nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

nineteen.

CHAPTER NINETEEN:
THE TWO SNOW WHITES

❖ ❖ ❖

Nina Scott has never been this pissed off in her life.

By the time the ambulance arrives, she's barely clinging to consciousness, and the vibrations of the vehicle and the pounding of shoes coming toward her rattle her head. Taking her face in gloved hands, one of the paramedics starts asking questions, and she manages to say, "Someone needs to tell Elodie," before she's pretty much gone from the world.

So, her little slip up about Elodie is one of the reasons she's pissed off at herself. The other is, of course, getting carried away with Spencer Reid. Once they'd hit that country road, she should have dumped and ran -- should have, quite literally, dumped her load and hit the road (except not a euphemism this time). But, no, she'd stupidly fallen into conversation, had stupidly found him funny -- and, most stupidly of all, she had trusted the slimy, conniving bastard.

So, she's pissed at herself for that, but she's also pissed at him. Spencer Reid is more of a liar than she is, and that's saying something. And worst of all, he'd lied about something that, as uncharacteristic as it is, had hit close to home for Nina Scott, because he'd managed to locate the occasional feeling that lingered beneath the surface, floating aimlessly among the black like a Windows DVD logo, and had used them to tear her apart.

Lying, sneaky son of a bitch.

All that shit about their connection, about his understanding of her -- if that was all a trick, then the act he'd put on since the apartment had been a trick, too. The whole, You like me too much to shoot me, fiasco. The whole, When did you learn to drive? The laughter, the peace. And she'd fallen for it all, hook, line and sinker.

And so her anger rounds back on herself for ever believing such a bold lie in the first place.

They must drug her, because she's out like a light all the way back to DC, despite the rattling and chaos in the ambulance. When she comes to again, it's for blurred seconds as she's rushed into the hospital, and all of them are painless; of course, after the initial blinding agony of the gunshot, shock had washed away most of the pain. But now it's gone completely, replaced by a heavy, achy hollowness in her abdomen; like there's a weight she's carrying there, instead of her intestines. Must be the morphine.

She swings back into full consciousness as they enter the hospital, and Spencer's still by her bedside. In her daze, she doesn't care about how he managed to convince the doctors he's an FBI agent and not an attempted-murder, but he must have, because he's next to her all the way to the ICU.