Note: For those of you returning after my two-week break, thank you for coming back! For any new people, I'm glad that you're on this journey. I hope you'll all stay for as long as you're able! Per chapter one's author's note, there is now a personal urgency to this case. As such, I've updated the tags to reflect this. Please take note of the updated tags if you're returning and make sure nothing there will trigger you. I will also continue to give additional warnings where needed (and they will be needed).
Spencer's abduction couldn't have come at a worse time—just when he was acknowledging his need to address his grief and just when he was ready to face other traumas from his past. But the world doesn't revolve around him, does it? There are always grander pictures to consider, other worlds that might collide with his own. Please strap in and 'enjoy' the brief exploration and prelude to arc two. I promise that everything written in this chapter has subtle, future implications down the line, especially in books two and three! While I'm here, please 'enjoy' all of arc two! When needed, take a breather—I know I certainly needed to while writing certain parts. There is also a brief end-note as well.
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SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2013–ONWARDS
When Robert 'Bobby' Putnam's body was found by the Crime Scene Unit—slumped in a wheeled swivel chair, zip ties at his wrists, and dark, drying blood spattered on the ground beneath him—he was behind a closed blue door beyond the puddle of blood underneath the bodies of Maeve Donovan and Diane Turner.
Found with his body was an unsent, typed letter written by Dr Susan Calvin addressed to Dr Joseph Bell. It was on Bobby's lap, unfolded, propped within an envelope. After being photographed, it was put into processing for evidentiary purposes. Those who later heard of it didn't have any difficulty putting two and two together; they knew who it was from and who it was written to despite its anonymity. They'd read their earlier exchanges.
Under the direction of Chief Erin Strauss, the rest of this macabre case would be handled by the DC Field Office and local DC police.
It was as it should have been in the first place; Spencer Reid was a victim of Diane Turner. He and the rest of his team should have never investigated Maeve's disappearance once it became apparent that he was also tied into this mess. There were protocols set in place for things like this.
Over three years ago, with the murder of Haley Hotchner and her killer, George Foyet, the director and assistant director had doubled down on these rules. Over a year ago, after the supposed murder of ex-Agent Emily Prentiss, the team came under intense scrutiny and two of its members—Aaron Hotchner and Spencer Reid—had been reassigned. Months later, the strange revival of that event—finding out that Emily Prentiss was alive and secreted across the Atlantic Ocean by Aaron and Jennifer—along with the ensuing Doyle fiasco made the director triple down on the rules. In front of the senator and other committee members, it was by Emily Prentiss' statement of valor—which was a reminder of the oath she and the others had once sworn when they became federal agents—that the agents' suspensions were lifted.
Unknown to the team though suspected by Aaron and David, Erin Strauss worked behind the scenes for the two weeks leading up to the committee review. She vied for this team of agents in front of the director and the tenacious assistant director, providing countless past cases as proof of their success as a holistic unit. Her efforts bore fruit; they were able to be reunited—so long as Agent Spencer Reid chose to be reinstated.
She had three teenage children of her own at home to deal with; the fact that she felt like this specific team would be her death in the same manner that she worried over her children was not lost on her. Sometimes she wanted nothing to do with them as a unit; let them be reassigned for goodness sakes.
But that desire was born by irritation. She saw the grander purpose and looked beyond the politics of her job and knew the truth for what it was: Aaron's team was result-oriented, and they worked well together.
Maeve Donovan's unfortunate murder was just a temporary thorn in Chief Strauss' side.
No one was to know that this was to be eclipsed by nefarious deeds of The Replicator, who—for the moment—had gone underground and wouldn't resurface for nearly a year.
And no one was to know that Spencer Reid's abduction would upend all of this.
—
In retrospect, what Spencer Reid went through was ghastly. He had been drained and almost catatonic as he was driven back to headquarters. Within a couple of hours, though, he was seated before his Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner and Section Chief Strauss.
His clinical recounting of the events turned into verbatim the verbal exchange between himself, Diane Turner, and Maeve Donovan. His nature was to recite such conversations with a detached efficiency whenever he was recalling them from his memory, such as he had done when recounting Aaron's conversation with George Foyet mere hours before Haley was killed.
But as the words from this night flitted from his mouth, there was a desperate pitch in his voice, and it grew more pronounced as he drew closer to the moments just before Diane shot herself and Maeve.
'Stay back, stay back, stay back! S-s-stay—stay back, stay back!' he had cried out, and Erin couldn't hold back her dread.
From then on, Spencer was unable to repeat the ensuing words without pausing, without flushing, without tightening his hands, without swallowing around his drying tongue.
"Thomas Merton." His voice was in a straining, whispering lilt. "Who's Thomas Merton? He knows. He knows. Who is he? He's the one thing you can never take from us."
His utterance of Diane's No undid him; it was in the next moment that she shot herself and Maeve.
Spencer was unable to express that the action followed her declaration. Rather, his behavior shifted: for mere minutes, he dissociated and fell into fevered self-stimulatory behavior. As if nothing had happened at all, though, it passed, and then he was at attention again. His unit chief drove him home, and for two weeks no one saw him.
—
Joe Donovan, who puffed out aborted and plosive breaths to keep composed, was stiff as he held his wife, whose knees collapsed under her as she wailed. They were still at the DC Field Office where Agent Hotchner had questioned them earlier during the day—hoping to see their daughter come back to safety, hoping that this would all be behind them—when he gave them the unfortunate news of Maeve's murder at the hands of a female stalker. She had taken her own life alongside Maeve.
