Chapter 37

Day 31

"So what did they say?" Dave asked as he settled into the chair across from Hotch's desk.

"She tendered her resignation at the school, effective immediately." Hotch replied.

"Which means they're relocating her; they'll move her to a new place, give her a stipend to live on, help her find a job, all of it. They'll make sure Carrington doesn't find her."

"I know."

Dave studied his old friend for a long moment. "Carrington isn't Foyet."

"Meaning?"

"He kills at a distance, poison he implanted during a medical procedure some time before. This tells me he doesn't enjoy the killing, it's not something he wants to savor up close and personal, it's a means to an end. Killing his victims protected his identity since he could be connected to the house."

Hotch frowned. "So what end would killing her bring? We already have more than enough evidence to convict him."

"Exactly," Dave replied. "How do we know he wants her dead?"

"You saw the threats he left at her apartment?"

"Yes, but how do we know he meant them? This is a trained surgeon who does the most delicate work; he has to have control regardless of his emotional state."

"You think the threats were a ruse? Why would he do that?"

"What angered him?" Ah, wait. "You didn't see the recording from the house."

"No. I thought it better given my connection to Clara."

"Let's just say that Reid got what Carrington wanted."

Dave saw the light bulb going on. "Jealousy, he wanted them forced apart as retaliation."

"And we have done so. His end game has been achieved. Odds are he's lurking around somewhere, watching Reid be miserable. Eventually we'll trip over him and that will be that."

"In the meantime there's no reason to assume he's actually hunting for Clara like..."

"...like Foyet hunted Haley. Exactly, wherever she is she's safe."

Hotch sighed. "I just wish she was safe and home."

This was decidedly unfair.

Clara sat at the window and looked out at the grey back wall of the building in front of her. It was the only window she was allowed to sit at because it faced that wall, so no one could see her in return. She sat and watched the day grow dim and the light of the city replace the sun as the reason for the glow in the sky.

She had yet to convince her guards that she was not what they considered her to be.

For three weeks they'd not had a single kind word for her except to comment that her hair looked different enough. She'd been eating their junk food and watching their endless sports and not complaining about the mess downstairs. She'd used every trick in her book to try to convince them that she respected them and the work they did and in no way looked down upon them. And not a one of them had worked.

Truth was she did respect them and the work they did, and she was profoundly grateful to them for doing it. She just wished they didn't have to be such dicks about it.

She had to change her hair, she understood that. But did they have to chop it off like that? Did she have to dye and work it until it looked like straw? She had to change her way of living, but did that mean she couldn't have any books at all? She couldn't keep any sort of a journal? She couldn't even look after her own health? She had to stay closed away until Carrington would likely stop looking for her, but did they have to lock her up here? Not only was it all of three blocks from Union Station, where she could so easily meet Spencer but these buildings in particular? Were they that tone deaf or was it deliberate?

She was leaning toward deliberate, likely starting with Jerry. After all, he was the one who brought her the "wall art".

Her heritage was a complicated matter for her. There was much there to despise, much that her ancestors were entirely and completely wrong about. But there were other things, other parts of their make up and lives, that she found fascinating and worthy of study. She did what she could to alleviate the suffering that still came from the decisions they had made back then, but at the same time she cherished the stories and customs they had created that had so nearly been lost to time. Still, it was complicated, so she tried to keep it to herself much of the time.

But given how they were acting, in this time and this space, she was not going to act ashamed of where she came from.

Most people thought the Stars and Bars were a symbol of redneck trash racist culture, and in modern society it was an unfortunate truth that they had been adopted by the worst kind of people. But back then it had been the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, proudly carried by her great-Grandfather's army as they fought for all the wrong reasons. She displaced it by draping it over the mirror above the dresser so she wouldn't have to look at what she had become. It was the only familiar thing left to her.

Her head ached.

Her head ached, her body ached, and her stomach was all twisted up. She looked at the barely nibbled cheeseburger and pile of fries they had given her for supper and pushed them aside, she was so very not hungry right now. She stared at the napkin where she'd been doodling math, trying to focus, which hadn't been helping at all. She couldn't even find refuge in dreaming, sleep kept eluding her.

She wanted to go home.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against the window frame and willed herself back home. Back to a house perched on an island and a pile of bedding under a shadbush and warm, strong arms that would never let go. She felt her heart skip and stutter and she nearly lost her breath as she remembered those arms and the love of the gentle man who held her.

She felt the tears come as she dreamed of home.

The problem, Spencer thought, was that he wasn't Hotch.

When Haley and Jack went into Protection Hotch had kept going. They all knew it bothered him, they knew he was lonely and aching and afraid, but it didn't affect his ability to function. He got up in the morning and got a run in and then a shower and put on a dark blue suit and a tie and went to work and hunted Unsubs more or less efficiently and at night he went home and dropped off his dry cleaning and likely had some kind of very healthy dinner and got to bed at a reasonable hour. He continued to function like a modern American male/FBI agent even through his fear and grief.

And now Spencer was expected to follow that example.

The problem was that it hurt.

There was a constant throbbing behind his eyes now, a low level migraine that would not go away. He slept in bits and snatches when his body would no longer sustain wakefulness. He slept on the plane and on the train to and from Quantico and just yesterday he had a remarkable 20 minute nap standing up in the main police station in Santa Fe. He no longer ate, he sustained himself on coffee laced with enough sugar to keep his energy up; coffee he could no longer taste. Even the bowl of mac and cheese on the table in front of him, a long time staple, was turning out to be more than his stomach would allow. When he did sleep he dreamed of a sunny day and a shadbush and he sweet weight of a woman in his arms. He dreamed of home.

This time it was much worse than when he lost Maeve.

Maeve, who had been so right, and so wrong. He was not meant to love. It would have been much better if he had never tried. But he had, twice now, and lost both times and now he had to pay the penalty. He was doing all he could and he still paid.

His chest ached too. Tears, he thought, that would not come.

He wrapped his arms around the book Maeve had left him, the only thing he had left of love, stretched out on a couch meant for one, and waited for the day to begin again.