Chapter 3
Reid awoke with his chin resting on his chest; he was upright and each arm was tied to the arm of a desk chair. He took a deep breath and instantly regretted it, positive that some of his ribs were bruised if not broken. The pounding in his head had not eased, he wasn't sure if he had a migraine or a concussion. Not that the distinction really mattered, it hurt either way. He raised his head to find that he was in what looked like a factory, an abandoned one. There was heavy machinery all around, covered with a thick layer of dust and grim. Sun light streamed in through the large bay windows at the top of the room. As his eyes scanned the room they fell upon Olivia, who was tied in the same position across the room from him.
"Olivia," he called softly. She stirred slightly. "Olivia," he called again. Her head shot up, her eyes wide.
"What's happening?" She wiped her head around, "What are we doing here?"
"Listen," His voice was steady and calm, "We are going to get out of this, ok, my team will find us."
"Oh god," Her face screwed up as the tears began to fall. "This is all my fault. He's going to kill me because of what I did."
"Listen," Reid tried to reason with her. "I've been in this situation before, my team will find me."
"No!" She cried, "He's going to kill you too because of me! You don't deserve this! I do!" Her body shook with sobs. "This is all my fault. I should have just killed myself instead of telling you what I did." Her voice trailed off at the end.
"You're right!" The voice startled both of them. Sean appeared with a bag hung over his shoulder. "You are going to die for what you did to my brother and you deserve it." His voice was cold.
"Sean," Reid's voice was still calm and steady, trying not to provoke him. "Look, I know what you must be feeling, but you can't do this."
"You know how I fell huh?" He chuckled. "Did a crazy psycho bitch kill your brother, your only family in the world?" Reid didn't have an answer. "That's what I thought."
"You are acting on your emotions, there are going to be consequences for what you've done." Reid looked his straight in the eyes.
"No one is going to know." He slung the bag down, sending a puff of dirt and dusk smoke up into the air. "All the police will know is that Olivia killed you and then herself, out of guilt. It will all be in her note." He showed a handwritten note while Olivia was quietly crying, biting her bottom lip.
Reid watched as Sean pulled items from his bag. A taser gun which must have been what he used to knock them both out, now Reid understood the pain in his neck. His breath caught in his chest when he watched Sean remove a small plastic container, with a number of black widows inside.
Sean paused a moment, "You know, I always thought you were kind of sweet," His eyes darted to Olivia, "You were this dumb girl, who never went out on dates because you couldn't get 'em." His eyes hardened. "Who knew you were a heartless killer. My brother was a good man," He rose and approached her. His hand struck her quickly. "He never did anything to you!" Her head snapped back, a thin trickled of blood trailed down her lip.
"He didn't do it to her!" Reid cried out, before thinking.
"What did you say?" Sean's head turned to him.
"He, ah, he," Reid worded the sentence carefully. "Look, your brother hurt another woman."
Sean covered the distance between him and Reid quickly. "You're a liar!" He punched Reid square in the jaw.
Reid's head snapped back, but he kept going. "All those men hurt women; they did terrible things to them." Sean's nose flared with anger, his fists pounded into Reid's chest, causing him to cry out when he heard an audible crack. His rib was defiantly broken now. He gasped for breath.
"You shut up!" Sean was yelling, but Reid's brain couldn't focus through the pain. "You're going first!" He spit out. Reid's eyes were clinched shut and they didn't open again until he felt Sean standing in front of him. He watched as Sean shook the plastic container, agitating the spiders within. Once he was sure they were good and angry, he dumped a few on Reid's exposed forearm.
"Please don't do this," Reid tried to stay as still as possible, but Sean ensured that they would bite him. He felt the sting and winced. Once, twice, and a third time; he could see the small red marks starting to form as the spiders scurried up his arm. Sean used his gloved hands to scoop them back into the plastic container. He approached Olivia, who seemed to have closed off her mind to what was happening, she didn't even flinch when he dumped all the spiders onto her. Reid counted at least 8 spiders; she didn't make a sound as they bit her again and again. Sean just stared at her. "You are going to feel the same pain my brother felt. You are going to die for what you did." He threw the empty container into his bag, not even bothering to gather the spiders up.
"Please, Sean," Reid began again, "There is still time. If you kill a Federal Agent there will be no hope for you."
Sean laughed. "No one is going to know it was me!"
