Chapter 7 – The Trust Game

Essential Listening: Breathe, by Alexi Murdoch

0o0

They'd got back to Quantico at midday, having finished the night before too late to fly back. Garcia had greeted them like an anxious parent, fussing unnecessarily and making most of them laugh.

They'd managed to shake her as the afternoon rumbled on, and they had all piled into their reports. It was astonishing, really, how much paperwork one case could generate. Grace glared at her in-tray. She honestly hadn't thought the FBI would surpass the form-filling capabilities of the London Metropolitan Police, but they had, even in the few weeks Grace had been on the team.

They had been away for four days and already there were ten more reports than she remembered. She ran her finger down their buff cardboard departmental spines.

Perhaps they were breeding.

She pulled the next one (an evaluation report from somewhere in Michigan) off the stack with an air of resignation; someone would definitely notice if they mysteriously disappeared.

She glanced at the top crime-scene photograph and grimaced.

At her desk, Prentiss slapped her case file closed with an air of finality and checked her watch.

"That's it, guys," she said, pushing her chair back. "I'm outta here."

"Somewhere to be, Prentiss?" Morgan asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah," she said, grabbing her bag. "Home – food, bath, bed."

Grace laughed.

"Sounds like heaven," she said, closing her own file. "Better get out of here before we get another call."

"Hell yeah," said Prentiss, swinging past Morgan. "See you tomorrow."

Deciding that whatever was terrorising Michigan could wait until the morning, Grace put her desk in order, not particularly looking forward to the microwaved meal and lumpy mattress that awaited her in the Cadet house. Standing up, she felt Morgan's eyes on her. He was watching her over the top of the weird glass partition that divided their desks.

"What?" she asked, sticking the evaluation report back on the top of her in-tray.

"You want to grab a drink?" he asked. Grace wondered whether this was his way of being supportive, remembering her reaction at the Cutler house.

She put her head to one side, considering. These past few years had shaped her into quite a private person. She didn't relish the thought of her new team-mates seeing her vulnerable – and talking about her father would always make her feel vulnerable. Reid, somehow, didn't count, particularly given the state of breakdown he had been in when they had met. He'd let her see his darker moments and she'd do the same, one day. That was different. But with the others…

Trust was earned, she reflected, and she'd have to start somewhere – and it wasn't like she had to tell him everything.

"Alright," she decided, "your shout."

Morgan quirked an eyebrow.

"You're buying," she translated; she was growing accustomed to having to explain the British parts of her idiolect.

"You're on," said Morgan, grabbing his jacket. "Pretty boy?"

"Uh – actually I'm going to finish this up," he said, glancing at Grace, who knew that he had a meeting tonight. "Thanks."

"Your loss," said Morgan jovially, waiting as Grace hooked an arm through her bag and knocked back the last of her tea.

"See you later," said Grace, ruffling Reid's hair as she passed him.

He tried to glare at her. It wasn't very convincing.

"Yeah, later…"

"So, where are we heading?" Grace asked. She hadn't been out too many times since she'd arrived – except for that one, ill-advised drinking session in New Orleans – and didn't really know the area.

"You'll see."

0o0

Grace eyed the perky barmaid who was chatting to Morgan with some amusement. The bar – which seemed to exist somewhere between a dedicated FBI hang-out and a sports bar – wasn't bad. It was hidden off a side street between the back end of the Marine Base Football Stadium and some warehouses of mysterious origin. It seemed to be the kind of place that you only found if someone in the know introduced you – and she suspected that this was what Morgan was up to. He wanted to build a rapport.

Standard interrogation technique.

It was probably also why he had chosen a secluded booth in the back of the bar.

She settled back in her seat as Morgan came back with their drinks, still grinning.

"She's cute," Grace observed.

"Not my type," said Morgan, setting their drinks down.

"Could have fooled me," Grace teased.

He gave a bark of laughter and she smiled, glad he wasn't offended.

