nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

twenty-six.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:
NINA GOES ROGUE

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"Jennifer Jareau, you're full of surprises."

JJ's purse is full of cash. Like, enough cash to make Nina -- Nina Scott, of all people -- huff out air and grin (despite the searing agony in her side). I mean, it's not Great Escape to the Maldives type of cash, but it's more than the average person carries around on them -- a hundred bucks in notes, maybe. Stood in a phone booth with her left arm propped over the metal phone box to hold herself up, she laughs aloud and, with her thumb, she flicks through, admiring the thick wad of green notes.

Saving that for later is a good idea, but for now she only needs change, which she hurriedly uses her right thumb to slot into the machine. Then, with a pale and shaking right hand, she pushes wet hair back from her clammy forehead so that she can see clearly before she starts to dial the only number she has memorised.

Ed's.

Her limbs are starting to give out on her. She'd gotten away from the hospital by curling into a ball in someone's trunk, and now she has no idea where she is; all she knows is that she's running out time, and her wound is leaking blood and her skin is clammy and she really, really wants a nap.

Oh, and that Ed is her last hope.

It's Janice, the maid, who picks up. The old lady is sweet enough, but impatient and brutally honest at times, like most older people of her generation -- but it's why Nina likes her.

"Hey, it's me, Jan," says Nina, breathing heavily. "Is Ed around?"

"You almost missed him. He's got a flight in a few hours."

Of course he has.

"Okay, I just need a quick word, can you put him on?"

There's movement on the other end of the line. She's put on hold, then patched through to what she guesses is Ed's office phone. He picks up with a, "Nina?"

The relief she feels is immeasurable, and she doesn't know if it's the pain or the joy that makes her legs turn to jelly beneath her. Her knees practically give out and she collapses against the glass wall of the phone booth, hot forehead against cool window, phone to her ear.

"He shot me," she says, and her voice cracks as she says it. Tears sting her eyes: five days worth of panic and pain surging up out of nowhere. "I went after Spencer and he shot me -- and I've been in hospital -- and I don't know where I am, and I need help."