Eidetic - A Criminal Minds/Spencer Reid Story

Chapter Twenty-Three - Life Worth Dying For

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them." - George Eliot

*Spencer Reid*

After being checked out by the doctor, and being warned to not do any rigorous work in the field, I returned to the FBI headquarters and started discussing with Viv and the rest of the team, who had just arrived in San Francisco, on how Daniel's interrogation should proceed. Viv was still pretty adamant about the fact that she should take the lead, but Hotch was understandably reluctant to let her do so.

"But Hotch, you know just as well as I do that Daniel is not going to talk to anyone except for me. Besides, I was the one he wanted in the first place," Viv said. "If anyone enters that interrogation room other than me, he is going to keep his mouth shut." Hotch just stood there with arms crossed.

"You being his goal is why I don't want you to go in there. He is a budding sociopath and is very good at manipulation. I don't want anything he says to get to your head and throw you off," Hotch replied.

"What about if I go in?" I interjected and everyone turned to look at me. Even Viv was surprised.

"But, Spence, don't you have a concussion? Are you even able to?" JJ asked.

"The doctor said it's a pretty small one, so I should be okay. I don't have to be the first one to go in, but he thinks he beat me up enough to the point where I'd be hospitalized, but here I am," I said.

"Okay, Pretty Boy, so what exactly is your plan here?" Morgan said.

"Viv said it earlier, Daniel is most likely going to want to talk to her, so I think she should go in first, and then at some point, I will go in to throw him off."

"Well...I'm still not one hundred percent about it, but it's worth a shot. We don't really have much to go on right now," Morgan said. "What do you think, Hotch?" Everyone could tell that Hotch did not neither Viv or me to go into the interrogation at all, but we also knew that Morgan was right, we didn't really have much of a choice at this point.

"Fine. Let's go with it," Hotch said. "Reid, you better be sure about this." Everyone filed out of the room and Viv and I were the only ones left.

For a few seconds, neither one of us said anything. I looked at her and she just kept her gaze on the ground. She was probably feeling a lot of things at this moment, sad, angry, upset, just to name a few. But, that look in her eyes told me she was hurt most of all. I walked up to her and put a hand on her cheek. "Viv?" I said softly.

"Spence...I..." She looked up at me and I saw that tears were forming in her eyes. I gave her a small smile and wiped away the tears with my thumb.

"Come on now. No tears. That would be showing a sign of weakness."

"I'm just..." Viv took a deep breath before continuing, "I'm sorry you got mixed up in all of this. If I had any inclination to what was really going on, I would've done everything I could to make sure it didn't happen. I just..."

I cut her off by planting I soft kiss on her lips. "Stop saying you're sorry because it isn't your fault. You're going to go in there and make that bastard pay for the trauma that he caused you." She looked down at the ground again, but when she looked back up at me, she was smiling. I hadn't seen her smile in a while. "That's my Viv."

Finally, we walked out of the room and down to the interrogation room where Daniel was. It was go time. Viv entered the room and I watched from the other side of the one-way glass with Morgan, JJ, and Hotch. "You good?" Morgan asked.

"My head is still ringing a little, but other than that I'm perfectly fine," I replied. "I just want to know what this guy's deal is."

Viv sat down across from him and Daniel smiled. "I thought the FBI was smarter than this to send you in first."

"And I thought you were smart enough to not get caught," she replied coldly. The next few seconds were spent in silence. They were both waiting for the other to slip up and reveal an opening only the other would recognize. Considering they were siblings, they would know each other's weaknesses well.

"How did you end up working at the FBI to begin with? I never would've imagined it. Especially not with you, Viv," Daniel said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Viv asked.

"You were always a shy girl. Not very talkative and always clung on to me," he continued. "Believe it or not, I missed having my little sister around."

"Why are you here, Daniel?"

"Come on, that's not way to start off this family reunion."

"I asked you why you are here." Viv continued to stand her ground while Daniel continued to talk in circles. It was a continual back and forth with no end in sight.

"Well, this is going nowhere," JJ said. "If Daniel really is a sociopath he's going to try to manipulate Viv and she knows that."

"Pretty Boy, is it about time you get on in there?" Morgan asked.

"It would seem so." I was just about to open the door when an agent came running up to us and handed Hotch a file.

"Sir, we just found this," the agent said. Hotch flipped through it and I saw his brows furrow. This wasn't good.

"Are you sure this is correct?" Hotch asked the agent, who only nodded in reply. "Okay, thank you very much." The agent walked away and Hotch handed the file to me. "You should take a look at that." I opened up the file and saw what was inside. There were pictures of two suspects with known ties to the Russian mafia. There was an address to the house that were in both of their names as well as a report of the findings in that house after the DEA did a search after being tipped off about a possible drug lab.

"Wait a minute..." As I kept reading, the pieces began to fall into place. The house had traces of anthrax as well as other chemicals in order to weaponize it. However, the two men as well the actual weaponized anthrax were nowhere to be found on the premises.

"How's mom and dad?" I heard Daniel ask Viv.

"They're pretty torn up about this whole thing. How else would they be?" Viv replied.

"Have you checked on them recently?" Viv went silent and I knew she was staring at him.

"What are you planning to do, Daniel?" she said through gritted teeth. "What's your aim here?"

I looked from the file to inside the interrogation room. "Biological engineering major and computer science minor, Russian mafia, chemical and biological weapons..." My eyes widened as everything all came together. Daniel was planning something much bigger than any of us could have ever imagined.

"What do you make of all of this, Reid?" Hotch asked. I looked up at everyone and then stormed into the room and threw the file down on the table.

"Oh look, the nerd is okay," Daniel said coldly. He looked at the file and pointed at it. "What's this?"

"Proof that you're going to turn your parents' home into an anthrax bomb," I replied.

"To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life: foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent." - Buddha

(A/N: Hi! I'm back from the dead! Sorry it took me a year to continue this story! I want to finish this so that I can actually finish something on here for once and then write more stories for you. For my loyal readers who have stuck with me, thank you. To new readers who have found this for the first time, hello and thank you for reading! There's only going to be at most three chapters left, so stay tuned!)