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“Uugh,” I practically screamed into my empty apartment. My characters weren’t behaving. The romantic interest and the main girl weren’t talking, they were living side by side, in pain… but… They were refusing to have the conversation that would fix things. I always hated the miscommunication trope in stories, but… My characters kind of did their own thing. I just needed to find a way to force them to talk to each other again. To get them to work things out.
Maybe I was just exhausted. Maybe that was why I couldn’t figure it out. The clock read 2:23 a.m., which meant I’d been awake for… approximately 27 hours… Tuesday had been my day off, and since Spencer was away on a case, and Lexy was on vacation with her family, which meant my day had been slow and boring. So I went to sleep early, thinking I’d wake up well rested the next day… But then… I woke up right before midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I wrote… Maybe that was the reason I was in that situation as well. I’d written the character’s silent breakup during that time…
And then, of course, there was work, which was exhausting and frustrating. I worked the late shift… getting off just after midnight. But even though I was exhausted, I was too high strung from work to be able to get to sleep. And I’d tried… But… It’d been a rough day at the diner. There’d been at least three customers that complained, for no reason more than the food wasn’t coming out quick enough. And one seemed to think I was being rude… Ivan, the chef and owner, stood up for me. But still, it was rough.
It’d been a bad day, and I just needed to relax. And usually, writing was relaxing. Writing helped me exist in the world… But my characters weren’t behaving, which was just making it worse. I needed to… I just needed to fix it, and then I could get some sleep.
Spencer had said that judgement was impaired after twenty four hours without sleep. Maybe that was why I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe that's why I wanted to scream, and just couldn’t seem to focus. Maybe it was that impaired judgement that I found myself calling Spencer at 2:23 a.m.
He was probably already asleep. He should already be asleep… I wasn’t sure where his case was, just that he was on a case. Still, it was late, and he should be asleep. Which meant he wouldn’t answer. Why would he? I just needed to figure out how to explain to him why I’d called him at such a late hour…
“Penny? Are you okay? Is everything alright?” he asked, not a hint of sleep in his voice. In fact, he sounded worried. The way he’d asked was almost… frantic. “It’s almost 2:30 there.”
“There? What time is it where you are?” I asked, suddenly confused. “Where are you?”
“I’m in California, it’s 11:23 p.m.,” he answered, stress still filling his voice. “But that doesn’t matter. Are you alright? Are you safe? What’s going on?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied, realizing that I’d scared him. I didn’t usually call him, I would text him, then he would call me… So me calling out of the blue, in the middle of the night… My heart raced at the thought of him worrying for me. It was so sweet of him. “I’m okay. I’m safe… I’m at home, safe, with my doors locked.”
“Good, good,” he said, his voice shaky and relieved. “I was worried… I… Is your roommate home too?”
“No, she’s on vacation right now,” I replied. “She’s been gone since sunday.”
“Oh,” he replied, and I could still hear hints of the worry. “But you’re safe?”
“Yes, I’m safe. I promise,” I replied, my heart stuttering in my chest at his worry. He was so sweet, so kind. The best friend a girl could ask for.
“Okay. Okay,” he said, repeating his words again. “So, what were you calling about?”
“It’s stupid… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to worry you,” I said, feeling bad for how stressed I’d made him. “I should hang up and let you get to sleep.”
“No,” he said, a bit too quickly. “It’s okay. I just… the case I’m working has been getting to me. That’s all. I want to talk to you. To hear your voice.”
“I’m sorry your work is so hard,” I replied, wishing I could do something to help… But maybe just talking is what he needed. It was definitely what I needed. “Seriously, the reason I called you was stupid. I was just having some problems with my characters… And I wanted to ask what you thought…”
“Go ahead, it’ll be good to get my mind off the case,” he said into the phone. “Repetitive thinking is a death knell to intellect… Maybe helping you solve your problem will help me solve my own.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling.