There had been evidence, they were told, that was being held until all the paperwork was written up, and they were informed of where they could view and later claim Maeve's body.
Hours later, under the harsh, bright fluorescent lights of a cold mortuary lab, the two viewed the body of their daughter—their only child. She looked wrong. The dark hair should be a sunny blonde. She had dyed it a dark auburn color a month and a half before breaking off her engagement with Bobby, not many weeks after the threatening calls and emails had started. For her own safety, she kept dying it. It and the rest of her naked, covered body had been cleaned of the blood.
Mary cried over her, and in the same breath she cursed Bobby Putnam, Diane Turner, and Spencer Reid. They arranged for her to be cremated.
—
That FBI agent Maeve had been involved with, Spencer Reid, had never even contacted them. How dare he just leave things as they were?
Joe Donovan sat at his armchair for days, brushing his teeth in the morning, drinking his normal cup of coffee, and nibbling at food when he felt the urge to eat—which wasn't often at all—and looked at the newspaper. Mary sat in her study and looked over the data that she and her daughter exchanged regarding her cancer, but never read it.
—
The week following Maeve's murder, on Saturday evening, Mary sat at her armchair next to her console table where a phone was perched, awaiting that familiar ringing that heralded long conversation with her daughter.
They always spoke on Saturdays, she and Maeve, promptly at six o'clock.
It was their tradition, something they did between mother and daughter.
So Mary sat and she waited. The phone never rang. She worried and looked at her watch, convinced that something was amiss, because her Maeve never missed a Saturday call—at least, not unless she warned her mother beforehand. Their conversation could be as profound as the moral and scientific complexities behind editing the genomes of human embryos, to simple subjects, such as the name of the criminally underrated B-list actors from French rom-coms who still hadn't made it to the larger screens.
Mary waited for two hours for that ring before she curled over and began to hum out her pain and the tears fell.
For the first few weeks, this repeated—the waiting, the worrying, the reality, the crying.
The same happened to Joe. Once a month—every month—Maeve would send her parents a classic poem or a literary excerpt in her rich Spencerian-style calligraphy, rife with ornate flourishes, written on parchment paper and mailed in a flat, document-sized priority-mail envelope. Joe looked forward to reaching into his mail and opening it alongside his wife as they two read the contents together.
It was their tradition, something they did between parents and child.
No such letter came in their inbox in the following weeks after her death, and he thought that it got lost in the ever-so-flighty United States Postal Service system. So he sent his daughter a text to get tracking information from her.
She didn't respond.
She always responded.
—
Money continued to funnel into the loft apartment where Joe and Mary had attempted to secrete their daughter from her stalker just days before she was murdered.
They couldn't go there yet to gather her things.
—
Maeve's death was attributed to a stalking case gone wrong, and like that, she was a forgotten blip, a small article on the inner pages of the local newspaper, a small paragraph and a picture splashed on the sidebar on the Mendel University website. Never mind the breakthroughs she had made in her field, or the countless articles she had written in science journals. His daughter was an exceptional, remarkable person; in death, she had been unremarkable.
Weeks after Maeve's death, Joe—a reasonable man who always had a cool temperament and an even cooler head—sought to speak to his wife to share with her his new resolve. He found her in her study, and he stood at the threshold.
"Mary."
"What is it, dear?" Her voice lacked any venom, and she hadn't even turned around. Instead, her sightless reddened and glistening eyes set on the papers below her.
"I think we should speak to a litigator."
"A litigator? Why, Joe?"
"They killed her."
Mary blinked and she looked to the doorway where her husband stood. "Oh, honey." She looked over his state. He hadn't shaved in a few days, his hair was disheveled, and he was wearing the same robe he'd worn for four days in a row.
"They killed our only child. It's their fault she died. They didn't protect—" His voice caught.
"Joe . . ."
Straining to speak, voice thin, he gritted out, "We couldn't protect her."
Following that conversation, Joe Donovan researched litigation law for hours on end.
He researched Agent Aaron Hotchner, the FBI agent who had interviewed him and his wife the day his daughter had been murdered.
He researched Dr Spencer Reid, the FBI agent who Maeve had developed a relationship with. He had failed to protect her! For a man with an alleged IQ of 187, for a man who had three—three!—PhDs and two baccalaureates, he was useless in his field. Why didn't he offer to help her earlier? Why hadn't he done more, been more insistent? It was clear that he had at his disposal the means to find her stalker. Didn't he care for her? What love he had—to be a capable knight and a slayer of monsters, a knight who hadn't rallied an order to rescue the damsel he wooed from afar in her secret castle and save her from the wicked creature surrounding it. There was no valiance in him—no chivalry. Spencer Reid didn't deserve her.
And Maeve, too! If she had just listened to her father when he told her over a year ago that she should leave the area, she wouldn't have died. His daughter was a genius, too. She herself had two PhDs under her belt. Her refusal had been myopic, and look where it had gotten her? A bullet to the head, and she had just turned thirty-one. What folly. What an idiot child.
He hadn't raised an idiot child.
And yet.
—
Why hadn't Maeve accepted Dr Reid's help when he had offered her the assistance of the FBI? She told them that she knew someone who was in a field where he could help her with this stalking issue. She never told them why she refused his assistance.
If she had sought that protection, she would still be alive today.
If she had moved further away, that distance would have dissuaded her stalker from continuing to follow her. She would still be alive today.
