The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

2 |Stories Shared

"Garcia, we've got a favor to ask," JJ said over the phone. She and Prentiss were sitting on the edge of one of the hotel room beds, legs crossed. They'd made an executive decision to call the tech analyst after watching the way Reid's eyes trailed after the young woman as she left with her own team, how she turned back to see him one more time before pushing the door of the restaurant open and exiting out into the New York night. They were definitely intrigued now. This was Reid, their Reid, who'd always shown more interest in victimology than women, who spent most of dinners or time on the plane waiting for a chance to play chess or talk statistics rather than holding a conversation, especially with a stranger.

"What is it? I don't know how much more I can read about child soldiers in Sudan," she sighed.

"Nothing like that," Prentiss clarified. "We want you to look up someone for us. Bianca Brown." They'd made a promise a long time ago, never to profile each other, but this wasn't technically profiling, and it wasn't technically Reid. Just a girl he was talking to.

"The girl Reid and Morgan were working with yesterday?" Garcia recognized the name.

"Exactly the one," Emily confirmed. "What can you find out about her?"

There was the sound of frantic typing and pinging before her question was answered. "Okay," Garcia began. "Bianca Brown. From Columbus, Ohio... did well in high school... 4.0 GPA in undergrad too. Smart girl. She did her undergrad in Chicago, studying psychology and international relations... And got her Master's in human rights studies from Columbia last year."

"So that's a normal timeline. She didn't graduate early or anything. Garcia, is there anything else on her?" JJ asked. She and Emily had taken a stab at the possibility she was another child prodigy, but that seemed unlikely. She hadn't grown up in Nevada, and by the time she was in college, Reid was already working for the Bureau. If she had met Reid before, it would've likely been somewhere like a chess tournament or some kind of convention.

"I'm looking, I'm looking..." On the screen, Garcia glanced up at them with a frown. "No criminal record... She's been living in New York for almost three years... Uh, she's been published?"

"Published? What for?" Prentiss asked. "A textbook? Anything that would've been relevant to our work? Something we might have needed to read?" It wasn't much of a stretch to conclude that he would remember an author of a book he'd read before.

Garcia typed away furiously at her keyboard. "Mm, probably not. It's a poetry collection, published under a pen name - Bianca Larson. That was almost four years ago. What's this about?" So that settled it. As far as Garcia could tell- and she could tell quite a lot, they knew- the two had never met before. Even more unusual.

"Reid," JJ interjected. "We thought she might know him."

"Is he in trouble?" Garcia asked, sounding nervous. "She seemed like a nice girl. I feel weird looking her up."

"Oh, this looks like just the opposite." Prentiss exchanged a knowing smirk with JJ. If he had no prior encounters with her, and she was still interested in talking to him, that had to mean something. It was decided between the three women that their resident genius was still clueless when it came to matters of the heart, and it couldn't hurt to take matters into their own hands and wait to see what came of it.

The two agents bid farewell to Penelope, and after a brief trip to the bookstore, were knocking at Reid's hotel door. He looked surprised when he answered, but invited them in nonetheless. A map was spread out over his bed next to a considerable pile of books. One was sitting open, a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt visible on the cover.