counting stars | criminal minds [discontinued]

4 | K E V I N

[3.14]

"i am not bad at cooking mama"

There had only been a handful of cases in the few weeks that Florence had been at the BAU. Most of them were short cases, which didn't require much help from her or Garcia. Because of that, Garcia decided that the best thing Florence could do was to take old paper files and digitize them. It would definitely take a long time to do them all, but Garcia was hoping to have everything online in the next year or two.

Florence had spent two full days scanning in and organizing files from forever ago, and by the third day, she was bored out of her mind. Given that Garcia wasn't in their office, Florence figured it wouldn't hurt to roam around.

Of course, she ended up being just as bored in the bullpen. Prentiss wasn't in yet, JJ and Garcia were talking in her office about something with the door closed, Rossi wasn't in his office, Derek was who knows where, and Hotch and Reid had flown to some state Florence had forgotten the name of to interview some serial killer on death row. She ended up sitting at Reid's desk, though she didn't touch any of his things just in case they were important.

That was how Prentiss found her when she arrived for the day — spinning around in fast circles in Reid's chair. She watched Florence for half a minute, expecting her to get tired and stop, but the girl just kept going. Prentiss chuckled to herself before grabbing the back of the chair, which halted the spinning.

Florence wobbled in the chair and put her arms out to try and steady herself as the room kept spinning around her. She sighed heavily.

"Emily, I have a fancy exciting job at the FBI. I should not be this bored out of my mind," she complained. "Reid isn't here to tell me facts and Hotch isn't here for me to annoy. Those have become my two favorite pastimes."

"Go talk to Rossi about the differences between Team Edward and Team Jacob until he gives you twenty bucks to go away like last week," Prentiss replied, putting her bag down at her desk.

Florence pointed to his office. "Not here either."

Prentiss furrowed her brows and looked towards the empty office. It was odd that Rossi wasn't in, and what confused her, even more, was the piles of folders and paper scattered all over the floor.

"What the hell," she murmured, leaving her desk to check his office. Florence, dying for something to do, jumped up and followed her. Soon, she gathered Morgan and JJ to check out his office too. Florence stood quietly to the side, not quite sure of what they were looking for.

"Hotch is in Connecticut, right?" Prentiss asked.

"With Reid. They left last night," JJ answered. "They're doing a custodial interview. Chester Hardwick."

"Oh, damn." Florence could only assume by Prentiss and Morgan's faces that he was a bad dude.

"He doesn't need anything else on his mind when he's dealing with a guy like Hardwick," Morgan said.