The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct Read online

I didn’t explain my reasoning, but I saw the second that the meaning behind those words registered to Dean. He was seventeen.

  Briggs stared at me for a few seconds. “What are you thinking?”

  He could have told me that this wasn’t our UNSUB. He hadn’t. I waited for Agent Sterling to object. She didn’t.

  This was the heat of the battle. We weren’t dealing with a copycat. We were dealing with the man who had held Agent Sterling captive, tortured her. Redding was playing mind games with her from behind bars.

  He was playing with Dean.

  I didn’t dwell on it, or think about how Agent Sterling would feel about all this a day from now, or a week, or a month. I turned back to Agent Briggs and answered his question.

  “Our UNSUB and Redding aren’t partners,” I said. “Men like Daniel Redding don’t have partners. They don’t think they have equals.” I searched for the right word. “The person we’re looking for isn’t a partner,” I said finally. “It’s an apprentice.”

  The next morning, Agent Briggs brought Lia a DVD. “Recordings of every meeting we’ve had with Redding since this case started,” he told her. “They’re all yours.”

  Lia snatched the DVDs before Briggs could rethink the offer. Beside him, Sterling cleared her throat. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “The director has approved your involvement on this case, but you’re allowed to say no.”

  “You don’t want us to.” Michael took in the way she was standing, the look on her face. “You hate that you’re even asking, but you hope to God we say yes.”

  “I’m in.” Lia cut Michael off before he could read the agent any further. “So is Cassie, and so is Sloane.”

  Sloane and I didn’t contradict her.

  “I don’t have anything better to do,” Michael offered. His tone was casual, but his eyes were glittering with the same emotion I’d seen in him when he’d pulled Dean off of Christopher Simms. No one played games with the few people in this world he cared about.

  “Lia, Michael, and Cassie, you’ll be in the media room, going over these interviews with a fine-tooth comb.” Briggs issued orders curtly and efficiently. “Redding thinks he has the advantage here. That changes today.”

  Agent Sterling focused her attention on Dean. “If you’re up for it,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been when she’d spoken to the rest of us, “Briggs is going to see your father.”

  Dean didn’t say anything. He just pulled on a lightweight coat over his battered white T-shirt and turned toward the door.

  Sterling turned to Briggs. “I guess that means he’s up for it.”

  Asking Dean to do this had hurt her, but doing nothing, doing anything less than everything she could to put an end to this would have hurt her more. Agent Sterling wasn’t wearing makeup. Her shirt wasn’t tucked in. There was an energy to her, a raw determination that told me that I was looking at the Veronica Sterling that Dean had known.

  The one who reminded Agent Sterling of me.

  “You okay here?” Briggs asked her.

  “You know me.” Sterling smiled—all lips, no teeth. “I always land on my feet.”

  Briggs watched her for a beat, then followed Dean to the door.

  “What about me?” Sloane called after him.

  Agent Sterling was the one who answered. “How are you with geography?”

  Sloane disappeared to the basement with a handful of maps to work up a geographical profile of Redding’s partner. The rest of us sequestered ourselves away in the media room. Michael and I sat at opposite ends of the couch. Lia popped the DVD Briggs had given her into the player and plopped down between us, one leg pulled to her chest and the other stretched out. Agent Sterling took up a spot in the doorway, watching us watch the DVD as it began to play.

  Daniel Redding was seated on one side of a long table. His hands were cuffed together and chained to the table, but from his posture, you’d have thought he was at a job interview. A door to his left opened and Agent Briggs came in, carrying a thin file. He sat down opposite Redding.

  “Agent Briggs.” There was something musical about the monster’s voice, but it was his eyes that drew your attention: dark, soulful eyes, with the faintest hint of wrinkles at the corners. “To what do I owe this most inestimable pleasure?”

  “We need to talk.” Briggs was all business. He didn’t rush the words. He didn’t drag them out. “I understand that you’ve been getting an unusual amount of mail as of late.”

