“Can I come in?”
There was something about the way he was standing there that told me he was expecting me to say no. Maybe I should have. Instead, I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He came in and shut the door behind him. “Lia eavesdrops,” he explained, gesturing toward the closed door.
I shrugged and waited for him to say something he wouldn’t want overheard.
“I’m sorry.” He managed two words, paused, and then pushed out two more. “About before.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” There was no law saying he had to trust me. Outside of Locke’s lessons, we’d barely spent any time together. He hadn’t chosen to kiss me.
“Lia told me about the files you and Michael and Sloane found.”
The sudden change of subject took me by surprise. “How does Lia even know about that?”
Dean shrugged. “She eavesdrops.”
And since I wasn’t exactly Lia’s favorite person right now, she had no reason whatsoever to keep her mouth closed about whatever it was that she’d overheard.
“So, what?” I asked Dean. “We’re even now? I found out about your dad and Lia told you that I think the UNSUB Briggs and Locke are after might be the one who killed my mom and now everything’s okay?”
Dean sat down on Sloane’s bed and faced me. “Nothing’s okay.”
Why was it that I’d managed to hold on to my cool with Michael and Sloane, but now that Dean was here, I could feel myself starting to slip?
“Sloane said that she thinks it’s highly unlikely that this killer is the same one who took my mother,” I said, looking down at my lap and trying not to cry. “It’s been five years. The MO is different. I don’t even know if the signature is the same, because they never found my mother’s body.”
Dean leaned forward and angled his head up at mine. “Some killers go for years without being caught, and their MOs change as time goes on. They learn. They evolve. They need more.”
Dean was telling me that I could be right, that the time frame didn’t preclude this being the same UNSUB, but I knew from his tone of voice that he wasn’t just talking about this UNSUB.
“How long was it before they caught him?” I asked softly. I didn’t specify who him was. I didn’t have to.
Dean met my gaze and held it. “Years.”
I wondered if that one word was more than he’d told anyone else about his father.
I thought that maybe it was.
“My mother. I was the one who found …” I couldn’t say her body because there hadn’t been one. I swallowed hard, but I kept going, because it was important, somehow, to put it into words, to tell him.
“I’d gone to check out the crowd, eavesdrop, see if there was anything I could pick up on that might help my mom during the show. I was gone ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and when I got back, she was gone. The entire room had been tossed. The police say she fought. I know she fought—but there was so much blood. I don’t know how many times he stabbed her, but when I got back to the room, I could smell it. The door was partway open. The light was off. I stepped into the room and I felt something wet underneath my feet. I said her name, I think. And then I reached for the light switch. I got the wall instead, and there was blood on the wall. It was on my hands, Dean, and then I turned on the light, and it was everywhere.”
Dean didn’t say anything, but he was there, so close that I could feel the heat of his body next to mine. He was listening, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he understood.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t usually talk about this, and I don’t let it do this to me, but I remember thinking that whoever hurt my mother hated her. He knew her, and he hated her, Dean. It was there, in the room, in the spatter, in the way she’d fought—it wasn’t random. He knew her, and how could I explain that to anyone? Who would have believed me? I was just some stupid kid, but now Briggs and Locke have this case, and their UNSUB is killing people who look like my mother and people who hold a similar job, and he’s doing it with a knife. And even though the victims are scattered geographically, even though none of them knew each other, it’s personal.” I paused. “I don’t think he’s killing them. I think he’s killing her again. And I’m not just some stupid kid anymore. I’m a profiler. A Natural. But even so—who’s going to believe me?”
Dean put a hand on my neck, the way he had the first time I’d crawled into a killer’s mind. “Nobody is going to believe you,” he said. “You’re too close to it.” He ran his thumb up and down the side of my neck. “But Briggs will believe me.”
Dean was the only person in this house who shared my ability. Michael and Sloane might have been skeptical about my theory, but Dean had instincts like mine. He’d know if I was crazy, or if there was something to this. “You’ll look at the case?” I asked him.
He nodded and dropped his hand from my neck, like he’d only just realized he was touching me.
I stood. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to get the file.”
CHAPTER 24
“Michael, can I have the—” I burst into the kitchen, only to find that Michael and Sloane weren’t the only ones there. Judd was cooking, and Agent Briggs was standing with his back to me, a thin black briefcase by his feet.
“—the bacon,” I finished hastily.
Agent Briggs turned to face me. “And why does Michael have your bacon?” he asked.
As if this whole situation wasn’t awkward enough, Lia chose that moment to come sauntering into the room. “Yes, Cassie,” she said with a wicked grin, “tell us why Michael has your bacon.”
The way she said the phrase left very little question that she was using it as a euphemism.
“Lia,” Judd said, waving a spatula in her general direction, “that’s enough.” Then he turned to me. “Grub will be ready soon. I expect you can hold out until then?”
“Yes,” I said. “No bacon needed.”
