Under Control

"These three women have been found dead in the last two months. Shanne Richter was found in an apartment building dumpster; Lisa Vincent was found in a hotel room; Taryn Lowry was in an abandoned warehouse," JJ explained, going through the pages in the file she held in her hands. "All of them were last seen at that same bar, waiting on the sidewalk for a cab. Friends of Shanna and Taryn saw them get in the cab, but Lisa was at the club alone. All of the bodies showed evidence of severe beatings and sexual assault, and they all died as a result of strangulation."

"What connections do we have on them?" Derek inquired.

"DNA collected from the bodies matches but we haven't been able to find a match in the system. The DNA taken from Isabeau Marcure's rape kit also matched the samples taken from the other girls."

Hotch took a deep breath. "Something about the girls at that bar is triggering this guy. I need background checks on all of them and I want to know everything. Who they hung out with, where they worked, anyone they might know who could and would do this."

"Garcia's working on backgrounds and common denominators for all the victims and trying to locate possible past victims that will help us connect the dots," Emily offered. She glanced at Reid. "It would be easier if we had more information from Isabeau."

Reid raised his brow. "Why are you looking at me?"

"You've been at the hospital every day since she woke up," JJ started. "You must have some sort of connection with her by now. There's got to be more than what she's telling you. Probabilities lie in the fact that she's going to tell you before she tells any of us."

Spencer knew all of this; he just didn't want to admit to it. Isabeau had woken up four days ago, and he had checked in with her each day – twice the day before. He was worried about her well-being; perhaps because he had come to him when she escaped her captor, he felt somewhat responsible for her.

"Reid?" Hotch prompted.

"Right," Spencer replied, snapping to attention. "She's getting out of the hospital this evening, and I'm taking her to Fairfax to get some things together before taking her to the safe house."

"We'll have a police watch out front. Might as well pack a bag, Reid. If she trusts you, you're going to watch her," Rossi assigned.

Reid agreed, but inside he was panicking. He wasn't an entirely unemotional being, although finding himself so attached to a stranger – a woman, at that – was not something he was familiar with experiencing.

"Hey, you all right?" Derek asked, playfully punching him in the shoulder. "You going to be able to handle this?"

"Yeah, sure," Spencer answered. "Guess I better check in with Garcia. Maybe she can give me something to go off of when I talk to the girl later."

Derek just nodded, smirking as he walked away. He could see the worry all over Reid's face; it was similar to the look Reid had when he dealt with Lila, a pretty actress in Los Angeles who had come on strong to Reid. Whatever had caught Reid's eyes about this girl, that thing had latched on with an unforgiving grip.



Spencer had spent most of the day trying to get a hold of Isabeau's parents, but that was proving difficult to do. Garcia was swamped trying to get the backgrounds on the dead girls and had yet to visit Isabeau's file just yet. He was doing the best he could with the information he had, but it just wasn't going to work.

Glancing at the clock, Spencer realized more hours had passed than he thought. Isabeau was being released from the hospital soon, and he needed to get over there. The staff had warned that she would be in a wheelchair since crutches would be nearly impossible with the broken hand. Expecting to be more of a babysitter than anything, he dropped his messenger bag over his shoulder and let Hotch know he was heading out. Just as he was getting into his car, his phone rang.

"Reid here," he answered.

"Going to get your girl?" Garcia responded.

Spencer frowned. "My girl?"

"Relax, just an expression," Garcia chuckled. "I have a few things for you. First of all, everything she told you checks out. No word on her parents yet, no family in this area."

"That all sounds pretty mundane."

"I saved the best for last, Genius Boy," Garcia assured him. He heard keys clicking in the background and then she came back to him. "Isabeau filed a restraining order on a Ronnie Griffith five months after she came to Virginia. That was almost eight years ago, but it looks like it's been renewed every year."

"After eight years, she's still got enough evidence to continue the restraining order? Don't see that very often."

"That's the best I've got for you right now, but I'm still digging. I'll run a check on Griffith and get back to you."

"Great, thanks."

Spencer disconnected the call and started the ignition in his car. It puzzled him, what could possibly scare Isabeau so much after eight years that she kept up a restraining order. Well, he would just have to ask her.



