Текст книги "The Naturals"

Автор книги: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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CHAPTER 34

“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 hadsaid 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, deeplyregret 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.

YOU

You weren’t supposed to make mistakes. The plan was supposed to be perfect. And for a few hours, it was.

But you messed it up. You always mess everything up—and there His voice is again in your head, and you’re thirteen years old and cowering in the corner, wondering if it will be fists or his belt or a poker from the fire.

And the worst thing is, you’re alone. Surrounded by people or throwing your hands up to protect your face, it doesn’t matter. You’re always alone.

That’s why you can’t mess this up. That’s why it has to be perfect from here on out. That’s whyyou have to be perfect.

You can’t lose Cassie. You won’t.

You’ll love her, or you’ll kill her, but either way, she’s going to be yours.

CHAPTER 35

The safe house looked like any other house. Dean went in first. He pulled his gun and held it expertly in front of his body as he cleared the foyer, the living room, the kitchen. I stayed close behind him. We’d made our way back to the foyer when the knob on the front door began to turn.

Dean stepped forward, pushing me further back. He held the gun out steadily. I waited, praying that it was Briggs and Locke on the other side of the door. The hinges creaked. The door slowly opened.

“Michael?”

Dean lowered his weapon. For a split second, I felt a burst of relief, warm and sure, radiating out from the center of my body. I expelled the breath caught in my throat. My heart started to beat again.

And then I saw the gun in Michael’s hand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. Looking at him, at the gun, I felt like the stupid girl in the horror movie, the one who couldn’t see what was right in front of her face. The one who went to check on the radiator in the basement when there was a masked murderer on the loose.

Michael was here.

Michael had a gun.

The UNSUB had a source on the inside.

No.

“Why do you have a gun?” I asked dumbly. I couldn’t keep from taking a step toward Michael, even though I couldn’t quite read the look on his face.

In front of me, Dean raised his right arm, gun in hand. “Put it down, Townsend.”

Michael was going to put down the gun. That was what I told myself. He was going to put down the gun, and this was all going to be some kind of mistake. I’d seen Michael on the verge of violence. He’d told me himself that the potential for losing it was in him, but I knewMichael. He wasn’t dangerous. He wasn’t a killer. The boy I knew wasn’t just a mask worn by someone who knew how to manipulate emotions as well as he could read them.

This was Michael. He called me Colorado, and he read Jane Austen, and I could still feel his lips on mine. He was going to put down the gun.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lifted it up, training the weapon on Dean.

The two of them stared at each other. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I took a step forward, then another one. I couldn’t stay in the background.

Michael had a gun trained on Dean.

Dean had a gun trained on Michael.

“I’m warning you, Michael. Put it down.” Dean sounded calm. Absolutely, utterly calm in a way that made my stomach churn, because I knew suddenly that he couldpull the trigger. He wouldn’t second-guess himself. He wouldn’t hesitate.

If he thought I was in danger, he would put a bullet in Michael’s head.

“You put it down,” Michael replied. “Cassie—”

I cut Michael off. I couldn’t listen to a word either of them had to say, not when we were a hair’s breadth away from disaster. “Put it down, Michael,” I said. “Please.”

Michael’s gaze wavered. For the first time, he looked from Dean to me, and I saw it the moment he realized that I wasn’t afraid of Dean. That I was afraid of him.

“You were gone. Dean was gone. One of Briggs’s guns was gone.” Michael took a ragged breath. The guarded expression fell from his face, bit by bit, until I was looking at the boy I’d kissed: confused and hurting, longing for me, terrified for me, breakable. “I would never hurt you, Cassie.”

Something came undone inside of me. This was Michael—the same Michael he’d always been.

Beside me, Dean repeated his command for Michael to lower the gun. Michael closed his eyes. He lowered his weapon, and the second he did, the sound of gunfire tore through the air.

One shot. Two shots.

My ears ringing, my gut twisting, bile rising in my throat, I tried to figure out which gun had gone off. Michael’s hand was by his side. His mouth opened in a tiny O, and I watched with horror as red blossomed across his pale blue shirt. He’d been hit. Twice. Once in the shoulder. Once in the leg. His eyes rolled back in his head. The gun dropped from his fingertips.

He fell.

I turned to see Dean with the gun still in his hand. He was aiming at me.

No. No no no no no no no.

And that was when I heard a voice behind me and realized that Dean wasn’t the one holding the gun that had gone off. He wasn’t aiming at me. He was aiming at the person standing behindme. The one who’d shot Michael.

He was aiming at Special Agent Lacey Locke.

PART FOUR: SEEING

YOU

You’ve waited for this moment. Waited for her to look at you and see. Even now, confusion is warring with disbelief on her face. She doesn’t understand why you shot Michael. She doesn’t understand who you are or what she is to you.

But Dean does. You see the exact moment that everything falls into place for the boy you trained. The lessons you taught them, the little hints you dropped along the way. The way you are with Cassie, grooming her in your own image. The resemblance between the two of you.

