EASY WAY OUT ¹ ➢ spencer reid

XXVIII

When I walked into Garcia's office the next morning I felt uneasy. As I sat down at my desk she swivelled to face me. She played with the pen in her hand, twirling it in-between her fingers as gave me a quick head nod and turned back around. "Yeah, Isla just walked in so I'll get her to take a look." She said.

I turned on my computer and yawned. Thanks to Reid's weird text message I'd barely gotten any sleep.

"Someone sent them a burner phone this morning." Garcia said.

"Seriously?" I asked, raising my brow.

She nodded hesitantly. "It came with a note. I got JJ to send you pics." She pointed to my computer and stared nervously as I opened the file and took a look.

"The note just says use me wisely." I frowned.

"After they turned it on they got a text message asking them for an answer."

"So this is where the riddle comes in?" I chewed my thumbnail as I examined the photos. Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was just a phone with some writing.

Reid started calling me. I clicked the notification, watching his face pop up onto the screen. He was holding the phone in his hand, typing something out. "You're answering him?" I asked.

He nodded, finishing his message before looking up at me.

I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. "So now we just wait?"

"Don't have to." He responded, looking back at the phone.

I looked at him curiously, watching as he leaned out of frame. "Hey guys, we got a map." When he looked back at the phone he seemed worried. His licked his lips, while his eyes darted back and forth, scanning the screen.

"Does it give us anything?"

"A lot, actually," he narrowed his eyes, "it looks like he's marking the abduction sites. The place where Sydney worked is marked down, as well as nine other locations in the surrounding area."

"So there's ten?" I widened my eyes. "We thought he only needed seven."

Reid sighed as he brought his hand up to his face. He stroked his chin, still staring at the screen in front of him. "It could mean there's other bodies?" He suggested.

"What do you mean?"

"If he's using girls to represent these virtues they're obviously important. The fact that he's putting him in a coma suggests he's trying to preserve them." He knitted his brows together, glancing up at me. "What if he already has what he needs and is just discarding the ones who fail to stay alive?"

The uneasy feeling I had grew about ten sizes, enveloping my whole stomach. I stared at the floor for a couple of seconds. I wanted to believe Reid was wrong, but I knew otherwise. This guy was smart. It wasn't surprising he'd managed to abduct ten bodies without getting noticed.

"So there's going to be two more bodies." I suggested.

"If my theory is right, yes."

Reid handed off the phone to someone else who quickly transferred the photos over to Garcia and I. We examined them for a while, while the rest of the team left to search everything. Reid stayed behind and together we tried to work out a potential geographical profile, which proved difficult since the radius of his abduction sites were fairly large. Eventually, we pinpointed a section that had some potential, relaying the information to the rest of the team. When Reid's phone starting ringing we knew the team had found something. He picked it up, pressing the phone against his ear as he leaned back in his chair and stared directly at me. "Hey, you guys find anything?" He blinked, listening for a couple of moments before sighing and hanging up. "They found the bodies."