Honestly, in the three and a half weeks I’d known him, he seemed way too good to be true. But that was just who he was. Yes, he was gone a lot. But he was the sweetest person I knew. So kind…
“Well, my characters are fighting… Not like yelling at each other fighting, but my main girl is giving the guy the silent treatment because she found out that he lied,” I explained my difficulty. “And I can’t seem to get them to have a conversation to figure things out… You see, the guy pretended not to be in love with her when they arranged the marriage, and now she’s found out that he was in love with her all along. She feels betrayed, tricked into marrying him. And she thinks that maybe he never really loved her, because how could he love her and lie to her like that… While she is in love with him, she doesn’t know if she can trust him anymore. And I don’t know how to make them sit down and actually talk about it. Or how he can possibly make it up to her.”
“That’s a hard thing to seek forgiveness for. Lying is hard to forgive,” Spencer said, and I could hear some of the stress drained from his voice. “Did he ever outright lie to her? Or was it just a lie of omission?”
“What?”
“Did he tell her he wasn’t in love with her, or did he just not mention it at all?”
“He told her he was in love with someone, who didn’t love him back. Which was the truth, but he used it to deceive her. He also said that it was the reason he wanted to have a contract marriage… Never mentioning that she was the person he was in love with. He never outright lied, but he was very careful with his wording to purposely deceive her.”
“That’s bad. While regaining trust would be possible, it wouldn’t happen quickly. Not after just one conversation,” he replied. “She trusted him before that, didn’t she?”
“Mmhmm,” I replied. The cursor on my open word document was blinking, taunting me. I closed my laptop, and focused on the phone.
“And that’s how he was able to fool her. Because she trusted him…” There was a sadness in Spencer’s voice. “That kind of trust isn’t easy to fix. First off, he should apologize to her. Not just because it’s expected, and not just because she’s upset, but because he’s actually sorry for lying to her. He… He shouldn’t blame her for not realizing, either…”
He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Who broke his trust? It hurt my heart to think that someone would do that to him. Lie to him, then blame him for believing it. That was a cruel thing… It felt like my heart broke for him, just a little. He deserved people in his life who he could trust.
I promised myself, then and there, that I would never do something like that to him. I would never lie to him… Even if it would hurt me. And it could… It could ruin our friendship. Because… Because I wanted to… to kiss him. I wanted to hug him, and go on dates and… I wanted.. But we were friends. I didn’t want to lose our friendship. I didn’t want to chase him away by liking him.
“Of course he won’t blame her for not realizing,” I replied, forcing myself to focus, and not let myself wonder what it would be like to kiss him. “And he is sorry for lying. He really cares about her, and is willing to take any consequences of his actions. Even if that means her leaving him.”
“Good, that’s the first step,” Spencer replied. “Relationships can be hard to fix, but it can be done.”
“What did your friend do to regain your trust, after they broke it?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?” he questioned, though I could hear in his voice that I hit the nail on the head.
“Someone lied to you, and broke your trust. Your reaction to my question told me… You don’t have to tell me about it, if you don’t want, but…” I said, realizing maybe we weren’t close enough for him to tell me.
“She thought I was mad because I couldn’t figure out she was lying,” he said, through the phone, with a weary sigh. “I don’t know if she actually believed that, or if she was just desperate to get me to talk to her. I trusted her… And she broke it, and then thought everything would go back to normal…”
“That’s awful,” I replied. My heart hurt for him. “Did she apologize?”
“Not… Not exactly. She said she was sorry, but it was in the middle of our argument. Too little too late,” he told me. “Our boss tried to intervene, he told me to be mad at him instead of her, that it had been his decision. But… I couldn’t. She was the one I’d trusted. The one who I’d gone to when I was hurting… She had been lying to me the entire time.”
“Did she ever succeed in regaining your trust?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I’d be quick to forgive someone who’d been lying to me, who didn’t even apologize.
“Yes,” he said, after a moment.
“How?” I asked, invested. Not for my story, but for him.
