The nights following the accident were restless, and Will knew that until that big inevitable blow up came, the two of them will never really be 'okay'.
The fourth night in a row that JJ woke up in the middle of the night, Will pulled himself out of his 'sleep mode' and crawled to the kitchen.
"Will, go back to sleep," JJ said, pouring herself a glass of wine.
Will stops her by grasping her hand and setting the bottle back down on the counter. He snaked his arms around her waist she leans comfortably into him.
"I usually wait for you to talk, but I'm getting a little impatient," Will says quietly, stifling a yawn.
"It can wait till morning, can it?"
"No, not really, no."
Will backs off JJ and grabs a bar stool.
"C'mon. Spill it, Agent Jareau."
"Will, I don't think you'll understand. It's not that I don't trust you—"
"All right. All right. I'll back off. Just tell me if there's anything – anything at all – that I can do to make you slightly happier."
JJ smiles – maybe it was because he was so adorable; maybe it was because he cared so much; or maybe it was simply because she loved him.
"Nah. I have to figure this out by myself."
"Okay, but for the record, I think you should talk to Reid."
With that, Will leaves JJ in the brightly lit kitchen – alone. JJ picks up her phone, plays with it for a while before she sets it back on the table.
Forget it, she thinks.
Three hundred and fifty eight miles up state, Reid was sitting in the conference room, scratching his head. He's plotting the map – it should make sense – but it doesn't. For once in a long while, he can't see the pattern. What is the connection? There isn't a connection…
Annoyed, he flings his pencil against the corkboard, only to have it bounce back and hit his leg, before rolling to Morgan's feet.
"Hey Kid. What's up with you man?"
Reid shakes his head.
"I don't understand."
Morgan scrutinizes the map, and a tiny part of Reid snubs him for even trying. If I can't get it, Reid thinks, obviously Morgan can't get it.
"Do you have a string?" Morgan asked.
15 minutes later, Morgan steps back and reveals his masterpiece.
"It's string art! You follow the first location to the second location to the third location and so on…"
Reid pauses, analyses the corkboard.
"It's a star in a circle – a sign of Satan!"
Reid kicked himself for not getting the pattern. He grabbed the French curve rulers and plotted out the next location the killer was going to kidnap his victim from.
"Good work," Hotch says sternly before splitting the group up to patrol the area.
"Blake, why couldn't I solve the puzzle?" Reid asked, once he strapped his seatbelt.
"Give yourself a break! There's a reason this is a team," Alex says, paying more attention to the roads and dark alleys.
"Yes, but it was child's play."
Blake snorts. "Okay, genius. Maybe you just weren't focusing. Or maybe you were thinking too much."
Reid considers the two reasons and grabs a marker, scribbling something down on his right arm.
"In case I forget," Reid says, rolling down his sleeve and covering whatever he wrote. Alex Blake was considered 'new' to the team, but she had pretty much gotten used to Reid's… eccentric-ness.
Two days later, Reid would examine the chain of causality very closely, but for now, it was quite simple.
Reid wasn't looking when he rolled down his sleeve.
If he had looked out his window at that traffic junction like he was supposed to, he would have saw the man in the midnight blue car next to him.
He would have seen the car plate number when it overtook them.
He would have noticed the car plate number was exactly the same as the one witnesses gave.
He would have noticed the driver had a nasty scar on the right side of his face and he would have remembered the caricature that the police sketch artist drew.
Spencer Reid would have noticed a lot of things if he had simply done what he was supposed to do at that time, instead of thinking about someone else.
He would have drawn his gun, shot through the glass windows of the two cars and kill the murderer before he even knew what happened.
But he did not.
And the killer had noticed the brown haired man dressed in a red vest and a white shirt.
He noticed that the man appeared on the T.V., holding a sketch of him and talking about him as if he knew anything.
And so he leaned over to the back seat, stretched his fingers and got his gun, then sped up the minute the lights turned green.
He left his foot on the gas pedal, since the road was empty, turned back and aimed.
Alex Blake barely grasped the situation before a loud screeching sound was heard and all that was left of the blue car was a cloud of thick smoke.
Ambulance needed IMMEDIATELY, officer down.
hello:) my grammar is ew but bear with me. :) just a question: do you want reid to die?