▆ excruciating wait
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﹙we will get you back﹚
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" Hotch hissed, slamming his hands on the metal table.
Verity tilted her head, her eyes staring into his brown ones as they sent shivers down her spine.
"How could I have done anything?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. She had done a lot more than they could even think of, but for once, there was no evidence. "I was here the entire time."
Hotch clenched his jaw, and his mouth pulled into a tight line. The raven-haired woman walked up to him. An unreadable expression was displayed on her face as she posed her eyes on Verity before shifting them to her boss. "Strauss wants to speak to you," she informed, her hand brushing against his arm.
Verity narrowed her eyes at the action. Movement, which didn't go unnoticed by the male agent, who, taking a deep breath, pushed himself off the desk.
He didn't bother sparing another glance at the detainee when he followed the woman outside, letting the door slam shut behind their bodies.
Verity shifted in her seat, turning her body to face the two-way mirror once again and moving her eyes to the gray wall- but not after sending a smirk to the agents behind the glass.
Everything was going according to plan; the only thing she could do now was wait. With a deep breath, she tried to ease the tension she felt in her shoulder; anxiety inevitably building in her chest.
It was fourteen past five.
They were coming. They had to; that was the plan.
"You want me to get arrested?" Her eyes shifted between the brown pair in front of her. He sighed, taking a step closer, but she took one back. It was an involuntary reaction; if she hadn't been confused by the information he had revealed, she would have never done it.
The emotion that crossed his face made her freeze; her foot still inches above the cold floor, not daring to touch it, and her muscles not able to move. "I-"
He took another step, a longer one, his hand grabbing her arms. "We need to get Ares back," he grumbled, his grip tightening on her skin. "If to do that, we need to get you in an interrogation room for a couple of hours, so be it."
Verity averted her gaze from his. She knew she wasn't vital to the Timoretikos; she was more an object they used to get what they wanted than an actual member of it, but for him, she thought she was more, somehow.
"You'd do that to me?" she asked, her voice wavering. He clenched his jaw, "I'm not doing anything. You will."
"Nathan-" he tilted his head, silencing her protest with just a movement. "What do I need to do?" she murmured, giving in. It was useless fighting back; it always was.
"Elijah will tell you everything." He pressed his hand against her hair, dragging it to her cheek. "We will get you back after Matthew," he assured, his eyes staring into hers, before pressing his lips on her forehead.
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Thirty-three past five. They weren't there yet.
Doubt started to insinuate in her brain. What if they weren't coming at all?
No, they had to. They were; she wasn't vital to the team, but she was needed.
Not like the others, but still, they couldn't just leave her to rot in a cell—could they?
They had limited time after shutting down the security system—precisely fifty minutes. It had been shut down at five o'clock so...
It had been shut down, right?
She hadn't heard any commotion coming from outside, but she was in a soundproof interrogation room; even if there had been, she wasn't going to be able to hear it.
Hotchner didn't barge into the room, asking her why nothing was working anymore. But he had been called by Strauss, the section chief; he probably wasn't even in the building at the moment.
But other agents were. And still, nobody had questioned her again since Hotchner had left her alone. In this moment, she was handcuffed in a room, while the other members of the BAU team were digging lower into her scarce file to figure her out—not a worry in the world she could escape.
Because the security system hadn't been shut down. Had it?
She knew she had to stay still; her eyes had to stay on that fucking gray wall like they had been for the past hours, but she couldn't anymore.
She turned around, part of her tangled hair falling from her shoulders while another covered her face. Her skin paled—the cameras were on.
She was fucked.
Verity had always known she wasn't fundamental to the Timoretikos, but she had never thought she was just a scapegoat for them—for Nathan.
What was she supposed to do now? She didn't know; the thought of being abandoned there by herself had never crossed her mind.
So she went back to do what she had done since she had been forced to sit in that metal chair, stare at that fucking gray wall. Aware that the agents behind the mirror had seen her sudden movement, the way the color left her face, her eyes widened, and her lower lips trembled along with her hands.
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Ten past six.
Verity had lost hope, and slowly she felt like she was also losing her mind.
Nobody had crossed the threshold of that room in–
"You're Medusa." The name made the hairs on her arm rise, and she couldn't help but turn her head, meeting the eyes of the man who owned the trembling voice which had brought her back from the meanders of her mind.
She took a moment to observe him.
Dr. Spencer Reid.
His coffee-brown hair was cut short (shorter than the photos she had obtained from her research) and messy. His eyes were sunken, probably as much as hers in that moment; he must've been awake since she had gotten there, trying to figure her out like the rest of his team.
And by the use of the right code name, she understood they had found something.
He closed the door behind himself, not bothering to present himself; everyone was aware she had done enough researches on the team to know their names. His movements weren't as assured as he wanted them to be, she watched him as he took his time to walk to the chair in front of her, his eyes never meeting hers until he was seated.
He cleared his throat, reaching for something in his pocket, and Verity could've sworn that was another tactic to make her talk, sending in an agent she hadn't seen before, letting him act intimidated by her presence so that she was going to feel in power and let the information leave her mouth as a taunt.
But that thought was scattered to a forgotten corner of her mind when his brown eyes met her ocean ones; he wasn't faking, he was genuinely feeling intimidated by her—probably he wasn't usually left alone interrogating an UnSub accused of so many deaths as her.
"I'll take your silence as confirmation." His voice wasn't trembling anymore, and his hand was now holding a small white envelope. "I believe this belongs to you," he said, handing it to her.
She narrowed her eyes, not moving a muscle, and her action didn't go unnoticed by him as he glanced at the metal surface of the table before looking at her again. "It was left in Matthew Blair's cell. I told them not to open it before you could read it," he explained, keeping his hand stretched towards her, the paper brushing against her skin.
"Why do you think I'm Medusa?" She asked, not taking the envelope just yet. He visibly gulped at the question, shifting in his seat while trying to hide it by leaning his elbows on the desk.
"Well, you are obviously part of the timoretikos. Nobody that's part of your group, that we're aware of, is incarcerated," he paused, his eyes burning in hers as her stare didn't falter. "Apart from you," he explained shortly.
It wasn't the explanation Verity thought she was about to hear; she believed they had investigated her life and found something more, ignoring for a moment the fact that in the files they owned there was nothing about her other than a few scattered pieces of information.
Without another world, she stretched her fingers, taking the envelope between them before bringing it closer to the edge of the table so that she could open it without the handcuffs restraining her.
She could feel his eyes watching her every move as she slid the card out. Her body stiffened for a second when she finished scanning the word written on it.
μεγιστοσωφρόνως.
One word, which could be interpreted in different ways. It seemed meaningless, just thrown there on a piece of white paper to fill the void it contained.
For her, it was a warning; utmost caution was what she needed to use now that she was left alone—but was she ever truly alone?
"What does it mean?" inquired Spencer, reading the still-unknown word. He was a genius, yes, but ancient Greek wasn't a language he was fluent in.
She lifted her head to meet his attentive gaze, folding the card and posing it, face down, on the metal desk. "That a woman will always be punished for things she was forced into."
He visibly frowned at her words, trying to grasp their full meaning. Was she about to admit she was innocent?
He opened his mouth, ready to ask the question out loud, but she stopped him before he could express his doubt–
"I'm guilty. I killed all those people."
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I can finally say we're going into the actual book, the introduttive chapters are over.
I'm so excited!!!