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Danny gets a call from an unknown number not long after Spencer leaves. She thinks nothing of it, probably another marketer, she thinks. She goes back to reading another one of Reids many books. But the phone rings again.

Danny looks at the number in confusion, before shifting herself and bringing the phone up to her ear.

"Hello?" She puts on a polite voice, not knowing who could be at the other end.

"Hello," a slimy voice greets back. Danny freezes on the couch knowing exactly who is on the other side. She hears that voice in her nightmares. "You are going to do exactly what I say. I know where you live. I also know where your little boyfriend is. Don't call him. Pick up the phone when I call again, Daniella."

She hears the harsh slam of him hanging up. It must have been a landline phone. She shivers at him addressing her by her first name. The way it falls clumsily out of his mouth, and nothing like the way her mother used to say it in her Spanish accent. Racking her brain, she can't think of how he knows her name. She only ever goes by Danny, and that's the name she gave the delivery service all those weeks ago.

Danny picks the phone right back up to text Spencer, thinking that this is a loophole because he only told her not to call Spencer. But she lays it right back down, she doesn't want to risk it. She doesn't want to risk his life.

Her mind is running wild and she tries to distract herself with the book, but the lines and letters jumble together and she ends up pacing the floor.

Why does he still want her? Did he really need to finish what he started? Why can't he just move on? But Danny cringes at herself for thinking that. If he's as sadistic as she thinks he is, 'moving on' would mean finding another victim.

That's the only positive about the situation. At least she can count on him have a fixation on her and not some other vulnerable girl.

The phone rings loudly in the silence and jumps Danny out of her skin. Her skin crawls at the same sequence of numbers. She tries not to think about that day, instead she answers the call. She needs to be brave for Spencer.

"Meet me at the college. Your favorite classroom," he cuts off just as fast. Danny notes the fact that he has been stalking her.

She grabs her coat. And puts a kitchen knife in her pocket.

•••

"Reid what have you got?" Hotch comes into the room from the crime scene.

Two girls were murdered. Both with dark hair, Latina heritage, raped and strangled by the neck. Morgan confirmed that the ME report stated the cause of death was asphyxiation.

"The male has to be trying to taunt us. The bodies are positioned," he trails off. Spencer gets a nagging in the back of his mind that these murders seem similar, but his eidetic memory doesn't know of any killings done before like this. He turns back to Hotch.

"I see what you mean," Hotch nods at the positions of the bodies. Morgan, Rossi and Prentiss walk in, JJ still with the press.

"This is a power play for him. The sexual act is in the strangulation," Morgan comments.

"He likes to hold them down. Face down," Prentiss agrees.

David nods, "he does seem to be a classic sadist. But why these victims? Normally they don't cross racial lines, but this man is white, mid thirties."

"There's a note too," Hotch places the note down in the evidence bag. It's written in Spanish. Spencer remembers how Danny knows a little Spanish.

"I can translate," Prentiss walks over.

"You can't hide her for long. I'm sure this crime will get her alone," she narrates.

"That makes no sense," Morgan argues.

"Reid look at the note, we will give the profile," Hotch stalks off.

Spencer sits to turn the note over and over in his head. The word 'crime' is too general for a murderer to use. A sadistic killer would revel in using descriptions. This note is only meant to taunt. These victims are a surrogate for the one he's really after. These girls are just a means to an end, a distraction. Spencer stops pacing.

He needs to see the bodies. The team is still giving the profile so he texts Morgan to tell him he's going to the morgue, waking out with his jacket and gun. 

 

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