Read my Lips

Chapter 32

"Are you sure you feel comfortable doing this?," Spencer asked.

Eliana smiled at him as she shifted her body slightly, snuggling deeper into the stack of hotel pillows behind her. "I want to do whatever I can to help you find those other women," she replied, offering him another soft smile of reassurance. She reached for Spencer, catching him by the sleeve of his shirt and pulling him down so she could wrap her arms around him. He held on as he turned to glance at Derek.

"Don't push her too hard," he warned. "She's still healing."

"Reid," Derek huffed. "Come on man. I've done this hundreds of times before. She's gonna be just fine, I promise."

When Derek suggested that they try his memory recall technique on Eliana, the last person he expected an objection from was Spencer. Another woman had been kidnapped. And this time, Casanova murdered her fiance. He was escalating. They needed to find him as quickly as possible, before he took his rage out on the women he was still holding captive.

The BAU was back in North Carolina with nothing to show for their unauthorized trip to the west coast. Penelope still hadn't gotten any answers from the photograph that Prentiss and Rossi found. Given that Casanova's partner was a medical doctor, they had to scrap the entire profile they built on him. The information they needed to start a new one was locked inside Eliana's head. And Derek suspected that the location of the missing women might be locked in there too, even if she was sure she didn't know where it was.

"Would I bother you if I asked you to record this?," Eliana asked, directing her question to Derek. He gave her a questioning look. Most people didn't even want to remember their attack, let alone make a record of them recounting it. Eliana's request didn't bother him. But it was strange. "I don't know if Spencer told you, but I like to write," Eliana explained. "Just silly sci-fi and romance type stuff. But I think when this is all over, I'd like to write about what happened to me. I don't know if anyone would want to read it… but I think it would feel good to get it all out of my head and onto a piece of paper."

"You want to record this so you have an accurate record of what you remember about your attack?," Derek concluded. Eliana smiled and nodded her head, grateful that he understood the reasoning behind her request without her having to explain further.

"Would that be okay?," she asked.

"Of course," Derek agreed. He rose from the chair he pulled up next to the bed and positioned his phone on the tv stand across from the bed, starting the video before he returned to his seat. Eliana's only other request was that Spencer sit on the bed next to her and hold her hand. Derek thought that was a good idea, since it would help her to relax and feel safe. Once Spencer was in position, Derek started talking. He told Eliana to listen to the sound of his voice.

"Listen to my voice and your body as you start to relax. Your eyes may feel heavy and want to close. You're safe here. Let your body sink into the pillows as you feel your muscles relax. Focus on your breathing and the way it feels to pull the air in… and let it out." Derek continued until it was obvious that Eliana's body was lax against the top of the mattress. She had Spencer's hand sandwiched between the two of hers, holding it against the center of her chest.

"I'm going to ask you some questions now," Derek explained. "...and I want you to answer with as much detail as you can." He paused for a moment, reminding himself to take it slow and get as much information from her as he could.

"What's your name?," he asked.

"Eliana. My friends call me Liana. And my dad calls me Annie."

Just from the tone of her voice, Derek could tell that Eliana had gone under deeper than he expected. She sounded like herself, but also not like herself at the same time. Almost like her words were coming through a fog to get to him. Only about four percent of the population were highly hypnotizable. He'd never encountered someone that was before. Not until today.

"That's good," he encouraged. "Now I'm going to ask you to think back to about a week ago. Do you remember what you were doing last Monday night?"

"I remember what I was doing on Saturday night," she announced.

"What was that?," Derek asked, though he already had a pretty good guess as to what, or rather who, Elaina was doing before they got called away to North Carolina.

"I invited Spencer over to watch scary movies on tv. But that was a trick. My tv isn't even hooked up. I wanted him in my bed." Derek choked back a laugh as he glanced at Spencer. His face was turning about three different shades of red. And he was staring at the woman next to him with a look that rode the line between amusement and total infatuation.

"Let's go forward from that," Derek instructed, quickly redirecting Eliana before he heard more than he wanted to hear about what she and Spencer did in bed together. "What did you do on Monday, after Spencer left for work?"

"I picked his mom up from respite care. Diana. She was acting kinda wound up, so we took the metro downtown and volunteered at the SPCA. It's good therapy. Taking care of someone else, even an animal, can help you put your own problems into perspective. And she likes to play with the puppies and the kittens."

