The Naturals

YOU

“Hold still.”

The girl whimpers, her eyes filling with tears, her hands pulling at the bindings. You backhand her, and she falls to the ground. There’s no pleasure to be had in this.

She’s not Lorelai.

She’s not Cassie.

She’s not even a proper imitation. But you had to do something. You had to show the people closing ranks around Cassie what happens when they try to stand between you and what is yours.

“Hold still,” you say again.

This time, the girl obeys. You don’t kill her. You don’t even hurt her.

Not yet.

I woke midmorning to slanting rays of light breaking through my bedroom window. Sloane was nowhere to be seen. After doing a cursory check of the hallway, I slunk into the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

Solitude. For now.

I pulled the shower curtain, stretching it across the length of the tub. With a twist of my wrist, I turned on the spray, as hot as it would go. The sound of water drumming against the porcelain tub was soothing and hypnotic. I sank down to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest.

Six days ago, a serial killer had contacted me, and my only reaction had been to crawl into the UNSUB’s head, calm and cool. But last night, wearing the same shade of lipstick as my mother had undone me.

It was a coincidence, I told myself. A horrible, twisted, untimely coincidence that within days of being contacted by a killer who might have murdered my mother, Lia had made me up to look just like her.

“It’s a popular color. Just say thank you.”

Steam built up in the air around me, reminding me that I was wasting hot water, a cardinal sin in a house with five teenagers. I stood and swiped my arm across the mirror, leaving a streak on its steam-covered surface.

I stared at myself, banishing the image of Rose Red on my lips. This was me. I was fine.

Stripping off my pajamas, I stepped into the shower, letting the spray hit me straight in the face. The flashback came suddenly and without warning.

Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. On the ground, my shadow flickers, too.

The door to her dressing room is slightly ajar.

I concentrated on the sound of the water, the feel of it on my skin, pushing back against the memories.

The smell—

Abruptly, I turned off the shower. Wrapping a towel around my torso, I stepped out onto the bath mat, dripping wet. I combed my fingers through my hair and turned to the sink.

That was when I heard the scream.

“Cassie!” It took me a moment to pick out my name, and another after that to recognize that Sloane was the one yelling. Wearing only a towel, I rushed across to our room.

“What? Sloane, what is it?”

She was still clad in her pajamas. White-blond hair stuck to her forehead. “It had my name on it,” she said, her voice strained. “It’s not stealing if it has my name on it.”

“What had your name on it?”

With shaking hands, she held out a padded envelope.

“Who did you not steal this from?” I asked.

Sloane looked distinctly guilty. “One of the agents downstairs.”

They’d been screening all of our mail, not just mine.

Angling my head so that I could see what was inside the envelope, I realized why Sloane had screamed.

There, inside the envelope, was a small, black box.

— — —

Once the box had been removed from the envelope, there was no question that it matched the first one: the ribbon, the bow, the white card with my name written on it in careful, not quite cursive script. The only difference was the size—and the fact that this time, the UNSUB had used Sloane to get to me.

You know the FBI has me under guard. You want me anyway.

“You didn’t open the box.” Agent Briggs sounded surprised. About ten seconds after I’d realized what was inside the envelope, Agents Starmans and Brooks had burst into the bedroom. They’d called Locke and Briggs. I’d had just enough time to get dressed before the dynamic duo had arrived—with another, older man in tow.

“I didn’t want to compromise the physical evidence,” I said.

“You did the right thing.” The man who’d come with Briggs and Locke spoke for the first time. His voice was gruff, a perfect match for his face, which was weatherworn and suntanned. I put his age at somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty-five. He wasn’t tall, but he had a commanding presence, and he looked at me like I was a child.

“Cassie, this is Director Sterling.” Locke made the introduction, but the things she didn’t say numbered in the dozens.

For instance, she didn’t say that this man was their boss.

She didn’t say that he was the person who’d signed off on the Naturals program.

She didn’t say that he’d been the one to rake Briggs over coals for using Dean on active cases.

She didn’t have to.

“I want to be there when you open it.” I addressed the words to Agent Locke, but Director Sterling was the one who replied.

“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” he said.

This was a man with children, maybe even grandchildren, even if he was a higher-up at the FBI. I could use that.

“I’m a target,” I said, allowing my eyes to go wide. “Keeping this information from me makes me vulnerable. The more I know about this UNSUB, the safer I am.”

“We can keep you safe.” The director spoke like a man used to having his words taken as law.

“That’s what Agent Briggs said four days ago,” I said, “and now this guy is coming at me through Sloane.”

“Cassie—” Agent Briggs started to talk to me in the same voice the director used—like I was a little kid, like they hadn’t brought me here to solve cases in the first place.

“The UNSUB struck again, didn’t he?” My question—which was a guess, really—was met with absolute silence.

I was right.

