The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct Read online

  Sterling took a step toward her father. “Someone has to. He’s seventeen years old.”

  “And he was helping dear old daddy out when he was twelve!”

  It was all I could do not to fly off the roof and go at the director myself. Beside me, all the tension melted out of Lia’s body. She looked relaxed. Friendly, even. For Lia, that meant she was almost certainly out for blood.

  Some people will always look at Dean and see his father, I thought dully. The director didn’t just hold Dean responsible for the sins of his father—he considered Dean an accomplice.

  “I am done talking about this with you, Veronica.” The director’s temper frayed. “We need to know if any of Redding’s visitors is a likely suspect on this case. Do I need to tell you who some of Colonial University’s alumni are? The pressure to put this one to bed is coming from on high, Agent.” His voice softened slightly. “I know you don’t want to see the bodies stacking up.”

  “Of course I want to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.” Agent Sterling had cautioned me against making cases personal, but this one had snuck through the chinks in her armor. “That’s why I went to see Redding myself.”

  The director froze. “I intercepted you before you executed that ill-thought-out plan.”

  Agent Sterling smiled at him, baring her teeth. “Did you?”

  “Veronica—”

  “Right now, I think I prefer Agent. You wanted someone to get underneath Daniel Redding’s skin. You don’t need Dean for that. I’m the one who got away, Director. You know what that means to a man like Redding.”

  “I know that I don’t want you anywhere near him.” For the first time, the director actually sounded like a father.

  “Let me talk to Dean.” Sterling wasn’t above pressing her advantage, however slight it might have been. “Let me be the one who shows Dean the visitor logs. If he knows anything that might prove relevant, he’ll tell me. Dean trusts me.”

  After a good ten or fifteen seconds of silence, the director nodded curtly. “Fine. But if you and Briggs can’t get me results, I’ll bring in someone who can.”

  Lia and I did not say a word until both Agent Sterling and the director were out of sight.

  “And I thought my family had issues.” Lia got up and stretched, arching her back and then twisting from one side to the other. “She was telling the truth when she said that she had our best interests at heart. Not the whole truth, but it was true. Heartwarming, isn’t it?”

  I was too busy sorting through the implications of what we’d heard to reply. After last summer, Sterling had threatened to shut down the program. The director had kept her from going over his head by pointing out exactly what I’d told Sterling: that normal wasn’t an option for any of us anymore. At least I had somewhere to go back to. Dean didn’t. Lia didn’t. Michael’s father was abusive. There was a very high likelihood that Sloane’s family were the ones who’d hammered home the idea that she said and did the wrong thing 86.5 percent of the time.

  My mother was dead, my father barely involved in my life. And I was the lucky one.

  “The director calls Dean the boy.” I paused to consider the significance of that. “He doesn’t want to see Dean as a person. The boy is an extension of his father. The boy is a means to an end.”

  This from the man who referred to his own daughter as Agent.

  She’s the one who followed in your footsteps. Of all your children, she’s the most like you. She was your legacy, and then she was gone.

  “The director really does believe that Dean helped his father.” Lia let me chew on that for a few seconds before continuing. “What exactly he thinks Dean helped Redding do is up in the air, but that wasn’t conjecture I heard in his voice. For him, Dean’s culpability is fact.”

  “Dean was twelve when his father was arrested!” The objection burst out of me. Realizing that I was preaching to the choir, I reined in the indignation a bit. “I know that Dean knew,” I said softly. “I know he thinks that he should have found a way to put a stop to it, that if he’d done things differently, he could have saved those women, but according to Professor Fogle’s lecture, Redding had been killing for five years before he was caught. Dean would have been seven.”

  Dean had told me once that he hadn’t known about his father at first. But later…

  He made me watch. Dean’s words stuck in my head, like food wedged between my teeth.

  I forced my attention back to the present, to Lia. “Was Sterling—our Sterling—telling the truth when she said she’d ask Dean about the visitor logs?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Lia replied. “She was.”