Isabeau was waiting in a wheelchair in the hospital's lobby when Spencer arrived. She found it slightly adorable when he fell over himself apologizing, and did her best to assure him it wasn't a problem.

"They let me go an hour earlier than they had thought they would," Isabeau explained. "The nurse gave me these papers and said to give them to you when you got here."

He took the papers that gave instructions on her pain medication and follow-up doctor's appointments and gave them a good look-over. Stuffing them in his messenger bag, Spencer stepped around to the back of her wheelchair and pointed them in the direction of the parking lot.

"I can take those papers if you want. I just assumed from what you'd said before that you'd be staying with me, so I told the nurse –"

"Don't even worry about it," Spencer interrupted. "We'll go to Fairfax first and you can get some things, then we'll come back here to the safe house."

It was difficult, trying to get her into the car. It was still painful for her to have her leg down instead of elevated, but there wasn't much room to stretch out. Spencer moved the seat all the way back for her and leaned it back just a little more so that she would have the room to elevate her foot with the pillows the hospital had sent with her.

"Thank you," Isabeau said just before he shut her door. He got in the driver's seat, told her it wasn't a problem, and pulled out to the road. "Need directions?"

"Probably," Spencer told her. "We had your address, but I'm guessing you know the fastest way there."

She told him where to go, then tried to settle back. After a few minutes, the silence was getting uncomfortable. She thought of a million different things she would say to any other guy she was interested in, but this was different. She didn't want to pursue Spencer; not when everything about her attraction to him screamed chemical reaction.

"So we've been doing background checks on everyone," Spencer spoke before she could settle on a subject. "She found a restraining order in your file. You didn't tell us about that."

"Was I supposed to?" Isabeau asked, slightly irked. She knew that they needed to know as much as possible, but they could just ask her these questions. They didn't need to go digging through her past.

"It just helps us. Maybe this person is the one who kidnapped you, or had something to do with it?"

Isabeau shook her head. "No. Ronnie Griffith has been deployed for the last three months."

"He could still have something to do with it. Why the restraining order? It's unusual that we see one go on for so long."

"After I broke up with Ben – the guy I moved here for – I stayed around here for another couple of months. We had a lease on an apartment, and since it was a mutual, amicable break-up, I stayed. Griffith was one of Ben's friends – well, used to be. He started calling me as soon as he found out Ben and I had ended things, and he wouldn't leave me alone. I didn't want to stay in the area and I didn't want any attachments here. He started showing up at my job and refused to leave when I asked him. That stopped for about a week after the first police call I made, but then he followed me into the apartment one night when I came home from work. Ben was on an overnight duty shift. Griffith told me he was going to kill me – if he couldn't have me, no one would – but the neighbors called the complex security when they heard me screaming and he didn't get to go through with it. He got some assault and battery charges. The Corps demoted him and he got in some trouble there, but they didn't discharge him."

"Is Ben still friends with him?"

"Not as far as I know. Ben and I are still friends – like I said, it was a mutual decision to end the relationship. They're not even in the same unit anymore."

Spencer thought on that for a few moments. It was difficult, he knew, for deployed servicemembers to be in constant touch with anyone back in the States but not entirely impossible. "Why is it that you continued the restraining order?"

"For the first three years I had it, he would wait until literally one minute into the day after the previous one expired, and he would knock on my door and create a scene. I don't know how he found me in Fairfax, but when I brought that to the courts, they allowed me to automatically renew it every year."

That made more sense. In his mind, this Ronnie Griffith may not have been a direct suspect, but he was certainly a possible solicitor. He took out his phone and called Penelope.

"Do me a favor; see if Ronnie Griffith is connected to the other girls as well."

Isabeau listened while he finished his conversation. His voice made her heart beat a little faster, but withdrew the tension from her muscles at the same time. She closed her eyes and told herself to stop thinking about it. Once all of this was resolved and she regained her sense of safety, it wouldn't be the same. These weren't really feelings; this was transference.

"Are you feeling all right?" Spencer asked, concern etched into his features and tone.

Isabeau nodded. "Yes, sorry. Just letting my mind wander, I suppose."

Spencer seemed a little nervous, but quickly recovered. "What part of psychology are you in?"

"Working with the school system, I'm really more of a traveling guidance counselor. I travel through all of the schools from elementary to high school and work with kids who have rough home lives or who have had bad things happen to them before."

