"Liberty, Texas," Reid said, walking into Piper's office. She had been working like crazy, a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold sitting next to her computer as she was immersed in files, making pile after pile on her desk, on the chair across from it, on the edges of the bookshelves behind her. "Wheels up in 30."
"What? Sorry, babe." She put her glasses back on, looking up at him. "What about Texas?"
Reid pursed his lips, regarding her skeptically. "Have you slept at all in the last three days?"
She sighed, shaking her head. "Hardly. You were out of town, and Nate had a project, and Sophie had a fever, and Chester's been driving me crazy. Then I got this box of files that some idiot hadn't forwarded to me, so all of these cases are behind, which means I've got to cross-reference them with everything in VICAP, in case something new's come up. And if it has, it moves up in priority and -"
"You need a nap. You have to take a break," he insisted, picking up a pile of files and sitting down on her desk. "If it was me, and it has been before, you would tell me to sleep. You'd drug me if you had to."
"I would," she smiled. "Every time I close my eyes, I see that funeral. Every time… I can't sleep, Spence. I see him every time. I dream that it's our wedding and we… he's laying in the middle of the aisle under that sheet, and there's so much blood."
Reid moved to give her a hug, saying, "If it makes you feel better, we've got two murdered security guards at a prison in Liberty, Texas. Nothing on the cameras, and no one knows anything. It's a federal penitentiary. Half of the 2,241 inmates are in for violent crimes."
"Sounds good to me. When do you fly out?"
"We fly out in 30. Grab your go bag. We're going to prison."
"What do you mean? I've got so much work here, Spence. And the kids… I've got to think about them too. Nate's presentation is tomorrow and Sophie's still sick."
"Jessica's taking care of everything," Reid promised, picking up her coffee cup, knowing that she would leave it there for a few days if he didn't grab it. "Hotch says you can do a bunch of your work on the plane, and you're not going to be working with us. He thought it would be a good idea if you came with, since there are plenty of prisoners there you might want to interview. You'll be with us, but not really working with us. They said you can get set up near the router and the main office will be yours."
She sighed, putting her head in her hands. "Okay, I'm going to try to take pictures of as many of these as I can, and I'll get Garcia to scan in the rest. Let me know when we're driving out."
Piper was on the plane for fifteen minutes before she fell asleep, Reid letting her lay on his lap. "Cute," Kate remarked, sitting down across from them with a cup of coffee.
Reid smiled a bit, running a hand through his wife's hair as he tucked her glasses into his coat pocket. "She hasn't slept in days. Nate's been having her help him with a project, and Sophie's been sick. She's getting better, but I had to drag Piper away with the promise of serial killer interviews and the like. I'm surprised she didn't crash on the way to the plane."
"You two are still cute," JJ smiled.
As they landed, Reid shook Piper's shoulder, his wife sitting up quickly and saying, "I slept through the whole thing? Shit, I have so much work to do, I was supposed to get ahead on it…"
"It's okay, Pipes," he assured her, kissing her cheek. "Remember, you've got murderers waiting for you."
"So do you."
Piper set up in the main office, taking a room the size of a large closet as her workspace and trying to get as much WiFi as she could from the weak signal. Meanwhile, the others were conducting interviews of prisoners who seemed to know things, or who seemed like they were hiding things. They would pull someone into an interview room, Piper pulling other people into a smaller interview room, the prisoners not knowing which FBI project they would be on.
She was also running faxes for the team, so she would often be interrupted by the beeping of the fax machine as Garcia sen in information and she had to borrow a radio to track the team down. On one of these missions, she ran into Reid in the hall, who told her, "Someone else just got killed in a shower. I've memorized all of the case files, so we don't need anything on him, but I figured I'd let you know."
"Isn't the whole prison on lockdown? Why is there anyone out of their cells?"
"It's been on lockdown for hours," he nodded, taking to pile of faxes from her. "Someone's got privileges. Or keys."
"That's three now… so we've got a serial killer walking around inside of a maximum security prison that's on lockdown?" she asked. "Who would have special privileges while they're all on lockdown? Spence, do you think it could be a guard? Or at least part of the team is a guard?"
"That's what I'm thinking," he confessed in a whisper. "Pipes, if it is one of them, we've got to be careful who we talk to and how loud we talk. They can't know, since we're literally trapped in here, if you think about it."
"You're sounding pretty paranoid, Spence." She gave him a hug, whispering, "We'll be careful. Just please don't let them catch you looking into things." She stepped back, raising her voice to say, "Be careful. I love you."
"I love you too. And you be careful."
