Title: Wait for the Wheel
Rating:
PG-13
Fandom:
Criminal Minds
Universe:
Different Destinations (Part 2)
Characters/Pairing:
Reid-centric, team - gen
Genre:
Suspense/Drama
Summary:
Infamous serial killer Spencer Reid is back, and this time he won't be content with taking just one BAU member. This time, he has to have them all.
Warnings: Character Death
Author's Note: Well the poll results are in, and the majority of you are sadists. This story will now contain character death, with Morgan's hot cousin Sergeant Spanks-a-lot being the most popular victim.

Wait for the Wheel

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

Jane Wagner

IX

Jennifer Jareau opened her eyes with a groan, and for a second, it almost seemed as though she hadn't opened them at all. Wherever she was, it was pitch dark, and her hands were bound behind her back. Her breaths came in short gasps, and even then it seemed like the hardest thing in the world.

All in all, not the most optimistic of situations.

It wasn't a situation she was used to; people thought the job was a lot more exciting, a lot more dramatic than it really was. Aside from a few exceptions, the job was mostly investigation and paperwork, with that side order of adrenaline.

For JJ, this was new.

She'd never been in this predicament before. Maybe that was something to do with the fact that she didn't see the field nearly as much as the rest of the team, but then, it wasn't as though this had happened in the middle of a high-stakes raid. They'd been ambushed.

Spencer Reid had outsmarted them.

Unsurprising, considering the profile – the BAU housed some of the best minds in law enforcement, but none of them had anything near the kind of genius that Reid had.

Her body tightened as she heard a noise, and her brain took a few seconds to interpret the sound. Another groan. Not her voice this time – deeper, more gravelly. Male.

'What the hell?' David Rossi muttered, and JJ almost felt like laughing. It wasn't often that Rossi was so…uninformed.

'You got whacked in the head with a plank of wood,' she informed him, and even though it was pitch dark, she knew that he was frowning.

'I know,' he growled. There was a pause. 'Drugged, too.'

JJ blinked. That would explain the fuzziness. Aside from a few cases of local anesthesia, and the occasional Advil, she wasn't exactly used to being drugged, either.

'Means he didn't want us to wake up on the way here,' Rossi continued. 'Guy's a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, he wouldn't be able to take us both on if we woke up on him.'

'One eighty, actually,' a voice spoke, out of the darkness. 'I try to work out.'

JJ heard a switch flip, and the room was suddenly cloaked in light. Her eyes didn't particularly like the sudden change in luminance. Spencer Reid was sitting on a stool on the far side of the room. She hadn't exactly had the chance to examine his appearance in great detail when fighting for her life, but now, given the opportunity, she could tell how different he seemed.

Evidently, Reid had taken the time to change since their confrontation at the house - he was wearing khakis and a lavender Oxford shirt, overlaid with an argyle vest, and a thin tie. His hair was a lot longer than last time, starting to curl towards his chin. In another life, she might have seen him as attractive, in a strange sort of way, but right now, it was difficult to shake the fact that he was a ruthless killer.

'What the hell do you want?' Rossi demanded, and JJ looked sideways at him. There was blood on the side of his face, trickling down, from where the plank had hit him. She knew she probably looked a lot worse – he'd managed to get in a few blows to the face, and there was most definitely swelling already.

'Interesting,' Reid said with a laugh. 'I would have thought that the author of The Secret Desires of Sadistic Serial Killers would be able to answer that question himself. I guess I overestimated you.'

The words were undoubtedly meant to sting, but JJ knew David Rossi; he would be getting up in arms less about the words of a pathological liar, and moreso over the fact that they had managed to get themselves abducted in the first place.

Whatever the outcome, it was going to be a hell of a lot of paperwork.

Emily ducked out of the house the moment Hotch arrived, the dead woman's children having accompanied local uniforms back to the station. Part of her wanted to stay with them, to reassure them that everything would be okay, but that was a lie – a lie to herself as well as a lie to them.

She found herself sitting on a porch chair that overlooked the street; she needed her mind to focus, to think about why Spencer Reid would have taken JJ or Rossi, about where he would have taken them.

The answer to the first question was easy. Profiling 101. It was a message. More specifically, a message to Hotch - "I have your people. I can do whatever I want with them." The last time they'd played that game had been a little different. Last time Emily had been on the other side, but she wasn't exactly sure that it was any more comforting to be on this side. She knew firsthand the horrors that her friends would be going through, the horrors she relived in her nightmares.

Emily's hand slipped into her pocket, and pulled out a golden chain, a few specks of blood – her blood – still caught between the links. She briefly considered taking a toothbrush to it, but on the list of important things in her life, it wasn't exactly close to the top right now.

She let the chain wrap around her fingers, the cross lying in her closed fist.

'Hey.'

Emily looked up to see Morgan standing by the chair.

'Can I sit with you?' he asked, gesturing towards the empty seat beside her. There was some kind of anger in his expression, which was unsurprising, but he wasn't punching walls, or throwing furniture. Derek Morgan had changed a lot in the time that she'd known him. Whether that was because he was becoming used to the atrocities of the job, or he was succumbing to the despair, it was sometimes hard to tell.

It was a fine line.

She inclined her head slightly in assent, fearing her voice might crack if she said anything.

'I still can't…' She choked on the words, feeling the tears at the corner of her eyes. Derek let his hand rest on hers, the friction rubbing the chain against her skin. She looked up and saw that he had tears in his own eyes as well, and somehow, that made her feel a little less stupid about what she was going to say. 'All my life, I've been taught to keep my emotions behind locked doors, but…doing this job. At first you think you might get used to all the death, all that sadness. But there's always just one more sick, freakish bastard out there who's determined to overshadow any decent thing in the world. I don't think there's any way of justifying that.'

'There isn't,' he agreed. 'But I don't think that the goodness is any less important. I guess we just tend to polarize a little. Good versus evil is easier to swallow than taking into account all the shades of gray.'

Emily shook her head. 'I can't see gray here, Derek. Not now. Not today.' She expected him to say something comforting, to tell her that she was wrong, but he didn't say anything, and somehow, that was more terrifying than anything else.