Bad Blood: (The Naturals #4) (Naturals, The)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Hours ticked by. The blender and the minibar proved to be a dangerous combination.

  “Truth or dare, Lia?” It was my turn, and I could feel reality creeping back up on us. Every round that went by was that much longer without hearing from Celine. It was that much closer until the point in time when Agent Sterling would either have to charge the Darby family or let them go.

  “Truth,” Lia replied. It was her first in a very long game.

  “Why did you go after Darby alone?” I asked her.

  Lia stood up and stretched, arching her back and twisting from one side to the other. She had the advantage in Truth or Dare.

  No one else in this room could lie and get away with it.

  “I got out,” Lia said finally. “My mother didn’t.” She stopped stretching and stood very still. “I ran away when I hit puberty. By the time Briggs found me in New York…” She shook her head. “There was nothing left for us to save.”

  Nothing left of the cult. Nothing left of your mother.

  “Some of Darby’s followers will just find someone else to latch on to,” Lia continued. “But there’s at least a chance that with him in prison, some of them will go home.”

  I thought of Melody and Shane. And then I thought of Lia—younger and more vulnerable than the girl I knew now.

  “Besides,” Lia added flippantly, “I wanted to stick it to Michael for that stunt he pulled in New York.” She turned on the tips of her toes. “Truth or dare, Sloane?”

  “Would choosing truth involve a question about beagle and/or flamingo statistics?” Sloane asked hopefully.

  “Doubtful,” Michael opined.

  “Dare,” Sloane told Lia.

  A slow, wicked grin spread over Lia’s face. “I dare you,” she said, “to hack into Agent Sterling’s computer and change her wallpaper to the picture I took of Michael mooning our Agent Starmans.”

  It took Sloane nearly half an hour to hack into Agent Sterling’s laptop. Considering that this was Sloane we were talking about, that made Agent Sterling’s computer security measures downright impressive. Our resident hacker was midway through uploading the picture Lia had taken when the computer beeped.

  “Incoming e-mail,” Lia said, reaching over Sloane to click the e-mail icon.

  One second, we were in giddy Truth or Dare mode, and the next, it was like all traces of oxygen had been sucked from the room. The e-mail was from Agent Briggs. There were files attached. Reports. Pictures.

  Within a minute, they filled the screen. The image of a human body, burned past all recognition, sent me to the ground. I sat down hard, unable to keep my arms from wrapping around my legs, unable to tear my eyes away from the screen.

  I’d known, logically, that the killing had started again. I knew that there was an UNSUB out there making the transition from apprentice to Master. I’d even known the killer’s MO.

  Strung up like a scarecrow. Burned alive.

  But there was a difference between knowing something and seeing it with your own eyes. I forced myself to look at a photograph of the victim—the person she’d been before her body was devoured by flames, before she was nothing but pain and scorched flesh and ash.

  Her hair was long and blond, her pale skin offset by a pair of dark-rimmed hipster glasses. And the longer I looked at her, the harder it was to look away, because she didn’t just look young and carefree and alive.

  “She looks familiar.” I hadn’t meant to say those words out loud, but they exited my mouth like a crack of thunder.

  Beside me, Sloane shook her head. “I don’t recognize her.”

  Michael squeezed in beside us at the computer. “I do.” He turned to look at me. “Back when we were investigating the Redding case, when you and Lia and I went to that frat party—you went off with the professor’s teaching assistant, and I followed. With her.”

  I tried to recreate the scene in my memory. A college girl had been killed, the MO an exact match to Daniel Redding’s. Michael, Lia, and I had snuck out of the house to do some recon on potential suspects. And one of the people we’d talked to was this girl.

  “Bryce.” Sloane read her name from the file. “Bryce Anderson.”

  I struggled to remember more about her, but other than the fact that she’d been in class with the first victim—and the fact that the class in question had been studying the Daniel Redding case—I came up blank.

