CLANDESTINE : Spencer Reid

12

The new year hits us like a train. I bring in my packed getaway bag just as Agent Hotchner asks. It monopolizes the bottom drawer of my desk. The week back, it is hard to get started. There is a backlog of cases from my little vacation. I spend practically every hour glued to my screen. The profilers start to call me Bouchard, and it catches on quickly.

On Friday morning, just two days after we returned, I am stuck. The analysis I am trying to run gives me nothing but error messages. When I blink to look down at my agenda, the pages look tinted blue. The only seconds peace I allow myself involves pinching the bridge of my nose.

"Do you want my help?" Reid asks, looking over my computer at me.

"Those are fighting words, Reid," Morgan warns.

"I'm fine," I insist.

New leaf bullshit.

I scan the code over and over. After thirty minutes of re-examining the t-values and IV and DV settings, I decide to run the whole thing again. I'm slower this time, more careful with my work. Rather than pounding my fingers off the keys I barely press down on them, looking at every letter I type rather than at my fingers. That evening, I am the last out of the door, and I'm the first back on Monday. I barely finish redoing every step before we are supposed to go home.

It still doesn't work. I am incredibly tempted to take the keyboard downstairs at use it as target practice, but I take the anger and swallow it. No one had better talk to me, or else I'm going to go ballistic. Excitation transfer theory and all of that criminal psychology stuff that Estelle insists is mumbo jumbo.

Dr. Reid must be familiar with the concept, but he speaks anyway, "you seem angrier than Friday."

"It keeps saying there is a syntax error," I grumble. "I swear, there is no syntax error. I would have found it by now."

"Reid can read 20, 000 words per minute," JJ offers.

She is putting on her coat, along with Prentiss. Everyone is standing up, ready to head out, and unlike them, it doesn't feel like the workday has begun. I'm no closer than when I started.

"I'm just going to stay late."

I don't even look up from my screen, running my eyes over everything I have typed. I'm beginning to go crazy. Numbers blur together, figures strong longer than the number of degrees Reid could put behind his name when he sends an email. Letters abbreviations, periods where they are supposed to be, brackets all closed.

"It'll still be there tomorrow, Bouchard," Prentiss says. "In the morning you'll look at it with fresh eyes."

"I already had the weekend to get fresh eyes," I insist. Without turning, I shoo them away. "Don't deny me the overtime. I'm not paid as much as you field agents anyway."

No one else offers anything. They don't even point out that we are salaried, so overtime doesn't matter as much to us as it would to people who are paid hourly. I'm still stuck in the mode I was in working for professors throughout university. I hear the others clearing out, so I turn my attention back to SPSS. The error has got to be somewhere. It is up to me to find it.

Then, a shadow crosses over my screen. The outline is vague, but I know who it is without having to turn around.

"You're such a backseat mathematician," I start rolling up my sleeves, trying to force myself to focus.

"I can still help," Dr. Reid says.

Rather than respond, I ignore him. Instead, I dig into the drawer with my getaway bag and pull out a hair tie. I've been trying to wear it down more since it's bad for your hair follicles to have it pulled out of your face, or so I hear, but desperate times, and whatnot. Dr. Reid moves behind me and for a second I let out an exhale. He's leaving.