Chapter Seven: The Flight
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It's been nine months since she died to save her family.
It's been nine months since the day JJ and Hotch killed her at her request, because if they hadn't, Doyle would have left her as the last one standing. It's always been his intention. Spencer and Elliott dead, and Emily alone.
Penance for Declan.
Almost nine months to the day, she wakes up to messages on their scrabble game. She doesn't think much of it at the time. Doesn't think much except how tired she is, as the game boots and the messages slowly load.
Cheeto-breath: If I asked you to come home, would it be possible…
Cheeto-breath: Only if it's safe
Cheeto-breath: I'm sorry Em. I'm so sorry. Spence killed himself last night.
Honestly, she should have realized. There were so many fucking clues.
But at first, there's just the shock. And not much else.
But there's a tiny part of her that whispers this isn't right, and it's that part that stays her hand. She doesn't break cover. She books a flight home under her assumed name. And she absolutely does not do the one thing that will destroy her.
She does not grieve.
Not yet.
If they know I'm alive, so does Doyle. You can't tell them.
She stands by this.
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Elliott is crying. The man is ranting. But Reid's mind is circling, wheeling, fixated on one singular utterance.
I was going to kill you like I killed your wife…
I killed your wife.
There's a gun to his head and his daughter watching as he kneels execution style on the bedroom floor, and all he can think about is those four words.
"You don't need to kill me," he says, because he was a profiler once and those skills are still in there, somewhere. Buried deep. "Emily is dead. Whatever revenge you have planned—"
The man laughs. Coldly, cruelly, and Reid's guts drop to his knees. He could die here and he can't risk making a move without endangering his daughter, frozen in the corner of the room with her face white with shock and mouth gaping soundlessly, eyes locked on him.
The man leans closer. The gun barrel shifts behind his ear, jabs harder, and Reid knows if it goes off there won't be enough of his skull left to identify him. "You fucking idiot," the man says, quietly. "She's not dead. They played us both. And now it's my turn to play them."
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She goes home and the apartment building is as silent as the grave. Silent of those who matter, anyway. She sees neighbours, she sees the everyday bustle of the street, but she doesn't see her team. She doesn't see her family. And she doesn't see anything that tells her one way or the other what is happening here.
Night ticks into the darkest morning, and she sees nothing, her hand on her phone and her old team's numbers scrawled on a notepad in her pocket. It would take a second to call JJ, to clarify those messages. A second to call Hotch. She stays her hand because if it wasn't JJ writing those messages, this is very likely a trap, and she won't draw her team into that. Not yet. Not like Tsia.
As it turns out, JJ calls first.
"JJ," Emily says, answering on the first dull thrum of her phone vibrating against her leg. There is a light on in their apartment. It's been burning all night. She hasn't seen anyone moving around, but that doesn't mean anything. Reid always keeps a light on and ever since Elliott, he goes to bed when she does even if he doesn't sleep. She can't see their bedroom from here. "Is he dead?"
There's a shocked noise. "Jesus, Emily, where are you?" her friend asks. Emily can hear traffic humming. "I just saw—I didn't send those messages. He's not dead. That wasn't me."
The light flickers out. Emily goes cold.
"I'm home," she says, and begins to run. "Get here now. Now!"
I was going to kill you like I killed your wife… but I've decided it's far more fun if you kill yourself.
The gun is warmed by his skin. Reid considers his options.
"Tick tock, Dr. Reid. Don't make me splatter your pretty little girlie with gunk. That's the kind of thing that creates daddy issues. Then again, daddy issues seem a given considering who her mom is… she's a wildcat in bed though, isn't she? I don't really blame you for knocking her up. Marrying her though? Oh, I hate you for that."
Reid swallows again. "I won't do it in front of my daughter," he says, and Elliott makes a harsh kind of choking sound deep in her chest but stays silent. Has been silent since the man first screamed at her to get in here. Has been silent since watching her daddy get pistol whipped across the jaw. Shock, Reid thinks numbly, his face aching. He's going to incapacitate me and I can't stop him. What will happen to her?
"I'll let her close her eyes. Hurry up. I have a date with your wife."
Reid takes the hypodermic with a shaking hand.
He just needs… time.
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The door is open.
