✓ | 𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗘 · ͟͟͞͞➳ spencer reid

CHAPTER 12 ━━━

# ! | CHAPTER TWELVE
- all hell breaks loose

━━━ AFTER AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE
series and roundabouts, lefts, rights, and a speed that is certifiably above the speed limit, Meryl and Clint reach their dingy destination. It's a hotel way off the beaten path, appearing to be void of guests and having been that way for a while.

The blindfold and rope are both removed and she stands on less than sturdy legs. Thoughts scrambled, vision blurry, she stumbles toward the one open hotel room door. Before she has even ambled into room, sharp and temporarily blue eyes skitter hazily across two masses of fur on the ground. The larger is white, the only slightly smaller is brown and black. Dead, flat eyes stare right through her. Elvis and Dion, her two dogs, her two joys, guts slashed open in a sick sort of welcome gift.

Two hands grab the backs of her arms and a voice that is disgustingly familiar and disgustingly close whispers vindictively in her ear, "Glad you could join us, Dr. Murphy."

Meryl swallows back her fear as James Laing ties her to a chair and smiles cruelly, his red hair swept away from his face in a pompadour style. James' blue eyes are like daggers, appraising the bit of her stomach where the jumpsuit cuts low enough. "Such a smart pet you are. Subconsciously running back toward your owner."

Meryl shakes her head. "You killed my dogs."

James shrugs dismissively. "Seems a little bit uncouth for kittens to keep puppies, don't you think?"

"Why am I here?" Meryl asks, twisting her wrists in the ropes.

"You're here," James says, sliding the fabric of her jumpsuit down her shoulders, pressing a sloppy kiss to her neck, "because I missed you. And I know how to get you crawling back."

Meryl huffs a laugh. "I think I'm here because you paid a guy to pay a guy to drug me. Just an idea."

She lets her head fall to the left as James clocks her across the cheek, other hand fishing a knife out of his pocket, the blade flicking out menacingly.  Laing cuts the fabric down and then drags his finger over the scar below her belly button. With one quick movement, the scar is reopened and the sound of Meryl's labored breathing fills the air.

James throws the knife across the room and rips her jumpsuit away until she's just in her undergarments. "I'd like to bruise the rest of you with my hands, I think. Try to get comfortable. Or don't."

For hours, two hours and thirty seven minutes to be exact, James covers every inch of Meryl's skin in various degrees of bruising. Fists, pipes, books, whatever his eyes land on. Each time he strikes, Meryl jumps a little bit, eyes burning with the need to take her contacts out in addition to her mental reserve not to cry. She doesn't think, she can't. She's gotta be concussed and definitely has a few hairline fractures, but her underwear had stayed on so far and that was really all she cared about.

It wasn't until hour ten or eleven that her will to live drifted from dry, cracked lips and on to the ground, where it was intercepted by James' boot, crushed in a a moment. She started speaking, provoking him, playing every card she could think of to get him to squeeze her neck a little too hard or use that baseball bat to finish things off.

"Why are you doing this?" Meryl asks, words garbled due to her exhaustion and busted lip.

James' returning expression is alight with violence. "Because you ruined me. I loved you and you left me. I love you, and you're still trying to leave."

Meryl scoffs, laughs. "I will always try to leave you on this plane of existence or any other. This," she murmurs sarcastically, "I swear to you."

James' face twists up in animalistic rage then. Before him stands a woman he hates and a woman he loves a woman he'd like to kill but he can't do any of those things because any way the ship sinks, he's going down with it. Her team comes, he's dead. She gets out of the bindings, he's dead.

Unless he goes out on his own terms.

ೃ⁀➷

It'd been over twenty four hours. Meryl was dead. Spencer just knew it. They had no idea where she was, no leads aside from a partial plate on the pickup truck.

Spencer lays awake at half past four in the morning. There has to be a clue, Meryl has to have left them a clue.

He looks over at her book on his shelf. The name "James Laing" catches his eye. With shaking hands, he calls Garcia.

Twenty minutes later, the whole team is back in the precinct with Garcia's worried, sleep deprived face on the monitor. None of the rest of them look like they've slept, either. How could they, when every minute that ticked by decreased their probability of finding Meryl alive?

"James Laing, born in New York City in 1973. Not quite a genius, went and took a normal amount of time to get his doctoral and then joined the USOU in 2004. First wife checked him into a mental institution three years before that but he got himself out. In 2009- oh, God, in 2009, Meryl got a restraining order against him on the grounds of sexual assault and stalking and in the few years since, he's written papers on her and other weird, creepy stuff." Penelope's throat is tight, tears threatening to spill over again.

"Garcia," Spencer asks, "do you have a-"

"Address is on it's way to you right now. It's like, ten miles away. Go get my girl back."