The Naturals (11 page)

“Very nice,” I said between hysterical giggles. He sank back onto the sofa and then turned dagger eyes on Lia.

“Truth or dare.”

Not surprisingly, Lia chose truth. Of all of us, she was probably the only one here who could lie and get away with it.

Michael smiled, as genial as Lia had been when she’d started this whole thing. “What’s your real name?”

For a few brief seconds, vulnerability and irritation passed over Lia’s features in quick succession.

“Your name isn’t Lia?” Sloane sounded strangely hurt at the idea that Lia might have lied about something as simple and basic as her own name.

“Yes,” Lia told her. “It is.”

Michael stared at Lia, raising his eyebrows ever so slightly.

“But once upon a time,” Lia said, sounding less and less like herself with every word, “my name used to be Sadie.”

Lia’s answer filled my mind with questions. I tried to picture her as a Sadie. Had she shed her old name as easily as she changed clothes? Why had she changed it? How had Michael known?

“Truth or dare …” Lia dragged her eyes across each of us, one by one, and I sensed something dark slowly unfurling inside of her. This wasn’t going to end well.

“Cassie.”

It didn’t seem fair that it was my turn again already, when Dean had yet to go, but I stepped up to the plate.

“Dare.” I don’t know what possessed me to choose that option, other than the fact that the look on Lia’s face convinced me that she’d make Sloane’s question look about as personal as an inquiry about the weather.

Lia beamed at me, and then beamed at Michael.
Payback
.

“I dare you,” Lia said, relishing each and every word, “to kiss Dean.”

Dean reacted to that sentence like he’d been electrocuted. He sat straight up. “Lia,” he said sharply. “No.”

“Oh, come now, Dean,” Lia cajoled. “It’s Truth or Dare. Take one for the team.” Without waiting for his reply, she turned back to me. “Kiss him, Cassie.”

I didn’t know what was worse, Dean’s objection to the idea of being forced to kiss me or the sudden realization that my body
didn’t
object to the idea of kissing him. I thought of our lessons with Locke, the feel of his hand on the back of my neck. …

Lia watched me expectantly, but Michael’s eyes were the ones I felt on my face as I crossed the room to stand in front of Dean.

I didn’t have to do this.

I could say no.

Dean looked up at me, and for a split second, I saw
something other than deadly neutrality on his face. His eyes softened. His lips parted, like there was something he wanted to say.

I knelt next to the fireplace. I put one hand on his cheek, and I brought my lips to his. It was a friendly kiss. A European hello. Our mouths only touched for a second—but I felt it, electric, all the way to my toes.

I pulled back, unable to force my eyes away from his lips as I did. For a few seconds, we just stayed there, staring at each other: him on the fireplace and me kneeling on the rug.

“Your turn, Cassie.” Lia sounded pretty darned satisfied with herself.

I forced myself to stand up and walk back to the sofa. I sat down, still able to feel the ghost of Dean’s lips on mine. “Truth or dare, Dean?”

It was only fair: he was the sole person present who hadn’t been in the hot seat yet. For a second, I thought he might refuse and call an end to this game, but he didn’t.

“Truth.”

This was the opportunity Michael hadn’t given me. There were so many things I wanted to know. I concentrated on that, instead of what had passed between us a moment before.

“The other day, when Locke said she couldn’t take Lia to the crime scene, you said that wasn’t what the program was
anymore
.” I paused. “What did you mean?”

Dean nodded, as if that were a perfectly reasonable question to ask after you’d kissed a person. “I was the first one,” he said. “Before there was a program, before they started using the term
Naturals
, it was just Briggs and me. I didn’t live with Judd. The FBI brass didn’t know about me. Briggs brought me questions. I gave him answers.”

“Questions about killers.” I wasn’t allowed a follow-up question, so I phrased it as a statement. Dean nodded. Lia cut in, breaking off all conversation.

“He was twelve,” she said, clipping the words. “Your turn, Dean.”

“Cassie,” Dean said. That was it—no “truth or dare.” Just my name.

Beside me, Michael’s jaw clenched. Lia’s payback had hit its target—and then some.

