Chapter 16
A/N: I've decided to try and finish this story. The reviews and response has been wonderful and I'm sorry it took me so long to start up again.
Agnes, Washington
"Do you want my hair-tie?" J.J. asked Reid as everyone took a seat at a large table at the only Chinese restaurant around.
Morgan busted out laughing as Reid blushed causing the rest of the team to laugh and Peter and the Mount Horizon crew who share confused looks.
"Did we miss something?" Sophie asked as she waved over Daisy who smelled like death as she waddled towards the table.
"Sorry for the smell after I left the funeral home, the police needed me to go to the morgue and examine a body," Daisy ignored the several displeased looks she was getting from her makeshift family, "Before you say anything, I know I'm on maternity leave, but I wore a mask and mostly dictated to my assistant, not that he's very skilled with a scalpel. Now what was everyone laughing about?"
"That's what we were confused about," Peter smiled looking over at Morgan who had laughed the loudest and longest.
"Just Reid's inability to feed himself with chopsticks," Morgan cracked a large smile remembering New York and Reid asking the waitress for a fork.
"We can't all be as perfect as you Brown Sugar," Garcia joked in between sips of her drink.
"I know it's got to be hard Baby Girl," Morgan said saucily causing the waitress who had just arrived at their table to blush.
"Can I take your orders?" The middle aged Asian asked holding up her pen and pad of paper.
"Could you come back in a few minutes?" J.J. asked in a sweet yet firm tone letting the woman know not to ask for anyone else's order.
"Is everything ok J.J.?" Hotch asked his slight smile reverting back into its typical stern line.
"Before we eat I think we should go over the next couple of days," J.J. said in the voice she usually reserved for the teams daily briefs.
"Sounds good Shel," Peter smiled as he and Sophie held hands both proud to see how far their Shelby had come yet nervous of how the next couple days would play out, "What did you have in mind?"
"First Jules," J.J. said looking over at her thin friend who was sipping a diet coke.
"What about me?" Juliette asked with attitude as she began tapping her fingers against the table nervously.
"I need you to eat a full dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow, and keep up with snacks throughout the day, without that promise and some sort of accountability set up I can't in good conscience let you make the hike to Hope Falls," J.J. said as smoothly as she could using the tricks she'd perfected over the years dealing with the media.
"Can't let me, who made you boss?" Juliette asked furiously, "You have no right…"
"It's important to me that you're there, and Peter told me to organize so I did," J.J. said trying to keep a level head, "I'm worried about you Jules, you haven't eaten much today and that hike may not be Dog's Peak but it's tough enough."
"Jules Shelby's right," Peter said taking Juliette's hand for a moment to reassure and comfort her, "Can you make that promise and keep it?"
"I can try," Juliette said after a moment of serious thought knowing how hard yet important this weekend was going to be, and how much she wanted to be there, "Sophie will you keep me accountable for not purging?"
"Yes," Sophie smiled before looking over at J.J. signaling for her to move on to the next thing on her mental check list.
J.J. nodded back a silent thank you to both of them before continuing, "Ok Tomorrow is going to be a long day, we leave at first light which means we need to be up by 4:30, have things packed and breakfast eaten by 5:30 so we can do double checks and leave by 6:00. We're going to take the lake to where it opens up to the river and then once we get off the water we have a long hike ahead of us, Everyone needs to pack extra jugs of water and make sure they stay hydrated, we'll stop as often as someone needs to but my hope is that we'll be at Hope Falls by noon, one o'clock by the very latest. Once we get there group one which consist of Juliette, Derek, Emily, Hotch, and Reid will set up camp while group two which is Peter, Scott, Sophie and Myself stay and get things ready for the service. At 5:oopm the helicopter will arrive with Jess accompanied by Daisy and Penelope, after the service group two will stay and finish things up at the plot, while group one goes and starts dinner and finishes setting up for the night, the next morning we'll clean up, pack up, and start heading back hopefully by 8:00am. Any questions?"
The entire table looked at J.J. with a mixture of shock and awe for a moment before Morgan spoke up, "Damn J.J. you are efficient."
"I learned from the best," J.J. smirked as she looked over at Peter and Sophie.
"You must have the Media shaking in their boots," Scott joked as he rubbed his wife's belly.
"On a daily basis," J.J. joked as Hotch waved the waitress back over to take their orders.
"Now that that's taken care of who's hungry?" Hotch asked with a rare smile.
The group talked and joked as they ate, with Reid sprouting off statistics and facts about serial killers as Morgan told a tale or two from the field and Daisy and Scott retold stories of their time at Horizon including the infamous birthday cake incident. Everyone laughed and ate and shared until it was time for Scott, Peter, and Juliette to head to their meetings.
"Hey where are you three off too?" Morgan asked as he took a sip of his beer.
"We've got meetings to go to," Juliette said with a sad smile as she looked down at her nearly empty plate.
"Are you coming Shel?" Scott asked as he shrugged into his jacket.
The entire table was silent as J.J. and Reid stood up, "We both are," She smiled though inside she felt as if she had given Reid's secret away to the team, "If that's ok."
"The more the merrier," Peter smirked at being right at pegging Reid as an addict.
"What sort of meeting?" Garcia asked not quite thinking.
"I'm going to the Eating Disorders Anonymous meeting," Juliette said refusing to touch her very full stomach or think of how much better she'd feel if she ran to the restroom instead of the meeting.
"We're going to the Narcotics Anonymous meeting," Peter offered with a proud smile, then offered with a laugh, "This town is so small that they lump all the meetings on one night."
"We won't be out late," J.J. offered before quickly adding, "We all need to get plenty of sleep tonight we have a really early start," With that J.J. headed towards the door with Reid right behind her followed by the other three.
"The words J.J. and narcotics do not compute," Garcia said looking at her stunned friends, even though she'd read Silver's file she still couldn't picture her J.J. ever being that person.
Reid sighed a breath of relief as he finished telling the circle about his brief addiction to Dilaudid.
J.J. took a deep breath and gathered what courage she could to open her mouth, "Hi my name is J… my name is Shelby and I'm a heroin addict and a crank addict."
"Hi Shelby," The group offered and then allowed her to continue.
When J.J. didn't say anything Reid though unsure grabbed her hand impulsively and gave it a soft comforting squeeze causing J.J.'s mouth to open again, "The last Meeting I went to was four years ago, so go easy on me. I have nearly 12 years clean one day at a time. Today I had almost talked myself into using again when I thought better of it and found a meeting." As she spoke J.J. realized that Reid was her small bit of Hope at the bottom of Pandora's Box.
"So what made today so much harder to resist than other days you've had?" The group leader asked leaning forward sure he had seen this same girl 12 years prior in this same group.
"Well," J.J paused trying to figure out exactly what she could say and what she couldn't wanting desperately to keep her walls up, "Tomorrow I have to burry my baby sister," She said as calmly as she could refusing to look at any of her companions.
"And what brought you to a meeting four years ago?" The man asked curiously, in his experience people who had the length of sobriety that Shelby did either went to meetings every week or only under great stress.
"I'm an F.B.I. agent," J.J. began slowly trying to get her exact thoughts out, "I have seen devastation after devastation, and none of it got to me… until I nearly had to burry one of my own, until I had to watch someone that I care about literally die in front of me, come back, and then I was forced to watch them struggle with what had happened and not be able to help." J.J. looked at Reid briefly and then her eyes flashed to Scott he heart hurting for all the pain she had put the ones she loved through, "I was so tired I had to go."