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It was becoming increasingly evident to Spencer that the officer he was assigned to would rather be looking for his body than an innocent teenage girl’s. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn the ire of someone he’d barely met, but he could take a wild guess from the list of things Derek often rolled his eyes at or left in the middle of. Leon Hartman, who was currently eyeing up particular rocky areas longingly, appeared to hate him on sight and felt no better when they were paired.
Perhaps he was hoping to be paired with the women of the team since he was (hopelessly) trying to begin a rapport with Elle and JJ by flirting, with Derek to discuss workouts and football or one of the more senior members of the team to chat about career progression. Simply put, Hartman would’ve sooner chosen a tree for a partner than Spencer.
The entire time, there hadn’t been one peep from his search partner, and any attempt to break the silence made the other stretch the gap between them. It got to the point where he couldn’t even see Hartman anymore through the thick vegetation, but he assumed the officer must see him. No matter how much you didn’t like a person, it would be quite the career killer to lead an FBI agent into the woods and come back alone. He tried to point out that he couldn’t see Hartman anymore, and they should really stick together in case one of them did find something, but it fell on deaf ears, and he hoped that was from the man being petty rather than out of reach.
Spencer could still hear the shouts from the main group of searchers, so he continued much further than he would’ve dared if he couldn’t. He chose to try to enjoy the peace forced upon him, ignoring the heavy atmosphere it came with. Hartman wasn’t the only officer to have a vendetta against him within twenty seconds of seeing him, although he was the only one who couldn’t pretend to be civil for any period of time. He got the gist of their distrust; he was too young to be there in their opinion, and they likely assumed several falsehoods because of that. Granted, he had some strings pulled to be in this position, but he earned it fair and square. He brought something to the table.
How much longer would he have to insist he was good enough to be there? When would come the time his first worry wouldn’t be convincing them not to think of him as a well-connected college kid, but to convince them the FBI was there to help the case, not do a rug pull on them and steal all the glory of solving the case? He’d spent the majority of his life proving his place despite his age. There could be a possibility that he would never stop having to.
Lost in thought, he paid no attention to where his feet were landing, and he didn’t think much when he stepped into a small pile of leaves and felt what he thought was just uneven ground. There were thousands of trees in the area, and there were bound to be roots sitting close to the surface, though roots didn’t usually press down under weight, especially Spencer’s weight. It was when he followed through and heard a whir that he realised two things at the same time.
- It was the beginning of hunting season, and they’d been paired up not just to make sure no one else claimed their final resting place on the leafy forest floor whilst searching, but also to ensure help was available if they didn’t notice a trap with their focus on finding a body
- He’d walked straight into some sort of trap and couldn’t decide whether to move or stand still in case he’d triggered the first phase and not the final deployment of the trap
Then his third realisation came as the ground underneath him became unsteady and began racing towards him. He shut his eyes and held out his hands as if that would do anything when his legs were swept out from under him and shoved into his chest, and the world gained a swing to it. The tree branches above his head creaked dangerously but settled in tandem with the swinging, slowing to a stop.
Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
A net trap.
Really?
His luck would be comical if he weren’t the unfortunate soul forced to experience it. He was surprised that it held his weight, too, assuming that it was intended to snatch up lighter prey animals, but then again, it would have to withstand a lot of thrashing. He tried his best to readjust himself without causing the net to swing too much and began to search through his bag for his cellphone.
Finding the small device had thankfully not been lost in his sudden usurpation from the ground, his relief was replaced with disappointment, and he groaned when he didn’t have any signal. As a Hail Mary, he attempted to call 911, and as he hit call, he began to craft a good story that would make him appear a little less pathetic and worsen his relationship with the local police department. The call failed, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little thankful he didn’t have to explain himself to a 911 operator whilst convincing them this wasn’t a prank.
“Hartman!” he shouted, knowing it was a long shot. He must’ve been walking for at least another hour after they separated, and he wasn’t all that confident in his theory that Hartman could see him but not the other way around. “Officer Hartman!” he called again. His voice bounced around the small clearing, but no response came bouncing back. He couldn’t hear the other searchers now either, and he wasn’t sure when that became the case. He could only wish that he'd noticed sooner.
Eventually, the team would notice his absence and go looking for him. It would be near freezing tonight, and the odds of him making it through the night without at least the beginnings of frostbite weren’t good. His wool coat and scarf would keep him warm for now, but being unable to move would make it difficult to keep warm, and he couldn’t really start a fire.
One of the firefighters who’d joined the search as a guide found the body, resting underneath an old oak tree, clearly staged with some care by the killer. The team went to investigate with a handful of officers, whilst the rest spread the news that the search was finally over.