“It took a while, I had to make the choice to forgive her. To try and be friends again,” Spencer said. “She had to lie… it had to do with our job, to keep our friend safe. She couldn’t tell me the truth. And then later, I found out that in a way, she didn’t really lie.”
“How… How so?” I asked.
“My friend really did die… When she was on her way to the hospital. They revived her, and they put her in witsec to keep her safe, but she had…” he answered. “So it wasn’t completely a lie.”
“Sounds like you did most of the work to fix the relationship there,” I commented. “You had decided… It was your work put in. She didn’t do anything…”
“Well, she did, somewhat,” he replied. “She tried to make it up to me, after our fight. Small things. She worked on regaining my trust, but I had to let her. JJ’s one of my best friends, I’m her son’s Godfather. I didn’t want to lose that.”
“JJ,” I repeated the name. “Still, she shouldn’t have lied to you.”
“She had to,” he told me, defending her.
“I’m sorry I made you talk about this,” I replied. “Sorry if it brought up bad memories.”
“It didn’t,” Spencer said. Though I wasn’t sure I believed him. “Does your character have something she wouldn’t want to lose? You said she is in love with him, right?”
Oh, yeah, we were talking about my book.
“She is in love with him,” I said. “Would that be enough?”
“It could be. Still, I think he needs to apologize to her,” Spencer said.
Like JJ should have apologized to you. I thought, but didn’t say.
“He will… What if… What if he comes to her, desperate to make her talk to him. To find out what’s wrong,” I suggested. “Like, he’s fed up with her ignoring him. Living side by side, and never really talking. And he confronts her… Cause at this point, he doesn’t exactly know that she knows he lied.”
“That would work,” Spencer said. “It is hard to be near someone you care about, and not talk…”
“But, she needs to make the decision to let him earn her trust back,” I commented, writing it down on the notebook that was opened next to my closed laptop. “It has to be her choice. And she wouldn’t want to lose him… She loves him…”
“They are going to need to talk about the lies, though,” Spencer added. “He needs to explain to her why he did it.”
I wrote that down, too.
“Are you taking care of yourself? Are you staying safe?” I asked, suddenly. He’d been worried about me, but I was allowed to worry about him. He was the one with the dangerous job, after all. And he said the case was getting to him.
“Of course,” he said, with an endearing chuckle. “We haven’t gone on a takedown yet. I’ve been in the precinct most of the time we’ve been here, which is the safest place to be.”
“But it’s late there… You should be sleeping,” I commented, leaning back in my chair… Maybe a bit too much, because all of a sudden I was falling. The chair fell to the ground with a clatter, me in it. He must have heard that through the phone… “I’m alright. I’m alright. I just leaned back too far…”
“Sounds like you need to get some sleep as well,” he said through the phone.
“But I’d much rather hear your voice,” I said, accepting my fate by still sitting in the downed chair. Maybe I should go to sleep, after all, I was saying things I really shouldn’t be saying. Not if I didn’t want to ruin my friendship with the best person I knew.
“You said I need to get some sleep, which I’ll do,” he countered. “And if I’m asleep, unfortunately I can’t keep talking to you. No matter how much I want to… I’ll make you a deal. After we hang up, we both go to sleep. Since we both need it so much.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” I said, finally moving to get up from the chair. It was not graceful, but at least I was eventually able to stand again. “As long as you get sleep.”
“I will,” he said, with fondness in his voice. “Goodnight, Penny.”
“Good night, Doctor Reid,” I replied, as I face planted onto my bed.
He laughed again, and the line went dead.
Closing my eyes, I worked on following my part of the deal… I’d text Spencer in the morning, to make sure he kept up on his own.
It was the third day on the case, and Spencer couldn’t shake the worried feeling he had whenever he looked at pictures of the victims. All women in their mid twenties, with red hair… Even their style reminded him of Penny. Which, of course, was why he was pacing around his hotel room, an hour after they’d called it a night, trying to figure out the case.
