Chapter thirty

He was alone

He was utterly alone.

Spencer Reid stood in the middle of Connecticut Avenue and listened to the silence around him. There was nothing. No cars. No busses. No faint rumblings of the Metro underground. No people.

Nothing.

A newspaper fluttered by, a clearly audible scuttling sound.

There wasn't even a bird to be heard.

Nothing.

No, he thought. They all left. All of them. All 5,703,948 left. They all abandoned me here. Every one.

No.

He started running toward the center of town. No, he thought, No. No. Nonononono…

Sheriff's station
Tulsa, OK

Spencer

Hell. Sheer, unmitigated hell.

They had been hunting this Unsub for three days now. Three days meant two nights away from DC. Two nights in which he had barely slept. Three days when he was having trouble eating, fueling himself on sweetened coffee and an endless stream of snack foods. He was trying to focus on the case, which meant that they were closer than they ought to be, but it wasn't helping to stave off the impending migraine.

Maeve would be so pissed at him right now. He could hear her lecturing him on vitamins and rest.

But the nightmares… "How are you doing this?" He asked JJ at one point, when it was just the two of them, sitting outside a likely spot for the Unsub to hit next.

"Doing what?"

"Staying away from Henry for so long?"

"It's important for him to get back into his normal routine. That includes my being out of town."

"Yeah, but how are you doing it?"

"I'm fine." She answered honestly. "I know Henry is fine and Will is fine, I don't have to worry."

"Yeah, but how do you know?" He wanted her secret, how she could stay so calm and trusting when they all knew in their bones how dangerous the world could be.

In response she picked up her tablet, opened an application, and entered a password. The screen she showed him was of DC, with two blinking lights, one green, one blue inside a neighborhood-sized orange boundary. "See, that's Henry at school and that's Will at the station. If Henry leaves a preprogrammed area the system will alert me and Garcia. I can't do that with Will, of course, but they also come with panic buttons, kind of a back-up to his back-up. At least if something happens we'll have their last known location."

"And Will was willing to do that for you?"

"After what happened with the bank robbers and now Henry? Oh yeah. I just wish my Mom would have agreed. She said it was a violation of her privacy." JJ sighed noisily. "At least I know my two guys are fine."

Bellflower House
3625 Yuma St. NW
Washington DC

"Hey Susanna, your Fed's here!"

That was Holly, Susanna's roommate. Spencer followed her down to the study pit where he found Susanna sitting at the computer with one of the instructors from the nearby Blind Center. "I have finally vanquished e-mail." She told him proudly.

"Really?" He inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She was fine, happy and healthy and safe. He'd worried for nothing.

"Well, okay, the e-mail part was easy. Learning how to use a Braille display took a bit." She stood up as he came over, and gently brushed his arm. What did it mean that he instantly knew that she wanted a hug, and that he instantly wanted one too and that it was that easy to pull her into his arms? "I missed you." She said to the crook of his shoulder.

"I missed you too." No, he had every reason to worry now. "Want to go get some dinner? I know a great Indian place about a half-mile from here."

She brightened at that, "Curry?"

"If you want to try."

"Just let me get my hat."

After dinner they slowly walked arm in arm back to the house through the cool, spring evening. "So you like curry?" Spencer asked

"Not as much as I like the chicken …oh, what was that called again?"

"Awadhi Dum ke Murg. Chicken in cashew and saffron gravy."

"Oh, that was so good." Susanna was still grinning. "I don't know how you managed to eat that entire bowl of curry, it was so hot! I'm glad I tried it though, I've been reading about curry all my life and now I know what it is. Thank you. I have to remember to tell Leah about it, although probably not about my first beer."

"You're welcome. Yeah, probably not the beer though." He chuckled a little, they'd split one bottle for the taste. "I grew up in the Southwest, I like spicy."

"I don't even know where you're from."

"Las Vegas, actually."

"Ooo, Sodom and Gomorrah."

He laughed again. "Actually it's not that bad. Lots of average people live there too. My Dad's a lawyer; my Mom's a college professor. Well, was a college professor, she's not well, she's been in a care home for a while."

"Oh. I'm sorry." She hugged his arm a little in sympathy.

"It's all right, she's comfortable there. I still write her every day though."

Susanna smiled a little. "Good son."

"I try."

"So what's been bothering you all night? Something's been off."

Gah, this wasn't just going to magically happen or go away. "I want to ask you something. Actually I want to ask you to do something, and it's something I shouldn't be asking. It's not right. In fact it's wrong."

"Okay."

"Let's pretend I didn't say anything."

"No, we don't get to do that. You want me to do something; I'm willing to hear what it is. I might say no but I'm willing to hear your argument."

