The Ghost of Princeton ||Spencer Reid||

bad ideas

CRESSIDA

In the history of bad ideas... this had to be my worst.

The team were going to kill me the second they realised I was gone. Spencer would kill me the second I showed up alone. And Cooper would kill me because that's what he'd been wanting to do for years now, and I was walking right into his hands.

I would be walking right into what I knew was a trap, and I would be doing so willingly.

My first priority was getting Spencer to safety, anything after that would be a bonus. Anything after that would be a fucking miracle.

My phone was turned off so the team couldn't call me, so they couldn't track me or try to stop me. Cooper wanted me to approach him alone, and for Spencer's sake it was best that I followed that want. I'd worked out exactly where Cooper was hiding, between working out how far he could have travelled and the locations that meant something or could be of use to him I found it.

An old apartment building that was currently abandoned because it was too dangerous to live in and too expensive to fix. An apartment building that Josh Wylan used to live in when he was a child. The team would be making the connection any minute now, and by the time they did it would be far too late to stop me.

I slammed my foot on the brake and the car skidded to a halt just outside of that building. From this point forward there was no turning back. I would either do this right now, save Spencer, or I would wait for the team to get here and Spencer could potentially end up dead.

My eyes wandered to my hands, still grasping onto the steering wheel with a death grip. My knuckles were white, and maybe it was reflective of the grip I was trying to hold onto my control with. I hated not having control over my own life, and for the last six years I'd had it. I had control of everything I did, I regretted some of it, but it was my life. And now Cooper was here, taking away that control from me once again.

I couldn't let him.

Slowly, I let out the breath I had been holding and refocused myself. If I had come this far by myself, had run away from the team to do this... I couldn't waste the head start.

I let go of the steering wheel, took hold of my gun and jumped out of the car. The driver door stayed open as I readjusted the Kevlar vest and walked into the abandoned building. Spencer was definitely going to kill me.

"Cooper!" I shouted as I walked up the stairs. Wylan's family lived on the second floor, apartment 2C. That was where I assumed Cooper was holding Spence, which meant that was where I needed to go. "Harrison fucking Cooper!" I shouted once more, my gun ready in my hands as I pointed it to the apartment door.

I took three deep breaths as I stood at the door, at least before I kicked it in and took the initial steps inside. Cooper was just standing there, arms crossed in front of his chest as he was in the middle of the lounge room which still had furniture in it. Old, dusty furniture which smelled wrong...

"Would you look at that, little Ghost. You did find us, with forty-three hours to spare." Cooper said, but I couldn't focus on him. I was too busy searching for brown eyes, for brown curls atop of a tall body that I had come to know as well as my own.

"Where is he?" I asked, Cooper shook his head as I looked back at him. "Where the fuck is Spencer?!" My gun was trained on him, right between his eyes.

"Your little doctor is fine, just as I promised." My heart skipped a beat.

"You didn't promise me shit." I said, taking a step towards him.

"I guess that's true, but you still expected me to hold my word." The way he was dancing around my question was making me twitchy, and I swear if he breathed wrong I wasn't going to hesitate to squeeze this trigger and-