EASY WAY OUT ¹ ➢ spencer reid

III

"Sleep well, Rafferty?" Morgan sat next to me at the work table, smirking as he sipped his coffee.

I rolled my eyes, which hurt. After I'd ran into Reid's room we spent the entire night brainstorming. "Not as well as you I bet." I squinted. It felt like the fluorescent lights bothered my eyes more than the lack of sleep.

JJ dropped a coffee in front of me, along with a couple of sugars. I smiled at her, mouthing an exaggerated thank-you as I immediately started mixing them all in. The second the warm, energizing liquid touched my lips I felt like a whole new woman. I sighed in delight, nodding my head. "This still tastes like ass, but I don't even care."

Morgan chuckled.

"Morning everyone," Hotch spoke as he entered the room. Behind him was Reid, who looked almost as tired as I was. He sat in the last seat available, blinking his eyes repeatedly as he turned his attention to Hotch. Not long after, a couple of the local PD guys followed in behind them, standing in various parts of the room grumpily.

"Alright," Hotch sighed, "let's talk profile."

He gave us the full spiel, explaining every single detail with even more tinier, complicated details. Despite basically knowing the whole case backwards and forwards, even I had to admit it was hard to keep track of. Hotch spoke quickly and efficiently and with the lack of sleep I'd gotten I found it extremely difficult to focus. Every so often he'd pause and someone would throw in something of their own to say, but most of the talking was done exclusively by him. After a couple of minutes the presentation ended and the room was silent. I felt like I was back in school, listening to some lecture I couldn't quite understand. For some odd reason I was worried that Hotch would call on me for the answer and I'd panic because both of us knew I wasn't really listening. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Instead, he followed the speech by giving out orders. Like yesterday, everyone left on various jobs, while JJ, Reid, and I stayed to work on geographical profiling, which honestly made me relieved. I wasn't sure I could handle dealing with people today.

JJ's phone beeped, causing her to sigh, "Well, duty calls." She gave us a tight lipped smile.

I looked at her, eyebrow raised.

"Press conference time," she groaned.

"Oh, gross," I scrunched up my face, "good luck."

"Thanks." She gave us a small wave as she left, clutching the case file to her chest as she opened the door. Once she was gone Reid stood up, grabbing the dry erase marker from the table. He started writing down addresses.

"Everything seems pretty central. Everything's in Belltown," I stated, looking at the map. We were given an updated file, which was nice, because it meant something different to look at. "And the downtown Churchome location is right next to the abduction sites."

"Hm." Reid wrote down the final address before taking a step back and examining his work. He brought his hand to his face, stroking his lip with his index figure curiously.

"So, Zoey was taken near Ora, Allison near Amber, Michelle near Rendezvous," I paused, letting out a small yawn, "sorry, uh, Emma was taken near Vue Lounge?" I narrowed my eyes. "Who is naming these clubs? They're awful."

Reid snorted.

"That's like less than a mile radius," I added, "there's no way these people live that close."

He grabbed his file and gave it a quick once over. "I think it's more to do with the dumpsites," he responded, "the radius is a lot bigger and houses less commercial buildings." He wrote the addresses of where the girls were dumped next to the other ones.