I hovered at the door. I couldn’t quite bring myself to knock. Suddenly, the door flew inward. Agent Sterling stood on the other side, her brown hair loose and messy, her face free of makeup, and her gun at the ready. When she saw me, she let out a breath and lowered the weapon.
“Cassie,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” I responded automatically.
“You live directly outside my door?”
“You’re on edge, too,” I told her, reading that much in her behavior, the fact that she’d answered the door with a gun. “You can’t sleep. Neither can I.”
She shook her head in chagrin—though whether that emotion was directed at herself or at me, I couldn’t tell—and then she took a step back, inviting me into the room. I crossed the threshold, and she shut the door behind me, flipping on the overhead light.
I’d forgotten that Briggs’s study was full of taxidermy—predators, posed seconds before they struck. “No wonder you can’t sleep,” I told her.
She bit back a smile. “He’s always had a flair for the dramatic.” She sat down on the end of the folded-out couch. With her hair loose, she looked younger. “Why can’t you sleep?” she asked. “Ankle tracker giving you problems?”
I glanced down at my feet, bewildered, as if they had only just appeared on my body. The constant weight on my right ankle should have been more bothersome than it was, but there’d been so much going on the past few days, I’d barely even noticed it.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes, I’d love for you to take it off, but that’s not why I’m up. It’s about the girl, the one that Christopher Simms was meeting at the coffee shop. The one he was planning to abduct.”
I didn’t specify what else Christopher had been planning on doing to that girl, but I knew Agent Sterling well enough by now to know that her mind would go there, the same as mine.
“What about her?” Sterling’s voice was slightly hoarse. I wondered how many nights she’d spent like this one, unable to sleep.
“Who was she?” I asked. “Why was she meeting Christopher?”
“She worked at the coffee shop,” Sterling replied. “She’d been conversing with someone on an online dating site. He used a fake name and only accessed the account from public computers, but it stands to reason that it was Christopher, taking things to the next level with victim selection. His mother was dead. He’d killed Emerson—that could have given him a taste for college-aged girls.”
Strangers on a train, I thought. “Christopher had an alibi for his mother’s murder. Clark had one for Emerson’s.” I swallowed. My mouth had gone so dry, I had to work to push out the next words. “Maybe that was it. Maybe now that Clark’s dead, Christopher was on his own—but Redding knew that someone was going to die soon, besides Clark. It was planned. And if it was part of the plan…”
I sat down next to Agent Sterling, willing her to understand what I was saying, even though I wasn’t sure I was making any kind of objective sense.
“What if Christopher wasn’t the one communicating with this girl online? What if he didn’t choose her?”
Clark chose Emerson.
Christopher chose his mother.
They both had ironclad alibis for the murders of the women they had chosen. What if they weren’t the only ones?
“You think there’s a third.” Sterling put the possibility into words. That made it real. I braced the heels of my hands against the edge of the bed, steadying myself.
“Did Christopher confess to Emerson’s murder?” I asked. “Is there any physical evidence tying him to the scene? Any circumstantial evidence? Anything, other than the fact that he was planning to kill another girl?”
Agent Sterling’s phone rang. The sound was garish, jarring in contrast with my quiet questions. Phone calls at two in the morning never brought good news.
“Sterling.” Her posture changed when she answered the phone. This wasn’t the woman with tousled hair, sitting on the edge of her bed. This was the agent. “What do you mean, ‘he’s dead’?” Short pause. “I know the literal meaning of the word, Dad. What happened? When did you get the call?”
Someone was dead. That knowledge weighed me down and set my heart to beating a vicious rhythm against my rib cage. The way she’s talking means it’s someone we know. As that realization occurred to me, a plea wrenched its way through me, taking over my thoughts, silencing everything else in its wake. Please don’t let it be Briggs.
“No, this isn’t a blessing,” Agent Sterling said sharply. “This case isn’t closed.”
Not Briggs, I thought. Director Sterling would never have referred to the death of his former son-in-law as a blessing.
“Are you listening to me, Dad? Director, we think there might be—” She cut off. “‘Who’s we?’ Does it matter who we is? I’m telling you—”
She wasn’t telling him anything, because he wasn’t listening.
“I know it would be to your advantage, politically, if this case was closed, if it never had to go to trial because our first killer took out our second killer and then strung himself up by the bedsheets once he was caught. That’s neat, and it’s tidy. It’s convenient. Director?” She paused. “Director? Dad?” She punched her thumb viciously onto her touch screen and threw down her phone.
“He hung up on me,” she said. “He told me that he’d gotten a call from the prison, that Christopher Simms had been found dead in his cell. He hung himself—or at least, that’s the going theory.”
I read the implication in those words: Agent Sterling thought that there was at least a chance—and possibly a good one—that Christopher Simms had met with foul play. Had Redding somehow managed to have him killed?
Or had the person who had killed Emerson Cole—and maybe even Clark—come back to finish the job?
Three UNSUBs. Two of them are dead.
If there was a third, if someone was still out there…
Agent Sterling slammed her suitcase open.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Getting dressed,” she said tautly. “If there’s even a sliver of a chance that this case isn’t over, I’m working it.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She didn’t even look up at the offer. “Thank you, but no. I still have a few scruples. If there’s a killer still out there, I’m not putting your life on the line.”
