The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct Read online

  “Cassie.”

  Sterling’s voice brought me back.

  “Is it sick if I wish I was normal?” I asked. “Not because I wouldn’t be here—I wouldn’t trade my life for the lives that I’ve helped save—but because if I were normal, I wouldn’t be sitting here climbing into his head, seeing us the way he sees us, knowing how this is going to end.”

  “It ends with you running,” Sterling reminded me. “You get away. You escape, because you’re a survivor. Because someone else thought you were worth saving.”

  I closed my eyes. Now she was just telling me a story—a fairy tale, with a happily ever after.

  “I knew a girl growing up who used to plot her escapes from all kinds of nasty situations. She was a living, breathing guide to surviving the most unlikely worst-case scenarios you could possibly think of.”

  I let Sterling’s voice wash over me. I let her words banish all the things I didn’t want to think.

  “‘You’ve been buried alive in a glass coffin with a sleeping cobra on your chest. Oxygen is running out. If you try to break the coffin, you’ll wake the cobra. What do you do?’”

  I opened my good eye. “What do you do?”

  “I don’t even remember, but she always had an answer. She always had a way out, and she was so darn cheerful about it all.” Sterling shook her head. “Sloane reminds me of her sometimes. When we grew up, she worked in the FBI laboratory. She always was better with facts than with people. Most second graders don’t appreciate a classmate who’s constantly putting their lives in theoretical peril.”

  “But you did,” I said. Sterling nodded. “Her name was Scarlett, wasn’t it?” I asked. “She was Judd’s daughter. Your best friend. I’m not sure what she was to Briggs.”

  Sterling stared at me for a few seconds. “You’re eerie,” she said. “You know that, right?”

  I shrugged as well as I could under the circumstances.

  “She was Briggs’s best friend, too. They met in college. I’d known her since kindergarten. She introduced us. We all joined the FBI together.”

  “She died.” I said it so that Sterling didn’t have to, but she repeated the words anyway.

  “She died.”

  The sound of a door opening ended our conversation. Ancient hinges creaked in protest. I fought the urge to turn toward the door. It wouldn’t be worth the bolts of pain the movement would send through my face and neck.

  You’re standing there. You’re looking at us.

  Heavy footsteps told me he was coming close. Soon, the man who’d killed the professor and Emerson, Clark, and—in all likelihood—Christopher, was standing directly between Sterling and me.

  He was holding a hunting rifle.

  YOU

  Guns and neat little bullet holes and the glory of being the one to pull the trigger.

  They’re yours. This time, you’re doing it your way.

  The little red-haired one who practically begged you to take her isn’t looking so good. She’ll be the first to fall. Her face is already a mottle of bruises. You did that. You. The FBI agent’s face is marred with obvious tear tracks. You rest the rifle to one side and reach out and drag your thumb over her face.

  She jerks back, but she can’t fight you. Neither of them can.

  “I’m going to untie you,” you say, just to watch the surprise flicker through their eyes. “You’re going to run. I’ll even give you a two-minute head start.”

  Take them. Free them. Track them. Kill them.

  “Now…” You draw the word out and tap the butt of the rifle thoughtfully against the ground. “Who’s first?”

  Adrenaline is already starting to pump through your body. You are powerful. You are the hunter. They are the prey.

  “Me.” The FBI agent is the one who speaks. Doesn’t she realize she’s nothing but a deer in your target?

  You’re the hunter.

  She’s the prey.

  You grab the younger one by the elbow. “You.” You breathe the word directly into her face. Let her shrink back from it, from you. “You’re first.” The smell of fear is tantalizing. You smile. “I hope you can run.”

  He pulled a knife out of his boot. I pictured it coming toward me. I felt it slicing through skin and muscle, peeling the flesh from my bone. But instead, our captor knelt. He trailed the flat of the blade down the side of my cheek. He paused at my neck, then moved slowly down towards my wrists. The blade hovered over my arm for a moment. He traced the tip lightly over a vein, but didn’t press down hard enough to cut.

  With one slash, my hands were free.

  He returned the knife to his boot and untied the rope around my torso by hand. He relished the task, drinking it in, savoring it. His hands brushed against my stomach, my side, my back.

  Soon, I was free. I glanced over at Agent Sterling. She’d wanted to go first, wanted to buy me time—but for what? This was the only way out. If he really gave me a head start, if I ran hard enough…

  You want me to think I have a chance, don’t you?

  Even knowing that, I still clung to the hope that two minutes might be enough time to disappear in the woods outside.

  There was a way out of this—I had to believe that. I had to fight.

  He put a hand in the middle of my back and pushed me roughly toward the door.

  “Cassie.” Agent Sterling’s voice broke as she said my name. “You’ve been buried alive in a glass coffin with a sleeping cobra on your chest. There’s a way out. There’s always a way.”

  Our captor didn’t give me the chance to turn around. To say good-bye. An instant later, I was on the porch. Sterling’s earlier description was spot-on—we were completely surrounded by woods, but at its closest point, the edge of the woods was about fifteen yards off. The trees were denser farther in. I’d need the cover.

