The Naturals

The one who’d shot Michael.

He was aiming at Special Agent Lacey Locke.

PART FOUR: SEEING

YOU

You’ve waited for this moment. Waited for her to look at you and see. Even now, confusion is warring with disbelief on her face. She doesn’t understand why you shot Michael. She doesn’t understand who you are or what she is to you.

But Dean does. You see the exact moment that everything falls into place for the boy you trained. The lessons you taught them, the little hints you dropped along the way. The way you are with Cassie, grooming her in your own image. The resemblance between the two of you.

Your hair is red, too.

Dean aims his gun at you, but you’re not frightened. You’ve seen inside this boy’s head. You know exactly what to say, exactly how to play him. You’re the one who told him to bring the gun. You’re the one who made sure that no one knew that he and Cassie were leaving the house. You’re the one who brought them here.

It’s all part of the plan—and Dean is just one more body, one more thing standing between you and your heart’s desire.

Cassie. Lorelai’s daughter.

You told her not to do anything stupid. She and Dean were supposed to come alone.

You’re going to have to punish her for that.

CHAPTER 36

Agent Locke was holding a gun. She’d shot Michael—she’d shot him—and now he was on the ground, blood pooling around his body, his insides leaking out. This was a mistake—it had to be a mistake. She’d seen that he was holding a weapon and she’d reacted. She was an FBI agent, and she wanted to protect me. That was her job.

“Cassie.” Dean’s voice was low and full of warning. The set of his features made him look like a predator, a soldier, a machine. “Stay back.”

“No,” Agent Locke said, moving forward, smiling as brightly as ever. “Don’t stay back. Don’t listen to him, Cassie.”

Dean tracked her movement with the gun. His finger bore down on the trigger.

“Are you a killer, Dean?” Agent Locke asked, her eyes wide and earnest. “We always wondered. Director Sterling was hesitant to fund the program, because he knows where you came from. What you came from. Is it really fair of us to teach you everything there is to know about killers? To force you to live in a house where their pictures line the walls and everything you see and do is geared toward that one thing? Given your background, how long could it possibly be until you snap?”

Agent Locke was closer to him now. “It’s what you think about. It’s your greatest fear. How long,” Agent Locke drawled, “until you’re just … like … Daddy?”

Arms steady, eyes hard, Dean pulled the trigger, but he was too late. She was on him. She knocked the gun to the side, and when it went off, the bullet flew astray, so close to my face that I could feel the heat of it against my skin. Dean turned his head to look at me, to make sure that I was okay. It cost him a fraction of a second, but even that was too much.

Agent Locke hit him with the butt of her gun, and he went down, his body limp, his crumpled form lying three feet away from Michael’s.

“Finally,” Agent Locke said, turning around to face me, “it’s just us girls.”

I took a step forward, toward Michael, toward Dean, but Agent Locke waved her gun at me. “Nuh-uh-uh,” she said, making a tsking sound under her breath. “You stay right there. We’re going to have to have a little talk about following orders. I told you not to do anything stupid. Letting Michael trail you here was stupid. It was sloppy.”

One second she was standing there, looking exactly like the woman I knew, full of life, a force of nature who was very good at getting her own way, and the next she was on top of me. I saw a blur of silver and heard the impact of her gun with my cheekbone.

Pain exploded in my face a second later. I was on the floor. I could taste blood in my mouth.

“Stand up.” Her voice was brisk, but there was an edge to it I’d never heard before. “Stand up.”

I clambered to my feet. She took her left hand and placed her fingers under my chin. She angled my face upward. There was blood on my lips. I could feel my eye swelling shut, and even the slight movement of my head sent stars into my eyes.

“I told you not to do anything stupid. I told you I’d make you regret it if you did.” Her fingernails dug into the skin under my chin, and I thought about the victims’ photos, the way she’d peeled the skin from their faces.

The knife.

“Don’t do anything else that I’ll be forced to make you regret,” she said coldly. “You’ll only be hurting yourself.”

I looked into her eyes, and I wondered how I could have missed this, how I could have spent all day, every day with her for weeks without realizing that there was something wrong with her.

“Why?” I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have been looking for a way out, but there wasn’t one, and I needed to know.

Locke ignored my question and glanced at Michael. “It’s a pity,” she said. “I’d hoped to spare him. He has a very valuable gift, and he certainly took a shine to you. They all did.”

With no warning whatsoever, she hit me again. This time, she caught me before I fell.

“You’re just like your mother,” she said. And then she tightened her grip on my arm, forcing me to stand straight. “Don’t be weak. You’re better than that. We’re better than that, and I won’t have you sniveling on the floor like some common whore. Do you understand me?”

I understood that the words she was saying were things that someone had probably once said to her. I understood that if I asked her how she knew my mother, she’d hit me again and again.

I understood that I might not get back up.

“I expect an answer when I talk to you, Cassie. You weren’t raised in a barn.”

“I understand,” I said, filing away her choice of words, the almost maternal undertone to her words. I’d assumed that the UNSUB was male. I’d assumed that when the UNSUB killed females, there might be some kind of underlying sexual motivation. But Agent Locke was the one who’d taught me that when you changed one assumption, you changed everything.

You’ll always be wrong about something. You’ll always miss something. What if the UNSUB is older than you thought? What if he is a she?

She’d practically told me that she was the UNSUB, and it had gone right over my head, because I’d trusted her, because if the UNSUB’s motivation wasn’t sexual, if he wasn’t killing his wife or his mother or a girl who turned him down, over and over again, if he was a she …

“Okay, kiddo, let’s get this show on the road.” Locke sounded so much like herself, so normal, that it was