Out of all the things Emily has ever feared, ever been afraid of, there's nothing that's chilled her more deeply than this open door. She brushes her hand against it and it grates open soundlessly, thumping against the wall. It's open, and the apartment is silent.
Darkness yawns back at her. There's not a single light on, and that's horrifying too. Spencer, not in all the time she's known him, has ever turned off every light.
"JJ," she says, very quietly, fully aware that she's unarmed, fully aware that this is a trap with her family in the centre. "Call for help. Now."
JJ hisses. "Don't go in there," she's saying, and Emily can hear her running. "Em, don't—"
Emily hangs up. And steps in.
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It's not your poison of choice, but beggars can't be choosers.
He tries. He tries.
Clings to himself as his mind begins to scatter with a rush that's sickeningly strong, and he knows in that instant that he has less than a minute to make his move. It's pure. It's stronger than anything he's taken before, and he's seven months clean.
He has a minute until total incapacitation.
Sixty seconds.
In the first ten, he's frozen waiting for that rush. Frozen staring at his daughter, her eyes scrunched shut at his command. The gun slips away and he thinks move, now. Take him down. Get the weapon, but it's not ten seconds anymore, and he blinks and the floor rushes to meet him.
On his side. Lethal respiratory depression, he thinks (forty-eight seconds) as he watches Elliott scream and leap towards him in hazy stop-motion. Disorientation. An arm catches her mid-jump, heaves her up (thirty). Uncontrollable muscle movements. He knows from prior experience he's shaking hard enough they're bordering convulsions, and he's seen enough users to know how terrifying this must look to her.
And he knows what he's waiting for.
The man looks down at him and when Reid blinks again, he's gone and so is the gun along with all the air in the room.
Get up.
Elliott's gone.
He's got her.
Get up.
(Ten)
He gets up. The world jitters as he moves, too slow, too fast, too undulating. Takes two staggering steps to the door but that's not right, not yet, and turns and falls and gets back up. Twice more.
Closet. Reaches.
His fingers brush the box. Pushed right up the back. Something in his gut twists and spasms and he gags, tasting bile. Falls again. Catches himself on the shelf and pulls the whole thing down with a crash. The box skids away from his hand, topples over, spilling the contents across the carpet like a kaleidoscope of things that could save his daughter, if only he was strong enough.
(Zero)
Elliott.
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There's a kitten. It runs away from her, up the dark hall and into Elliott's silent bedroom, and Emily stares at it. For a moment too long, because it had scared the shit out of her, this one small sign of life.
There's a cough. It's a wet sound, almost a gagging sound, and she moves quickly towards it.
When she turns on their bedroom light, he's on the ground looking at her, and his eyes have never been more empty.
"Spence?" she asks, stupidly, and she can smell vomit and piss and something acrid, and then it hits her. "Oh god." Two steps to clear the bedroom, and he's laying half covered in the contents of their closet, not looking at her at all. Looking past her.
In that moment, she flicks from wife to agent. Airways first. He's vomited, laying on his back; he's choking on it. It's the work of a second to roll him to his side, clear his throat, hear that fucking gorgeous sound of air working its way into his lungs again in a rattling heave.
Thumping feet. JJ hurtles in, gun in hand. Stares. "Where's Elliott?" screams someone, maybe JJ, maybe Emily, maybe some stranger that slipped in while Spencer was dying, and JJ has her phone to her ear as she vanishes back out the room. Nine-one-one, what's your emergency, and Emily kneels on a wire hanger as she leans down and shakes Spencer until his eyes—pinpoint pupils, getting smaller as she watches—focus on her. "Where's Elliott?" she asks again, and his mouth moves uselessly, the drug dragging him down and away from her.
And Emily knows, Doyle, because this is just his fucking style.
"Box," Spencer rasps suddenly, his tongue finally obeying him, and his arm jerks grossly outward. "Em. Box…"
She's never been one to ignore him, and she's not choosing now to start. There's a shoebox on its side and she's pretty sure she drags her knee through vomit to get to it, but when she does she's glad she did.
"Elliott's not here," JJ says, as Emily fumbles with Spencer's arm and slips the syringe into the steady blue of his tensed vein, depressing it slowly. "Hotch is on his way, medics too. Is that Narcan? Is he high?"
