*Cassie's POV*
I walked into the Bullpen, on the phone with Dean, "Dean, sweetheart. I really don't care what happened, but you don't need to get in a fight with everyone who says I'm hot." Morgan smirked and swiveled his chair to look at me as Spence watches me lean against my desk. I rub my forehead, "I love you too Dean. I promise I'll call on the jet when we have a case, okay? Don't beat anyone else up. Tell John that he owes me five grand because of our bet. Don't worry about what the bet was, just tell him or I'm going to bust his knees. Love you too, bye." I hang up the phone as Elle smirks at me, "Husband?"
I chuckled, "Yeah. Thinks he can fight anyone who looks in my direction." JJ looks up from a file, "Who's John?" I snorted, "My father-in-law. Bit of an asshole when he wants to." Spence tilts his head, "What was the bet?" I smirked, "That if Dean called me about him getting in a fight about me then he would owe me five thousand dollars." Morgan chuckled, "What would you do with five grand?" I shrugged, "Apartment rent. I'm still in a hotel." Spencer frowned, "That isn't good. I have more than enough room in my apartment, Andra. You can be my roommate."
Morgan raised an eyebrow, "Wouldn't husband get upset?" I snorted, "He seems like he would fight Spence, but I've been with Dean since we were fifteen. If I wanted to cheat on Dean, I would have done it when I met Tom Cruise when I was twenty. Dean would rather see me stay with a coworker that I trust than get murdered in a hotel room." Elle cackled, "Tom Cruise?" I nodded, "I'm sorry, he's hot. I would love to be your roommate, Spence. I'll pay half of all the bills and rent." Spence smiled and nodded at me, "Excellent."
-Timeskip-
I look through the photos of the bomb fragments. "Pipe bombs," Gideon said looking over my shoulder. "Packed in cardboard boxes," Morgan said, handing a photo to Gideon. Hotch pushes one off to the side, "Package bombs."
Gideon scrunched up his nose, "Sent through the mail?" Morgan shakes his head, "No. The other picture in your hand is of the switch that ATF found. The same mechanism for both bombs, mercury activated." Elle looked at the photos, "What does that mean?"
I look closer at one photo, "There are contacts to a detonator on either end of a bent tube full of mercury." Spence nods as Morgan elaborates, "What it means is all you have to do is tilt the package to detonate it." Elle looks at Morgan, "So they couldn't have been sent through the mail. The bomber had to deliver than himself." Morgan took a sip of his coffee, "Exactly."
"Strange way to commit an act of terrorism," Hotch said without looking up from the photos, "Why go to all this trouble to kill just a few people?" Gideon looks at all of us, "Let's recommend not raising the terror alert level for now. No reason to spread panic." I pouted and looked at Gideon, "Well that's a bummer. Maybe I wanted to cause chaos." Gideon just smirked, "You are the definition of chaotic evil, you know that?" I grinned, "It's the spicy memories." Spence looked at me, "Did you just refer trauma as 'spicy memories'?" Morgan grinned behind his coffee as Hotch raised an eyebrow at me, "Should we be worried about you, Malik?" I snort, "The only thing you should be worried about is the corners of your desks." Gideon looked confused, "Why?" I shrugged, "Because at least once a day, my toe and hip will find the corners and I'll cuss it out." Hotch chuckled, "Why am I not surprised?"
JJ came into the room, "We got news." JJ turned the TV on and it showed the news. "This is just a local channel, but the coverage is everywhere now. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, AL-JAZEERA, you name it." Hotch crossed his arms, "So much for not spreading panic."
"According to doctors, he's badly injured, but in stable condition in the I.C.U. Now, neighbors say that they heard the blast at about ten-thirty this morning and police arrived-" I couldn't hear the rest after Gideon spoke, "If DHS doesn't raise the terror alert now, they'll look weak."
Hotch looked at JJ, "Make sure Homeland Security knows that this is everywhere." JJ went to walk away when another explosion on TV went off. I stood up and looked at the photos, running a hand through my hair. Hotch sighed, "Looks like we're going to Palm Beach. Let's meet at the airstrip in twenty.
-Twenty minutes later-
I sat down in a seat with my bag at my feet and as soon as I saw down, my phone rang. I groaned, "It's almost like he knows." I pressed decline on my phone, knowing we needed to discuss, but I shot Dean a quick text saying that I would call him back when I got the chance. Hotch chuckled and sat in the seat beside me, "Husband?" I nodded and Elle chuckled, "The phone call earlier was amusing. Her husband, Dean, beat someone up for calling Maverick hot." Hotch chuckled and Spence smiled, "I offered Andra to be roommates with me so she could get out of that hotel." Hotch raised an eyebrow and looked at me, "You were in a hotel?" I nodded, "It would be nice to have a roommate when Dean and the father-in-law are taking trips everywhere around the country."
