Note: fair warning, I know this whole shebang has been gory, but the mid-section of this chapter is especially grisly, and I should probably apologise for what fell out of my brain this time. Hopefully the minor fluff makes up for it!
0o0
Essential Listening: Electricity, by Suede
"Okay, I've been doing some math," said Prentiss, when Grace had managed to get the foul taste of Reid's coffee mostly out of her mouth. "Based on what we know from lividity and the preliminary autopsies, he seems to be killing at the same time of day."
"When?" asked Rossi.
"Between six and ten p.m.," she replied, and then rolled her eyes as Reid immediately double checked her working.
"That's very consistent, considering he'd have to wait for people to be alone," said Hotch, quirking an eyebrow.
"Well, I'm assuming he's got eyes on all his potential victims, and he picks one who he can access," said JJ. She frowned. "I think we should run a press conference. If we can warn people about the stalking software, his victim pool might dry up."
Hotch nodded. "Do it. Garcia?"
"Yes, my liege?"
Grace watched as the shadow of a smile flickered over his face. Really, it was impossible to remain entirely grim in her magnificent presence.
"Is there anything we can do to limit his access to the people who have already been exposed to the virus?"
"There is and there will be," she said, looking momentarily puzzled. "I will think on it. God, I need sleep!"
"You can go back to the hotel, if –"
"No way in hell! Don't even think about it, boss-man, because the answer will be no!"
"Alright," he said, and this time his smile was more real.
Grace patted her friend fondly on the back, but Garcia didn't even look up from her computer.
"If he's killing at the same time of day then he could be on a regular shift pattern," Rossi proposed.
"But not right now," Prentiss argued, and Hotch nodded.
"With this level of organisation and preparation, and the amount of time he would have to spend with his victims there is no way he would be able to hold down a job," he remarked.
"He could be on leave," Grace suggested. "This is a very specific festival. Same date every year. Chances are he'll have been planning this for some time, so he'd know in advance to book time off."
"Exactly," said Rossi. "And we all know how hard habits are to shake. Maybe he kills at that time of day, because that's when he's used to not working."
"It's also a time when the victims are more likely to be using their computers," Spencer observed.
Grace pulled out her pocket watch. "If you're right about this, we have three hours."
"Okay, I think I've got it," said Garcia. "As you all know, I am the mistress of all things digital, and this guy – this guy – will not beat me! Now, our man of mystery is spoofing his IPs by rewriting the headers within the IP packets, trying to confuse and befuddle me – and it's sort of working, because I can't figure out where he's coming from, but I do know he's pretending to be coming from somewhere else. I can't mess with his local network – but, I have his servers, so I can send him down a rabbit hole and null-route everything. A veritable warren of rabbit holes!"
"I don't even know what you're saying," said Rossi, looking mildly pained.
"The virus is already on the potential victims' computers, okay?" said Garcia, waving her arms expressively. "But to access the webcams he has to do that from his computer – and the thing that lets his computer talk to their computers is the servers. So, if I turn his servers into a Swiss-cheese of data-burying black holes, I can block all out-bound access!"
"And stop him seeing into their houses," Prentiss exclaimed, cottoning on.
"Will that be enough?" Garcia asked, looking worried. "Until I can identify his home network, I can't shut him down, but –"
"It's the best we can do, right now," said Hotch, decisively. "It's a risk to disrupt him, but given how regularly he is killing, and that he has a date-based goal orientation, we need to knock him off his schedule."
"Why is it a risk?" Garcia asked, though from her rather owlish expression, and the higher pitch of her voice, Grace suspected she had already worked it out.
"Uh, because he's obsessed with his task," said Prentiss told her, with a glance at the others. "Divergence from that will anger him, and he might well slip up –"
"That's good, right?" Garcia pressed, aware there was something they weren't saying.
"Yeah, but it also means we likely won't be able to save the victim he's selected for today," said Rossi.
"I'm going to make it worse?" she asked, looking horrified.
"No one is doing this but the unsub," said Grace, firmly. "And it's awful, but in all likelihood, nothing we do now will prevent the next victim's murder."