Or if she had allowed her mother to stay with her like she had offered when they got her the loft, maybe she could have protected her better. She would have been the one to answer the door and speak to Diane Turner, and she might have been able to anticipate the blow that had incapacitated Maeve. Or she might have been able to fend off Diane. She might still be alive today.
If the agents hadn't allowed Spencer Reid to be alone with Diane and Maeve, they might have had better control of the situation when they finally breached the building. Maybe no one else aside from Bobby Putnam would have died. Maybe they would have emptied their clips into Diane Turner. But Maeve would still be alive today.
Or, maybe, if Maeve had never become a geneticist at all, then she never would have caught the attention of Diane Turner. She would still be alive today.
If they had never moved up further north for a mere handful of years, and if they never let her pursue that dream of fixing her mother and fixing herself, if they had her just accept that her illness would have to be solved by other scientists, then she wouldn't have taken on her studies. Maybe she would have done something less strenuous. Maybe she would be a full-time calligrapher or a professional scribe. The former was regaining popularity in the growing billion-dollar wedding industry, and she would have fit right into it. She was a romantic. She loved calligraphy. Maybe she would still be alive today.
But Maeve had a tenacity and grit, and she knew what she wanted and what she didn't want. It was, in part, why she wasn't alive today.
—
Two and a half months after Maeve's murder, Mr and Mrs Donavan would no longer take their daily walks in the park together. Their joy had waned.
The friends they had for years before they had left DC and when they returned to live out their retirement had stopped inviting them to dinners, because the Donovans had stopped answering their texts or calls. Relatives had gone back to being distant.
They shopped for food, they cooked their meals at home, the news or medical programs were always running in the background.
A parent wasn't supposed to outlive their child. There was no word for this kind of loss. Their child, whom they had always cherished, was gone. It was a hole in their chests that felt carved out, empty.
—
"Joe, dear?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like to take a walk in the park tomorrow afternoon and have dinner at that new restaurant?"
"Did you forget, Mary? We're going to be going to Maeve's loft to empty it out tomorrow."
"Oh yes, you're right. I did forget."
"Are you not feeling well, Mary? We can reschedule. You must be tired after your chemotherapy."
"The fog will pass, honey. If I need a rest, I can lay on her bed for a little while."
It was Saturday, and Maeve and her mother would usually speak to each other on the phone, but Mary Donovan had made plans with her husband this day, and they wouldn't be back home before the early evening.
Joe Donavan knew contacting a litigator would be chasing after the wind. He had stopped looking over a month ago. There would be no satisfaction in taking legal action against the Federal Bureau of Investigations. He neither wanted nor needed their money. It wouldn't buy back Maeve's life. At best, any proceedings would take months to get anywhere. The hurdles he would have to jump over would lead him to his own grave. He couldn't do that. He had a sick wife to look after.
It was just a few months later and—together—they were moving on.
—
Joe wiped the sweat from his forehead. The late-April day-time heat was something he never liked. That, coupled with his current tasks made him uncomfortable, sticky.
Maeve hadn't finished unpacking some boxes, but she made headways with her possessions. He wondered if, perhaps, he should discuss with Mary the prospects of keeping the apartment furnished; it was a six-month contract that would be ending about two months from now. Such an affordable loft on the outskirts of the downtown hubbub was ideal; perhaps they could sublet it to college students for a fraction of the price they were paying for it. There was nothing in the contract that disallowed it. They didn't need the money; it would teach the students discipline.
Discipline.
It was how Joe and Mary had taught Maeve the value of independence when she was attending her undergraduate studies, though, of course, she commuted for those four years.
Maeve was three months shy of sixteen when she graduated high school with a 4.3 GPA, and they wanted to ensure that she was in a safe environment while also giving her the freedoms (and responsibilities) she would have if she were an eighteen-year-old student in dorm living. She had a full-ride scholarship to Yale University, the sole university she wanted to attend ever since she was eleven and began suffering from the same chronic condition as her mother. She wanted to study in the Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology undergraduate program first and work her ranks to earning a doctorate (or two).
Either way, the family had moved from Washington, DC to Connecticut when Maeve was eight. Sure enough, she was accepted into Yale at the ripe age of fifteen despite the many complications of her illness, which often caused her to miss school for days on end—at one point for two whole weeks. But she never fell behind in her assignments or her projects. By the time she was thirteen, she was being home schooled, wherein she worked at her own pace. It was the best decision they could have made for her. Her pace was that of acceleration far beyond the academic level of her peers, soaking in information and retaining it.
So as a teenager, Maeve had learned to take the correct bus and train routes to campus, and she got a part time job in the library on campus. She also tutored her classmates or other university students. In time, she became a research assistant. She lastly made good money penning documents and letters and creating spot calligraphy on rare occasions. Some of her money went into savings, and a good chunk of it went toward rent and travelling expenses she paid without complaint to her parents. She learned the value of responsibility for those handful of years and decided even when she turned eighteen that she wanted to continue living home until she earned her doctorate, the first of which she got at the age of twenty-one.
Discipline, yes, and responsibility, too.
"Mary," Joe called out to his wife. She was in Maeve's little study, a little alcove in her bedroom that she converted from a large walk-in closet to her study room. Mary didn't respond to him. Instead, he found his wife sitting on the floor in front of a hard-case leather travel trunk.
Within the trunk was a large, opened leather pouch with string, full of typed letters and envelopes. There was a leather-bound journal with its spine cracked, opened to a page that had a thin and flat leather string nestled in its pages. It looked to be the last entry, for the page on the right was blank.
