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Opening Move

He woke to complete darkness and a splitting headache. He groaned and turned over. Something tickled at his neck as he put one hand down into something gritty. He moved his hand, feeling something hard and rough under his fingertips.

His eyes felt like someone had thrown sand into them as he opened them. His throat hurt as though he'd been screaming. Something smelled like wet leaves and earth, but he couldn't see anything. It was like looking into the black abyss at the furthest end of the universe.

He shivered and moaned as the shaking of his body jarred some injury to his back and neck. If felt like someone had hit him hard. He lifted his hand to his head and felt the lump under his hair at the back of his head.

What the hell?

His right arm ached as he tried to push up to a standing position. He pushed against what felt like dirt under his fingers as his legs straightened. He swayed and took a step forward, feeling hard stones and pebbles on his toes. Someone had taken his shoes. Something shifted behind him and he froze with his arms outstretched. He waited, hearing his breath rush in and out of his lungs in the black silence. He held out his hands as he took another tentative step in what he hoped was a straight line. Nothing happened, so he stepped forward, one two, three. His fingers brushed against a solid barrier. He jumped as something fell to the ground. It sounded like dirt rolling down a hillside.

He turned around, put his back to the 'wall', and tried to get his breath. His side hurt every time he drew breath and the pain would not let him stand up straight.

"Is anyone there?" He suddenly asked the deep darkness that surrounded him.

Nothing answered his call. He held out his hands, which shook. Gooseflesh leapt out on his arms, which he realized were as bare as his feet and so were his legs. Who had taken every stitch of clothes but his boxers from him? Where was he?

"Hello…" He croaked over a very dry throat. "Is someone there?"

Only silence answered back and it didn't have anything interesting to say as he began to walk back across the void. It made him think of "The Pit and The Pendulum." He shivered again, holding his hands out. Five paces had him running into another wall. He stood there breathing in the smell of dirt and decay, trying not to panic.

He decided to follow the 'wall,' and see where it went. He walked forward, trailing his hand along the dirt and pebbles. This time he only took four steps before running into another wall. His prison was tiny. He began to breathe in gasps…

NO!

He stood up as straight as he could against the pain in his back and ribs. He wouldn't give in to the urge to panic. His enemies must have brought him here. If he waited, they'd come back. They had to come back!

"Quit hiding…" He shouted as bravely as he could.

Something creaked over his head, back and forth. It sounded like someone walking on an old floor. He reached up his hands over his head looking straight up. There was a bit a very yellow light in a square above him, but it was too weak to illuminate this 'room,' in which he'd been enclosed.

"Someone talk to me." He shouted as loudly as he could.

The silence dragged out for what seemed to be an hour, but was probably only a couple of minutes before the creaking stopped and the square lifted away on squeaking hinges that sounded full of dirt. A bright light shone down blinding him. He turned his face away as a familiar silken voice spoke.

"I hope you like your new home."

"I won't give you what you want! He said, coughing over his parched throat.

William Reid lifted his fingers and tried to look through the light to the face above it. His eyes stung and watered though, so he had to close them as the man laughed. Something was tossed down to him. It barely missed his head as it fell to the floor with a clunk.

"You better make it last because it's all your getting for today. Can't have you starving or dying of thirst before the funs over."

"Wait, I want to talk you. You don't have to do this. It wasn't my fault. I didn't have anything to do with what happened."

The door in the ceiling closed, dropping him into nearly complete darkness once again. He dropped to his knees shifting uncomfortably on the soft dirt. His fingers brushed over something that felt like plastic. He pulled on it and it fell over. He grunted in frustration, pulling forward on his stomach until his hands found the cold plastic container. He ran his hands over it until his fingers found the hard plastic of the cap.

The icy water ran out of the bottle as he sucked on the sweetest tasting liquid he'd ever had in his life. He forced himself to stop after just a few swallows. He only had that one bottle he discovered as his hand encountered another plastic container. He pulled it open with a frustrated cry. Something that felt and smelled like bread made his stomach growl. He nearly screamed in rage when he found just one big chunk in the container.

"Bread and water isn't very creative." He yelled up at the square over his head.

No one spoke in reply to his taunt. He listened hard, ignoring the bread even though he stomach ached with hunger.

"Are you up there? "

Silence reigned over the darkness, like a medieval king over his terrified subjects. Nothing creaked overhead and for just an instant William thought, he had imagined all of it. His fingers brushed the bottle of water and he knew it had been real.

