The Naturals

YOU

You can’t remember the last time you felt this way. All of the others—all of them—were imitations. A copy of a copy of the thing you wanted most. But now—now you’re close.

A smile on your face, you pick up the scissors. The girl on the floor screams, the duct tape stretching tight across her face, but you ignore her. She’s not the real prize here, just a means to an end.

You grab her by the hair and jerk her head back. She struggles, and you tighten your grip and slam her head into the wall.

“Be still,” you whisper. You let her hair fall back down and then lift a single lock of it up.

You raise the scissors. You cut the hair.

And then you cut her.

I went to bed early. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours that my body physically hurt. I didn’t want to be awake anymore. That plan worked for a few hours, but just after midnight, I awoke to the sound of footsteps outside of my door and the dulcet melody of Sloane snoring next to me.

For a second, I thought I’d imagined the footsteps, but then I saw the hint of a shadow underneath the door.

There’s someone out there.

Whoever it was just stood there. I crept toward the door, my hair stuck to my forehead with sweat and my heartbeat thudding in my ears.

I opened the door.

“Not going for a swim tonight?”

It took a second for Michael’s features to come together in the darkness, but I recognized his voice immediately.

“I don’t feel like swimming.” I lowered my voice, but not as much as I would have if my roommate’s nasal passages hadn’t been threatening to deafen me within the year.

“I got you something.” Michael took a step forward, until his face was mere inches from mine. Slowly, he held up an inch-thick file.

I looked at him, then at the file, then back at him.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“Oh yes,” he replied. “I did.”

“How?” Already, my fingers were itching to snatch the file from his hand.

“Briggs took Sloane’s computer. He didn’t take mine.”

I thought about Briggs’s warning, his threat to send me home. And then, slowly, I closed my fingers around the file. “You copied the files onto your laptop.”

Michael smiled. “You’re welcome.”

— — —

I tucked the file under my mattress. Maybe there was another clue in there. Maybe there wasn’t. First chance I got, I was showing it to Dean. Unfortunately, when I went to find him the next morning, he wasn’t alone.

“Miss me?” Agent Locke didn’t wait for me to answer her question. “Sit.”

I sat. So did Dean.

“Here.” Agent Locke held out a thick legal file, the accordion bottom stretched to capacity and then some.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Briggs thinks you’re ready to take the next step, Cassie.” Locke paused. “Is he right?”

“A cold case?” The file was faded—and much, much heavier than the one tucked under my mattress.

“A string of unsolved murders from the nineties,” Locke told us. “Home invasion; one bullet to the head, execution-style. The rest of the file contains all of the similar unsolved homicides that have taken place in that area since.”

Dean groaned. “No wonder the file’s so thick,” he muttered. “A third of all drug-related hits probably look just like this.”

“Then I guess it should keep the two of you busy.” Locke gave me a look that I took to mean Briggs had told her about our little discussion.

“I’ll check in later in the week. You two have a lot of reading to do, and I have a case to solve.”

She left the two of us alone. I opened my mouth to say something about the case file jammed under my mattress, but then I closed it again. Lia eavesdropped—and apparently, so did Judd.

“How would you feel about working on our cold case in the basement?” I asked. The soundproof basement. It took Dean a moment to catch on, but then he led the way down the stairs, closing the door firmly behind us. We walked the length of the basement, three-walled rooms lining either side, like theater sets in want of a play.

Once I was sure we were alone, I started talking. “When I went to get the file yesterday, Briggs busted me. By the time I got back to my room, you were gone.”

“Lia may have mentioned that Briggs busted you,” Dean said. “You okay?”

“I told him my theory. I asked to work on the case. He said no.”

“You going to work on it anyway?” Dean paused in front of one of the outdoor sets: a partial park. I sat down on a park bench, and he leaned back against the bench’s arm.

“I have a copy of the file,” I said. “Will you look at it?”

He nodded. Five minutes later, he was elbow-deep in the case—and I had Locke’s cold case in my hands, ready to cover in case anyone came down to check on us.

“Sometimes victims are just substitutes,” Dean said after he’d read through the entire file. “I’m married, but I’d never get away with killing my own wife, so I kill hookers and pretend that they’re her. My kid died, and now every time I see a kid in a baseball cap, I have to make him mine.”

Dean had always used the word I to climb into killers’ heads, but now that I knew his background, hearing that word come out of his mouth gave me chills.

“Maybe the first time I killed someone, it wasn’t planned, but now the only time I ever really feel alive is when I’m feeling the life go out of someone else, someone like her.”

“You see it, too, don’t you?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’d bet money that this person is either reliving their first kill or fantasizing about a person they want to kill but can’t.”

“And if I told you there was a red-haired psychic attacked with a knife five years ago, and they never found the body?”

Dean paused. “Then I’d want to know everything there was to know about that case,” he said.

So did I.

YOU

The box is black. The tissue is white. And the present—the present is red. You lay it gingerly in the tissue. You put the lid on the box. You wash the scissors and use them to cut a long, black ribbon—silk.

Special.

Just like The Girl is.

No, you think, picking up the present and stroking your gloved thumb along its edge. You don’t have to call her The Girl. Not anymore.

You’ve seen her. You’ve watched her. You’re sure. No more imitations. No more copies. It’s time she got to know you, the way you knew her mother.

You put the card on top of the package. You scrawl her name on the outside, each letter a labor of love.

C-A-S-S-I-E.