"Mary?" He bent toward his wife, who was gripping onto one of the letters. "What are these?"
There was also a thick, gusseted string-tie portfolio, opened, and Joe could see some MRI scans and other medical documents sticking out of it. They had post-it notes on them with things written in her neat penmanship. There was lastly another pouch that was opened, and from it peaked parchment paper with Maeve's everyday Palmer-style calligraphy.
Mary still hadn't answered him.
"Mary?"
"These"—she gasped, panged—"everything in here. It's all to do with that . . . that agent."
Joe picked up the journal and skimmed through her last entry. She was a diligent journalist. It was written on Friday, the eighteenth of January, just one day before she was murdered.
Our failure last month merely availed us the opportunity to begin again, only more wisely—in the minced words of Henry Ford.
I have no doubt that the next time we meet—really meet—there will be no hindrances. It won't be under a veil of secrecy, and he can see the very real person that I am.
There are still no new emails, no phone calls with heavy breathing or mysterious hang-ups. Spencer hasn't stopped apologising to me for the botched date where we would have finally met. He doesn't stop. What to do when you love a dolt? Continue to love him, I suppose. But. When we meet, I'll recite to him the words that I wanted to say to him the first time around. He'll be impressed with my recitation of the poem in its original Russian, I'm sure, and he'll have no doubt at all of my devotion to him. None. I've been waiting. I'd been practicing, since my Russian is a little rusty, recording and re-recording myself. I think I got it right the last time. I can't wait to talk to him again on Sunday and ask him if we can try again. My heart aches to meet him and love him more.
Under the small line of text was a short poem, written in its translated English, and it confused Joe as he read it. He read the words again, and then a third time, perturbed. "Mary," he began with a note of confusion. "I thought she and that agent had never actually met."
"They didn't, Joe," she responded. "As far as I know."
"Then . . . what is this?"
Mary shook her head in exasperation. "I don't understand either, dear. I . . . I just don't. You know how much of a romantic she was."
Mary was holding another letter addressed to Dr Joseph Bell. It seemed that Maeve hand-wrote every letter that she sent to Agent Spencer Reid in her penmanship before she typed and printed them for her safety. She had always preferred the allure of the traditional medium.
Oh, my darling child.
The initial letters were addressed to Dr Spencer Reid, but subsequent letters she wrote to him were coded as his letters to her also seemed to be following the second one. He always addressed his letters to her as Dr Susan Calvin, and she began to address her letters to him as Dr Joseph Bell. She then went on to ask him in greater detail about the psychopathy of obsessive stalkers.
Mary stopped midway through Maeve's third letter to him and couldn't read any more. Firstly, they began sharing their letters in code with each other (not a difficult task for her to decipher—she knew her daughter well), and secondly, she just couldn't do this. She instead had looked at some of the MRIs of the agent, dating back to 2011, as well as other medical documents he'd provided her. The MRIs were fascinating. But why had he sent them to her?
No . . . no. Mary didn't want to know about any of this. Her daughter was dead. Her only child. They hadn't been able to protect her.
She couldn't blame them; Bobby had been killed, so it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that her daughter would meet the same fate. He was a controlling bastard, yes, but he didn't deserve to die. And who would have expected that her stalker was a woman? She was sure that Agent Reid was also traumatized by the event. Agent Hotchner, when he told them of Maeve's death, had told them that Agent Reid had offered to let that woman take his life in exchange for hers.
She wanted to thank him for what he had tried so valiantly to do, but something inside of her made her too afraid to reach out to him.
She didn't know what to do with these things. She didn't. All these letters. All of these—
Wait. Oh!
"Joseph, honey?" She tilted her head as she lowered the letter to the floor.
The man had put the journal back down and was moving about the room. "Yes?"
"Didn't that agent, the older one—what was his name again?"
"Agent Hotchner."
"Didn't he say that there was something of Maeve's still being processed until the case was closed?"
"Yes, you're right; he did." Joe went to his wife and extended a hand to her when she started to stand. "Oof, we're not young anymore." She couldn't unfurl herself from the floor without shuffling, and he couldn't pull her up without having to take a bracing step back.
"I would think those things are processed by now. It's been months."
"Are you sure you want—"
"I'm ready to just put things away, Joseph. Do we still have that card he gave us?"
"It's somewhere in my study, honey. I'll search for it when we get home. Why don't we go to that new restaurant you were talking about the other day?"
When the couple returned home after eating at the restaurant, Joe set about looking for the contact card that Agent Hotchner had given them. He remembered that the face of the man who had told them of Maeve's death, had been hard and unreadable. He had told them that if they needed anything at all, they should contact him.
He handed the card to his wife, and she declared she would call him in the morning.
—
When Monday morning came around, Mary hadn't been able to call Agent Hotchner. Nor had she been able to call him throughout the day. In the evening, she fell asleep assuring herself that she would call him tomorrow. The next morning came around and Mary fixed herself a coffee along with an English muffin with confiture. At promptly half after nine, she picked up her phone, pressed the numbers, and hit send. It rang once.
Oh dear. Was she ready for this?
A second time it rang.
She might not be.
And then a third.
This might—she thought she was ready to put this all behind her, but she found her hand shaking.
There was an answer. Her chest ached.
"You've reached the office of Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner."
That voice—
"I apologize that I'm unable to speak with you personally."
Oh!
"Please leave a brief message regarding the nature of your call, as well as the best means for me to contact you, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible."