Eliana's comment about animals being good therapy made Derek smile. He never thought about it that way, but he supposed it was true. People, including maybe even him, spent too much time thinking about themselves. Putting someone else first for even a short time would do all of them some good. "I'm glad you had a good day," Derek told her. "But can you tell me what happened later that night? You sent Spencer a text before you went to sleep, right?"

Eliana confirmed that she sent the text. But then her body went stiff. Her eyes were moving back and forth rapidly under her closed eyelids, making her long dark lashes flutter.

"What's happening?," Derek asked.

"He's here," Eliana gasped. Her grip on Spencer's hand tightened. "Casanova."

"It's okay," Derek soothed. "You're safe here with me now. You got away." He paused, giving her a moment to process what he said before he continued. "Tell me everything you remember about him."

Eliana sucked in a hard breath. All the muscles in her body went stiff at the same time. But then she relaxed into the pillows behind her and started talking. Like Derek suspected, Eliana knew a lot more about the man that took her than she thought. She knew Casanova's height and how he smelled. She described the unique mask he wore in great detail. Derek knew that she would recognize her attacker's voice if she heard it again. From her injuries, they already knew that their unsub subdued his victims with a stun gun. Eliana confirmed that. Casanova stunned her. He tied her arms behind her back with a rope and he drugged her to keep her knocked out for the drive back to North Carolina.

Depending on what information he needed to extract, there were times when Derek might have asked more questions about the drive. Knowing how long the victim was in the unsub's vehicle often gave them a better idea of where they were taken. But he already knew Eliana was taken from DC and brought to North Carolina. After confirming that she was too out of it to know the make or model of her attacker's vehicle, Derek skipped over the rest and directed Eliana to focus on the interior of the room where she was held.

"My body felt heavy, like it was moving underwater…," she recounted.

"That's because you were drugged," Derek explained. "Push past that. How did you feel when you woke up? What did it smell like? Could you hear anything?"

"I was in bed. The sheets were soft… and they smelled good, like fabric softener. I was still wearing Spencer's shirt. It smelled like soap and men's aftershave." Derek encouraged Eliana to keep going by asking her what else she smelled. "Dirt," Eliana replied. "The whole room smelled like old dirt. The walls were made of rocks, not cement blocks but actual rocks. I could tell the place was built a long time ago. But someone came in and renovated it. Fresh wood was nailed on top of the old door, to reinforce it. The bed and the dresser were new, like the sheets." Eliana paused again, the fingers on her right hand flexing and drumming against the back of Spencer's palm. Derek gave her another memory nudge, asking if there was anything on or in the dresser. A watched as a shudder rippled through her body. "The top drawer was full of lingerie," she recalled. "There wasn't much on top of the dresser. Just a little box with a few lipsticks in it. But that's where he kept his stun gun after he shot me with it. When he used the gun, it smelled like ozone and burnt hair."

"You're safe. He's not in the room with you yet," Derek soothed. "Could you hear anything?"

As he waited for an answer, Derek was desperately hoping for some small clue that might reveal where Eliana was held. Things people wrote of as background noise, like a train whistle, were often enough to help Garcia center in on a location. As he continued his gentle probing line of questions, Derek could see the thumb of Spencer's free hand flying across the screen of his phone. They'd been working together long enough that Derek didn't need to ask him what he was doing. He was sending the information they were getting from Eliana to both of their technical analysts in real time. If Casanova was filling drawers upon drawers with women's lingerie, there might be some record of him buying it.

"I heard another woman's voice. She warned me not to call out. She had a southern accent. I could hear music. One of the other women was playing a violin. Another woman was crying. It sounded like she was trying to muffle the noise with a pillow…"

"Could you hear anything else?," Derek asked.

"There was something else…," Eliana said. "It was all around me the whole time I was there. Like white noise. It was running water. The toilet in my room, it wasn't the normal type with plumbing. It emptied into a hole in the ground. The sound of the water was louder when I got close to it, like there was water running underneath me."

"Good," Derek said. "You're doing great. Eliana, I'm going to ask you to tell me what else you remember about him now. But I want you to know that you're completely safe. I'm here. And Spencer's here. We're not going to let anything happen to you." Derek paused before he prompted her again. "What happened when he came into the room?"

