Enjoying Your Company //

chapter nine

Hotch's POV:

"I think Lukas is the unsub." I look at Reid's crafted face, watching the fear leak through him.

"Garcia, start looking up the name Lukas linked to any arrest records, restraining orders, or patient reports in connections to our victims. Especially Vanessa. This man has been incarcerated for his violence at some point."

"On it."

"Reid, come with me." We walk out of the briefing room and into my office. "Have a seat." I instruct, closing the blinds, watching the doctor shyly take his seat. Waiting for my swift hammer of justice. I take position behind my desk.

"Hotch I-"

"Reid." I invite him take a second before continuing. Seeing his brilliant fragile mind overtaken with paralyzing fear. "Calm yourself." He heeded my advice, working on some quivering breaths, recollecting himself. Before re-meeting my eye line. "Now, tell me what you know about Vanessa." He shifted in his seat. "You don't know very much."

"No." He croaked.

"It's alright. Tell me what you remember. What was the first thing you noticed." He shut his eyes, swallowed the panic, took a breath, and answered.

"Her smell. She smelt like hazelnut."

*Hotch's office fades, and the background shifts into the interior of the bookstore. Revealing Vanessa in the shop's aisle, sitting in the antique chair with a book. Hotch and Reid are both standing, watching as the cognitive interview unfolds.*

"What next?"

"The book. She was reading Christopher Pearse Cranch."

"Was she wearing any jewelry?"

"She had on a gold necklace, and double pierced ear rings."

"Who spoke first?" I watched his brow furrow.

"She did." He pressed his lips together.

"What did she say?"

"Are you staring at me?" Reid's voice blended with Vanessa's as he spoke.

"Why would she ask that?"

*Reid moves into the open chair beside her.*

"Because I was."

"Instead of responding another way she said 'are you staring at me' what does that tell you?" I ask.

"She's defensive?"

"She's use to feeling watched. Was there anyone else there?"

*Reid was hypnotized, lost in Vanessa as the conversation carried on. Hotch watches Spencer closely as he continued questioning.*

"I don't know, I was only looking at her."

*Vanessa smiled, glancing to the book then back at Reid*

"Was there anything that seemed out of place?"

"Other than her being interested in me?" He joked self consciously, crinkling his nose.

"What happened next?" He swallowed his nerves, continuing.

"I quoted Andre Brenton." A timid grin slid across his face. "She liked it." He exhaled watching her. "She gave me her book with her number, she said she wanted to have dinner with me."

"Does she leave first?"

*Vanessa rose from the chair, making her exit*

"Yes."

"Did you see anyone after she left?" Reid squeezed his eyes harder, silent for a second.

*Someone in black passed by*

"A man walked by the aisle just after she did."

"Which way did he go?"

*The interior falls back into present time. Hotch's office.*

"The same way Vanessa did." Reid's eyes snapped open. "He was watching us." Garcia appeared, my office door open.

"Sir, I found him."

We gathered in the briefing room, Garcia by the screen.

"Lukas Elwood, thirty, originally from Nashville Tennessee. He was placed in the foster care system at age nine after his parents death. In and out of jail practically his whole life. He spent five years in a psychiatric ward in Tennessee after attempting to rob a pharmacy with a sledgehammer. He was under the influence of heavy narcotics at the time."

"There's your violence." Rossi coined giving me a look.

"He's also an addict with a pretty graphic drug problem, Demerol, GHB, Heroin. He was even caught trafficking those same type of drugs, across the Canadian boarder in 2010."

"Same drugs found in the toxicity reports of the first three victims." Prentiss added. 

"And this guy got no jail time?" Morgan scoffed, heatedly.

"What about the relationship between Lukas and Vanessa?" JJ noted.

"The Canadian government sent over some paperwork. Vanessa filled a restraining order against him in 2018 after he was arrested for domestic violence. She was in and out of the hospital for almost a month. Three broken ribs, a shattered collar bone, multiple bruises, and serve dehydration, fractured arm." Garcia spoke cautiously, watching Reid as photos of Vanessa's beaten and bruised body flooded the monitor. I watched the color drain from his face. "But I found an address. Under a pseudonym, Robbie Hart."

"Garcia, send it." She nodded quickly. The team scattered. "Reid, Morgan, you're with me." Derek nodded taking his jacket off the chair, I turned to Reid. "You need to be ready to go in there. She needs your head in the game, do you understand me?" He nodded, forcing down the chaos and desperation I saw flicker in his gaze. "He's going to try to break you, get you weak. Don't show him weakness. Don't respond to his taunts." He nodded, re-wiring his brain for field work. "We'll get her."