "Yeah. I remember, Beetle. But- you can't seriously be thinking about going."
She frowned. "I am actually. It could be fun, seeing Vegas from the point of view of a tourist. The lights, the people, the life."
"Yeah," he said shortly. "Magical. We're going to be late. We should go."
Derek's eyebrows shot up and Tessa sighed, smoothing out her knee length cocktail dress and looping her hand around Derek's arm for her to escort her. "Right. Let's get going."
It was dinner at a nice seafood restaurant downtown. Hotch and Garcia were apparently the first ones there. Then Emily and JJ at fairly the same time. Then Derek, Spencer, and Tessa arrived just as Gideon was getting out of his car. Derek pulled the key out of the ignition and rushed around to open Tessa's door, in a race as Spencer threw his seat belt off, only for them to be beaten by Gideon who rolled his eyes at the both of them.
"Have you really not figured it out yet?" He whispered in her ear.
"I'm starting to figure it out," she responded in referral to their earlier question of Spencer and Derek being strange with each other.
Gideon opened the door for her and the four of them met the others at their table, a large booth, in which Tessa again found herself in between Derek and Spencer with Gideon on the other side of Spencer. Hotch was next to Gideon, Emily next to him, with Garcia and JJ beside her in a broad half circle.
After ordering, Garcia took it upon herself to see what everyone had been up to. Hotch's new son, Jack, was starting to sleep more during the night, but still waking up a few times. Tessa still maintained that he had liked the name of her terrier so much he named his son that. She thought he knew she held that playful belief, and he didn't like it. Emily had been thinking about getting a cat. Garcia had been playing a new online game and shopping like a fiend. Gideon bought a new camera and set of binoculars for bird watching.
"Tessa's got her high school reunion coming up," Derek said.
Emily clicked her teeth. "Oh. The desire to go back and shove your success in their faces, ignite old flames, and laugh at the cheerleaders who never left town because they got saddled down young."
"You, uh, seem to speak from experience," JJ said with a laugh.
"Actually, I never had a high school to have a reunion at. I've just read about the supposed awkwardness."
The food came, the waitress winking at Derek as she passed the plates to their person and Tessa frowned, finding herself imagining shooting her in the forehead. She shook her head and blinked a few times to banish the image.
"I went to mine," JJ told them, "and it was awkward. An old ex tried to stick his tongue down my throat. It was horrible."
"Well, there's little chance of that happening to me," Tessa commented.
Garcia glanced to her. "Because you don't have an ex?"
She chuckled, "No. Because then he wouldn't have a tongue."
Spencer looked up in alarm. "I never knew about a boyfriend."
"I don't know if you could call him a boyfriend, Charlie. It was just a few dates."
"Yeah. Dates I didn't know about. Who was it?"
Tessa wished she hadn't said anything. It wasn't a big deal. She hadn't told him because Garrett's older brother and Spencer graduated together and Damian had been his chief tormentor. Garrett wasn't as malicious like his brother. He was just, without a backbone to stand up to others. That wasn't the same, but Spencer wouldn't see a difference. "No one you would know, Charlie."
"I know the names of your entire graduating class."
Gideon cleared his throat, sensing this could turn ugly if Spencer forced Tessa to answer, or tried to. "I think you should go," he told her. "You could go, see all of your friends, smirk secretively at your nemesis, all that jazz."
"You know, I think I will."
"Who was it?" The question made her jump at three in the morning when she came downstairs for a snack because she couldn't sleep. She gave a bit of a shriek and grabbed the counter with another hand over her heart.
"Jesus, Charlie! Don't do that." She reached over and flipped the light on. There he stood in his robe and dark circles under his eyes.
"Who was he?"
Tessa didn't answer at first, opening the fridge and pulling out a Greek yogurt, and a spoon from a drawer. "His name is Garrett Frost."
The effect was instantaneous as his face got redder than she'd ever seen except for that one time, when at eight, they'd had a bet that she started to see who could hold their breath longer. He'd won. Then he passed out. "Frost?" He repeated in a quiet tone that almost made her flinch. "As in Damian Frost?"
"His brother isn't like him, Charlie. It didn't even go anywhere. Do you remember when I called you to come get me? At the pizza place and we rode home on your bike with me on the handlebars? That was the last time I saw him outside of school functions."
"Why?" He asked. "If he isn't like his brother, why didn't it go anywhere?"
Tessa wasn't sure how to answer. Garrett really hadn't been as bad as his brother. He was just... a victim of peer pressure. An influenced member of the community that stated you were either the bully or the bullied. He wasn't Damian. "Because I was too much like mine."
The words hung in the air and Tessa was afraid it came out wrong, that it was harsh, but he seemed to understand what she didn't say. He was good at that. "I don't mean to be pushy," he said, taking a seat at the bar and taking an apple from the bowl of Granny Smiths and Red Delicious'. "You're my sister and I love you more than anyone else. I just want you to be happy."
