Title:  I Need Sunshine 14/?

Rating: FRAO for violence, mentions of rape and drug use, language

Pairing: Morgan/Reid, but mentions of Garcia/Kevin & Hotch/JJ

Summary: Spencer dreams about his big secret. Lizzie makes a run for it. Derek and Rossi find out where they are, but find out that saving Spencer and Lizzie might cost them a life.

Beta: None. Ah well. All mistakes are mine.

ConCrit:  Better than watching Reid suck on a lollipop (and that was pretty darned good)

SPOILERS:  Some canon from all seasons. Many illusions to season 2 and season 4, mostly.

~~~

Disclaimer:  I don’t own any rights or trademarks to Criminal Minds, the FBI, CBS or any of the characters within.  No infringements of these copyrights are intended.  Any similarities between original characters therein are a coincidence.  I make no profit from the following fictional story.  (Fictional, maybe, but I swear this happened all in my head).

~~~

10:27pm at the Delta Theta Pi house

Dr. Spencer Reid

The woods, the snow, the smell of the cabin burning to the ground.

I’m in an empty room sitting at a steel table with paper and pencil in front of me. There’s a light above my head, nothing else. It feels like an interrogation room.

“Give us your confession, Doctor.” A deep voice rings through the room.

Before I know what’s happening, I have ten pages of chicken-scratch written. I don’t know if I’m writing a letter to my mother or if it’s just a confession, but either way I’m feeling a sense of relief. I look over where I confessed being high. I know the words I wrote—eidetic memory—but there’s something about the way my words look on the page that strikes me. It makes it real. It’s not just a memory, its written testimony. It happened. It’s real and it’s suddenly terrifying.

“I can’t tell Derek this. I can’t tell my mother this. I can’t…I can’t make it real to them,” I plead.

“The truth shall set you free,” the voice says.

My hands are shaking and I start sweating. My mouth runs dry and I have never ‘craved’ a fix more in my life. I could…it would be easy for me to sneak out and find something. I should go over to Derek’s room, I should let him distract me. I should tell him that I want a ‘fix’ and he’d help me. I know he would, he loves me. But I can practically hear his ‘advice’ and his concern and it would make me feel even more horrible than I do right now. I can’t impose any more on him, I’ve already done enough.

I wipe the tears from my eyes before I continue. ‘I was high on morphine, I wasn’t thinking clearly and my reaction time was poor. It was cold…and even though I couldn’t feel the cold it had an effect on my body. It made everything slow. I had told myself over and over again that I didn’t have a choice but to stay alive that I wasn’t bothering to look before I fired…the look in his eyes. Toby looked at me so incredulously, and yet his eyes told me that he didn’t want to believe what just happened. I shot Toby. I watched him fall to the ground. I saw him breathing still, calling out to me. I stood there…I stood there until his chest stopped moving up and down. Then I heard more footsteps crunching through the snow at me. This time it was a Subject…he attacked me…we struggled in the snow and I eventually shot him. It was then that I went over to Toby’s body and cradled him close…as if me killing the unsub would magically bring him back to life. I shot Toby, watched him die, and the worse thing was that I stood there and said and did nothing. It wasn’t until I started coming down from the high that I realized I had to stage the scene. I cradled Toby’s body and then told the team that the unsub had taken my weapon in the struggle and shot him. They believed it. Why shouldn’t they?’

“I SHOT TOBY! I SHOT HIM!” I scream. “ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?”

