The Naturals

YOU

You watch the FBI agents scurrying around the crime scene like ants. This particular corpse is not your best work. You killed her last night, and already, her screams have faded from your ears. Her face is still recognizable—more or less.

You used scissors this time instead of your knife.

But that’s not the point. Not this time. This time, the point is that the gift you sent sweet little Cassandra Hobbes was the real thing.

The pathetic little slut lying lifeless on the pavement is just a piece of the plan. You abandoned her body at dawn, knowing that it wouldn’t be discovered immediately. You’d hoped—prayed, even—that Cassie would be there when the agents got the call.

Did you scream when you opened the box, Cassie? Did you think about me? Am I the thought that keeps you up at night? There’s so much you want to ask her.

So much you want to tell her.

The rest of the world will never understand. The FBI will never know the inner workings of your brain.

They’ll never know how close you are.

But Cassie—she’s going to know everything. The two of you are connected. Cassie is her mother’s daughter—and that’s as close as you’re ever going to get.

Two days later, the hair from the black box came back as a match for the UNSUB’s latest victim.

“I’ll accept gifts in lieu of an apology,” Lia told Agent Locke. “Any time now is fine.”

Locke didn’t reply. The three of us—along with Briggs, Michael, and Dean—were in Briggs’s study. Sloane was nowhere to be seen.

You sent me a piece of hair. I couldn’t keep from talking to the killer in my head, couldn’t keep from thinking about the present and what it meant that the UNSUB had sent it to me. Was she screaming when you cut it off? Did you use the scissors to cut her afterward? Was it ever even about her? Or was it about me? About my mother?

“Am I in danger?” I sounded remarkably calm, like my question was just a piece of the puzzle and not a matter of life and death—specifically, mine.

“What do you think?” Locke asked.

Briggs narrowed his eyes, like he couldn’t believe she was using this as a teaching opportunity, but I answered the question anyway.

“I think this UNSUB wants to kill me, but I don’t think he wants to kill me yet.”

“This is insane.” Michael had that look on his face—the one that told me he wanted to hit someone. “Cassie, are you even listening to yourself?” He turned to Briggs. “She’s in shock.”

“She is standing right here,” I said, but I didn’t contradict the rest of Michael’s statement. Given his ability to read people, I had to assume that he might be right. Maybe I was in shock. I couldn’t deny the fact that my emotions were on lockdown.

I wasn’t angry.

I wasn’t scared.

I wasn’t even thinking about my mother and the fact that this UNSUB might very well have killed her, too.

“You kill women,” I said out loud. “Women with red hair. Women who remind you of someone else. And then one day, you see me, and for whatever reason, I’m not like the others. You never needed to talk to them. You never needed them to go to sleep at night thinking about you. But I’m different. You send me a gift—maybe you want to scare me. Maybe you’re playing with me or using me to play with the feds. But the way you wrapped that box, the care you took with my name on the card—there’s a part of you that thinks you really have given me a gift. You’re talking to me. You made me special, and when you kill me, that will have to be special, too.” Every single person in the room was staring at me. I turned to Dean. “Am I wrong?”

Dean considered the question. “I’ve been killing for a long time,” he said, slipping into the killer’s mind as easily as I had. “And each time, it’s a little bit less than it was the time before. I don’t want to get caught, but I need the danger, the thrill, the challenge.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, it was like the two of us were the only two people in the room.

“You’re not wrong, Cassie.”

“This is sick,” Michael said, his voice rising. “There’s some psycho out there, fixating on Cassie, and you two are acting like this is some kind of game.”

“It is a game,” Dean said.

I knew Dean wasn’t enjoying this, that looking at me through a killer’s eyes wasn’t something he would have chosen to do, but Michael only heard the words. He lunged forward and caught Dean by the front of his shirt.

A second later, Michael had Dean pinned to the wall. “Listen to me, you sick son of a—”

“Michael!” Briggs pulled him off Dean. At the last second, Dean lunged forward and grabbed Michael, reversing their positions and wedging his elbow underneath Michael’s throat.

Dean lowered his voice to a whisper. “I never said this was a game to me, Townsend.”

It was a game to the UNSUB. I was the prize. And if we weren’t careful, Michael and Dean were going to kill each other.

“Enough.” Locke put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He stiffened, and for a second, I thought he might hit her.

“Enough,” Dean echoed, expelling a breath. He let Michael go and took a step back. Then he just kept walking backward until his back hit the opposite wall. He was a person who didn’t lose control, who couldn’t afford to, and he’d come close enough with Michael just now that it scared him.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, pulling everyone’s attention from Dean and giving him a second to recover.

Briggs jabbed his index finger in my direction. “You’re still not working this case. Either of you.” He spared a glare for Dean before returning that laser focus to me. “I’ve assigned a team to watch the house. I’ll introduce you all to Agents Starmans, Vance, and Brooks. Until further notice, none of you will be leaving this residence, and Cassie is never alone.”

Closing ranks around me wasn’t going to bring us any closer to this UNSUB.

“You should take me with you,” I told Briggs. “If this guy wants me, we should use that. Set a trap.”

“No!” Michael, Dean, and Briggs responded at the exact same time. I turned beseeching eyes to Agent Locke.

She looked like she was on the verge of agreeing with me, but at the last second, she bit her lip and shook her head. “The UNSUB has only made contact once. He’ll try again, whether you’re here or elsewhere, and at least here, we have the home court advantage.”

I’d been taught that there was no such thing as the home court advantage, but my mother’s lessons had been geared toward reading people, not playing cat and mouse with killers.

“The UNSUB is breaking pattern.” Locke reached out and touched the side of my face softly. “As scary as it is, that’s a good thing. We know what he wants, and we can keep him from getting it. The more riled up he gets, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

“I can’t just do nothing.” I locked my eyes onto my mentor’s, willing her to understand.

“You can do something,” she said finally. “You can make a list. Everyone you’ve spoken to, everyone you’ve met, every place you’ve been, every person who’s spent even a second looking at you since you got here.”

My mind went immediately to the man who’d interrupted my reading that afternoon by the Potomac—without telling me his name. Was that him? Was it nothing?

It was hard not to be paranoid, given what I knew now.

“The UNSUB mailed the package,” Lia pointed out, jarring me from my thoughts. “He doesn’t have to be local.”

Dean jammed his hands into his pockets. “He’d want to see her,” he said, his own gaze flicking toward my face, just for a second.

“We weren’t able to trace the package,” Locke said grimly. “Busy post office, busy day, less than observant mail clerk, and no security cameras. Our UNSUB paid cash, and the return address is obviously faked. This guy is good, and he’s playing with us. At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”