nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

thirty.

CHAPTER THIRTY:
WITNESS PROTECTION

❖ ❖ ❖

"Oh, it wasn't a joke."

Spencer watches as she rolls her eyes, turning away, back to his books. Despite the fact she's literally handcuffed, it suddenly feels very homely, joking and smiling as she analyses his choice in literature, surrounded by the smell of coffee and the sounds of clinking cutlery -- and, naturally, he hates himself for it. When he puts his mug down on the coffee table, there's a soft clink as he puts one down for her, too. He hasn't made anyone coffee in his apartment in a long time.

Biting back shame for his own generosity, he acts natural, pretending he has done her no kindness and not daring to look up at her. But his cheeks are nonetheless slightly hot, and in his peripheral vision she is holding back a smile, eyes burning into the side of his face.

He swallows. "Tomorrow, we can begin with your statement," he says, speaking up to break the tension.

She hesitates. "I don't know... Where would I begin?"

Spencer glances up, hold her eyes a moment, looks away. "I already know where it all begins," he says, before words fail him for a moment. If these words come out, everything might tumble apart. Or fall together. "It starts with your sister, Elodie."

Perhaps Spencer has always overestimated Nina, because even now he expects no reaction. He expects her to keep it together, remain cold and calculated as always -- but his prediction is way off. Of course it is; Elodie has always been her weakness, the one thing she cannot remain 'cold and calculated' about.

Like she's just been shot again, the girl goes death white.

"Do you have people listening?"

He should have expected this question, eventually. "No."

"Liar."

"You've spent the last ten years of life with a liar. Do I look like one too?" And he truly isn't lying. For once. There is no poker game here. No chess pieces being slid into place. There is only his attempts to build rapport, and her reluctance to oblige him.

But Nina at least sits down, on the arm chair at his coffee table, a few feet away from him on the sofa. She's shaking, but he pretends not to see -- a kindness he extends to her not because she deserves it, but because he knows what it feels like to be caught off guard with news about family -- and to hide it, she grips her knees tightly, leaning forward.

"You read my diary?" she says airily, like a question. Her face is set with anxiety, like a mother awaiting awful news in a hospital waiting room.