All In: (The Naturals #3) Read online

  Agents, plural, I thought. That meant Sterling was there, too, just out of the frame.

  “We have just a few more questions about last night for you.” Briggs seemed to be taking lead on this one—which meant that Sterling had chosen to sit back and watch. Given that she was the profiler, that didn’t surprise me. Sterling would want to get Tory’s measure before she decided exactly which tack to take.

  “I already told you,” Tory replied to Briggs, a slight edge in her voice, “Camille and I went for drinks. We played a couple of hands of poker, and I called it an early night. Camille was looking for a party. I wasn’t. I have a show today, and I like to be on my game.”

  “I understand your shows have been selling out,” Agent Briggs said.

  “Say what you mean, Agent.” Tory leveled a look at him—and it was almost like she was aiming that same, dry look at us. “My show has been selling out ever since the Wonderland closed theirs down.”

  Ever since victim number two literally went up in flames, I corrected silently.

  “You seem defensive.” Agent Sterling was the one who said those words. I knew her well enough to know that she’d chosen that moment to speak up—and that observation—for a reason.

  “This is the second time you’ve interviewed me in the past twelve hours,” Tory retorted. “You came to my place of business. I hadn’t known Camille for long, but I liked her. So, yes, when you come here, purportedly following up on what I told you last night, but also dropping oblique hints about my dead rival, I get a little defensive.”

  “Not just defensive,” Michael opined. He didn’t volunteer whatever else it was he saw in her face.

  “I didn’t hurt Camille,” Tory said plainly. “And I wouldn’t have wasted even one of my breaths on Sylvester Wilde. I’m sorry she’s dead. I’m not sorry he is. Are we done here?”

  Lia let out a low whistle. “She’s good.”

  “At lying?” I asked, wondering which portion of the statement Tory had just made was untrue.

  “She hasn’t lied yet,” Lia said. “But she will. The best liars start by convincing you either that they’re straight shooters or that they can’t lie. She’s going with the former. And like I said, she’s very, very good.”

  Tory was a magician. It was easy enough to believe that she was setting the stage so that when the misdirect came, Briggs and Sterling wouldn’t see it coming.

  Agent Sterling changed tactics. “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Camille? Anyone who might have a grudge against her?”

  A flicker of sorrow crossed Tory’s face. She pushed back against it. No muss. No fuss. “Camille was the only female likely to advance to the final round in a high-stakes competition dominated by egos and men. She was confident and manipulative, and she liked winning.”

  You identify with her, I realized as Tory spoke.

  “Camille was also beautiful, borderline famous, and had no problems whatsoever telling people no,” Tory continued unflinchingly. “There were probably a lot of people who wanted to hurt her.”

  Her tone was so matter-of-fact that I knew: Someone—maybe multiple someones—hurt you. Tory knew what it was like to be seen as weak, and she knew what it was like to be overpowered. I could see why Camille had chosen to spend time with her. If she’d been fictional, Tory Howard was exactly the kind of character Camille Holt would have chosen to play.

  “Did Camille ever say anything to you about Aaron Shaw?” Agent Briggs switched up the line of questioning again.

  “Interesting,” Michael murmured, leaning closer to the screen—and closer to Tory.

  “Camille and I met at a New Year’s party,” Tory replied. “We hit it off. We went out for drinks a couple of times. I wasn’t exactly her confidante.”

  I glanced back at Lia. She’s pelting them with truth again, I thought.

  “One more question,” Agent Sterling said. “You and Camille went to the Majesty last night.”

  “The new sushi restaurant,” Tory supplied. More truth, easily verifiable.

  “Who picked the restaurant?” Sterling asked.

  Tory shrugged. “She did.”

  Behind me, Lia swung her legs off the couch and stood. “And there we have it,” she told us. “That’s the lie.”

  “I’ll text Sterling.” Dean reached for his phone. There was a good chance Sterling and Briggs might have picked up on the lie, but they’d want confirmation from Lia. “Anything to add?” Dean asked as he began typing.

