The Naturals (17 page)

“We don’t even know that this is our UNSUB,” Agent Locke pointed out. “It’s red hair. For all we know, it could be a prank.”

Her gaze drifted over to Lia the second she said the word
prank
. I whipped my head around to look at the Natural liar, too.

Lia tossed her black hair over her shoulder. “This is a little beyond the pale, even for me, Agent Locke.”

Locke glanced at me. “Gotten into any arguments lately?” she asked.

I opened my mouth, then glanced at Lia again.
Remind me never to ask you for a favor again
. The venom in her tone when she’d said those words had been palpable.

“Lia.” Agent Briggs barely managed to get the word out around his clenched jaw. “Tell me again how you found the present.”

Lia’s eyes flashed. “I went out to get the mail. There was a package with Cassie’s name on it. I opened said package. Inside, there was a box. I decided I wanted to see the look on Cassie’s face when
she
opened said box. I brought it into the kitchen. Cassie opened it. The end.”

Briggs turned to Locke. “If the DNA comes back as a match for one of our victims, you’ll have to completely rework the profile. If it doesn’t …”

He glanced back at Lia.

“Why does everyone keep looking at me?” she snapped. “I found the package. I didn’t send it. If the DNA on the hair doesn’t come back as a match, maybe you should think about asking
Cassie
some questions.”

“Me?” I asked incredulously.

“You wanted in on this case,” Lia retorted. “And now the killer contacts you out of the blue? How lucky for you.”

I couldn’t tell if Lia believed what she was saying or not. It didn’t matter, because Briggs had already turned his diamond-hard gaze on me.

“Cassie didn’t do this.”

I hadn’t even realized that Dean was in the room until he spoke. Clearly, neither had the agents. Briggs actually jumped.

“Cassie’s not the type to play games.” Dean’s voice brooked no doubt. “The entire reason she wanted to work on this case is that she thinks it has something to do with her mother’s murder. Why would she risk diverting manpower and resources away from the real investigation when she
knows
the killer is escalating? If this is a prank, it’s a prank that’s going to get someone killed.”

The knot in my chest loosened. I looked at Dean, and suddenly, I could breathe.

“Dean’s right.” Locke’s voice sounded exactly like mine when I was working my way through a puzzle. “If Cassie wanted in on this case, she’d just find a way to keep working it on her own.”

I tried very hard not to look conspicuous—because that was
exactly
what I’d been trying to do.

“Cassie, did you or did you not drop this case when I told you to?” Briggs took a step forward, invading my personal space. “Have you done
anything
that might have drawn the killer’s attention?”

I shook my head—no to both questions. Briggs’s hand fell back to his side. He clenched his jaw again. For the second time, Dean intervened.

“All Cassie did was give a copy of the case file to me.”

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Dean. Normally, he stood and walked like someone who wanted to disappear into the woodwork, but today, his shoulders were back, his jaw set.

“I read the file. I profiled it. And I think Cassie’s right.” Dean leveled his gaze at Agent Briggs. “These women are stand-ins, and I think there’s a very real chance that the person they’re standing in for is Cassie’s mother.”

“You’ve never even seen the Lorelai Hobbes case file,” Briggs shot back. My mother’s name hit me like a punch to the stomach.

“I’ve seen Cassie’s mother’s picture,” Dean argued. “I’ve
seen the human hair that someone just sent to Cassie as a gift.”

Briggs listened to every word Dean had to say, an intense look of concentration on his face. “You’re not authorized to work this case,” he said finally.

Dean shrugged. “I know.”

“You are not
going
to be working this case.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to pretend that we never had this conversation.”

“Liar,”
Lia coughed.

Briggs was not amused. “You may leave the room, Lia.”

Lia clasped her hands together. “Oh, Mother, may I?”

Dean made a choking sound. I wasn’t entirely certain, but he might have been swallowing a laugh.

“Now, Lia.”

