Lost In The Fire | Spencer Reid

21. Missing

Becca sat behind her desk, stretching her legs out beneath her desk as she looked out of the window at the snow falling outside.

It was now a few days after New Year and Becca was back at the university, prepping for lectures to start the following week.

The students had started to trickle back into their dorms and she could hear laughter outside of her window. She pushed herself from her seat, picking up her hot coffee from her desk and making her way across to the window. She looked down into the courtyard below, smiling as a small number of students threw snowballs at each other, one small girl using her taller friend as a shield from one particularly brutal throw.

She wrapped both hands around her mug, relishing it's warmth. The university building which held her office was one of the original university buildings. It was very old, but so was the heating in it, and despite the many layers of warm clothing she had piled on this morning, she could still feel the chill in the air.

She startled, pulling her vibrating cellphone from her jeans pocket, sighing disappointedly as she rejected the call. She'd been expecting Spencer but instead seemed to be getting sales calls from her cell provider.

She'd been trying to get hold of him for the last two days now. They'd been speaking every day since she arrived in England, but he seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. She'd also tried calling Emily without any joy, so she assumed they had flown out on a case somewhere.

Still, it was unusual for Spence to be out of contact for this long, and truth be known she was starting to worry.

Scrolling to her call log, she clicked on his name and raised her phone to her ear, sighing deeply as it rang out yet again and pushing her phone back into her pocket, sitting back down at her desk and turning her attention back to her lesson plan.

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Climbing out of the hot shower, Becca walked across the cold tiled floor to the bathroom sink, using her towel to wipe the condensation from the mirror. She looked at her reflection, pulling a brush through her long hair and pulling on her bathrobe before heading to the kitchen.

Her head was pounding from a long day staring at timetables and grading matrix's, and the last thing she felt like doing was cooking a meal, so instead she grabbed a microwave meal from the freezer, pushing it into the microwave.

She hopped up onto the counter, scrolling through her cell while she waited.

The microwave pinged and after putting the hot carton onto a plate and grabbing a can of cola from the fridge, she made her way to the lounge, collapsing down onto the deep couch cushions. She flicked the tv on, watching some Friends while she ate. She'd lost count of how many times she'd watched the whole ten seasons, and yet she could still watch them over and over.

After an hour or so, she could feel her eyes starting to drift shut, her head nodding gently as she fought sleep. She tried one last time to call Spence, again without any joy, before switching off the tv and taking herself off to the bedroom.

Hanging her bathrobe up on the back of the door, she pulled her pyjamas on and climbed under her duvet, moaning softly as her head sank into the deep pillows.

Spence crossed her mind again, so Becca grabbed her cell from the bedside table, quickly typing a message to the one person who would be guaranteed to have her tech with them even if they were out on a case:

'Hey Pen, hope you're good today! I miss you <3 Are the team out on a case? I've been trying to get hold of Spence but not getting any response, so just thought I'd check in with the font of all knowledge to put my mind at rest ;) Love you!'

She hit send, waiting for her cell to show the double tick that confirmed it had sent before she put her phone back down on the table and switching off the light, quickly drifting off to sleep.

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Becca groaned loudly, pulled hard from her slumber by her cell ringing loudly next to her head. She flicked on the bedside lamp, screwing her eyes tight as the bright light hit her.

She grabbed the phone and answered the call, putting the handset to her ear as she flopped back onto the pillow.

"Hello?" She whispered, her voice hoarse.

"Hey kitten," she heard a voice say softly on the other end of the line. Her eyes sprang open.

"Pen? What's wrong?"

""Nothing's wrong, I just..." Penelope hesitated.

"Something's wrong, or you wouldn't be calling me at," she paused, checking the clock. "Three thirty in the morning. What is it?" She finished, sitting up in bed.

"When I got your message, I couldn't get hold of the boy genius either, so I did a little digging," Penelope explained quietly. "It's Diana, Beck. She died a couple of days ago."

Becca's heart seemed to stop beating in her chest, and she swung her feet out of bed, running towards her desk, where her laptop lay.

"I'll be on the next flight, I'll text you the details."

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A/N: Next couple of chapters are proving to be emotional to write :(