Ineffable - S.REID

46

・゜゜・．THREE WEEKS LATER .・゜゜・

tw:mentions miscarriage 

They had been back after their two weeks off for just a week before another holiday had to be taken. It seemed life wasn't keen on letting them rest, it wanted to throw curveballs. Spencer had been the one to need the time off this time and Hotch had just given Clara the time too, knowing that Spencer would need all the support he could get during the process facing him. His mother had kicked up a storm where she lived and was refusing new meds yet again, complaining that they made her irritable. So they flew out and spent two weeks with his mother. Fourteen days where they discovered something else within his genes that could become a problem, dementia. His worst nightmare came true, his mother didn't recognise him for three seconds.

They had been forced to come back a few days later by an unavoidable lead in a specific case that had been in the background for months. Garcia was being hunted by a gang of hit men and Spencer had been talking to one of them via emails for weeks on end (JJ had taken over the emails during his weeks off.)

So all Clara could do was watch in silence, trapped within a metal van with Garcia and Hotch, watching a screen that displayed all the cameras in the restaurant. He walked in, prepared for his fake date and nervously looked around the room whilst he awaited his date. When the woman arrived, he acted nervous and awkward. The cute kind of awkward though, the type wanted on a first date. He played the part of a married man who wanted to kill his wife well.

She watched the screen intensely, playing with the necklace around her neck anxiously as she waited for something to happen. Her stomach twisted when Cat, the woman, realised that he was Fbi and everything was a lie. Her heart jumped to her throat and thrashed there violently when she pulled a gun from her purse, training it on him under the table. She gulped inaudibly as she stared at the screen, having to consciously remind herself to take a breath every now and then.

"I want to play a game with you," Cat smiled somewhat sinisterly. "You like games?"

"I do."

"Do you win?"

He leant forward slightly, dropping his voice low, "I always win."

"Give me your phone," she instructed and he quickly did so, hoping the game wouldn't be too awful. He wasn't in the right mindframe for mind games. "Okay, here's my game. You have thirty minutes to answer every question I ask. And if you lie, I'll know. Because I've spent the past ten years of my life studying men and their lies before I kill them."

"This isn't going to go well," Clara sighed as she leant back in her chair, shoulders so tense they had started to become painful.

Hotch looked over to her and covered the microphone by his mouth, softly asking, "Intuition or fear?"

"Intuition," Clara responded hesitantly, feeling as if she spoke the words they would become true. Fear crossed both Hotch's and Garcia's eyes, it lingered in hers but was rather instantly wiped form his and replaced with determination.

"What do you want to know?" His question brought them back to the computer screen. Her gaze focused on him, not the people around them or the women holding a gun to him. Just him. She analysed his posture, the look on his face and, even though the screen was blurry, the look in his eyes.

Cat chuckled as she moved to sit next to him, "How you found me of course. A professional learns from her mistakes."

He cleared his throat, "We got our big break in the case months ago. I didn't learn how big until I came back from some time off."