Did Spencer have his call for help yet? How much time had passed? He had to think of something to do to get out of this in case his son decided not to try to help him.

The man sat behind his antique fire mahogany wood desk. The red of the wood appealed to him. It warmed the room and made a statement to everyone that came into the room. He shut the file folder his assistant had given him and sighed. He had an entire company to run which took up too much of his time now that he had this new 'project' to work on.

He looked at the old black and white photograph in a silver frame on his desk. The face staring back at him from the picture had the blood raging into his face and pushing ice into his stomach.

"I have the last piece of the puzzle to complete our revenge." He told the face. "All of them will get what's coming to them soon."

He picked up the phone and hit the speed dial marked one on his phone. "It's me!" He said to the voice on the other end. "Put the next part of the plan into motion."

The envelope looked innocent, but had to be checked out before it could be given to its addressee. Warren Billings turned it over looking closely for any tampering or surprises. He put it through the x-ray machine, waiting as the picture formed before him on the screen.

The x-ray revealed only a few sheets of paper inside the envelope. He couldn't see any obvious threat like poison or explosives. None of the chemical tests had turned up anything amiss either. He added it to Dr. Reid's pile of mail. The agent would get the overnight letter unopened as the rules had relaxed since the anthrax scare in 2001.

"Hey Warren…"

Lucy Adams hollered at him from over the document she processed for prints. "You ever heard of taking a lunch break."

He felt his face go hot. Lucy had black hair and the darkest eyes he'd ever seen. She said her grandmother was half Iroquois Indian while her grandfather had been Irish American. He thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but he couldn't get up the nerve to ask her out. Why would she want someone three inches shorter than her with balding light brown hair and hazel eyes covered by glasses? He forgot all about Dr. Reid's package as she waggled her finger at him.

"Come on Warren… I'm starving and it's your turn to buy me lunch."

Warren rushed up from QD to the sixth floor. He'd nearly forgotten the overnight package for Dr. Reid because of his crush on his lab partner. His boss would read him the riot act if Agent Reid complained. He hopped off the elevator a few minutes later, only to find the bullpen empty but for Agent Anderson, who was hard at work over a thick file folder.

"Have you seen Dr Reid today?" Warren asked.

"They should be back at any minute. They're on their way back from a tiny little town in Oklahoma. Some sheriff's deputy went nuts and started killing and eating people."

Warren shivered. "I don't want to know about it."

Anderson just looked at him. "You work for the FBI and you're squeamish."

"I like to work with documents and paper, not blood and flesh."

The elevator doors opened at that moment as though they'd heard the conversation between Warren and Anderson. Hotch led the others out of the car to the bullpen. "I want all of you to go home after you've filed your reports." He said as he headed for his office.

Warren looked up at the clock. It was going on two pm on a Monday afternoon. The team had been gone since the Thursday before that. They all looked as though the weight of the world lay on their shoulders.

"Dr Reid…" Warren held out the overnight mail envelope. "This came for you."

"Thanks Warren," Reid took the envelope without looking at it and placed it on top of the tottering pile on his desk.

Warren breathed a sigh of relief. It must not be that important if Dr. Reid wasn't tearing into it right away. He left the bullpen and the agents to their paperwork.

Reid pulled out his phone after Warren left and checked his messages. He'd ignored his phone unless it was from Garcia mostly because he didn't want to talk to his dad. He sighed when he scrolled through his calls to find his father's number in the list. In addition, there was a voice mail waiting for him. What if it was his dad? He just couldn't deal with hearing his voice. The case had worn them all down. How did his dad know to call at the precisely wrong time?

"Hey Reid…" Emily said. "Is everything okay?"

He glanced up at her concerned face. "I'm not sure." He answered truthfully.

"Can I help?"

"No… I have to work this out on my own."

He put his phone back into his messenger bag and reached for the overnight folder from the top of his stack. "If I didn't know better," he said to Emily. "I would think that this stack multiplied on its own."

Emily laughed. "I was thinking the same thing about mine."

He opened the envelope without looking at the return address and pulled out the sheaf of papers. As the words passed in front of his eyes, his knees started to feel as though someone had poured oatmeal into his knees.

His heart began thumping in his chest as his eyes swept over the words written in unforgettable handwriting. He dropped down in his chair. The words changed… replaced by words his memory couldn't let him forget no matter how much he wanted to forget them.

