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'Oh yes, I know you very well indeed,' I answered frankly. 'I have frequently had the pleasure of seeing you at the window.'
Those were the last words he uttered out loud before putting down that book. Before she got to learn about New York. Before she got to understand the elaborate investigation he was holding behind her back. Since then, no other words were read, not even in silence. And though she frequently picked up that book, it remained untouched by anything else besides his voice.
Her bed had become an unlivable living space for the last three days and barely anyone had the clue of her whereabouts. To most people, she was still in New York, enjoying the blessing of her unharmed family, a dying image cracked by her eternal incapacity of embracing the serene, as per her sister's complaints. Now, the rotting image interchanged with her decayed body fusing within the sheets, each passing hour that drew her closer to the moment she had to drag herself back to work becoming harder and harder as unwavering branches wreathed around her body like a summoned force that kept her still.
Her mind, though, had not been able to stop running the infinite fields since it last heard those only five words addressed to her in the last three days. "The mouse entered the trap," Cass declared from the other side of the phone, quiet noises suppressing his eager bites. "Should I send her a message on her computer? Mess with her a bit?" She laid on one side of the bed, not between her two pillows as she liked to usually sleep, turning her body to face her ceiling in search for the rightful path. "God no! You'd drive her right to me," she opposed, her lips moving independent of her stuck brain. Her sight escaped to her other side of the bed when, not too long ago, another body warmed up the numb sheets, a pair of slender limbs pulling her being like a neodymium magnet. Now, that permanence vanished. Now the sheets were cold once again.
"Babe. She's already onto you."
Spencer didn't quite know what to say. Or how to explain the situation properly. He tried to go through it a million times in his head in hopes he'd at least make himself understand, but there were always small details that still didn't connect. "I'm 99% sure she graduated The Academy in '98," Penelope explained as more photos and documents appeared on her screen. "Yup. There she is."
His fingers were shaking on the archived piece of paper that haunted him ever since he laid hands on it, his uncontrollable palms aching to get rid of it as he desperately placed it on Garcia's desk. "Then why does Eleanor Beaumont not exist before 1997? All actual records that mention her are in that year! Where was she before that?" Her concerned gaze switched between his agitated state and the paper in front of her, then she suddenly swirled her chair back to her desk as she eagerly searched in her database for Yale Class of 1997. A list of alumni quickly appeared on her screen and she instinctively filtered it by name, soon enough Eleanor's name making its way up.
