The Naturals (16 page)

“Did the UNSUB dye her hair before or after he killed her?”

Briggs didn’t say a word. He was playing this by the book—but he didn’t tell me to stop talking, either.

“Dyeing the victim’s hair before the kill could be an attempt to create a more ideal target, one who claims to be psychic
and
has red hair. But dyeing her hair afterward …” I paused, just long enough to see that Briggs was listening, really listening, to every word. “Dyeing her hair after she’s already dead is a message.”

“And what message is that?” Agent Briggs asked sharply, like he was dismissing my words out of hand, when both of us knew that he was not.

“A message for you: hair color matters. The UNSUB
wants you to know that there’s a connection between the cases. He doesn’t trust you to come to that conclusion on your own, so he’s helping you get there.”

Briggs was silent for three or four loaded seconds.

“We can’t do this, Cassie. I understand your interest in the case. I understand your wanting to help, but whatever you think you’re doing, it ends now.”

I started to object and he held up a hand, silencing me.

“I’ll tell Locke to let you start working on cold cases. You’re obviously ready. But if you so much as sniff in the direction of
this
case again, there will be consequences, and I can guarantee that you will find them unpleasant.” He leaned forward, his posture unconsciously mimicking the roaring bear’s. “Have I made myself clear?”

I didn’t respond. If he was looking for a promise that I’d stay out of this, he was going to be disappointed.

“I already have a Natural profiler in this program.” Briggs looked me straight in the eye, his lips set in a thin, forbidding line. “I’d prefer to have two, but not at the risk of my job.”

There it was: the ultimate threat. If I pushed this, Briggs could send me home. Back to Nonna and the aunts and the uncles and the constant awareness that I would never be like them, like
anyone
outside of these walls.

“You’ve made yourself clear,” I said.

Briggs closed his briefcase. “Give it a couple of years, Cassie. They won’t keep you out of the field forever.”

He waited for my reply, but I said nothing. He stood up and walked to the door.

“If he’s dyeing their hair, the rules are changing,” I called after him, not bothering to turn around to see if he’d stopped to listen or not. “And that means that before things get better, they’re going to get a whole lot worse.”

You can’t remember the last time you felt this way. All of the others—all of them—were imitations. A copy of a copy of the thing you wanted most. But now—now you’re close.

A smile on your face, you pick up the scissors. The girl on the floor screams, the duct tape stretching tight across her face, but you ignore her. She’s not the real prize here, just a means to an end.

You grab her by the hair and jerk her head back. She struggles, and you tighten your grip and slam her head into the wall.

“Be still,” you whisper. You let her hair fall back down and then lift a single lock of it up
.

You raise the scissors. You cut the hair
.

And then you cut her
.

I
went to bed early. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours that my body physically
hurt
. I didn’t want to be awake anymore. That plan worked for a few hours, but just after midnight, I awoke to the sound of footsteps outside of my door and the dulcet melody of Sloane snoring next to me.

For a second, I thought I’d imagined the footsteps, but then I saw the hint of a shadow underneath the door.

There’s someone out there
.

Whoever it was just stood there. I crept toward the door, my hair stuck to my forehead with sweat and my heartbeat thudding in my ears.

I opened the door.

“Not going for a swim tonight?”

It took a second for Michael’s features to come together in the darkness, but I recognized his voice immediately.

“I don’t feel like swimming.” I lowered my voice, but not as much as I would have if my roommate’s nasal passages hadn’t been threatening to deafen me within the year.

“I got you something.” Michael took a step forward, until his face was mere inches from mine. Slowly, he held up an inch-thick file.

I looked at him, then at the file, then back at him.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“Oh yes,” he replied. “I did.”

“How?” Already, my fingers were itching to snatch the file from his hand.

“Briggs took Sloane’s computer. He didn’t take mine.”

I thought about Briggs’s warning, his threat to send me home. And then, slowly, I closed my fingers around the file. “You copied the files onto your laptop.”

