The Boss' Niece (Spencer Reid)

48. Ending the nightmare

SPENCER
4 days. 4 long and difficult days. I wasn't sure how much longer I could go without Cassidy. She laid in her hospital bed, still asleep. The doctors reassured me that she'd wake up soon, but the more days went by, the more I started to lose hope.

That was until I felt movement. At 3:45 AM, on the 4th day, I woke up when I felt the bed moving. Opening my eyes, my heart raced when I watched as Cassidy's hand twitched. Her eyes were still closed, and it was clear that she hadn't woken up yet, but each finger on her right hand twitched, allowing me to feel a tiny bit of hope for her.

CASSIDY
Since I discovered that JJ and Spencer were engaged, I had woken up in my bed 3 times. And each time, I jolted out of bed in a sweat, my forehead burning as I tried to calm down my breathing. I kept having the same reoccurring nightmare.

I scoffed as I walked into the BAU, my shirt tightly tucked into my pants. I was having nightmares within a nightmare. Oh how I wanted to scream and shout, releasing all of my pent up anger, but I couldn't. There was a reason why I was living this specific nightmare.

"We have a case." Hotch announced as we all looked up at him.

Everyone stood up and walked up to the conference room. The images on the screen looked familiar, and I instantly felt sick.

The jet ride was difficult...to say the least. When we weren't talking about the case itself, JJ and Spencer were looking through their wedding folder, talking specific details. I tried to look away. I tried to focus on something else, but even when I was looking at the case file in front of me, my gaze drifted over to Spencer and JJ, who couldn't keep their hands away from each other. The sight of JJ placing kisses on Spencer's cheek made me physically sick. I could feel the nausea building up.

Feeling the contents of my stomach slowly coming up, - although I don't remember eating - I exited my seat and calmly walked to the bathroom of the jet. I shut and locked the door, quickly bending over so that I could empty my stomach contents into the toilet. As much as I hoped that my vomiting would be semi-private, I knew I was in the small toilet of a semi-large jet, and my co-workers might have heard some of what I was doing.

After flushing the toilet, wiping my mouth and washing my hands, I exited the toilet and immediately felt all eyes on me.

"You alright, Cassidy?" Emily asked as she and the rest of the team looked at me.

"I probably ate something that didn't agree with me." I chuckled, lying. Luckily, I was able to hide my true answer from all of the expert profilers that I was surrounded by.

"If you need to take a break, just let me know." Hotch offered. I nodded, trying to remain calm.

When we landed, we split up and went to our designated locations. Hotch and Rossi went to the police station. Morgan and Emily went to the M.E. JJ, Spencer and I went to the crime scene. Being paired with them created a knot in my stomach. No matter how many times I tried to breathe and calm down, the nausea wouldn't go away. All I could really do was wait it out.

———

After days of investigating, we had a solid lead. We had come across a 36-year-old white male, Callum Green, who had been left at the altar by his then fiancé, Sophia Wallis. Add to that the stressor of his mother cheating multiple times on his father when he was in high school and the trigger of his mother finally divorcing his father so she could marry the man she had been cheating with.

We had gone to his home, where he had led another pair of victims. The woman had a gun to her head and the man had a knife to his throat. Every single gun that didn't belong to the unsub was being aimed at him.