“Truth,” I said, trying not to dwell on Michael’s reaction or what it might mean.

“Why did you come here?” Dean asked, looking at Lia, at his own hands, at anything but me. “Why join this program at all?”

There were a lot of answers to that question that would have been technically true. I could have said that I wanted to help people. I could have said that I’d always known that I’d never quite fit in the regular world. But I didn’t.

“My mother was murdered.” I cleared my throat, trying to say the words like they were just any other words. “Five
years ago. Based on the blood spatter, they think she was stabbed. Repeatedly. The police never found her body, but there was enough blood that they don’t think she could have survived. I used to think that maybe she had. I don’t anymore.”

Dean didn’t react visibly to that confession—but Lia went unnaturally still, and Sloane’s mouth dropped open as she averted her eyes. Michael had known about my mother, but I’d never said a word to any of the others.

Truth or dare, Dean
. I wanted to say the words, but I couldn’t keep asking Dean questions. Already, we’d kept this game between the two of us for too long. “Truth or dare, Lia?”

“Truth.” Lia said the word like a challenge. I asked her whether she was messy or neat. She lowered her chin, raised her eyebrows, and stared at me.

“Seriously,” she said. “That’s your question?”

“That’s my question,” I confirmed.

“I’m a mess,” she said. “By
every
sense of the word.” She didn’t give me time to meditate on the fact that I’d pegged her right before she targeted Michael for the next round. I expected him to pick dare again, but he didn’t.

“Truth.”

Lia ran dainty hands over her dress. She gave him her most wide-eyed, innocent look. Then she asked him if he
was jealous when I kissed Dean. Michael didn’t bat an eye, but I thought Dean might actually throttle Lia.

“I don’t get jealous,” Michael said. “I get even.”

No one was surprised when Michael aimed the next round at Dean.

“Truth or dare, Dean?”

“Truth.” Dean’s eyes narrowed, and I remembered Lia saying that if Dean had a temper, Michael would have been dead by now. I waited, my stomach heavy and my throat dry, for Michael to ask Dean something horrible.

But he didn’t.

“Have you ever seen
The Bad Seed
?” he inquired politely. “The movie.”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. “No.”

Michael grinned. “I have.”

Dean stood up. “I’m done here.”

“Dean—” Lia’s tone was halfway between mulish and wheedling, but he silenced her with a look. Two seconds later, he was stalking out of the room, and a few seconds after that, I heard the front door open, then slam.

Dean was gone—and a person didn’t have to be an emotion reader to see the look of satisfaction on Michael’s face.

Every hour, every day, you think about The Girl. But it’s not time for the grand finale. Not yet. Instead, you find another toy at a little shop in Dupont Circle. You’ve had your eye on her for a while, but resisted the urge to add her to your collection. She was too close to home, in an area that was too densely populated.

But right now, the so-called Madame Selene is just what you need. Bodies are bodies, but a palm reader—there’s a certain poetry to that. A message you want—need
—have
to send. It would be simpler to kill her in the shop, to drive a knife through each palm and leave her body on display, but you’ve worked so hard this week.

You deserve a little treat
.

Taking her is easy. You’re a ghost. A stranger with candy. A sympathetic ear. When Madame Selene wakes up in the warehouse, she won’t believe that you’re the one who’s done this to her.

Not at first
.

But eventually, she’ll see
.

You smile, thinking about the inevitability of it all. You touch the tips of her brown hair and pick up the handy box of Red Dye Number 12. You hum under your breath, a children’s song that takes you back to the beginning, back to the first.

The palm reader’s eyes flicker open. Her hands are bound. She sees you. Then she sees the hair dye, the knife in your left hand, and she realizes.—

You are the monster
.

And this time, you deserve to take things slow
.

W
hen Agent Locke showed up Monday morning, she had dark circles under her eyes. Belatedly, I remembered that while we’d been watching TV and playing Truth or Dare, she and Briggs had been out working a case. A real case, with real stakes.

A
real killer
.