Penny was safe. She was 2,295 miles away. Even if she was exactly the unsub’s type, he would never find her. Never. She was safe.
Spencer ran a hand through his hair, as he paced. He just needed to figure out the case, so they could go home, and he could see her again… He felt like there was something missing. Some clue that would help them wrap it up quickly. But he couldn’t seem to figure it out. And that bothered him.
His missed Penny… Now he understood how JJ must have felt, every time she was away from Will while on a case. Relationships and the BAU didn’t exactly go together… He hadn’t even kissed Penny yet. But he definitely wanted to. Every time they were together, he wanted to. But it didn’t feel like the right time yet. Sometimes, he wondered if she cared as much for him, as he did for her.
Times like those, when he was away from Penny, he realized how much he really cared for her. He hoped she knew….
His phone started ringing on the desk, and he picked it up immediately. Who would be calling at 11:23 p.m.? When he saw Penny’s name on the caller ID, he panicked. It was 2:23 a.m. over there… Why would she be up that late? Why would she be calling him?
He answered the phone, pressing it to his ear with a shaky hand.
“Penny? Are you okay? Is everything alright?” he asked, running a hand through his hair, and increasing his pacing. He was 2,295 miles away… he couldn’t do anything, if she needed help… But… But he needed to be there for her. “It’s almost 2:30 there.”
“There? What time is it where you are?” she asked, her voice perfectly calm, though slightly confused. “Where are you?”
“I’m in California, it’s 11:23 p.m.,” he answered her question. He still didn’t know why she called, and he was still worried. Very worried. “But that doesn’t matter. Are you alright? Are you safe? What’s going on?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, her beautiful voice as serene as could be. “I’m okay. I’m safe… I’m at home, safe, with my doors locked.”
She was safe. Which was good. He breathed out a shaky sigh of relief, running his hand through his hair.
“Good, good,” he said. “I was worried…” These victims look too much like you. “I…” And they were always home alone when they were abducted. “Is your roommate home too?”
“No, she’s on vacation right now. She’s been gone since Sunday,” Penny replied, simply.
“Oh,” Spencer replied. He knew she didn’t have any pets… Hopefully she had a home alarm system, but those things could be hacked. And with unsubs… “But you’re safe?”
“Yes, I’m safe. I promise,” she assured him
“Okay,” he replied, running his hand through his hair again, and starting to pace back towards the door. “Okay. So, what were you calling about?”
“It’s stupid,” she said, suddenly sounding embarrassed. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to worry you. I should hang up and let you get to sleep.”
“No.” Please don’t hang up yet. I still need to hear your voice. “It’s okay. I just…” he said, sitting down on the edge of the hotel bed. “The case I’m working on has been getting to me. That’s all. I want to talk to you. To hear your voice.”
Just hearing her voice was like a balm to the worry and stress he’d been feeling for the last few days.
“I’m sorry your work is so hard,” she replied, sympathetically. “Seriously, the reason I called you was stupid.”
Spencer doubted that.
“I was just having some problems with my characters… And I wanted to ask what you thought…” she said, almost apologetically.
It made him almost laugh. Because it was so… Normal. It was a relief that was so sweet to him. Everything was okay. Maybe helping her with her story would help him get his mind off the case. Off the stress of it all.
“Go ahead, it’ll be good to get my mind off the case,” he explained. Story help was easy for him. He didn’t need to know statistics, or the psyche of some sick person who got off on kidnapping and torturing redheads. It was simply knowing human nature. And he definitely knew about that. “Repetitive thinking is a death knell to intellect…” And thinking of this case is making me so stressed I can hardly sleep. “Maybe helping you solve your problem will help me solve my own.” And I’ll get to hear your voice more.
“Okay,” she replied.
Spencer could hear the smile in her voice, and he smiled as well.
“Well,” she began. “My characters are fighting… Not like yelling at each other fighting, but my main girl is giving the guy the silent treatment because she found out that he lied.”
