The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct (16 page)

“You should have seen Dean when we got the call that the FBI had recovered Mackenzie McBride,” I said, thinking of
that
Dean. Our Dean. “He didn’t just smile. He
beamed. Did you know he has dimples?”

Agent Sterling didn’t reply.

“Dean was never going to have a normal childhood.” I wasn’t sure why it felt so important to make her understand that. “There are things you don’t come back from.
Normal’s not an option, for any of us.” I thought of what Sloane had said. “If we’d had normal childhoods, we wouldn’t be Naturals.”

Agent Sterling finally turned to look at me. “Are we talking about Dean’s father or your mother?” She let that question sink in. “I’ve read your file,
Cassie.”

“I’m Cassie now?” I asked. She wrinkled her forehead. I elaborated. “You’ve called me Cassandra since you showed up.”

“Do you want me to keep calling you by your full name?”

“No.” I paused. “But you want to keep calling me by it. You don’t like nicknames. They bring you closer to people.”

Sterling sucked in a breath. “You’re going to have to learn to stop that,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“Most people don’t like being profiled. Some things are better left unsaid.” She paused. “Where were you last night?”

My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. The question came out of nowhere.

I played dumb. “What do you mean?” She’d threatened the program when all Sloane had done was make use of the basement crime sets. If she knew what Lia, Michael, and I had done
the night before, there was no telling what she might do.

“You think that I dislike you.” Sterling was using her profiler voice, getting into my head. “You see me as the enemy, but I am not your enemy, Cassie.”

“You have a problem with this program.” I paused. “I don’t know why you even took this job. You have a problem with what Briggs is doing here, and you have a problem with
me.”

I expected her to deny it. She surprised me. “My problem with you,” she said, enunciating each word, “is that you don’t do what you’re told. All the instincts in
the world are worthless if you can’t work within the system. Briggs never understood that, and neither do you.”

“You’re talking about what happened last summer.” I didn’t want to be having this conversation, but there was no way out. I couldn’t get out of the car. I
couldn’t get away from her assessing stare. “I get it. Dean got hurt. Michael got hurt. Because of me.”

“Where were you last night?” Agent Sterling asked again. I didn’t answer her. “Last summer, you and your friends hacked a secured drive and read through the case files
for no reason, as far as I can tell, other than the fact that you were bored. Even after Briggs warned you to back off, you had no intention of doing it. Eventually, the killer made contact.”
She didn’t give me time to recover from that brutal recitation of events. “You wanted in on the case. Your Agent Locke obliged.”

“So it’s my fault,” I said, angry, trying not to cry, terrified that she was right. “The people Locke killed, just to send me their hair in boxes. The girl she kidnapped.
The fact that she shot Michael. That’s all on me.”

“No.” Sterling’s voice was low and uncompromising. “None of that was your fault, Cassie, but for the rest of your life, you will wonder if it was. It will keep you up
late at night. It will haunt you. It will never leave. I know that sometimes you wonder if I look at you and see your aunt, but that’s not it. Dean’s not his father. I’m not mine.
If I thought you were anything like the woman who called herself Lacey Locke, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Then why are you having this conversation with
me
?” I asked. “You say that I don’t know how to work within the system, but don’t try to tell me that the
others do. Lia? Michael? Even Sloane. You don’t look at them the way you look at me.”

“Because they’re not me.” Agent Sterling’s words seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the car. “I didn’t read your file and see your aunt, Cassie.” She
clamped her jaw shut. By the time she finally continued, I’d almost convinced myself that I’d misheard her. “When you break the rules, when you start telling yourself that the end
justifies the means, people get hurt. Protocol saves lives.” She ran a hand over the back of her neck. Midday, with no air-conditioning, the temperature in the car was approaching
stifling.

“You want to know why you, in particular, concern me, Cassie? You’re the one who really feels things. Michael, Lia, Dean—they learned very early in life to shut down their
emotions like
that
. They’re not used to letting people in. They won’t feel the need to put their own necks on the line
every single time
. Sloane cares, but she deals in
facts, not emotions. But you? You won’t ever be able to stop caring. For you, it will always be about the victims and their families. It will always be personal.”

I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. But then I thought of Mackenzie McBride, and I knew that Agent Sterling was right. Every case I worked would be personal. I would always want justice for
the victims. I would do whatever it took to save just one life, the way that I wished that someone had saved my mother’s.

“I’m glad you were able to be here for Dean today, Cassie. He needs someone, especially now—but if you’re serious about doing what we do, what
I
do, emotions are a
luxury you cannot afford. Guilt, anger, empathy, being willing to do
anything
to save a life—that’s a recipe for getting someone killed.”

At some point before she’d left the FBI, she’d lost someone. Because she’d gotten emotionally involved in a case. Because in the heat of battle, she’d broken the
rules.

“I need to know where you were last night.” She was like a broken record. “I’m giving you a chance to make a good decision here. I suggest you take it.”

Part of me wanted to tell her, but this wasn’t just my secret. It was also Michael’s and Lia’s.

“Briggs doesn’t know you snuck out. Neither does Judd.” Sterling let the implied threat hang in the air. “I’m betting you’ve never seen Judd really angry. I
have. I don’t recommend it.”

When I didn’t reply, Agent Sterling went silent. The temperature in the car was becoming unbearable. “You’re making a bad decision here, Cassie.” I said nothing, and her
eyes narrowed. “Just tell me this,” she said. “Is there anything I should know?”

I caught my bottom lip in my teeth and thought of Dean and the lengths he was going to, to get even the smallest bit of information out of his father.

“Emerson was involved with her professor,” I said finally. I owed it to Dean to share that information. “The one who was writing a book about Dean’s dad.”

