The Naturals (2 Book Series)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “And on that note, I take my leave.” Michael stood up. He kept his voice casual, but I knew he didn’t like talking about his home life. He’d told me once that his father had an explosive temper. I tried not to think about the reasons a little boy might need to become an expert at reading other people’s emotions, growing up with a father like that.

  Michael paused next to Sloane on his way out. “Hey,” he said softly. She peered up at him. “I’m not mad at you,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Sloane smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ve got a lot of data to suggest I do or say the wrong thing at least eighty-six-point-five percent of the time.”

  “Spoken like someone who wants to get tossed in the pool,” Michael countered. Sloane managed a genuine smile this time, and with one last glance back at me, Michael was gone.

  “Do you think Dean went out to the garage?” Sloane asked after the two of us had been alone for several minutes. “When he’s upset, he usually goes out to the garage.”

  Dean wasn’t just upset. I didn’t know the exact details of what he’d been through growing up, but the one time I’d asked Dean if he’d known what his father was doing to those women, Dean’s response had been not at first.

  “Dean needs space,” I told Sloane, laying it out for her in case she couldn’t see it for herself. “Some people like having their friends around when things get tough, and some people need to be alone. When Dean’s ready to talk, he’ll talk.”

  Even as I said the words, I knew I wouldn’t be able to just sit here, doing nothing. Waiting. I needed to do something—I just didn’t know what.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Sloane asked me, her voice barely audible.

  I couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know.”

  I ended up in the library. Wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor shelves held more books than I could read in two lifetimes. I hovered in the doorway. I wasn’t here for a book. Third shelf from the left, two up from the bottom. I swallowed hard, then walked over to the correct shelf. Interview twenty-eight, binder twelve.

  My fingers closed around the correct binder, and I forced myself to pick it up. The last time I’d tried reading interview twenty-eight, I’d stopped when I’d registered the interviewee’s last name.

  Lia was right. I didn’t fully understand what Dean was going through—but I wanted to. I needed to, because if it had been me spiraling into the abyss, Dean would have understood.

  Dean always understood.

  I sat down on the floor, propping the binder up on my thighs and opening to the page I’d left off on weeks before. Briggs was the agent conducting the prison interview. He’d just asked Dean’s father to verify the identity of one of his victims.

  Redding: You’re asking the wrong questions, son. It’s not who they are, it’s what they are.

  Briggs: And what are they?

  Redding: They’re mine.

  Briggs: Is that why you bound them with zip ties? Because they were yours?

  Redding: You want me to say that I bound them so they’d stay. Your fancy FBI psychologists would salivate to hear me talk about all the women who’ve left me. About my mother and the mother of my son. But did you ever think that maybe I just like the way a woman’s skin looks when she struggles against the hold of the plastic? Maybe I liked watching white lines appear on their wrists and ankles, watching their hands and feet go numb. Maybe the way their muscles tensed and some of them fought themselves bloody while I sat there and watched…Can you imagine, Agent Briggs? Can you?

  Briggs: And branding them? Are you going to tell me that wasn’t a mark of ownership? That owning them, dominating them, controlling them—that wasn’t the point?

  Redding: The point? Who says there’s a point? Growing up, people never took to me. Teachers said I was sullen. My grandfather raised me, and he was always telling me not to look at him like that, not to look at my grandmother like that. There was just something about me, two shades off. I had to learn how to hide it, but my son? Dean? He was born smiling. People would take one look at him and they’d smile, too. Everybody loved that boy. My boy.

  Briggs: Did you? Love him?

  Redding: I made him. He was mine, and if it was in him to charm, to put people at ease, it was in me.

  Briggs: Your son taught you how to blend in, how to be liked, how to be trusted. What did you teach your son?

  Redding: Why don’t you ask your wife? Pretty little thing, isn’t she? But the mouth on that one…mmmm, mmm, mmmmm.

  “Good reading?”

  A voice snapped me back to the present. “Lia.”

