The Naturals (15 page)

You’re the one who does the punishing now
.

But it’s never enough. The neighbor’s dog. The whores. Even the palm reader wasn’t enough. You open the bathroom cabinet. One by one, you run your hands over each of the tubes of lipstick, remember each of the girls.

It’s calming
.

Soothing
.

Exciting
.

You stop when you get to the oldest tube. The first. You know what you want. What you need. You’ve always known.

All that’s left to do now is take it
.

W
hen I’d found out about Dean’s dad, I’d taken off running, but now that my mom’s photograph was staring up at me from a sea of murder victims, all I could do was sit there.

“Maybe this was a bad idea.” Coming from Michael, those words sounded completely alien.

“No,” I said. “You wanted to distract me. I’m distracted.”

“The likelihood that this UNSUB is the one who attacked your mother is extremely low.” Sloane spoke hesitantly, like she thought one more word—or one more statistic—might set me off. “This killer abducts his victims and kills them at a separate location, leaving little to no physical evidence at the site of abduction. There’s some indication that at least two of the victims may have been drugged. The women have relatively few defensive wounds, indicating that they’re likely restrained before the knife comes into play.”

Sloane was talking about this killer’s MO. With her gift, that was as far as she could go. She couldn’t see underneath it, couldn’t imagine how a killer might have refined his technique over the span of five years.

“When does Agent Briggs get back?” I asked.

“He’s never going to let you work on this,” Michael told me.

“Is that your way of telling me that you don’t want him to know we hacked a stolen jump drive?” I shot back.

Michael snorted. “Personally, I wouldn’t mind taking out an ad in the paper or hiring a skywriter to announce that he and Locke were outsmarted by three bored teenagers.”

I could think of a lot of words to describe my life right now;
boring
wasn’t one of them.

“Briggs is nothing if not predictable, Cassie. His job is proving that we can solve cold cases, not dragging us along on active ones. He’s probably lucky his bosses didn’t fire him when they figured out what he was doing with Dean. Even if this case does have something to do with your mother’s, he’ll never let you work on it.”

I turned to Sloane for a second opinion.

“Two hours and fifty-six minutes,” she said. “Briggs was due back in town today, but he’ll need to settle things at the office and grab a change of clothes and a shower before coming in.”

That meant I had two hours and fifty-six minutes to
decide how to broach this case to Agent Briggs—or better yet, Agent Locke.

— — —

The good thing about being in cahoots with an emotion reader was that Michael could tell that I wanted to be left alone, and he obliged. Better yet, he took Sloane—and the files—with him.

If he hadn’t, I probably would still have been sitting there, staring at the crime-scene photos and wondering if my mom had died without a face. Instead, I was lying on my bed, staring at the door and trying to think of something—
anything
—I could offer the FBI to make them want me on this case.

Two hours and forty-two minutes later, someone knocked on my door. I thought it might be Agent Briggs, back fourteen minutes earlier than Sloane had predicted.

But it wasn’t.

“Dean?”

He hadn’t ever sought me out
before
he’d told me that we weren’t partners, weren’t friends, weren’t anything. I couldn’t imagine why he’d come looking for me voluntarily now.

“Can I come in?”

There was something about the way he was standing there that told me he was expecting me to say no. Maybe I should have. Instead, I nodded, not trusting my voice.

He came in and shut the door behind him. “Lia eavesdrops,” he explained, gesturing toward the closed door.

I shrugged and waited for him to say something he wouldn’t want overheard.

“I’m sorry.” He managed two words, paused, and then pushed out two more. “About before.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.” There was no law saying he had to trust me. Outside of Locke’s lessons, we’d barely spent any time together. He hadn’t
chosen
to kiss me.

“Lia told me about the files you and Michael and Sloane found.”

The sudden change of subject took me by surprise. “How does Lia even know about that?”

Dean shrugged. “She eavesdrops.”