“Where’s Reid?” JJ asked when Hartman picked up the paperwork to sign out.
“Behind me somewhere.”
“I don’t see him. When did you last look behind you?” He shrugged with little care and attempted to leave before JJ stepped in front of him, suspicion written across her face. “When did you last see him?”
“Sorry, lady, but I don’t get paid to babysit.”
“Well, man, you get paid to do as you're told, and you were told to escort Dr Reid through the woods whilst we searched. Considering you returned without him and you can’t pin down when you last saw him, I’d say you’re doing a pretty bad job,” she snarked back. “Now, if you don’t want a media hailstorm calling you both unfit and incredibly unprofessional, I strongly suggest you start rattling your brain for when you saw Reid last. Think you can do that? Or are those instructions too difficult to understand?” He huffed loudly and made a show of trying to recall when he'd last seen the kid, purposefully standing in the way of other searchers trying to sign out as though she'd let him go to get rid of the inconvenience he was causing. Fat chance.
“Three hours ago, maybe? We hit a fork in the path. He must've taken the right path instead of following me down the left,” he suggested, passing off any blame onto Spencer when she knew for certain he wouldn’t wander off like that. He didn't like the dark.
“So for three hours, you didn’t notice that he was gone?” He rolled his eyes as if she were being impossible. It took a lot of strength not to punch him in the face there and then, though some credit could go to her hand holding her phone at the ready to call the team. “You’re staying here until we find him, and your behaviour will be reported to your commanding officer.”
“Whatever. I woulda hoped the guy solving serial killer cases could handle a little hike through the woods, but please, blame me for the kid getting lost.”
“I will, thank you,” she replied. “Hotch, we have a problem.”
“You’re on speaker, baby girl, behave,” Derek warned as he held the phone out to the middle of the group. Most searchers had already left at this point, and of the few who remained, none of them seemed all that keen on lending further support. Two officers offered to help, but it was clear they just wanted the chance at playing hero and keep criticism of Hartman on the low. They could try as hard as they liked, but Jason held close ties with their captain, and Aaron had plenty of lawyers all too willing to represent Spencer in a lawsuit if the young man saw fit, so their efforts weren't going to go as far as they'd like.
“You’re no fun,” she complained. “Looks like there’s a big ‘ol signal deadzone right after that fork in the path. His phone puts him at the coordinates I just sent you, but that was hours ago. The good news is that the signal deadzone is only in a four-mile radius. The bad news is that for the past couple of hours, he’s stayed in that signal deadzone,” Penelope explained, her disappointment palpable.
“So what has him static?” Elle asked herself. “Garcia, are there any areas where he could fall or encounter bodies of water?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Where was his buddy during all this? Why has the buddy system failed him when it works perfectly fine for middle schoolers?”
“Because it’s Reid,” Derek replied. He was half tempted to mention it was Hartman's fault, but decided against it. She could go scorched earth on him once the case was over and they didn't need his cooperation.
“Next time, give him some breadcrumbs if he insists on wandering through the woods on his own. At least Hansel and Gretel followed the buddy system," she muttered. "Call me when you find him, which you will, because if you don’t, I will return to evil and no one will know peace.” She hung up, and as though it weren’t already dire, she’d added her own stakes into the game.
“You,” he pointed to the offending officer Hartman, who’d been joking with the two officers on the sidelines. “Come with us and show us exactly where you lost sight of him." The officer went to argue, probably something along the lines of unpaid overtime or needing to get home, but Derek silenced him by putting up his hand. "We don't have time for whatever excuse you're going to make. It’ll be dark in a few hours, and I'm not risking an agent because you can't be bothered.”
Throughout the walk back to Spencer’s last known coordinates, Hartman put on a stellar show of minimising his responsibility and portraying the genius as a helpless child losing their parents at Disneyland rather than a missing agent who could potentially be hurt or worse. Derek turned around every so often to say something, but Elle or Aaron would stop him before he could do anything he'd regret or would otherwise come to bite them in the ass. Defending Spencer in his absence wouldn’t help the officers think any higher of him, and they couldn’t afford for much more hostility, even if they hadn't done anything to spark it.
Spencer’s hope began to dwindle when the sun went down, and he felt the cold begin to permeate his thick wool coat. He’d done his best to conserve body heat by hugging his knees and hiding his face in the space between his arms. His nose was beginning to drip, and he could feel the chill wind nipping at his unprotected extremities. The branch above him occasionally creaked ominously every once in a while as if to test his wits, but hadn’t failed yet. He didn’t fancy being crushed by it if the branch finally crashed down.