  “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” There was an edge to Lia’s voice, but she didn’t sound as blindly furious with me as she had before.

  “I’m sorry about earlier.” I took my life in my own hands and risked apologizing, knowing it might set her off. “You’re right. I don’t know what Dean’s going through. The situation with Locke and me—it wasn’t the same.”

  “Always so genuine,” Lia said, a hint of sharpness to her singsong tone. “Always willing to own up to her mistakes.” Her gaze locked on to the binder in my lap, and her voice went flat. “Yet always so very ready to make the same mistakes, all over again.”

  “Lia,” I said. “I’m not trying to get between the two of you—”

  “God, Cassie. I told you this wasn’t about you. Do you really think it’s about me?”

  I wasn’t sure what to think. Lia went out of her way to be difficult to profile. The one thing I was sure of was her loyalty to Dean.

  “He wouldn’t want you reading those.” She sounded certain—but then again, Lia always sounded certain.

  “I thought it might help,” I said. “If I understood, then I could—”

  “Help?” Lia repeated, biting out the word. “That’s the problem with you, Cassie. Your intentions are always so good. You always just want to help. But at the end of the day, you don’t help. Someone gets hurt, and that someone is never you.”

  “I’m not going to hurt Dean,” I said vehemently.

  Lia let out a bark of laughter. “It’s sweet that you believe that, but of course you are.” She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. “Briggs made me listen to an audio recording of Redding’s interviews when I was fourteen.” She pulled her legs tight to her chest. “I’d been here a year at that point, and Dean didn’t want me within a ten-foot pole of anything having to do with his father. But I was like you. I thought it might help, but it didn’t help, Cassie.” Each time she said help, her expression grew closer to a snarl. “Those interviews are the Daniel Redding show. He’s a liar. One of the best I’ve ever heard. He makes you think he’s lying when he’s telling the truth, and then he’ll say things that can’t possibly be true.…” Lia shook her head, like she could rid herself of the memory with the motion. “Reading anything Daniel Redding has to say is going to mess with your head, Cassie, and knowing that you’ve read it is going to mess with Dean’s.”

  She was right. Dean wouldn’t want me reading this. His father had described him as a little boy who’d been born smiling, instantly lovable, effortlessly putting other people at ease, but the Dean I knew always had his guard up.

  Especially with me.

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Cassie, and I’ll make you a pretty apology. Tell me that Daniel Redding hasn’t already gotten under your skin.”

  I knew better than to lie to Lia. There was something inside me, the part of me that saw people as puzzles to be solved, that wanted answers, that needed to make things—awful things, horrible things, like what had happened to my mother, like what Daniel Redding had done to those women—make sense.

  “Dean wouldn’t want me doing this,” I conceded, catching my bottom lip in between my teeth, before plowing on. “That doesn’t mean he’s right.”

  My first week in the program, Dean had tried to send me running. He’d told me that profiling killers would ruin me. He’d also told
me that by the time Agent Briggs had started coming to him for help on cases, there was nothing left to ruin.

  If our situations had been reversed, if I’d been the one drowning in all of this, Dean wouldn’t have backed off.

  “I slept in Michael’s room last night.” Lia waited for those words to register before giving me a Cheshire cat grin. “I wanted a strip poker rematch, and Monsieur Townsend was oh-so-happy to oblige.”

  I felt like she’d stabbed an icicle straight through my chest. I went very still, trying not to feel anything at all.

  Lia reached over and snatched the binder off my lap. She snorted. “Honestly, Cassie, you’re too easy. If and when I choose to spend the night with Michael again, you’ll know it, because the next morning, you’ll be invisible, and Michael won’t be looking at anything but me. In the meantime…” Lia snapped the binder shut. “You’re welcome, because this is officially the second time in the past five minutes that I’ve saved you from going someplace you really don’t want to go.” Her eyes bore into mine. “You don’t want to crawl into Daniel Redding’s mind, Cassie.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “If you make me go for intervention number three, I’ll be forced to get creative.”

