The Naturals (12 page)

You know her
, I thought.

“The UNSUB’s first two victims were chosen randomly.” Agent Locke met my eyes, and for a second, it felt like she was reading my mind. “We assumed the third victim was as well. We were wrong.” Locke rocked back on her heels. “That’s why you need both sides of the coin. Checks and balances, victims and UNSUBs—because you’ll always be wrong about something. You’ll always miss something. What if there’s a personal connection? What if the UNSUB is older than you thought? What if
he
is a
she
? What if there are two UNSUBs working as a pair? What if the killer is just a kid himself?”

I knew suddenly that we weren’t talking about the type A woman and the man who’d killed her anymore. We were talking about the doubts plaguing Locke
right now
,
the assumptions she’d made on her current case. We were talking about an UNSUB that Locke and Briggs hadn’t been able to catch.

“Ninety percent of all serial killers are male.” Sloane announced her presence, then walked up to join us. “Seventy-six percent are American, with a substantial percentage of serial murders concentrated in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. The vast majority of serial killers are Caucasian, and over eighty-nine percent of victims of serial crimes are Caucasian as well.”

I could not help noticing that she spoke significantly slower when not under the influence of caffeine.

Briggs followed Sloane into the room. “Lacey.” He got Agent Locke’s attention. “I just got a call from Starmans. We have body number four.”

Thinking about those words—and what they meant—felt like eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help myself. Another body. Another person, dead.

Locke clenched her jaw. “Same profile?” she asked Briggs.

Briggs gave a brisk, slight nod. “A palm reader in Dupont Circle. And the national database search we ran came back with more than one match for our killer’s MO.”

What MO?
I couldn’t shake the question, any more than I could stop wondering who this new victim was, if she’d had a family, who had told them that she was dead.

“That bad?” Locke asked, reading Briggs’s face. I wished
Michael were there to help me do the same. This case was none of my business—but I wanted to know.

“We should talk elsewhere,” Briggs said.

Elsewhere. As in somewhere that Sloane, Dean, and I weren’t.

“You didn’t have trouble coming to Dean for advice when he was
twelve
,” I said, unable to stop myself. “Why stop now?”

Briggs’s eyes darted over to Dean, who met his gaze without blinking. Clearly, that wasn’t information Dean was supposed to share with the rest of us—but just as clearly, Dean wasn’t going to look away first.

“The flower beds could use some weeding.” Judd broke the tension, coming into the room to stand between Briggs and Dean. “If you’re done with the kids for a bit, I can put them to work. Might be good for them to get their hands dirty, get some sun.”

Judd directed those words at Agent Briggs, but Locke was the one who replied. “It’s fine, Judd.” She glanced first at Dean, then at me. “They can stay. Briggs, you were saying the database turned up more than one case with the same MO?”

For a moment, Briggs looked like he might argue with Locke about letting us stay, but she just stood there, stubbornly waiting him out.

Briggs gave in first. “Our database search returned three
cases consistent with our killer’s MO in the past nine months,” he said, clipping each word. “New Orleans, Los Angeles, and American Falls.”

“Illinois?” Locke asked.

Briggs shook his head. “Idaho.”

I processed that information. If the cases Briggs was talking about were related, we were dealing with a killer who’d crossed state lines and had been killing for the better part of a year.

“My go bag is in the car,” Locke said, and suddenly, I remembered—
we
weren’t dealing with anything. Locke hadn’t let Briggs shuffle the three of us out of the room, but at the end of the day, this wasn’t a training exercise, and it wasn’t
my
case, or even
ours
.

It was
theirs
.

“We leave at sixteen hundred hours.” Briggs straightened his tie. “I left work for Lia, Michael, and Sloane. Locke, do you have anything for Cassie and Dean—besides weeding the flower beds?” he added with a glance at Judd.

“I’m not leaving them a cold case.” Locke turned to me, almost apologetically. “You have an incredible amount of raw talent, Cass, but you’ve spent too much time in the real world and not enough in ours. Not yet.”

“She can handle anything you throw at her.”

