The Naturals

“No,” Dean said. “Stay. It’s fine.”

He didn’t sound fine—and if I was picking up on that, I didn’t want to know how easy it was for Michael to see what Dean was feeling.

“I brought you this,” Dean said, holding out a file. At first, I thought it was the case file for our UNSUB, but then I saw the label on the file. LORELAI HOBBES.

“My mother’s file?”

“Locke snuck me a copy,” Dean said. “She thought there might be something here, and she was right. The attack on your mother was poorly planned. It was emotional. It was messy. And what we saw today—”

“Wasn’t any of those things,” I finished. Dean had just put into words the feeling I’d been on the verge of explaining to Michael. A killer could grow and change, their MO could develop, but the emotions, the rage, the titillation—that didn’t just go away. Whoever had attacked my mom would have been too overwhelmed by adrenaline to commit the minutiae of the scene to memory.

The person responsible for the blood in my mother’s dressing room five years ago wouldn’t have been able to reenact her murder so coldly today.

This wasn’t about reliving a kill.

“Even if I’m evolving,” Dean said, “even if I’ve gotten good at what I do—seeing you, Cassie, seeing your mother in you, I’d be frenzied.” Dean slipped a picture of my mother’s crime scene out of the folder. Then he laid a second picture down next to it, of the scene today. Looking at the two photos side by side, I accepted what my gut was telling me, what Dean was telling me.

If you were the one who killed my mother, I told the UNSUB, if every woman you’ve killed since is a way to relive that moment, wouldn’t her death mean something to you? How could you possibly stage a scene like that and not lose control?

The UNSUB responsible for the corpse I’d seen today was meticulous. Methodical. The type who needed to be in control and always had a plan.

The person who’d killed my mother was none of those things.

How is that even possible? I wondered.

“Look at the light switches.”

I turned around. Sloane was directly behind me, staring at the pictures. Lia entered the room a moment later.

“I took care of Agent Starmans,” she said. “He has somehow developed the impression that he is urgently needed in the kitchen.” Dean gave her an exasperated look. “What?” she said. “I thought Cassie might want some privacy.”

I didn’t really think five people counted as “privacy,” but I was too stuck on Sloane’s words to nitpick Lia’s. “Why am I looking at the light switches?”

“There’s a single smear of blood on the light switch and plate in both photos,” Sloane said. “But in this one”—she gestured to the photo of the scene today—“the blood is on the top of the switch. And in this one, it’s on the bottom.”

“And the translation, for those of us who don’t spend hours working on physical simulations in the basement?” Lia asked.

“In one of the photos, the light switch got smeared with blood when someone with bloody hands turned it off,” Sloane said. “But in the other one, it happened when the light was turned on.”

My fingers touch something warm and sticky on the wall. Frantically, I search for the light switch. My fingers find it. I don’t care that they’re covered in warm, wet liquid.

I. Need. It. On.

“I turned the light on,” I said. “When I came back to my mother’s dressing room—there was blood on my hands when I turned the light on.”

But if there had only been one smear of blood on the switch, and that smear of blood was from my hand …

My mother’s killer wouldn’t have known it was there. The only people who would have known about the blood on the light switch were the people who’d seen the crime scene after I’d returned to the dressing room. After I’d turned the light on. After I’d accidentally coated the switch in blood.

And yet, our UNSUB, who had meticulously recreated my mother’s murder scene, had included that detail.

You weren’t reliving the kill, I thought, allowing myself to finally give life to the words, because you weren’t the one who killed my mother.

But who else could this UNSUB—who was unquestionably fixated on my mom, on me—possibly be? My mind raced through the day’s events.

The gift, sent to me, but addressed to Sloane.

Genevieve Ridgerton.

The message on the bathroom wall.

The theater in Arlington.

Every detail had been planned. This killer had known exactly what I would do at every step along the way —but not just me. He’d known what all of us would do. He’d known that sending a package to Sloane was his best chance of getting it to me. He’d known that Briggs and Locke would cave and bring me to the crime scene. He’d known that I’d find the message, and that someone else would decode it. He’d known that we would find the theater in Arlington, that the agents would let me see it.

“The code,” I said, backtracking out loud. The others looked at me. “The UNSUB left a message for me, but I couldn’t have decoded it. Not alone.” If the UNSUB was so set on forcing me to relive my mother’s murder, why leave a message I might not be able to understand?

Had the UNSUB known Sloane would be there? Did he expect her to decode it? Did he know what she could do? And if he did …

You know about my mother’s case. What if you know about the program, too?

“Lia, the lipstick.” I tried to keep my voice steady, tried not to let the panic in my chest worm its way to the surface. “The Rose Red lipstick—where did you get it?”

A few days ago, it had seemed benign: a cruel irony, but nothing more. Now—

“Lia?”

“I told you,” Lia said, “I bought it.”

I hadn’t recognized the lie the first time around.

“Where did you get it, Lia?”

Lia opened her mouth to dish out a retort, then closed it again. Her eyes studied mine. “It was a gift,” she said quietly. “I don’t know from who. Someone left a bag of makeup on my bed last week. I just assumed I had a makeup fairy.” She paused. “Honestly, I thought it might be from Sloane.”

“I haven’t stolen makeup in months.” Sloane’s eyes were wide. My stomach lurched.

There was a chance that the UNSUB knew about the program.

The only people who would have been able to reconstruct my mother’s crime scene so exactly, the only people who would have known about the blood on the light switch, were people who had access to the crime- scene photos.

And someone had left a tube of my mother’s favorite lipstick on Lia’s bed.

Inside our house.

CHAPTER 34

“Cassie?” Lia was the first one to break the silence. “Are you okay? You look … not good.”

I was going to go out on a limb and guess that was about as diplomatic as Lia got.

“I need to call Agent Briggs,” I said, and then I paused. “I don’t have his number.”

Dean fished his phone out of his pocket. “There are only four numbers in my contacts,” he said. “Briggs is