There was a beep.
Mary was silent. She had forgotten the sound of Aaron Hotchner's voice and hearing it over the pre-recorded voice messaging system had made her recall that day with clarity, when he had apologized to her and Joe and told her that Maeve had been murdered. Her voice caught in her throat. She hung up without leaving a message.
MONDAY, APRIL 29 AT 11:47PM WASHINGTON, DC
The scramble to pick up the phone as soon as it began ringing on Penelope's countertop sent her lunging and nearly pushing it over the edge to clatter to the floor. "Hotch? Sir? Have you found Reid? How's Alex? Please, tell me what's going on."
She was frenzied since she last spoke with the team, pacing back and forth and murmuring to herself that everything would be fine. All the information she was gathering was still collating and she was stuck, unable to assist where she was needed. She was needed in New Jersey. She had to be with her people. She had to make sure that everything was fine and not as chaotic as was seeming to be. Derek wasn't answering his phone or the texts, and neither was Jennifer.
Bad—very bad communicators!
"No, we haven't, Garcia." Aaron sounded enervated. "Blake is soon to go into surgery."
Her voice cracked out in a squeak and she felt her eyes stinging. Desperate and unable to quell it, she blurted, "Sir, what do you need from me? Please, I need to help."
"Thanks, Garcia. I need you to take the next flight to Newark Liberty International Airport asap—"
"Oh!"
"We'll need you to take point on the surveillance from various locations, so bring anything with you that will assist with digital forensics recovery. I'll detail you when you get here. Let me know your approximate arrival time; I'll be picking you up personally."
"Yes, sir, I'm"—she inhaled—"on my way. With the earliest flight possible."
She went about booking the next red-eye flight from the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport; it wouldn't leave until quarter after five in the morning.
"Wouldn't it be better to drive?" She spoke aloud to the specters in her apartment. She reasoned with herself, shaking her head. "No. No. Hotch wants me to take a flight, so I'll fly. Driving is—bad. Dangerous."
But this was good. This would give her time to go to Spencer's apartment. A few years ago, he had requested she take on an important matter. She had intended to make good on that promise then and was chagrined that now might be the time to do so.
—
It was just a couple of days after the unit had dealt with the three DC home invaders who were brutally murdering homeowners in the newly gentrified areas[1]. Spencer was now officially cleared to travel despite his leg injury and the crutches, but he found himself in the lair of the technical analyst extraordinaire anyway for no other reason than wanting to be in her company.
He had liked working with her so closely these past few weeks. They had bickered, they had joked around, they had talked about upcoming sci-fi conventions, they had debated over where the next Doctor Who series was headed and who would be the eleventh doctor, and she'd clocked him upside his head a couple of times with one of her fuzzy pens whenever he unwittingly irritated her.
The two were in a comfortable silence, and he was chagrined that he would be breaking it.
"Hey . . . Garcia?"
"What is it, my dearest dove?" Penelope didn't turn away from her screen, and her fingers clacked away on one of her keyboards.
"I—I, uh, have to—hmm." He paused to clear his throat.
Penelope stopped typing and rotated her chair to face her colleague, and he was warmed by the immediate concern on her face. He was folding and unfolding a paperclip between his lithe fingers.
"Reid?" She squeezed his face gently in her hand.
"I was wondering if you could, um, promise? To do something for me?" he continued, keeping his eyes downcast. He cleared his throat again. "It's kind of a huge burden."
"Oh, yes, of course. Anything for you, lovey-dovey. Never a burden."
"You might not like it. In fact, knowing your disposition, I know you won't. But. I'd be really grateful." The last words came out softly, and with that same hint of something else.
She waved a hand at him, expression warm and inviting. "Pish posh. What is it?"
"A few months ago, when I contracted that strain of anthrax"—he saw her expression fall—"I asked you to record a message."
"Yes, I remember." She bridled, shaking her head. "Okay. Reid? You're right; you know my constitution? I'm touched"— her voice raised in intonation like she was asking him, and her eyes squinted unevenly—"that you entrusted me to do that for you? But never again . I will keep you in this office forever if it will prevent anything like that from ever happening to you again. That—was—traumatic."
Spencer looked ashamed. "I'm sorry, Garcia."
"Humph. Have a cookie."
He sat more upright, his expression breaking from that glum look into something unbridled. "You made more! I can finally have a cookie!"
"You can finally have a cookie. Better than one, take two."
He was uninhibited in his anticipation and his eyes glinted as she produced the tin. He plucked up two oatmeal cookies. They were so good and so moist, and best of all, they didn't have raisins. Spencer suspected that she made them for him; she usually put raisins in her oatmeal cookies and he had to chew around them or spittoon them out, but not these ones.
"Okay, so, what is this favor you speak of?"
"Firstly," he started around the cookie still wedged between his teeth and his inner cheek, "can you play it for me, please?" He remembered exactly what he said, of course. What he couldn't remember, because it was a highly charged situation, was how he sounded.
Penelope's face couldn't hide her distress, and she let out a sound of objection. Nonetheless, she put the tin away after closing it, having taken one of the cookies for herself as well. She turned to her screens, started a fevered search, and finally the sound file popped up. She pressed play and had to suppress the urge to cover her ears.
"Hi, Mom. This is Spencer. I just, um . . ." His voice drifted, and they could hear a sigh. "I just . . . really want you to know that I love you, and"—the voice caught, and a throat cleared, and then it took on that shaky quality that was difficult for him to control—"I need you to know that I spend every day of my life proud to be your son."
