The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct (28 page)

The same thing Locke wanted from me.

Suddenly, I was back at the safe house. Dean was lying unconscious on the floor. Michael had been shot. And Locke wanted—desperately, madly—for me to take the knife. She’d
wanted me to be like her. She’d wanted me to be
hers
. At least she’d seen me as a person. To Daniel Redding, Dean was a thing. A marvelous creation, purely his, body and
soul.

Maybe Redding was looking to re-create that with our UNSUB. Or maybe this whole case had just been a way to remind his wayward son who was in charge, to force Dean to come and see him,
face-to-face.

“We should adjust the lower end of the age range for our UNSUB.” I sounded calm, the way I always did when this part of my brain took over, converting even the most horrifying and
personal situations into a puzzle to be solved. “To seventeen.”

I didn’t explain my reasoning, but I saw the second that the meaning behind those words registered to Dean.
He
was seventeen.

Briggs stared at me for a few seconds. “What are you thinking?”

He could have told me that this wasn’t
our
UNSUB. He hadn’t. I waited for Agent Sterling to object. She didn’t.

This was the heat of the battle. We weren’t dealing with a copycat. We were dealing with the man who had held Agent Sterling captive, tortured her. Redding was playing mind games with her
from behind bars.

He was playing with Dean.

I didn’t dwell on it, or think about how Agent Sterling would feel about all this a day from now, or a week, or a month. I turned back to Agent Briggs and answered his question.

“Our UNSUB and Redding aren’t partners,” I said. “Men like Daniel Redding don’t have
partners
. They don’t think they have
equals
.” I
searched for the right word. “The person we’re looking for isn’t a partner,” I said finally. “It’s an apprentice.”

T
he next morning, Agent Briggs brought Lia a DVD. “Recordings of every meeting we’ve had with Redding since this case started,”
he told her. “They’re all yours.”

Lia snatched the DVDs before Briggs could rethink the offer. Beside him, Sterling cleared her throat. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “The director has approved
your involvement on this case, but you’re allowed to say no.”

“You don’t want us to.” Michael took in the way she was standing, the look on her face. “You hate that you’re even asking, but you hope to God we say
yes.”

“I’m in.” Lia cut Michael off before he could read the agent any further. “So is Cassie, and so is Sloane.”

Sloane and I didn’t contradict her.

“I don’t have anything better to do,” Michael offered. His tone was casual, but his eyes were glittering with the same emotion I’d seen in him when he’d pulled Dean
off of Christopher Simms. No one played games with the few people in this world he cared about.

“Lia, Michael, and Cassie, you’ll be in the media room, going over these interviews with a fine-tooth comb.” Briggs issued orders curtly and efficiently. “Redding thinks
he has the advantage here. That changes
today
.”

Agent Sterling focused her attention on Dean. “If you’re up for it,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been when she’d spoken to the rest of us, “Briggs is
going to see your father.”

Dean didn’t say anything. He just pulled on a lightweight coat over his battered white T-shirt and turned toward the door.

Sterling turned to Briggs. “I guess that means he’s up for it.”

Asking Dean to do this had hurt her, but doing nothing, doing anything less than
everything she could
to put an end to this would have hurt her more. Agent Sterling wasn’t wearing
makeup. Her shirt wasn’t tucked in. There was an energy to her, a raw determination that told me that I was looking at the Veronica Sterling that Dean had known.

The one who reminded Agent Sterling of me.

“You okay here?” Briggs asked her.

“You know me.” Sterling smiled—all lips, no teeth. “I always land on my feet.”

Briggs watched her for a beat, then followed Dean to the door.

“What about me?” Sloane called after him.

Agent Sterling was the one who answered. “How are you with geography?”

Sloane disappeared to the basement with a handful of maps to work up a geographical profile of Redding’s partner. The rest of us sequestered ourselves away in the media
room. Michael and I sat at opposite ends of the couch. Lia popped the DVD Briggs had given her into the player and plopped down between us, one leg pulled to her chest and the other stretched out.
Agent Sterling took up a spot in the doorway, watching us watch the DVD as it began to play.

Daniel Redding was seated on one side of a long table. His hands were cuffed together and chained to the table, but from his posture, you’d have thought he was at a job interview. A door
to his left opened and Agent Briggs came in, carrying a thin file. He sat down opposite Redding.

“Agent Briggs.” There was something musical about the monster’s voice, but it was his eyes that drew your attention: dark, soulful eyes, with the faintest hint of wrinkles at
the corners. “To what do I owe this most inestimable pleasure?”

“We need to talk.” Briggs was all business. He didn’t rush the words. He didn’t drag them out. “I understand that you’ve been getting an unusual amount of
mail as of late.”

Redding smiled. The expression looked self-effacing, almost boyish. “I’m an unusual man.”

“The prison screens and catalogs your mail, but they don’t keep copies of the letters.”

“Rather sloppy of them,” Redding opined. His hands were folded on the table. He leaned forward, just a fraction of an inch. “One can never be too careful about
one’s…
records
.”

Something in the way he said
records
made me think that he was really talking about something else—something targeted to get under Agent Briggs’s skin.

Did Redding keep records of the women he’d killed?

Briggs didn’t rise to the bait. “Have you received any letters you would classify as fan mail?” he asked, his voice taking on a slight mocking tone, like Daniel Redding was a
member of some long-forgotten boy band and not a restless predator locked in a cage.