  With those rather concerning words, she left the room—taking the binder and everything it contained with her.

  Can she do that? I sat there, staring after her. Eventually, I snapped out of it and told myself that she was right, that I didn’t need to know the details of Dean’s father’s case to be there for Dean now, but even knowing that, even believing it, I couldn’t stop wondering about the parts of the interview I hadn’t gotten the chance to read.

  What did you teach your son? Agent Briggs had asked.

  I’d never even seen a picture of Dean’s father, but I could imagine the smile spreading over his face when he’d replied. Why don’t you ask your wife?

  Dean skipped dinner. Judd fixed a plate for him and put it in the refrigerator. I wondered if Judd was used to Dean disappearing for hours on end. Maybe, when Dean had first come here, that had been a normal thing. I found myself thinking more and more about that Dean—the twelve-year-old whose father had been arrested for serial murder.

  You knew what he was doing. I slipped into Dean’s perspective without even meaning to. You couldn’t stop it.

  Empathizing with Dean: his feelings toward his father, what staring at that girl’s corpse must have done to him—I couldn’t tuck that away in a separate section of my psyche. I could feel it bleeding over into my own thoughts. Right now, Dean was almost certainly thinking about the fact that he had a killer’s blood in his veins. And I had Locke’s in mine. Maybe Lia was right. Maybe I couldn’t really understand what Dean was going through—but being a profiler meant I couldn’t stop trying to. I couldn’t keep from feeling his pain and recognizing in it an echo of my own.

  After dinner, I meant to go upstairs, but my feet carried me toward the garage. I stopped, just outside the door. I could hear the muted sound of flesh hitting something—over and over, again and again. I brought my hand up to the doorknob, then pulled it back.

  He doesn’t want you here, I reminded myself. But at the same time, I couldn’t keep from thinking that maybe shutting the rest of us out was less about what Dean wanted and more about what he wouldn’t let himself want. There was a chance—a good one—that Dean didn’t need to be alone so much as he thought being alone was what he deserved.

  Of its own volition, my hand reached out again. This time, I turned the knob. The door opened a crack, and the sound of heavy breathing added itself to the rhythmic thwack thwack thwack I’d heard before. A breath hitching in my throat, I pushed the door open. Dean didn’t see me.

  His blond hair was beaded with sweat and stuck to his forehead. A thin white undershirt clung to his torso, soaked and nearly transparent. I could make out the lines of his stomach, his chest. His shoulders were bare, the muscles so tense that I thought they might snap like rubber bands or fight their way out from underneath his tanned skin.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  His fists collided with a punching bag. It came back at him, and he fought harder. The rhythm of hits was getting faster, and with each punch, he put more and more of his body into it. His fists were bare.

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, watching him. There was something animal about the motions, something feral and vicious. My profiler’s eye saw each punch layered with meaning. Losing control, controlled. Punishment, release. He’d welcome the pain in his knuckles. He wouldn’t be able to stop.

  I took a few steps closer, but stayed out of range. This time, I didn’t make the mistake of trying to touch him. His eyes were locked on the bag, unseeing. I wasn’t sure who he was striking out at—his father or himself. All I knew was that if he didn’t stop, something was going to give—the bag, his hands, his body, his mind.

  He had to snap out of it.

  “I kissed you.” I wasn’t sure what possessed me to say that, but I had to say something. I could see the moment the words broke through to him. His movements became slightly more measured; I could feel him regaining awareness of the world around him.

  “It doesn’t matter.” He continued punching the bag. “It was just a game.”

  Truth or Dare. He was right. It was just a game. So why did I feel like someone had slapped me?

  Dean finally stopped punching the bag. He was breathing heavily, his whole body moving with each breath. Casting a sideways glance at me, he spoke again. “You deserve better.”

  “Better than a game?” I asked. Or better than you?