That was a good reason for them to be fighting. Spencer thought. He remembered how it felt being lied to… It’d happened rather recently to him.
“And I can’t seem to get them to have a conversation to figure things out,” she continued. “You see, the guy pretended not to be in love with her when they arranged the marriage, and now she’s found out that he was in love with her all along. She feels betrayed, tricked into marrying him. And she thinks that maybe he never loved her, because how could he love her and lie to her like that…”
That was something Spencer had questioned. How could a friend lie to him like JJ had? He knew why she had to, but… But it still felt like a betrayal to him.
“While she is in love with him, she doesn’t know if she can trust him anymore,” Penny said. “And I don’t know how to make them sit down and actually talk about it. Or how he can possibly make it up to her.”
“That’s a hard thing to seek forgiveness for. Lying is hard to forgive,” he said, speaking from experience. “Did he ever outright lie to her? Or was it just a lie of omission?”
This conversation was distracting. Definitely distracting in a good way. Because the part of his brain that had been working on the case, was working to figure out Penny’s problem instead. It was… dare he say it, relaxing.
“What?” Penny asked.
“Did he tell her he wasn’t in love with her, or did he just not mention it at all?” Spencer questioned. JJ hadn’t exactly said Emily had died, she’d said Emily never made it off the table. That was a difference… but it meant the same thing.
“He told her he was in love with someone, who didn’t love him back. Which was the truth, but he used it to deceive her. He also said it was the reason he wanted to have a contract marriage…” she explained. “Never mentioning that she was the person he was in love with. He never outright lied, but he was very careful with his wording to purposely deceive her.”
“That’s bad,” Spencer said, knowing how it felt like to be on the receiving end of such a deception. “While regaining trust would be possible, it wouldn’t happen quickly. Not after just one conversation.” Not for a long time. “She trusted him before that, didn’t she?”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed into the phone.
“And that’s how he was able to fool her. Because she trusted him…” Like I trusted JJ. “That kind of trust isn’t easy to fix. First off, he should apologize to her. Not just because it’s expected, and not just because she’s upset, but because he’s actually sorry for lying to her. He…” He should give her time. He shouldn’t do what JJ did. “He shouldn’t blame her for not realizing, either...”
“Of course he wouldn’t blame her for not realizing,” she said, with an intensity that made him realize she might know the feeling herself. “And he is sorry for lying. He really cares about her, and is willing to take any consequences of his actions. Even if that means her leaving him.”
“Good, that’s the first step,” Spencer said. That humility about it would work towards helping fix it. “Relationships can be hard to fix, but it can be done.”
“What did your friend do to regain your trust, after they broke it?” Penny asked, and Spencer froze.
He hadn’t expected her to know… He hadn’t wanted to talk about that. To talk about himself… But she was perceptive. While she wasn’t a profiler, she did know human nature. Wasn’t that what writers did? Learn human nature, and write about it. Learn how to read people like a book.
“What do you mean?” he asked, wanting clarification.
“Someone lied to you, and broke your trust. Your reaction to my question told me…” she replied, explaining. “You don’t have to tell me about it, if you don’t want, but…”
She asked, so he’d tell her. He would never want to lie to Penny. And while he could just say he didn’t want to talk about it, she obviously wanted to know. Relationships were about communication.
“She thought I was mad because I couldn’t figure out she was lying,” Spencer said, with a sigh. That had been just as upsetting as her lying. The fact that she didn’t take responsibility for it. “I don’t know if she actually believed that, or if she was just desperate to get me to talk to her. I trusted her…” I went to her house for ten weeks, crying about losing a friend. “And she broke it, and then thought everything would go back to normal…”
“That’s awful,” Penny said, voice filled with care. “Did she apologize?”