  By some miracle, Michael managed to stifle his long-held tendency to answer everything Dean said with a smart-mouthed barb. “Two things,” Michael said. “First, defensiveness isn’t an emotion. It’s a combination of emotions that plays out in different ways in different people at different times. In this case, we’ve got a tantalizing cocktail of anger and self-presentation and guilt.”

  Tory feels guilty. I tried to reconcile that with what I knew about her. She struck me as pragmatic. Like Camille, she’d risen to the top of a male-dominated field. To have her own show in Vegas, she’d have to be ambitious.

  She didn’t strike me as a person who would let herself feel bad about anything for long.

  “And the second thing?” Dean asked.

  “Her reaction to Aaron Shaw.” I beat Michael to the punch line.

  Michael inclined his head slightly. “Temporary freezing of the facial muscles, brows fighting the urge to draw together, lips just barely stretching themselves back.” He shifted his flask rhythmically from one hand to the other and back again, then clarified. “Fear.”

  What are you scared of, Tory? Why did you skirt the question when Briggs and Sterling asked you if Camille had said anything about Aaron Shaw?

  My mind went to what I knew about Sloane’s half brother. He’d grown up in a family where wealth and power were givens. I was betting he’d been raised to follow in his father’s footsteps. It wouldn’t be hard for someone like that to get used to blurring moral lines. But there had also been something gentle about the way he’d interacted with Sloane, and that something gave me pause.

  Is it you Tory’s scared of? I thought, picturing Aaron in my mind. Or is it your father?

  Dean sent the text. A moment later, we heard Agent Sterling excuse herself from the interrogation. Dean got a text back less than a minute later. “Anything else?” he read out loud. “Cassie?”

  The fact that Agent Sterling had directed that question to me told me that she was looking for something specific—a confirmation of her own hunch, or some aspect of Tory’s personality that I would be more likely to pick up on than Dean.

  “I’m not sure,” I said quietly, “but we might be looking at a history of assault. Verbal, physical, sexual—or maybe just the ongoing threat thereof.”

  Saying those words felt like violating a confidence. Michael must have heard that in my voice, because he leaned over Dean and passed me the flask. I raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged.

  “I can’t help you.” The increase in volume drew my attention back to the tablet. Clearly, Tory had reached a breaking point. “If you have any more questions, you can address them to my attorney.”

  “Everything okay here?” Sterling reentered the conversation, stepping into the frame.

  Briggs cleared his throat. “I was just asking Ms. Howard if anyone could verify her whereabouts after she parted ways with Ms. Holt.” And she asked for her attorney. Briggs let the second half of that statement go unsaid.

  She doesn’t trust people in power, I told him silently. And she certainly doesn’t trust you.

  “I can.” A male voice carried over the microphone several seconds before its owner appeared on-screen, stepping directly between the FBI agents and Tory. Male. Young. Early twenties at most. My brain started cataloging his demographics before my mind recognized his face.

  “Beau Donovan,” Dean said. “One of our persons of interest. The twenty-one-year-old dishwasher who won the amateur spot at the poker tournament.”

  �
�Tory was with me,” Beau was saying on-screen. “Last night, after she and Camille parted ways, Tory was with me.”

  “Funny story,” Lia mock-whispered. “She totally wasn’t.”

  You’re lying. That alone was enough for Beau to command my full attention. He was about the same height as Tory, but he stood slightly in front of her. Protective.

  “You and Beau were together last night?” Agent Briggs pressed Tory.

  “That’s right,” Tory said, staring down the agents. “We were.”

  “She really is good,” Lia commented. “Even I might not have pegged that one for a lie.”

  “And how do you two know each other?” Sterling asked.

  Beau shrugged, looking for a moment like the kid slumped in the back of the classroom, barely paying attention to what was said at the front. “She’s my sister.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “Your sister,” Agent Sterling repeated.

  “Foster sister.” Tory was the one who supplied that information. She was older than Beau by two years, maybe three. Something told me the protectiveness ran both ways.