“This UNSUB wants me.” I worked my way through the logic. “You tried to keep him away from me. Whatever’s in that box, it’s a step up from what the UNSUB sent me last time. A warning for you, a present for me. If he thinks you’re keeping it from me, things are only going to get worse.”

The director nodded to Agent Briggs. “Open the box.”

Briggs put on a pair of gloves. He pulled on the edge of the ribbon, and the bow came undone. He set the card to the side and lifted the lid off the box.

White tissue paper.

Carefully, he opened the tissue paper. A ringlet of hair lay in the box. It was blond.

“Open the card,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.

Briggs opened the envelope and pulled out a card. Like the last one, it was white, elegant, but plain. Briggs opened the card, and a photograph fell out.

I caught sight of the girl in the picture before they could obscure it from me. Her wrists were bound behind her body. Her face was swollen, and dried blood had crusted around her scalp. Her eyes were filled with tears and so much fear that I could hear her screaming behind the duct-tape gag.

She had dirty blond hair and a baby face.

“She’s too young,” I said, my stomach twisting. The girl in the picture was fifteen, maybe sixteen—and none of the UNSUB’s other victims had been minors.

This girl was younger than me.

“Briggs.” Locke picked up the photo and held it out to him. “Look at the newspaper.”

I’d been so fixated on the girl’s face that I hadn’t noticed the newspaper carefully poised against her chest.

“She was alive this time yesterday,” Briggs said, and that was when I knew—why this present was different from the last one, why the hair in the box was blond.

“You took her,” I said softly, “because they took me.”

Locke caught my eye, and I knew she’d heard me. She agreed with me. Guilt rose like nausea in the back of my throat. I pushed it down. I could process this later. I could hate the UNSUB—and myself—for the blood and bruises on this girl’s face later. But right now, I had to hold it together.

I had to do something.

“Who is she?” I asked. If taking this girl was the killer’s way of lashing out because the FBI had tried to keep him from me, she wouldn’t be just anyone. This girl didn’t fit with the victimology of the UNSUB’s other victims, but if there was one thing I knew about this killer, it was that he always chose his targets for a reason.

“Ms. Hobbes, I appreciate your personal interest in this case, but that information is above your pay grade.”

I gave the director a look. “You don’t pay me. And if the killer is watching, and you insist on keeping me locked up out of reach, it’s going to get worse.”

Why couldn’t he see that? Why couldn’t Briggs? It was obvious. The FBI wanted to keep me out of this, but the killer wanted me in.

“What does the card say?” Locke asked. “The picture is only part of the message.”

Briggs looked at me, then at the director. Then he flipped the card around so that we could read it for ourselves.

CASSIE—WON’T IT LOOK BETTER RED?

The implication was clear. This girl was alive. But she wouldn’t be for long.

“Who is she?” I asked again.

Briggs kept his mouth clamped shut. He had priorities, and keeping his job was number one.

“Genevieve Ridgerton.” Locke answered my question, her voice flat. “Her father is a U.S. senator.”

Genevieve. So now the girl the UNSUB had taken because of me, the girl the UNSUB had hurt because of me, had a name.

The director took a step toward Locke. “That information is need-to-know, Agent Locke.”

She waved off his objection. “Cassie’s right. Genevieve was taken as a deliberate strike at us. We put protection on Cassie, we kept her from leaving the house, and this was the direct response. We’re no closer to catching this monster than we were four days ago, and he will kill Genevieve unless we give him a reason not to.”

He would kill Genevieve because of me.

“What are you suggesting?” The director said those words in a tone brimming with warning, but Locke responded as if the question had been posed in earnest.

“I’m suggesting that we give this killer exactly what he wants. We deal Cassie in. We take her with us and pay another visit to the crime scene.”

“You really think she’ll find something we missed?”

Locke shot me an apologetic look. “No—but I think that if we take Cassie to the crime scene, the killer might follow.”

“We’re not training these kids to play bait,” Agent Briggs said sharply.

The director turned his attention from Locke to Briggs. “You promised me three cold cases by the end of the year,” he said. “So far, your Naturals have delivered one.”

I could feel the dynamics in the room shifting. Agent Briggs didn’t want to risk something happening to one of his precious Naturals. The director was skeptical that our abilities were worth the cost of this program, and whatever objections he had to bringing a seventeen-year-old to a crime scene must have been outweighed by the fact that this situation could have major political ramifications.

This UNSUB hadn’t chosen a senator’s daughter by chance.

“Take her with you to the club, Briggs,” the director grunted. “If anyone asks, she’s a witness.” He turned to me. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Cassandra.”

I knew that. I also knew that I did want to—and not just because Locke might be right about my presence being enough to lure the killer out. I couldn’t just sit back and watch this happen.

Behavior. Personality. Environment.

Victimology. MO. Signature.

I was a Natural—and as sick as it was, I had a relationship with this UNSUB. If they brought me to the crime scene, I might see something the others had missed.

“I’ll go,” I told the director. “But I’m bringing backup of my own.”