"But – uh – what you're doing might mean we can save the one tomorrow," said Reid quickly, as their technical analyst subsided unhappily.
She closed her mouth, sighed miserably, and sat back down. "Okay. Helping. That's what I'm doing."
0o0
They got the call at half past six, an hour after shift change, and firmly within Emily's proposed window of activity. Garcia had taken it pretty hard, retreating sullenly behind her screen as soon as Detective Singh had delivered the news. She appeared to have resigned herself to it, however, because by the time they were pulling into the cordoned off street, she was already on the radio, relaying information.
"Mike Hernandez, thirty-six, Hispanic," she listed, her usual chirpiness distinctly lacking. "Born in San Diego, moved here with his older sister when he was seventeen, after their parents' divorce. Lived here ever since. Has held several long-term jobs as a barman in various watering holes in Meridian, all of which get good reviews on Trip Advisor."
"Anything that might tell us why he was singled out?" Rossi asked, pulling the keys out of the ignition.
"Nothing yet. Although, from his bank account, the details of which the impressively efficient Detective Singh had already given me before you left, I can tell you he had two major passions: a three-year-old German Shepherd who, according to the insurance payments, is called Kubo; and romance."
"Romance?" Emily asked, exchanging a puzzled look with Rossi.
"He bought a lot of flowers, mostly roses, mostly red," Garcia explained. "Also wine, chocolates, and small trinkets – the kind of gift you'd give to a girlfriend. Only, get this – they're all personalised, and they all have different women's names on them."
"So his hobby isn't romance," said Rossi, with a quirk of his mouth that suggested particular knowledge and experience. "It's sex."
"With as many partners as he can get," said Emily.
"I'm gonna guess this guy represents desirability, charisma – lust."
Emily nodded. "Hey, Garcia, have you got his driver's license?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Is he handsome?"
"I mean, he's got nothing on the chocolate chiselled God of perfection that we work with, but he's pretty hot," she said, after a moment of contemplation. "Got a sort of evil twin goatee thing going on that wouldn't work for most people. Only Rossi and this guy."
Rossi rolled his eyes.
"Or, I guess, he did have…" She sighed, sounding miserable. "I'm going to get some coffee and some food, and I don't want to be called for half an hour."
She hung up, and they got out of the Suburban, joining the rest of their team, who were pulling on forensic booties and – unusually – Tyvec suits.
Detective Singh, who had got there a little before them in order to direct proceedings, looked particularly ashen. He was escorting a grey-faced colleague out of the house. The other detective hurried around the corner of a van and vomited profusely.
"It's…" Singh shook his head. "It's a bad one. Worse than the other scenes."
"Worse, how?" asked Grace, who was gallantly letting Reid steady himself on her so he could get his booties on without falling over.
Singh fixed her with a harrowed sort of stare. "Just… worse."
Emily shared a dark look with Hotch, zipped up her suit and followed the others into the house. Almost immediately, she heard Reid – who was just ahead – whisper, "Oh God," under his breath.
Then the stench hit her. The other scenes had been veritable lakes of blood, flooding their senses with the sour tang of iron. Although that was the same, here the sharp smack of haemoglobin was accompanied by an undercurrent of something deeper and more fragrant – possibly some of the herbs listed on the receipt they had found – and on top of that…
"I hate burnt flesh," Grace remarked, in a low, pained voice, as she and Emily allowed two forensic techs to navigate past them. "It always makes me think of barbecue ribs."
Emily's stomach rolled over at the thought, and she nodded, keeping her teeth tightly together. That was always the problem: the body was conditioned to interpret cooked meat as a delicious smell, and before you knew it you would begin salivating – and then you'd remember why. Deciding that a temporarily vegetarian diet would be an excellent idea for the foreseeable future, she and Grace walked side by side into the open-plan living space. It might have been a nice place at one point, but it was rather hard to tell.
"Hell's bells," her friend murmured, shaken.
Emily took a moment to steady herself. Her pulse roared over-loud in her ears, then it subsided as her training kicked in. This was awful, but she had seen the full spectrum of awful, and today she was on the front line of it again: the victim who was decorating the walls deserved justice.
