The Naturals

Three days later, I left for the program. Michael was the one who came to pick me up. He parked out at the curb and waited.

“I do not like this,” Nonna told me for maybe the thousandth time.

“I know.” I brushed a kiss against her temple, and she cupped my head in her hands.

“You be good,” she said fiercely. “You be careful. Your father,” she added, as an afterthought. “I am going to kill him.”

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Michael standing with his back to a gleaming black Porsche. From a distance, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but I had a suspicion that he wasn’t having any trouble interpreting my feelings.

“I’ll be careful,” I told Nonna, turning my back on the boy with the discerning eye. “Promise.”

“Eh,” she said finally. “How much trouble can you get into? There are only a few students in the entire school.”

A few students who were being trained to analyze crime scenes, pore over witness testimony, and track serial killers. What trouble could we possibly get into?

Without another word, I hauled my bag out to the car. Nonna followed and, when Michael opened the trunk but made no move to help me with my bag, she shot him a disapproving look.

“You are just going to stand there?” she asked.

With an almost imperceptible smirk, Michael took the bag from my hand and hoisted it effortlessly into the trunk. Then he leaned close, into my personal space, and whispered, “And here I’d pegged you as the kind of girl who’d want to do the heavy lifting herself.”

Nonna eyed me. She eyed Michael. She eyed what little space there was between the two of us. And then she made a harrumphing sound.

“Anything happens to her,” she told Michael, “this family—we know how to dispose of a body.”

Instead of giving in to the mortification and burying my head in my hands, I said good-bye to Nonna and climbed into the car. Michael followed suit.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

Michael arched one eyebrow. “About the death threat, or the imaginary chastity belt she’s fitting you with as we speak?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, come on, Cassie. I think it’s nice. You have a family that cares.”

Maybe he thought that was nice, and maybe he didn’t. “I don’t want to talk about my family.”

Michael grinned, completely undeterred. “I know.”

I thought back to what Agent Briggs had told me about Michael’s gift.

“You read emotions,” I said.

“Facial expressions, posture, gestures, the works,” he said. “You nibble on the inside of your lip when you’re nervous. And you get this little wrinkle at the corner of your right eye when you’re trying not to stare.”

He said all of this without ever taking his eyes off the road. My gaze flitted to the speedometer, and I realized how fast we were going.

“Do you want to get pulled over?” I squeaked.

He shrugged. “You’re the profiler,” he said. “You tell me.” He eased off the accelerator ever so slightly. “That’s what profilers do, isn’t it? You look at the way a person is dressed, or the way a person talks, every little detail, and you put that person in a box. You figure out what kind of individual you’re dealing with, and you convince yourself that you know exactly what everyone else wants.”

Okay, so he’d had an experience—and not a good one—with a profiler in the past. I took that to mean that the difficulty I’d been having getting a read on him was no accident. He liked keeping me guessing.

“You wear a different style of clothing every time I see you,” I said. “You stand differently. You talk differently. You never say anything about yourself.”

“Maybe I like being tall, dark, and mysterious,” Michael replied, taking a turn so quickly that I had to remind myself to breathe.

“You’re not that tall,” I gritted out. He laughed.

“You’re annoyed with me,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “But also intrigued.”

“Would you stop that?” I’d never realized how irritating it was to be the one under the microscope.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Michael said. “I’ll stop trying to read your emotions if you stop trying to profile me.”

I had so many questions—about the way he’d grown up, about his ability, about why he’d warned me to stay away—but unless I wanted him making an intense study of my emotions, I’d have to get my answers the normal way.

“Fine,” I said. “Deal.”

He smiled. “Excellent. Now, as a show of good faith, since I’ve already spent a good chunk of time getting inside your head, I’ll give you three questions to try to get inside mine.”

The puzzle solver in me wanted to ask what kind of clothes he wore when there was no one around to see him, how many siblings he had, and which one of his parents had turned him into the kind of guy who was a little angry at the world.

But I didn’t.

Anyone comfortable driving this fast wasn’t going to shy away from a few little white lies. If I asked him what I wanted to know, all I would get was more mixed messages—so I asked him the only question I was fairly certain he’d answer honestly.

“What’s with the Porsche?”

Michael took his eyes off the road just long enough to flick his gaze over to me, and I knew that I’d surprised him.

“The Porsche?” he repeated.

