The Chariot (Spencer x Reader)

FIFTEEN

warning: mild case description

My phone rang not one minute after we finished. I hurried across the room, still naked, to answer it. It was Hotch. It would've been wrong on so many levels to answer this call – from my boss ­­– while naked, so I snatched a blanket from the couch nearby and wrapped it around myself.

"Hey, Hotch," I answered.

"We have a case. Can you be here in an hour?" His serious tone filled my ear.

"Yeah, see you soon," I hung up and shuffled back over to Spencer. He received the same call seconds later. "Can we stop by my place so I can change?" I asked as I tried not to show my disappointment.

"No." His arms wrapped around me so tightly I thought he might crush a rib.

"No?" I looked up at him, confused by his refusal to such a reasonable request.

"I don't want to go. I just want to stay here and go to sleep," he pouted. He didn't need to convince me; the last thing I wanted to do right now was go into work and ruin this moment.

"I'm sure we can sleep on the jet. I really don't wanna go either, but we have to. C'mon, if we leave now I can change, and then maybe I'll sit next to you on the flight there." I gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and he begrudgingly released his grip on me.

----

The jet touched down at the local municipal airport early the next morning. All we knew is that a bomb exploded in a house, killing a father and daughter. When two cops arrived on the scene, they were shot and killed with an automatic weapon. Due to the town's proximity to the border, a terror alert was sent out to the surrounding areas.

We split up between two SUVs that were at the airport waiting for us, all headed to the crime scene. Once we arrived, JJ introduced the team to the Sheriff, and Hotch began asking him questions about the victims. In a town this small, there were no secrets – everyone knows everything about each other.

Rossi, Prentiss, and I carefully treaded around what was left of the house. The unsub had placed canisters of gunpowder in the kitchen by the front door and broken the oven's pilot light. The combination of the gas filled room and the gunpowder caused the destruction we stood in the middle of. "So then what was the trigger?" I asked.

"The victim smoked." Prentiss held up a carton of cigarettes, blackened by the fire. "And they probably knew he would be smoking when he entered the door."

We reasoned that these killings weren't an act of terrorism – the unsub knew the father personally.

Rossi soon got a call from Hotch telling us there was another victim, and that we needed to go check it out. I didn't even know Hotch and Morgan had left, Spencer along with them.

Spencer and I didn't talk much over the next couple of days. I was sharing a room with Emily, and as much as I loved her, she wasn't the one I wanted to spend my nights with right now.

The unsub was a student at the high school in town. He was likely very gifted intellectually, but struggled with reading and spatial reasoning, causing his poor grades and dislike for sports.

Emotional abuse experienced at home by his father and at school by his peers led him to commit these acts of violence. He was what we termed an "injustice collector;" someone who killed out of revenge, thereby collecting the lives of the people who wronged them in any way. All of this isn't to say that everyone who's bullied kills people, but it can happen under the right conditions.