Michael smiled. “You’re welcome.”

— — —

I tucked the file under my mattress. Maybe there was another clue in there. Maybe there wasn’t. First chance I got, I was showing it to Dean. Unfortunately, when I went to find him the next morning, he wasn’t alone.

“Miss me?” Agent Locke didn’t wait for me to answer her question. “Sit.”

I sat. So did Dean.

“Here.” Agent Locke held out a thick legal file, the accordion bottom stretched to capacity and then some.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Briggs thinks you’re ready to take the next step, Cassie.” Locke paused. “Is he right?”

“A cold case?” The file was faded—and much, much heavier than the one tucked under my mattress.

“A string of unsolved murders from the nineties,” Locke told us. “Home invasion; one bullet to the head, execution-style. The rest of the file contains all of the similar unsolved homicides that have taken place in that area since.”

Dean groaned. “No wonder the file’s so thick,” he muttered. “A third of all drug-related hits probably look just like this.”

“Then I guess it should keep the two of you busy.” Locke gave me a look that I took to mean Briggs had told her about our little discussion.

“I’ll check in later in the week. You two have a lot of reading to do, and I have a case to solve.”

She left the two of us alone. I opened my mouth to say something about the case file jammed under my mattress, but then I closed it again. Lia eavesdropped—and apparently, so did Judd.

“How would you feel about working on our cold case in the basement?” I asked. The
soundproof
basement. It took Dean a moment to catch on, but then he led the way down the stairs, closing the door firmly behind us. We walked the length of the basement, three-walled rooms lining either
side, like theater sets in want of a play.

Once I was sure we were alone, I started talking. “When I went to get the file yesterday, Briggs busted me. By the time I got back to my room, you were gone.”

“Lia may have mentioned that Briggs busted you,” Dean said. “You okay?”

“I told him my theory. I asked to work on the case. He said no.”

“You going to work on it anyway?” Dean paused in front of one of the outdoor sets: a partial park. I sat down on a park bench, and he leaned back against the bench’s arm.

“I have a copy of the file,” I said. “Will you look at it?”

He nodded. Five minutes later, he was elbow-deep in the case—and I had Locke’s cold case in my hands, ready to cover in case anyone came down to check on us.

“Sometimes victims are just substitutes,” Dean said after he’d read through the entire file. “I’m married, but I’d never get away with killing my own wife, so I kill hookers and pretend that they’re her. My kid died, and now every time I see a kid in a baseball cap, I have to make him mine.”

Dean had always used the word
I
to climb into killers’ heads, but now that I knew his background, hearing that word come out of his mouth gave me chills.

“Maybe the first time I killed someone, it wasn’t planned, but now the only time I ever really feel alive is when I’m feeling the life go out of someone else, someone like
her
.”

“You see it, too, don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’d bet money that this person is either reliving their first kill or fantasizing about a person they want to kill but can’t.”

“And if I told you there was a red-haired psychic attacked with a knife five years ago, and they never found the body?”

Dean paused. “Then I’d want to know everything there was to know about that case,” he said.

So did I.

The box is black. The tissue is white. And the present—the present is red. You lay it gingerly in the tissue. You put the lid on the box. You wash the scissors and use them to cut a long, black ribbon—silk.

Special
.

Just like The Girl is
.

No,
you think, picking up the present and stroking your gloved thumb along its edge. You don’t have to call her The Girl. Not anymore
.

You’ve seen her. You’ve watched her. You’re sure. No more imitations. No more copies. It’s time she got to know you, the way you knew her mother.

You put the card on top of the package. You scrawl her name on the outside, each letter a labor of love
.

C-A-S-S-I-E
.

W
anting to know more about my mother’s case and determining the best way to gain access to her file were two very different things. Twenty-four hours after Dean had confirmed my impression of our UNSUB, I was still empty-handed.