After a long moment and a glare aimed at the room as a whole, Lia twirled on her toes and stalked out of the room. Once he was sure Lia was gone, Agent Briggs turned to Agent Locke. “Do you think this case is related to the Lorelai Hobbes case?”

I didn’t flinch when he said my mother’s name a second time. I concentrated on the fact that Lia was correct: Briggs had no intention of forgetting what Dean had told him.

I think Cassie’s right
.

“I don’t know that it matters whether the two cases are related or not,” Locke answered finally. “Cassie’s hair is red.
She’s a bit younger than the other victims, but otherwise, she fits the profile of this killer’s victims, and more importantly, our UNSUB is escalating. If you assume the last victim’s hair was dyed as a message, that means this guy is playing with us. And if he’s playing with us, there’s a sizable chance that he’s
watching
us.” Agent Locke rubbed the back of her hand wearily over her brow. “If he’s watching us, he could have followed us here, and if he followed us here, he could have seen Cassie.”

Briggs’s phone rang before he could reply. By the time he hung up, I already knew what the next words out of his mouth were going to be.

“We’ve got another body.”

You watch the FBI agents scurrying around the crime scene like ants. This particular corpse is not your best work. You killed her last night, and already, her screams have faded from your ears. Her face is still recognizable—more or less.

You used scissors this time instead of your knife
.

But that’s not the point. Not this time. This time, the point is that the gift you sent sweet little Cassandra Hobbes was the real thing.

The pathetic little slut lying lifeless on the pavement is just a piece of the plan. You abandoned her body at dawn, knowing that it wouldn’t be discovered immediately. You’d hoped—prayed, even—that Cassie would be there when the agents got the call.

Did you scream when you opened the box, Cassie? Did you think about me? Am I the thought that keeps you up at night?
There’s so much you want to ask her
.

So much you want to tell her
.

The rest of the world will never understand. The FBI will never know the inner workings of your brain
.

They’ll never know how close you are
.

But Cassie—she’s going to know everything. The two of you are connected. Cassie is her mother’s daughter—and that’s as close as you’re ever going to get
.

T
wo days later, the hair from the black box came back as a match for the UNSUB’s latest victim.

“I’ll accept gifts in lieu of an apology,” Lia told Agent Locke. “Any time now is fine.”

Locke didn’t reply. The three of us—along with Briggs, Michael, and Dean—were in Briggs’s study. Sloane was nowhere to be seen.

You sent me a piece of hair
. I couldn’t keep from talking to the killer in my head, couldn’t keep from thinking about the present and what it meant that the UNSUB had sent it to me.
Was she screaming when you cut it off? Did you use the scissors to cut her afterward? Was it ever even about her? Or was it about me? About my mother?

“Am I in danger?” I sounded remarkably calm, like my question was just a piece of the puzzle and not a matter of life and death—specifically, mine.

“What do you think?” Locke asked.

Briggs narrowed his eyes, like he couldn’t believe she was using this as a teaching opportunity, but I answered the question anyway.

“I think this UNSUB wants to kill me, but I don’t think he wants to kill me yet.”

“This is insane.” Michael had that look on his face—the one that told me he wanted to hit someone. “Cassie, are you even listening to yourself?” He turned to Briggs. “She’s in shock.”

“
She
is standing right here,” I said, but I didn’t contradict the rest of Michael’s statement. Given his ability to read people, I had to assume that he might be right. Maybe I was in shock. I couldn’t deny the fact that my emotions were on lockdown.

I wasn’t angry.

I wasn’t scared.

I wasn’t even thinking about my mother and the fact that this UNSUB might very well have killed her, too.

“You kill women,” I said out loud. “Women with red hair. Women who remind you of someone else. And then one day, you see me, and for whatever reason, I’m not like the others. You never needed to talk to them. You never needed them to go to sleep at night thinking about you. But I’m different. You send me a gift—maybe you want to scare me. Maybe you’re playing with me or using me to play with the feds.
But the way you wrapped that box, the care you took with my name on the card—there’s a part of you that thinks you really
have
given me a gift. You’re talking to me. You made me special, and when you kill me, that will have to be special, too.” Every single person in the room was staring at me. I turned to Dean. “Am I wrong?”