Dear Dianna,

You accused me of weakness… You were right! I am a weak man. I can't stay here and watch you deteriorate before my eyes. I can't watch you change from the beautiful, vibrant woman I knew when we first met. I can't live with secrets and lies.

Tell Spencer I love him very much. I know he'll hate me for leaving him alone, but I can't take him away from you. I know how much you love him. He'll believe me selfish, and he's right. I am a selfish man that can't take the rift between us anymore.

William

Three sheets of paper fell from his fingers as his eyes began to burn. They couldn't see the words written to him in the most recent letter, because the words written nearly twenty years ago blocked them out completely.

"Reid!"

He could hear Emily's voice, but it was like a badly tuned radio in his ear. His father's voice drowned out everything else. "Spencer… no one cares about obscure facts and statistics from a ten year old."

"Hey man… You okay?"

He wanted to tell Morgan to go away, but his brain couldn't seem to remember how to form the words. His cheeks burned and his stomach churned. How could his father ask him for help? Why would he think Reid would care enough to drop everything? Reid had tried to forgive his dad since they'd finally come to an understanding after the Riley Jenkins case. It was so hard to forget twenty years. How could his father expect that all the hurt would just go away overnight even if Reid wanted it to?

"Reid!" Emily called.

"Hey kid… Talk to me." Morgan said

He looked up at the words he'd heard hundreds of times in the last five years. "Stop calling me that!" He spat out at his friend. "Leave me alone."

He brushed past the bigger man, almost running to the elevator. He could hear voices around him and friends calling out, but it all joined the cacophony in his head. His heart pumped so fast it made his head spin. The elevator doors and the walls seemed to push in and fall out around him as he waited.

"Reid… I didn't mean to make you mad." Morgan was there holding onto his arm.

"Let go of me!"

"What's wrong?"

"I can't stay here. I have to go home."

"Reid!"

"I said… Let go of me!" He shouted.

He yanked his arm out of his hand and stumbled into the elevator doors as they opened. He barely noticed when Morgan didn't follow him. If he could just get out of the office then maybe he could breathe again.

He turned off the desk lamp and rubbed at his eyes. The clock on the wall read well after two am. He sighed and tried to talk his brain into getting up and going upstairs to bed. She'd be asleep, just like every night. How long had it been since he'd felt like taking her in his arms. He wanted to behave as a husband, but she refused him again and again.

His head ached along with his shoulders and upper back. He had court in the morning and he had to get some sleep if he expected to be of any use for his clients.

He left his home office and trudged up the stairs to his bedroom. The lights were out of course and he could hear her breathing in her sleep. The room would have been pitch black but for the light seeping in from the doorway. She insisted on blackout curtains on the windows all the time to keep government spies from watching them.

He nearly took a step inside, then turned and went down the hallway to Spencer's room. His son's door was open a crack to the hallway and William smiled. Spencer hated sleeping with the door shut for fear of missing something even in his sleep.

He opened the door a bit wider and went to sit on the edge of the four-year-old boy's bed. "Sleep well…Daddy loves you very much," He whispered.

Spencer suddenly turned over in his sleep so William could see his face in the half-light from the hallway. He looked like any other little boy as he slept, but he wasn't like just any other little boy. He had gifts and abilities that he didn't understand.

He pulled the blanket up around Spencer's shoulders and smoothed it out. Dianna had the idea that someone wanted to hurt their little boy. He couldn't believe it though… She often accused others of wanting to harm Spencer. It had happened on and off since, he was a tiny baby. How could he believe her when she had 'cried wolf' so many times?

He kissed Spencer's cheek and left him to his dreams. He'd keep a close eye on the boy as he always had and everything would be okay.

William sat up, opening his eyes to more darkness. He lookedup at where the door in the ceiling had been, but it looked like and sounded like the room above was empty. The silence reminded him of the first days he'd spent on his own after leaving Spencer and Dianna.

He shut his eyes and tried to remember the sound of his son's voice. If he could think of some obscure fact Spencer had told him, then maybe it wouldn't feel like he was lost to the world.

You deserve to be lost! What goes around comes around William Reid. This is your punishment for leaving your son alone with his mentally deficient mother. You get to feel what it's like to be all alone with no hope that your loved one will care enough to come for you.

He shut out the voice in his head that told him he was getting just what he deserved. He couldn't think about the possibility that Spencer would ignore his plea for help. He'd have to help because his life was on the line too.