Spencer touched his hand to his forehead. He could clearly hear the despair and sadness in his voice. He was relieved that the message had never reached his mother's ears. She would have immediately known that something was wrong.
A mother knows.
He didn't have to know from Dr Norman that if she had heard that message, she would have had a terrible episode, and it would have been damaging to her psychosis. He couldn't do that to her. That hadn't been well thought out at all, and as soon as he got home from his hospital stay after Dr Kimura cleared him, he decided to undertake a project that worked in tandem with other plans for his mother's future care, which he had been building toward for years.
"Please, delete that message."
"Whew, Boy Genius. You do not have to ask me twice. Consider it done." A few clicks later, she turned back to him. "It's obliterated into the great nothingness. And might I remind you? Never again." She gave him a stern expression, pressing her index and middle finger to his forehead.
He quirked his lips in an expression of unease. He was sure that she was not going to like what would come next.
"Was that it, or . . ."
Spencer shook his head. "I told you, you won't like this. Since that case—since May fifteenth—I've been writing additional letters to my mother, about two to three a night, and three or four a night on some weekends. I finished the last letter a few days ago. They're not particularly long like my usual letters, but I think they have enough enriching detail to keep my mother . . . distracted."
Penelope's face dropped. "That's, like, over 350 letters, Reid."
"I've written exactly a year's worth of letters—one letter for each day. I—I can't leave a message like that for my mother again." His voice was weak and vibrated. "I can't do that to her and just leave her . . . hanging. That's why I need your help. I know I can trust you to help me with this."
—
Penelope stepped into Spencer's apartment after unlocking the door. He had given her a key that day so that she could enter his apartment whenever she deemed necessary. That had turned into her leaving him food in his near-empty fridge or in his sparsely-stocked pantry and cabinets whenever the team was away on cases.
'These occasions aren't a necessity,' he had said to her over the phone the third time he returned from a three-day case and found something in his fridge that didn't belong.
The two laughed it off but he didn't ask her to stop. So, she didn't. Except when Maeve was killed. She didn't abuse her key privileges at that time; she merely visited him every day and asked him to knock on the door twice to let her know that he was still conscious, leaving him mixed nuts, baskets of food, and other things besides.
She flicked on the light, and the dark apartment was illuminated in a soft, yellowish glow. She hadn't been back here since she, Derek, Jennifer had helped him clean it following Maeve's death. She noticed that the books on all of his shelves had since then been rearranged, and that the apartment was in much less disarray. It was in its strange mix of organized and disorganized, overall neat, as it had been before all this happened.
She sighed and stood still for a moment, soaking in the comfortable and lived-in feel. And then her eyes started roving as she recalled Spencer's words.
'In the case of an emergency, Garcia . . . um, Penelope, if I get sick like that again and my prognosis is bleak, or if something happens in the field and I'm killed, I need you to mail my mother a letter daily. It's fairly self-explanatory once you find the trunk that's on my bottom bookshelf under my stained-glass window.'
Her eyes zeroed in on the window and she walked toward it, stepping around his desk. She saw it. She saw the trunk. Her eyes watered. "I hate you, Dr Spencer Reid," she murmured to herself. "I hate you so much for making me do this."
'When you open it, there will be sheets of stamps in a vellum package, a vellum sleeve with one separate letter, a sheet of instructions, and under that stacks of letters.'
She put the trunk on his desk and sat at the chair, fingers twiddling for a moment. She pressed the index fingers of each hand onto it and pushed on it. "I really hate this." She'd hated it when he asked her to begin this, and she hated it now. It all broke her heart, and she dealt with enough heartbreak in her life. Breathing deeply, she flicked her thumbs on the buckles and opened up the trunk. It was as he said.
The reality hit her. This was—this might be happening.
'You realize, Reid, that I won't have to do any of this. You won't ever have to send those letters to your mother.'
'I hope not, but I'm being realistic.'
Her eyes glistened. Given the habits of this specific case—and in light of new understanding, knowing their implications because she worked with enough cases to know how some unsubs operated only by sheer proximity to the team she worked with—the reality was that Spencer was either going to be in captivity for months, or like Marion he would—
Oh god. Oh no. Oh, Reid.
She felt ill.
'I have only one letter that needs to be sent out before any of the others are, and it's in the other vellum sleeve. Once that one is mailed, the others can be sent out in any order. The instruction sheet will remind you of that.'
Breathing down the sick that she felt crawling up her throat, she sighed, resolute. She had to be prepared. Above all things, she wanted to respect Spencer's wishes.
'Please don't wait any more than two nights and two days before sending her that first letter.'
The vellum sleeve with the separate letter had a post-it note on it, which had writing on it in bold, thick sharpie letters: Please send this letter first. In pen and in smaller text, it was written: All others can be sent in any order.
She looked at the instructions, which were hand-written in his scrawl. He took care to write it as carefully and legibly as possible, though:
One: Please call Dr Norman at 702.555.8990 as soon as possible and let him know what's happened. He will know how to deal with my mother.
Two: 40% of my monthly income is directly deposited to my mother's mental care facility every 21st of the month. An additional 10% goes into an emergency fund account. There is enough in that emergency account to cover her needs for approximately 3.5 years as of 4/3/2013.
Penelope noted that it looked like he whited out the numbers in the underlined spaces and updated it regularly over the months and years. She read on:
Please immediately begin using this account before the 21st following any issue that would prevent me from being able to pay Bennington Sanitorium. Access to this account is as follows.
