All In: (The Naturals #3) (4 page)

“I suppose you’re going to tell us victim number two burned the numbers into his own arm?” Lia asked Briggs. She did a good job of sounding unaffected by the gruesomeness of
what we were seeing, but I knew better. Lia was an expert at masking her true reactions, showing only what she wanted the world to see.

“In a manner of speaking.” Briggs brought up another picture, side by side with the wrist. It looked like some kind of wristband. Set back into the thick material it was made of were
four metal numbers:
4558
, but flipped—a mirror image of the numbers on the victim’s skin.

Agent Sterling enlightened us. “Fire-retardant fabric. When our victim caught fire, it heated the metal, but not the fabric, leaving a legible brand underneath.”

“According to our sources, the victim received the bracelet with a parcel of fan mail,” Briggs continued. “The envelope it was mailed in is long gone.”

“Fan mail?” I said. “And that makes the victim…who?”

Another picture flashed onto the screen in response to my question, this one of a twentysomething male. His face was striking and gaunt, sharp angles offset by violet eyes—probably
contacts.

“Sylvester Wilde.” Lia let one of her feet fall to the floor. “Modern-day Houdini, illusionist, hypnotist, and jack-of-all-trades.” She paused, then translated for the
rest of us. “He’s a stage magician—and like most of his kind, an
excellent
liar.”

From Lia, that was a compliment.

“He had a nightly show,” Briggs said, “at the Wonderland.”

“Another casino.” Dean mulled that over.

“Another casino,” Agent Sterling confirmed. “Mr. Wilde was in the midst of his evening performance on January second when he—to all appearances—accidentally set
himself on fire.”

“Another
accident
.” Dean bowed his head slightly, his hair falling into his face. Already, his concentration was so intense, I could see it in the lines of his shoulders,
his back.

“Or so the authorities believed,” Agent Briggs said. “Until…”

One last picture, one last victim.

“Eugene Lockhart. Seventy-eight. He was a regular at the Desert Rose Casino. He came once a week with a small group from a local retirement home.” Briggs didn’t say anything
about how Eugene had died.

He didn’t need to.

There was an arrow protruding from the old man’s chest.

H
ow did a killer go from staging accidents to shooting someone with an arrow in broad daylight?

As the jet descended into Las Vegas, that was the question I kept coming back to. Our briefing hadn’t stopped with the picture of Eugene Lockhart, skewered through the heart, but that was
the moment when every assumption I’d made about this killer had started to change.

Beside me, I could feel Dean mulling over what we’d been told, too. Part of being a Natural was not being able to turn off the parts of our brains that worked differently than other
people’s. Lia couldn’t choose to stop recognizing lies. Sloane would always see numbers everywhere she looked. Michael couldn’t help picking up on every last micro-expression that
crossed a person’s face.

And Dean and I compulsively pieced people together like puzzles.

I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried—and knowing what my brain would cycle back to the second I stopped thinking about this case, I didn’t fight it.

Behavior. Personality. Environment.
There was a rhyme and reason to the way even the most monstrous killers behaved. Decoding their motivations meant trying to step into the
UNSUB’s shoes, trying to see the world the way he or she saw it.

You wanted the police to know that Eugene Lockhart was murdered,
I thought, starting with the obvious. People didn’t get “accidentally” shot with hunting arrows in the
middle of busy casinos. Compared to the earlier murders, that was definitely an attention-getter.
You wanted the authorities to take notice. You wanted them to see. See what you were doing.
See
you.

Are you used to going unnoticed?

Are you sick of it?

I went back over what we’d been told. In addition to the four-digit number written in permanent marker on the old man’s wrist, the medical examiner had also found a message inscribed
on the arrow that had killed him.

Tertium.

Latin, meaning “for the third time.”

Hence the police looking back over all recent accidental deaths and homicides and the discovery of the numbers tattooed on Alexandra Ruiz’s wrist and burned into Sylvester
Wilde’s.

Why Latin?
I turned that over in my head.
Do you consider yourself an intellectual? Or is the use of Latin ritualistic?
A slight shiver ran down my spine at that possibility.
Ritualistic how?

Without meaning to, I leaned into Dean’s body. Brown eyes met mine, and I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if climbing into this killer’s mind was giving him chills,
too.

Dean laid a hand on my arm, his thumb tracing along the back of my wrist.

Across from us, Lia eyed our hands and then brought her own to her forehead in a melodramatic motion. “I’m a dark and angsty profiler,” she intoned. “No,” she
countered in a falsetto, bringing her other hand up, “
I’m
a dark and angsty profiler. Ours is a star-crossed love.”

Toward the front of the plane I heard Judd cough. I deeply suspected he was covering a laugh.

“You never did tell us why the locals called in the FBI so quickly,” I told Agent Briggs, easing my body away from Dean’s and trying to redirect Lia’s attention before
she did a reenactment of our
entire
relationship.

The plane landed. Lia stood and stretched, arching her back before taking the bait. “Well?” she prompted the agents. “Care to share with the class?”

Briggs kept his answer brief and to the point. “Three murders at three different casinos in three days. The casino owners are obviously concerned.”