“Spencer?”

~~~~~

Meanwhile at Larry Karnes’ residence

Agent Derek Morgan

“Not a fucking thing!” I hit the wall, smashing my knuckles on the articles about dead cats in shopping bags. “Where the fuck did he take them?”

Hotch stops what he’s doing and comes over to me. “Morgan, we need to calm down and stay focused.”

“There is nothing here Hotch,” I sigh. Before I can go back to work my cell phone rings and it’s Garcia. “Tell me you have something Penelope,” I say, putting it on speakerphone.

“The San Diego field office just called, they found Larry’s family home. His mother passed away a few months ago. He hired a cleaning crew to clean the place top and bottom. He used the insurance and maxed out every credit card he could get in both his and her name to buy new furniture and appliances. They found picture frames with Lizzie’s picture in them.”

“He was planning on taking her to the house to start a life together,” Hotch says.

“They are doing check points at every highway exit and onramp in Arizona,” Garcia says. “Check this out Hotch, I put a trace on Margaret Hall’s credit info and her Visa was last used at a gas station on 5^th and Lexington which, according to my map, is halfway between the house and campus. The security tapes are downloading now, I should have more in a few…oh here we go.” I hear some frantic typing. “I’ve got him—Larry Karnes on camera buying the gas, paying with the credit card. He’s driving a green Ford Windstar mini-van, 2002, tags Alpha Beta Wallace ten-sixteen. I’ll add that to the APB.”

“Thanks Garcia,” Hotch looks to Prentiss. “Let’s go to the station, track this guy. Morgan, you and Rossi stay here and find where he took them.”

“Hotch,” I beg.

“Even if he get him, he’ll have Lizzie and Reid someplace safe and the only way to find that place is here.” He turns and leaves with Prentiss and Detective Craven.

Once they are gone, Rossi clears his throat. “Are there any legends on these walls that we haven’t seen yet?”

I walk around the room, reciting them out loud. “I’ve got the Price and Loren murder, the cats in the shopping bags, Doyle’s murder, Nelson, Killian…even these file cabinets are just student papers or more of the same.” I sit back down and reach for the bottom drawer of his desk. I pull out a thick file on the top of the third drawer and open it up.

There are pictures of Reid, Rossi and George. Some alone, some with Lizzie. There is a picture of a house next to a story circled in red. I start to read the legend and suddenly images flood my mind of Lizzie and Reid, slaughtered.

I hand the folder to Rossi. “He’s planning on killing them,” I say, barely able to speak.

Rossi looks at the story in front of him. “He’s staging it at least.”

I pull the picture of the house off the wall. “Which means we have to find this house.”

“That’s the Delta Theta Pi sorority house,” Detective Craven comes up behind us, having snuck into the room at some point without us noticing. “It’s on the row over on campus. Most of those sororities take students on volunteer missions during break because volunteer work helps them keep charter.”

“So it could be empty?” Rossi looks at me.

“Let’s go.”

~~~~~

Back at the Delta Theta Pi house

Dr. Spencer Reid

“Spencer?”

I am woken up by a soft female whisper.

I open my eyes. “Lizzie? Lizzie, get out of here now!” I sit up, finding myself on the couch of the main living room where Larry Karnes set me before injecting me with what looked like a very small dose of whatever he was using to sedate me. It wasn’t a narcotic, I can’t feel that same haze. Part of you wants to know what it is, don’t you? My head injury still makes me feel dizzy and sore.

“He’s asleep, we have to leave now.” She frantically removes the tape from my ankles. “I didn’t grab any keys, I can’t undo your cuffs.”

“That’s fine,” I sit up, the dizziness getting worse. “He is tied up?”

She shakes her head. “After, he just fell asleep. I got him to trust me enough to take my ropes off.” She shudders. “We don’t have time to talk about that, we just have to go.”

We stand up and head towards the front door, but its boarded shut. “Back door,” I say, leading her down the hallway towards the back. Just as we pass the stairs I hear someone walking down them. I stop. “Lizzie, run. I’ll distract him.”

“No no no, I’ll go to the kitchen. Just trust me. You hide,” she pushes me down the hall and runs to the kitchen.

I duck into a closet facing the open doorway into the kitchen. Through the slats in the door I see Lizzie quickly pose in front of the fridge, searching for something. Larry comes up to her. He’s wearing only boxer shorts. “Liz, what are you doing?”

“I needed something cool to drink,” she says, her voice wispy like Derek’s is when he wakes up. “I was going to bring you something to drink in bed.”

“That’s why I love you,” he wraps his arms around her. They kiss deeply and suddenly I realize what she’s been doing to gain his trust. She is a very strong girl. I just hope she’ll be able to cope with the trauma when we get out of here.

“Honey, go back to bed, I’ll bring you something,” Lizzie pulls out of his grasp and turns back to the fridge. “I want to do something nice for you.”

“I’m going to get dressed, we better get going,” he kisses the back of her neck and disappears.

After a few moments, Lizzie starts to look around the kitchen for something—I would assume a weapon. I’m about to open the door to the closet and get her to leave the house when I hear a loud bang. Lizzie quickly finds a knife and runs around the side of the cabinets.

“DR. REID! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU YOU FUCKING FAGGOT?” Larry storms past me and into the kitchen. “Lizzie, where is the good Doctor?”

“FUCK YOU!” She screams, stabbing him in the shoulder. Leaving the knife in him, she runs past him.

I quickly get out of the closet and run after her towards the back door. “Come on, we have to go!” I say to her. “Grab that chair, we’ll break the glass in the window.”

“LIZZIE!” Larry comes running towards us, the steak knife Lizzie stabbed into his shoulder now in his hand. “You fucking liar!”

