The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct (26 page)

“I always believed, you give kids enough space, they make their own mistakes. They learn.” Judd said nothing for several seconds. “Then one time, my daughter was about ten. She
and her best friend got it into their minds that they were going to go on a
scientific expedition
.”

“You have a daughter?” Michael said.

Judd continued on as if he’d never spoken. “Scarlett was always getting ideas like that one. She’d get it in her brain that she was going to do something, and there was no
talking her out of it. And her little friend—well, if Scarlett was in it for the
science
, her friend was the expedition type. The scale-down-the-side-of-a-cliff-for-a-
sample
type. They damn near got themselves killed.” Judd fell into silence again. “Sometimes, some kids, they need a little help with the learning.”

Judd never raised his voice. He didn’t even look angry. But suddenly, I was very sure that I did not want Judd’s “help.”

“It was my fault.” Dean’s voice was a perfect complement for Judd’s, and I realized that some of his mannerisms were the older man’s as well. “Michael and
Cassie only went with me so I wouldn’t go alone.”

“Is that right?” Judd asked, giving the three of us one of those stares that only someone who’d been a parent could manage, the one that—when your own parent made
it—reminded you that they’d changed your diapers and could recognize your BS, even now.

“I needed to do this.” Dean didn’t say any more than that. Judd crossed his arms over his chest.

“Maybe you did,” he allowed. “But I’d think of a better excuse in the next five seconds, son, because you’re going to need it.”

I heard the sound of heels on tile. An instant later, Agent Sterling appeared in the doorway behind Judd. “Inside,” she barked. “Right now.”

We went inside. So much for not getting caught. Sterling herded us into Briggs’s office. She gestured to the couch. “Sit.”

I sat. Dean sat. Michael rolled his eyes, but took a seat on the arm of the couch.

“It was Dean’s fault,” Michael announced solemnly. “He needed to do this.”

“Michael!” I said.

“Do you know where Briggs is right now?” Agent Sterling’s question wasn’t what I expected. My mind started searching for reasons that Briggs’s location might be
relevant to this discussion, to what we’d done. Was he out looking for us? Meeting with the director to do damage control?

“Briggs,” Agent Sterling said tautly, “is at the Warren County police station, meeting with a man who thinks he has information about the Emerson Cole murder. You see, a serial
killer’s son paid his mother a visit this afternoon, and Mr. Simms believes the boy might be violent.” She paused. “The gentleman has a bruise on his neck to back up the
claim.”

Christopher Simms had reported Dean to the police? I hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Luckily,” Agent Sterling continued, making the word sound more like an indictment than an expression of luck, “Briggs had asked the locals to route anything relevant to this
case through him, so he’s the one who took the statement. He’s still there, taking the statement. As it turns out, Christopher Simms has quite a lot to say—about Dean, about the
rest of you, about his mother’s relationship with Daniel Redding. He’s just a
fount
of information.”

“He drives a black truck.” I stared at my hands, but couldn’t keep from speaking up. “He has a connection to Daniel Redding. His mother berates him constantly. He lost
his temper while I was there and grabbed me, so you’ve got impulsivity, but his movements and mannerisms are also controlled.”

“You slammed Christopher into the wall when he grabbed Cassie?” Agent Sterling asked Dean. Of everything I’d said, it figured that she’d latch on to that.

Dean shrugged unapologetically. Agent Sterling took that as a yes.

Sterling turned to Michael. I expected her to ask him something, but instead she just held out her hand. “Keys.”

“Spatula,” Michael replied. She narrowed her eyes at him. “We aren’t just saying random nouns?” he asked archly.

“Give me your keys. Now.”

Michael dug his keys out of his pocket and tossed them blithely to her. She turned back to Dean.

“I told my father that I trusted you,” she said. “I told him I could handle this.”

Her words dug their way under Dean’s skin. He pushed back. “I never asked you to handle me.”