A second or two passed in horrified silence as everyone readjusted their minds to cope with the carnage in front of them.
"Well, Garcia knocked him off his game, alright," said Rossi, in a hollow voice.
Emily nodded, numbly. Suddenly she appreciated exactly why Hotch had looked so haunted after the first scene. There was something about this one – more than there had been with Bill Waters. Something other. She couldn't place it.
The late Mike Hernandez had not been left arranged in the same way as the previous victims. He had been skinned, and there was blood everywhere, but the level of violence in this kill was extraordinary. The removal had not gone as planned: he had been butchered, and not very cleanly. He was also in a number of pieces. Some of them still had recognisable skin attached.
"Scorch marks," said Reid, in a tight voice that suggested that this scene would be entering directly into his regular sequence of nightmares. He pointed at several, large burns on the wall, where the wallpaper had bubbled and flaked. Above them, the coving had melted in long, shiny streams, streaking down the wall, mingling with the blood.
There were scorch marks on what was left of the victim, too.
"What in the name of God did that?" someone asked, and Emily realised it was her. She felt oddly disconnected from herself.
Reid's face, which was already a mask of horror, darkened. He narrowed his eyes. "Guys, there are too many – uh – there's – I think we may have multiple victims here."
"At least two," said Grace, tersely. "Well, two human."
"What?" Detective Singh asked, as five pairs of eyes swivelled in her direction.
She pointed at a lump of something in the corner (of someone, Emily reminded herself, sternly). "That part has fur."
"Hernandez has a dog," said Rossi, slowly. "Kubo."
"Had," said Hotch, darkly.
"Who kills the dog, for fuck's sake?" Grace complained angrily, and nobody picked her up on her cursing.
Bastard, thought Emily. "He was also a serial romantic," she recalled aloud. "Fancied himself as a bit of a Casanova."
"Then perhaps our unsub interrupted a date," the detective suggested, swallowing rather hard.
"Which meant he couldn't control his victim," Hotch added.
"The disruption to his ritual enraged him," said Reid, following after the fashion.
"And this is the result," Rossi finished.
"He must have access to chemicals," said Emily, looking around. "I can't think of anything else that leaves burns like this but doesn't touch anything else."
"If one victim is Hernandez and the other is his date, can we assume he successfully completed his ritual?"
The question had been addressed to the team as a whole, but Hotch had been looking at Grace as he spoke.
"If he hasn't, he'll be looking for a new victim," Reid reflected.
Grace pinched the bridge of her nose so hard it left two red nail marks, livid against the twin white rosettes her fingers had created. "He got what he needed," she said shortly, and without further explanation, she turned and walked outside.
Spencer, always attuned to the moods of their resident Brit, whether they were talking or not, immediately peeled off and followed her; after a few beats, so did Hotch. Emily met Rossi's eye, across a sea of what might otherwise be described as blackened meat.
"Something is going on there," she said in an undertone, after Detective Singh had broken off to liaise with the coroner, who was looking around with an air of unsettled professional bafflement.
Rossi inclined his head. "Hotch has been off since this case started," he remarked. "Pearce, too."
Emily nodded, thinking of the way the other agent had simply announced that there would be more victims, and then been handed the profile. "Hey, maybe she's seen a case like this before," she suggested.
"If that's the case," said Rossi carefully, "then why wouldn't she just tell us about it?"
"Maybe she can't?" Emily pursed her lips. She couldn't think of another reason – or another good reason, at least. "I've worked things that required me to sign a none-disclosure notice."
"So have I," Rossi mused.
There were many events – dark, distant, destabilising – in her own life that she wouldn't want to revisit – and a lot that she was simply forbidden from revisiting. There were some things she simply would never tell the rest of her team, no matter the circumstances. That she could never tell them. It wasn't that difficult to imagine that there might be situations in Grace's past that were the same.
And that raised other questions: if Hotch knew, for operational purposes, why did Reid? The three of them had separated from the group several times over the course of the day, and that couldn't be ignored. And why did they feel the need to be so clandestine? Did they think a room full of profilers wouldn't notice?
