NINE SAFER WITH ME

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WINTER PARK POLICE STATION
The Next Day

"Hotch, you're going to want to see these," Spencer spoke in a rush as he entered the room, pinning the printed screenshots Tensley had set them of her messages with Wren. Everyone crowded around him as he stepped away from the images, important phrases underlined in red. "Tensley sent these to me last night, she said Wren wanted to take care of her while Theodore was in custody, but she refused and opted to stay with her friend."

"If she wanted Tensley, that'll give her motive," Derek commented, a hand rubbing his chin as he looked over the images along with everyone else. "We already know she was having fertility issues, taking someone else's kid cuts out the middle man."

"But why Tensley?" Hotchner asked, his gaze cutting as he reads over the messages, "And why take out her own husband if the intent was to have children together? This makes no sense. Morgan, JJ, when you spoke to her, did she mention anything about children? Or about Tensley specifically?"

The man nodded, "Yeah, said the kid was like family to her. And that Jameson loved her like she was his own. Clearly, she had some sort of connection to Miss Baldwin whether Tensley wanted it or not."

"She says here you'll be safer with me," Spencer reads off one of the messages, following the line with his finger as he turns to speak to the group, "Safe from what? Look at this most recent one, Heard Teddy got out, you're making a mistake. She seems so sure that he did it, but these messages aren't exactly those of a warm and fuzzy mother figure looking to take care of an orphan."

"Should we try speaking to Wren again?" Emily Prentiss asks, speaking up for the first time that afternoon, "Maybe JJ and I could go, woman to woman type thing. She might be more relaxed, especially because she knows JJ is a mother. We might be able to get more out of her if it's us two."

"If we speak to her again too soon she might get suspicious," Hotch hummed, looking as though he were searching his brain for some kind of solution, "I want to bring Wren in with Tensley, see how she acts around her. We can say Tensley wanted to see her, but Theodore didn't want it unsupervised."

Derek raised an eyebrow, "You want to leave a fifteen-year-old with a potential murderer?"

"We left her with Teddy," JJ supplied, a hesitant look on her face. The room went silent for a moment and they realized she was technically right even though Theodore's name was getting clearer and clearer the more digging they did.

Spencer surveyed the expressions of his team, wondering if they would agree with the idea of beginning to pin this on Wren. Something about the woman, especially with those messages now up on the bulletin board was simply off. He knew they couldn't clear Teddy yet, but they were getting close and that was all that mattered. The man wasn't sure why he wanted Theodore to be innocent so badly, maybe it was their history, but maybe it was something else Spencer didn't quite understand yet, but there were very few things he didn't understand so that was unlikely.

"Spence," JJ nudged him gently, asking, "Do you think you can get Tensley to ask Wren to come down to the station?"

He grounded himself in his surroundings once more, looking around at his team as he nodded, "Yeah, I'll get Teddy -- Theodore, sorry, to come as well just in case, but let's not tell Wren he'll be there, it might make her more careful or reserved."

"We don't care if you call him Teddy, you know," Derek chuckled, "We know you two were friends, it's fine."

"I'd like to distance myself from our friendship while he's still technically a murder suspect even if we think he's innocent, it's the professional thing to do," Spencer commented, his voice tense and uncaring. It wasn't a lie, it was hard to look at Theodore chained to the table in an interrogation room and think of him as the teenage boy who had once defended Spencer from boys twice his size like it was nothing. There was no way those two were the same person, something about Theodore was different now. The traces of the carefree boy were still there, but there was something darker in his eyes now. Spencer shook his head absentmindedly to himself as if he were trying to shake the thoughts themselves out of his mind.

JJ looked at him with a raised eyebrow before shrugging and saying, "Fair enough. All right, so we're going to get Tensley to contact Wren, do we want to clear this with Theodore first? He is her legal guardian still, so we probably should."

"I'll call him," Spencer nodded, leaving the room to pull out his phone. The dial tone met his ears as he tapped his foot impatiently on the floor. He almost thought that Teddy wasn't going to pick up, but sure enough, the call was answered.

"Hello? Spence?" he could hear Teddy's voice and he was taken aback at the nickname but tried not to let it show in his voice. He had never been good at phone calls.

"Te-- Theodore, I don't really know how to explain this, but we think if Wren is the one setting you up it's because of your niece. We have some messages we can show you, but the reason I'm calling is because we want to use Tensley to get Wren down to the station and see what information we can get from her if Tensley is the one asking," Spencer tried to explain as briefly as possible, "We'll have you in the building, but not in the room, we don't want Wren knowing you're there in case there's something she doesn't want to say in front of you."

The other line was silent for so long Spencer wondered if he had hung up, but he could still hear Theodore's quiet breathing. After a moment he asked, "You're not saying... you, you think Wren killed Jameson? My Wren? One of my best friends since high school?"

"She tried to put you in jail for her husband's murder, Theodore, it's not out of the realm of possibility here," the man sighed, "What I need to know is are you okay putting Tensley in a room with Wren? We'll be watching the entire time and she won't hurt her if she wants Tensley to trust her."

It was quiet once more, but a heavy sigh could be heard from the other end, and finally, "As long as I can watch too. If you really think Wren could have done this, I'm not taking my eyes off of her while she's with my niece."

"We can do that," Spencer nodded before asking, "How soon can you get here?"