  “You still need help with fixing the lights?” Beau asked Tory, as if the FBI wasn’t even standing in the room. “Or what?”

  “Mr. Donovan,” Agent Sterling said, forcing his attention back to her, “would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Tory isn’t the only one who’s not overly fond of people with power.

  “I understand you’ve advanced to the finals of the Vegas multi-casino poker tournament,” Agent Sterling said. “You’re getting quite a bit of attention.”

  “Everyone likes an underdog story.” Beau shrugged again. “I’m thinking of selling the rights to Hollywood,” he deadpanned. “It’ll be one of those really inspirational stories.”

  “Beau,” Tory said, a warning note creeping into her voice. “Just answer the questions.”

  Interesting. She didn’t want him to aggravate the authorities. For a split second, I felt like I was watching some alternate-universe version of Lia and Dean, where she was the older one and he had Michael’s mouth.

  “Fine,” Beau told Tory, then he turned back to Agent Sterling. “What do you want to know?”

  “How long have you been playing poker?”

  “A while.”

  “You must be good at it.”

  “Better than some.”

  “What’s your secret?”

  “Most people are crappy liars.” Beau let that sink in. “And for a high school dropout, I’m pretty good at math.”

  I saw Sterling filing those words away for future reference, and I did the same.

  Agent Briggs took over the questioning. “Were you at the New Year’s Eve party on the roof of the Apex?”

  “Yeah,” Beau said. “Thought I’d see how the other half lives.”

  “Did you know Camille Holt?” Agent Sterling asked.

  “I did. She was a nice girl,” Beau replied.

  “Lie,” Lia sing-songed.

  “Well,” Beau amended, as if he’d heard Lia, “Camille was nice to me. We were the outsiders in the inner circle. She was a chick. I’m a dishwasher.” He managed a small, crooked smile. “A girl like that? She wouldn’t normally give a guy like me two seconds. But once I joined the tournament, she went out of her way to make me feel welcome.”

  “She was trying to figure you out.”

  I recognized Agent Sterling’s statement for what it was—an attempt to see how Beau dealt with rejection. Tell him Camille was only nice to him because she was manipulating him, see what happens.

  Beau shrugged. “Of course she was.”

  “A swing and a miss,” Michael said under his breath. In other words: Sterling’s words hadn’t gotten a rise out of her target. At all.

  “Camille was competitive,” Beau said. “I respected that. Besides, she decided pretty early on that I wasn’t the one she needed to worry about.”

  Agent Sterling cocked her head to the side. “And who was Camille worried about?”

  Beau and Tory both answered the question, and they both said the exact same thing. “Thomas Wesley.”

  While Briggs and Sterling went to track down Thomas Wesley, the rest of us were left to entertain ourselves. Michael took out his earpiece and tossed it onto the carpet with no more care than one might use to throw away a crumpled napkin. “Call me when the show’s back on,” he said, reclaiming his flask and heading for his room. Lia shot me a look that said, I told you we were at issue capacity. See?

  Yes, I thought, watching Michael go. I do.

  “I’ll go check on Sloane,” I said. Michael wouldn’t want my concern. Sloane, at least, might be glad for the company.

  When I got to our room, I was greeted by the sound of upbeat techno music. I opened the door, half expecting Sloane to be wearing goggles and on the verge of blowing something up. It helps me think, Sloane had explained to me once, like explosives were an alternative form of meditation.

  Luckily, however, in the absence of her basement lab, she’d taken a different—and less explosive—tack. She was lying upside down on the bed, the upper half of her body hanging over the end. Blueprints, schematics, and hand-drawn maps lay three-deep, covering the floor around her.

  “Thirteen hours.” Sloane yelled the words over the music, still hanging upside down. I went to turn the music down, and she continued, her voice softer, more vulnerable. “If our UNSUB is killing one a day, we have a maximum of thirteen hours until he kills again.”