  Dean didn’t reply. I knew, then, that this wasn’t really about me. Dean wasn’t seeing me. This was about some make-believe, idealized Cassie he’d built up in his head, something to torment himself with. A girl who deserved things. A girl he could never deserve. I hated that he was putting me up on a glass pedestal, fragile and out of reach. Like I didn’t get a say in the matter at all.

  “I have a tube of lipstick.” I threw the words at him. “Locke gave it to me. I tell myself that I keep it as a reminder, but it’s not that simple.” He didn’t reply, so I just kept going. “Locke thought I could be like her.” That had been the whole point of her little game. “She wanted it so badly, Dean. I know she was a monster. I know that I should hate her. But sometimes, I wake up in the morning and for just a second, I forget. And for that second, before I remember what she did, I miss her. I didn’t even know we were related, but…”

  I trailed off, and my throat tightened, because I couldn’t stop thinking that I should have known. I should have known that she was my last connection to my mother. I should have known that she wasn’t what she seemed. I should have known, and I didn’t, and people had gotten hurt.

  “Don’t make yourself say these things because I need to hear them,” Dean said hoarsely. “You’re nothing like Locke.” He wiped his palms on his jeans, and I heard the words he wasn’t saying.

  You’re nothing like me.

  “Maybe,” I said softly, “to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.”

  A breath caught in Dean’s throat, and for the longest time, the two of us stood there in silence: breathing in, breathing out, breathing through the truth I’d just uttered.

  “Your hands are bleeding,” I said finally, my voice as hoarse as his had been a moment before. “You’re hurt.”

  “No, I’m…” Dean looked down, caught sight of his bleeding knuckles, and swallowed the rest of his argument.

  If I hadn’t interrupted, you would have beaten your hands raw. That knowledge spurred me into action. A minute later, I was back with a clean towel and a basin of water.

  “Sit,” I said. When Dean didn’t move, I fixed him with a look and repeated the order. Physically, I resembled my mother, but when given proper motivation, I could do a decent impression of my paternal grandmother. A person butted heads with Nonna at his or her own risk.

  Taking in the stubborn se
t of my jaw, Dean sat down on the workout bench. He held out his hand for the towel. I ignored him and knelt, dipping the towel into the water.

  “Hand,” I said.

  “Cassie—”

  “Hand,” I repeated. I felt him ready to refuse, but somehow, his hand found its way to mine. Slowly, I turned it over. Carefully, gingerly, I cleaned the blood from his knuckles, coaxing the towel along sinew and bone. The water was lukewarm, but heat spread through my body as my thumb trailed lightly over his skin.

  I put down his left hand and started in on the right. Neither of us said anything. I didn’t even look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on his fingers, his knuckles, the scar that ran along the length of his thumb.

  “I hurt you.” Dean broke the silence. I could feel the moment slipping away. I wanted it back, so ferociously it surprised me.

  I don’t want to want this. I wanted everything to stay the same. I could do this. I’d been doing this. Nothing had to change.

  I put Dean’s hand down. “You didn’t hurt me,” I told him firmly. “You grabbed my wrist.” I pushed up my sleeve and brandished my right arm as proof. Next to his tan, my skin was almost unbearably fair. “No marks. No bruises. Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You were lucky,” Dean said. “I was…somewhere else.”

  “I know.” The night before, when Agent Sterling’s arrival had sent me into a tailspin, he’d been the one to break the hold that somewhere else had on me. Dean held my gaze for a moment, and understanding flickered in his eyes.

  “You blame yourself for what happened with Agent Locke.” Dean was a profiler, the same as me. He could climb into my head as easily as I could climb into his. “To the girls Locke killed, to Michael, to me.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Cassie. You couldn’t have known.” Opposite me, Dean swallowed hard. My eyes traced the movement of his Adam’s apple. His lips parted, and he spoke. “My father made me watch.”

  Those whispered words carried the power of a gunshot, but I didn’t react. If I said anything, if I breathed, if I so much as moved, Dean would clam up again.