  Redding smiled. The expression looked self-effacing, almost boyish. “I’m an unusual man.”

  “The prison screens and catalogs your mail, but they don’t keep copies of the letters.”

  “Rather sloppy of them,” Redding opined. His hands were folded on the table. He leaned forward, just a fraction of an inch. “One can never be too careful about one’s…records.”

  Something in the way he said records made me think that he was really talking about something else—something targeted to get under Agent Briggs’s skin.

  Did Redding keep records of the women he’d killed?

  Briggs didn’t rise to the bait. “Have you received any letters you would classify as fan mail?” he asked, his voice taking on a slight mocking tone, like Daniel Redding was a member of some long-forgotten boy band and not a restless predator locked in a cage.

  “Why, Agent Briggs, I do believe you need something.” Redding feigned surprise, but the hum of pleasure in his voice was real. “Now, why would a man like you be interested in the letters received by a man like me? Why would you want to know that women write to tell me that they love me, that every day, my legacy lives on, that the lonely and the heartsick and the deliciously, darkly lost sheep of this world pour their souls into ink on the page, begging me, beckoning me toward them, so desperate are they for a shepherd.”

  Redding’s voice was silky, his delivery of those words impossible to ignore.

  “Why I’m asking these questions doesn’t matter. What matters is that I can make your life significantly less pleasant if you don’t answer them. How would you feel about a transfer? I hear there are some federal facilities that are lovely this time of year.”

  “Now, now, Agent Briggs. There’s no need to resort to threats. I think we both know that given even the slightest opportunity, you’d throw me in the deepest, darkest hole you could find. The fact that you haven’t already means that you can’t.” Redding leaned forward, his eyes on Briggs’s. “I wonder—do you ever get tired of the things you can’t do? Can’t catch every killer.” Redding’s voice took on a pouting tone, but his expression reminded me of a hawk, sharp-eyed and merciless, focused on one thing and one thing alone. “Can’t keep a wife. Can’t keep from coming back here. Can’t get me out of your mind.”

  “I’m not here to play games with you, Redding. If you can’t give me something, I have no reason to stay.” Briggs leaned forward. “Maybe you’d prefer I left,” he said, his voice as low and silky as Redding’s.

  “Go ahead,” Redding replied. “Leave. I think we both know that you’re not my type. Now the delectable Agent Sterling, on the other hand…”

  A muscle in Briggs’s neck visibly tensed, but he didn’t snap. Instead, he pulled a photograph out of the file folder and laid it on the table. He pushed the photo forward, keeping it just out of Redding’s reach.

  “Well,” Redding said, mesmerized, “this is an interesting turn of events.”

  He reached for the photograph and Briggs pulled it back. He placed it back in the folder and stood up. It took me a moment to realize what had just happened. This interview had been taped shortly after the first victim had turned up dead. I was willing to bet a lot of money that Briggs had just showed Redding a photograph of Emerson’s body.

  I could see in the killer’s eyes that he wouldn’t be able to tamp down the desire to see it again.

  “They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Redding’s gaze was no longer on Briggs’s face. It was on the fold
er. “Where was she found?”

  Briggs took his time answering the question, but ultimately doled out the answer—just enough to whet Redding’s appetite for more. “Colonial University. The president’s front lawn.”

  Redding snorted. “Showy,” he said. “Sloppy.”

  His eyes were still on the folder. He wanted to see the picture. He wanted to study it.

  “Tell me what I want to know,” Briggs said evenly, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Briggs was counting on Redding’s narcissism. He assumed the man would want to know everything he could about this imitator. What Briggs didn’t know—and what we knew now—was that Redding wasn’t criticizing the work of an imitator. He wasn’t looking to see his infamy reflected in this girl’s body.

  He was a teacher, evaluating the performance of a prize pupil.

