White Rabbit - A Criminal Minds Fic

Twenty Four

The reply came just before they finished up the following day, Penelope rushing out of office as Alice and Spencer were getting ready to leave.

"We have a reply, it's signed off 'Eric' and it was sent from Rylon County public library."

The team followed Penelope back into her office, gathering around the computer screen to read the reply.

Alice,

When I reported back last night that I'd received a message claiming to be from you, the elders were shocked. Lewis however, wasn't.

Lewis was broken when you'd left, but then he remembered that this was part of the natural occurrence of events. A dream reminded him that this is what was meant to be and he told us all that you'd be back. That you needed to run to learn that Wonderland is where you were needed.

I guess he was right.

We can come for you and your new husband in two days time. The same place we picked you and Rebecca up from. 11pm on the 21st of the month.

We'll see you then.

Eric

Hotch re read the email and then stood up straight, looking from Alice to Spencer, and then back to Alice.

"Two days. That doesn't give us a lot of time to prepare you Alice."

"Prepare me how exactly. I'm the one that's been around these people before, I'm the one that has lived there for nearly five years" she was indignant in her response and Spencer placed his hand lightly on her arm.

"He means to prepare our back story. If we're married, we need to know certain things about each other and we need to learn to behave a certain way towards each other."

Alice nodded, accepting what Spencer was telling her and turned back to Garcia at the computer.

"Are we replying now, telling him that we'll be there?"

Penelope looked to Aaron, waiting for his go ahead.

"Reply, they'll be there."

...

Over the next forty eight hours Alice and Spencer rehearsed their stories.

The decided that he would have been her therapist, one her sister had forced her to meet with when she'd turned up out of the blue after five years missing. They were keeping Spencer's name the same to avoid any confusion or potential slip ups and Penelope and the other technical genius's had put out an internet block on his name; any searches for him coming from anywhere other than police departments would return details of a Dr Spencer Reid, the psychiatrist. One who had controversially married one of his patients eighteen months ago after treating her for three years.

Hotch and Rossi observed the pair interacting together, throwing random questions at them both, questions they might not expect but would have to think up answers for on the spot. Alice never faltered once, keeping to the same story she and Reid had created between themselves and coming up with believable answers for parts of the story that hadn't been pre empted. Their body language towards each other reflected that of a married couple, two people comfortable in each others presence, although it seemed like Spencer had a slight edge on Alice.

Both Aaron and Dave noted the edge and appreciated that it gave the relationship that touch more realism, if Alice HAD been a patient then perhaps there would have been some manipulation going on, on Spencer's part. It would be an unethical relationship and that slight hint of control that Spencer exhibited and Alice let him have, made it seem more believable, more passable. After all, she'd manipulated by a male once before. It very much seemed like they'd been born to play these parts against each other.

When they went back to her home late at night, they'd fall into their separate beds completely exhausted.

They didn't tell Ellen and Robert what the plan was, Alice had made it clear that she did not want them to know until after they had left on the 21st. She was an adult, she could make her own decisions and this was one of them. Alice did not want to deal with her sister's fit when she realised what Alice was planning to do. So Agent Hotchner had agreed with her to have an Agent fill her sister and brother in law in after they had left to go to Rylon County where Alice and Spencer would check into a motel room to await 11pm.

On the morning of the 21st, Alice hugged her sister and Robert tightly, surprising them both with the strength of her embrace. During the drive to hanger where the jet was kept, Spencer observed Alice wiping away a tear, the first sign of her struggling that he'd seen since she'd made the decision to go back in.

"I'm fine" she sensed him watching her.

"Are you sure? We still have time to pull out, we can think of another plan, it will just take longer. But if you feel the slightest doubt that you can't do this, that we can't do this together, then we won't."

The car pulled into the hanger and came to a halt. Spencer spied the other Agents, the rest of his team who had been so painstakingly seeing to the rest of the plans, collecting and testing the equipment that would allow Alice and Reid to communicate with the rest of team over the next few days, putting in place back up plans and fail safes for if something went wrong. But nothing would go wrong, not if they played their parts correctly.

Or at least that's what Spencer constantly told Alice.

"I'm fine. Spencer, when this is over and done, you're going to lend me those Harry Potter books you offered to me okay. And I'm finally going to finish the story."

Dr Reid nodded at the woman sat beside him, the woman who for the next few days he was going to be responsible for keeping alive as she thrown back into a life that she had so desperately worked to escape.

"Alice, I'll not only lend you the books, but we will sit and watch the movies back to back."

"All eight of them?"

"All eight of them."