I looked at Dean, surprised. He was the last person I expected to be making this argument on my behalf.

“Thank you for that glowing endorsement, Dean,” Locke said, “but I’m not going to rush this. Not with her.” She paused. “Library,” she told me. “Third shelf from the left. There’s a series of blue binders. Prison interviews. Make your way through those, and we’ll talk about getting you started on cold cases when I get back.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Dean’s voice was curiously flat. Locke shrugged.

“You’re the one who said she was ready.”

T
hat night, when I snuck out to the pool for a midnight swim, Dean wasn’t the one who joined me.

“I would have pegged you for a no-nonsense one-piece,” Michael said as I came up for air after swimming laps. He dangled his legs over the side of the pool. “Something sporty.”

I was wearing a two-piece bathing suit—halfway between sporty and a bikini.

“Should I be insulted?” I asked, swimming to the opposite side of the pool and pulling myself up onto the ledge.

“No,” Michael replied. “But you are.”

He was right, of course. In the dim light of the moon, I wondered how he could even see my face, let alone read an emotion I was trying to hide.

“You like it here.” Michael lowered himself into the pool, and for the first time, I registered the fact that his chest was
bare. “You like Agent Locke. You like all of her little lessons. And you like the idea of helping out with real cases even more.”

I didn’t say anything. Clearly, Michael was capable of having this conversation all by himself.

“What? You aren’t even going to try to profile me?” Michael flicked water at my knees. “Where’s the girl from the diner?” he asked me. “Tit for tat.”

“You don’t want to be profiled,” I told him. “You don’t want people to know you.” I paused. “You don’t want
me
to know you.”

He was silent for one second, two, three—and then, “Truth.”

“Yeah,” I said wryly. “I speak the truth.”

“No,” Michael replied. “
Truth
. Isn’t that what you wanted me to say last night, instead of
dare
?”

“I don’t know,” I told him, grinning. “I wouldn’t trade the memory of your ballet man-dance for anything.”

Michael pushed off from the ledge and started treading water. “I also excel at synchronized swimming.” I laughed, and he made his way over to my ledge. “I mean it, Cassie. Truth.” He paused, two feet away from me. “You ask. I’ll tell you. Anything.”

I waited for the catch, but there wasn’t one.

“Fine,” I said, considering my questions carefully. “Why
don’t you want to be profiled? What is it you’re so afraid that people are going to find out?”

“I got into a fight once,” Michael said, sounding oddly at ease. “Right before I came here. Put the other guy in the hospital. I just kept hitting him, over and over again, even once he was down. I don’t lose it often, but when I do, it’s bad. I take after the old man in that. We Townsends don’t do anything halfway.” Michael paused. He’d answered my second question, but not my first. “Maybe I don’t want to be profiled because
I
don’t want to know what you’d see. What little box I fit in. Who I really am.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I said.

He gave me a lazy smile. “That’s a matter of some debate.”

I’d been planning on asking about his father, but now I couldn’t bring myself to ask if the old man had ever
lost it
with him. “Your family’s wealthy?”

“As sin,” Michael replied. “My past is a long string of boarding schools, excess, and the finest fill-in-the-blank that money can buy.”

“Does your family know you’re here?”

Michael pushed off the side and started treading water again. I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but I didn’t need to see him to know that his trademark smirk held more than a hint of self-loathing. “A better question might be if they care.”

Three questions. Three honest answers. Just because he’d offered to show me his scars didn’t mean I had to tear them open. “You and Lia?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yes,” Michael replied, catching me off guard, because I hadn’t considered it a yes-or-no question. “On again, off again. Never for very long, and it was never a good call—for either of us.”

If I didn’t want to know the answer, I shouldn’t have asked. I stood up and cannonballed back into the pool, sending a small tsunami of water Michael’s way. The moment I came back up, he flicked water at my face.

“You know, of course,” he said solemnly, “that this means war.”

One second, there was a good three feet of space between us, and the next, we were wrestling, each trying to outdunk and outsplash the other, neither of us fully aware of just how close together our bodies were.

