CHAPTER TWELVE:
INTRUDER ALERT
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"I've got something!"
Emily practically explodes out of the interrogation room, bursting into the bullpen and making all the heads turn, including Spencer's, his heart soaring.
But she doesn't look at them, or at anyone, and with her files in one hand and her black hair billowing our behind her, she hurries across the room and takes the stairs two at a time, calling out for Garcia.
Hands on Spencer make him jump, and he's already half falling out of his chair when he realises it's JJ, her hand firm around his arm and pulling. Managing barely to get his feet under him, he lets her drag him toward Garcia's office; when they reach it, Emily's already bent over next to Garcia's chair, the many screens illuminating their closely pressed faces.
"Emily, what's going on?" JJ demands, hurrying forward.
"She's transient, he says," she explains in a rush, glancing hurriedly between Garcia, was typing, and the confused faces of her team in the doorway. "She travels, a lot. She never stays in one place for longer than a month. So he couldn't give us an address -- but he could give us --"
"Her bank details," Garcia cuts in, just as her computer dings. She swizzles in her chair, grinning so wide that her gums show, and splays her hands up and out in victory. "Speaking of which, I just froze her accounts."
Spencer brushes forward, past all three women, and squinting he looks at the computer -- and, oh, jeez. His mouth drops open.
"If I saw that number in my account, I think I'd kill for it, too," remarks Garcia behind him, which pretty much sums up exactly what he's thinking. Swooshing across on her wheel chair, she starts to scroll, looking through the recent transactions. "The girl has taste. Boutiques, hair salons, hotels, plane tickets. She's really living the ideal life."
"She's a murderer, Garcia."
"Aside from that part."
"She's not gonna be happy you froze her assets," Spencer mumbles. "All that luxury, suddenly gone? She's not gonna be happy at all."
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But the rest of the team is happy. Even Hotch cracks a smile. It's similar to the joy when they close a case, sunshine filling the air and smiles wide as they gather things and cut idly in the elevator all the way down to the ground floor.
As usual, Hotch remains behind, and Spencer watches him from down the hallway as he steps into the interrogation room with Huxley, just before the elevator doors ding open and he's bustled inside with the others. Spencer already knows, without knowing how he knows, that will never find out what is done with Huxley -- although, if he has to guess, Hotch probably gave him a hard warning, and let him out into the world to suffer the consequences by his own boss for his indiscretion. Suffering at the hands of a man like Edelstein seems worse than the prison system, from what he's seen of the man so far.
It feels odd to head home when Nina is so close to walking straight into their wide open arms (and a prepared jail cell), but when Spencer catches sight of the clock in his car, he realises its almost ten at night, and he's been at work over ten hours. Then, because ignorance is bliss and he'd seemingly been holding off exhaustion only by not knowing the time, the tiredness instantly hits.
Driving home is a chore, even with the joy in his chest thats pumped him full of helium so he's light as air. But, somehow without crashing despite his tired eyes, he makes it home -- and stops at the bottom of the stairs to his apartment. Three flights of stairs. Not what he needs.
"Oh, jesus."
And he starts his climb.
And, when he makes it onto the same floor as his apartment door -- that's when it begins.
The moment he turns onto the landing, one hand trailing along the banister and the other holding the strap of his messenger back, feet shuffling, he knows somethings wrong. He stops in his place, staring straight ahead at the wall at the top of the stairs -- the same wall he's seen a thousand times, a million. The same dusty apartment block, permeated with the smell of jaded pot heads and the crazy cat lady upstairs. Every usual thing in its usual place, undisturbed.
Still.
Something is different.
Hesitantly, as if scared, he turns his head, and his body follows, edging around the top of the stairs toward his apartment door.
His open apartment door. It's just a crack, invisible from this angle -- except for the sliver of yellow light that cuts into the dim landing, stretching in a long line across the panelled wooden flooring.
2013. It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in Spencer's own genes the memory remains: the awareness, the instinct, both so animalistic. The floorboards creak under his feet, his fingers brush across the banister, and from inside his apartment, he can hear the television on, a rerun of an old Jimmy Kimmel episode, audience laughing.
Had he left it unlocked? Had someone broke in? Or, Doris, upstairs -- she'd walked into Spencer's apartment once before, having been already senile and also wine drunk after one of her Friday night bingo sessions. That had been an awfully embarassing moment, one that makes Spencer shrivel up in his bed at night -- but right now, he'd prefer her to any of the other alternatives.
But he knows it isn't her. Instinct tells him that.
Because up rises instinct's little voice, speaking from the back of his mind, that told, Shhhh, it's close now. Close.
He should bail. Call for help. That little voice has his back. That little voice is far older, wiser, smarter, than he is -- 3 PhDs or not. It knows better than him, than Hotch, than his team.
He should listen to that voice.
Instead, he only listened to the silence of the empty landing, to the distant rumble of Jimmy Kimmel's voice, listened hard. Something is in his apartment, and he wants to know what it is, even though he has a feeling he already knows. Instinct tells him who it is. But he needs to know. Curiosity killed the cat, and it'll kill him too.
But, oh, isn't this the case of the lifetime? And, out of all the ways to go, wouldn't it be nice to go down in the pursuit of knowledge?
He takes a tiny step away forward, then another, floorboards creaking.
And then the Something makes a noise, somewhere between a cough and a laugh. It comes, clear as day, from within his apartment.
That's the moment when Spencer doesn't need a little old voice to tell him what to do. It's obvious -- a no-brainer: leave. Go downstairs, to his car, get in the car, drive away, and call for help.
But he doesn't run.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and he pushes the door open with his fingertips.
It swings slowly forward on loose, creaking hinges, and as Spencer steps forward into the yellow block of expanding light stretching across the floor, and as he finally looks through the open doorway into his apartment, Nina Scott turns around and grins at him.
"I wondered when you'd get here," he says.
Sat on his sofa, feet up on the coffee table like it's the most casual thing in the world, she smiles wider over her shoulder at him. "You knew I would come?" she asks, stretching her arm on the back of his sofa as she turns properly, the hand that she reveals loosely holding a gun.
He draws his own casually, stepping deeper into the apartment. It feels a lot like entering a ring, but never of them even even blink. "I knew you would," he confirms. He kicks the door shut with his heel, and raises the pistol, barrel aimed straight at her skull. "So, what do you want?"
authors note:
AAAAAAAA
THEY MET
AAAAAAAAAAA
i'm so excited!! things are really gonna heat up (the next chapter is gonna be TENSE, and the one after that is even worse) and i'm jUST SO EXCITED
btw, they weren't supposed to meet, and it was supposed to just be another phone call, but i felt like it's time they speak face to face AND it was more necessary to the plot, so here u go u lucky bastards
please like and comment!! love y'all