For a long time, Locke didn’t say anything. “Briggs and I hit a brick wall this weekend,” she said finally. “We’ve got three bodies, and the killer is escalating.” She ran a hand through hair that looked like it had been only haphazardly brushed. “That’s not your problem. It’s mine, but this case has reminded me that the UNSUB is only half the story. Dean, what can you tell Cassie about victimology?”

Dean stared holes in the countertop. I hadn’t seen him
since Truth or Dare, but it was like nothing had changed between us, like we’d never kissed.

“Most killers have a type,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s a physical type. For others, it may be a matter of convenience—maybe you focus on hikers, because no one reports them missing for a few days, or students, because it’s easy to get ahold of their class schedules.”

Agent Locke nodded. “Occasionally the victims may be serving as a substitute for someone in the UNSUB’s life. Some killers kill their first girlfriend or their wife or their mother, over and over again.”

“The other thing victimology tells us,” Dean continued, flicking his eyes over to Agent Locke, “is how the victim would have reacted to being abducted or attacked. If you’re a killer …” He paused, searching for the right words. “There’s a give-and-take between you and the people you kill. You choose them. You trap them. Maybe they fight. Maybe they run. Some try to reason with you, some say things that set you off. Either way, you react.”

“We don’t have the luxury of knowing every last detail about the UNSUB’s personality,” Agent Locke cut in, “but the victim’s personality and behavior account for half of the crime scene.”

The moment I heard the phrase
crime scene
, I flashed back to opening the door to my mother’s dressing room.
I’d always thought that I knew so little about what had happened that day. By the time I’d gotten back to the dressing room, the killer was gone. My mother was gone. There was so much blood.…

Victimology
, I reminded myself. I knew my mother. She would have fought—nail-scratching, breaking-lamps-over-his-head, struggling-for-the-knife
fought
. And there were only two things that could have stopped her: dying or the realization that I was due back in the room at any second.

What if she went with him?
The police had assumed she was dead—or at the very least unconscious—when the UNSUB had removed her from the room. But my mother wasn’t a small woman, and the dressing room was on the second floor of the theater. Under normal circumstance, my mother wouldn’t have just let a killer waltz her out the door—but she might have done anything to keep her assailant away from me.

“Cassie?” Agent Locke said, snapping me back to the present.

“Right,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “Right what?”

“Sorry,” I told Locke. “Could you repeat what you just said?”

She gave me a long, appraising look, then repeated herself. “I said that walking through a crime scene from a victim’s perspective can tell you a lot about the killer. Say you go
into a victim’s house and you find out that she compulsively writes to-do lists, color-codes her clothes, and has a pet fish. This woman is the third victim, but she’s the only one of the three who doesn’t have defensive wounds. The killer normally keeps his victims alive for days, but this woman was killed by a strong blow to the head on the day she was taken. Her blouse was buttoned crookedly when they found her.”

Putting myself into the killer’s head, I could imagine him taking women. Playing with them. So why would he let this one off easy? Why end his game early, when she showed no signs of fighting back?

Because she showed no signs of fighting back
.

I switched perspectives, imagining myself as the victim.
I’m organized, orderly, and type A in the extreme. I want a pet, but can’t bring myself to get one that would actually disrupt my life, so I settle for a fish instead. Maybe I’ve read about the previous murders in the paper. Maybe I know how things end for the women who fought back
.

So maybe I don’t fight back. Not physically
.

The things Locke had told me about the victim said that she was a woman who liked to stay in control. She would have tried reasoning with her killer. She would have resisted his attempts to control her. She might have even tried to manipulate him. And if she’d succeeded, even for an instant …

“The UNSUB killed the others for fun,” I said, “but he killed her in a fit of rage.”

Their interaction would have been a game of control for him, too—and she was just enough of a control freak to disrupt that.

“And?” Agent Locke prompted.

I drew a blank.

“He buttoned her shirt,” Dean said. “If she’d buttoned it, it wouldn’t have been crooked.”

That observation sent my mind whirring. If he’d killed her in a rage, why would he have dressed her afterward? If he’d
un
dressed her, I could understand it—the final humiliation, the final assertion of control.