Written afterwards was the necessary account information.
Three: In the case that 3.5 years has passed, my trust fund of $23,335 will be used for an additional year, after which all funds will be discontinued, and Diana Reid will be turned to a state hospital if possible.
No. Just no. He wouldn't be gone for that long. Not anywhere near it if she had anything to say about it. He would be back home in no time. They were going to find him in no time at all. She was only doing this as a failsafe because as much as she adored Spencer, she respected him as well, and she was being realistic. They would find him, and she would shower him with the love she'd intended to have done just a day prior.
She looked through everything and paused. "Envelopes." There were no envelopes. He had forgotten to provide envelopes, the muttonhead! He thought of everything else but that. Should she mail them using his home address as the return address, or should she use his PO Box address? It was with that error that she was able to see, through the vellum sleeve, the first letter she would be sending to his mother:
To My Resplendent Mother,
Hi, mom. It's your son, Spencer. I'm sorry that I haven't written you a letter for a few days. I've been terribly ill. I hope you're doing well, and much better than I was. Are you sleeping well?
The letter was short, and Penelope didn't even read it all. She felt intrusive for having read any part of it—but what she did read was full of doting sentiment and love.
It was signed Yours forever in heart and mind, Spencer.
She sighed and pulled a folio from her bag to put in the first letter along with a couple of others. Just in case, she would take one week's worth, but she knew that she wouldn't need that many. They would find him and get him back quickly. They would.
She snapped a picture of his instructions with her phone and would call Dr Norman as soon as possible. In fact, I'll check with him how Spencer addressed his envelopes.
Maybe he had prepared for having a medical situation or being killed in the field. But he hadn't ever thought of the scenario where he was taken again.
Despite what everyone believed, Dr Spencer Reid, genius with an IQ of 187, reader of 20,000 words a minute, chess aficionado, did not see every step. He was blind as a bat.
Oh. That reminded her. There was something else she should get from his apartment. She might have to dig a little to find it. She had a little time.
TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2013 AT 2:55 AM BETHESDA, MARYLAND
Erin Strauss didn't like receiving calls from Aaron Hotchner. She liked even less when she received them from him at ungodly hours in the morning. He had spoken with her less than 24 hours ago about the progress of his current case; she knew that any issue that warranted her attention at this hour would be nothing short of indigestion-inducing.
"Aaron," she answered in an even tone.
"Chief Strauss," Aaron began on the other line. "Apologies for calling you at this late hour. I need to apprise you of a—an unfortunate and delicate situation that has come up with the case."
"Yes?"
"I want you to know that we've been on top of the development for a few hours and are still getting more information as time passes."
This wasn't like her agent. He was a direct person. With a touch of impatience, she said, "Aaron, you're not one to beat around the bush. What is it?"
"There was an accident late last night involving Agent Blake and Dr Reid."
Ugh. Erin sat more at attention, turning on her bedside lamp. I swear with this team . . . Never a dull moment. She aimed to speak with compassion, though: "Are they alright? Will an incident report need to be filed, or will we need to involve any legal proceedings?"
"Erin, we have reason to believe that the unsubs targeted them."
She must still be sleep-addled. She shook her head in bemusement, letting out a sound of irritation. "Tell me everything," she ordered.
Aaron began to apprise her of where everything stood as of now, wrapping it all in the neatest bow he knew possible:
Agent Blake and Dr Reid were returning from the ME after the newest victim, who the team believed was targeted by their unsub, had turned up dead. They pulled over due to vehicular issues, and in that time, while they were parked, there was a head-on collision. From there, things got complicated. Dr Reid was missing, and Agent Blake was stabbed multiple times. A viable suspect was being looked into.
"What?" This was an attack on them. "Is . . . is Agent Blake alright?" The concern was, to her surprise, genuine. She and Alex had just patched things up a couple of months previous. She wanted to prove to her, not in word, but in action, that she was truly contrite, and was not the same self-interested person she had been those many years ago. That wouldn't do if she was dead.
Was that selfish? Bad form? Yes, maybe a little so.
"She'll make a full recovery. She just got out of surgery a few minutes ago. This will put her out of commission for a few weeks."
"Undoubtedly." She sighed. "Aaron, do you think this is the replicator? He's been dormant, but—"
"I have my doubts, Erin. He's been laying low these past few weeks, like you said. There's nothing to suggest that he even followed the last few cases. He was chasing us, then it was our turn to chase him, and when we caught up to him he went inactive. As of now, the intricacy of this case, which hasn't even come to a conclusion yet, is far too fresh for him to get his hands on, and the events leading up to the attack and Dr Reid's abduction are invariably linked to this case, so I'm convinced this is the work of our unsubs."
There it was again. Erin thought that she had misheard before, but it seems that it hadn't been her sleep-addled imagination. "That's the second time you've pluralized the word unsub, Aaron. Am I to understand that you believe there's more than one?"
He sighed on the other end of the line. "Yes, based on the evidence and the nature of the attack upon Agent Blake and Dr Reid, the orchestration is far too elaborate for just one person to pull off."
"Good god. And you think that he . . . that they have Dr Reid."
"Yes."
"What do they want with him?"
"Unfortunately, we still have yet to determine how other victimology even links together, Erin, so I can't even answer that."
"Are you alright, Aaron?"
"Yes, thank you."
"But not truly."