Your hair is red, too.

Dean aims his gun at you, but you’re not frightened. You’ve seen inside this boy’s head. You know exactly what to say, exactly how to play him. You’re the one who told him to bring the gun. You’re the one who made sure that no one knew that he and Cassie were leaving the house. You’re the one who brought them here.

It’s all part of the plan—and Dean is just one more body, one more thing standing between you and your heart’s desire.

Cassie. Lorelai’s daughter.

You told her not to do anything stupid. She and Dean were supposed to come alone.

You’re going to have to punish her for that.

CHAPTER 36

Agent Locke was holding a gun. She’d shot Michael—she’d shot him—and now he was on the ground, blood pooling around his body, his insides leaking out. This was a mistake—it had to be a mistake. She’d seen that he was holding a weapon and she’d reacted. She was an FBI agent, and she wanted to protect me. That was her job.

“Cassie.” Dean’s voice was low and full of warning. The set of his features made him look like a predator, a soldier, a machine. “Stay back.”

“No,” Agent Locke said, moving forward, smiling as brightly as ever. “Don’t stay back. Don’t listen to him, Cassie.”

Dean tracked her movement with the gun. His finger bore down on the trigger.

“Are you a killer, Dean?” Agent Locke asked, her eyes wide and earnest. “We always wondered. Director Sterling was hesitant to fund the program, because he knows where you came from. Whatyou came from. Is it really fair of us to teach you everything there is to know about killers? To force you to live in a house where their pictures line the walls and everything you see and do is geared toward that one thing? Given your background, how long could it possibly be until you snap?”

Agent Locke was closer to him now. “It’s what you think about. It’s your greatest fear. How long,” Agent Locke drawled, “until you’re just … like … Daddy?”

Arms steady, eyes hard, Dean pulled the trigger, but he was too late. She was on him. She knocked the gun to the side, and when it went off, the bullet flew astray, so close to my face that I could feel the heat of it against my skin. Dean turned his head to look at me, to make sure that I was okay. It cost him a fraction of a second, but even that was too much.

Agent Locke hit him with the butt of her gun, and he went down, his body limp, his crumpled form lying three feet away from Michael’s.

“Finally,” Agent Locke said, turning around to face me, “it’s just us girls.”

I took a step forward, toward Michael, toward Dean, but Agent Locke waved her gun at me. “Nuh-uh-uh,” she said, making a tsking sound under her breath. “You stay right there. We’re going to have to have a little talk about following orders. I told you not to do anything stupid. Letting Michael trail you here was stupid. It was sloppy.”

One second she was standing there, looking exactly like the woman I knew, full of life, a force of nature who was very good at getting her own way, and the next she was on top of me. I saw a blur of silver and heard the impact of her gun with my cheekbone.

Pain exploded in my face a second later. I was on the floor. I could taste blood in my mouth.

“Stand up.” Her voice was brisk, but there was an edge to it I’d never heard before. “Stand up.”

I clambered to my feet. She took her left hand and placed her fingers under my chin. She angled my face upward. There was blood on my lips. I could feel my eye swelling shut, and even the slight movement of my head sent stars into my eyes.

“I told you not to do anything stupid. I told you I’d make you regret it if you did.” Her fingernails dug into the skin under my chin, and I thought about the victims’ photos, the way she’d peeled the skin from their faces.

The knife.

“Don’t do anything else that I’ll be forced to make you regret,” she said coldly. “You’ll only be hurting yourself.”

I looked into her eyes, and I wondered how I could have missed this, how I could have spent all day, every day with her for weeks without realizing that there was something wrong with her.

“Why?” I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have been looking for a way out, but there wasn’t one, and I needed to know.

Locke ignored my question and glanced at Michael. “It’s a pity,” she said. “I’d hoped to spare him. He has a very valuable gift, and he certainly took a shine to you. They all did.”

With no warning whatsoever, she hit me again. This time, she caught me before I fell.

“You’re just like your mother,” she said. And then she tightened her grip on my arm, forcing me to stand straight. “Don’t be weak. You’re better than that. We’rebetter than that, and I won’t have you sniveling on the floor like some common whore. Do you understand me?”

I understood that the words she was saying were things that someone had probably once said to her. I understood that if I asked her how she knew my mother, she’d hit me again and again.

I understood that I might not get back up.

“I expect an answer when I talk to you, Cassie. You weren’t raised in a barn.”

“I understand,” I said, filing away her choice of words, the almost maternal undertone to her words. I’d assumed that the UNSUB was male. I’d assumed that when the UNSUB killed females, there might be some kind of underlying sexual motivation. But Agent Locke was the one who’d taught me that when you changed one assumption, you changed everything.

You’ll always be wrong about something. You’ll always miss something. What if the UNSUB is older than you thought? What ifhe is ashe?

