The Naturals

Blowing stuff up was surprisingly therapeutic.

“Clear!” Michael yelled. The two of us scuttled backward. A second later, a string of fireworks went off, scorching the floor of a fake foyer.

“Somehow, I don’t think this is what Agent Briggs had in mind when he built this basement,” I said.

Michael adopted an austere look. “Simulation is one of our most powerful tools,” he said, doing a passable imitation of Agent Briggs. “How else are we to visualize the work of the infamous Boom-Boom Bandit?”

“Boom-Boom Bandit?” I repeated.

He grinned. “Too much?”

I held my index finger up an inch from my thumb. “Just a little.”

Behind us, the door to the basement opened and slammed shut. I half expected it to be Judd, asking what precisely we thought we were doing down here, but Michael had assured me the basement was soundproof.

“I didn’t know anyone was down here.” Sloane looked at the two of us suspiciously. “Why are you down here?”

Michael and I looked at each other. I opened my mouth to answer, but Sloane’s eyes widened as she took in the evidence.

“Fireworks?” she said, folding her arms over her middle. “In the foyer?”

Michael shrugged. “Cassie needed a distraction, and I needed to give Briggs a few more gray hairs.”

Sloane eyed him mutinously. Considering the amount of time she spent down here, I could see why she might take any misuse of the crime sets seriously.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You should be,” she replied sternly. “You’re doing it all wrong.”

What followed was a ten-minute lecture on pyrodynamics. And several more explosions.

“Well,” Michael said, surveying our work. “That’ll teach Briggs and Locke to leave us to our own devices for too long.”

I shoved my hair out of my face with the heel of my hand. “They’re working a case,” I said, remembering the look on Locke’s face—and the details I’d managed to glean about what she and Briggs were up to. “I think that’s a little bit of a higher priority than training us is.”

“Sloane,” Michael said suddenly, drawing out her name and narrowing his eyes.

“Nothing,” Sloane replied quickly.

“Nothing what?” I asked. Clearly, I was missing something here.

“When I said Locke’s name, Sloane looked down and to the side and her eyebrows pulled up in the center.” Michael paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “What did you take, Sloane?”

Sloane made a careful study of her fingernails. “Agent Locke doesn’t like me.”

I thought back to the last time I had seen Sloane and Locke together. Sloane had come into the kitchen and rattled off some statistics about serial killers. Locke hadn’t had a chance to reply when Briggs came into the room with an update on their case. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Locke say anything to Sloane, though she traded barbs easily enough with Michael and Lia.

“There was a USB drive,” Sloane admitted finally, “in Agent Locke’s briefcase.”

Michael’s eyes lit up. “Am I to infer that you have it now?”

Sloane shrugged. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

“You took a USB drive out of Locke’s briefcase?” I processed that bit of information. When Lia had helped herself to the contents of my closet, she’d said that Sloane was the kleptomaniac in the house. I’d assumed she was joking.

Apparently not.

“Let’s concentrate on the important thing here,” Michael said. “What information do you lovely ladies think Locke would be carrying on her person while working a case?”

I glanced at Sloane, then back at Michael. “You think it has something to do with their current case?” I couldn’t keep the surge of interest out of my tone.

“That is also a distinct possibility.” Sloane was sounding distinctly more chipper.

Michael threw an arm over her shoulder. “Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite?” he asked her. Then he cast a wicked glance at me. “Still in need of distraction?”

CHAPTER 22

“This encryption is pathetic,” Sloane said. “It’s like they want me to hack their files.”

She was sitting cross-legged on the end of her bed, her laptop balanced on her knees. Her fingers flew across the keys as she worked on breaking through the protection on the pilfered USB drive. A stray piece of blond hair drifted into her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Done!”

Sloane turned the laptop around so the two of us could see it. “Seven files,” she said. The smile fell from her face. “Seven victims.”

Locke’s lecture on victimology came flooding back to me. Was that why my mentor had been carrying around a digital copy of these files? Had she been attempting to get inside the victims’ heads?

“What if this is important?” I asked, unable to push back a stab of guilt. “What if Locke and Briggs need this information for their case?” I’d come to the program to help, not to get in the way of the FBI’s efforts.

“Cassie,” Michael said, taking a seat against the foot of the bed and stretching his legs out in front of him. “Is Briggs the type to keep backups?”

Agent Briggs was the type to keep backups of his backups. He and Locke had been gone for three days. If they’d needed this drive, they would have come back for it.

“Should I print out the files?” Sloane asked.

Michael looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Your call, Colorado.”

I should have said no. I should have told Sloane that the case Locke and Briggs were working on was none of our business, but I’d come here to help, and Locke had said that she and Briggs had hit a brick wall.

“Print it.”

A second later, the printer on Sloane’s desk started spitting out pages. After fifty or so sheets, it stopped. Michael leaned over and grabbed the pages. He separated them by case and helped himself to three case files before handing the others to Sloane and me. All seven were homicides. Four in DC in the past two weeks and another three cases, all within the past year, from other jurisdictions.

“First DC victim disappeared from the street she was working ten days ago and showed up the next morning with her face half carved off.” Michael looked up from leafing through the file.

“This one’s dated three days later,” I said. “Facial mutilation, numerous superficial cuts to the rest of the body—she died of blood loss.”

“This would take time,” Sloane said, her face pale. “Hours, not minutes, and according to the autopsy reports, the tissue damage is—severe.”

“He’s playing with them.” Michael finished with his second file and started in on the third. “He takes them. He cuts them. He watches them suffer. And then he cuts off their faces.”

“Don’t say he,” I corrected absentmindedly. “Say I or you.”

Michael and Sloane both stared at me, and I realized the obvious: their lessons were very different from mine.

“I mean, say UNSUB,” I told them. “Unknown Subject.”

“I can think of some better names for this guy,” Michael murmured, looking through the last case file in his hands. “Who has the file for the last victim?”

“I do.” Sloane’s voice was quiet, and suddenly, she looked very young. “She was a palm reader in Dupont Circle.” For a second, I thought Sloane might actually put the file down, but then her features went suddenly calm. “A person is ten times more likely to become a professional athlete than to make a living reading palms,” she said,