  “Maybe she’s starting to realize that she can’t protect Dean from this,” I said. “All she can do is run interference and make sure he’s not going through it alone.”

  My words hung in the air. I’d thought all along that Sterling and Briggs weren’t doing Dean any favors by keeping him in the dark, but from his perspective, Lia, Michael, and I had done the exact same thing. When I was the one at the center of a case, I thought slowly, if I’d discovered that the others were investigating behind my back, I wouldn’t have felt protected.

  I would have felt betrayed.

  “Whatever you say, Cassandra Hobbes.” Lia pivoted and began making her way back to her bedroom window. She walked on the tips of her toes, like the roof was a tightrope and she was seconds away from performing a death-defying move.

  “You forgot the ice cream,” I called after her.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “And you forgot the most interesting thing we learned from this little excursion.”

  I’d been so focused on the sequence of events that had led Agent Sterling here and the director’s comments on Dean that I hadn’t let myself process the rest of their conversation.

  “The Nightshade case?” I grabbed the ice cream and went to stand, but Lia’s response froze me to the spot.

  “The Nightshade case—whatever that is—and the person who paid the price for however that case went down.”

  “Scarlett,” I said, thinking back to my realization outside the prison that Agent Sterling had lost someone and that she blamed herself.

  Lia turned the corner. I couldn’t see her anymore, but I had no trouble hearing her. “Not just Scarlett,” she countered. “Scarlett Hawkins.”

  The person Agent Sterling had lost because she cared too much, because she was willing to do whatever it took to save lives, shared Judd’s last name.

  His daughter, I guessed. Judd was about the same age as the director, and the way he treated Agent Sterling wasn’t just familiar—it was fatherly. Now Judd’s feelings about the director made total sense. Judd had lost a child, and Director Sterling’s primary concern had been morale.

  I pieced together what I knew. Scarlett Hawkins and Agent Sterling were friends. They both worked at the FBI. Scarlett was killed. Briggs started going to Dean for help on cases. Agent Sterling left the FBI…and her husband.

  When the director had discovered what Briggs was doing, he’d made it official. Dean had moved into this house. With Judd.

  I was so caught up in thought that I almost didn’t see the figure creeping across the front lawn. The sun had fully set, so it took me a moment to recognize the way the person moved, hands stuffed into his pockets, shoulders rounded and hunched. The hoodie the figure was wearing almost masked his face. His hair—in desperate need of a trim—finished the job.

  Dean. Sneaking out of the house. I was halfway back to Lia’s window before I’d even registered the fact that I was moving. I forced myself not to look down and finished the journey. Thankful that Lia had left the window open, I climbed back into her room and raced down the stairs.

  For once, I didn’t run into anyone. By the time I made out it the front door, Dean was already halfway down the block. I ran to catch up to him.

  “Dean!”

  He ignored me and kept walking.

  “I’m sorry,” I called after him.
My words hung in the night air, insufficient, but dear. “Lia and I should have told you we were going to that party. We thought we might pick up on something the FBI missed. We just wanted this case over.”

  “For me.” Dean didn’t turn around, but he stopped walking. “You wanted this case over for me.”

  “Is that so bad?” I asked, coming to a standstill behind him. “People are allowed to care about you, and don’t tell me that when people care about you, they get hurt. That’s not you talking. That’s something you were told. It’s something your father wants you to believe, because he doesn’t want you to be close to anyone else. He’s always wanted you all to himself, and every time you push us away, you’re giving him exactly what he wants.”

  Dean still didn’t turn around, so I took three steps, until I was standing in front of him. The tip of his hood hung in his face. I pushed the hood back. He didn’t move. I put a hand on each side of his face and tilted it up.

  The same way that Michael had tilted my face up to his.

  What are you doing, Cassie?

  I couldn’t pull back from Dean, not now. No matter what it might mean. Dean needed this—physical contact. He needed to know that I wasn’t afraid of him, that he wasn’t alone.