“Well, well, well …”

I heard Lia’s voice, but refused to turn around and watch her make an entrance. Instead, I focused on the grain of the kitchen table and the sandwich on my plate.

“Somebody got a package in the mail,” Lia singsonged. “I took the liberty of opening it for you, and voilà. A box within a box.” She sat down next to me and placed a rectangular gift box in front of her on the table. “A secret admirer, perhaps?” There was an envelope on top of the box, and Lia picked it up and dangled the card in front of me.

My name was written on the envelope, the letters evenly spaced with just a hint of curl to them, like the person who’d written them was torn between writing in cursive and writing in print.

“You really are
incredibly
popular, aren’t you?” Lia said. “It defies all logic. I assumed you were just the new shiny. In a program with so few students, it would be weirder if the new girl
didn’t
draw attention from the opposite sex. But neither Michael nor Dean would have a reason to mail you a package, so I can only infer that your, shall we say,
appeal
isn’t limited to people who live here.”

I tuned Lia out and looked at the box. It was matte black with a perfectly fitted lid. A black ribbon had been wrapped around the box twice, forming a cross shape on the front. In the center of the cross, the ribbon curled into a bow.

“Did I hear my name?” Michael sauntered over to join us. “Don’t you just hate it when you walk into the room and everyone’s talking about you?” His eyes landed on the gift, and the smile on his face turned plastic and sharp.

“Somebody’s not fond of competition,” Lia said.

“And somebody is a lot more vulnerable than she lets on,” Michael replied without missing a beat. “Your point?”

That shut Lia up—temporarily. I looked back down at the box and ran my finger along the edge of the ribbon.

Silk
.

“You didn’t send this?” I asked Michael, my voice catching in my throat.

“No,” Michael replied with a roll of his eyes. “I really didn’t.”

There wasn’t a person in my family who would have sent me a package wrapped up in silk, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who would want to send me a care package.

Michael hadn’t sent it.

Dean wasn’t the gift-giving type.

I turned to Lia. “You sent this.”

“Not true.” She stared at me for a second, then made a grab for the card.

“Don’t—” I started to say. My words fell on deaf ears. She plucked a plain white note card from the envelope and cleared her throat.

“From me, to you
.” Lia arched an eyebrow and tossed the card back on the table. “How romantic.”

A chill crawled up my spine. My breath felt hot in my lungs, but my hands were freezing cold. The package, the ribbon, the bow tied just so …

Something isn’t right
.

“Cassie?” Michael must have seen it on my face. He leaned toward me. I glanced at Lia, but for once, she had nothing to say. Slowly, I brought my hand up to the ribbon. I pulled, and it fell away into a graceful black heap on the table.

Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I hooked my fingers around the lid of the box. I pulled it off and set it gingerly to the side. White tissue paper, meticulously folded, lay inside.

“What is it?”

I ignored Lia’s question. I reached into the box. I unwrapped the tissue paper.

And then I screamed.

Nestled in the tissue paper was a lock of red hair.

I
t took Agent Briggs an hour to get to our house. It took him five seconds to get from the front door to the kitchen—and the box.

“Still think I’m jumping to conclusions when I say this case is related to my mother’s?” I asked him, my voice shaky. He ignored me and barked out commands to the team of agents he’d brought with him.

“Bag the packaging, the box, the ribbon, the card,
everything
—if there’s a speck of evidence on any of it, I want to know. Starmans, track the box—how it was sent, where it was mailed from, who paid for it. Brooks, Vance, we need DNA on the hair, and we need it yesterday. I don’t care who you have to threaten in the lab to get it done, rush it. Locke …”

Agent Locke crossed her arms over her chest and gave
Briggs a look. To his credit, he lowered his voice to a more reasonable volume and pitch.

“If this is our UNSUB, it changes everything. We have no evidence that he’s ever made contact with a target prior to killing. This may be our chance to get ahead of him.”