"Nah – I got two rules," he told her cheerfully. "Never date anyone who carries a gun –" Grace snorted into her drink "- and never date someone who works where you like to eat."

"Sound advice," Grace nodded, and almost added that it was advice she ought to follow more often, but stopped herself; it might have led to questions she didn't want to answer.

Morgan watched her quietly for a few moments.

Ah, thought Grace, the putting-me-at-my-ease part of the evening has come to an end…

"So why the BAU?" Morgan asked, not quite ready to stop playing the trust game.

"The reputation didn't hurt," she said surprised. "And I had profiling experience. Not as much as you lot, as far as I can tell, but enough."

"Why not a profiling unit in Britain?" Morgan asked, sipping his beer.

Grace smiled. As with the coppers back home, conversations with her new colleagues (being that unique combination of curious and utterly suspicious that members of law enforcement tended towards) were rather like verbal chess matches.

"There aren't any," Grace said. "Not like the BAU, anyway. There are a few trained bods like me, scattered across various departments – and we run training seminars every few months – but there's no dedicated team. I think we're a bit too small, really."

"Your unit?"

"Britain in general," she said; Morgan laughed.

"Still – you could have transferred to another unit in the UK," he pressed, watching her expression closely. "You didn't have to come all the way out here."

Grace sighed and took a considered sip of her beer.

"I needed a change of scene," she said, leaving it deliberately vague. If he wanted to press her further, he could.

"I don't let go of things," said Morgan, after a moment.

Grace smiled slightly.

"You wouldn't be BAU if you did," she said. She put her beer carefully down on the table and took a deep breath. "Okay. About a year and a half ago, my Dad was diagnosed with severe early on-set dementia."

Morgan let out a long, slow whistle; Grace avoided his face – she didn't want to see the pity there.

"It was rough. I was working in London, driving up to his house in Oxford a couple of times a week after work, kipping in his spare room at the weekend. Most of it was a bit of a blur, to be honest." She frowned, absently drawing pictures in the condensation on the outside of her glass with her finger. "Doctor's visits, evaluations, taking to his work – he was a Professor at Oxford – reassuring his students, speaking to his neighbours, worrying about what might happen when I wasn't there, the endless night drives… it was exhausting. If the Gov' hadn't cut me some slack at work I'd have gone barmy.

"Watching him deteriorate was… heartbreaking…" she faltered, and paused for a moment until she could trust her voice again. "It was like… like his mind was a pane of safety glass that someone had thrown a rock through… and every day another fragment would fall away and I'd lose another piece of him. I was just sitting around waiting for that last piece to drop – the one that would take down the whole damn' lot…

"Some days – the good days – he was my Dad again… he knew who, where and when he was, he knew who I was…" she closed her eyes briefly, remembering. "Other times I'd have to remind him to eat, to dress – he'd forget what day it was and take too much medication, or set the alarm when he was still in the house… hundreds of tiny, everyday things that we think are automatic…

"And sometimes he'd forget how old I was and ask me how I was getting on at school…" or worse, she added mentally, ask about Simon. "Or ask what time Mum would be getting home, and I'd have to tell him all over again. It broke his heart – I felt so guilty, sometimes I just pretended she was staying with friends until he forgot that he'd asked…"

She paused and took another drink, trying to pretend that she wasn't about to cry.

"How old were you when she died?" Morgan asked, gently.

"Six," said Grace heavily, meeting his eyes and recognising a familiar sadness there. "Drunk driver ran her off the road." She watched him nod slowly and added, "You?"

"Ten," he said, after a moment. "My Dad – shot in a convenience store. He was a hero," he said, and the hollow tone told her everything she needed to know.

"It doesn't help, does it?"

"No, not really," he said, smiling grimly.

They were silent for a moment, thinking of the children they had once been.

"We were on a list," Grace said eventually. "For a home – or a live-in carer. I couldn't be there and be in the Met'… and Dad was so proud of me when I joined the police, leaving would have felt like letting him down.