  I needed a plan.

  “Two minutes. Starting now.”

  He shoved me off the porch. I stumbled. My face throbbed.

  I ran.

  I ran as hard as I could, as fast as I could, for the densest trees I could find. I reached cover in seconds—less than ten, more than five. I tore my way through the brush until my lungs started to burn. I looked back. I couldn’t see him through the forest, which meant he couldn’t see me.

  How much time had passed? How much did I have left?

  There’s always a way out.

  Running wasn’t a solution. The man hunting me had a longer stride than I did. He had a runner’s build, and he didn’t need to catch me—he just needed to get me in his sights.

  Two minutes is nothing.

  My only hope was losing him, sending him one way while I was going the other. It went against every instinct I had, but I backtracked. I split off from the trail I’d laid the first time, stepping lightly and staying low, ducking into heavy brush and hoping to God he’d follow my original path and not this one.

  A twig snapped somewhere nearby. I went deathly still.

  Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me.

  Another snap. Another footstep.

  Moving away from me. He’s moving away.

  I didn’t have much time before he’d realize his mistake. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I couldn’t keep running. Could I climb? Bury myself in brush? I crossed a small stream, wishing it were a river. I’d toss myself in. I heard a yell—almost inhuman-sounding.

  He must have hit the end of my original trail, discovered my little trick. He’d be moving fast now, determined to recover lost ground.

  You’re not angry. Not really. This is the game. You know you’ll find me. You know I won’t escape. There’s probably nothing to escape to.

  I had no idea where we were—all I knew was that I had to do something. I knelt down and grabbed a rock. It barely fit in my hand. With my other hand, I reached for a branch overhead and gritted my teeth—which made the pain worse, not better.

  No time. No time for pain. Climb. Climb. Climb.

  I could only g
rip with one hand, but I made use of the other arm, hooking it around branches, ignoring the way the bark tore at tender skin. I went as high as I could before the branches became too thin to support my weight and the leaves too sparse to cover me. I transferred the rock from my left hand to my right and used the left to steady myself.

  Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me.

  I heard him—fifty yards away. Forty. Thirty. I saw him when he stepped into view, crossing the stream.

  Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me.

  His eyes were on the ground. Tracks. I’d left tracks—and they stopped right under this tree. I knew the second he was going to look up. I only had time for one thought, one silent plea.

  Don’t miss.

  My arm whipped the rock at him so hard, I nearly knocked myself out of the tree. He looked up.

  I didn’t miss.

  The rock caught him just above the eye. He went down, but didn’t stay down, and as he climbed from his knees to his feet, bleeding and dazed, but very much alive, I felt the adrenaline that had pushed me to this point evaporate. There would be no superhuman feats of strength or speed. This was it: him aiming the rifle into the tree, and me clinging to a branch fifteen feet up in the air, shaking and bleeding, with nothing left to throw.

  “Out of tricks?” he called up, his finger toying with the trigger.

  I thought of Agent Sterling back in the cabin. He’d go for her next, run her through this sick little game.

  No.

  I did the only thing there was left to do. I jumped.

  The gun went off. The shot went wide, and I crashed into him, feet first. We both went down in a tangle of limbs. He kept hold of the rifle, but I was too close for him to point it at me.

  Three seconds.

  That was how long it took for him to get the upper hand, to wrestle me to the ground. He pinned me with one hand, then rose to a crouch and slammed a foot into my chest, replacing his hand. Head wound bleeding heavily, he stood. From my position on the ground, he looked impossibly tall. Invincible.

  He brought the gun to his shoulder. The tip of the barrel was less than three feet away from my body. It hovered over my midsection for a few seconds, then settled just over my forehead.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Take them. Free them. Track them. Kill—” He cut off, suddenly and without warning. It was only later that my brain processed the sound of gunfire, the rush of footsteps coming toward me.

  “Cassie. Cassie.”

  I didn’t want to open my eyes. If I opened my eyes, it might not be real. The gun might still be there. He might still be there.

  “Cassandra.” There was only one man in the universe who could say my full name in exactly that tone.

  I opened my eyes. “Briggs.”

  “Webber’s dead.” He clarified that point before asking me if I was okay.

  “Webber?” I croaked. I knew the name, but my mind couldn’t process it, couldn’t process the fact that the man who’d done this to me even had a name.

  “Anthony Webber,” Briggs confirmed, doing a cursory check of my injuries, tallying them, down to every last detail.

  “Sterling?” I managed to ask.

  “She’s safe.”

  “How did you—”

  Briggs held up a hand and dug his phone out with the other. The call he made was brief and to the point: “I’ve got her. She’s fine.” Then he turned his attention back to me and answered the question I hadn’t even finished asking. “Once we realized the two of you were missing and unaccounted for, the director threw the entire agency behind finding you. He kept saying that Veronica had tried to tell him something was off about this case.”

  “But how did you—”

  “Your ankle tracker.”

  “Agent Sterling said she hadn’t activated it.”