"You see that's where you're wrong." Reid's mouth was set in a hard line. "My team is going to know that this wasn't Olivia's doing. It's all wrong. She never restrained her victims." Reid raised his hands in an attempt to prove him point. "I don't fit her pattern. I'm not like the men she killed."
"That's doesn't matter," Sean yelled.
"Everything matters when it comes to profilers." Reid tried to explain. "They are going to study that note and compare the handwriting and know it's not hers." Sean's face seemed to fall for only an instant.
"Fine," Sean bit back, "No, note. I will just have to come back and untie you after you are sick enough you can't fight back. That way when they find your bodies, no one will know there was a third person here." Sean seemed satisfied with his new plan. "I'll be back in a bit." He left without another word.
"Can anybody hear me?" Reid shouted. "Help!"
Reid tried for a few minutes before Olivia's quiet voice said, "No one can hear you. This factory is far off the road and no one comes out here, it's been abandoned for years."
Reid struggled against the ropes on his wrist and legs. "You should conserve your energy," she stated blankly. "The poison moves through you faster if your adrenaline is up." Reid, of course, knew this, but he just couldn't sit and wait to die.
"For what it's worth," She began, "I'm sorry for this."
"Olivia," Reid looked at her.
"I'm going to die," she said flatly. "I have been bitten over a dozen times and the poison is moving quickly."
"Why did you do it?" Reid wanted to keep her talking.
"It doesn't matter now," She replied.
"It does to me. I'm a profiler; I want to know what happened. What happened to you?" Reid provoked. "What did those men do?"
It took her a minute to answer him. "After my mother died, I went to a few different foster homes, until I ended up with 2 other girls. I was there for 8 years. He would come for me, for us, almost every night. I only told one person what he did to me." She paused. "If you ever told he would punish you…"
"How?" Reid prompted.
"He wouldn't come for me, he would come for one of the other girls and he would punish you by making you watch." She gritted her teeth, "He would make you listen to their cries and pleads." Her eyes began to flutter, the poison was moving quickly through her system. "You know we all had to go to church and pretend that life was wonderful and that we were so thankful to be in his home. He thought he had everyone fooled, but they all knew. How could they not? And they did nothing! He beat his wife! He beat her something awful! He almost killed her." She remembered the day she ran into the woods, trying to escape her cries. "That's when I found them."
Reid studied her face; he could tell that her mind was far from that dirty factory. There was a low ache growing in his joints. "The spiders?"
"They were there, in their beautiful web." She shuttered. "I sat there for a long time, just watching. They were so beautiful." She sat quietly for a while her head bobbing slightly.
"Olivia," Reid prompted, but she didn't answer him. "Olivia!" He shouted. Her head shot back up. "What did you do with the spiders? Tell me."
"The last time he came for me, he was drunk…" Her thoughts were coming in fuzzy. "He passed out, and I made the spider bite him." She frowned. "He slept through the whole thing. By the time he woke up it was too late. He died in that house, and he had no idea I had killed him. Nobody did." She looked at Reid, "You're the first person I've ever told." She paused, "He wasn't a good person. You're a good person. You catch killers like me." Her head began to bob again, "I killed him, and I killed you too. He's right, I do deserve to die."
"Olivia, don't talk like that?" Reid tried to speak, but she cut him off.
"Why do you care about me? You don't know me! You are going to die because of me." She didn't understand.
Reid thought for a moment. Even though she had killed nearly a dozen men, he felt for her, he understood why she did what she did. He was trained to relate, to profile. "I'm not saying that killing another human being is ok, because it's not…" He paused, "I've killed before."
Olivia's mouth opened but she made no attempt to speak.
"The first man I killed had taken a number of innocent people hostages. He was armed and planned on killing them all. I…shot him; he was dead before he hit the floor. It took a while before it hit me, but when it did I felt I didn't deserve to live. " Reid licked his lips, "The second man was very confused, and he was living as 3 people in his mind. In his head, he couldn't control his actions." Reid skipped over the part where he was being held captive, "He had murdered innocent men and women that he deemed to be sinners. He was going to kill me, so I had to shoot him." Reid remembered the fear in his chest when he pointed the gun, praying that the bullet was in the chamber as Hankel rushed him with that knife. "You claim I am a good man, but I have killed."
"You were protecting those people. You were protecting yourself." Olivia still wasn't convinced that Reid should care what happened to her.
"Maybe, I don't deserve to live," Reid said honestly.