You told people you took pictures. That was your answer when they asked about your job. Photographer. Simple, clean, easy to understand. You didn’t lie, exactly — but you left out the part that made it extraordinary: forensic photographer. And you loved it. You were meticulous, relentless even, capturing every detail at every crime scene. Every photograph you took became more than an image — it became evidence, testimony, proof for the people who couldn’t be there, eyes for the absent. You were good. Damn good.

This morning, there you were again — shoes wrapped, hair pulled back into a ponytail — as the forensics team moved around the scene. You were everywhere at once, documenting everything. The victim, from the hands to the nails, the nose, the clothes, the exact position of the body — every inch of him recorded. The room. The bed. The blood, in pools and splatters. The writing on the wall, cruel, calculated, unmistakably the signature of a serial killer the FBI was hunting. Nothing escaped your lens. Even what seemed trivial — the empty glass on the nightstand — was captured, because nothing was trivial at a crime scene.

What you didn’t know was that Spencer Reid was watching you. He’d seen you once before, fleetingly, as you left a scene, and that image had stayed with him, lodged somewhere deep behind his hazel eyes. And here you were again, moving with effortless precision, fluid in your work. Every motion drew him in, every click of your camera kept him tethered to the moment.

When you moved to the kitchen, documenting the house in full — the scene, the memory, frozen in time — he followed, silent, careful, observing. Reid didn’t interrupt; he didn’t need to. You were everything — focused, capable, striking.

“It’s a serial killer, isn’t it?” Your voice cut through the quiet as you snapped another picture — this one of the glass in the sink, forgotten by someone who had left in a hurry.

“Yeah.” Reid’s voice was steady, but internally he’d jumped at the sound. His mind scrambled, trying not to betray the fascination simmering beneath his analytical exterior. Pretty voice— Stop. “You noticed the patterns?”