The Naturals

“Cassie?” Lia was the first one to break the silence. “Are you okay? You look … not good.”

I was going to go out on a limb and guess that was about as diplomatic as Lia got.

“I need to call Agent Briggs,” I said, and then I paused. “I don’t have his number.”

Dean fished his phone out of his pocket. “There are only four numbers in my contacts,” he said. “Briggs is one of them.”

The other three were Locke, Lia, and Judd. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Briggs.

No answer.

I called Locke.

Please answer. Please answer. Please, please answer.

“Dean?”

Like Agent Briggs, Locke didn’t bother with hello.

“No,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Cassie? Is everything okay?”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

“Are you alone?”

“No.”

Locke must have heard something in my voice, because she flipped into agent mode in a heartbeat. “Can you talk openly?”

I heard steps in the hallway. Agent Starmans opened the door without knocking, glared pointedly at Lia, then resumed standing guard, right outside the door.

“Cassie,” Locke said sharply. “Can you talk?”

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t know anything except for the fact that there was a very real possibility that the killer had been inside our house—for all I knew, the killer could be inside the house now. If the UNSUB had access to FBI files, if he had access to us …

“Cassie, I need you to listen to me. Hang up the phone. Tell whoever’s around you that I’m in the middle of something and I’ll stop by the house as soon as I’m done. Then take the phone, go to the bathroom, and call me back.”

I did what she told me to do. I hung up the phone. I repeated her words to the rest of the room—and to Agent Starmans, who was standing right outside.

“What did she say?” Lia asked, her eyes locked on to my face, ready to call me out the second a lie passed my lips.

“She said, ‘I’m in the middle of something, and I’ll stop by the house as soon as I’m done.’”

Technically, Agent Locke had said those exact words. I wasn’t lying—and I’d just have to take the chance that Lia wouldn’t pick up any cues that I was withholding a chunk of the truth.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, hoping they’d read that as me not wanting to admit that I wasn’t okay. I walked out of the room without ever looking Michael in the eye.

The second I closed the bathroom door behind me, I locked it. I turned on the sink faucet, and then I called Agent Locke back.

“I’m alone,” I said softly, letting the sound of running water mask my words for everyone but her.

“Okay,” Locke said. “Now, take a deep breath. Stay calm. And tell me what’s wrong.”

I told her. She cursed softly under her breath.

“Did you call Briggs?” she asked.

“I tried,” I said. “He’s not picking up his phone.”

“Cassie, I need to tell you something, and I want you to promise me that you’re going to keep it together. Briggs is in a meeting with Director Sterling. We have reason to believe that there might be a leak in our unit. Until we get firm evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that your protection detail has been compromised. I need you to get out: quietly, quickly, and without drawing anyone’s attention.”

I thought about Agent Starmans, out in the hallway, and about the other agents downstairs. I’d been so caught up in the case I hadn’t paid attention to them.

To any of them.

“I’ll call Starmans and the others,” Locke said. “I should be able to buy you a few minutes unguarded.”

“I have to get out of here,” I said. The idea that the UNSUB might be one of the people who was supposed to protect me—

“You have to calm down,” Locke said, her voice firm. “You live in a house full of very perceptive people. If you panic, they’ll know it.”

Michael. She was talking about Michael.

“He doesn’t have anything to do with this,” I said.

“I never said he did,” Locke replied, “but I’ve known Michael for longer than you have, Cassie, and he’s got a history of doing stupid things for girls. The last thing we need right now is someone playing hero.”

I thought of the way that Michael had slammed Dean into the wall when Dean had called the killer’s obsession with me a game. I thought of Michael in the pool, telling me about a time when he’d lost it.

“I have to go,” I said. The farther away I was from Michael, the safer he’d be. If I left, the UNSUB would follow. We could flush this psychopath out. “I’ll call you once I’m clear.”