“Not… Not exactly.” It felt like an afterthought. “She said she was sorry, but it was in the middle of our argument. Too little too late,” Spencer said. “Our boss tried to intervene, he told me to be mad at him instead of her, that it had been his decision. But…” But I hadn’t gone to his house, or cried on his shoulder. “I couldn’t. She was the one I’d trusted. The one I’d gone to when I was hurting… She’d been lying to me the entire time.”
“Did she ever succeed in regaining your trust?” Penny asked, and Spencer could just imagine her with a pen, ready to write down his answer.
“Yes,” he said. He trusted JJ again. He had to, with the job they had…
“How?” Penny asked.
Spencer smiled, knowing that his own experience would likely end up in her story. He didn’t mind that at all. If it did, that meant that a piece of him would belong to her forever…
“It took a while,” he answered, honestly. “I had to make the choice to forgive her. To try and be friends again.” I missed her. “She had to lie…” Quite literally. “It had to do with our job, to keep our friend safe.” Doyle would have gone after her again, and might have succeeded in killing her. “She couldn’t tell me the truth. And then later, I found out that in a way, she didn’t really lie.”
“How… How so?” she asked, and Spencer could just imagine that confused look on her face that he loved. The one he’d seen when his rambling got off topic, or she didn’t understand the episode of Star Trek they were watching… She was a Trekkie, but she was into newer shows, not the original series.
“My friend really did die,” he admitted. Emily had told them all about how she’d coded on the way to the hospital. What she’d experienced. “When she was on her way to the hospital. They revived her, and they put her in witsec to keep her safe, but she had…” She had died. She, like him, had known what it was like to die. “So it wasn’t completely a lie.”
“Sounds like you did most of the work to fix the relationship there,” Penny said, hitting the nail on the head. “You had decided… It was your work put in. She didn’t do anything…”
“Well, she did, somewhat,” Spencer said, wanting to defend JJ. “She tried to make it up to me, after our fight. Small things.” She bought me coffee for a month. Went to see some weird sci-fi movies with me. She tried… “She worked on regaining my trust, but I had to let her. JJ’s one of my best friends, I’m her son’s Godfather. I didn’t want to lose that.”
“JJ,” Penny said, contemplatively.
Spencer inwardly cursed himself for slipping with the name. He didn’t want Penny to judge JJ for that. He wanted her to like his friends…
“Still, she shouldn’t have lied to you,” she continued.
There was a ferocity in her voice that caught him off guard. She really did care… It was obvious. And it made his heart do a weird little twist in his chest. Though, he knew that that was physically impossible.
“She had to,” he said, trying to smooth it over. Trying to keep Penny from disliking JJ before even meeting her.
“I’m sorry I made you talk about this,” she said, voice sincere. “Sorry if it brought up bad memories.”
And she was concerned about him. Concerned that it’d hurt him to talk about it…
“It didn’t,” Spencer said, wondering if there was anything that could make him love Penny more… But he needed to get back to the story. Her problem that she called him about. “Does your character have something she wouldn’t want to lose? You said she is in love with him, right?”
“She is in love with him,” Penny replied. “Would that be enough?”
“It could.” If I still had a crush on JJ, I probably wouldn’t have remained angry for quite as long. “Still, I think he needs to apologize to her.”
“He will…” she said, and he could just hear the gears turning in her head. “What if… What if he comes to her, desperate to make her talk to him. To find out what’s wrong. Like, he’s fed up with her ignoring him. Living side by side, and never really talking. And he confronts her… Cause at this point, he doesn’t exactly know that she knows he lied.”
“That would work,” Spencer said, with a fond smile. He knew she’d take his story into her own. In a way, it made him feel slightly invincible. Like he’d live forever… As part of her. “It is hard to be near someone you care about, and not talk…” Like what happened with JJ and I.
“But she needs to make the decision to let him earn her trust back,” Penny said, brainstorming aloud. “It has to be her choice. And she wouldn’t want to lose him… she loves him…”
Spencer had to remind himself that she was talking about her characters. Because hearing her speak of love… He wanted her to say she loved him. He wanted her to love him. Because he loved her… He… Oh… He needed to get back to the safe land of talking through the story.