  “When you talked to my father…” Dean’s voice was steady, but I knew exactly how hard he had to fight for that kind of detachment. “He indicated that he was aware of the Masters’ existence. What are the chances that they have been keeping tabs on him?”

  I saw the logic in Dean’s question. If our victim had a connection to the Daniel Redding case, there was at least a chance that the UNSUB did as well.

  The door to the hotel room opened before I could put any of that into words.

  “This,” Agent Sterling said sternly, coming into the room, “is the face of someone who is not going to say a word—not a single word—about the dubious decision-making that leads one to moon a federal agent.” The edges of her lips turned up slightly. “Once we finish in Gaither, Agent Starmans has requested some time off.” She took in the mood of the room and the expressions on our faces. “Have we heard anything back from Celine?”

  In response, Sloane turned the laptop around, giving Agent Sterling a look at the screen. The poker face our mentor adopted in that moment told me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the files attached to this e-mail weren’t news to her. She’d known the identity of the first victim—and somehow, she’d made the connection.

  “You hacked my laptop.” That was neither a question nor an accusation. Judd, who’d been giving us space for hours, chose that moment to join us, and Sterling met his gaze. “Is this the part where you tell me that reading them the riot act would be a waste of breath?”

  Dean stepped toward her. “This is the part where you tell us about victim number two.”

  Bryce had been killed on April second. The next two Fibonacci dates were the 4/4 and 4/5—and today was the fifth. At a minimum, we had two victims. By midnight, we’d have three.

  “Are we looking at the same geographical area?” I asked Sterling, hoping to prompt some kind of response. “Same victimology?”

  “Does victim number two have a connection to my father?” Dean pressed. “Or that class on serial killers?”

  “No.”

  That response didn’t come from Agent Sterling. It came from Sloane.

  “No. No. No.” Sloane had turned the laptop back around. Her hands sat limp on the keys, and I realized that she’d opened the rest of the files attached to Briggs’s e-mail.

  My eyes stung as I took in the second crime scene. Strung up like a scarecrow. Burned alive. But it was the name typed onto the accompanying forms that explained the way Sloane pressed her hands to her mouth and the garbled, high-pitched sound that made its way through her fingers.

  Tory Howard.

  Tory had been a person of interest in our Vegas case. She was a stage magician in her early twenties who’d grown up alongside our Vegas killer. And that meant that the common thread between our two victims wasn’t the Redding case. It wasn’t geographical. It was us. Cases we’d worked. People we’d talked to.

  In Tory’s case, people we’d saved.

  “She loved him, too.” Sloane’s hands weren’t on her mouth anymore, but her voice was still garbled. Tory had been involved with Sloane’s brother, Aaron. She’d grieved for him, like Sloane had. She’d recognized Sloane’s grief. “Call Briggs.” Sloane’s voice was still quiet, her eyes pressed closed.

  “Sloane—” Judd started to say, but she cut him off.

  “Tanner Elias Briggs, Social Security number 449-872-1656, Scorpio on the cusp of Sagittarius, seventy-three-point-two-five inches tall.” Sloane forced her blue eyes open, her mouth set in a mutinous line. “Call him.”

  This time, when Agent Sterling dialed the number, Briggs picked up
.

  “Ronnie?” Briggs’s voice cut through the air. In all the time I’d known him, he’d almost always answered the phone with his own name. I wondered what to read into the fact that this time, he’d answered with hers.

  “You’ve got the entire group,” Agent Sterling said, setting the phone to speaker. “The kids hacked my computer. They saw the files.”

  “You should have told me,” Sloane said fiercely. “When you found out the second victim was Tory.” Her voice shook slightly. “I should have known.”

  “You had your plate full.” Judd was the one who responded, not Briggs. “You all did.” The former marine’s characteristically gruff manner softened slightly as he moved toward Sloane. “You remind me of my Scarlett.” Judd rarely spoke his daughter’s name. It carried an unearthly weight when he did. “Too much sometimes, Sloane. Every once in a while, I fool myself into thinking that maybe I can protect you.”

