Agent Sterling enlightened us. “Fire-retardant fabric. When our victim caught fire, it heated the metal, but not the fabric, leaving a legible brand underneath.”
“According to our sources, the victim received the bracelet with a parcel of fan mail,” Briggs continued. “The envelope it was mailed in is long gone.”
“Fan mail?” I said. “And that makes the victim…who?”
Another picture flashed onto the screen in response to my question, this one of a twentysomething male. His face was striking and gaunt, sharp angles offset by violet eyes—probably contacts.
“Sylvester Wilde.” Lia let one of her feet fall to the floor. “Modern-day Houdini, illusionist, hypnotist, and jack-of-all-trades.” She paused, then translated for the rest of us. “He’s a stage magician—and like most of his kind, an excellent liar.”
From Lia, that was a compliment.
“He had a nightly show,” Briggs said, “at the Wonderland.”
“Another casino.” Dean mulled that over.
“Another casino,” Agent Sterling confirmed. “Mr. Wilde was in the midst of his evening performance on January second when he—to all appearances—accidentally set himself on fire.”
“Another accident.” Dean bowed his head slightly, his hair falling into his face. Already, his concentration was so intense, I could see it in the lines of his shoulders, his back.
“Or so the authorities believed,” Agent Briggs said. “Until…”
One last picture, one last victim.
“Eugene Lockhart. Seventy-eight. He was a regular at the Desert Rose Casino. He came once a week with a small group from a local retirement home.” Briggs didn’t say anything about how Eugene had died.
He didn’t need to.
There was an arrow protruding from the old man’s chest.
How did a killer go from staging accidents to shooting someone with an arrow in broad daylight?
As the jet descended into Las Vegas, that was the question I kept coming back to. Our briefing hadn’t stopped with the picture of Eugene Lockhart, skewered through the heart, but that was the moment when every assumption I’d made about this killer had started to change.
Beside me, I could feel Dean mulling over what we’d been told, too. Part of being a Natural was not being able to turn off the parts of our brains that worked differently than other people’s. Lia couldn’t choose to stop recognizing lies. Sloane would always see numbers everywhere she looked. Michael couldn’t help picking up on every last micro-expression that crossed a person’s face.
And Dean and I compulsively pieced people together like puzzles.
I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried—and knowing what my brain would cycle back to the second I stopped thinking about this case, I didn’t fight it.
Behavior. Personality. Environment. There was a rhyme and reason to the way even the most monstrous killers behaved. Decoding their motivations meant trying to step into the UNSUB’s shoes, trying to see the world the way he or she saw it.
You wanted the police to know that Eugene Lockhart was murdered, I thought, starting with the obvious. People didn’t get “accidentally” shot with hunting arrows in the middle of busy casinos. Compared to the earlier murders, that was definitely an attention-getter. You wanted the authorities to take notice. You wanted them to see. See what you were doing. See you.
Are you used to going unnoticed?
Are you sick of it?
I went back over what we’d been told. In addition to the four-digit number written in permanent marker on the old man’s wrist, the medical examiner had also found a message inscribed on the arrow that had killed him.
Tertium.
Latin, meaning “for the third time.”
Hence the police looking back over all recent accidental deaths and homicides and the discovery of the numbers tattooed on Alexandra Ruiz’s wrist and burned into Sylvester Wilde’s.
Why Latin? I turned that over in my head. Do you consider yourself an intellectual? Or is the use of Latin ritualistic? A slight shiver ran down my spine at that possibility. Ritualistic how?
Without meaning to, I leaned into Dean’s body. Brown eyes met mine, and I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if climbing into this killer’s mind was giving him chills, too.
Dean laid a hand on my arm, his thumb tracing along the back of my wrist.
Across from us, Lia eyed our hands and then brought her own to her forehead in a melodramatic motion. “I’m a dark and angsty profiler,” she intoned. “No,” she countered in a falsetto, bringing her other hand up, “I’m a dark and angsty profiler. Ours is a star-crossed love.”
Toward the front of the plane I heard Judd cough. I deeply suspected he was covering a laugh.
“You never did tell us why the locals called in the FBI so quickly,” I told Agent Briggs, easing my body away from Dean’s and trying to redirect Lia’s attention before she did a reenactment of our entire relationship.
The plane landed. Lia stood and stretched, arching her back before taking the bait. “Well?” she prompted the agents. “Care to share with the class?”
Briggs kept his answer brief and to the point. “Three murders at three different casinos in three days. The casino owners are obviously concerned.”
Lia grabbed her bag and slung it neatly over one shoulder. “What I’m hearing,” she said, “is that the powers that be at the casinos, worried that murder might be bad for business, used their substantial political capital to get local law enforcement to call in the experts.” A slow, dangerous smile spread over Lia’s lips. “Dare I hope this means those same casino owners will also see to it that we get the Vegas VIP treatment?”
I could practically see visions of nightclubs and VIP rooms dancing in Lia’s head.
Briggs must have been thinking the same thing, because he grimaced. “This isn’t a game, Lia. We’re not here to play.”
“And,” Agent Sterling added sternly, “you’re underage.”