  Briggs smiled wryly. “She hadn’t, but since she was on a playing-by-the-rules kick when she checked it out, she filled out all the paperwork. I’s were dotted. T’s were crossed. We had the serial number and were able to activate it remotely.”

  It was ironic—I’d saved Agent Sterling’s life by breaking the rules, and she’d saved mine by following them.

  Briggs helped me to my feet. “My team’s on their way in,” he said. “We left straight from the house, so we had a head start.”

  We?

  “Cassie.” Dean broke through the brush.

  “I told him to wait at the cabin,” Briggs said to me. “I told you to wait at the cabin,” he reiterated to Dean, annoyance creeping into his voice. But he didn’t stop me from taking three steps toward Dean, or Dean from crossing the remaining space between us in a heartbeat. The next second, he had a hand on each of my shoulders, touching me, confirming that I was okay, that I was here, that I was real.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  His hands went from my shoulders to my face. His right hand cupped the left side. His left gently bypassed my injuries, burying itself in my hair and holding my head up for me, like he thought my neck might not be able to do the job.

  “Activating the tracker was Sloane’s idea. Everyone else forgot about it. Briggs was at our place when we got the coordinates. I may have arranged it so that I was in his car when he went to leave.”

  Briggs wouldn’t have wasted even a second trying to kick him out.

  “What happened?” Dean asked me, his voice thick with emotions I couldn’t quite identify. I knew he was probably asking about the abduction, about my face, about being tied up in the cabin and scrambling for my life, but I chose to interpret the question slightly differently.

  “I hit him in the head with a rock. Then I jumped on him from up in that tree.” I gestured vaguely with one hand. Dean stared at me, his expression unreadable until the ends of his lips began to turn slowly upward.

  “I was wrong,” he said, “when I said I just felt something.” He was breathing heavily. I couldn’t breathe at all. “When I said I wasn’t sure it was enough.”

  He was scared, like me. But he felt it, and I felt it, and he was there. I’d spent so long trying not to choose, trying not to feel, and in an instant, I felt something inside of me break, like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

  Dean pulled me gently toward him. His lips brushed lightly over mine. The action was hesitant, uncertain. My hands settled on the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

  Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe when the smoke cleared, things would look different. But I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t keep living my life on maybes if I wanted to live.

  I rose up on my toes, my body pressed against his, and returned the kiss, the pain in my face fading, washed away with the rest of the world, until there was only this moment—one that I hadn’t thought I’d live to see.

  I spent the night at the hospital. I had a concussion, bruising on my neck from nearly being strangled, and countless cuts and abrasions on my hands and legs. They had to pry Dean away from me.

  I was alive.

  The next morning, the doctors released me into Agent Briggs’s custody. We were halfway to his car before I realized that he was being too quiet.

  “Where’s Agent Sterling?” I asked.

  “Gone.” We climbed into the car. I gingerly pulled on my seat belt. Briggs pulled out onto the road. “Her injuries were minimal, but she’s on a mandated leave until a Bureau psychologist gives her the green light for fieldwork.”

  “Is she coming back?” My eyes stung as I asked the question. A week ago, I would have been glad to be rid of her, but now…

  “I don’t know,” Briggs said, a muscle in his jaw ticking. He was the kind of person who hated admitting uncertainty. “After Redding captured her—after Dean helped her escape—she fought to get back to active duty. She threw herself into work.”

  That was then. This was now. I’d thought Agent Sterling was coming around to the idea of the program, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the
look on her face when she’d asked me why. Why hadn’t I listened to her? Why had I made the madman take me, too?

  All she’d wanted, in those last moments, was to believe that I would make it out of that hellhole alive.

  “She blames herself?” I asked—but it wasn’t really a question.

  “Herself. Her father. Me.” Something in Briggs’s tone told me that Agent Sterling wasn’t the only one shouldering that guilt. “You were never supposed to be in the field,” he told me. “None of your lives were ever supposed to be on the line.”

  If the Naturals hadn’t worked this case, Christopher Simms would have killed that girl. If I hadn’t gone with Agent Sterling, she’d be dead. No matter how much what I’d been through haunted Agent Briggs, I knew in my gut that at the end of the day, he would be able to live with the risks of this program. I wasn’t sure that Agent Sterling could.

  “Where are we going?” I asked when Briggs drove past our exit on the highway.

  He didn’t say anything for several minutes. Mile blurred into mile. We ended up at an apartment complex across the street from the prison.

  “There’s something I want you to see.”

  Webber’s apartment had two bedrooms. His life was highly segmented. He slept in one room—hospital corners on his bed, blackout curtains on the windows—and he worked in the other.

  Briggs’s team was cataloging evidence when we walked in: notebooks and photographs, weapons, a computer. Hundreds—if not thousands—of evidence bags told the story of Webber’s life.

  The story of his relationship with Daniel Redding.

  “Go ahead,” Briggs told me, nodding toward the carefully documented bags. “Just wear gloves.”

  He hadn’t brought Dean to this crime scene. He hadn’t brought Michael or Lia or Sloane.

  “What am I looking for?” I asked, slipping on a pair of gloves.

  “Nothing,” Briggs said simply.