Then he heard shouts. The words were muffled at first, but they were shouts nonetheless, and at this point, he’d take any human over no human.
“I’m over here!” Spencer shouted back. Flashlights flickered through the trees, emboldening him to shout louder. “I’m here!”
An odd shape in the darkness caught the impromptu search party’s attention, and their worry was briefly replaced with amusement as their flashlights lit up the scene before them. Curled up with a thick blanket of leaves underneath him and his already doe-like eyes pulled to give him a deer in headlights look, they could forget for the moment that he’d been trapped in the cold woods all because one officer didn’t fancy paying even the tiniest bit of attention to him.
“There was a net trap,” Spencer greeted awkwardly. Derek dared to crack a laugh, getting a shove from Elle for being cruel, as though she wasn’t close to giggling herself but had been graced with hair long enough to hide her grin. JJ used her position at the back of the group to her advantage as she took some pictures without him noticing. Considering how prepared they'd been to find him incapacitated, gravely injured or dead, swinging in a net trap bashfully was a heavy weight off their shoulders, and she, for one, was going to enjoy every minute of it.
“We can see that,” Aaron replied, his lips twitching up.
“Reid, you truly do amaze me sometimes, but this might take the cake,” Jason commented as he shed light on the mechanism keeping the net suspended from the ground. “How the hell did you manage this?”
“Sir, as much as I would love to answer that question, I would prefer to be on the ground when I do.”
“Well, I certainly can’t blame you for that. Should be a wench somewhere.” As he went searching, the team remained watching the spectacle that was Spencer, caught in a net a good few feet up from the ground.
“It could be worse,” JJ offered.
“It could also be better,” Spencer grumbled. He squinted when he saw Derek reach for something in his pocket. “Morgan, do not take a photo of me.”
“It’s for Garcia; she needs the physical proof to understand how goofy you look.”
“She has a functioning imagination for that.”
“Nothing can beat the reality, kid.”
“You should put it on the Christmas cards,” Elle suggested. “Oh, oh, for his next birthday, JJ could get it printed on sugar paper for his cake.”
Hartman was the only one not in some way entertained by his predicament. If anything, he seemed angrier than before, huffing and puffing in the background and entirely put out with having to travel back into the woods instead of being able to head home.
“Fucking pathetic,” he muttered, but he must’ve intentionally let the gist of the words carry because it would’ve been incredibly easy to speak low enough for the team to only hear a murmur. They’d know from his tone that he meant nothing good, but at least he’d have plausible deniability.
“What’s your deal, man?” Derek asked, dropping any remnants of the smile he couldn’t fight off earlier.
“My deal is that you let disgraces like that into your little group, but my brother can’t get in over a mistake he made forever ago.”
“So what? Reid’s got nothing to do with that.”
“You’re telling me you’re okay working with a kid like that? A gangly college kid who looks like he can’t lift a spoonful of soup to his mouth without a spotter, who could’ve only got in because he knows a guy or mummy or daddy called in a few favours to make life easier.”
“Officer Hartman, I can see now why your department was so desperate for my team to come down here if you're even the slightest representation of its resources. Clearly, you can’t profile a cat from a dog, judging by your assumptions about Dr Reid. Let me remind you, it was your responsibility to ensure his safety, and you severely failed in doing so, putting a federal agent in harm's way and potentially sabotaging an investigation,” Aaron stated. He could never quite get rid of the prosecutor tone from when he was a lawyer, and it had Hartman losing the confidence he once had.
“Whatever, just cut the kid down so I can go home. I’m sure my brother would love to know what the FBI considers SSAs nowadays.” He obviously wouldn’t suddenly embrace Spencer with open arms or admit his faults entirely, but he’d be quiet, and that was the best outcome they could hope for.
“Was he like that with you the entire time?” Elle asked.
“No, he just refused to speak to me.”
“You don’t think he left you here on purpose, do you?”
“Either way, he’s a dick,” Derek asserted before bumping shoulders with her, silently telling her not to make him think like that.
Jason managed to find the line of connecting rope and loosened it, lowering his mentee to the ground; the others peeled away the netting until he could climb out and unsteadily stand up onto numb legs. He winced at the pins and needles but was otherwise in perfect working order, all things considered. Just another memory to cringe at three in the morning when he needed sleep most.
“Just looking at you is making me cold,” Jason fussed, though his tone didn’t accurately portray his concern. He surrendered his gloves and tightened Spencer’s scarf, like a parent wrapping their child up warm for the walk to school in winter. “He stays with us next time."
“That’s not necessary-”
“I’ll take him. The number of people who think being in a search party constitutes a meet-cute is genuinely concerning,” Elle weighed in.