Rossi met her gaze, and she read the same questions in him that were on the tip of her own brain.
"Do you ever get the impression that she left a lot behind when she left London?"
Emily gave a noncommittal shrug, but her eyes followed Rossi's to the window, through which she could see the three other agents engaged in what looked like a hurried and urgent discussion.
"Yeah," she found herself saying. "I'm guessing, more than we think."
0o0
They had gathered outside, ultimately. It was that kind of crime scene.
"Found a wallet in the bedroom," said Rossi, handing the evidence bag over to Detective Singh. "Our second victim's name is Cecilia Lewis, thirty-one. African American. Geologist for the USGS."
"Poor woman," Emily remarked. "Wrong place, wrong time."
"We any closer to figuring out how they were killed?" asked Detective Singh. "Because I've been doing this for fourteen years, and I have never seen anything like this. The ME's assistant said something about explosives, but he's also muttering about how it has to be impossible. I think he's gonna retrain."
Swallowing, Spencer glanced at Grace from under his eyelashes. Although she was paying attention to the huddle, she had one ear and one eye on the apartment building behind her.
Once they were safely out of earshot of the others, she had told him and Hotch all about the screaming thing that the male victim had become. It was worse than the others, possibly because he'd witnessed (post mortem) what had happened to Lewis and Kubo.
"Well, Hernandez was likely controlled somehow, the same way as the others, and flayed alive," Prentiss speculated. "Then the dismemberment was post-mortem."
"And Lewis?"
"We'll know more after the autopsy," said Hotch, effectively shutting the line of questioning down.
Spencer tried not to look relieved. Keeping things from his colleagues made him feel distinctly uncomfortable, particularly on a case, but there wasn't really another option. He wasn't about to 'out' Grace in front of his friends, even if he thought they ultimately wouldn't care about her weirder talents. He didn't enjoy lying to them, but it wasn't his choice to make.
Also, quite frankly, if they told Detective Singh what was really going on, they would look insane.
Maybe less so, after this scene, he thought.
"The candles, the sigils and the working area were the same," said Rossi, glancing at Grace as well. "So we know he managed to control them long enough to do that."
"Or he did it before they got in," Spencer suggested. "That takes time, and when I talked to the building manager, he said the screaming started about ten minutes after he saw Hernandez and Lewis arrive."
"That's another difference," Grace remarked, returning her attention to the group. "The candles weren't burned down nearly so far, either – did you notice? So he had less time for his ritual, and he knew it. The screaming alerted the neighbours – which is another first. Multiple victims. Rage." She sighed, an ugly expression on her face. "It almost feels like he's devolving."
Spencer nodded. They all knew the signs – and apart from the occult component, he was exhibiting all the classic symptoms of a sociopath who was beginning to lose all control.
"Let's hope we didn't push him too far," said Hotch, after a moment of concerned silence. He gave a heavy sigh. "Alright, Reid, Rossi, go back to the coroner, see how far they've got with the other autopsies. Prentiss, you and Pearce talk to the neighbours, see if anyone saw our guy."
"Yes, boss."
"Detective Singh, I think it might be useful for us to set up a tip-line," he continued, and Singh nodded.
"Alright. We've done that before, but I'll coordinate with your Agent Jareau." He gave them a weary smile. "I wouldn't mind one of her, if you ever find a spare."
Spencer smiled to himself, as he and Rossi walked away. Singh had seemed exhausted and at the very end of his weird limit for the entire time they had been there, but anyone who could see how awesome his best friend was, was going to be fine.
He stifled a yawn. Though he was used to being awake for long stretches before inevitably having to make himself step away, nearly two full days of wakefulness was a lot to ask. He had a suspicion none of them were going to be conscious on the jet home after this case, despite the horrors they had seen that might otherwise keep them up.
Everyone was beginning to look a little haggard.
"You gonna make it?" Rossi teased, though when he turned to look he could tell that the older agent was half serious.