A brick wall was the perfect place to stop for a moment. The neighborhood was quiet, residential, there were lights flickering in windows, he could see televisions, people washing dishes, but they were alone. "There was this woman I was close to, just over a year ago."

"Close to?"

Deep breath. "I was in love with her."

"Was?"

"Her name was Maeve."

"Was?" He heard her take a deep breath. "Oh."

"She wrote to me after I published this paper…we used pseudonyms at first, I wasn't certain why. Eventually we started talking on the phone, and she told me she was being stalked by someone."

"Stalked?"

"A former student whose paper she rejected was obsessing over her, threatening her. She was hiding from this woman, terrified of what she might do. She refused to meet me for the longest time because she was trying to protect me."

"She sounds like a good person."

"She was. Eventually the stalker found her. By the time we tracked her down it was too late, Diane had the upper hand…I tried, but, um…" He couldn't talk about it. His voice was already breaking.

All this time Susanna hadn't let go. "Spencer I am so sorry."

"It's dangerous, being a part of this family. Henry, Maeve, Will was taken by these bank robbers, we got him back just in time. Emily, she used to be a part of our team, she was caught by an Unsub and we got her back just in time. Hotch was targeted by an Unsub, he had to send his family into witness protection but Foyet got to them anyway and killed his wife before he could get there…I mean the list just keeps going…."

"Shhhh." She rubbed his shoulder gently. "I'm willing to take this risk."

"Why?" Why would anyone want to, ever?

"Because evil targets the ones with the most virtue; I rather think I'm lucky to be here."

Oh god. "There is this thing called a GPS tracker. You hide it in your clothes and it lets a satellite network pinpoint your location anywhere on the planet. JJ got them for Will and Henry, not only in case something happens again but because she can look on a map when she's away and know that they're safe."

"And you want me to carry one?"

"It's a horrendous invasion of privacy. I shouldn't even…."

"Shhhh." She placed a gentle finger on his lips. It was like being brushed by a butterfly. "I'll do it."

The train cars in his brain jumbled. "Wait...huh…you will?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Two reasons. One, Linda, my mobility instructor, wants me to start learning how to use the bus and Metro system. I'm honestly more than a little nervous about being out in the city on my own. Not that I plan to stop trying or that I'm going to restrict where I go but I'd feel a lot better knowing that a guardian angel was looking over my shoulder, just in case."

"I assume you're referring to Garcia." Guardian angels. Is that what we are?

"And two, you said Haley was in Witness Protection."

"Yes."

"Is that your department?"

"No, it's another branch of the government."

"Was that…Unsub someone who was after her husband, someone he attracted through work?"

"Yes."

"And what about Emily, the same?"

"Um, no. Doyle targeted her because of her previous job."

"And Will, you said bank robber, but as I understand it you don't chase bank robbers."

"No, he crossed paths with them at work, DC Metro."

"Mmm-hmm. We know Henry was almost random, they didn't know what his mother does for a living. And you said Maeve was being…stalked by a former student."

"So?"

"Haley was relying on Witness Protection and Maeve was keeping you away. So it sounds like evil can come from anywhere but once your team is involved the odds of safely coming home go up. Is that about right?"

Spencer stopped and blinked and blinked again as he re-ran the data. Gideon had kept Sarah to himself. Haley was being kept away from the team by Sam Kasselmeyer. Maeve was deliberately keeping her distance. But every time the team got involved early in the game they got their people home. "Yes. Yes it is."

"Then I can't think of better guardian angels." Susanna said with a smile.

For a moment Spencer was overcome with an urge so powerful that he felt helpless to refuse. He almost followed through with it right then. But at the last moment he didn't kiss her, instead he pressed his temple to hers. "Thank you." He whispered. Thank you for your trust in me.

"No." She murmured back before he felt her lips brush his cheek. "Thank you."

Police station
Phoenix AZ

The hardest part, Spencer realized, was seeing the mangled bodies of young women who had been missing for days and not picturing the people you cared about up there. She was fine. Really, she was fine.

Wasn't she?

Thankfully there was now a small box, one that Garcia had decorated to look, in her words, like the ultimate Steampunk amulet. Something about brown and brass and old watch parts. He had to admit, it was a very attractive piece by the time Garcia was done. And it perfectly hid the small GPS tracking device without interrupting its connection.

Spencer picked up the tablet that he was now carrying, the one unfortunate drawback, and opened the application with his password. They had all agreed to share the most vulnerable, just in case, and so on his map an orange dot blinked over Jack's school, a blue dot blinked over Henry's kindergarten and a purple dot blinked over the UDC campus.

"Everyone's all right?" Hotch asked quietly.

"Yep," Spencer nodded and turned back to the case.