White Rabbit - A Criminal Minds Fic

Nine

Reid had taken part in a similar conversation the previous night after Agent Hotchner had left. Alice had taken herself off for a bath, but not before making Spencer promise that he would retrieve his gun from his bag and wear it.

Ellen Manchester had look horrified at the thought having a gun in the house, she obviously hadn't clocked Aaron's. Alice had laughed at her sisters expression.

"All these years I wanted one and you wouldn't let me. Now, you don't got a choice but have one in the house."

"I just didn't think that anything could be that bad that you'd need one. You wouldn't tell me why you wanted one so badly."

Alice sighed and shook her head, tired of this conversation already. She'd had the argument a gazillion times. She wanted a gun for protection but she couldn't tell them why she needed protection. But the FBI Agent had one, so now her sister had no choice. She could tell that Ellen was still disbelieving that she could be involved in something so bad that FBI had now taken an interest. Alice could barely believe it herself. Those four and a half years seemed like a dream, a nightmare. A nightmare she'd woken up from but could feel it creeping into her day to day life. She'd left the other three adults to it and had gone for a bath, staying in the main house rather than going back to her own apartment.

Part of her knew worries about them finding her were for nothing. If they'd really wanted to, she was sure they could have done it by now. But.... But maybe they were waiting for the right moment. He had told her over and over again that she was the chosen was, the special one. She was going to lead when he could no longer. He'd seen something in her, a spark that he recognised, he wanted to nurture her and show her the way.

She shuddered in the water, shaking the images from her head and sinking down under the water.

..

"So what you're saying is that my sister in law was part of some kind of doomsday cult?" Robert had said to Spencer.

Spencer sipped his coffee which he'd finally been given. "We're not sure. And I'm not sure we'd use the term Doomsday either."

He'd been unsure how much to reveal to Robert and Ellen, as soon as Alice had left the room they'd started to ask questions. When it came down to it, he didn't want to press his own speculations onto them. Whatever story it was, it was Alices to tell. He's simply given them the same information about Lewis and Marnie Goldstein that would be available online in the public domain. Enough newspaper articles had been written about their disappearance, Marnies parents had made sure of that. Even though she was elder of the pair and both were no longer minors, her parents had insisted that there was something suspicious about their disappearance, rueing the day that they ever let Lewis into their home and blaming him for leading their daughter astray.

"What term would you use then? From what I'm piecing together here, Alice seems to have been part of a cult, led by a leader that claims to be from the future and is predicting an apocalypse of sorts. Oh, and they appear to be been killing off their members. My baby sister, part of a cult!" Ellen had summed everything up quite aptly and was pacing the kitchen.

"Stop talking about me please." Alice appeared at the kitchen door, wrapped only in a towel, her hair dripping wet.

"Ally, we're talking about the situation." Robert said soothingly.

"And the situation involves me. So stop. Please. I'll tell the Agents everything tomorrow so I'm sure you'll both have your curiosity sated then. I'm going back to my apartment. Dr Reid, I have a pull out couch in my room. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the man with gun was sleeping in there. "

"Alright. There's a car picking us up at eight am." Spencer stood and followed Alice through a door to the side of the back entrance. It led to a ulitility area with a staircase leading up from it and another exit. He averted his eyes as he followed her up the stairs, wishing she was wearing something other than a towel.