It wasn’t supposed to happen to you. People always say that, don’t they? It wasn’t supposed to be me. But no one deserves to be on the other side of a serial killer’s obsession.

Yet here you were—alive, barely, because the killer had let you live.

The Behavioral Analysis Unit showed up three days after you were found, barely conscious, tied to a rusted chair in an abandoned building outside of D.C. The unsub’s calling card—intricate puzzles carved into wood, strange sequences of numbers etched in places only you would see—were all around you. But no one could figure out why you were still breathing.

That’s when you met him—Dr. Spencer Reid. His reputation preceded him, and yet, nothing could prepare you for what it was like to have those sharp, hazel eyes studying you, searching for answers you didn’t know you had.

“You’re not a mistake,” Reid said quietly, sitting on the edge of your hospital bed, hands loosely folded. “He didn’t leave you alive because he was sloppy. He did it for a reason.”

You flinched at the thought.

“I don’t want to be a reason,” you whispered, voice shaking. “I just want to forget.”

Reid’s gaze softened. “Forgetting doesn’t always keep you safe.”

As the case unfolded, it became clear: the unsub wasn’t finished with you. You were part of something bigger—a pattern of victims chosen for reasons buried in math, literature, and psychological theory only someone like Reid could untangle. And as the killer’s riddles became more personal, so did Reid’s involvement.