Bad Blood
Page 52

“You heard the man,” I told Michael.
Michael stood up and dusted off his lapels. “Mooning Agent Starmans,” he said solemnly, “would be my pleasure.” He stalked to the balcony, let himself out, waited for Agent Starmans to pass by, and then called down to the man. When Starmans looked up, Michael saluted him. With military precision, he turned and bared his backside.
I was laughing so hard, I almost didn’t hear Michael as he came back in and turned to Dean. “Truth or dare, Redding?”
“Truth.”
Michael crossed his arms over his waist in a way that made me think Dean was going to regret that choice. “Admit it: I’ve grown on you.”
Sloane frowned. “That wasn’t a question.”
“Fine,” Michael said, grinning, before returning to torture Dean. “Do you like me? Am I one of your closest bosom buddies? Would you cry your little heart out if I was gone?”
Michael and Dean had been at each other’s throats for as long as I’d known them.
“Do. You. Like. Me.” Michael repeated the question, this time with gestures.
Dean glanced at Lia, whose presence was a reminder that he couldn’t get away with lying.
“You have your moments,” Dean mumbled.
“What was that?” Michael cupped his ear.
“I don’t have to like you,” Dean snapped back. “We’re family.”
“Bosom buddies,” Michael corrected loftily. Dean gave him a dirty look.
I grinned.
“Your turn again,” Lia reminded Dean, nudging him with the tip of her foot.
Dean resisted the urge to target Michael. “Truth or dare, Cassie?”
There were very few things I kept from Dean—very few things he couldn’t ask me, if he wanted to know.
“Dare,” I said.
Sloane cleared her throat. “I would just like to point out,” she said, “that this is one of only two-point-three percent of hotel rooms that come with a blender.”

Hours ticked by. The blender and the minibar proved to be a dangerous combination. “Truth or dare, Lia?” It was my turn, and I could feel reality creeping back up on us. Every round that went by was that much longer without hearing from Celine. It was that much closer until the point in time when Agent Sterling would either have to charge the Darby family or let them go.
“Truth,” Lia replied. It was her first in a very long game.
“Why did you go after Darby alone?” I asked her.
Lia stood up and stretched, arching her back and twisting from one side to the other. She had the advantage in Truth or Dare.
No one else in this room could lie and get away with it.
“I got out,” Lia said finally. “My mother didn’t.” She stopped stretching and stood very still. “I ran away when I hit puberty. By the time Briggs found me in New York…” She shook her head. “There was nothing left for us to save.”
Nothing left of the cult. Nothing left of your mother.
“Some of Darby’s followers will just find someone else to latch on to,” Lia continued. “But there’s at least a chance that with him in prison, some of them will go home.”
I thought of Melody and Shane. And then I thought of Lia—younger and more vulnerable than the girl I knew now.
“Besides,” Lia added flippantly, “I wanted to stick it to Michael for that stunt he pulled in New York.” She turned on the tips of her toes. “Truth or dare, Sloane?”
“Would choosing truth involve a question about beagle and/or flamingo statistics?” Sloane asked hopefully.
“Doubtful,” Michael opined.
“Dare,” Sloane told Lia.
A slow, wicked grin spread over Lia’s face. “I dare you,” she said, “to hack into Agent Sterling’s computer and change her wallpaper to the picture I took of Michael mooning our Agent Starmans.”
 
 
It took Sloane nearly half an hour to hack into Agent Sterling’s laptop. Considering that this was Sloane we were talking about, that made Agent Sterling’s computer security measures downright impressive. Our resident hacker was midway through uploading the picture Lia had taken when the computer beeped.
“Incoming e-mail,” Lia said, reaching over Sloane to click the e-mail icon.
One second, we were in giddy Truth or Dare mode, and the next, it was like all traces of oxygen had been sucked from the room. The e-mail was from Agent Briggs. There were files attached. Reports. Pictures.
Within a minute, they filled the screen. The image of a human body, burned past all recognition, sent me to the ground. I sat down hard, unable to keep my arms from wrapping around my legs, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen.
I’d known, logically, that the killing had started again. I knew that there was an UNSUB out there making the transition from apprentice to Master. I’d even known the killer’s MO.
Strung up like a scarecrow. Burned alive.
But there was a difference between knowing something and seeing it with your own eyes. I forced myself to look at a photograph of the victim—the person she’d been before her body was devoured by flames, before she was nothing but pain and scorched flesh and ash.
Her hair was long and blond, her pale skin offset by a pair of dark-rimmed hipster glasses. And the longer I looked at her, the harder it was to look away, because she didn’t just look young and carefree and alive.
“She looks familiar.” I hadn’t meant to say those words out loud, but they exited my mouth like a crack of thunder.
Beside me, Sloane shook her head. “I don’t recognize her.”
Michael squeezed in beside us at the computer. “I do.” He turned to look at me. “Back when we were investigating the Redding case, when you and Lia and I went to that frat party—you went off with the professor’s teaching assistant, and I followed. With her.”
I tried to recreate the scene in my memory. A college girl had been killed, the MO an exact match to Daniel Redding’s. Michael, Lia, and I had snuck out of the house to do some recon on potential suspects. And one of the people we’d talked to was this girl.
“Bryce.” Sloane read her name from the file. “Bryce Anderson.”
I struggled to remember more about her, but other than the fact that she’d been in class with the first victim—and the fact that the class in question had been studying the Daniel Redding case—I came up blank.