  I could see Sloane struggling to understand—what Judd was saying, the fact that he’d been the one to make the call about keeping us in the dark.

  “Today is April fifth.” Lia’s tone had sharp edges, but I couldn’t hear even the slightest tinge of anger. “4/5. Where are we on victim number three?”

  She’d asked the question because Sloane couldn’t, and she’d asked it to remind Briggs, Sterling, and Judd that they couldn’t lie to her.

  Briggs kept his reply brief. “No crime scene. No victim. Not yet.”

  Yet. That word served as a reminder of every person we’d failed. While we’d been here in Gaither, searching for clues, two more people had died. Another would join them soon, join the hundreds of victims the Masters had murdered through the years.

  “We need to go through our past cases,” I said tersely, fighting back against the crushing reality that when we made mistakes—when we weren’t good enough, when we were too slow—people died. “Identify persons of interest.”

  “Female persons of interest under the age of twenty-five,” Dean said quietly. “Even if the other Masters have been suggesting victims that will make a point to the FBI, this is my test, and that’s my type.”

  Dean’s words sent a chill down my spine, because they gave life to a suspicion lurking just below the surface of my mind. Each Master chose nine victims. Victimology was one of the things that separated each Master from the next.

  But this time, our killer wasn’t the only one with a say in the kills.

  This isn’t just ritual. It’s personal. No matter how many times I tried to slip into this UNSUB’s head, I kept coming to the same conclusions. Someone made it personal, because we’re getting close. Because we’re in Gaither.

  “The Masters had the apprentice kill Bryce and Tory because of us.” I swallowed, but I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of my mouth. “I’m not sure if it’s revenge or an attempt to lure us away from Gaither, but if we weren’t here…”

  On the other side of the room, Michael had his cell phone pressed to his ear. He said nothing, ending the call and trying a second time.

  “Michael—” Lia started to say.

  He slammed his fist into the wall. “Female,” he said, like it was a curse word. “Under twenty-five. With a connection to one of our previous cases.”

  For the first time since I’d known him, Michael’s expression was transparent. Terrified. Nauseated.

  And that was when I realized…

  “Celine,” I said. Female. College-aged. Bile rose in my throat. “She was the ‘victim’ in our most recent case. If they’ve been watching us…” A heavy feeling settled over my limbs. “She helped us identify Nightshade. And we just pulled her back into the case.”

  Not we, I thought, horrified. Me. I was the one who suggested we call Celine—just like I went to see Laurel.

  “If she was there, she’d answer.” Michael slammed his fist into the wall again and again, until Dean forcibly hauled him back. “With everything that’s going on, she’d answer.” Michael struggled violently against Dean’s hold before stilling abruptly. “My call went to voice mail. Twice.”

  No matter how many times we called Celine, her phone went straight to voice mail. Briggs sent a local field agent to her dorm to check on her, but she wasn’t there.

  No one had seen or talked to Celine Delacroix since we’d sent her the photos hours earlier.

  “First they went after your sister, Colorado,” Michael said dully, his eyes empty of emotion. “And now they’ve taken mine.”

  Lia crossed the room to stand in front of him. For no apparent reason, her hand snaked out to slap him across the face, and a moment later, she pressed her lips to his, kissing him hard. As far as distractions went, that was a one-two punch.

  “Celine is fine,” Lia said when she pulled back. “She’s going to be fine, Michael.” Lia could make anything sound true. Her breath was ragged as she continued. “I promise.”

  Lia didn’t make promises.

  “She’s only been missing a few hours,” Sloane added. “And given that she has a history of kidnapping herself, statistically speaking…” Our numbers expert paused, her blond hair falling into her face. “She’s going to be okay.” Sloane didn’t offer up a single number or percentage. Whatever numbers were flying through her head, she fought back against them for Michael and echoed Lia’s words. “I promise.”

  Dean clapped a hand onto Michael’s shoulder. Michael’s eyes found their way to mine.

  “She’s going to be okay,” I said softly. After everything we’d been through, everything we’d lost, I had to believe that. But I didn’t promise. I couldn’t.