Hotch nodded and stood up, handing out files, "Bombings occurred within three miles of each other. The first victim was a seventy-four-year-old widow, Barbara Keller. Two hours after that, Clurman got hit in his driveway, and forty-five minutes later...Well, we all saw that. Jill Swenson, a thirty-four-year-old housewife who lived across the street from Clurman. Of the three, only Clurman survived."
Spence and I looked up and asked at the same time, "Is there any connection between the victims?" Everyone gave us a funny look and Gideon shivered, "That was weird. Never do that again." Hotch looked at Spence and me, "One. Clurman was a partner in a ten-million-dollar condo development deal in which Keller was an investor and a few weeks ago, the whole deal went bust."
Elle holds up a pen, "Went bust how?" Hotch took a deep breath, "Geologists discovered that the land was on methane, the condos never got built, the land became worthless, and Clurman lost a lot of people a lot of money."
Spence looked at me and then Hotch, "So maybe one of them was mad enough to take aim at Clurman." Gideon flipped through the photos, "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's a little too early to theorize about motive." JJ tilted her head, "Then where do we start?"
Gideon shrugged, "From the beginning. What do we know about bombers?" I put a hand to my chin, "Mostly male, loners, history of criminal activity." Spencer finished for me, "About fifty percent of all bombings are actually the product of vandalism." Hotch nodded, "And more often than not, bombers end up accidentally blowing themselves up, so the first suspects you always look for in the bombing case are the victims."
Elle tapped her pad of paper, "Clurman was the only male. Losing a large business deal like that could be a powerful stressor." Gideon leaned forward and opened his file, "Well, then there's the crime scene. Clurman was the only victim who didn't get hit at his door. Why? What was different about this one?"
Hotch and I walked over to Clurman's car. "Before Clurman passed out, what he told cops at the time was that he saw the package sitting on the stoop outside his kitchen door." Spence and Elle walked around it, "Why didn't he take it in?" Spencer looked around, "Why didn't it go off until he got to his car? It's like fifty feet away." I looked at the front seat, "Joe Reese, one of Clurman's investors, was here before the bomb went off. The cops have ruled him out as a suspect, but he said he saw Clurman get in the car with the package."
Elle looked at me, "So maybe Clurman wasn't receiving a bomb at all. Maybe he was on his way to deliver one." Spence looks thoughtful, "But he drops it or tilts it and it goes off by accident." Gideon looks around, "I'd like to talk to Clurman. In the meantime, let's get a warrant to search his house." I looked around and shook my head and Hotch looks at me, "What is it?" I sighed, "I have to be honest, if I wasn't expecting a package at all, I would open it where it stood and not even picked it up. Why would you pick up a package that doesn't have your name on it if you weren't expecting one?" Hotch chuckled, "Because not everyone thinks that cautiously, Hydrangea." I nodded, accepting that reasoning.
Hotch, Elle, and I are standing on the front porch of Clurman's home when a man walks up, "Agent Hotchner?" The man holds a hand out for Hotch to shake, "Detective Morrison, Palm Beach P.D. I'm lead on the case." Hotch shakes his hand and Elle gets off the phone, "Nice to meet you, this is Agents Greenway and Malik. Agents Reid and Gideon are at the hospital. I think you met Agent Jareau at the station house." Morrison shakes our hands but holds on to mine for quite some time. "Agent Malik, I have to say. That outfit is a great one for chasing down criminals. You are quite beautiful." I smile nervously, not quite sure why he's telling me this. "Thank you so much, Detective Morrison." I let go of his hand as Elle opened the front door and let me walk through first, but gave me a weirded-out look first. Hotch walked in behind us, "ATF hasn't found any hard evidence yet, just some kitchen timers, tape recorders, and electrical switches."
Morrison walks into the house, "Yeah, it is amazing how many household items count as potential bomb-making materials." There was a slam and a woman came busting through the room, "Hello? Excuse me? What's going on here?" Hotch steps forward, "Mrs. Clurman, my name is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner with the FBI." Mrs. Clurman looks around, "What are you doing in my house?" Hotch gestures to the table, "There is a copy of the warrant on the table. I know that this is hard to believe, but we just need to cover all of our bases. We need to make sure that your husband was not involved in any way."
Mrs. Clurman looked angry, "Involved? My husband's in the hospital with his leg blown off. What are you talking about?" Elle spoke softly, "Mrs. Clurman, there are some questions that your husband needs to answer, and the sooner that we talk to him, and clear him then the sooner we can find whoever's responsible."
Morrison called out, "Agent Hotchner? We got something." We all head out to the garage as someone takes down a toolbox and Morisson opens it, "We found this buried on the back of that shelf." Mrs. Clurman walked up to look and Hotch looked at her, "Mrs. Clurman, do you know anything about this?"
Mrs. Clurman looked up in shock as I looked down at the book that had the title of 'The Anarchists Companion'.