Paranoia - s.reid

A Few Days

Late into the evening, Liz approached a house, cars with flashing red and blue lights surrounding it as she exited her vehicle and entered the house.

She walked through, seeing the familiar figure of Elle Greenway, Gideon and Morgan leaving her side. "Hey, Greenie. Good to see you, honey." The two girls shared a quick hug.

"Hey, Lizzy. I asked Morgan about the BAU spot, he told me to trust my instincts." Elle smiled.

If Liz were being honest, it was odd to call Elle by her name. Mostly because it was the nickname reserved by her father and her friend understood that, allowing the name 'Greenie' from Greenway to stick. "Good luck with that. I'll catch up with you later. I have to find Morgan." They nodded and smiled at each other before Liz began the journey upstairs, finding Morgan in the doorway of a bedroom.

"Something's not right about this. This is a boy's room, not a man's." Liz shrugged at the man, dragging him downstairs to a group of agents with a computer. Slessman's computer. 

"Wait, don't type a password into that computer!" It was too late, they typed in a random password and watched the screen go black. "Oh I'm trying so hard not to call you idiots! It won't turn on because you were given a false password."

Minutes passed, another computer sat in front of Liz and Morgan with six available password attempts. Their heads perked up as Elle, Spencer and Gideon entered the room. "What's the number six at the bottom of the screen?"

"Number of password attempts before the program wipes the hard drive." Liz sighed, getting up. "There could be an email or journal in the computer, something that tells us where Heather is."

"Yeah, Greenie. But we don't have a password."

"Do you think you can break in?"

"In six tries? I can hack basic softwares, this stuff is for Garcia." 

"Liz, remember, try again. Fail again. Fail better." Gideon voiced, everyone turned to him. Spencer nodded. "Samuel Beckett."

"Try not. Do or do not." Morgan replied, looking in Liz's direction as the group had confusion written on their faces. "Yoda." She confirmed, almost rolling her eyes as she walked over to a book shelf, scanning the books until she recognized one.

"Gideon, look. I had this textbook at Brown. Journal of Applied Criminal Psychology." She passed the book over to the older man, both her and Spencer watching as he flipped through pages, finding an article of himself from six months ago. "He's a fan." 

"I wanna talk to him."

-----

Elle, Hotch and Gideon had left the house after Hotch told Liz of their two killer idea. She thought it was phenomenal.

There she was, outside the house, a cigarette between her lips. Elizabeth wasn't an avid smoker. She didn't enjoy it, or think it was cool. She used it as a stress reliever during times like these, where she had to figure out a passcode and only have six attempts. 

"You said you stopped." The familiar voice of Spencer Reid was almost like music to Liz's ears, until she realized the situation. "I needed it. What are you doing here? Go inside."

"Why aren't you talking to me?"

"Don't worry about it, Reid. Doesn't matter." She took one final drag from the stick, before throwing it on the grass and crushing it with her shoe, entering the house again. 

In all honesty, the only reason she was acting this way was to buy herself time to figure out what to do. She couldn't think about that right now, she was sitting next to Morgan at a computer trying to solve a case. "I've been thinking about the CDs." The young doctor entered the room, sitting awfully close to Liz. "We tried the CDs. We searched, sifted, and sorted through every one of this guy's head-banging heavy metal collection and even though some of it is very good, we have to find something or Heather's dead."

Spencer inserted a pin into the computer, the trio watched a CD pop out of the machine. "It was the only empty case." He held up an empty CD case.

"Alright, I'm an insomniac who listens to Metallica to sleep at night. What song could possible speak to me?"

"Enter Sandman." Liz grinned, watching as her idea worked and Morgan entered the computer, pulling up a certain video footage. It was a girl, in a cage, crying. Liz's heart sank. "That's Heather. Oh my god, Morgan call Gideon!" The man nodded, grabbing his phone and dialing a number.

"Gideon, Heather's alive. Because we're watching her right now." He put down the phone, returning to where Liz and Spencer sat with the computer. 

"Ellie, can you pull up the last 12 images lined up next to eachother?" She complied, not wanting to fight the man during a case and pulled up the pictures. "Right there. You see that? The light bulb hanging from the wire? It's shifting positions. Almost like it's,"

"Almost like it's swaying. Like the Earth is tilting. Like water. She's on a boat!" The woman grabbed her phone, calling Hotch as quickly as possible. "She's on a boat. It's a pier or a dock. He wouldn't be able to transmit the webcam image from the middle of the ocean. Go get her, Hotch."

They waited. Minutes felt like hours, until something on the footage didn't seem right. Timothy Vogel was in the room, with Heather. Liz called Elle, praying for her fast pick up and sighing when she answered, setting the phone on speaker. "Elle, hun, you gotta wait for backup before you go inside."

"If we wait, the girl is dead."

"You need to wait-" Morgan was interrupted by the woman.

"You told me to trust my instincts." The call disconnected. Elizabeth couldn't help but feel as if the world were crashing down on her as she watched Heather being taken, running out of the boat after she kicked her captor, but still not making it far out of his grasp.

-----

Morning had come, Heather Woodland was saved. Morgan, Liz and Hotch stood, watching the paramedics do their magic, nodding as Gideon walked by. "What kind of report do they want on him? Is it like the one they did Liz?"

"No, Morgan. That one was to check if I'm mentally stable and clear of the murder gene." Liz answered, smiling slightly. "I suppose whether he's fit to be a field agent."

"You know, Haley and I were looking at a baby names book. Guess what Gideon means in Hebrew." Hotch grinned, however, Liz's smile faltered as a certain doctor approached the group. "Mighty warrior. Appropriate. Ellie, may I speak to you?"

She knew it was coming, and she knew she couldn't avoid it anymore as she nodded, walking away the boy. "I think I know why you aren't speaking to me."

"Do you, now?" Liz almost smiled.

"Did you think I wouldn't ever find out? I believe this is yours." Spencer pulled a black, netted bra out from his satchel, discreetly handing it to the woman in front of him, smiling as her cheeks burned, turning crimson. "Uh thanks."

Liz had never been so embarrassed in her entire life.

"Please tell me we can go back to normal, now?"

"Yeah, Penny. We can." She grinned at the ecstatic doctor, her grin dropping as a realization dawned on her. "How long have you had my bra in your bag?"

"A few days, at most."