  Michael, taking one look at my face, would have known why.

  A knock at the hotel room door broke the silence that had fallen over us. Judd stepped forward to prevent me from answering it. Looking through the peephole, he let his hand drop from the gun at his side and opened the door.

  “You have a bad habit of disappearing, young lady.”

  I processed Judd’s words before I registered the identity of the girl on the other side of the door.

  “Celine?”

  Celine Delacroix stood, designer suitcase in hand, her hair swept gently back from her face. “Two-dimensional skull photos blow,” she declared in lieu of a greeting. “Take me to the bodies.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Celine to tell anyone she was going on an impromptu trip to Oklahoma. She’d turned her phone off on the plane.

  “I told you.” Lia smirked at Michael. “Say that I was right.”

  “You were right.” Michael rolled his eyes. His voice softened slightly. “You promised.”

  “In the interest of ultimate honesty,” Celine cut in, “I’m pretty sure that everyone present would appreciate it if you two got a room.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Dean grumbled.

  “I am unbothered by displays of physical and emotional intimacy,” Sloane volunteered. “The nuances and statistics underlying courtship behavior are quite fascinating.”

  The edges of Celine’s lips quirked upward as she met Sloane’s gaze. “You don’t say.”

  Sloane frowned. “I just did.”

  “I could use some mathematical expertise for these facial reconstructions.” Celine cocked her head to the side. “You in, Blondie?”

  Remembering Sloane’s reaction to the bodies in the basement, I expected her to decline, but instead, she took a step toward Celine. “I’m in.”

  Agent Sterling, Celine, and Sloane left before the sun came up the next morning. I ended up along for the ride. In all my time in the Naturals program, this was my first visit to one of the FBI labs—in this case, a secure facility a two-hour drive from Gaither. After the medical examiner had finished her analysis of both bodies and a forensics team had gathered trace evidence from the clothing and skin, what little had remained of our victims’ flesh had been stripped from the bones. The two skeletons lay side by side.

  Agent Sterling cleared the room before allowing us in.

  Celine stood in th
e doorway, taking in the long view before advancing on the skeletons, circling them slowly. I knew, just from her posture, that her eyes missed nothing. Her gaze latched on to the smaller skeleton—our female victim.

  You see more than bones. You see contours. A cheek, a jaw, eyes…

  “Can I touch her?” Celine asked, turning to Agent Sterling.

  Sterling inclined her head slightly, and Sloane handed Celine a pair of gloves. Celine slipped them on and ran her fingertips gently over the woman’s skull, feeling the way the bones curved and met up with each other. For Celine, painting was a whole-body endeavor, but this—this was sacred.

  “Two-point-three-nine inches between her orbital cavities,” Sloane said softly. “An estimated two and a half inches between her pupils and mouth.”

  Celine continued her exploration of the skull, nodding slightly. As Sloane rattled off more measurements, Celine reached for the sketch pad she’d laid on a nearby exam table. Within seconds, she had a pencil in hand and it was flying across the page.

  As Celine drew, she stepped back from the rest of us. You’ll show it to us when it’s ready. When it’s done.

  It was several minutes before the sound of Celine ripping the paper out of her pad cut through the air. Without a word, she handed the picture to Sloane, set down her notepad, and turned her attention to the second skeleton.

  Sloane brought the picture to me. I brought it to Agent Sterling. The woman staring back at us from the page was in her late twenties, pretty in an ordinary kind of way. A creeping feeling of familiarity tugged at me.

  “Recognize her?” Agent Sterling asked me quietly, as Celine continued to work on the other side of the room.

  I shook my head, but inside, I felt like nodding. “She looks…” The words hovered, just out of grasp. “She looks like Melody,” I said finally. “Ree’s granddaughter.”

  The instant that statement was out of my mouth, I knew. I knew who this woman was. I knew that Ree’s daughter—Melody and Shane’s mother—hadn’t skipped town after a brief stop at Serenity Ranch.