Chapter 16

BAU Headquarters
FBI Building
Quantico, VA

June 2012

"You bought her a ring?" Garcia's jaw was not the only one dropping in the room.

"Yeah. We were going to get married." Spencer replied.

"What happened?" JJ asked.

"We both put in for a transfer to DC and permission to live together, my transfer came through right away, but hers didn't We finished out our work, graduated, waited as long as we could, but finally I had to report to the Academy. Every priory has some kind of guest house; she was going to stay in the one at Castle Green until her transfer went through. Once she had that they would cover our moving expenses and let her stay in the guest house here in DC until she found us an apartment. Then before I reported for duty we were going to fly back to Vegas and get married."

"But you didn't?" Morgan asked.

"About three weeks into the Academy her letters started coming back Not At This Address. I tried calling but her number was disconnected. When I spoke to the secretary at Castle Green he said she had been transferred. I asked Gideon to look into it but..."

"Gideon was never the best at follow through." Morgan nodded.

"And everyone was saying that college romance doesn't last through being that long apart. I...I guess I just cut my losses and moved on."

"Which is exactly the advice I would have given you if we had been roommates back then," Morgan said. JJ and Garcia nodded their agreement. "But it sounds like that's not what happened..."

Westbound
Over the English Channel

"So what happened?" Dave asked.

Mia was curled up on the couch of the jet he had arranged. She was napping away the flight, which her mother likely should have done as well. But Dave could feel her need to finally talk to someone, anyone. And so he had listened to the story of how she met Spencer, of their life together, and of how life found a way. "I thought I was coming down with something." Shannon said, "All the work of finishing my degree and making preparations to move across country and transfer and all of it. And Spencer and I weren't getting as much sleep as we should." She managed to chuckle a little at that. "About a week after he left I realized that I had missed two periods and I went to the drugstore. Surprise."

Dave chuckled with her. "You weren't the first college lovers to be caught by that kind of surprise."

"No. we weren't. I didn't have any way to call Spencer so I wrote to him. I asked him to ask if he could call me, of course, but I said that I was all right and that if he didn't want that right now that was fine we could work something out. But I was planning on keeping it; I couldn't do that to something created from that much love and that much magic." She shook her head. "And then I sealed the letter, addressed it to him and put it in the outgoing mail slot in the Priory office." Dave groaned. "I'd be surprised if he ever got any of my letters."

"Some. Not that one."

She nodded. "A few nights later two men broke into my room in the middle of the night, pulled a bag over my head, tossed me into a car and drove me out to a training camp. Bernard Maupin was there along with his men, there were seven of us, and he started in. He told us we weren't really knights we were just whores that had snuck into the ranks to seduce real knights from their duties, and that he was going to keep us there and train us until we were real knights or we died trying. When one of the women protested he pulled out a gun, had his men strip her down and whipped her, one lash for every word. He said the only thing we were allowed to say was Yes Sir. And he meant it."

"You couldn't get together and fight?"

"He thought of that. He pulled a bottle of Mifepristone out of his pocket and said that if there was any indication that we were thinking it someone would randomly get dosed."

Mifepristone. Also known as RU-486. The abortion pill. "That ended that idea."

"Yeah. I spent my entire pregnancy doing calisthenics, hiking around the desert mountains and learning to endure torture techniques. I never saw a doctor, not once through the whole thing." Her eyes went sad and dark just remembering. "Most days I was just praying that she would survive."

"She has a strong mother."

Shan shrugged at that. "Two days after I delivered in the training camp clinic, which was a nightmare, he took the last of my words out on my skin..." Dave couldn't help the noise that came from him. "I didn't even realize I was talking while I was in labor. The day after that he dropped a change of clothes on my bed with a backpack full of diapers, told me to get dressed, and drove me to the airstrip. He never told me where I was going or why. I landed, got into the car that met the plane, and was driven to my new home. There was a case of formula, a bag of bottles and a box of diapers on the table, clothes in the closet." She indicated what she was wearing, "And a note. It said that today was Saturday and that I was to report to the priory at 8am Monday morning for an eight hour shift. Mia was all of four days old."

"And there was nothing you could do?"

"I didn't even know where I was. There wasn't any food in the house, there weren't any stores or businesses I could see, the houses around me looked dark for the most part, and given that he hadn't bothered to hide the cameras I figured the phone was tapped as well. I was just grateful for the formula, I never could manage more than what seemed like a few drops of milk for her. I made up a bottle, sat right there in the middle of the floor and filled up her belly, and I was dammed grateful I could. She'd been crying with hunger all day even though I let her nurse as much as I could."

"At least you had that much." Dave pointed out.

Shan shook her head. "Yeah. I figured once she was full I'd change her, pack what I could of it in my backpack and then start walking. At that point I honestly thought he was going to kill her at any time, at least that way we could go together." By now her eyes were filling up with tears. "As I was sitting there I saw an envelope under the front mat. Euros, about a thousand. Maybe from the previous tenant. It was something at least. And when I looked outside I saw someone making a delivery to an apartment building across the intersection. Thankfully the kid spoke English."

Corner of Via de S. Domenico and Via de S. Alessio
Rome, Italy

December 2003

"Hey!" Shannon called to the figure across the street. She'd left Mia in the center of the barren living room, insurance for her return. Hopefully this person did not think she was a crazy woman, running out in leggings and a soiled tank top and a battered pair of hiking boots. "Hey!"

The person was a kid, maybe eighteen. "Sì? Cosa vuoi?" He asked.

Oh damn it. Just a kid, she couldn't risk getting him overly involved. Hopefully the darkness would hide his identity, her movements, from the cameras on the front of the building. "English?"

"Some. A little."

"Can you run an errand for me?"

"Errand?"

"Bring something from the store" As if on cue Mia's cries started coming from the door. "I have the baby, I can't..."

"Ohhhh. Sì, Sì. I understand. Un bambino."

"I'll pay you to go to the store for me. Um, a hundred Euro?"

"Sì, sure, what I get?"

"Um, whatever food you just brought to that house. And one other thing..."