Dean considered the question. “I’ve been killing for a long time,” he said, slipping into the killer’s mind as easily as I had. “And each time, it’s a little bit
less
than it was the time before. I don’t want to get caught, but I need the danger, the thrill, the challenge.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, it was like the two of us were the only two people in the room.

“You’re not wrong, Cassie.”

“This is sick,” Michael said, his voice rising. “There’s some psycho out there, fixating on Cassie, and you two are acting like this is some kind of game.”

“It
is
a game,” Dean said.

I knew Dean wasn’t enjoying this, that looking at me through a killer’s eyes wasn’t something he would have
chosen
to do, but Michael only heard the words. He lunged forward and caught Dean by the front of his shirt.

A second later, Michael had Dean pinned to the wall. “Listen to me, you sick son of a—”

“Michael!” Briggs pulled him off Dean. At the last second, Dean lunged forward and grabbed Michael, reversing
their positions and wedging his elbow underneath Michael’s throat.

Dean lowered his voice to a whisper. “I never said this was a game to me, Townsend.”

It was a game to the UNSUB. I was the prize. And if we weren’t careful, Michael and Dean were going to kill each other.

“Enough.” Locke put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He stiffened, and for a second, I thought he might hit her.

“Enough,” Dean echoed, expelling a breath. He let Michael go and took a step back. Then he just kept walking backward until his back hit the opposite wall. He was a person who didn’t lose control, who couldn’t afford to, and he’d come close enough with Michael just now that it scared him.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, pulling everyone’s attention from Dean and giving him a second to recover.

Briggs jabbed his index finger in my direction. “You’re still not working this case. Either of you.” He spared a glare for Dean before returning that laser focus to me. “I’ve assigned a team to watch the house. I’ll introduce you all to Agents Starmans, Vance, and Brooks. Until further notice, none of you will be leaving this residence, and Cassie is never alone.”

Closing ranks around me wasn’t going to bring us any closer to this UNSUB.

“You should take me with you,” I told Briggs. “If this guy wants me, we should use that. Set a trap.”

“No!” Michael, Dean, and Briggs responded at the exact same time. I turned beseeching eyes to Agent Locke.

She looked like she was on the verge of agreeing with me, but at the last second, she bit her lip and shook her head. “The UNSUB has only made contact once. He’ll try again, whether you’re here or elsewhere, and at least here, we have the home court advantage.”

I’d been taught that there was no such thing as the home court advantage, but my mother’s lessons had been geared toward reading people, not playing cat and mouse with killers.

“The UNSUB is breaking pattern.” Locke reached out and touched the side of my face softly. “As scary as it is, that’s a good thing. We know what he wants, and we can keep him from getting it. The more riled up he gets, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

“I can’t just do
nothing
.” I locked my eyes onto my mentor’s, willing her to understand.

“You can do something,” she said finally. “You can make a list. Everyone you’ve spoken to, everyone you’ve met, every place you’ve been, every person who’s spent even a second
looking
at you since you got here.”

My mind went immediately to the man who’d interrupted my reading that afternoon by the Potomac—without telling
me his name. Was that him? Was it nothing?

It was hard not to be paranoid, given what I knew now.

“The UNSUB mailed the package,” Lia pointed out, jarring me from my thoughts. “He doesn’t have to be local.”

Dean jammed his hands into his pockets. “He’d want to see her,” he said, his own gaze flicking toward my face, just for a second.

“We weren’t able to trace the package,” Locke said grimly. “Busy post office, busy day, less than observant mail clerk, and no security cameras. Our UNSUB paid cash, and the return address is obviously faked. This guy is good, and he’s playing with us. At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

F
or the next three days, I could barely manage to go to the bathroom without someone else following me in. And every time I looked out the window, I knew that the FBI was out there, watching and waiting, hoping the killer would try again.

“There are approximately thirty thousand working morticians in the United States.”