  Briggs had told Sloane that he needed her to figure out where the UNSUB would strike next. She had clearly taken that request to heart. You want to be needed. You want to be useful. You want to matter, even a little.

  I tiptoed around the papers and lay down on the bed next to Sloane. Hanging upside down, side-by-side, we turned to look at each other.

  “You can do this,” I told her. “And even if you can’t, we’ll love you just the same.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “She was wearing a dress,” Sloane whispered after a moment. “The little girl.” She shook her head slightly, then picked up a pen and began marking off distances on one of her maps, as easily as if the whole thing were right-side up.

  My chest tightened. The grip Sloane had on the pen told me that even sinking herself into a project like this one wasn’t enough to burn from her mind the memory of the doting father and his little girl.

  “She was wearing a white dress.” Sloane’s voice was very small. “It was clean. Did you notice?”

  “No,” I said softly.

  “Children stain white clothes within an hour of putting them on at least seventy-four percent of the time,” Sloane rattled off. “But not her. She didn’t ruin it.”

  The way Sloane said the word ruin told me that she wasn’t just talking about children staining their clothing. She was talking about herself. And clothing was just the tip of the iceberg.

  “Sloane—”

  “He brought her to the bar to get a cherry.” Her hand stilled, and she turned to look at me again. “He brought me cherries,” she said. “Just once.”

  Sloane could have told me the number of cherries, the exact day and time, the number of hours that had passed since—I could see that information, repeating itself over and over again in her head.

  “Does it help if I hate him for you?” I asked. Him. As in her father.

  “Should it?” Sloane asked, wrinkling her forehead and sitting up. “I don’t hate him. I think that maybe, someday, when I’m older, he could not-hate me.”

  When you’re older—and better and normal and good, my brain filled in. Sloane had told me once that she said and did the wrong thing over eighty-four percent of the time. The fact that her biological father had played a role in teaching her that lesson—the fact that she still hoped that he might develop even the barest hint of affection for her someday, if only she could do things right—physicall
y hurt me.

  I sat up and latched my arms around her. Sloane leaned into the hug and rested her head on my shoulder for a few seconds. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “About the cherries.”

  “I won’t.”

  She waited a moment longer, then pulled back. “Al Capone once donated a pair of cherry trees to a hospital as thanks for treating his syphilis.” With those memorable words, Sloane lay back down, hanging upside down off the end of the bed and staring out at the maps and schematics she’d collected. “If you don’t leave,” she warned me, “there’s a high probability that I’m going to tell you some statistics about syphilis.”

  I rolled off the bed. “So noted.”

  Back in the living room, Michael had apparently seen fit to return. For reasons I could not begin to fathom, he and Lia were arm wrestling.

  “What—” I started to say, but before I could finish, Dean spoke up.

  “Show’s back on,” he said.

  Lia took advantage of Michael’s distraction and slammed his hand down. “I win!” Before Michael could complain, she resumed her spot on the back of the couch. I sat next to Dean. Michael stared at us for a second or two, then picked his earpiece up off the floor and went to stand behind Lia.

  On-screen, I saw a hand—probably Briggs’s—reach out and knock on a hotel room door. I fit my earpiece back into my ear just in time to hear Thomas Wesley’s assistant answer the door.

  “May I help you?”

  “Agents Sterling and Briggs,” I heard Sterling say from off-screen. “FBI. We’d like a word with Mr. Wesley.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Wesley isn’t available at the moment,” the assistant said.

  The look on Lia’s face called BS on that one.

  “I would be happy to pass along a message or to put you in touch with Mr. Wesley’s legal counsel.”

  “If we could just have a few minutes of Mr. Wesley’s time—” Briggs tried again.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.” The assistant smiled daggers at Briggs.

  “It’s fine, James,” a voice called. A second later, Thomas Wesley appeared on-screen. His salt-and-pepper hair was slightly mussed. He was wearing a teal silk robe and very little else. “Agent Sterling. Agent Briggs.” Wesley greeted them each with a nod, like a monarch graciously acknowledging his subjects. “What can I do for you?”