And since I wasn’t exactly Lia’s favorite person right now, she had no reason whatsoever to keep her mouth closed about whatever it was that she’d overheard.

“So, what?” I asked Dean. “We’re even now? I found out about your dad and Lia told you that I think the UNSUB Briggs and Locke are after might be the one who killed my mom and now everything’s okay?”

Dean sat down on Sloane’s bed and faced me. “Nothing’s okay.”

Why was it that I’d managed to hold on to my cool with Michael and Sloane, but now that Dean was here, I could feel myself starting to slip?

“Sloane said that she thinks it’s highly unlikely that this killer is the same one who took my mother,” I said, looking
down at my lap and trying not to cry. “It’s been five years. The MO is different. I don’t even know if the signature is the same, because they never found my mother’s body.”

Dean leaned forward and angled his head up at mine. “Some killers go for years without being caught, and their MOs change as time goes on. They learn. They evolve. They need
more
.”

Dean was telling me that I could be right, that the time frame didn’t preclude this being the same UNSUB, but I knew from his tone of voice that he wasn’t just talking about
this
UNSUB.

“How long was it before they caught him?” I asked softly. I didn’t specify who
him
was. I didn’t have to.

Dean met my gaze and held it. “Years.”

I wondered if that one word was more than he’d told anyone else about his father.

I thought that maybe it was.

“My mother. I was the one who found …” I couldn’t say
her body
because there hadn’t been one. I swallowed hard, but I kept going, because it was important, somehow, to put it into words, to tell him.

“I’d gone to check out the crowd, eavesdrop, see if there was anything I could pick up on that might help my mom during the show. I was gone ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and when I got back, she was gone. The entire room had been tossed. The police say she fought. I
know
she fought—but
there was so much blood. I don’t know how many times he stabbed her, but when I got back to the room, I could smell it. The door was partway open. The light was off. I stepped into the room and I felt something wet underneath my feet. I said her name, I think. And then I reached for the light switch. I got the wall instead, and there was blood on the wall. It was on my hands, Dean, and then I turned on the light, and it was everywhere.”

Dean didn’t say anything, but he was there, so close that I could feel the heat of his body next to mine. He was listening, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he understood.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t usually talk about this, and I don’t let it do this to me, but I remember thinking that whoever hurt my mother hated her. He knew her, and he hated her, Dean. It was there, in the room, in the spatter, in the way she’d fought—it wasn’t random.
He knew her
, and how could I explain that to anyone? Who would have believed me? I was just some stupid kid, but now Briggs and Locke have this case, and their UNSUB is killing people who look like my mother and people who hold a similar job, and he’s doing it with a knife. And even though the victims are scattered geographically, even though none of them knew each other, it’s personal.” I paused. “I don’t think he’s killing them. I think he’s killing
her
again. And I’m not just some stupid kid anymore. I’m a profiler. A Natural. But even so—who’s going to believe me?”

Dean put a hand on my neck, the way he had the first time I’d crawled into a killer’s mind. “Nobody is going to believe you,” he said. “You’re too close to it.” He ran his thumb up and down the side of my neck. “But Briggs will believe me.”

Dean was the only person in this house who shared my ability. Michael and Sloane might have been skeptical about my theory, but Dean had instincts like mine. He’d know if I was crazy, or if there was something to this. “You’ll look at the case?” I asked him.

He nodded and dropped his hand from my neck, like he’d only just realized he was touching me.

I stood. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to get the file.”

“M
ichael, can I have the—” I burst into the kitchen, only to find that Michael and Sloane weren’t the only ones there. Judd was cooking, and Agent Briggs was standing with his back to me, a thin black briefcase by his feet.

“—the bacon,” I finished hastily.

Agent Briggs turned to face me. “And why does Michael have your bacon?” he asked.

As if this whole situation wasn’t awkward enough, Lia chose that moment to come sauntering into the room. “Yes, Cassie,” she said with a wicked grin, “tell us why Michael
has your bacon
.”