Agent Sterling slipped off her jacket. Clearly, the heat was getting to her, too. “Thank you,” she said, turning in her seat to face me. “But listen and listen well: when I
told you to stay away from this case, I meant it. The next time you take so much as a step out of Quantico without my permission, I’ll have you fitted for an ankle tracker.”

I barely heard the threat. I didn’t reply. I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t even think them.

When Agent Sterling had removed her jacket, she’d dislodged her shirt slightly. It gapped in the front, giving me a view of the skin underneath. There was a scar just under her
collarbone.

A brand, in the shape of the letter
R
.

S
terling looked down. Her face absolutely expressionless, she righted her shirt. The scar was covered now, but I couldn’t stop staring.

Bind them. Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.

The entire time we’d been in the observation room, she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Daniel Redding.

“My team was investigating the case,” Sterling said calmly. “I got a little too close, and I got sloppy. Redding had me for two days before I escaped.”

“That’s how you know Dean.” I’d wondered how they’d developed a relationship based only on the fact that she’d arrested his father. But if she’d been
one of Redding’s victims…

“I’m not a victim,” Sterling said, following my line of thought so closely it was eerie. “I’m a survivor, and Dean is the reason that I survived.”

“Was this the case you were talking about before?” I couldn’t seem to find my voice. It came out cracked and hushed. “When you said that getting emotionally involved was
a recipe for getting someone killed, were you talking about someone Daniel Redding murdered?”

“No, Cassie, I wasn’t. And that’s the last question I’m going to answer about Daniel Redding, my past, or the brand on my chest. Are we clear on that?”
Sterling’s voice was so even, so utterly matter-of-fact, that I couldn’t do anything but nod.

The door to the prison opened, and Briggs and Dean exited. They were only accompanied by one guard, the older one. I watched as the guard handed something to Agent Briggs—a file. Beside
them, Dean stood perfectly, unnaturally still. His shoulders were hunched. His head was down. His arms hung listlessly by his sides.

“Don’t ask Dean about any of this.” Agent Sterling issued those words as a command, desperate and fierce. “Don’t even tell him you saw the brand.”

“I won’t. Ask him. I won’t ask him anything.” I struggled to form sentences and fell silent as Dean and Briggs walked toward the car. Dean opened the car door and climbed
in. He shut the door, but didn’t look at me. I forced myself not to reach for him. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the seat in front of me.

Briggs handed the file to Agent Sterling, slapping it down into her hand. “Visitor logs,” he said. “Redding wasn’t supposed to
have
visitors. The warden is out of
his mind. I wouldn’t even bet on the logs being complete.”

Agent Sterling flipped open the file. She ran down the list of names. “Conjugal visits?” she asked.

Briggs spat out the answer. “Several.”

“You think our UNSUB is on this list?” Sterling asked.

“That would make sense,” Briggs replied tersely. “It would make our lives easy, so, no, Ronnie, I don’t think our UNSUB is on that list, because I don’t think this
is going to make sense. It’s not going to be easy. We’re just not that lucky.”

I expected Sterling to snap back at him, but instead, she reached out and touched his forearm lightly with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t let him get to you,” she said
quietly. Briggs relaxed slightly under her touch. “If you let him in,” she continued, “if you let him under your skin, he wins.”

“This is stupid.” Dean shook his head, his upper lip curling in disgust. “We knew what would happen if I came here. He promised he’d talk. Well, he talked, and now we
have no way of knowing how much of what he said was true and how much is just him leading us around, like dogs on ropes.”

It shouldn’t have been me behind that glass,
I thought. It should have been Lia watching the interrogation. I didn’t care about the difference between active cases and cold
cases. I cared about
Dean
.

Agent Sterling turned around in her seat. I expected to see the gentleness with which she’d just reproved Briggs, but instead, her eyes were glittering, hard as diamonds, as she addressed
Dean. “Don’t,” she told him, jabbing a finger in his direction.

“Don’t what?” Dean shot back. I’d never heard him so angry.

“You really want to play this game with me?” Sterling asked him, her eyebrows nearly disappearing into her hairline. “You think I don’t know what it was like for you in
there? You think I don’t know what he said, what you’re thinking? I am telling you, Dean,
don’t
. Don’t go there.”

As Briggs drove back past the gate and off prison grounds, the three of them settled into a tense silence. I put my hand on the seat, palm up. Dean turned toward the window, his fingers curling
into fists.

I looked down at my hand, open and waiting, but couldn’t move it. I felt utterly out of place and useless. I’d accompanied them on this trip for Dean’s sake, but I didn’t
need to be a profiler to know that he didn’t want me here now. With a single conversation, his father had jammed a wedge between Dean and the rest of the world, cutting him off as effectively
as a blade severing a ruined limb. The unspoken closeness that had been building between Dean and me was a casualty of that blow—gone, as if it had never existed at all.

I’m in you, boy. In your blood, in your mind, in every breath you take.

In the front seat, Briggs pulled out his cell phone. Seconds after he dialed the number, he was barking out orders. “Redding gave us a location on the professor’s writing cabin.
Catoctin.” Briggs paused. “No, I don’t know whose name the deed to the cabin is under. Try the professor’s parents, ex-wife, college roommates.…Try everyone and their
damned dog, but find it.”

Briggs ended the call and tossed his phone down. Sterling caught it. “If I remember correctly,” she said dryly, “throwing phones was more my area than yours.”

Agent Sterling was the one who had been tortured by Daniel Redding, but she was the only one of the three of them holding it together in the wake of this visit.

“Did Redding say anything about the professor being involved with Emerson Cole?” Agent Sterling’s question snapped both Dean and Briggs out of it, if only for a second.