But it’s okay to risk yours? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. Instead, I went upstairs and changed clothes myself. I caught Agent Sterling in the driveway, headed toward her car.
“At least have Briggs meet you there,” I called after her, running to catch up. “Wherever there is.”
She hit the unlock button on the car. The headlights flashed once, then darkness set back in.
“It’s two o’clock in the morning,” Agent Sterling said, clipping the words. “Just go to bed.”
A week ago, I would have argued with her. I would have resented her for shoving me onto the sidelines. But somehow, a part of me understood—even after everything she’d had us do, her first instinct was still to protect me. She’d take risks with her own life, but not with mine.
Who’s going to protect you? I thought.
“Call Briggs, and I’ll go to bed,” I promised.
Even in the dark, I could make out the annoyance on her face. “Fine,” she said finally, pulling out her phone and waving it at me. “I’ll call him.”
“No,” a voice said, directly behind me. “You won’t.”
I didn’t have time to turn, to think, to process the words. An arm locked around my throat, cutting off my air supply and jerking me to the tips of my toes. My body was pulled flat against my assailant’s. I clawed at the arm around my neck. It tightened.
I couldn’t breathe.
Something metal and cool grazed my cheek and came to rest at my temple.
“Put your gun on the ground. Now.” It took me a moment to realize that those words were aimed at Agent Sterling. A second af
ter that, I realized that I had a gun at my head, that Sterling was doing exactly as she’d been instructed.
She’d risk her life, but she wouldn’t risk mine.
“Stop struggling,” the silky voice whispered in my ear. He pressed the gun harder into my temple. My whole body hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop struggling.
“I’m doing what you asked. Let the girl go.” Sterling sounded so calm. So far away.
It was dark outside, but things were getting darker as my vision blurred and inky blackness began to close in on me.
“Take me. That’s what you came here for. I’m the one who got away from Redding. Proving you’re better than his other apprentices, killing them isn’t enough. You want to prove you’re better than him. To show him.”
The grip on my neck relaxed, but the gun never wavered. I sucked air into my burning lungs, gasping for just one breath, then two.
“Eyes on me, Cassie.” Sterling shifted her focus from the UNSUB to me just long enough to issue that instruction. It took me a moment to realize why.
She doesn’t want me to see him.
“Knock her out. Leave her here. She wasn’t part of the plan. Your plan.” Sterling’s voice was steady, but her hands were shaking. She was playing a dangerous game. One wrong word and the UNSUB could kill me as easily as he could knock me out. “She can’t identify you. By the time she wakes up, you’ll be long gone, and I’ll be yours. You won’t lose me, the way Redding did. You’ll take your time. You’ll do it your way, but they won’t find you. They won’t find me if you stick to the plan.”
Sterling was targeting her words at the UNSUB, playing on his fears, his desires, but I heard what she was saying, too, and the real kicker was, I believed her. If I couldn’t identify the UNSUB, if he took her, if they left me in the driveway unconscious, by the time I woke up, it would be too late.
He’d have too much of a head start.
But there was one way to make sure that Briggs knew immediately that something was amiss. One way to make sure that he could find her.
The UNSUB let go of my neck.
“Look here, Cassie. Look right here.” I could hear the desperation in Agent Sterling’s voice. She needed this, needed me to keep looking right at her.
I turned around. Even in the dark, I was close enough to make out the features of the UNSUB’s face. He was young, early twenties. Tall and built like a runner. I recognized him.
The guard from the prison. Webber. The one who’d been disgusted by Dean’s very existence, who had a problem with female FBI agents. The one who’d refused to allow us to stay in the car.
The pieces fell into place in a single, horrible moment: why the man hadn’t let us stay in the car, how Redding had known I existed, how our third UNSUB had been able to kill Christopher Simms in prison.
“Redding would take me, too. He’d kill me, too.” My voice was scratchy and barely audible. “You work at the prison. You know he asked for me. You’re probably even the one who delivered the message.”
He could shoot me. Right now, he could shoot me. Or my gamble could pay off.
All I saw was a flash of movement, the glint of metal. And then everything went black.
YOU
The gun cracks against her skull with a sickening thwack.
It doesn’t sicken you.
The girl’s body crumples to the ground. You aim your gun at the pretty FBI agent. She looked down her nose at you when she visited Redding. She dared to tell you what to do.
She probably laughs at boys rejected from the FBI Academy, let alone the local police force.
“Pick her up,” you say.
She hesitates. You aim the gun at the girl. “Either you pick her up, or I shoot her. Your choice.”
Your heart is thudding in your ears. Your breaths are coming faster. There’s a taste to the night air—almost metallic. You could run a marathon right now. You could dive off Niagara Falls.
The FBI agent picks up the girl. You pocket her gun. They’re yours. You’re taking them both. And that’s when you know.
You’re not going to hang them. You’re not going to brand them. You’re not going to cut them.
You have the One Who Got Away. You have his useless little son’s girl. This time, you think, we’re doing it my way.
