The Naturals
Page 7

Michael seemed to sense that I wasn’t buying it. “And also possibly because Briggs needed someone to read your emotions and figure out whether or not you’re a secret bottle of rage who shouldn’t be granted access to confidential files.”
“Did I pass?” I asked, a teasing note making its way into my voice.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Michael replied. “That’s four questions.”
With no warning, he jerked the steering wheel to the left, pulled a U-turn, and then took a fast right. A few seconds later, the two of us slammed into a parking space at what appeared to be some kind of airport hangar.
“What,” I said, my eyes widening as I took in the sleek hunk of metal in front of us, “is that?”
“That?” Michael repeated. “That’s the jet.”
“Let me guess,” I said, only half joking. “You made getting to keep your private jet a condition of your acceptance into the program?”
Michael snorted. “Sadly, it belongs to the FBI. When Briggs isn’t out roping the young and impressionable into doing his dirty work for him, he belongs to a specialized team that works with law enforcement across the country. The jet cuts down on travel time. For us, it’s just a perk.”
“Cassie,” Agent Briggs greeted me the second I stepped out of the car. Just my name, nothing else.
Michael hit a button, and the trunk popped open. I went to retrieve my bag, and Michael shot Briggs a very good imitation of Nonna’s scowl. “You just going to stand there?” he asked the FBI agent.
Briggs helped me with my bag, and Michael caught my eye. “Amused,” he whispered. “And also some residual embarrassment.”
It took me a second to realize that Michael wasn’t interpreting Briggs’s facial expression. He was interpreting mine.
I’ll stop trying to read your emotions if you stop trying to profile me.
Liar.
Without another word, Michael turned and sauntered to the jet. By the time I climbed aboard, he was already lounging in the back row of seats. He looked up, his posture inviting, his eyes telling me to stay away.
Tearing my gaze from his, I took a seat in the row in front of him, facing the cockpit. We’d see how good he was at reading my emotions based on nothing more than the back of my head.
“Tell you what,” Michael whispered, his voice loud enough to reach my ears, but not Briggs’s. “If you promise not to give me the silent treatment, I’ll give you a fourth question, free of charge.”
As the plane took off and the city grew small behind us, I turned around in my chair.
“You’re leaving the Porsche in Denver?” I asked.
He leaned forward, close enough that his forehead was almost touching mine.
“The devil’s in the details, Cassie. I never said that Porsche was my only car.”
YOU
It’s been days since the last time, days of reliving your failure, over and over again. Each minute has been torture, and now you’re on a schedule. You don’t have the luxury of hunting for the perfect girl. The right girl. There’s nothing special about the one you’ve chosen, except for the color of her hair.
It reminds you of someone else’s hair, and that’s enough. For now.
You kill her in a motel room. No one sees you enter. No one will see you leave. You put duct tape over her mouth. You have to imagine the sound of her screams, but the look in her eyes is worth it.
It’s fast, but not too fast.
It’s yours.
You’re in charge. You decide. You slide the knife into the flesh under her cheekbone. You carve the heavy makeup—and the skin—off of her face.
There. That’s better.
You feel better. More in control. And you know that even though you don’t have time for pictures, you’ll never forget the way the blood looks as it stains her hair.
Some days, you think, it feels like you have been doing this forever. But no matter how many there are, no matter how proficient you’ve become at showing them what you are, what they are, there is a part of you that knows.
It will never be quite right.
It will never be perfect.
There will never be another one like the first.
PART TWO: LEARNING
CHAPTER 7
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.