"Doyle," Emily says, head spinning, pulling the needle free and pressing her thumb to the injection point as every muscle the body under her hands seems to relax at once. She stares in his eyes as they shutter shut, flick back open, the pupils diluting rapidly. One part of her notes the bloodied smear of the track mark that almost killed him, alone on the bare skin of his arm. He was clean. He was fucking clean. "Doyle did this. He's taken her. He's taken Elliott."
Spencer suddenly twists under her arms, fighting the drugs in his system to get to his feet. "We have to…" he slurs, shaking his head, falling again, and Jesus fuck, if she could feel anything but fear right now, she's be thanking him for being alive. "I couldn't. Get to it quick enough. He's got—"
And he stops. Narrows his eyes, and turns his head to stare at Emily.
"I'm hallucinating," he says, quite clearly, and passes out.
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"No. I'm refusing medical care."
Hotch reaches for his arm again, but he jerks away, furious. Why are they worrying about him? His daughter is gone, missing, taken, and they're wasting their time with her addict father instead of finding her. "Spencer, you're shaking," he says, and his eyes are worried and Reid hates him in that moments; hates the concern, hates the kindness, hates the fact that he's here and not chasing Ian Doyle down like a hound pulling down a fox.
The paramedics begin to move away, finally. They can't force him. He signed the statement saying he was refusing them, he's had two shots of naloxone, they've given him another shot for later when he needs it, and if it wasn't for the fact that he needs to be up and looking for his daughter, needs his mind working, he'd almost wish he'd taken the bullet.
And nearby. Nearby.
Reid turns on the spot, peering up at the apartment where police are tearing it apart looking for anything that will lead them to Ian Doyle. Peers down at the door where Morgan is standing shell-shocked and pale, Emily at his side. Emily.
Raging and shouting and frantic to find their daughter and, most of all, alive.
There's twenty-three feet of space between them, and nine months of time, and Reid doesn't know how to cross either with the weight of her wedding ring around his neck hauling him to the ground.
"We can't be involved with this investigation," Hotch says, and bullshit they can't. Reid turns on him, furious, and Hotch doesn't flinch. "We can't be officially involved, Spencer. Are you listening?"
He is.
"You knew about Emily," he says instead of anything else that's dancing on his tongue—instead of telling him how much he despises him for this, instead of thanking him for it, instead of voicing the alluring whisper that points out precipitated withdrawal is going to slow you down and you have twenty-four hours before statistically she's dead; you'll work better high than you will withdrawing. "You and JJ."
"Yes." The words are heavy and they break something between them.
But Emily never would have walked away if she had a choice.
"You know who this man is. This… Ian Doyle." It's a statement, not a question, and Reid looks at his hands as he asks it, at the veins and muscles standing out starkly against the skin, cording with the tension thrumming through his body and making every extremity sweat and shake. His head is spinning, his gut aching, he knows he's going to be ill again, violently ill, and he can't spare the time to allow it.
"Yes."
Reid heaves a breath. Shoves those shaking hands in the pockets of the coat Hotch had slipped over his shoulders as he'd sat on the ambulance in nothing but the clean shirt JJ had had the presence of mind to grab him as the police had ushered them out of his home. Their home. Theirs again, maybe, if she stays. If they find her. If they don't lose something today. "Then you have a profile—"
"Reid, I don't think—"
"—is he going to kill her?" Don't lie to me, Reid says with his eyes and his posture, facing his friend as a father and a husband and a colleague all at once. Don't lie, Aaron, because Emily knows and you know I'll be able to tell.
Hotch doesn't lie.
"He'll try."
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Rossi is stiff and awkward, hovering by her side without actually saying anything, but when the woman walks towards them, he presses closer. Protective.
"SSA Jacobs," the woman introduces herself, but Emily already knows who she's with, even if the large CARD logo emblazoned across her FBI windbreaker hadn't already given the game away. "I'm with the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team. May I have a moment of your time, Ms. Prentiss?"
And there it is. It hammers home in that moment. There's another member of the CARD team talking to Spencer across the street. Their child is a statistic. Everything she did to keep them safe, gone in a moment. Doyle found them anyway.
"If you're considering us as suspects, you're wasting your time," Emily says, her eyes still on Spencer as he lifts his hands to his face and presses them across his mouth, as though trying to hold himself together. "I know the stats, but this isn't a parental abduction."