"What do I have to worry about?" A lot, as it turned out. Piper was in A Block, in the interrogation room next to Morgan and Kate's, when she heard the door open, three prisoners rushing in. She'd just finished with an interview, the man she had been talking to having left a few minutes before. "I'm a federal agent," she warned them as they burst in. "I wouldn't advise doing anything."
"Piper!" Kate yelled from the other room, Piper knowing that they had gotten to her and Morgan too. Do it. You know what you have to do. She reached into her belt, taking out her gun.
"I told you I'm a federal agent. Now put your hands up," she instructed calmly. "Put your hands up, and -"
"Lady, there aren't enough bullets in that thing for the amount of people we got out there."
"You might be right, but gunshots bring a lot more attention in a prison than yelling does," she reasoned, the men staying by the door. "And I hate to brag, but I'm pretty good. I could take you all in one shot if I really wanted to."
"Good luck with that." One of them moved towards her, Piper hitting him in the chest.
"Either of you two want to try?" She heard footsteps in the hallway, someone yelling to get down. Uniformed agents ran in, subduing the prisoners immediately as Piper holstered her gun. "Thank you." As they marched out, she heard another set of footsteps, someone running and trying to get through the squad of agents. Reid wormed his way though the group and into the room as Piper stood over the man she had shot. "I could have killed you, you know," she told the man. "But I'm going to leave you here bleeding for the medical team. And you're going to tell the others what I did to you, what it means to try to hurt federal agents - well, you will once you get out of solitary. You'll get a lot more time in here, too."
"Pipes, I'm so glad -" Piper turned around, giving Reid a hug. "There's no way I would've let them kill me. I've still got you and the kids to worry about, now don't I?"
"That your girl?" the prisoner asked, clutching his chest as the first of the medical team came in.
"That she is," Reid smiled, putting his arm around her waist. "She's brilliant and she's a crack shot. Didn't I get lucky?"
"Let's go, Spence. This guy needs to get stitched up, and I need a cup of coffee. And the rest of my files. Are Morgan and Kate okay?"
"They're fine," he told her, walking down the hall. "A bit beat up, but they're fine. I think you're going to have to stop your interviews, though. A group of the guards started this fight club, and it turned deadly. They kept killing people off so they wouldn't get caught, and the prisoners took some of them into their own hands."
Piper nodded, turning in to the main office, where Rossi and Hotch were talking to the others. "They're probably going to see a big turnover in the people working here," Hotch said, Rossi nodding in agreement. "The guards who were involved are all being transferred to cells in the local jail while they figure out what to do with them and write up charges. Piper, I'm sorry you didn't get too many interviews in, but when a riot breaks out, everything goes out the window. I'm sure they'd like us out of here, but I'm equally sure I can get you back in. Just give it a couple of months."
"Thanks," she nodded, holding Reid's hand. He could still feel her fingers shaking a bit, having just shot someone. They split into two cars, heading for the jet and talking about what they were going to do with their day off. Piper leaned her head on Reid's shoulder in the back of the SUV, not letting go of his hand.
"Are you okay?" he whispered as JJ and Kate were talking about running out for groceries and all of the other errands they had to get done.
"I'm fine. No, I'm not. I shot a man in cold blood, Spence. I know I could have knocked him out, but I shot him."
"Pipes, you knew there was no way you would have fought the three of them and the men right outside the door. Not on your own. You did what you had to do," he said. "We all have to do things like that sometimes."
"That's not what scares me. What scares me is… you know how Hotch says we carry a bit of every case with us, and that it's hard to ever be unaffected? Spence, I don't feel anything."
"You're in shock. It's all hitting you now," he explained as they pulled up to the airstrip. "You're in shock, and you've hardly slept. You're running on coffee and sandwiches, and I doubt you've eaten all of the lunches you pack. Besides, you're still keyed up from the interviews. I know they stress you out, even if you don't show it. I hate to profile you, but there's a lot that you don't say. You've told me yourself - you can't do that, just get quiet and not tell people how you're doing. There's a lot of things you don't say, and I know you write about them -"
"If you've been in that box of journals -"
"No, it's just that I can tell when something's bothering you," Reid assured her as they got onto the plane, taking seats next to each other near the back. "And something's bothering you. You need sleep and real food. Come here. Lay down like you did on the way here. C'mon. I'll wake you up when we get home."
A.N.: I'm going to apologize in advance if I'm not updating regularly over the next few days. We've got a giant hurricane barreling towards us here in Florida, so I've got no idea if/when I'll have WiFi. I'll try my best to keep updating, but I'll definitely be writing during the storm. Stay safe, loves!