"I know, Charlie. I love you too, but you can't protect me from everything. Especially when there's nothing to protect me from." She tossed her empty yogurt cart into the trash can and her spoon in the sink, walking around to kiss his head before walking back upstairs to try in vain to sleep.
She woke again not an hour later with a phone call, which she could barely see through squinted eyes said Ashleigh, and picked up with a groggy greeting. After half a moment, though, who was to say how long a moment has to be to be considered a moment- she jerked into an upright position at the breathy tone to her best friend's voice.
"Ash? What's wrong?" She tried not to think back to a night just over ten years ago that she received a similar call from her.
"She's dead." There was a hitch in Tessa's breathing as there had been ten years ago and Ash had said the same thing. "I'm in trouble. They think I did it, but I swear, Tess, I didn't. Please, I just, I need help."
Tessa threw her blanket off and swung her legs to the side off the bed, turning on the lamp beside her. "Ash, I need you to calm down. Who's dead?"
"Cadence," her friend sobbed.
Cadence? Cadence Reagan? "Cadence Reagan?" The girl on the phone sniffed and gave an affirmative. Cadence was a pretty girl, what Spencer would call- a mean girl. Tessa stood up and left her room to walk across the hall to Spencer's room. "Alright, Ash. Charlie and I will be there tomorrow. I'll get you out of this, I promise."
They hung up and Tessa found herself banging on Spencer's door and then throwing the door open. He'd almost been hit by the door as he had been coming to open it. She walked past him and started pacing his room, which was rather small. "Ash is in trouble," she told him, repeating everything that Ashleigh had told her.
She could see the wheels in his head turn as he nodded to himself on what he thought they had to do. "Okay," he said. "Okay. You go pack and I'll call Hotch- tell him we need a few personal days. You pack and get the plane tickets. We'll take a cab."
Tessa nodded dumbly and left to her room, turning on the light and pulling her old suitcase out of her closet to leave open on her bed. The she went over to laptop, pulling up a travel site to purchase the tickets- two that boarded in just under three hours. She couldn't believe her luck. She started pulling things out of her dresser, then to the wardrobe in the closet where she yanked things out and tossed them to her suitcase.
By the time she was done, Spencer was at her door with his own suitcase. "Cancel the flights," he said. "JJ got us invited. It's our case."
She hugged him tightly. "Oh, thank God. Let's go, I'll cancel them on the way."
"They sent us their files on the murder," JJ told them on the jet. "There were two. Miranda Cross Tuesday and Cadence Reagan yesterday."
Tessa shook her leg and restrained from pulling out her hair. "Miranda Cross?"
"You know her?" Gideon asked.
She nodded. "She was in our class, mine and Ash's. She, uh, well, she was a bully. She and Cadence both were. What about the crime scene?"
"Miranda Cross' hair was shaved," Hotch said, "and her nails were pulled from her nail beds. Cadence Reagan was... oh my God, she was, she was skinned. But, they were both beaten to death."
Tessa felt like she was going to throw up and then Emily said, "What's with the crickets?"
Her head shot up. "Crickets? What crickets?"
"There were crickets found on and around the bodies," Gideon told her slowly, watching her face turn green. "Why? Does that mean something to you?"
Tessa went to nod, went she tore out of her seat and to the bathroom where she unloaded the contents of her stomach. A moment later, Derek was holding her hair back and Spencer was at the door, looking on worriedly. When she was done, she sat back against Derek and he held her for a few minutes before helping her up. After another few minutes, she came out from brushing her teeth and sat down beside Derek, him wrapping an arm around her.
"Cricket is what we called Ashleigh's sister, Cindy. She hated that name. Before she died it brown, she had red hair and green eyes that were too big for her face. Ash always told her it made her look like a bug so we called her Cricket." Tessa remembered the day she died her hair, hating the red where Ash embraced it, and they all joked that she looked more like Tessa's twin than Ashleigh's. "She was bullied, badly. Ash and I tried to stop it when we could, but none of us were someone people listened to. When they were seventeen, and I was fifteen, Cricket committed suicide. Ash found her in bed with the pill bottle still in her hand."
Her voice broke on the last word and she covered her mouth. "That's why they think it's her. Miranda and Cadence were awful to her. To everyone. Miranda, she was terribly vain about her hair. Cadence had perfect skin. It was something everyone associated them with."
"Then the unsub is trying to deprive them of it," Hotch said.
Gideon set the file down and looked her in the eye. "Elisabeth, I need to know. Is there any possible way your friend could have done this?"
Her expression was adamant, but she wasn't the one that answered. "None." Everyone except Tessa turned to look at Spencer. "Ashleigh was distraught over what happened to Cricket, we all were, but she didn't blame anyone for her sister's death except maybe herself. Even there, she was able to later accept that her sister needed help. It was no one's fault. One of those tricks nature plays."
