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

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“This doesn’t make sense,” Sloane said, staring at the pictures. “The angle of entry, especially on the torso wounds…it doesn’t make sense.”

  “So Malcolm Lowell wasn’t stabbed by a child?” Michael asked, attempting to translate.

  “This wound,” Sloane said, zeroing in on one of the pictures. “The knife was wielded from Lowell’s right side, suggesting a left-handed attacker. But the wound is too neat, too clean, and the shape suggests that the knife was held with the blade facing toward the ceiling. It entered the body at an angle of roughly one hundred and seven degrees.”

  “So Malcolm was stabbed by a child?” Michael tried again.

  “No,” Sloane said. She closed her eyes, every muscle in her body taut.

  “Sloane,” I said. “What is it?”

  “I should have seen it.” Sloane’s words were barely audible. “I should have seen it before, but I wasn’t looking.”

  “You weren’t looking for what?” Agent Sterling asked her gently.

  “He wasn’t stabbed by a child,” Sloane said. “And he wasn’t stabbed by a left-handed adult.” She opened her eyes. “It’s there, if you’re looking. If you run all possible scenarios.”

  “What’s there?” I asked her quietly.

  Sloane sat down hard. “I’m ninety-eight percent sure that the old man stabbed himself.”

  What kind of determination would it take to stab a blade into your flesh over and over again? What kind of person could kill his own flesh and blood and then calmly turn the knife on himself?

  I pictured myself holding a bloodied knife, pictured myself turning it inward, pictured the light glistening off the blade.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Lowell is unavailable.” The home health aide who answered Lowell’s front door couldn’t tell us much more than that. The old man had taken his leave shortly after Agent Sterling had interviewed him—and hadn’t told a soul where he was going.

  As I paced Lowell’s house, looking for some shred of evidence, something to confirm Sloane’s theory that he’d killed his daughter and son-in-law, then turned the knife on himself to bar suspicion, I couldn’t help remembering the statement he’d given to Agent Sterling about the murdered animals.

  You said that you believed that Mason had watched. I pictured the knife again, picture myself holding it. It must have pleased you to be able to say those words, knowing Agent Sterling wouldn’t see the truth behind them. You weren’t talking about the way Mason watched Darren Darby kill those animals. You were talking about what your grandson watched you do.

  “What are you thinking?” Dean asked, slipping in beside me.

  “I’m thinking that maybe Nightshade did see his parents murdered. Maybe he did watch.” I paused, knowing that my next words would hit home for Dean. “Maybe it was a lesson. Maybe when Kane arrived later, Nightshade threw suspicion on Darren because little Mason Kyle had learned that a boy who tortured animals wasn’t worthy of following.”

  Dean was quiet then, the kind of quiet that told me he’d gone to a dark and cavernous place in his own memory the moment I’d said the word lesson. Eventually, he clawed himself out.

  “My daughter was a disappointment.” When Dean spoke, it took me a moment to realize that he was speaking from Lowell’s perspective. “I tried to raise her right. I tried to raise her to be worthy of my name, but she ended up being just another whore—pregnant at sixteen, defiant. They lived with me, Anna and her pathetic husband and the boy.”

  The boy. The one who would grow up to be Nightshade.

  “You thought Mason was cut from your daughter’s cloth,” I said, picking up where Dean had left off. “And then he started sneaking out.” By Malcolm Lowell’s own admission, he had tried to cage his family. He’d tried to control them. I’d assumed that the proud old man would have considered Mason’s behavior an affront.

  But what if you didn’t? Air entered and exited my lungs. I took a step forward, even though I didn’t know what I was walking toward. What if you considered Mason’s little pastime a sign?

  “When the animals started turning up,” Dean mused, his voice sounding uncannily like his father’s, “I thought it might be the boy. Perhaps he had potential after all.”

  “But it wasn’t Mason.” I pressed my lips together as I thought about Kane, broken and hollow. “It was Darren Darby.”

  “A disappointment,” Dean said harshly. “A sign of weakness. One that required an object lesson for my grandson about who he was and where he came from. We are not followers. We do not watch.”

  Dean’s words coated me like oil, bringing me back to my own encounter with Malcolm Lowell as a child.

  You knew what it was like to feel the life go out of your victims. You knew the power. You wanted Mason to see you for what you really were, to know exactly whose blood ran in his veins.

  Out loud, I let myself take that thought to its logical conclusion. “To kill his own family, to plan it out so coldly, to go as far as to calmly and brutally attack himself…By the time of the Kyle murders, Malcolm Lowell was already a killer.”

  Dean waited a beat and then took my statement a step further. “Already a Master.”

  A chill spread slowly down my spine, like the cracking of ice. You were tested. You were found worthy. You’d already killed your nine.

  “The timing doesn’t add up,” I said, pushing down the urge to look over my shoulder, like the old man might be there, watching me the way he had when I was a child. “The poison Master who trained Nightshade—the one who chose him as an apprentice—didn’t become a Master himself until years after the Kyle murders.”

  And that meant that if my instincts—and Dean’s—were correct, Malcolm Lowell was not the poison Master.

  You were something more.