"I was afraid," Eliana recounted with a shiver. When she spoke, the words spilled out of her in rapid fire. It was like she explained when she was talking about writing down her experience, she just wanted to get it out of her. "I tried to remember everything I could about him, in case I needed to describe him later. He was wearing a mask. The same one. But the bottom half of it was missing. There was a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled at me. He was muscular, like he worked out a lot. His entire body was shaved. Or maybe waxed. Like a bodybuilder. He was tan, like he spent a lot of time outside with his shirt off. He was wearing jeans with nothing underneath. He told me not to ask him any questions."

"What happened next?," Derek coaxed.

"He made me take a pill. It was yellow with a little smiley face on it. He said if I didn't take it, he would punish me. But that's not why I took it. I didn't want to be sober when he raped me."

"That's okay," Derek promised. "You're not in trouble for taking that pill."

Eliana's eyes fluttered again. She bent her legs, scraping her heels against the hotel mattress. Tears dripped down from the corners of her eyes, wetting her hair as she spoke. "He said he liked how I looked in Spencer's shirt. He wanted me to wear it… while he was inside me. He was talking about Spencer while he touched me. He said it didn't matter how many PhD's he had, he was a weak man that didn't deserve me. He made me look him in the eye while he forced me. I thought he was going to kill me when he finished. I wanted him to kill me."

Spencer shifted his body on the bed, sitting up and moving towards Eliana like he intended to shake her out of the trance she was in. But Derek held his hand up, signaling for him to wait. He knew this had to be awful for him, especially now that they knew for sure that this whole attack was actually targeted at him. Eliana was just collateral damage.

"What did you do after he left?," Derek asked.

"I broke the rules," Eliana said. The defiant tone in her reply made him smile. Contrary to her seemingly sweet and gentle disposition, Eliana was a fighter. "I talked to one of the other girls. Kate McNamara. She said she was a doctor at Duke University. She asked me if I was okay. She said he raped her too."

Derek made eye contact with Spencer again. It was a good thing he waited, even though Derek knew he was dying to stop their session. This was new information. Eliana previously confirmed that there were other women alive where she was being held. But she hadn't mentioned any of them by name before now.

"When did you see Casanova again?," Derek asked.

"I don't know when," Eliana explained. "The lights never turned off. I fell asleep twice. But I don't know for how long." As she recounted the last bit of her captivity, Eliana's body tensed and jerked spasmodically. "I heard him before I saw him. He was beating her. Kate. For breaking the rules and talking to me. I knew he was coming for me next. If he beat me, I knew I'd never get away. I opened the dresser and pulled out one of the outfits he picked out for me. It was red. Riley always said I looked good in red. I put on red lipstick to match the nightie. And then I waited for him to come in."

"What happened when he came in?"

"He had a belt in his hands. There was blood on his chest. Kate's blood. My stomach hurt. And my body felt tight, like a coiled spring." Eliana paused, her face contouring with regret and disgust. "I kissed him. I got on my knees. I put my mouth on him and waited until I was sure he let his guard down…" Eliana paused for a moment. And when she spoke again, it was clear she had no reservations about what she did next. "I bit him. I bit down as hard as I could. I could taste his blood in my mouth. He was screaming. He jerked back and his skin ripped against my teeth. And then I punched him as hard as I could in the balls. He fell down. Casanova." Eliana's voice rose, she was speaking louder and faster as if she was reliving her escape. "I ran! I don't know where, I just ran and I kept running. There was a door. I pushed it open. And then there was sunlight! I made it outside!"
"Did you look back?," Derek asked. "Were you in a house? A barn? What did it look like?"

"I don't know!," Eliana replied. "When I turned around, there was nothing there. No house, just a hole in the ground. I didn't look any more, I just kept running. I ran and I ran." Eliana's voice cracked. She wasn't just dripping tears now, she was sobbing so hard that her breath was coming in ragged gasps. "I just ran. I didn't look back. I LEFT THOSE OTHER GIRLS BEHIND! I left Kate behind! She might be dead now because of me! He was chasing me! I could hear him, screaming my name! And I just told myself to run! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to leave them…"

"Eliana!" Spencer called her name, gently shaking her out of the trance she was in before he pulled her against his chest. "It's okay. None of this was your fault."

"I just left those other women behind," she sobbed. "How could I do that?"

"Hey," Derek said. He didn't mean to interject. But he couldn't help himself. "Listen to me. We're going to find those other women. Because of you."

Eliana choked off her tears, turning her last sob into a choked hiccup. She lifted her head from Spencer's chest, regarding Derek with a look of hope in her dark eyes. "You really mean that? You think you'll be able to find them?"

"I don't think," Derek replied. "I know."