  I brushed the hair off his cheekbones, and dark eyes met mine.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you see too much?” he asked me.

  I managed a small smile. “I’ve been told that I should keep some of it to myself.”

  “You can’t.” Dean’s lips curved almost imperceptibly upward. “You didn’t plan on saying any of those things. I’m not sure you even knew them until they came out of your mouth.”

  He was right. Now that I’d said it, I could see that it was true—Dean’s father didn’t want to share him. I made him, he’d said in that interview with Briggs. He wanted Dean to blame himself for each and every woman Redding had killed, because if Dean blamed himself, if he thought he didn’t deserve to be loved, he’d keep the rest of the world at arm’s length. He’d be his father’s son—and nothing else.

  “Where are you going?” I asked Dean. My voice came out as a whisper. I dropped my hands from his face, but they only made it as far as his neck.

  This is a mistake.

  This is right.

  Those thoughts came on the heels of each other, playing in stereo. Any second, Dean was going to pull back from my touch.

  But he didn’t.

  And I didn’t.

  “I can’t just sit here and wait for the next body to show up. The director thinks that he can just put me in a drawer and pull me out when I’m useful. Agent Sterling tried to cover for her father, but I know what he’s thinking.”

  He’s thinking that you owe him this, I thought, feeling Dean’s pulse jump in his throat under my touch. He’s thinking that he’s doing the world a favor by making you his tool.

  “Where are you going?” I repeated the question.

  “Agent Sterling showed me a list.” Dean put his hands on my wrists and pulled my hands away from his neck. He didn’t let go, just stood there on the sidewalk, his fingers working their way from my wrists to my fingers, until our hands were interwoven. “She wanted to know if I recognized any of my father’s visitors, if anything jumped out to me.”

  “And did anything jump out to you?”

  Dean nodded curtly, but didn’t release my hands. “One of the visitors was a woman from my hometown.”

  I waited him to elaborate.

  “Daniel killed people in that town, Cassie. My fourth-grade teacher. Travelers just passing through. The people in that town, our friends, our neighbors—they couldn’t even stand to look at me after the truth came out. Why would anyone there go to visit him?”

  Those weren’t rhetorical questions. They were questions Dean was set on answering himself. “You’re going home,” I said. I knew it was true, long before Dean confirmed it for me.

  “Broken Springs hasn’t been home for a very long time.” Dean took a step backward and dropped my hands. He pulled his hood back up. “I know the type of women who visit men like my father in jail. They’re fascinated. Obsessed.”

  “Obsessed enough to re-create his crimes?”

  “Obsessed enough that they won’t cooperate with the FBI,” Dean said. “Obsessed enough that they’d love to talk to me.”

  I didn’t tell Dean that everyone from Briggs to Judd would kill him for doing this. I did, however, take issue with his timing. “How late is it going to be when you get there? And for that matter, how are you going to get there?”

  Dean didn’t answer.

  “Wait,” I told him. “Wait until morning. Sterling will be out with Briggs. I can go with you, or Lia can. There’s a killer out there. You shouldn’t be going anywhere alone.”

  “No,” Dean said, his face twisting like he’d tasted something sour. “That’s Lia’s job.”

  I’d apologized for digging into this case without him. She hadn’t. I knew Lia well enough to know that she wouldn’t. Dean knew that, too.

  “Go easy,” I told him. “Whatever you said to her, she’s taking it hard.”

  “She’s supposed to take it hard.” There was a stubborn set to Dean’s jaw. “I’m the only one she listens to. I’m the one who cares if she goes off with two strange men in the middle of a murder investigation. You think that anything anyone else says is going to keep her from doing it again?”

  “You made your point,” I told him. “But you’re not just the only person she listens to. You’re the only person she trusts. She can’t lose that. Neither can you.”

  “Fine,” Dean said. “I’ll wait until morning to head for Broken Springs, and I’ll talk to Lia before I go.”