"I'm good," he said, with a half-smile. "I – uh – should probably take my contacts out before they glue themselves to my eyeballs, but…"
Rossi chuckled. "Ah, to be young. Unlike you, I both need and value my beauty sleep."
0o0
Spencer blinked owlishly up at Prentiss, who had shaken him awake. "Uh… sorry."
Foggily, he realised that not only had he fallen asleep in the back of the SUV on the way back from an extended visit to the coroner's office, he had remained asleep while decisions had been made to deposit him at the hotel. He rubbed his face, embarrassed, and nearly knocked his glasses off. He had entirely forgotten he was wearing them.
"It's okay," she said, with amusement. "Hotch wants you, Grace and Garcia to get some rest. We took the last shift."
He nodded, numbly, and eased himself out of the car.
Spencer joined the two other women on the sidewalk, taking solace in the fact that they looked as exhausted as he felt.
"You look like death warmed over, Pretty Boy," said Morgan, pausing to press a kiss into Garcia's hair on his way out of the foyer.
She clung to his shirt. "Can't you stay and keep me warm?"
"Nu-uh, Babygirl. I'm sorry," he said fondly, detaching himself. "I gotta eat – and then I gotta get back up to speed."
"I'm basically a cab, tonight," Emily complained. "Come on Morgan."
"Alright, alright, hold your pretty horses, Princess," he retorted, and Prentiss rolled her eyes.
Grace raised her eyebrows. "Mate, you just said that to Emily, out loud. Good luck with that."
They left them bickering by the SUV and staggered into the elevator without even a glance towards reception.
"I am so insanely tired," Garcia complained, linking arms with both of them just to stay upright.
Spencer put up no resistance whatsoever. Right now, if they were nowhere near the hotel, he would have happily gone to sleep on his feet, in a sort of upright, three-person lean, but fortunately, somewhere nearby there was a warm (and if he knew hotels – which he did – overwarm) bed to fall into.
"We got a partial print, by the way," said Grace, from Garcia's other side, and then yawned expansively.
It woke him up a bit. "From Hernandez's apartment?"
"Yeah, on a torn bit of card, probably from a book of matches," she said tiredly.
"That's – uh – that's good," he said, aware that there were other case related things he ought to be thinking about, but unable to make the mental connections in order to do so.
"The techs are processing it," Garcia offered. "I just… I just wish we didn't have to push him to get it."
"It's not your fault, you know," said Grace, and Spencer gave Garcia's arm a squeeze.
"The – the only person responsible is Draven Blaize," he added. "Or whatever his real name is."
"Oh, you two sweethearts are adorable," she said, though he could hear the guilt and sadness in her voice. "I'll be okay in a couple of hours – and then we can bury this evil weirdo, and I can start making up for it and rebalancing my karma."
They disentangled and stepped out onto the fifth floor.
"You know, next time baby Hotch has a school sports day, we should volunteer for the four-legged race," she joked, as they paused outside her door, but it was half-hearted.
"C'mere," said Grace, and wrapped her arms around her.
After a moment's contemplation, Spencer joined in, squashing their technical analyst in the middle of a many-armed hug.
"Careful," she said, sniffling a little as they broke apart. "Or I'll fall asleep right here."
"Get some rest, Supergirl," said Grace, and she nodded vaguely, pushing open her door.
The two remaining agents fell into step together, in an easy sort of sleep-deprived companionship that made Spencer long for simpler days of uncomplicated company, without gory murders to solve – even though he knew they'd both get horribly bored without them.
It would just be nice, he thought wearily, to sleep in with you, every once in a while. A lazy Sunday, here and there. Curled up together, reading – tea for you, coffee for me. Blankets and books and bare feet. That would be paradise…
"Right," said Grace, and he realised they'd reached their doors, which were opposite one another, this time.
Spencer frowned. Now that it came to it, he found he was disinclined to be without her. Before she could let herself into her own room, he took her hand; she peered down at it for a moment, looking vaguely puzzled, but she didn't let go.
"Um," he said, intelligently, unable to resist rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.
It seemed like an age since she had joined him beneath a desk in the library of the local college and he had given in to the mad urge to kiss her again, but in reality it had only been the day before. He wondered if she'd object if he tried it again.
