Wicked Game

pressure and cristallisation

The Hastings residence is large enough to have the task force staying over instead of sending them to a hotel. Spencer Reid recoils at the thought of running into Miss Hastings several times a day accidentally, and to his confusion, he hates the idea of it not happening even more.

The room he is put into is comfortable and quiet, facing the back garden and the woods that surrounds the property. Before he is done unpacking, he gets a text from Goldenberg that Veronica Hastings wants to meet him as soon as possible. Reid sighs and rubs his eyes as he leaves his room - what am I doing here?

His phone lights up and he picks it up with a smile. Garcia greets him in an unusually quiet manner.

"What's up?" Reid asks as he walks down the stairs to the main room where the joint task force had set up.

"You know when you asked me to do a little digging on Spencer Hastings?"

"Yes?" Spencer replies, an uneasy feeling clouding his thoughts as he listens to Garcia's quiet sigh.

"I might have gone a little overboard...Her file just got thicker. I sent it all to your tablet and let me just say - it's worse than we thought...I've gone through her messages and emails back when she was in school. Whoever was stalking her back then was out for blood." She states.

Spencer rubs his eyes as he tries to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Garcia, I never asked you to hack her. I need to understand what's going on, and I hope she will be able to tell me more about what happened back then, but this feels...Too invasive." They already have so much information on Hastings and her family, digging for more without knowing much about her besides what her file says gives Spencer Reid a strange sense of guilt.

He needs to understand victimology, but not like this. Whatever this is, it needs to come from Spencer herself. He needs to take a step away from all that they have gathered.

"I know and I'm sorry, but I think you should know she has been through more than she is letting on - apparently even within her own family...Besides the whole pressure and overachiever thing, her uptight older sister sounds like a nightmare, some of her ex-boyfriends made a move on Spencer more than once when she was underage. I'm talking grooming vibes. I just thought you needed a heads up – an even stronger heads up."

Reid feels his stomach turn into a knot at the thought of a younger version of Hastings having to come face to face with both her parents and some stranger trying to take advantage of her. "That's disgusting." He hisses. "I'm guessing her parents didn't exactly offer support."

"No - apparently her sister blamed her for it. and so did the first stalker. And there's more...Like Rosewood PD being terrible at their job, Hastings apparently being involved in an accident that nearly killed and blinded a local girl, not to mention her parents. They are cutthroat lawyers first, parents second. Her sister seems to have followed the same path. Maybe it's in their genes, be careful."

"Look, you meant well, but please don't look more into it. I think I have enough for - for a while. Let me call you back later, okay?"

Spencer Reid hangs up as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, on his way to one of the rooms turned into office, he stops to study a wall covered in what seems to be a series carefully curated shots of the Hastings family over the years. Country club lunches, golf tournaments, science fairs, even young Spencer Hastings spelling bee final is included. Every single frame tells the same story about the Hastings, the one they want the world to see: winners, leaders, the perfect American family. Reid is still considering what this means for the case, and for Veronica Hastings, Spencer Hastings' mother, to be the one that called the FBI in.