From behind Briggs’s back, Michael pantomimed smacking his palm into his forehead. Apparently, my attempts at subterfuge left something to be desired. I tried to make a quick exit, but Agent Briggs stopped me in my tracks.
“Cassie. A word.”
I glanced at Michael, wondering what—if anything—Briggs knew about what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to.
“Ambidextrous,” Sloane said suddenly.
“This should be good,” Lia murmured.
Sloane cleared her throat. “Agent Briggs asked for a word. Ambidextrous is a good one. Less than point-five percent of the words in the English language contain all five vowels.”
I was grateful for the distraction, but unfortunately, Briggs didn’t bite. “Cassie?”
“Sure.” I nodded and followed him out of the room. I wasn’t sure where we were heading at first, but after we passed the library, I realized we were going to the only room on the ground floor I hadn’t been in yet—Briggs’s study.
He opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I walked into the room, taking in my surroundings. The room was full of animals, lifeless and frozen in place.
Hunting trophies.
There was a grizzly bear, reared up on its back legs, its mouth caught in a silent roar. On the other side of the room, a lifelike panther crouched, canines gleaming, while a mountain lion seemed to be on the prowl.
The most disturbing thing about this entire room—maybe this entire situation—was that I hadn’t pegged Agent Briggs for a hunter.
“They’re predators. Reminders of what my team deals with every time we go out in the world.”
There was something about the way Agent Briggs said those words that made me realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he knew what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to in his absence. He knew that we knew the exact details of the case that he and Agent Locke were working now.
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“Judd told me.” Briggs crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk. He gestured for me to take a se
at in a chair in front of him. “You know, Judd might fade into the background around here, but there’s not much that goes on in this house that he doesn’t know. Information gathering has always been a specialty of his.”
Keeping his eyes fixed on me, Briggs opened his briefcase and took out a file: all of the papers we’d printed out earlier. “I confiscated this from Michael. And this,” he added, holding up the USB drive, “from Sloane. Her laptop will be making a trip to our tech lab to ensure that all traces of data have been wiped from the hard drive.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to tell Agent Briggs my suspicions, and he was already shutting me down—and shutting me out.
Briggs ran one hand roughly over his chin, and I realized that he hadn’t shaved in at least a day.
“The case isn’t going well.” I paused. “Is it?”
“I need you to listen to what I’m saying, Cassandra.”
That was only the second time he’d called me by my full name since I’d told him I preferred Cassie.
“I was up front with you about what this program is and what it is not. The FBI isn’t about to authorize teenagers to dive into the middle of active cases.”
His choice of words was more revealing than he knew. The FBI had qualms about throwing teenagers into the thick of things. Briggs—personally—did not.
“So what you’re saying is that using the twelve-year-old son of a serial killer as your own personal encyclopedia of murderous minds was fine, but now that the program is official, we can’t even look at the files?”
“What I’m saying,” Briggs countered, “is that this UNSUB is dangerous. He’s local. And I have no intention of involving any of you.”
“Even if this case has something to do with my mother’s?”
Briggs paused. “You’re jumping to conclusions.” He didn’t ask me why I thought this case had something to do with my mother’s. Now that I’d brought up the idea, he didn’t have to. “The occupations. The red hair. The knife. It isn’t enough.”
“The UNSUB dyed the latest victim’s hair red.” I didn’t bother asking if I was right about that, knowing in my gut that I was. “That’s above and beyond victim selection. It’s not just an MO anymore. It’s part of the UNSUB’s signature.”
Briggs crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not talking with you about this.”
And yet, he didn’t leave the room—and he didn’t stop listening.
“Did the UNSUB dye her hair before or after he killed her?”
Briggs didn’t say a word. He was playing this by the book—but he didn’t tell me to stop talking, either.
“Dyeing the victim’s hair before the kill could be an attempt to create a more ideal target, one who claims to be psychic and has red hair. But dyeing her hair afterward …” I paused, just long enough to see that Briggs was listening, really listening, to every word. “Dyeing her hair after she’s already dead is a message.”
“And what message is that?” Agent Briggs asked sharply, like he was dismissing my words out of hand, when both of us knew that he was not.
“A message for you: hair color matters. The UNSUB wants you to know that there’s a connection between the cases. He doesn’t trust you to come to that conclusion on your own, so he’s helping you get there.”
Briggs was silent for three or four loaded seconds.
“We can’t do this, Cassie. I understand your interest in the case. I understand your wanting to help, but whatever you think you’re doing, it ends now.”
I started to object and he held up a hand, silencing me.
“I’ll tell Locke to let you start working on cold cases. You’re obviously ready. But if you so much as sniff in the direction of this case again, there will be consequences, and I can guarantee that you will find them unpleasant.” He leaned forward, his posture unconsciously mimicking the roaring bear’s. “Have I made myself clear?”
I didn’t respond. If he was looking for a promise that I’d stay out of this, he was going to be disappointed.
“I already have a Natural profiler in this program.” Briggs looked me straight in the eye, his lips set in a thin, forbidding line. “I’d prefer to have two, but not at the risk of my job.”