That last sentence was a direct quote. Tessa remembered when her friend had said that. "Ashleigh isn't capable of this. I can't think of anyone I knew that is."
"Well," Derek held her hand, "we'll find out who did this," he whispered close to her ear.
"I'm Captain Jay Travis," he said, shaking JJ's hand. "We spoke on the phone. It's a privilege to be working alongside you. Truly."
"Thank you," Hotch told him. "I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner. You've met our Communications Liaison, Jennifer Jareau. This is SSA's Jason Gideon, Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan, Elisabeth Reid, and Dr. Spencer Reid."
The man, an older man with a very well maintained head of graying hair and a bit of a portly figure, frowned. "Did you say Reid?"
Las Vegas was big, the twenty eighth biggest city in the United States and the most biggest in Nevada, but it was broken into different sections- each section a large part of the city in and of its self. She'd lived Downtown and though the sections were big, each felt like a small town though. She supposed it wasn't surprising that the Downtown section Captain knew their name.
"Where is Ashleigh Keogh?" She asked instead of answering.
He blinked a few times and pointed behind him. "The interrogation room."
Tessa brushed past him and towards the room where she threw the door open. Someone was sitting across from her and stood when the door opened and went to stop her, but she pulled her badge out and tossed it roughly at him before pulling her friend to her in a desperate embrace. Ash held onto her hard, crying into her shoulder. Then,
"Tessa?"
Her closed eyes, that she hadn't realized she'd closed, flashed open. Garrett. There were footsteps behind her. "Elisabeth?" That was Gideon and Tessa moved away from her friend to address the team.
"Ash, this is my team. We're going to get you out of this. I promise." She pulled Ash to them by the hand and introduced everyone. "Guys, this is my friend, Ashleigh. And-" Tessa looked back at Garrett, whom she hadn't seen since graduation. He still had those blue eyes. "This is Garrett Frost. An old friend."
"Friend?" He echoed. "Is that all?"
She looked away. "Where are we set up?"
Derek clenched his jaw at the look this Frost guy was giving his girl. And the way she'd looked at him for that split moment before he brought up the past. He stepped into the room and grabbed her hand, interlocking their fingers. "I'll show you."
Lieutenant, in the ten years since they'd graduated, Garrett had become a lieutenant in the Downtown Police Department. Tessa had gone to school and left with a doctorate and two bachelors. Ash had gone and started her own coffee shop/bookstore with pun based drinks from her favorite books and poems. She supposed they'd each done well for themselves.
"Our unsub is male, mid to late twenties. The murders were spurred by the high school reunion, but we can't let ourselves get caught up in that. He might just live in the area. He obviously blames these victims for Cynthia Keogh's suicide, and from that we think he had romantic feelings for her most likely before her death- but it is possible that he obsessed over her afterwards and became overwhelmed by feelings then. He's reckless, not stopping to be careful with leaving a trail and only worried about vengeance. When we find him he may respond best if Ashleigh talks to him. He probably works a menial job, not under any large amount of supervision, and very submissive in nature. You wouldn't notice him at first."
Derek couldn't help but notice that while Gideon gave the profile, the Frost fellow watched Tessa. It was obvious, to him at least, that she noticed too as she would start to look that way and stop herself. He stood beside her, behind Emily and Hotch, and he reached over and grabbed her hand, squeezing it gently. She squeezed back. And he smiled.
"We're wanting to keep this out of the press," Spencer said. "He wants to call attention to these murders and what he's trying to represent with them. We leave that out of the press, and he'll most likely contact us which will help us find him."
"I need to talk to you," Derek whispered lowly in her ear.
Then a phone rang.
"If one suffers we all suffer. Togetherness is strength. Courage." -Jean-Bertrand Aristide
A/N: Whew. Hope you like this chapter, guys. I'm actually REALLY proud of it. So, there's a website where you can literally design a house and I LOVE IT! I've been using it to create what I think my characters houses would be so I can use it in my stories. It's called and it's free to do. You don't even have to sign up if you don't want.
So, I'm not going to make much more of a big deal to the drama with Tessa, Morgan, and Garrett than I have. It may or may not come to a head at some point, but she's Morgan's girl and has been from the start. It's a bit obvious. Also, there were concerns of favoritism. Every parent has a favorite and any who say they don't is lying, I just never happened to be either of mine. Maybe favorite isn't the right word. Gideon loves all three of them- Spencer, Tessa, and Stephen equally, but he identifies the most with Tessa. He feels more connected with Tessa. But I'm not trying to write her as his favorite. Is that coming out right? Anyway...
Ashleigh will not be a huge part of my story, but she will be recurring I think- from time to time. Who else totally flipped out when Reid got shot in the neck at the end of the ninth season? I was freaking! I may not go too much in detail about the actual case, but focused more on the in between and personal stuff this case brings. Like an appearance from Garrett's older brother- Damian.
Love always, Skye.