Sterling actually flinched. “Dean…” She looked like she was about to apologize, but she stopped herself. The expression on her face hardened. “From this point on,
you’re not alone,” she told Dean sharply. She gestured to Michael. “You two are bunking together. If you’re not with Michael, you’re with someone else. Now that
you’ve flung yourself onto the local PD’s radar, if and when our UNSUB strikes again, you might need an alibi.”

Agent Sterling couldn’t have devised a better punishment for Dean. He was a solitary person by nature, and after the day’s events, he’d want to be alone.

“You’re dismissed.” Agent Sterling’s voice was crisp. All three of us were on our feet in an instant. “Not you, Cassie.” Sterling fixed me in place with her
stare. “You two,” she told the boys, “out!”

Michael and Dean glanced at each other, then at me.

“I won’t ask you again.”

Agent Sterling waited until the door shut behind the boys before she spoke. “What were you and Dean doing out at the old Redding house?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Was there
nothing
she didn’t know?

“Christopher Simms wasn’t the only one who contacted the police,” Sterling informed me. “The local police hear ‘teenage prowlers’ out on Redding’s old
property, mere minutes after someone files a complaint about Dean, and one guess where their minds go.”

Even I had to admit this didn’t look good.

“He needed to go back,” I said, my voice soft but unwavering. “Just to see it.”

Sterling’s jaw clenched, and I wondered if she was thinking of the time she’d spent on that property, bound hand and foot in a toolshed that no longer existed.

“Dean needing to go back there, it wasn’t about his father.” I paused to let that sink in. “This visit, it had nothing to do with Daniel Redding.”

Sterling turned that over in her mind. “His mother?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. After another tense moment of silence, a question burst out of my mouth. “Has anyone talked to her?” I just kept thinking that my
mother had had many faults, but she never would have
left
me. And Dean’s mother hadn’t just left—she’d had a chance to get him back, and she’d said no.
“If our UNSUB is obsessed with Redding, Dean’s mother could be a target,” I continued. There were reasons to talk to Marie that had nothing to do with wanting to shake some sense
into her—or at the very least, make her face what she’d done to Dean.

“I talked to her,” Sterling said shortly. “And she’s not a target.”

“But how could you—”

“Dean’s mother lives in Melbourne,” Sterling said. “As in Australia—halfway across the world and well out of the reach of this killer. She didn’t have any
information relevant to the case and has asked that we leave her alone.”

Like she left Dean?

“Did she even ask about him?” I asked.

Sterling pursed her lips. “No.”

Given what I knew about Agent Sterling and her relationship with Dean, I was betting that she’d gone into that call the same way I would have: hating Marie for what she’d done, but
halfway convinced that if she just said the right thing or asked the right question, she could undo it. Agent Sterling hadn’t ever wanted to believe that the Naturals program was Dean’s
best option, but now I could practically hear her thinking,
If it weren’t for this program, he’d have nowhere else to go.

“You should add Christopher Simms to your suspect list,” I said. When she didn’t immediately shut me down, I continued, “He’s not a small person, but he
doesn’t have the kind of presence you’d expect from someone his size. He moves slowly, talks slowly, not because he’s unintelligent or uncoordinated, but because he’s
deliberate. He’s inhibited. Not shy, not awkward, just holding something in.”

“Cassie—” She was going to tell me to stop, but I didn’t give her the chance.

“Christopher was outside when we approached the house. If I had to guess, I’d say he does all the outdoor chores. The lawn was overgrown—maybe it’s his way of striking
out at his mother, even as he does her bidding in everything else. He’s pulling at the bit, but he’s old enough that if he really wanted to, he could move out.” The words were
pouring out of my mouth, faster and faster. “His mother mentioned that he has plenty of friends, and I saw nothing to make me think that he was antisocial or particularly inept. So why
doesn’t he move out?” I answered my own question. “Maybe he thinks she needs him. Maybe he wants her approval. Maybe she guilts him into it. I don’t know. But I do know that
when he snapped, it happened in an instant, and he didn’t go for Michael or Dean. He went for me.”