I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’s not standard FBI issue.”

The edges of his lips curved upward, and for once, there was no dark undercurrent to the expression. “The Porsche was a present,” he told me. “From my life before. Getting to keep it was one of the conditions I gave Briggs for joining up.”

“Why wouldn’t he have let you keep it?” I asked, realizing belatedly that I’d just burned question number two.

“Tax fraud,” Michael replied. “Not mine. My father’s.”

From the tightness in his voice, I got the feeling that keeping the Porsche probably hadn’t been the only condition of Michael’s participation in the program. Whether he’d asked for the government to overlook his father’s crimes or his father had bartered away his son in exchange for immunity, I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t ask.

Instead, I stuck to safer ground. “What’s it like? The program?”

“I’ve only been there for a few months,” Michael said. “Briggs sprung me to come get you. Good behavior, I guess.”

Somehow, I doubted that.

Michael seemed to sense that I wasn’t buying it. “And also possibly because Briggs needed someone to read your emotions and figure out whether or not you’re a secret bottle of rage who shouldn’t be granted access to confidential files.”

“Did I pass?” I asked, a teasing note making its way into my voice.

“Uh-uh-uh,” Michael replied. “That’s four questions.”

With no warning, he jerked the steering wheel to the left, pulled a U-turn, and then took a fast right. A few seconds later, the two of us slammed into a parking space at what appeared to be some kind of airport hangar.

“What,” I said, my eyes widening as I took in the sleek hunk of metal in front of us, “is that?”

“That?” Michael repeated. “That’s the jet.”

“Let me guess,” I said, only half joking. “You made getting to keep your private jet a condition of your acceptance into the program?”

Michael snorted. “Sadly, it belongs to the FBI. When Briggs isn’t out roping the young and impressionable into doing his dirty work for him, he belongs to a specialized team that works with law enforcement across the country. The jet cuts down on travel time. For us, it’s just a perk.”

“Cassie,” Agent Briggs greeted me the second I stepped out of the car. Just my name, nothing else.

Michael hit a button, and the trunk popped open. I went to retrieve my bag, and Michael shot Briggs a very good imitation of Nonna’s scowl. “You just going to stand there?” he asked the FBI agent.

Briggs helped me with my bag, and Michael caught my eye. “Amused,” he whispered. “And also some residual embarrassment.”

It took me a second to realize that Michael wasn’t interpreting Briggs’s facial expression. He was interpreting mine.

I’ll stop trying to read your emotions if you stop trying to profile me.

Liar.

Without another word, Michael turned and sauntered to the jet. By the time I climbed aboard, he was already lounging in the back row of seats. He looked up, his posture inviting, his eyes telling me to stay away.

Tearing my gaze from his, I took a seat in the row in front of him, facing the cockpit. We’d see how good he was at reading my emotions based on nothing more than the back of my head.

“Tell you what,” Michael whispered, his voice loud enough to reach my ears, but not Briggs’s. “If you promise not to give me the silent treatment, I’ll give you a fourth question, free of charge.”

As the plane took off and the city grew small behind us, I turned around in my chair.

“You’re leaving the Porsche in Denver?” I asked.

He leaned forward, close enough that his forehead was almost touching mine.

“The devil’s in the details, Cassie. I never said that Porsche was my only car.”

YOU

It’s been days since the last time, days of reliving your failure, over and over again. Each minute has been torture, and now you’re on a schedule. You don’t have the luxury of hunting for the perfect girl. The right girl. There’s nothing special about the one you’ve chosen, except for the color of her hair.

It reminds you of someone else’s hair, and that’s enough. For now.

You kill her in a motel room. No one sees you enter. No one will see you leave. You put duct tape over her mouth. You have to imagine the sound of her screams, but the look in her eyes is worth it.

It’s fast, but not too fast.

It’s yours.

You’re in charge. You decide. You slide the knife into the flesh under her cheekbone. You carve the heavy makeup—and the skin—off of her face.

There. That’s better.

You feel better. More in control. And you know that even though you don’t have time for pictures, you’ll never forget the way the blood looks as it stains her hair.

Some days, you think, it feels like you have been doing this forever. But no matter how many there are, no matter how proficient you’ve become at showing them what you are, what they are, there is a part of you that knows.

It will never be quite right.

It will never be perfect.

There will never be another one like the first.