He didn't feel like trying to form proper sentences, so he jerked his head towards the door to his room and punctuated the question with his eyebrows.
That slow, easy smile that Spencer kept in his heart spread across her face. "Oh, yes please," she said softly, and to his immense pleasure, rested her head against his shoulder. "I thought you'd never ask."
Grinning tiredly, he opened the door, threw his wallet, cell phone, spectacles and key card on the table and started fumbling with his gun belt. He was so tired that his fingers didn't seem to be working, however. Grace's were, though, and he was still struggling with it by the time her belt, pocket watch and cuffs were on the back of the chair, so she gently knocked his hands aside. Spencer let her, chuckling at the feel of what might have been quite an intimate act, if they weren't both so damn tired.
"Thanks. Thank you," he mumbled, as she succeeded in removing it and draped it next to hers.
By way of answer, she tapped him gently on the nose, the way she had in a sweltering New Orleans club, a lifetime ago. Deciding to make her laugh, too, he kissed her and then swept her off her feet, depositing her none-too-gently on the bed before flopping down beside her. Pleased with the effect, he pulled her close while she was still giggling and stifled her laughter with his mouth.
Grace wound an arm around his waist, tangling her legs with his.
She looked tired and happy when they broke apart. Her hair was shorter now, but just as delightfully unruly as ever, crowning her slightly impish face with a wild halo. Spencer tucked a honey-coloured curl behind her ear, breathing in the strawberry and tea scent that was all Grace.
I'm home, he thought, unable to keep his lips from quirking upward once more. This is home. Right here. With you.
Grace made a contented sort of sound that sounded like an echo of his heart, and murmured, "Feels like –" Her smile grew sweeter and he felt her fingers curl into the placket of his shirt, grazing the skin of his chest between the buttonholes. "Feels like I'm home."
0o0
Neither one of them had taken their shoes off when they crashed out – they hadn't even bothered to get under the covers. Both things that came in handy when, a scant few hours later, their phones chimed in unison.
However long had passed between falling asleep and whatever this fresh problem was, was absolutely not long enough.
Grace groaned into Spencer's chest, burying her head more firmly into his shirt. He'd dropped his phone on the table, she dimly recalled, so it wasn't a tremendous surprise when she felt him slip his hand into her back pocket and groggily retrieve her phone – a fairly bold move she couldn't imagine him having tried before, even in the weeks they had been sort-of-dating the year before. She put it down to tiredness – and the slight change in the nature of their relationship that the months apart had wrought.
"Cheeky blighter," she mumbled, and smiled despite the horrible lack of sleep.
"Uh – well, mine's all the way over there," he murmured into her hair, not sounding remotely contrite, and read the text over her shoulder.
"No, no!"
She felt the jolt of shock run through him, and woke part of the rest of the way up. "What is it?"
"Garcia," he said, already rolling out of bed. "She thinks there's someone in her room."
"What?"
He pushed the phone into her hand and grabbed his – which lit up with the same text – and his gun. Grace sprang haphazardly up, nearly turning her ankle over in her haste. She was almost painfully awake, now. A glance at her phone told her that it was perilously close to the witching hour. She dropped it onto the bed and dove for her things.
"She's hiding in the closet at the far end of the corridor," he told her.
Grace shoved her badge and cuffs into her pockets. There was no time for the belt. "Glasses," she hissed, and Spencer made a noise that she would have interpreted in anyone else as strangled swearing and briefly turned back.
Grace had her hands free, so she let Spencer take point; gun up, he gave her the nod and together they moved out into the hall. It was gloomy, since only the security lights were on at this time of night, but then they hadn't turned the light on in Spencer's room, so their eyes didn't take long to adjust.
The closet was part way between their rooms and Garcia's, so they moved swiftly and silently along the corridor until they reached it. Spencer provided cover, while Grace whispered their friend's name and pushed the door open as quietly as she could. Garcia was inside, wearing hot pink pyjamas and a white, fluffy cardigan, a mop raised above her head. She was trembling with fear, but ready to defend herself, if necessary.