"Our technical analyst can back us up on this," Rossi adds suddenly, tone husky, and Emily realizes with a jolt that he's not here working the job, not here simply because their daughter is gone and he needs to find her. Not like Morgan, who's coldly determined, or Hotch, who's just determined. Rossi is here because he loves Elliott, has since the first time Emily dropped her onto his lap and told him to look after that, there's a lad. "She's been tracing the messages used to lure Agent Prentiss back to the States, and can confirm they do appear to have been sent by—"
"Ian Doyle," Jacobs interrupts. "I know. We're looking into it. But there are other aspects we need to consider—"
"Can I speak to my husband?" There's nothing Emily can tell them that they don't already know, and Spencer has his back to the grimy wall behind him, sliding down it. On the ground, his head in his hands, and the CARD agent reaches a consoling hand down. "Please." Without waiting for an answer, she strides away, almost walking into a cruiser as her focus narrows to the man shattering in the dim light of this endless dawn.
His eyes flick up to her as she approaches, watching her over his splayed fingers. He's talking monotonously. Describing…
Her clothes. He's giving a description of what she was wearing for the AMBER alert.
Emily stumbles.
"He may change her clothes," Spencer ends with, dropping his arms to watch her openly. "She was scared. She's only four and she was terrified, she…" He trails off again. He's struggling, openly, unable to hide any of the emotions rippling across his features with the withdrawal still delaying his reactions. Fear, anger, hatred. "If he intends upon keeping her a-alive, he might… change."
"Thank you," murmurs the agent, noting Emily, and vanishes. Leaving them alone. They're not suspects. Emily supposes she can thank Hotch for that, because every procedure should have them both still being questioned, separated, distrusted.
"We're going to find her," Emily says. The first thing she says to him since dying, at least while he's conscious enough to heed her words. "She's going to be fine."
"Three hours," he replies, and stands slowly. Painfully. She blinks, seeing him clearly for the first time in the weak, blue morning light, and he's older. So much older, and she did this to him. There are lines around his mouth that draw it down, lines around his eyes that make him look tired, his hair is short. "In cases where the child is abducted and killed, seventy-six percent of the time it takes place within the first three hours. And he intends on killing her."
She shakes her head, stubborn. Always stubborn. "Not without me he won't," she says, because this is revenge. It's not enough just to take her daughter. He'll want her to watch. "He's doing this to hurt me. He thinks I killed his son."
Spencer cocks his head and examines her, almost like how he used to. There's curiosity under the clawing grief. "Did you?" he asks calmly, and she's floored. Shakes her head. Feels the shock crack and become a hot, spilling kind of pain that floods her chest and works its way up to dry her throat, to burn behind her eyes. He doesn't seem to notice this, or if he does, he doesn't respond to it. "You know, seeing you standing here and Elliott not…" She watches his throat work as he swallows, as he struggles to bite back whatever his stuttering brain is throwing at him, as he fights and loses the cruelty withdrawal always taints him with. "I'd rather bury you again than her."
It's cruel.
It's expected.
"So would I," she answers, as he walks away.
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They're at Rossi's with every scrap of the case they've been able to beg, buy, and steal from the FBI's databases, with Garcia's help. It's like stepping back in time. The whiteboard with pictures of the victim (the victim, not Elliott, compartmentalize effectively to do your job), Morgan and Emily with their heads bowed together as they work on a profile, JJ working with Garcia, cross-legged on the rug. Reid has the geographical profile pinned to Rossi's wall in front of him.
It's like stepping back in time, except for the notable differences.
The fact that he's not Emily, he can't compartmentalize… that's the biggest one.
It's three am. In two hours, she'll have been gone for the full twenty-four.
Emily's phone is on a cleared space in the centre of the room, mockingly staying silent. They're waiting for it to ring. Wanting it to. He has to ring, to mock, to taunt, but he hasn't yet and the wait is destructive.
Reid glances at it once. Then again. Then stares at it, as though willing it to move, to hum, to anything. He's wrecked, agonisingly tired and every muscle is sparking with a red-hot pain to remind him of his weaknesses. Of his failures. She should be in bed. Curled up with her toys and her kitten and her scrapbook, and she's not. His heart stumbles, skips, his pulse racing and lungs choking for a long moment, the memory of their failure to continue working heavy in his mind.
