LAUGHTER LINES, spencer reid.

chapter fifteen

LAUGHTER LINES
chapter fifteen.

Spencer and Dave were on their way back to the BAU after finding three dead bodies and it was grim to think that a child was missing. Ian Doyle had crawled back into the lives of every team member, and again, he brought trouble.

Rossi briefly glanced over at Reid. "I saw you on the phone earlier," he stated easily. "Were you talking to Gwen?"

"She had to cancel dinner with me tonight," Reid answered. "She said something about checking on a source for a piece she's writing."

"At night?" Dave asked.

"No, she met him earlier, but she wasn't sure how long it would take. She pushed our dinner to tomorrow, but I'm going to have to cancel this time," Reid explained. He was starting to feel just the slightest bit tired, but he would work through the night to find Declan.

"It's probably best. We all know how crucial it is to find a missing child," Dave nodded as he pulled into the academy parking lot. "She'll probably understand." Dave gained a playful glint in his eye. Given the serious condition in which they were working, it was nice to have something to poke fun at. Reid was just an easy target because of his inexperience in the dating field.

"Probably?" Reid asked. He wasn't really sure what his team member was talking about. He had to work. A kid's life was on the line. Gwen had to understand that.

"Women don't like it when you cancel a date. It's okay when they do it, but they don't like when the guy does it," Dave said with an air of knowing. He mentally smirked when he saw that Reid was playing right into his hands and it was perfect. "Not making it to a date is a big no no."

"I have to work, and she canceled first," Reid said defensively. What did Rossi know about Gwen? She came from a law enforcement family. Surely she knew what it was like for Reid to be working into the night.

"Although, she's the daughter of a cop, the sister of a cop," Dave shrugged. "You might have lucked out. Just don't push your luck and cancel two dates in a row." He let out a small chuckle as he turned off the car.

Dave and Reid got out of the standard black SUV, and Reid didn't like the feeling in his gut. It was unwelcome, and he wanted it to go away. Maybe that was why he couldn't take Dave's joking lightly. He couldn't help but feel like something unexpected was going to happen. "This is going to be one of those cases, isn't it?" he asked Rossi.

Dave nodded somberly. "It looks like it," he replied grimly.

Reid blew out a sigh and wondered if this would lead to more lunches spent at the firing range. He knew that firing a gun did little to help the feelings that boiled to the brim almost every day, but it was better than going over to JJ's again to mourn the loss of his close friend. He did it much less now that he spent more time with Gwen, but some days, he just needed to shoot at paper terrorists.

Dave pulled the door open to the academy's main entrance. "We all miss her, Reid," he said. "Prentiss was a great team member, and she went down fighting. That's more than some people can manage, even if she didn't deserve to die like that."

"No one deserves that," Reid stated bitterly. He couldn't imagine what Prentiss was feeling, but he had once been at Death's door himself, and it wasn't an experience he was too keen on reliving. "What would she say about this case?" he pondered aloud.