"I—"
"This is the second time that Dr Reid has been taken by an unsub under your purview, Aaron. I don't want to be the one to say this, but it doesn't look good. For him, or for you."
It wasn't the first time, either, that something awful happened to that agent. Trouble seemed to follow him, not unlike her middle child, her son. It didn't make her son any less her favorite child though. Of all those agents in that team, she rather favored Dr Reid—for the little that she knew him—because he was the only one who treated her with any amount of deference. And he—
"I'm aware. We're doing everything we can to retrieve him in a . . . timely and safe manner."
Erin sighed. "You need more time there."
"We do."
"The director will have my head. You're victims in this situation, you understand that, yes?"
"Yes."
"And you understand that since that debacle with Ian Doyle and ex-Agent Prentiss, the director has been keeping tabs on you, yes? And that your dealings with Maeve Donovan have put you back under scrutiny?"
"I understand all that, Erin, and it goes without question that I appreciate your having our backs in all of those cases."
"Yes, well, you are the best team I have under my belt, despite your roguish ways." It was a backhanded compliment. "What else have you uncovered?"
Aaron then picked up from where he left off, explaining to her how they were sure that the unsubs who had abducted Marion were the same as Spencer's abductors because of the same modus operandi in the actual abduction—the tires, the cones. They eventually found the vehicle used to crash into Alex and Spencer, and its state was enough to indicate to them that it couldn't have been driven to its location. It was how they concluded that there was more than one unsub. The tires, the license plate, and the most viable suspect it belonged to—all of this was relayed to Erin. That was as far as they had gotten.
Erin sighed. "You mentioned yesterday that there's a sexual component to these abductions."
"In the case of Noah Turner, yes. It's suspected but as of yet confirmed with Victim B. Given the septic state of Noah's gastric organs, any indications of sepsis found in further analyses of Victims B and C might lead us to believe the same is the case for them."
"God. What of Marion, the most recent victim?"
"There was no physical evidence of sexual assault or forceful sexual activity anogenitally, but DNA analysis might prove otherwise. And there was no sadistic component as found with Noah or the other two victims, either—that is, there weren't signs of strangulation, and there was no partialist behavior either."
"So perhaps Dr Reid won't be—"
"Unfortunately, Erin, we're looking at this realistically. We have reason to believe that the unsubs stalked and targeted Dr Reid specifically, and we can't determine why. Marion Knowles was killed within about 24 hours of being abducted and his body was held before it was dumped. These unsubs' normal modus operandi might be that they seek to have control of their victims for . . . for weeks and months at a time."
"My god. So, you think that Marion was used as a way to do what? Lure you?"
"Possibly."
Erin sighed. She hated this. She hated all of this. This was enough to make her turn to—
No.
No. She'd been doing well. Very well.
"Why do criminals have such a fascination with this damn team?" she murmured to herself.
"I'm sorry?"
"Nothing," Erin spoke up. "Despite any misgivings, I wouldn't trust any other team to find Dr Reid at the moment. Do what needs to be done, Aaron, but do not break any protocol. Get your agent back. And let me know if you need anything. I'll deal with the director myself."
It was more than Aaron was expecting, for there was silence on the other end.
"Aaron?"
"Yes—I—thank you, Erin."
"Aaron, keep me updated with any new developments at all times. If needed, I will pull you out and have Newark Field Office handle this."
"I will. Thank you, again, Erin."
The call ended, and Erin put her phone down on her nightstand, sighing again. Damn it, damn it, damn it all. She opened the drawer on her nightstand, plucking her sobriety chip from within. She used to keep a bottle of gin in there instead. Whenever she felt troubled and she reached in there with mindless muscle memory, her finger brushed the chip and she remembered her struggle, her sobriety. She took the chip in her hand and rubbed it. She had one here, and she had one in her office drawer. This one she had gotten from her AA group.
The one in her office she had gotten from Dr Reid, who had seen what others hadn't seen, and came into her office shortly after she had returned from her months away. She had been impatient with him, but he had been meek in his putting a dark and small gift box on her desk. This was just a few months before Derek and Aaron approached her about her alcoholism after she relapsed. Based on how she now sponsored other alcoholics fighting for sobriety, she knew what to look for in a person to see the subtle signs of addiction. It took an addict to know what other addicts looked like. She knew what that meant.
She was glad to know little of this agent before, and—in all honesty—she hadn't wanted to know too much about him even after he had given her that chip, as that put too much emotional burden on her. He was another brick in the wall and another cog in the machine.
But the event with Maeve Donovan had bridged that distance even more, to her great displeasure. His trauma was palpable, and it had made her uncomfortable. While she separated her personal life and her work life in a very delineating line, his reaction after recounting what had transpired during that event had awakened a primal and basic response from her. She hoped to never have to deal with him again for fear that line vibrated as it had that time. What little she knew of him was that he was kind, and that was impressionable.
She didn't care what others thought of her, and she didn't care if the agents under her purview liked her or not. But acts of kindness were not quickly forgotten, especially when there was a sensitive issue involved. She wouldn't forget his discretion. Such an act spoke volumes of the type of person he was. But that was all she would have liked to say regarding that agent.
.
.
.
[1] Referring to Criminal Minds episode 05x04 Hopeless.
Note: Not that I'm a fan of giving major plot points away or anything, but I want to make it 100% clear that Joe and Mary Donovan have nothing at all to do with Spencer's abduction. I think, in having read their section to the full, that this is more obvious, but I want to make note of it anyway. Thanks for having read, hope to see you in the comments :)
