The Naturals

I stepped off the jet and blinked, my eyes adjusting to the sun. A woman with bright red hair strode toward the plane. She was wearing a gray suit and black sunglasses, and she walked like she had someplace to be.

“I heard a rumor we were getting in around the same time,” she called out to Briggs. “Thought I’d come to greet you in person.” Without waiting for a reply, she turned her attention to me. “I’m Special Agent Lacey Locke. Briggs is my partner, and you’re Cassandra Hobbes.”

She timed this speech to end just as she closed the space between us. She held out a hand, and I was struck by the fact that she looked somehow impish despite the sunglasses and the suit.

I took her hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Most people just call me Cassie.”

“Cassie it is, then,” she replied. “Briggs tells me you’re one of mine.”

One of hers?

Michael filled in the blank. “A profiler.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic about the science of profiling, Michael,” Locke said lightly. “Cassie might mistake you for a seventeen-year-old boy without a strong sense of derision for the rest of the world.”

Michael held a hand to his chest. “Your sarcasm wounds me, Agent Locke.”

She snorted.

“You’re home early,” Briggs cut in, aiming the comment at Agent Locke. “Nothing in Boise?”

Locke gave a brief jerk of her head. “Dead end.”

An unspoken communication passed between the two of them, and then Briggs turned to me. “As Michael so obligingly pointed out, Agent Locke is a profiler. She’ll be in charge of your training.”

“Lucky you,” Locke said with a grin.

“Are you …” I wasn’t sure how to ask.

“A Natural?” she said. “No. There’s only one thing I’ve ever been a natural at, and sadly, I can’t tell you about that until you’re twenty-one. But I did go through the FBI Academy and took every class they offered in behavioral analysis. I’ve been a part of the behavioral science unit for almost three years.”

I wondered if it would be rude to ask how old she was now.

“Twenty-nine,” she said. “And don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

“Used to what?”

She grinned again. “People answering questions before you ask them.”

— — —

The program’s base of operations was a looming Victorian-style house in the tiny town of Quantico, Virginia—close enough to FBI headquarters on Marine Corps Base Quantico to be handy, but not so close that people were going to start asking questions.

“Living room. Media room. Library. Study.” The person that Briggs had found to look after the house—and us—was a retired marine by the name of Judd Hawkins. He was sixty-something, eagle-eyed, and a man of few words. “Kitchen’s through there. Your room is on the second floor.” Judd paused for a fraction of a second to look at me. “You’ll be sharing with one of the other girls. I expect that’s not a problem?”

I shook my head, and he strode back down the hallway and toward a staircase. “Look alive, Ms. Hobbes,” he called back. I hurried to catch up and thought I heard a smile in his voice, though there was barely a hint of it on his face.

I fought a smile of my own. Judd Hawkins might not have been gruff and no-nonsense, but my gut was telling me he had more soft spots than most people would have thought.

He caught me studying him and gave a brisk, businesslike nod. Like Briggs, he didn’t seem to mind the idea that I might be getting a general picture of his personality from the little details.

Unlike a certain other individual I could think of, who’d done his best to thwart me at every turn.

Refusing to glance back at Michael, I noticed a series of framed pictures lining the staircase. A dozen or so men. One woman. Most were in their late twenties or early thirties, but one or two were older. Some were smiling; some were not. A paunchy man with dark eyebrows and thinning hair hung between a handsome heartbreaker and a black-and-white photo from the turn of the century. At the top of the stairs, an elderly couple smiled out from a slightly larger portrait.

I glanced at Judd, wondering if these were his relatives, or if they belonged to someone else in this house.

“They’re killers.” An Asian girl about my age stepped around the corner. She moved like a cat—and smiled like she’d just eaten a canary.

“The people in the pictures,” she clarified. “They’re serial killers.” She twirled her shiny black ponytail around her index finger, clearly enjoying my discomfort. “It’s the program’s cheery way of reminding Dean why he’s here.”

Dean? Who was Dean?

“Personally, I think it’s a little macabre, but then again, I’m not a profiler.” The girl flicked her ponytail. “You are, though. Aren’t you?”

She took a step forward, and my eyes were drawn to her footwear: black leather boots with heels high enough to make my feet shudder in spasms of sympathy. She was wearing skintight black pants and a high-necked sleeveless sweater, electric blue to match the streaks in her black hair.

As I took in her clothing, the girl closed the space between us until she was standing so close to me that I thought she might reach out and start twirling my hair instead of her own.

“Lia,” Judd said, absolutely unfazed, “this is Cassie. If you’re finished trying to scare her, I’m betting she’d really like to set that bag down.”

Lia shrugged. “Mi casa es su casa. Your room is through there.”

“Your” room, I thought. Not “our” room.

“Cassie’s really broken up about not rooming with you, Lia,” Michael said, interpreting my facial expression with a wink. Lia pivoted to face him, and her lips twisted upward in a slow, sizzling grin.

“Miss me?” she asked.

“Like a thorn in my paw,” Michael replied.

Coming up the stairs behind us, Agent Briggs cleared his throat. “Lia,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

Lia gave him a look. “Now, Agent Briggs,” she replied, “that’s simply not true.”

Agent Locke rolled her eyes. “Lia’s specialty is deception,” she told me. “She has an uncanny knack for being able to tell when people are lying. And,” Agent Locke added, meeting Lia’s eyes, “she’s a very good liar.”

Lia didn’t seem to take offense at the agent’s words. “I’m also bilingual,” she said. “And very, very flexible.”

The second very was aimed directly at Michael.

“So,” I said, my duffel bag digging into my shoulder as I tried to process the fact that Lia was a Natural liar, “the pictures on the wall aren’t serial killers?”

That question was answered with silence. Silence from Michael. Silence from Judd. Silence from Agent Locke, who looked a bit abashed.

Agent Briggs cleared his throat. “No,” he said finally. “That’s true.”

My eyes were drawn to the portrait of the elderly couple.

Smiling serial killers, five-inch heels, and a girl with a gift for lying? This was going to be interesting.