There it was: the ultimate threat. If I pushed this, Briggs could send me home. Back to Nonna and the aunts and the uncles and the constant awareness that I would never be like them, like anyone outside of these walls.
“You’ve made yourself clear,” I said.
Briggs closed his briefcase. “Give it a couple of years, Cassie. They won’t keep you out of the field forever.”
He waited for my reply, but I said nothing. He stood up and walked to the door.
“If he’s dyeing their hair, the rules are changing,” I called after him, not bothering to turn around to see if he’d stopped to listen or not. “And that means that before things get better, they’re going to get a whole lot worse.”
YOU
You can’t remember the last time you felt this way. All of the others—all of them—were imitations. A copy of a copy of the thing you wanted most. But now—now you’re close.
A smile on your face, you pick up the scissors. The girl on the floor screams, the duct tape stretching tight across her face, but you ignore her. She’s not the real prize here, just a means to an end.
You grab her by the hair and jerk her head back. She struggles, and you tighten your grip and slam her head into the wall.
“Be still,” you whisper. You let her hair fall back down and then lift a single lock of it up.
You raise the scissors. You cut the hair.
And then you cut her.
CHAPTER 25
I went to bed early. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours that my body physically hurt. I didn’t want to be awake anymore. That plan worked for a few hours, but just after midnight, I awoke to the sound of footsteps outside of my door and the dulcet melody of Sloane snoring next to me.
For a second, I thought I’d imagined the footsteps, but then I saw the hint of a shadow underneath the door.
There’s someone out there.
Whoever it was just stood there. I crept toward the door, my hair stuck to my forehead with sweat and my heartbeat thudding in my ears.
I opened the door.
“Not going for a swim tonight?”
It took a second for Michael’s features to come together in the darkness, but I recognized his voice immediately.
“I don’t feel like swimming.” I lowered my voice, but not as much as I would have if my roommate’s nasal passages hadn’t been threatening to deafen me within the year.
“I got you something.” Michael took a step forward, until his face was mere inches from mine. Slowly, he held up an inch-thick file.
I looked at him, then at the file, then back at him.
“You didn’t,” I said.
“Oh yes,” he replied. “I did.”
“How?” Already, my fingers were itching to snatch the file from his hand.
“Briggs took Sloane’s computer. He didn’t take mine.”
I thought about Briggs’s warning, his threat to send me home. And then, slowly, I closed my fingers around the file. “You copied the files onto your laptop.”
Michael smiled. “You’re welcome.”
— — —
I tucked the file under my mattress. Maybe there was another clue in there. Maybe there wasn’t. First chance I got, I was showing it to Dean. Unfortunately, when I went to find him the next morning, he wasn’t alone.
“Miss me?” Agent Locke didn’t wait for me to answer her question. “Sit.”
I sat. So did Dean.
“Here.” Agent Locke held out a thick legal file, the accordion bottom stretched to capacity and then some.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Briggs thinks you’re ready to take the next step, Cassie.” Locke paused. “Is he right?”
“A cold case?” The file was faded—and much, much hea
vier than the one tucked under my mattress.
“A string of unsolved murders from the nineties,” Locke told us. “Home invasion; one bullet to the head, execution-style. The rest of the file contains all of the similar unsolved homicides that have taken place in that area since.”
Dean groaned. “No wonder the file’s so thick,” he muttered. “A third of all drug-related hits probably look just like this.”
“Then I guess it should keep the two of you busy.” Locke gave me a look that I took to mean Briggs had told her about our little discussion.
“I’ll check in later in the week. You two have a lot of reading to do, and I have a case to solve.”
She left the two of us alone. I opened my mouth to say something about the case file jammed under my mattress, but then I closed it again. Lia eavesdropped—and apparently, so did Judd.
“How would you feel about working on our cold case in the basement?” I asked. The soundproof basement. It took Dean a moment to catch on, but then he led the way down the stairs, closing the door firmly behind us. We walked the length of the basement, three-walled rooms lining either side, like theater sets in want of a play.
Once I was sure we were alone, I started talking. “When I went to get the file yesterday, Briggs busted me. By the time I got back to my room, you were gone.”
“Lia may have mentioned that Briggs busted you,” Dean said. “You okay?”
“I told him my theory. I asked to work on the case. He said no.”
“You going to work on it anyway?” Dean paused in front of one of the outdoor sets: a partial park. I sat down on a park bench, and he leaned back against the bench’s arm.
“I have a copy of the file,” I said. “Will you look at it?”
He nodded. Five minutes later, he was elbow-deep in the case—and I had Locke’s cold case in my hands, ready to cover in case anyone came down to check on us.
“Sometimes victims are just substitutes,” Dean said after he’d read through the entire file. “I’m married, but I’d never get away with killing my own wife, so I kill hookers and pretend that they’re her. My kid died, and now every time I see a kid in a baseball cap, I have to make him mine.”
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