“Too young to party, just old enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder.” Lia let out an elaborate sigh. “Story of my life.”
“Lia.” Dean leveled his own version of Briggs’s look at her.
“I know, I know, don’t agitate the nice FBI agents.” Lia waved away Dean’s objection, but dialed it back a notch anyway. “Are we at least getting our rooms comped?” she asked.
Briggs and Sterling glanced briefly at each other.
“The FBI has been given a complimentary suite at the Desert Rose,” Judd said, stepping in and answering on their behalf. “I, on the other hand, have secured two rooms at a modest hotel just off of the Strip.”
In other words: Judd wanted to keep some distance between us and the FBI’s base of operations. Considering that I’d been taken captive by not one, but two UNSUBs in the past six months, I certainly wasn’t going to complain about the idea of keeping our visibility low.
“Sloane,” Dean said suddenly, drawing my attention in her direction. “Are you okay?”
Sloane’s teeth were bared in what was, quite possibly, the largest, fakest smile I’d ever seen. She froze like a deer in headlights. “I’m not practicing smiling,” she said quickly. “Sometimes people’s faces just do this.”
That statement was met with silence from every single person on the plane.
Sloane hastily changed the subject. “Did you know that New Hampshire has more hamsters per capita than any other state?”
I was used to Sloane spitting out statistics at random, but given that we were getting ready to disembark in Vegas, I would have expected something a little more thematically applicable. That was when I realized—Vegas.
Sloane had been born and raised in Las Vegas.
If we’d had normal childhoods, we wouldn’t be Naturals. I didn’t know much about Sloane’s background, but I’d caught pieces here and there. Sloane hadn’t gone home for Christmas. Like Lia and Dean, that meant she had nowhere to go.
“Are yo
u okay?” I asked her quietly.
“Affirmative,” Sloane chirped. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Lia said bluntly. Then she reached over and pulled Sloane to her feet. “But put me in charge of your life decisions for the next few days, and you will be.” Lia punctuated those words with a glittering smile.
“Your statistical track record for decision-making is somewhat concerning,” Sloane told her seriously. “But I’m willing to take this under advisement.”
Briggs brought one hand to his temple. Sterling opened her mouth—probably to decree that Lia not be allowed to make anyone’s Vegas-related decisions, including her own—but Judd caught the female agent’s eyes and shook his head slightly. He had a soft spot for Sloane, and it was clear to everyone on this plane that she wasn’t happy to be home.
Home isn’t a place, Cassie. The memory crept up on me. Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.
I stood and pushed back against the memory. I couldn’t dwell on my mother. We were in Vegas for a reason. There was work to do.
The door to the jet opened. Agent Briggs turned to Agent Sterling. “After you.”
YOU
Three is the number. The number of sides on a triangle. A prime number. A holy number.
Three.
Three times three.
Three times three times three.
You run your fingertips over the edge of an arrowhead. You’re a good shot. You knew you would be. But killing the old man brought you no joy. You prefer the long game, the careful planning, lining up dominoes in loops and rows until all you have to do is knock over one—
The girl in the pool.
The flames burning the skin from number two.
Perfect. Elegant. Better, by far, than skewering the old man.
But there is an order to things. There are rules. And this was how it had to be. January third. The arrow. An old man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Have you gotten their attention yet?
You pocket the arrowhead. In another life, in another world, three would be enough. You could be happy with three.
Three is a good number.
But in this life, in this world, three is not enough. You can’t stop. You won’t.
If you don’t have their attention yet, you will soon.
I’d spent most of my childhood in motels and apartment buildings where rent was paid by the week. Compared to some of the places my mother and I had stayed, the hotel Judd had booked for us looked nice enough—if a bit run-down.
“It’s everything I dreamed it would be.” Lia sighed happily. In addition to detecting lies, she also had an aptitude for telling them. With every appearance of sincerity, she eyed the building’s exterior like she had stumbled across a long-lost love.
“It’s not that bad,” Dean told her.
Like a switch had been flipped, Lia dropped the act and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. “This is Las Vegas, Dean. ‘Not bad’ isn’t exactly what I was aiming for.”
Judd snorted. “It’ll do, Lia.”
“What if I told you it didn’t have to?” That question came from the parking lot behind us. I recognized the voice instantly.
Michael.
As I turned to face him, I wondered which Michael I would see. The boy who’d recruited me to the program? The raw, unguarded Michael who’d shown me brief glimpses of his oldest wounds? The careless, indifferent one who’d spent the past three months acting like nothing and no one could touch him?
Especially me.
“Townsend,” Dean greeted Michael. “Nice car.”
“Aren’t you a bit young for a midlife crisis?” Lia said.
“Life in the fast lane,” came Michael’s reply. “You have to adjust for inflation.”
I looked at the new car first, then at Michael. The car was a classic—a convertible in deep cherry red with a style I associated with the fifties or sixties. It was in mint condition. Michael gave every appearance of being in mint condition, too. There were no bruises on his face, no marks on the arm resting on the back of the passenger seat.
Michael’s eyes lingered on my face, just for an instant. “Don’t worry, Colorado,” he told me, a sharp smile pulling at the edges of his lips. “I’m all in one piece.”
