heather || spencer reid

vii -the mojave desert-

* Reid's point of view *

As I got into the plane I saw that the girls were already sitting there.

JJ and Emily sat at a table and Heather withdrew herself to the back of the plane, reading a book. Assuming that she wouldn't want to get disturbed, I sat next to Emily and asked them what I missed in the few days that I couldn't attend work.

"Not much," JJ said, "just a lot of paperwork. You just came at the perfect timing for another case.", we silently laughed at that.

-

When we got to the desert we met with some police officers and the people that found the victims. We questioned them and then went to examine the crime scene.

"It's weird, isn't it?", Prentiss asked, "They have no wounds that would have appeared if they had defended themselves. How did he manage to execute all seven boys as planned without even one of them trying to flee, as it looks they didn't even try to budge the slightest bit?"

"All of the kids exhibit bruising and other signs of effects of violence.", JJ said, "Maybe they knew that this was inevitable, or they accepted that death would be better than enduring the agony. The oldest victim was captured eight years ago, just try to imagine what he must have  went through."

"What do we know about the Unsub so far?", Hotch asked, "we have to deliver a profile soon."

Rossi said, "We have to find out why the Unsub took kids from several states and why he assassinated them in this desert."

We turned to look at the scene once again, I stepped forward and noticed something next to the beanie that laid in front of the third victim.

I carefully wiped a bit of the sand away and found the bullets with which the victims were shot.

The Unsub wanted us to find these.

Then a possibility hit me, the crime scene looked odd, too clean for seven people having been shot, there was all this order- the things, all still intact even after eight years, being arranged in front of them, the chronological order of the shootings, each victim is a year older than the other.

"Maybe our Unsub is a woman.", I spoke up, speculating.

"If that is so, I can easily think of a motive; maybe, she lost a son that was nine years old which would be the trigger, and had to abduct another child every year because the kids were getting older but her child stayed at the same age as she saw him the last time. Her son was probably named something with 'J' but I still don't know why she abducts kids in all these states and why she killed all of the children at once, here and now.", I suggested.

"It would definitely make sense if the Unsub was a woman, all of the boys only had mothers, they would more likely trust women more than men in a stranger kidnapping.", Hotch said.

"That sounds plausible.", said Morgan, "I'll call Garcia and see if she can help us find a name with the information we already have."

-

"We are looking for 46-year-old Susanna Linde, her son, Joshua Linde, was nine years old when his father shot him and later on himself. This was the trigger and from that point on, she abducted a boy every year, soaring in age. All the victims names began with the letter 'J' which also reminds of her son.", Rossi explained to the officers and the press that surrounded us.

"All of the victims were raised by women which made it easier for our perpetrator to gain their trust and abduct them.", JJ carried on.

"Every single one of the kids also shows signs of abuse, the boys probably tried to flee over the years but had to be taught that they couldn't run away." , Prentiss added.

"Susanna was also nine years old when both her parents died, their bodies were found in the same desert she shot the seven victims. We have several sources that let us suspect that Susanna was molested by her foster parents. These happenings traumatised her and caused her to develop psychopathic and violent tendencies. Maybe the age is also the reason that she had to stop and kill the victims. We assume that there were no other abductions after the youngest victim, 11-year-old Johnny who was nine years old when he was abducted. Thank you.", Heather said.

It took us three days to find Linde, but when we did, she had already shot herself.

We got into the plane in order to fly back to Virgina. Everyone was tired and decided to sleep a little bit on the flight home.

It had been a tough case.

I couldn't sleep and Dr. Jayce read in the back of the plane as she did on the prior flight. She seemed to not be feeling well ever since we were in the conference room back in Quantico.

She barely talked these past few days and it seemed that the frown never left her face since she opened that case file. She was acting unusual quiet and seemed to be in a pensive mood.

I decided to just go over to her. 

"Hi.", I whispered, and feared that she hadn't heard me, but then she looked up from her book and whispered a "Hi." back.

"What are you reading?", I asked her and she shifted the heavy book over to me. I noticed that it was something in French,Les Fleurs du Mal de Charles Baudelaire, I nodded.

"I was meaning to ask you if everything is alright? I feel like we haven't talked much these past few days.", oh god, congrats, Spencer, you sound like such an idiot.

She smiled, as she always seemed to do, "Yes, everything is going fine, Spencer, thank you for asking. What about you? You look a bit tired.", right as she said that I had to yawn and we chortled.

I didn't even notice that I was falling asleep to imagining her reading to me and I actually slept good that night.