I finally stopped for a breath. For a few seconds, Sterling just stood there.

“You said that the UNSUB was comfortable with firearms, but less sure of himself when it came to unarmed confrontations. I was the easy target in that room, and I was the one he went
for.”

Maybe Christopher had reached for me because I was the one talking. Maybe he’d been actively trying
not
to start a fight and thought that I was the only one of the three of us who
wouldn’t respond with a punch.

Or maybe he was the kind of guy who liked asserting himself against women.

“Were there any firearms in the house?” Sterling asked. I got the sense that the question had slipped out. She hadn’t meant to ask it.

“I didn’t see any guns.”

Agent Sterling’s phone buzzed, and she held up her hand, effectively putting me on hold.

“Sterling.” She answered the phone with her name. Whatever the person on the other end of the phone had to say, it wasn’t good news. She was like a spring that had been coiled
tight, every muscle tense. “You’re kidding me. When?” Sterling was silent for long enough to make me think that “when” wasn’t the only question being answered.
“I can be on the road in five.”

She ended the call abruptly.

“Bad news?” I asked.

“Dead body.”

Those words were probably meant as a conversation ender, but I had to ask. “Our UNSUB?”

Sterling tightened her hand around her phone.

“Is this the point where you tell me to stay out of it?” I asked.

Sterling closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “The victim is Trina Simms, and neighbors heard screaming and called 911
while
her son Christopher was at
the police station with Briggs.” Sterling ran a hand through her hair. “So, yes, this is where I tell you to stay out of it.”

Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d listened to what I had to say about Christopher. Hearing from Briggs had been like a splash of cold water in her face.

I was wrong,
I thought. The bits and pieces I’d picked up from my visit to Broken Springs—none of that mattered now. Trina was dead, and Christopher had been with Briggs when
it happened.

He’s just a guy. A guy with a dark truck and a mother who is a real piece of work. Who
was
a piece of work.

I pictured Trina, who thought my shoes were precious and that Daniel Redding would be released from prison on an appeal.

“Does Dean’s dad have any open appeals?” I asked.

Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at the change of subject. “None.” She walked over to Briggs’s desk and pulled something out of one of the drawers. She shut the drawer
and walked back to me. “Put your foot on the couch,” she ordered.

That was when I remembered.
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.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Sterling asked. She looked like Judd had when we’d arrived back at the house. “I made you a promise,” she told me, “and I
always keep my promises.” I didn’t move, and she knelt down and clipped the tracker in place. “If you leave the yard, I’ll know it. If you try to remove the tracker,
I’ll know it. If you violate the perimeter set into this anklet, a silent alarm will go off, sending a text directly to my phone and directly to Briggs’s. The GPS in this anklet will
allow us to pinpoint your location, and I will drag you back here kicking and screaming.”

She stood back up. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t force out an objection.

“You have good instincts,” Sterling told me. “You have a good eye. Someday, you could be a very good agent.”

The tracker was lighter than it looked, but the added weight, however slight, made my entire body feel heavy. Knowing I couldn’t leave, knowing that I couldn’t do anything—I
hated it. I felt useless and weak and very, very young.

Sterling stood up. “But that day, Cassandra, is not today.”

YOU

You can picture Trina Simms’s last moments perfectly in your mind. In fact, now that the deed is done, you can’t stop picturing it, over and over again.

Hands bound together. Plastic biting into fleshy wrists. Knife. Blood.

Your brain re-creates the moment in bright, Technicolor detail.
Her skin isn’t unblemished. It isn’t smooth. The brand sinks in, in, in….

Burning flesh smells the same whether or not it’s supple, whether or not it’s young. Just thinking about the brand sinking in, you can smell it. With each breath, you
picture—

Rope around her neck. Dull, lifeless eyes.

Trina Simms was always shrill, deluded, demanding. She’s not so demanding now.