That was the first time he’d responded to something I hadn’t said in weeks. The first time he’d acted like I was a person worth reading.
“In fact,” Michael announced, “I’m feeling like a new man. An incredibly generous, incredibly well-connected new man.” He glanced around at the others, his gaze coming to rest on Judd. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but I made us a reservation of my own.”
Michael’s reservation was at the Majesty, the most expensive luxury hotel and casino in the city. Sloane hesitated as we approached the grand entrance, bobbing back and forth slightly like a magnet repelled by an invisible field. Her lips moved rapidly as she rattled off the digits of pi under her breath.
Some children had security blankets. I was fairly certain Sloane had grown up with a security number.
As I tried to figure out what about the Majesty had triggered this particular episode, our expert statistician forced her lips to stop moving and stepped over the threshold. Lia met my eyes and raised an eyebrow. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Sloane’s behavior. The only reason Michael hadn’t noticed was that he was several yards ahead, sauntering through the lobby.
As the rest of us followed, I stared up at the sixty-foot ceiling. Judd hadn’t put up a fight about moving. The profiler in me said Judd had sensed that Michael needed this—not the luxury offered by the Majesty.
Control.
“Mr. Townsend.” The concierge greeted Michael with all of the formality of a diplomat greeting a foreign head of state. “We’re so pleased you and your party will be joining us. The Renoir Suite is one of the finest we have to offer.”
Michael took a step toward him. Months after being shot in the leg, Michael still had a noticeable limp. He made no attempt at hiding it, his hand coming to rest on his thigh, daring the concierge to let his gaze drop.
“I do hope the suite has elevator access,” Michael said.
“Of course,” the concierge replied nervously. “Of course!”
I caught Dean’s eyes. His lips twitched slightly. Michael was messing with the poor guy—and enjoying it just a little bit too much.
“I believe the Renoir Suite has private elevator access, does it not, Mr. Simmons?” A blond-haired man in his twenties smoothly interjected himself into the conversation as he came to stand beside the concierge. He was wearing a dark red shirt—silk, from the looks of it—under a black sports jacket. As he raked assessing blue eyes over Michael, his fingers casually fastened the top of two buttons on the jacket—less of a nervous gesture than one that called to mind a soldier readying himself for battle.
“I’ll take it from here,” he told the concierge.
The concierge nodded his head slightly in response. The interplay told me a few things. First, the concierge had no problems taking orders from a man at least twenty years his junior. And second, the man in question had no problems whatsoever giving them.
“Aaron Shaw.” He introduced himself to Michael, holding out a hand. Michael took it. At second glance, I realized Aaron was younger than I’d initially thought—twenty-one or twenty-two.
“If you’ll follow me,” he said, “I’d be glad to personally show you to your rooms.”
My mind arranged and rearranged what I knew about Aaron Shaw. Behavior. Personality. Environment. Aaron had come to the concierge’s rescue. As he walked through the lobby, he nodded and smiled at various people, from bellhops to guests. He clearly knew his way around.
With each step he took, people got out of his way.
“Your family owns the casino?” I asked.
The rhythm of Aaron’s stride faltered, just for a second. �
��Am I that obvious?”
“It’s the silk shirt,” Michael told him in a conspiratorial whisper. “And the shoes.”
Aaron came to a stop in front of a glass elevator. “Outed by my footwear,” he deadpanned. “There goes my future in espionage.”
You expect other people to take you seriously, I thought, but you’re capable of laughing at yourself.
Beside me, Sloane was staring at the hotelier’s son like he’d just reached into her rib cage and ripped out her heart.
“I was joking about the espionage,” Aaron told her with a smile more genuine than any he’d offered Michael. “Promise.”
Sloane searched her store of mental heuristics for an appropriate response. “There are 4,097 rooms in this hotel,” she told him, an oddly hopeful tone in her voice. “And the Majesty serves over twenty-nine thousand meals a day.”
I turned back to Aaron, ready to run interference, but he didn’t bat an eye at Sloane’s version of “conversation.”
“Have you stayed with us before?” he asked her.
For some reason, that question hit Sloane hard. Silently, she shook her head. Belatedly, she remembered to smile at him—the same painfully large smile she’d been practicing on the plane.
You’re trying so hard, I thought. But for the life of me, I wasn’t sure exactly what it was that Sloane was trying to do.
The elevator doors opened. Aaron stepped on and held the door for the rest of us. Once we were all on, he glanced at Sloane. “Everything okay, miss?”
She nodded furtively. As the elevator doors closed, I bumped my hip lightly into Sloane’s. After a moment, she snuck a hesitant look at me and bumped back.
“Did you know,” she said brightly, making another attempt at conversation, “that elevators only kill about twenty-seven people per year?”
The much-touted Renoir Suite had five bedrooms and a living area large enough to host the majority of a football team. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall, giving us a panoramic view of the Vegas Strip, neon and glowing, even during the day.
Lia hopped up on the bar, her legs dangling down as she considered our digs. “Not bad,” she told Michael.
All In: (The Naturals #3) Page 3