“Cassie, if you hang up this phone and do something stupid,” Locke said, channeling Nonna and my mother and Agent Briggs all at once, “I will spend the next five years of your life making sure you deeply, deeply regret it. I want you to find Dean. If anyone in that house knows how to spot a killer, it’s him, and I trust him to keep you safe. He knows the combination to the safe in Briggs’s study. Tell him I said to use it.”

It took me a moment to realize that the safe in question must be a gun safe.

“Get to Dean and get out of the house, Cassie. Don’t let anyone else see you leave. I’ll send the coordinates of our DC safe house. Briggs and I will meet you there.”

I nodded, knowing that she couldn’t see me, but unable to form intelligible words.

“Stay. Calm.”

I nodded again and finally managed to say, “Okay.”

“You can do this,” Agent Locke said. “You and Dean are an incredible team, and I’m not going to let anything happen to either of you.”

Three sharp raps on the bathroom door made me jump, but I forced myself to follow Locke’s primary directive and stay calm. I could do this. I had to do this. Hanging up the phone, I stuffed it into my back pocket, turned the faucet off, and glanced at the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Michael. I cursed inside, because there was calm and there was calm, and with Michael’s knack for emotions, he’d know in a heartbeat if I was faking.

Calm. Calm. Calm.

I couldn’t be angry. I couldn’t be scared. I couldn’t be panicked or guilty or show any signs that I’d just talked to Agent Locke—not if I wanted to keep Michael out of this. At the last second, as I opened the door, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

He was going to realize that something was wrong—so I did the only thing I could think of to do. I opened the door, and I lied.

“Look,” I said, allowing the bevy of emotions I’d been holding back to show on my face, allowing him to see how tired I was, how overwhelmed, how upset. “If this is about the kiss, I really just cannot deal with this right now.” I paused and let those words sink in. “I can’t deal with you.”

I saw it the second the words hit their mark, because Michael’s facial expression utterly changed. He didn’t look angry or sad—he looked like he couldn’t have cared less. He looked like the boy I’d met in the diner: layers upon layers, mask upon mask.

I brushed past him before he could see that it hurt me to hurt him. Hitting the final nail in the coffin, I stalked down the hallway, knowing he was watching me, and I walked right up to Dean.

“I need your help,” I said, my voice low.

Dean glanced over my shoulder. I knew he was looking at Michael. I knew Michael was glaring at him, but I didn’t turn around.

I couldn’t let myself turn around.

Dean nodded, and a second later, I followed him up to the third floor, to his room. True to Agent Locke’s words, Agent Starmans received a phone call that kept him from following.

“Sorry—” I started to say, but Dean cut me off.

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Just tell me what you need.”

I thought of the way he’d looked, walking in on Michael and me. “Locke wants me out of the house,” I said. “Either there’s a leak in the FBI and the UNSUB has a way in, or the UNSUB is already here and we just don’t know it. Locke said to tell you to use the combination to the safe in the study.”

Dean’s phone buzzed. A new text.

“That will be the location to the safe house,” I said. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to get down to the study and out of the house without anyone seeing us, but—”

“I do.” Dean kept things simple: no more words than absolutely necessary. “There’s a back staircase. They blocked it off years ago: too unsteady. Nobody but Judd even knows it’s there. If we can get down to the basement, I know a way out. Here.” He threw me a sweatshirt off his bed. “Put this on. You’re freezing.”

It was the middle of summer. In Virginia. I shouldn’t have been freezing, but my body was doing its best to go into shock. I slipped the sweatshirt on as Dean ushered me down the back staircase and into the study. I kept watch at the door as he knelt next to the safe.

“Do you know how to shoot?” he asked me.

I shook my head. That particular skill hadn’t been part of my mother’s training. Maybe if it had been, she’d have still been alive.

Dean loaded one of the guns and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. He left the other one where it was and shut the safe. Two minutes later, we’d made it to the basement, and a minute after that, we were on our way to the safe house.