The way she said the phrase left very little question that she was using it as a euphemism.

“Lia,” Judd said, waving a spatula in her general direction, “that’s enough.” Then he turned to me. “Grub will be
ready soon. I expect you can hold out until then?”

“Yes,” I said. “No bacon needed.”

From behind Briggs’s back, Michael pantomimed smacking his palm into his forehead. Apparently, my attempts at subterfuge left something to be desired. I tried to make a quick exit, but Agent Briggs stopped me in my tracks.

“Cassie. A word.”

I glanced at Michael, wondering what—if anything—Briggs knew about what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to.

“Ambidextrous,” Sloane said suddenly.

“This should be good,” Lia murmured.

Sloane cleared her throat. “Agent Briggs asked for a word.
Ambidextrous
is a good one. Less than point-five percent of the words in the English language contain all five vowels.”

I was grateful for the distraction, but unfortunately, Briggs didn’t bite. “Cassie?”

“Sure.” I nodded and followed him out of the room. I wasn’t sure where we were heading at first, but after we passed the library, I realized we were going to the only room on the ground floor I hadn’t been in yet—Briggs’s study.

He opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I walked into the room, taking in my surroundings. The room was full of animals, lifeless and frozen in place.

Hunting trophies.

There was a grizzly bear, reared up on its back legs,
its mouth caught in a silent roar. On the other side of the room, a lifelike panther crouched, canines gleaming, while a mountain lion seemed to be on the prowl.

The most disturbing thing about this entire room—maybe this entire situation—was that I hadn’t pegged Agent Briggs for a hunter.

“They’re predators. Reminders of what my team deals with every time we go out in the world.”

There was something about the way Agent Briggs said those words that made me realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he knew what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to in his absence. He knew that
we
knew the exact details of the case that he and Agent Locke were working now.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“Judd told me.” Briggs crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk. He gestured for me to take a seat in a chair in front of him. “You know, Judd might fade into the background around here, but there’s not much that goes on in this house that he doesn’t know. Information gathering has always been a specialty of his.”

Keeping his eyes fixed on me, Briggs opened his briefcase and took out a file: all of the papers we’d printed out earlier. “I confiscated this from Michael. And this,” he added, holding up the USB drive, “from Sloane. Her laptop will be making a trip to our tech lab to ensure that all traces of data have been wiped from the hard drive.”

I hadn’t even had a chance to tell Agent Briggs my suspicions, and he was already shutting me down—and shutting me out.

Briggs ran one hand roughly over his chin, and I realized that he hadn’t shaved in at least a day.

“The case isn’t going well.” I paused. “Is it?”

“I need you to listen to what I’m saying, Cassandra.”

That was only the second time he’d called me by my full name since I’d told him I preferred Cassie.

“I was up front with you about what this program is and what it is not. The FBI isn’t about to authorize teenagers to dive into the middle of active cases.”

His choice of words was more revealing than he knew. The
FBI
had qualms about throwing teenagers into the thick of things. Briggs—personally—did not.

“So what you’re saying is that using the twelve-year-old son of a serial killer as your own personal encyclopedia of murderous minds was fine, but now that the program is official, we can’t even look at the files?”

“What I’m saying,” Briggs countered, “is that this UNSUB is dangerous. He’s local. And I have no intention of involving any of you.”

“Even if this case has something to do with my mother’s?”

Briggs paused. “You’re jumping to conclusions.” He didn’t ask me why I thought this case had something to do with
my mother’s. Now that I’d brought up the idea, he didn’t have to. “The occupations. The red hair. The knife. It isn’t enough.”

“The UNSUB dyed the latest victim’s hair red.” I didn’t bother asking if I was right about that, knowing in my gut that I was. “That’s above and beyond victim selection. It’s not just an MO anymore. It’s part of the UNSUB’s signature.”

Briggs crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not talking with you about this.”

And yet, he didn’t leave the room—and he didn’t stop listening.