The Naturals

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.”

CHAPTER 18

That 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