The mop lowered immediately and she flung herself towards Grace, babbling urgently in frightened whispers.
"I had a nightmare, and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went out for snacks, and when I came back, the door was open and there were noises inside, and all I could think about was what he does to the bodies, and –"
Before she could make any more noise, Grace grabbed her arm and put a finger to her lips. Garcia gulped, took a deep breath, and nodded, plainly terrified.
"Text Hotch," Grace mouthed, and Garcia showed her the screen: she had, rather sensibly, texted everyone. "Tell them we're with you and not to call until you do," Grace whispered, her mouth close to her friend's ear, hoping she would think not to included them in the message and make their phones buzz.
Just outside the door, Reid moved back slightly, getting them in his eyeline. He motioned for Grace to take up a secondary position, but before she could Garcia grabbed her shoulder and made a gun shape with her hand, shaking her head.
Spencer caught the movement, swallowed, then managed to convey – through facial expression alone, and without Garcia realising – that he knew Grace didn't need a weapon, and that if this was their unsub, this situation would not end well without serious back up of a slightly arcane kind.
She nodded, and fell into formation with him, wafting Garcia temporarily and unhappily back into the closet.
Grace hunkered into the familiar law-enforcement crouch, adrenaline making her pulse sound like a snare drum inside her head, and moved with Spencer to within a couple of feet of Garcia's door, which was ajar.
There was a strange, blue glow emanating from within, that one might mistake for the light of a late-night TV, but Grace felt it before she saw it. Barring Spencer's progress with her hand, she took another step and heard the tell-tale hum of the inexperienced practitioner impatiently waiting to cause serious harm, just beyond what ought to be possible to hear.
Magic was hard to contain when you weren't properly in control of yourself, and this guy was poor at that even when he wasn't radiating with fury.
Reid shot her a questioning glance and she mouthed, "It's him."
Wordlessly, they fell back, retreating as far as the cupboard, where Garcia was anxiously waiting.
"We have to call Hotch," he murmured, just loud enough for them both to hear.
"We have to go," Grace hissed. "Do not engage, remember?"
"We need back up," Spencer insisted, as quietly as he could, but Grace shook her head urgently, willing him to remember her profile.
She saw understanding flicker through his eyes as Garcia whispered, "Why wouldn't we want back up? He exploded three people!"
Both Supervisory Special Agents looked at her and then back at each other. There was little to no chance the man they had been chasing had happened upon Garcia's room accidentally, only a few hours after she had turned his servers into digital Swiss cheese.
"Too many people here," Grace murmured.
Spencer nodded minutely and glanced again at Garcia. "We need to get her out," he mouthed back.
"Where?" Penelope hissed. Her grip on Grace's arm grew painfully tight.
Stairs, thought Grace.
Apparently Spencer had had the same idea as he shot a swift look behind him and moved more fully into the hall.
"I'll cover you," he whispered, gun still up. "Go."
Grace pulled Garcia with her. "Stay close to me. Don't make noise. Go for the stairs."
Her friend nodded, terrified, and the three of them moved as quickly as they could to the end of the hallway furthest from her room. Grace's stomach dropped as they reached it: it was a fire exit, and as such, was connected to the alarms. Any loss of contact would set it off – and she knew from experience that there was no magical way of circumventing that.
I can slow him down, she thought. But by how much? And they're going to see…
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Reid clock the problem, shoot her a worried look and nod, ready to move fast.
Grace leaned close to Garcia's ear and whispered. "As soon as we pull the door, he'll be out of the room and he might follow us, so we're going to have to fucking run. Okay?"
Garcia closed her eyes, blinking panicked tears away, then nodded.
"Be ready to take cover if you have to, and if we fall behind, just keep running."
The technical analyst redoubled her grip on Grace's arm and shook her head emphatically at that, but something of the fury that was building inside her must have registered on her face because she subsided, looking wretched.
Brown eyes met blue, for a fraction of a second.
Ready?
He looked at Garcia, then back at her, visibly steeling himself.
They pushed the door.