  “I’m not interested in anything you have to say.” Redding managed to pull his gaze from the folder. He leaned back in his metal chair, as far as he could with his wrists chained to the table. “But it’s possible that I have some information that could be relevant to you.”

  “Prove it.” Briggs threw down the challenge—to no avail.

  “I want to talk to my son,” the killer said flatly. “You’ve kept him from me for five years. What reason could I possibly have to help you?”

  “Basic human decency?” Briggs suggested dryly. “If there were anything human or decent in you, maybe your son would want to see you.”

  “‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’” Redding responded in a singsong tone. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar….’”

  Briggs finished the quote for him. “‘But never doubt I love.’ Shakespeare.” He stood, gathering his things and slamming the door on the conversation. “You’re not capable of loving anyone but yourself.”

  “And you’re not capable of letting this go.” Redding smiled again, equal parts serene and smug. “You want me to talk? I’ll talk. I’ll tell you who’s been writing to me, and who’s been a very, very bad boy. I’ll lay out everything you want to know—but the only person I’m talking to is Dean.”

  The screen went black. Redding and Briggs were gone, replaced a moment later by an eerily similar scene, except that this time, Dean was the one sitting opposite his father, and Briggs sat adjacent to Dean.

  “Dean.” Redding relished the word. “You’ve brought me a gift, Agent Briggs,” he said, never taking his eyes off his son. “Someday, I will return the favor.”

  Dean stared at a spot just over his father’s shoulder. “You wanted me here. I’m here. Now talk.”

  Redding obliged. “You look like your mother,” he said, drinking in Dean’s features like a dying man in the desert. “Except for the eyes—those are mine.”

  The way Redding said the word mine made my stomach roll.

  “I didn’t come here to talk about my mother.”

  “If she were here, she’d tell you to get your hair cut. Sit up straight. Smile every once in a while.”

  Dean’s hair fell into his face, his eyes narrowed to slits beneath it. “There’s not much to smile about.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve lost the taste for life already, Dean. The boy I knew had so much potential.”

  A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. He and Redding sat staring at each other. After a full minute of silence ticked by, Dean’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Tell me about the letters.”

  This was where Agent Sterling and I had come in the first time around. It was harder to watch the second time: Dean trying to get his father to part with some scrap of information, Daniel Redding sparring with him verbally, bringing the topic back to Dean again and again.

  “I want to know about you, Dean. What have those hands been doing the past five years? What sights have those eyes seen?”

  You knew Briggs would come to see you as soon as the first body turned up. You knew that Dean would come if you refused to talk to anyone else. You planned this, step by step.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” On the screen, Dean’s voice was getting louder, more intense. “There’s nothing to talk about. Is that what you want to hear? That these hands, these eyes—they’re nothing?”

  “They’re everything.” This time, I could see a manic intensity in Redding’s eyes. He looked at Dean, and the only thing he saw was himself—a god, not subject to man’s laws, above things like empathy and guilt. I thought about the card that Briggs had found in Trina’s pocket—the king of spades.

  Redding wanted immortality. He wanted power. But more than anything, he wanted an heir.

  Why now? I thought. Why is he doing all of this now? He’d sat in that prison for five years. Had it taken that long to find someone to do his bidding on the outside, or had something happened to push him into doing this?

  On the screen, Dean’s father had just asked if there was a girl. Dean denied it. Redding called him “son,” and Dean said the five words that triggered the man to lash out.

  “I am not your son.”

  Even knowing it was coming, the sudden rush of violence took me off guard. Redding’s fists were buried in the front of Dean’s shirt. He jerked him close and told him that he was and would always be his father’s son.

  “You know it. You fear it.”

  This time, I saw the instant Dean snapped, the moment when the anger that Michael had told me was always present beneath the surface bubbled up and overflowed. Dean’s face was like stone, but there was something wild in his eyes as he grabbed his father, pulling him halfway across the table, as far as the other man’s chains would allow.