Lia grabbed her bag and slung it neatly over one shoulder. “What I’m hearing,” she said, “is that the powers that be at the casinos, worried that murder might be bad for
business, used their substantial political capital to get local law enforcement to call in the experts.” A slow, dangerous smile spread over Lia’s lips. “Dare I hope this means
those same casino owners will also see to it that we get the Vegas VIP treatment?”

I could practically see visions of nightclubs and VIP rooms dancing in Lia’s head.

Briggs must have been thinking the same thing, because he grimaced. “This isn’t a game, Lia. We’re not here to play.”

“And,” Agent Sterling added sternly, “you’re underage.”

“Too young to party, just old enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder.” Lia let out an elaborate sigh. “Story of my life.”

“Lia.” Dean leveled his own version of Briggs’s look at her.

“I know, I know, don’t agitate the nice FBI agents.” Lia waved away Dean’s objection, but dialed it back a notch anyway. “Are we at least getting our rooms
comped?” she asked.

Briggs and Sterling glanced briefly at each other.

“The FBI has been given a complimentary suite at the Desert Rose,” Judd said, stepping in and answering on their behalf. “I, on the other hand, have secured two rooms at a
modest hotel just off of the Strip.”

In other words: Judd wanted to keep some distance between us and the FBI’s base of operations. Considering that I’d been taken captive by not one, but
two
UNSUBs in the past
six months, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about the idea of keeping our visibility low.

“Sloane,” Dean said suddenly, drawing my attention in her direction. “Are you okay?”

Sloane’s teeth were bared in what was, quite possibly, the largest, fakest smile I’d ever seen. She froze like a deer in headlights. “I’m not practicing smiling,”
she said quickly. “Sometimes people’s faces just do this.”

That statement was met with silence from every single person on the plane.

Sloane hastily changed the subject. “Did you know that New Hampshire has more hamsters per capita than any other state?”

I was used to Sloane spitting out statistics at random, but given that we were getting ready to disembark in Vegas, I would have expected something a little more thematically applicable. That
was when I realized—
Vegas
.

Sloane had been born and raised in Las Vegas.

If we’d had normal childhoods, we wouldn’t be Naturals.
I didn’t know much about Sloane’s background, but I’d caught pieces here and there. Sloane
hadn’t gone home for Christmas. Like Lia and Dean, that meant she had nowhere to go.

“Are you okay?” I asked her quietly.

“Affirmative,” Sloane chirped. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Lia said bluntly. Then she reached over and pulled Sloane to her feet. “But put me in charge of your life decisions for the next few days, and you will
be.” Lia punctuated those words with a glittering smile.

“Your statistical track record for decision-making is somewhat concerning,” Sloane told her seriously. “But I’m willing to take this under advisement.”

Briggs brought one hand to his temple. Sterling opened her mouth—probably to decree that Lia not be allowed to make
anyone’s
Vegas-related decisions, including her
own—but Judd caught the female agent’s eyes and shook his head slightly. He had a soft spot for Sloane, and it was clear to everyone on this plane that she wasn’t happy to be
home.

Home isn’t a place, Cassie.
The memory crept up on me.
Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.

I stood and pushed back against the memory. I couldn’t dwell on my mother. We were in Vegas for a reason. There was work to do.

The door to the jet opened. Agent Briggs turned to Agent Sterling. “After you.”

YOU

Three is the number. The number of sides on a triangle. A prime number. A holy number.

Three.

Three times three.

Three times three times three.

You run your fingertips over the edge of an arrowhead. You’re a good shot. You knew you would be. But killing the old man brought you no joy. You prefer the long game, the careful
planning, lining up dominoes in loops and rows until all you have to do is knock over one—

The girl in the pool.

The flames burning the skin from number two.

Perfect. Elegant. Better, by far, than skewering the old man.

But there is an order to things. There are rules. And this was how it had to be. January third. The arrow. An old man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Have you gotten their attention yet?

You pocket the arrowhead. In another life, in another world, three would be enough. You could be happy with three.

Three is a good number.

But in this life, in this world, three is not enough. You can’t stop. You won’t.

If you don’t have their attention yet, you will soon.

I
’d spent most of my childhood in motels and apartment buildings where rent was paid by the week. Compared to some of the
places my mother and I had stayed, the hotel Judd had booked for us looked nice enough—if a bit run-down.

“It’s everything I dreamed it would be.” Lia sighed happily. In addition to detecting lies, she also had an aptitude for telling them. With every appearance of sincerity, she
eyed the building’s exterior like she had stumbled across a long-lost love.

“It’s not that bad,” Dean told her.

Like a switch had been flipped, Lia dropped the act and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. “This is Las Vegas, Dean. ‘Not bad’ isn’t exactly what I was aiming
for.”

Judd snorted. “It’ll do, Lia.”

“What if I told you it didn’t have to?” That question came from the parking lot behind us. I recognized the voice instantly.

Michael.

As I turned to face him, I wondered which Michael I would see. The boy who’d recruited me to the program? The raw, unguarded Michael who’d shown me brief glimpses of his oldest
wounds? The careless, indifferent one who’d spent the past three months acting like nothing and no one could touch him?