"I had one of the neighbours cooking for him, keeping an eye on him while I was at work – Mrs Rutherford from next door." She smiled suddenly at the recollection. "He told me he thought she was sweet on him on one of his better days – made sure she heard him, too. They loved winding one another up…

"Anyway, one night I had to stay late – finishing an interrogation, some small-time thief who shot his partner in the leg by accident – I didn't get back 'til nearly midnight, and when I turned into the lane there was smoke everywhere…" she glanced up at him. "You know that feeling you get when you know something's wrong but you don't know why? I think I drove the rest of the way at about a hundred miles an hour…" she stared into her beer, watching tiny rivulets of condensation trickle down the glass.

"He'd gone into the garage to get the lawnmower out," she said quietly. "Christ only knows why, I mean it was gone eleven at night in October… Anyway, our lawnmower was this old beast of a thing – tended to take you across the grass instead of the other way around… petrol powered… and he'd brought out a candle instead of the torch, and he must have knocked the petrol can over, or something…"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Morgan close his eyes as he mentally filled in the blanks.

"By the time I got out of the car the whole garage was on fire," she said tightly. "And I could hear – I could hear him screaming. I have never heard anything like it. Wakes me up sometimes, if… Anyway, I couldn't get to him, it was so hot – and something exploded – and then – and then he stopped screaming.

"I don't remember much after that," she continued slowly, trying to bring it to mind. "Mrs Rutherford called the fire brigade, and someone must have taken me inside because I remember being sat at the top of the stairs, the way I did when they came to tell Dad that Mum was –" she swallowed, trying to control tears that she didn't want to shed – not here, not now. "And the Gov' showed up at about three in the morning, his great-coat over his pyjamas and dressing gown. I've no idea who called him… someone must have seen my ID I suppose.

"Anyway, he bundled me into his car – I remember Alice was there, his daughter. She's terrified of everything – won't even go outside – we used to take it in turns to home-tutor her. But there she was, in a car in a completely different county in the middle of the night. She held my hand all the way back to London," she said in a small voice, missing her young friend. "I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up on the Gov's sofa."

"Grace…" said Morgan; she looked up, surprised. He hadn't used her first name before. "That's… damn'."

She nodded, feeling that that just about summed it up.

"When I got back to work…" she began absently twisting the glass in her hands. "People… It was different. People thought I'd done it. To him. That he'd been… inconvenient. Some of them even said it to my face." She paused. "I didn't react well."

"Hell," said Morgan flatly. "Who would've?"

"I couldn't stand the way people looked at me," she continued, almost to herself, "even the ones who never said anything. We'd be having a perfectly normal conversation and they'd give me this sideways look, like they were trying to figure out how I'd got away with it. It was…" she shook her head, "awful."

"Grace, I saw your face at the Cutler house," said Morgan firmly. "There's no way you'd ever do that to anyone – let alone your Dad."

"Well, thank you for saying that," she replied, with a painful smile.

"I mean it," he said, and patted her hand. "Anyway, you're here now – fresh start."

She nodded, swallowing hard.

"I'd… er – I'd appreciate it if –" she began, but Morgan waved it away.

"I won't say anythin'," he said. "Everybody's got a past."

"Thank you."

There was a faintly awkward silence that neither of them wanted to break. Morgan gave in first.

"You want another beer?" he asked, and Grace was a little surprised to see that her glass was empty. She drank beer slowly, as a rule, preferring the European ales and lagers to the American variety. "It's on me."

"Are you sure – I can –"

"Nah," he said, pulling the glass out of her unresisting fingers. "I got it."

Grace took the opportunity to pull herself together while Morgan was at the bar, aware that at some point in the near future she would be a complete mess. It had been good of Morgan to look out for her, but he'd seen enough of her vulnerable side for one night.

She watched him flirting with the waitress – with much less enthusiasm than before – and wondered if he'd still be looking out for her if he knew about Simon.

He sauntered back over with their drinks and the barmaid's number on the back of a napkin, and turned the talk to lighter things.