“They are going to need to talk about the lies, though,” Spencer said, trying to get back to what their entire conversation was about. Trying to keep himself from just blurting out that he loved her. “He needs to explain to her why he did it.”
He could hear the scratch of her pen through the phone. He could just listen to that for hours.
“Are you taking care of yourself?” Penny asked, out of the blue. The scratch of her pen had stopped. Spencer was shocked with the sudden question. “Are you staying safe?”
“Of course,” he said, with a chuckle. He hadn’t thought of her worrying about him. And it was charming. He wasn’t used to having people worry about him. “We haven’t gone on a takedown yet.” Honestly, we’re a bit stuck. “I’ve been in the precinct most of the time we’ve been here, which is the safest place to be.”
“But it’s late there,” Penny commented. “You should be sleeping.
It’s later where you are. Spencer thought. You should take your own advice.
Then, suddenly, there was a loud clatter through the phone, and Spencer’s heart started racing. He knew it wasn’t logical, something probably fell… but… He couldn’t help but worry for her. After a moment, when he was just about to ask if she was okay, he heard her voice again.
“I’m alright,” she said, quickly. “I’m alright. I just leaned back too far…”
“Sounds like you need to get some sleep as well,” Spencer said, relieved once more that she was alright. He wanted to remind her how bad sleep deprivation could be, but she already knew…
“But I’d much rather hear your voice,” she said, and he could just hear her pout.
His heart did another of those physically impossible little flips… Maybe he needed to go to the E.R. to get an E.K.G., to make sure there wasn’t something seriously wrong with him.
“You said I need to get some sleep, which I’ll do,” he said, ready to start a bargain with her. He did also need sleep, so he’d be able to contribute to the case in the morning. “And if I’m asleep, unfortunately I can’t keep talking to you. No matter how much I want to…” And I want to keep talking to you. “I’ll make you a deal. After we hang up, we both go to sleep. Since we both need it so much.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” Penny said.“As long as you get some sleep.”
Spencer smiled at that. A win was a win. “I will,” he told her. “Goodnight, Penny.”
“Good night, Doctor Reid,” she said, sounding half asleep already.
Spencer chuckled at the use of his title, and hung up. Talking to Penny had really helped, since he was finally calm enough to try and sleep.
The next morning, he walked into the precinct with a purpose. A coffee in his hand, and a pep in his step that surprised the rest of the team. They’d all seen him stressing since they got the case.
“What’s got you smiling this morning?” Morgan asked, wondering what could have caused such a change in their young genius. He could guess, of course…
“I think I’ve figured something out,” Spencer replied, taking a sip of his coffee. He didn’t want to explain how his conversation with Penny had dispelled his stress. That his realization that he was in love with her had seemed to make the world brighter overnight.
“Hmmm?” Morgan said, smiling at his friend.
“I think the unsub might have been married,” Spencer explained. “He only goes after married women, and the way he treats them… I think he was married to someone who looks an awful lot like these victims. He’s punishing them for something he is mad at his wife for.”
“Let’s call Garcia,” Morgan suggested, dialing Garcia.
“Garcia’s office of how can I save your ass today,” she answered.
“Garcia, we think that the unsub has a wife that left him. Either divorced or separated,” Morgan said into the phone.
“I think they’re separated, not divorced,” Spencer interrupted. “With the kind of anger he is displaying, if he was divorced he’d likely go after his wife with all this anger. All of the victims are still married, in good relationships. So I’m guessing he’s still hoping to reconcile with his wife. She will have red hair like the rest of the victims, as well.”
“Adding recently seperated with a red haired wife to all the other parameters,” Garcia said, tying. “Gives me all of one name. Kyle Watson. Work and home addresses sent to your phones.”
“Thank you Garcia,” Spencer said.
They had the case solved, and were on the plane back to Virginia that night.