You make the FBI agent put the girl in your trunk, climb in herself. You knock her out—and oh, it feels good. It feels right.
You slam the trunk. You climb into the car. You drive away.
The student has become the master.
Consciousness came slowly. The pain came all at once. The entire right side of my face was white-hot agony: throbbing, aching, needles jabbing down to the bone. My left eyelid fluttered, but my right eye was swollen shut. Bits and pieces of the world came into focus—rotted floorboards, heavy rope encircling my body, the post I was tied to.
“You’re awake.”
My good eye searched for the source of the voice and found Agent Sterling. There was blood crusted to her temple.
“Where are we?” I asked. My arms were bound behind my back. I twisted my neck, trying to catch a glimpse of them. The zip ties digging into my flesh looked uncomfortably tight, but I couldn’t feel anything beyond the blinding pain radiating out from my cheekbone.
“He hit you with his gun, knocked you out. How’s your head?”
The fact that she’d ignored my question did not go unnoticed. A moan escaped my lips, but I covered it as best I could. “How’s yours?”
Her dry lips parted into a tiny, broken smile. “I woke up in the trunk of his car,” she said after a few seconds. “He didn’t get as good a hit in on me. I pretended I was unconscious when he brought us in here. As best I can tell, we’re in an abandoned cabin of some type. The surrounding area is completely wooded.”
I wet my lips. “How long ago did he leave?”
“Not long.” Sterling’s hair hung in her face. She was bound the same way I was: hands behind her back, tied to a wooden post that stretched from ceiling to floor. “Long enough for me to know I can’t get out of these knots. Long enough for me to know that you won’t be able to, either. Why, Cassie?” Her voice broke, but she didn’t stop talking. “Why couldn’t you just do what I asked? Why did you make him bring you, too?”
The anger drained out of her voice from one sentence to the next until all that was left was a terrible, hollow hopelessness.
“Because,” I said, nodding toward my right foot and wincing when my head protested, “I’m wearing a GPS tracking anklet.”
Sterling’s head was bowed, but her eyes found their way to mine.
“The minute I left the property, Briggs got a text message,” I said. “It won’t take him long to realize that you’re missing, too. He’ll pull up the data from my tracker. He’ll find us. If I’d let you go alone…” I didn’t finish that sentence. “Briggs will find us.”
Sterling lifted her head to the ceiling. At first, I thought she was smiling, but then I realized she was crying, her mouth stretched tight enough to clamp down on any sounds trying to escape her mouth.
Those don’t look like tears of relief.
Sterling’s lips parted, and an odd, dry laugh escaped. “Oh, God. Cassie.”
How long had we been here? Why hadn’t Briggs already come bursting through that door?
“I never activated the tracker. I thought wearing it was deterrent enough.”
The tracker was supposed to go off. It was supposed to lead Briggs right to us.
It had never occurred to me that she might have lied to me. I’d known I was taking a risk, but I’d thought I was putting my life on the line to help save hers.
The tracker was supposed to go off. It was supposed to lead Briggs straight to us.
“You were right about Emerson’s killer.” Those were the only words my lips would make, all there was left to say. The killer would be back. No one was coming to save us.
“How so?”
I could tell by the l
ook in Sterling’s eyes that she was keeping the conversation up for my benefit, not hers. Mentally, she was probably berating herself—for not finding the killer, for agreeing to live in our house and dealing us in on this case, for letting me in when I’d knocked on her door.
For not activating the tracker. For letting me believe that she had.
“You said that Emerson’s killer was between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight, above average intelligence, but not necessarily educated.” I paused. “Though if he stuffed us in his trunk, that seems to suggest that he doesn’t drive a truck or SUV.”
Sterling managed a wry grin. “Ten bucks says that wasn’t his car.”
My lips tilted slightly upward on one side, and I winced.
“Try not to move,” Sterling told me. “You’re going to need to conserve your energy, because when he gets back here, I’m going to distract him, and you’re going to run.”
“My hands are bound, and I’m tied to a post. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll get him to untie you, to untie me. I’ll distract him.” There was a thread of quiet determination in her voice, but there was also desperation—a desperate need to believe that what she was saying could happen. “Once he’s distracted, you run,” she said fiercely.
I nodded, even though I knew he had a gun, knew I wouldn’t even make it out the front door. I lied to her, and she accepted the lie, even though she knew as well as I did that a distraction wasn’t going to be enough.
There was no enough.
There was nothing but him and us and the certainty that we were going to die in this damp, rotting cabin, screaming with no one but each other to hear.
Oh, God.
“He broke from Redding’s pattern.” Now Sterling was the one trying to distract me. “He’s broken away from him altogether.”
So maybe we wouldn’t die the way Emerson Cole had, the way the dozen women Daniel Redding had murdered before being caught had.
This isn’t Redding’s fantasy anymore. It’s yours. You enjoyed squeezing the life out of me. Did you enjoy hitting me with that gun? Are you going to beat us to death? I forced myself to keep breathing—quick, shallow breaths. Will you display our broken bodies in public, the way you laid Emerson out on the hood of her car? Will we be trophies, testaments to your control, your power?
The Naturals (2 Book Series) Page 24