  Once Lia was involved, I doubted she’d sit back and let him go off on his own. If he wouldn’t take her or me, he could at least take Michael. That might be a recipe for a road trip that ended in a fistfight, but at least Dean would have backup.

  Michael doesn’t hate Dean. He hates that Dean is angry and holding it in. He hates that Dean knows what his childhood was like. He hates the idea of Dean with me.

  I turned and started walking back toward the house, my mind a mess of thoughts about Michael and Dean and me. I’d made it six feet when Dean fell in beside me. I didn’t want to think about the heat of his body next to mine. I didn’t want to want to reach for his hand.

  So I forced myself to stick to safer ground. “Have you ever heard of Judd having a daughter named Scarlett?”

  The next morning, I woke up to find that Michael was outside working on his car again. I stood at my bedroom window, watching him going at the bumper with the power sander like rust removal was an Olympic sport. He’s going to destroy that car, I thought. Restoration was not Michael’s strong suit.

  “You’re up.”

  I turned from the window to face Sloane, who was sitting up in her own bed. “I’m up.”

  “What are you looking at?”

  I grasped for a way to avoid answering the question, but came up empty. “Michael,” I said.

  Sloane studied me for a moment, the way an archaeologist might look at paintings on the wall of a cave. Given the way her brain worked, she probably would have had better luck reading hieroglyphics.

  “You and Michael,” Sloane said slowly.

  “There’s nothing going on with Michael and me.” My reply was immediate.

  Sloane tilted her head to one side. “You and Dean?”

  “There’s nothing going on with Dean and me.”

  Sloane stared at me for another three seconds, and then: “I give up.” Clearly, she’d expended her capacity for girl talk. Thank God. She disappeared into the closet, and I was halfway out the door before I remembered my promise.

  “I may be going somewhere today,” I told her. “With Dean.”

  Sloane popped out of the closet, half-dressed. “But you said—”

  “Not like that,” I cut in hastily. “For the case. I’m not sure what the plan is, but I
’m getting ready to find out.” I paused. “I promised I’d deal you in next time. This is me dealing you in.”

  Sloane pulled on a shirt. She was quiet for several seconds. When she spoke, she beamed. “Consider me dealt.”

  We found Dean in the kitchen with Lia, who was sitting on the kitchen counter, wearing white pajamas and red high heels. Her hair was loose and uncombed. The two of them were talking softly enough that I couldn’t make out the words.

  Lia caught sight of me over Dean’s shoulder, and with an unholy glint in her eye, she hopped off the counter. Her heels didn’t so much as wobble when she landed.

  “Lover boy here says you stopped him from doing something stupid last night.” Lia smirked. “Personally, I don’t want to know how you persuaded him to hold his horses. Horses were held. Let’s save my tender ears the details, shall we?”

  “Lia,” Dean barked.

  Sloane raised her hand. “I have questions about these tender details.”

  “Later,” Lia told Sloane. She reached over and patted Dean’s cheek. He narrowed his eyes, and she folded her hands primly in front of her body. “I’ll behave,” she promised. “Scout’s honor.”

  Dean muttered something under his breath.

  “Blush. Grimace. Smirk.” Michael strolled into the room, labeling each of us as he passed. “And Sloane is perplexed. I miss all the fun.”

  I could practically feel him trying not to read anything into Dean’s grimace and my blush. Michael was trying to give me space. Unfortunately, he couldn’t turn off his ability, any more than I could turn off mine.

  “Townsend.” Dean cleared his throat.

  Michael turned his full attention to the other boy. “You need something,” he said, studying the set of Dean’s jaw, the thin line of his lips. “You really hate asking.” Michael smiled. “It’s like a Band-Aid—just pull it off.”

  “He needs a ride,” Lia said so Dean wouldn’t have to. “And you’re going to give it to him.”

  “Am I?” Michael did a passable job of sounding surprised.

  “I’d appreciate it.” Dean shot Lia a look, which I read to mean Stay out of it.