misery//sequel to gut feeling

five: they know

Spencer closed the front door and locked it. 

"There you are!" Emily said, walking into the hallway.

"He's here?" A voice yelled from a different room.

"Yeah, he's here!"Emily called back. She turned his attention to Spencer. "Where were you?"

"At the barbecue looking for all of you!" He said. "When I couldn't find you I just assumed you had left."

"Oh." Emily paused for a minute. "Well we couldn't find you at the barbecue, so we all came back here because we thought you must have, and then you weren't here and Morgan was about to send out a search party or at least start one himself, and Arthur was asking us questions-- it was mayhem. I think they all thought you had been taken. I'm just..." Emily pulled him into a hug. "I'm glad you're safe."

Spencer hugged her back and mumbled quietly, "Are they going to kill me when they find out I'm fine?"

Emily pulled back. "I mean, Morgan might."

They began walking to the sitting room.

Spencer laughed. "Watch Hotch start calling me by my last name again."

Emily looked at him curiously. "What?"

"He only does that when he's mad, right?" Spencer asked. 

"Wait, really?" Emily asked with wide eyes.

Spencer shrugged. 

"Well, shit." She whispered. "Things aren't looking good for me."

"Oh, Spencer! Thank goodness you're okay, I was worried sick-- we all were, but I was just--" Penelope stopped talking as she pulled him into a hug. He leaned into it and Penelope pulled away, restraining herself from continuing her rant. "I'm so glad you're fine, Spencer." She whispered.

"Thanks, Penelope." He said with a small smile. He turned to everyone else. "I'm so sorry I worried everyone. I just lost track of all of you and searched the whole place before I tried to come back here."

"Nothing strange happened? At all?" Hotch asked, standing on the other side of the room. 

Spencer thought about the woman who had sat down next to him, told him about her dead son, and then invited him over. He remembered the feeling of dread when he looked into her eyes, a feeling of deja vu that he couldn't really understand.

"Maybe you should tell us everything that  happened tonight. Just in case?" Arthur said. "It's taking you a bit too long to know if anything was weird for nothing to have happened."

"I-- I met this woman?" Spencer began. He saw Morgan raise his eyebrows and shook his head. "No, not like that!"

"Well then, like what?" Morgan asked, sitting down next to JJ, whose hands were stilll trembling.

"I just... it was weird. I felt like I had seen her somewhere... maybe my nerves were just messed up from having to talk to so many people at once, but... she sat down next to me and asked me some things--"

"Like what?" Arthur asked quickly. "Don't leave anything out."

"She asked me what I was thinking about and I just told her I was thinking about moving here and what I left behind. She asked what I left, so I said my home and old job and my mom. She said she thought my mom was dead and I told her that she was but it still felt like we left her behind. But then she told me that she had lost a lot, too, and... she said that her parents, grandfather and son were dead. I don't know if it was just how open she was about it that made me feel so... odd? but when I looked at her I just felt like I knew her, and... I don't know. I guess it was just a gut feeling. She asked me to go over to her house and I said no, and after she couldn't convince me, she left."

"Spencer, what did she look like?" Hotch said, pulling a file out of a drawer. He began quickly  flipping through it.

Spencer stood there, staring off into space.

Hotch looked up from the file. "...Spencer?"

He continued to stare blankly at the floor.

Emily waved a hand in front of him and got no response. 

Arthur walked over to him, right as Spencer jumped and looked around the room.

"I remembered!" He said. His eyes suddenly darkened. "We aren't safe here, we gotta go, we--"

"Spencer, what did you remember?" Rossi asked loudly, but gently.

"I-- the woman-- that was there tonight?-- I remember, she fought Emily. We were in some kind of cellar and I was tied up. Emily, you tased her. She was there, and she said she lives right down the street--"

"They already found us?" JJ asked, looking up from her hands. "And she tried to take Spencer home?"

Arthur picked up a stack of files. "I'm going to make a call to get you all out of here. The next location will most likely be a remote safe house. I'm sorry this plan didn't work. Please, all of you, go wait in a room without windows. Stay together, no matter what happens." Arthur left the room, and Hotch stood up. He led the group silently to a large closet in the back of the house.

They all sat on the floor with a single light on over them.

"I'm so sorry... I can't believe I didn't recognize her faster." Spencer finally said. 

"None of this is your fault." Rossi said. 

Morgan nudged Spencer's foot. "Dont' blame yourself. You didn't even remember what she looked like, you can't--"

"Exactly, but if I had, she would be arrested and you could all go back to your normal lives!" 

"Spencer." Hotch said sternly. "You didn't know you were in danger and you handled yourself very well despite that. It isn't your fault that she found us, and it isn't your fault that you didn't recognize her right away."

"I just wanna know how it only took a week for them to catch up with us." Penelope said, fidgeting with a ring. "If they were able to hack into the Witness Protection files or something then they would know that we aren't dead and they would even have a location. It's also possible that they just followed us the whole time, but that feels..."

"A little far fetched." Emily finished.

"Right now all we can do is wait." JJ said quietly.

Across the street, in the house where the neighborhood barbecue was hosted, the two hosts had finally fallen asleep after cleaning up. 

The clock ticked peacefully along with the crackling sound of the baby monitor that let the couple know that their nephew was asleep like them. It had a walkie-talkie setting that they had forgotten to turn off, that let the baby also hear what was happening on their end.

The toddler was deep asleep. But it wasn't the sounds of heavy footsteps entering the couple's room that woke him, nor the cry of his aunt as she saw her dead husband and the knife poised over her. He awoke hours after the crime, to the sound of his neighbor's car turning on and speeding away. He fell back asleep, not knowing what waited in the other room: his dead aunt and uncle, and 'YOU WONT RUN FOREVER. THEY NEVER DO' spray painted onto the wall.