I got a mouthful of water. I sputtered. Michael dunked me, and I came up gasping for air—and saw Dean standing on the patio. He was standing perfectly, horribly still.

Michael dunked me again before he realized I’d stopped fighting. He turned around and saw Dean.

“You got a problem, Redding?” Michael asked.

“No,” Dean replied. “No problem.”

I gave Michael a sharp look and trusted that he’d be able
to read me well enough for it to be effective, even in the dark.

Michael got the message. “Care to join us?” he asked Dean, overly politely.

“No,” Dean replied, just as politely. “Thank you.” He paused, and the silence swelled around us. “You two have a good night.”

As Dean disappeared back into the house, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d taken something from him—the place he came to think, the moment we’d shared the night he’d shown me the black lights.

“Truth or dare.” Michael’s voice cut into my thoughts.

“What?”

“Your turn,” Michael told me. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

Michael reached out to push my wet hair out of my face. “If Lia had dared you to kiss me, would you have done it?”

“Lia wouldn’t have dared me to kiss you.”

“But if she had?”

I could feel heat rising in my cheeks. “It was just a game, Michael.”

Michael leaned forward and brushed his lips against mine. Then he pulled back and studied my face. Whatever he saw there, he liked.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

— — —

I didn’t sleep much that night. I just kept thinking about Michael and Dean, the subtle barbs that passed between the two of them, the feel of each one’s lips. By the time the sun came up the next morning, I wanted to kill someone. Preferably Michael—but Lia was a close second.

“We’re out of ice cream,” I said murderously.

“True,” Lia replied. She’d swapped the silk pajamas for boxer shorts and a ratty T, and there wasn’t so much as a hint of remorse on her face.

“I blame you,” I said.

“Also true.” Lia studied my face. “And unless I’m mistaken, you’re not just blaming me for the ice cream. And that makes me terribly curious, Cassie. Care to share?”

It was impossible to keep a secret in this house—let alone two. First Dean, then Michael. I hadn’t signed up for this. If Lia hadn’t dared me to kiss Dean, Michael never would have kissed me in the pool, and I wouldn’t be in this mess, unsure what I felt, what they felt, what I was supposed to do about it.

“No,” I said out loud. I was here for one reason and one reason alone. “Forget breakfast,” I said, slamming the freezer door shut. “I have work to do.”

I turned to leave, but not before I caught sight of Lia twirling her gleaming black ponytail around her index finger, her dark eyes watching me a little too closely for comfort.

I
made my way to the library to drown my sorrows in serial killer interviews. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor bookshelves bulged with carefully organized titles: textbooks, memoirs, biographies, academic journals, and the oddest assortment of fiction I’d ever seen: old-fashioned dime-store mysteries, romance novels, comic books, Dickens, Tolkien, and Poe.

The third shelf from the left was full of blue binders. I picked up the first one and opened it.

Thomas Friedman. Such a normal-sounding name. Gingerly, I flipped through the transcript: a bare-bones play
with a limited cast of characters, no plot, and no resolution. Supervisory Special Agent Cormack Kent was the interviewer. He asked Friedman about his childhood, his parents, his fantasies, the nine women he’d strangled with high-sheen dress hose. Reading Friedman’s words—black ink typed onto the page—would have been bad enough, but the worst part was that after a few pages, I could
hear
the way he would have talked about the women he’d killed: excitement, nostalgia, longing—but no remorse.

“You should sit down.”

I’d been expecting someone to join me in the library. I hadn’t expected that someone to be Lia.

“Dean’s not coming,” Lia said. “He read those interviews a long time ago.”

“Have you read them?” I asked.

“Some,” Lia replied. “Mostly, I’ve
heard
them. Briggs gives me the audio. I play Spot the Lie. It’s a real party.”

I realized suddenly that most people my age—most people
any
age—wouldn’t be able to take reading these interviews. They wouldn’t want to, and they certainly wouldn’t lose themselves in it, the way I would. The way I already
had
. Friedman’s interview was horrible and horrifying—but I couldn’t turn off the part of my brain that wanted to
understand
.