She’d practically told me that she was the UNSUB, and it had gone right over my head, because I’d trusted her, because if the UNSUB’s motivation wasn’t sexual, if he wasn’t killing his wife or his mother or a girl who turned him down, over and over again, if hewas a she …

“Okay, kiddo, let’s get this show on the road.” Locke sounded so much like herself, so normal, that it was hard to remember she was holding a gun. “I’ve got a present for you. I’m going to go get it. If you move while I’m gone, if you so much as blink, I’ll put a bullet in your knee, beat you within an inch of your life, and put a matching bullet in lover boy’s head.”

She gestured toward Dean. He was unconscious, but alive. And Michael …

I couldn’t even look at Michael’s body, lying prone on the floor.

“I won’t move.”

She was only gone for seconds. I took a single step toward Michael’s abandoned gun and froze, because I knew our captor was telling the truth. She’d kill Dean. She’d hurt me.

Even a moment’s hesitation was too long, and an instant later, Locke was back—and she wasn’t alone.

“Please don’t hurt me. Please. My dad has money. He’ll give you whatever you want, just please don’t—”

It took me a moment to recognize Genevieve Ridgerton. There were ugly cuts on her neck and shoulders. Her face was swollen beyond recognition, and there was blood crusted on her scalp. The skin around her mouth was pink, like someone had just ripped off a strip of tape. She made a mewling sound, halfway between a gargle of water and a moan.

“I told you once,” Agent Locke said to me, knife in hand and a wide smile growing on her face, “that I was only ever a Natural at one thing.”

I struggled to remember the exchange, one of the first things she’d ever said to me, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. I’d assumed she was referring to sex—but the helpless, hopeless expression in Genevieve’s eyes left very little doubt what Locke’s so-called gift was.

Torture.

Mutilation.

Death.

She considered herself a Natural killer, and she was waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to compliment her work.

You knew my mother. You hit me, you hurt me, you told me it was my fault. You were almost certainly abused as a child. You called mekiddo. I’m not like your other victims. You sent me presents. You groomed me.

“The first day we met,” I said, hoping the expression on my face looked earnest enough, innocent enough to please her, “when you said you were a Natural at only one thing, you also said that you couldn’t tell me about it until I was twenty-one.”

Locke looked genuinely pleased that I remembered. “That was before I knew you,” she said. “Before I realized how very like me you were. I knew you were Lorelai’s daughter. Of course I knew—I was the one who flagged you in the system. I spoon-fed you to Briggs. I brought you here, because you were Lorelai’s, but once I started working with you …” Her eyes were alight with a strange glow, like a blushing bride’s or a pregnant lady’s, brimming with happiness from the inside out. “You were mine, Cassie. You belonged with me. I thought I could wait until you were older, until you were ready, but you’re ready now.”

She pushed Genevieve roughly down to her knees. The girl collapsed, her body shaking, the taste of her terror potent in the air. Locke saw me looking at Genevieve, and she smiled.

“I got her for you.”

Gun still in her right hand, Locke held her knife out to me with her left, hilt first. The look in her eyes was hopeful, vulnerable, hungry.

You want something from me.

Locke didn’t want to kill me—or maybe she did, but she wanted this more. She wanted me to take the knife. She wanted me to slit Genevieve’s throat. She wanted me to be her protégé in more ways than one.

“Take the knife.”

I took the knife. I eyed the gun, still in her hands, trained on my forehead.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked, trying to act as though the thought of turning this knife against the sobbing girl on the floor didn’t make me want to throw up. “If I’m going to do this, I want it to be mine.”

I was speaking her language, telling her what she wanted to hear: that I was like her, that we were the same, that I understood that this was about anger and control and having the power to decide who lived and who died. Slowly, Locke lowered the gun, but she didn’t put it down. I measured the distance between us, wondering if I could sink the knife into her before she could get a shot off at me.

She was stronger than I was. She was better trained. She was a killer.

Stalling for time, I knelt next to Genevieve. I bent down, bringing my lips to her ear, letting the expression on my face take on a hint of the madness I saw in Locke’s. Then, my voice so low that only Genevieve could hear me, I whispered to the girl, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Genevieve looked up, her body still crumpled into a ball on the floor. She reached out and grabbed me by the front of my shirt.

“Kill me,” she pleaded, the words escaping cracked and bleeding lips. “You kill me, before she does.”

I knelt there, frozen, and Locke lost it. She morphed from a teacher observing her star pupil into an angry, animal creature. She pounced on Genevieve, turning the girl on her back, pinning her to the floor, her hands encircling her neck.

“You don’t touch Cassie,” she said, her voice rising to a yell, her face so close to Genevieve’s that the younger girl had nowhere to go. “You. Don’t. Get. To. Decide.”

My brain whirred. I had to get her off Genevieve. I had to stop her. I had to—

One second Locke was on Genevieve, and the next she ripped the knife out of my hand.

“You can’t do it,” she spat at me. “You can’t do anythingright.”

Genevieve opened her mouth. Locke plunged the knife into her side. I’d promised to protect Genevieve, and now …

Now, there was blood.