"Did you always want to do that?"

"Actually, when I first went into psychology, I wanted to work with PTSD patients. Being around Ben and some of my other friends in Quantico, it hits home. I did my internship with a PTSD support group on base." She paused. "What about you? I mean, no offense, but you don't seem old enough to know everything you know."

Spencer smirked. "It sounds conceited, but I'm a genius. Graduated high school at twelve, and now I've got three Ph.D.'s."

"Photographic memory?"

"How'd you know?"

Isabeau smiled; the first smile he had seen from her since he appeared in her life a few nights ago. "When you walk into a room, the first thing you do is look around – it's like you're observing every little detail. A girl in one of my study groups in high school did the same thing."

"Sounds like I'm not the only observant one," Spencer commented. He looked over at her and smiled. It was strange; he was nervous around her but not uncomfortable. That was new for him.

"I like to be aware of my surroundings. Which, I guess, is another reason why this all caught me even more off guard."

They continued to talk all the way to her place in Fairfax. When they arrived, Spencer parked as close to the door as possible. He had her wait in the car while he let the man in the office know they needed into the apartment, then came around and opened the door for her, and Isabeau let out a deep sigh.

"I should have taken crutches, just in case," she breathed.

Spencer looked behind him at the apartment. A four-floor building stood in front of them. He thought at first that the wheelchair was just going to get frustrating for her, then he realized why she was really upset.

"You're on the fourth floor, aren't you?"

Isabeau answered with a defeated nod. "I like the exercise the stairs give me, and there's a pretty view when the sun rises."

She was trying to scoot herself forward on the seat so she could then scoot over into the wheelchair when she felt strong, unexpected arms lift her from the seat.

"You don't have to do this," she assured Spencer as he approached the first flight of steps.

"Don't worry about it. I'm stronger than I look, and you're light as a feather, anyway."

She put her arms around his neck to hold on and tried to hide her smile. He smelled absolutely enticing, and being so close to his face was making it difficult for her not to think about kissing him. The office manager let them into the apartment; Spencer carried her in, careful to shut the door behind them before carrying her into her bedroom and setting her on the bed.

"Thanks," Isabeau smiled shyly at him. "Um, there's a bag on the top shelf of my closet. If you can get that for me, I should be able to scoot around enough to get everything together."

He retrieved the bag for her and then told her to yell if she needed help. He figured there were some private things she needed to gather and it would be better if he wasn't in the room. Wandering out to the living room, Spencer did exactly what she had observed him doing – took in every detail of the apartment.

There were many pictures of her with friends and family. It was clear that despite the distance and the years, she was still close with her family. He wondered if maybe this would be enough to send her back to her hometown and stamped down his disappointment at the thought. One particular picture of a younger, smaller Isabeau proudly holding a teddy bear and sitting in a man's lap caught his attention, and he smiled. When Isabeau yelled for him, he brought the picture with him.

"How old are you in this picture?"

Isabeau took the picture from his hand and smiled. "That's me and my dad on my eighth birthday. Every year for as long as I can remember, he got me a new teddy bear. They're all back at home; haven't gotten one since my eighteenth birthday. I miss it, sort of."

"Do you talk to them very often?"

"Yeah. We reconciled shortly after I moved out to Fairfax, and I've been home a few times. They even came out here once."

"Would you go back then?"

She shrugged. "I hadn't really thought about it. I guess once they know what happened, they'll want me to come back. I'm myself out here though, you know? Back there, I was whoever they wanted me to be. I think that's why I stayed, even after I made up with them."

"Makes sense."

Isabeau asked him to help her to the bathroom so she could gather some toiletries, threw those into her bag, and then announced that she was ready.

"Sure you want to carry me back down? I might be able to just scoot down on my butt."

Spencer shook his head. "It's fine, really."

He helped her hobble over to the door where they made sure the lights were off and let the office manager lock the door again before Spencer lifted her off the ground and carried her back down to the car.

"I might fall back asleep," she warned him.

"That's all right, you should rest while you can."

Whether it was the smooth ride of the car or the sense of safety being in Spencer's presence gave her – or perhaps both with a little bit of influence from her pain medication – Isabeau was soon lulled into a peaceful sleep.