“Why, Agent Briggs, I do believe you need something.” Redding feigned surprise, but the hum of pleasure in his voice was real. “Now, why would a man like you be interested in
the letters received by a man like me? Why would you want to know that women write to tell me that they
love me
, that every day, my legacy lives on, that the lonely and the heartsick and the
deliciously, darkly lost sheep of this world pour their souls into ink on the page, begging me, beckoning me toward them, so desperate are they for a shepherd.”

Redding’s voice was silky, his delivery of those words impossible to ignore.

“Why I’m asking these questions doesn’t matter. What matters is that I can make your life significantly less pleasant if you don’t answer them. How would you feel about a
transfer? I hear there are some federal facilities that are
lovely
this time of year.”

“Now, now, Agent Briggs. There’s no need to resort to threats. I think we both know that given even the slightest opportunity, you’d throw me in the deepest, darkest hole you
could find. The fact that you haven’t already means that you can’t.” Redding leaned forward, his eyes on Briggs’s. “I wonder—do you ever get tired of the things
you can’t do? Can’t catch every killer.” Redding’s voice took on a pouting tone, but his expression reminded me of a hawk, sharp-eyed and merciless, focused on one thing and
one thing alone. “Can’t keep a wife. Can’t keep from coming back here. Can’t get me out of your mind.”

“I’m not here to play games with you, Redding. If you can’t give me something, I have no reason to stay.” Briggs leaned forward. “Maybe you’d prefer I
left,” he said, his voice as low and silky as Redding’s.

“Go ahead,” Redding replied. “Leave. I think we both know that you’re not my type. Now the delectable Agent Sterling, on the other hand…”

A muscle in Briggs’s neck visibly tensed, but he didn’t snap. Instead, he pulled a photograph out of the file folder and laid it on the table. He pushed the photo forward, keeping it
just out of Redding’s reach.

“Well,” Redding said, mesmerized, “this is an interesting turn of events.”

He reached for the photograph and Briggs pulled it back. He placed it back in the folder and stood up. It took me a moment to realize what had just happened. This interview had been taped
shortly after the first victim had turned up dead. I was willing to bet a lot of money that Briggs had just showed Redding a photograph of Emerson’s body.

I could see in the killer’s eyes that he wouldn’t be able to tamp down the desire to see it again.

“They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Redding’s gaze was no longer on Briggs’s face. It was on the folder. “Where was she found?”

Briggs took his time answering the question, but ultimately doled out the answer—just enough to whet Redding’s appetite for more. “Colonial University. The president’s
front lawn.”

Redding snorted. “Showy,” he said. “Sloppy.”

His eyes were still on the folder. He wanted to see the picture. He wanted to study it.

“Tell me what I want to know,” Briggs said evenly, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Briggs was counting on Redding’s narcissism. He assumed the man would want to know everything he could about this imitator. What Briggs didn’t know—and what we knew
now—was that Redding wasn’t criticizing the work of an imitator. He wasn’t looking to see his infamy reflected in this girl’s body.

He was a teacher, evaluating the performance of a prize pupil.

“I’m not interested in anything you have to say.” Redding managed to pull his gaze from the folder. He leaned back in his metal chair, as far as he could with his wrists
chained to the table. “But it’s possible that I have some information that could be relevant to you.”

“Prove it.” Briggs threw down the challenge—to no avail.

“I want to talk to my son,” the killer said flatly. “You’ve kept him from me for five years. What reason could I possibly have to help you?”

“Basic human decency?” Briggs suggested dryly. “If there were anything human or decent in you, maybe your son would want to see you.”

“‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’” Redding responded in a singsong tone. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar….’”

Briggs finished the quote for him. “‘But never doubt I love.’ Shakespeare.” He stood, gathering his things and slamming the door on the conversation. “You’re
not capable of loving anyone but yourself.”

“And you’re not capable of letting this go.” Redding smiled again, equal parts serene and smug. “You want me to talk? I’ll talk. I’ll tell you who’s
been writing to me, and who’s been a very, very bad boy. I’ll lay out everything you want to know—but the only person I’m talking to is Dean.”

The screen went black. Redding and Briggs were gone, replaced a moment later by an eerily similar scene, except that this time, Dean was the one sitting opposite his father, and Briggs sat
adjacent to Dean.

“Dean.” Redding relished the word. “You’ve brought me a gift, Agent Briggs,” he said, never taking his eyes off his son. “Someday, I will return the
favor.”

Dean stared at a spot just over his father’s shoulder. “You wanted me here. I’m here. Now talk.”

Redding obliged. “You look like your mother,” he said, drinking in Dean’s features like a dying man in the desert. “Except for the eyes—those are mine.”

The way Redding said the word
mine
made my stomach roll.

“I didn’t come here to talk about my mother.”

“If she were here, she’d tell you to get your hair cut. Sit up straight. Smile every once in a while.”

Dean’s hair fell into his face, his eyes narrowed to slits beneath it. “There’s not much to smile about.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve lost the taste for life already, Dean. The boy I knew had so much
potential
.”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. He and Redding sat staring at each other. After a full minute of silence ticked by, Dean’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Tell me about the
letters.”

This was where Agent Sterling and I had come in the first time around. It was harder to watch the second time: Dean trying to get his father to part with some scrap of information, Daniel
Redding sparring with him verbally, bringing the topic back to Dean again and again.

“I want to know about you, Dean. What have those hands been doing the past five years? What sights have those eyes seen?”

You knew Briggs would come to see you as soon as the first body turned up. You knew that Dean would come if you refused to talk to anyone else. You planned this, step by step.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” On the screen, Dean’s voice was getting louder, more intense. “There’s nothing to talk about. Is that what you want to
hear? That these hands, these eyes—they’re
nothing
?”