“Run Lizzie, run!” I shout, grabbing a lamp from the table near the door and smashing it over Larry’s head as he runs towards me. I feel something sharp in my forearm and look to see he cut me. Lizzie makes a break towards the stairs. With Larry on the floor, I have to make a quick choice. Can I take him without a weapon? I don’t think so, not with a head injury that’s still affecting my coordination. Instead I run past him writhing on the floor and into the living room, looking for another weapon or way to drag him away from Lizzie so she has a chance.

I hear the gunshot the same time the bullet whizzes past me and hits a picture frame on the wall, spraying shattered glass onto me. I duck and run around the corner into a back hallway, which just leads back towards the backdoor.

“You know about Richard Speck, don’t you Dr. Reid?” I hear him call out. I quickly rack my brain and recall every book or article I’ve read on his murders. In 1966, he broke into a dormitory house and methodically raped and murdered eight nursing students. One of the students, Cora Amurao, hid under a bed until morning when Speck left. “See doctor, each urban legend has its roots in reality. My favorite legends are the ones where people learn a lesson. Unfortunately, Lizzie didn’t learn a lesson when her room mate died in the same room. So I found this little legend. It’s holiday vacation at the local University campus. In a sorority house, only two girls decide to stay in town for the vacation. They have the house alone for two days and are looking forward to no curfew.”

I tiptoe carefully down the hall, finding a non-collapsible umbrella leaning near the closet I was hiding in. Taking the opportunity to hide, I slip inside.

“One night,” Larry continues, “one of the girls isn’t feeling well and decides to stay home. The other one gets all dressed up and goes out for a night on the town. Later that night when she’s settling down for sleep in her room, she hears a small crash coming from the kitchen downstairs. Thinking it’s the house cat, which is fond of jumping on the counters and knocking things down, she shrugs and crawls into bed.” Larry keeps talking as his footsteps get closer.

I hear footsteps upstairs, which tells me Lizzie is still in the house. What is she doing, she needs to run. Break a window and scream for her life. Then again, we are on campus during break and there are very few people around. Maybe they won’t hear her. She should still try. I quickly open the door and stab him in the chest with the point of the umbrella. It doesn’t penetrate the skin, but from the noises he’s making I know it hurts. He grabs the umbrella from my hands and hits me in the head with it before he falls to the ground in pain.

“Dr. Reid, Dr. Reid…” Larry growls, standing up to chase after me. “You aren’t letting me finish.”

I push past him and run to the stairs, stumbling my way up them. Larry keeps talking, slowly coming after me. He thinks he has all the time in the world to torture me by telling me his plan. I almost want to scream at him that this is nothing compared to what I’ve been through before him. If I could make it out of Davenport and Deep Lake alive, I can make it out of this house alive. With a living, breathing Lizzie Rossi in my arms.

“Minutes later,” Larry continues, “she hears something thumping on the stairs, something much larger than a cat. Maybe a burglar broke into the house she thinks. Getting up, she locks her bedroom door. A few moments later she hears scratching at the door, like someone is trying to get in. Petrified, she doesn’t answer. She sits in the corner of the room and rocks in place, praying for the intruder to go away.

I make it past the second bedroom door before I collapse on the floor, my body weak from lack of food and the injuries. I hear crashing, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. I haven’t had anything to drink since last night and the heat is draining me. I could die from that alone, I think. I could, but I won’t.

The door opens and Lizzie comes out. “Spencer,” she grabs me. “Come on!”

“After several minutes, the scratching stops but she stays in the corner. In the morning there’s a frantic knock at the door and the sound of the house mother’s voice calling for her.” Larry’s voice gets close, really close. Things start to get blurry and I notice that I’ve stopped sweating.

“Larry Karnes drop the weapon!” Rossi’s voice fills the air. I look up to see his blurry form, clad in a Kevlar vest, alone. “It’s over Larry.”

“LIZZIE IS MINE!” Larry screams.

I hear three loud shots and I nearly cry from the relief. Lizzie screams and I open my eyes. Rossi’s on the ground. Larry shot him. Now I want to cry for a different reason but my body just won’t fight back. This is the same helplessness you felt on the drugs I tell myself.

“Where was I?” Larry says, turning back to us. “When she opens the door, the house mother tells her not to look down, but she does anyway. There is the other room mate lying dead. Her throat had been slashed and she was scratching at the door for help.”

This time I close my eyes and know that I don’t have the strength to open them again.

~~~~~

*I stole a scene from Scream. Yes I did, I was watching it the other nice on Encore while writing, so sue me ;)