"Spence." He turns his head towards that voice. Rossi. Eyes worried, the box of Doyle's victims he's picking through to try and find a pattern still under his palm. "You need to sleep. You can't keep pushing yourself, your body is already under enough strain. Just a couple of hours, kid."
The others are looking at him. "You look like you're going to drop," Morgan says, which is rich considering he doesn't look much better. No one has really broached the topic of the ghost in their midst yet, even as the day grinds on and makes her look more corpse than woman. "Seriously, we'll wake you if we find something. You gotta rest or you'll crack right when we need you."
It's a valid, logical point, and he's clinging to logic right now because rationality will see him through this when his emotions would see him break. So he goes. Reluctantly and knowing he'll just lie awake for those few hours, visualizing every case they've failed before.
But as soon as he falls fully dressed onto Rossi's bed, he's leaden, slipping under almost instantly. Waking only once, to a soft knock on the door, and the ghost of Emily Prentiss sidling through.
I love you, he thinks, looking at that ghost, but he doesn't say it because he can't allow that emotion just yet. Not until their daughter is safe. I hate you, because it's her demons that did this.
"Stay away from me," he says instead of all those things, because his demons are still visible in the shake of his body and the clammy cast of his skin, and he needs her to be stronger than him right now.
She goes and he sleeps and their daughter is still lost to them.
.
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She doesn't listen to him. This time.
He's smarter than her, but he's also hurting, withdrawn, confused, unwell. She sees it in his eyes when she follows him into the room. There's no venom in his words, just… exhaustion. He can't focus on her being back, being alive, not yet.
So she handles it. Alone. Just like she's been for the last nine months.
Emily Prentiss had a family to protect and she died for that. Emily Prentiss would have clung to her husband, and he'd have held her close and borne her through this impossible twist. From profiler to corpse to victim.
But she's not Emily Prentiss anymore, not really. Not yet.
Maybe one day.
When she finds herself again, she's curled up outside watching the sun come up over the tips of the trees in Rossi's backyard. The grass is wet with frost, her breath fogging, the world is silent, and there are so many hearts being broken around her. Not just hers and Spencer's. The team's. Her family. The family that's missing. A TV fires up in Rossi's kitchen, the window just thin enough that she can hear it.
Response teams investigating the abduction of four-year-old Elliott Elizabeth Prentiss… any information, please call this hotline… abductor considered armed and very dangerous, do not approach… she was last seen wearing…
"Emily." It's JJ, her feet quiet on except for the crunch of frost under her heels. Unlike Emily, she's wearing shoes. Emily welcomes the cold. It reminds her that she's alive to feel chilled, alive and able and not giving up on seeing her daughter again. I wonder what she looks like now, she thinks suddenly, because it's been nine months. I wonder how she's changed. If she goes inside, she can see. Look at the picture on the news that Spencer supplied the investigators with. Relearn the shape of her daughter's face from the photo declaring her gone. "It's freezing out here. Come on, come inside…" A warm hand on her cheek, her shoulder, easing her up.
Emily turns and finds herself almost in her friend's arms. There's a look in JJ's eyes that shatters her resolve.
"What if she's gone already?" Emily breathes, unthinkingly, and crumples into those arms. "What if we're already too late? What is he waiting for?"
But she already knows the answer.
This. This is exactly what he's waiting for.
Them to fall apart.
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And the hours tick by.
Oddly, he discovers that he speaks less as time slips away and the tension builds. The withdrawal fades to a numb reminder but the horror doesn't fade. They go over every scrap of information they have and then they do it again and then they do it once more.
Twenty-eight hours, and he's awake and redoing his geographical profile for the fourth time as Rossi makes coffee and they try to choke down buttered toast. He brings his back up and washes his face to continue the illusion that he's coping.
Thirty hours, and JJ sneaks away so no one sees her crying, but they all know. They all know.
Thirty-five hours, and Emily is interviewed again by CARD. Thirty-six and they interview him and he hears Emily shout from the other room what's fucking rapid about this? and almost laughs. Almost.
Forty, and they let them go home to collect belongings. Sergio is locked in Rossi's laundry, so Reid finds his favourite toy and tucks it in his pocket. No reason the kitten should be miserable as well, he figures, despite the animal being somehow aware that something is missing and refusing to come out from under the washer. I miss her too, Reid had mumbled to the growls emitting from the tiny space, but the cat hadn't responded.
