The Naturals

It took Agent Briggs an hour to get to our house. It took him five seconds to get from the front door to the kitchen—and the box.

“Still think I’m jumping to conclusions when I say this case is related to my mother’s?” I asked him, my voice shaky. He ignored me and barked out commands to the team of agents he’d brought with him.

“Bag the packaging, the box, the ribbon, the card, everything—if there’s a speck of evidence on any of it, I want to know. Starmans, track the box—how it was sent, where it was mailed from, who paid for it. Brooks, Vance, we need DNA on the hair, and we need it yesterday. I don’t care who you have to threaten in the lab to get it done, rush it. Locke …”

Agent Locke crossed her arms over her chest and gave Briggs a look. To his credit, he lowered his voice to a more reasonable volume and pitch.

“If this is our UNSUB, it changes everything. We have no evidence that he’s ever made contact with a target prior to killing. This may be our chance to get ahead of him.”

“We don’t even know that this is our UNSUB,” Agent Locke pointed out. “It’s red hair. For all we know, it could be a prank.”

Her gaze drifted over to Lia the second she said the word prank. I whipped my head around to look at the Natural liar, too.

Lia tossed her black hair over her shoulder. “This is a little beyond the pale, even for me, Agent Locke.”

Locke glanced at me. “Gotten into any arguments lately?” she asked.

I opened my mouth, then glanced at Lia again. Remind me never to ask you for a favor again. The venom in her tone when she’d said those words had been palpable.

“Lia.” Agent Briggs barely managed to get the word out around his clenched jaw. “Tell me again how you found the present.”

Lia’s eyes flashed. “I went out to get the mail. There was a package with Cassie’s name on it. I opened said package. Inside, there was a box. I decided I wanted to see the look on Cassie’s face when she opened said box. I brought it into the kitchen. Cassie opened it. The end.”

Briggs turned to Locke. “If the DNA comes back as a match for one of our victims, you’ll have to completely rework the profile. If it doesn’t …”

He glanced back at Lia.

“Why does everyone keep looking at me?” she snapped. “I found the package. I didn’t send it. If the DNA on the hair doesn’t come back as a match, maybe you should think about asking Cassie some questions.”

“Me?” I asked incredulously.

“You wanted in on this case,” Lia retorted. “And now the killer contacts you out of the blue? How lucky for you.”

I couldn’t tell if Lia believed what she was saying or not. It didn’t matter, because Briggs had already turned his diamond-hard gaze on me.

“Cassie didn’t do this.”

I hadn’t even realized that Dean was in the room until he spoke. Clearly, neither had the agents. Briggs actually jumped.

“Cassie’s not the type to play games.” Dean’s voice brooked no doubt. “The entire reason she wanted to work on this case is that she thinks it has something to do with her mother’s murder. Why would she risk diverting manpower and resources away from the real investigation when she knows the killer is escalating? If this is a prank, it’s a prank that’s going to get someone killed.”

The knot in my chest loosened. I looked at Dean, and suddenly, I could breathe.

“Dean’s right.” Locke’s voice sounded exactly like mine when I was working my way through a puzzle. “If Cassie wanted in on this case, she’d just find a way to keep working it on her own.”

I tried very hard not to look conspicuous—because that was exactly what I’d been trying to do.

“Cassie, did you or did you not drop this case when I told you to?” Briggs took a step forward, invading my personal space. “Have you done anything that might have drawn the killer’s attention?”

I shook my head—no to both questions. Briggs’s hand fell back to his side. He clenched his jaw again. For the second time, Dean intervened.

“All Cassie did was give a copy of the case file to me.”

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Dean. Normally, he stood and walked like someone who wanted to disappear into the woodwork, but today, his shoulders were back, his jaw set.

“I read the file. I profiled it. And I think Cassie’s right.” Dean leveled his gaze at Agent Briggs. “These women are stand-ins, and I think there’s a very real chance that the person they’re standing in for is Cassie’s mother.”

“You’ve never even seen the Lorelai Hobbes case file,” Briggs shot back. My mother’s name hit me like a punch to the stomach.

“I’ve seen Cassie’s mother’s picture,” Dean argued. “I’ve seen the human hair that someone just sent to Cassie as a gift.”

Briggs listened to every word Dean had to say, an intense look of concentration on his face. “You’re not authorized to work this case,” he said finally.

Dean shrugged. “I know.”

“You are not going to be working this case.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to pretend that we never had this conversation.”

“Liar,” Lia coughed.

Briggs was not amused. “You may leave the room, Lia.”

Lia clasped her hands together. “Oh, Mother, may I?”

Dean made a choking sound. I wasn’t entirely certain, but he might have been swallowing a laugh.

“Now, Lia.”

After a long moment and a glare aimed at the room as a whole, Lia twirled on her toes and stalked out of the room. Once he was sure Lia was gone, Agent Briggs turned to Agent Locke. “Do you think this case is related to the Lorelai Hobbes case?”

I didn’t flinch when he said my mother’s name a second time. I concentrated on the fact that Lia was correct: Briggs had no intention of forgetting what Dean had told him.

I think Cassie’s right.

“I don’t know that it matters whether the two cases are related or not,” Locke answered finally. “Cassie’s hair is red. She’s a bit younger than the other victims, but otherwise, she fits the profile of this killer’s victims, and more importantly, our UNSUB is escalating. If you assume the last victim’s hair was dyed as a message, that means this guy is playing with us. And if he’s playing with us, there’s a sizable chance that he’s watching us.” Agent Locke rubbed the back of her hand wearily over her brow. “If he’s watching us, he could have followed us here, and if he followed us here, he could have seen Cassie.”

Briggs’s phone rang before he could reply. By the time he hung up, I already knew what the next words out of his mouth were going to be.

“We’ve got another body.”