  This time, as Briggs broke up the fight, I saw Redding smile. He’d gotten what he wanted. A hint of violence. A taste of Dean’s potential.

  My eyes were riveted on the screen. This was the last thing I’d seen the first time around. Briggs waited a moment or two, to make sure Dean was finished, before he backed off—but I noticed that this time, he didn’t sit, positioning himself just behind Dean.

  “Where is the professor’s cabin?” Briggs asked.

  Dean’s father smiled. “Catoctin,” he said. “I don’t know anything more specific than that.”

  Dean asked two or three more questions, but his father didn’t have anything else useful to say.

  “We’re done here,” Briggs said. Dean stood. His father remained sitting, perfectly relaxed. Briggs put a hand on Dean’s shoulder and began steering him out of the room.

  “Have you ever told Briggs precisely what you did to his wife, Dean?” Daniel Redding didn’t raise his voice, but the question seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room. “Or does he still think it was me who drew the knife slowly down her shoulders and thighs, me who sank the brand into her flesh?”

  Briggs’s grip on Dean tightened. If he’d been steering him toward the door before, he was shoving him now—anything to get Dean out of there. But Dean’s feet were suddenly glued to the floor.

  Go, I told Dean silently. Just go.

  But he didn’t.

  Redding relished the moment. “Tell your agent friend there what you did, Dean. Tell him how you came out to the barn where I had Veronica Sterling bound hand and foot. Tell him how I went to cut her—how you took the knife from my hand, not to save her, but to do it yourself. Tell him how you made her bleed. Tell him how she screamed when you burned an R into her flesh. Tell him how you asked me for her.” Redding closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the ceiling, like a man offering thanks to his gods. “Tell him she was your first.”

  First victim. For Redding, that was the only first that mattered, no matter how much innuendo he might jam into the word.

  Briggs slammed the door open. “Guard!”

  A guard—the one who’d given Agent Sterling and myself a front-row seat to the first half of this show—appeared, disgust barely contained on his face. He went to restrain Redding. “Even if you find the professor in his cabin,” Dean’s father called after him, his voi
ce echoing, surrounded by metal walls, “you won’t find what you’re looking for. The most interesting letters I’ve received, those that show rather remarkable attention to detail—those letters didn’t come from the professor. They came from one of his students.”

  The room fell into silence. Lia paused the DVD. I stood up and walked toward the door, my back to Michael and Lia. In the doorway, Agent Sterling calmly met my eyes. She didn’t comment on the contents of the interviews.

  Did Dean really brand you? I asked her silently. Did Dean—our Dean—torture you?

  She had no answers for me.

  “I only caught Redding in one lie.”

  I turned back toward Lia, hoping that she’d tell me what I wanted to hear—that Redding had lied about Dean.

  “When he told Briggs that he wasn’t interested in anything he had to say—that wasn’t true. He wanted to know everything about Emerson Cole’s murder. He was hungry for the details, which means that he didn’t have them already. Whoever his protégé is, our UNSUB didn’t exactly record the nitty-gritty and send them to his good old sensei.”

  “That’s it?” I asked Lia. “Everything else he said was true?”

  Lia looked down at the ground. “Everything.”

  “That means that he did get some remarkable letters from a student in Fogle’s class,” I said. “To a man like Redding, ‘attention to detail’ probably means some pretty explicit descriptions of violence.”

  “And yet,” Michael chimed in, “every student in that class has an alibi.”

  “Misdirection.” Lia said the word lightly, but I heard the bite buried in her tone. “You can deceive people without lying. Liars are like magicians: while you’re watching the beautiful assistant, they’re slipping the rabbit out of a sleeve.”

  Watching these interviews—particularly the one with Dean—had been almost physically painful. I refused to believe that we’d learned nothing about this case.

  “So assume everything about the letters and the professor was the beautiful assistant,” I said. “What’s left? What did we learn?” Other than the fact that Redding claims that Dean tortured Agent Sterling himself.