He collects a change of clothes and flees the room that's scattered with memories of that horrible night, dodging evidence markers. Finds Emily standing in Elliott's room, holding her scrapbook in both hands and looking breathless, poleaxed. It's open. Pushing aside his innate mistrust of the walking dead, Reid steps closer and looks down at it.
My Mama in his handwriting. Elliott's underneath. The page is bare except for those lines.
Mama is gone now. I miss Mama. Daddy cries. I miss Daddy too.
"I never would have gone if I had a choice," Emily whispers, more to the book than him. As though Elliott can hear her through the pages. "He was going to hurt you to hurt me. Hurt Elliott."
"I know," Reid says, and takes the book from her gently. Closes it and hugs it close with one arm, the other hand free and cold and itching to move towards her. To touch her. Would she feel the same? "I… I would have done the same."
She looks at him, the same endless dark eyes he fell in love with, and his heart stutters in his chest to remind him he never fell out of love. She holds her hand out, a request.
He takes it.
A promise.
.
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Forty-nine hours, and they can't keep going like this. The others are floundering, Hotch and JJ haven't seen their own children since it began, and they're all looking drawn.
"Bed," Rossi orders, shooing them. "Here, no one leaves. No one is driving in this state." They obey because no one has the energy left to argue.
Emily is curled up next to JJ in the spare room, and she can't sleep. The scrapbook taunts her, those scratchy pages. Elliott's careful letters, so determined to get them right, and she couldn't write when Emily left. Could read, but not write, and it's a painful reminder that there's a gap of time that Emily is missing of her daughter's life that she might never get back.
She might never have more.
JJ is asleep, deeply so, her breathing long and even, so Emily slides out of the bed and pads up the silent hall. Rossi's office door is cracked open, the only one to be so, and she sees Hotch watching her from his made-up bed on the couch against the wall in there. Lifts his head, eyes shadowed in the gloom, and watches her silently as she curls her palm about the cold handle of the master bedroom where Spencer is and slides in. The door closes between her and his steady regard, and she presses her cheek against the wood and tries to remember how to breathe.
"Em." The voice is hoarse, brittle. She turns again, finds Reid curled on top of the covers with his knees to his chest and his eyes puffy-red and swollen. The kitten—she hasn't asked its name yet and she should—is pressed against his chest, purring vibrantly, his wide hand draped over top. She steps closer and can see the trail on her husband's cheeks from tears.
The knowledge he's been crying floors her.
He shifts, uncomfortable, and something glints at his chest. Her ring. She knows it's her ring, because his is vivid on his finger against the black fur of the kitten.
And it's stupid, reckless, she hasn't the right anymore, but she moves swiftly across the room to join him on the bed, the mattress dipping between them and drawing them together, and wrapping herself as close to him as she can get without crushing the cat. Head to his chest, mouth against his collarbone, knees knocking together, and she gasps for air as her lungs fail her.
There's no response for the longest moment. Her mouth brushes the chain with her ring. Turning her head, she can hear his heart in his chest, still beating. Broken. Heartbroken, assuredly, but still beating. "Don't send me away," she says into that beating heart, tilting her mouth to brush a kiss against the skin bared to her. Once, twice, desperate. "Please. I can't bear it."
She actually feels it jolt, miss a beat. Slam twice to catch up as he sags into her grip, almost-rough fingers catching her jaw and dragging her mouth up to meet his. It's a long, painful embrace and she knows his touch in every iota of her body.
"No matter what happens," he says into her mouth, shaping the words carefully against her lips, "don't leave again. I can't… can't let you back in if you're going to leave again. Not into her life… or mine."
The tears come along with the words. I won't. He holds her until both have faded, and they fall asleep together.
But she wakes first, to a hum at her hip. Her phone. A message.
Unknown Number: Time to play, sweetheart.
She freezes. Spencer shifts against her, murmurs something in his sleep, a flicker of some dark misery passing across his features. Her phone hums again. MMS received. A swipe of her thumb and Elliott stares up at her, hazel eyes wide and teary, grime across her mouth. She's holding her stuffed cat, fingers digging into the soft plush. There's a bruise on her temple, small and grazed, red-raw against her white skin.
Another buzz.
Unknown Number: Come alone. If you're late, so is she.
