The Ghost of Princeton ||Spencer Reid||

time

CRESSIDA

My hands shook as I walked into the FBI headquarters in Quantico. This would be simple enough, but I had to calm down. Walking in here shaking would look suspicious, so I took a few slow breaths and walked towards the reception.

The reception desk was large, having three people sitting behind it in perfectly spaced positions. My feet carried me to one of them, a woman in her mid-thirties, her brown hair tied back in a low bun.

"What can I do for you?" She asked with a smile, I smiled back and forced my body to stop shaking. Forced the nerves to stop.

"I'm here to speak with Dr Spencer Reid, he should be expecting me," I said, while my eyes flicked around the room too much. Stop it, you need to calm down, Cressida.

"Can I get a name? And I'll need some identification as well," she said, as she poised her fingers over her keyboard.

"Dr Cressida Stiel," I said, leaning onto the desk.

"Could you spell that for me?" She asked, and so I did. There was a moment after she had entered in my name that she froze for before her hand dipped underneath the edge of the desk from her side for just a second. The movement may have gone unnoticed by other people, but I knew she'd pressepressed the security button. "Do you have any ID?" She asked, her face slathered with a forced smile.

"I think we both know I don't have any. You just searched my name, you know why I don't," I said, her eyes flicked towards someone behind me. "Dr Spencer Reid is still expecting me-" I was cut off by a guard touching my shoulder.

"Sure he is, love. You need to come with me," he said, and I nodded. I couldn't put up a fight, even though I wanted to as he had a hand between my shoulder blades and pushed me through the crowded ground floor to an elevator. I ignored stares of people as I was escorted to what I could only assume would be an interrogation room. Although we did walk past the glass doors of the BAU bullpen. I hoped to catch a glimpse of the team, but it seemed they were too far in for me to catch do so.

"How long will I be waiting for?" I asked the guard as he opened the door to the interrogation room. He didn't answer, so I walked in and sat down at the table. He also left the second he could, the door closed before I had even taken two steps into the room.

Now was the waiting game.

I sat in the dreary silence for roughly twenty minutes. My fingers constantly tapped on the table top, my leg bounced as my eyes flicked to the camera in the corner of the room and back to my hands. There was no way I could turn back now, not that I wanted to. All I could hope for was that I would actually be safe here like Reid promised. That the three other members of my 'team' wouldn't be able to get to me in here.

I ran a hand through my hair as the door opened. As I had suspected, they didn't send Reid in. I knew Rossi would want to take point for my interrogation, especially since Hotchner had taken a personal day to see his son. Reid and Hotchner were the ones I could trust, but I couldn't wait another day for the unit chief to get back. Hell, I wasn't sure if I could have waited another two hours and made it out alive.

"So you are apparently Dr Cressida Stiel." David Rossi said with a file in his hand that he threw onto the table in front of me.

"There's no question about it, Agent Rossi. I am Cressida Stiel." I said calmly, my eyes weren't on him though. There was a feeling in my gut. It told me that Reid was on the other side of the viewing glass, watching without any control of the situation. I let my eyes land where my intuition told them to, and I knew that if I could see him that I'd be looking into his eyes. I could feel it.

"Can you explain to me why you're supposedly dead then? Because you look fairly alive to me right now." I took a slow breath and finally turned my eyes onto his.

"I'm going to say this once: I am only going to speak to Dr Spencer Reid-"

"You don't get to come in here and-"

"Don't cut me off," I said as he sat down in the seat across from me. "Just listen. I understand that you teach interrogation, but you can't change my mind. You won't be giving me what I want by letting me speak to Reid. You will be allowing me to talk to one of the only people on this earth that I actually trust. But if you tell me that he wasn't arguing with you about that exact same point, that he's not on the other side of the glass right now arguing with Morgan to come in here, then yes I will talk to you. But I know Reid, and he's fighting this. You can even be in the room if you want just know I will only speak to him to start with. If you don't like it, call Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner," I said. He nodded while looking through my file. Was he seriously pretending he hadn't heard a word I'd said?

Fine.

"You can speak with me or not speak at all." His voice was calm as he looked up at me again. My eyes were focused solely on his, but I didn't say a word in response. Didn't even change my breathing pattern to give him something to work with. "So, you were supposed to have died six years ago. Can you tell me how you faked your death?"

While I managed to keep the cold exterior on the outside, on the inside I was screaming and tearing at the walls I'd confined myself in. Soon. Soon I would be free of all this, I just needed to get through this last stage and I would be free.

"How about how you came into leagues with the Horsemen? Which one are you, by the way? I'm sure that each of you gave yourself the name of one of the Four Horsemen." If he was trying to annoy me into talking, it wouldn't work. The past few years had been far too shit to have something as simple as that work. But what he was revealing to me was that he was out of the loop, either because Reid and Hotch hadn't told the team or because he was faking it to try and get me to talk.

Instead of answering I just continued to stare into his eyes with boredom. He would be over this before I would. The patience I had learned over the last six years would outlast his.

He tried interrogating me for another six minutes before his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen before eyeing me, then looking over his shoulder at the glass.

I stifled my smile as I assumed what the message was. It was either Morgan or Prentiss telling him that they needed to let Reid in. That one of them had contacted Hotchner and found out that Reid hadn't exaggerated anything. Either that or Garcia had gone through some of the information I had sent to Reid and told them that it was all true.

Rossi didn't say anything else as he put his phone back in his pocket and stood up, taking his file with him. I highly doubt it was to let Reid just waltz in here, there would definitely be another argument about this before they would let Reid in.

All I had to do was bide my time.