  “You groomed your grandson for greatness,” I said, my heart thumping in my chest. “You saw the potential, and you made Mason a monster. You made him your heir.” I paused. “You sent him to live with a man who knew—intimately knew—the thin line between medicine and poison.”

  Mason Kyle had left Gaither when he was seventeen years old. He’d attempted to bury all traces of his identity. He’d lived as a ghost for two decades before he’d become an apprentice and then a Master.

  He knew it was coming. He always knew what he was meant to be. Even thinking about Nightshade, I never left the old man’s perspective. You made him in your own image. You made him worthy.

  A flicker of shadow was the only warning I had that Dean and I were no longer alone.

  “Basements are actually relatively rare in Oklahoma,” Sloane commented, popping up beside us. “But this house has one.”

  My heart had leapt into my throat before I’d realized that Sloane was the one who’d joined us. It stayed there as I turned the word basement over and over in my mind, thinking about the fact that Laurel had grown up inside and underground.

  Thinking that Holland Darby might not be the only one in Gaither with shackles built into his walls.

  I knew, logically, that it couldn’t be that simple. I knew that my mother had probably never been here, knew that wherever the Masters kept her, wherever they conducted their business, it probably wasn’t in one of their basements. But as I wound my way toward the basement, Dean and Sloane on my heels and Lia and Michael falling in beside us, I couldn’t push down the roar building in my mind, the incessant thumping of my heart as I thought, You built this house. For your wife. For your family. For what was to come.

  The basement floor was made of concrete. The beams overhead were covered in cobwebs. A surplus of cardboard boxes made the room’s function clear.

  Just storage. Just a room.

  With no idea what I was looking for, I began to open boxes and go through the contents. They told a story—of a man who’d gotten started on his family later in life. Of the local girl he’d married. Of the daughter who’d lost her mother when she was six years old.

  Six years old.

  Suddenly, I was taken back to the day Malcolm
Lowell had caught Melody and me in the apothecary garden.

  “How old are you?” the man demands.

  “I’m seven,” Melody answers. “But Cassie’s only six.”

  I was six years old when I met Malcolm Lowell. His daughter was six years old when her mother died. Mason Kyle was nine when he watched his grandfather murder his parents.

  “Six,” I said out loud, sitting down hard between the boxes, the concrete digging into the skin under my legs. “Six, six, and nine.”

  “Three plus three,” Sloane rattled off, unable to stop herself. “Three times three.”

  The Masters kill nine victims every three years. There are twenty-seven—three times three times three—Fibonacci dates total. My hand brushed up against something etched into the concrete. I shoved a box to the side to get a better look.

  Seven circles around a cross. It was the Masters’ symbol, one I’d first seen etched into a wooden casket and later seen carved into a killer’s flesh. Like Laurel, Beau Donovan had been raised by the Masters. Like Laurel, his mother was the Pythia.

  “Beau was six years old when he was tested by the Masters,” I said, looking up from the floor. “Six years old when they cast him out to die.”

  Beau—and Laurel—had been born for one purpose and one purpose alone.

  Nine is the greatest of us, Nightshade had told me months ago. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation.

  I traced my fingers around the outside of the symbol. “Seven Masters,” I said. “The Pythia. And Nine.”

  If Laurel passed their tests, if she was worthy, someday she would take the ninth seat at the Masters’ table. But whose seat is it now?

  The greatest of us. The bridge from generation to generation. There had been awe in Nightshade’s voice when he’d spoken those words. There had been warmth.

  “I know that face, Colorado,” Michael said, narrowing his eyes at me. “That’s your holy bleep face. That’s—”

  I didn’t wait for him to finish. “We were never looking for the poison Master who preceded Nightshade,” I said, moving my finger from the outer circle to the inner cross. “We were looking for someone who’d been a part of the Masters for longer than twenty-seven years. Someone who held sway over the others. The whole time—we were looking for Nine.”

  Everything I knew about Malcolm Lowell fell into place. How many years had he spent being molded in the Masters’ image, hidden away from the world? How old had he been when he’d finally been allowed a life outside those walls?

  How many times had the Masters attempted to raise a new child to take his place?

  There had been at least three Pythias in the past twenty years. My mother. Mallory Mills. The Pythia who’d given birth to Beau. In all likelihood, there had been more.

  Had each woman had a child? Had all of the would-be Nines been tested and found unworthy? Turned out to die?

  You don’t care to be replaced.

  Without meaning to, I began walking toward the stairs. I climbed them two at a time and headed for Agent Sterling, but when I reached the top, a familiar voice froze me in my tracks.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” That was Sterling—and her tone was steel.

  “You are.” When Director Sterling gave Briggs an order, Briggs took it—but the director’s daughter was another matter.

  “You’re not authorized—” Agent Sterling started to say, but her father cut her off.

  “I’m not authorized to tell the Naturals what cases they can and cannot work. You saw to that, Veronica. I am, however, authorized as your superior in this organization to pull my agents off of a case—and that includes you.”

  “We’re this close. You can’t—”

  “I can and I am, Agent. I let you chase this lead, and you ran it into the ground. You’ve identified one individual connected with this group. Now Lowell is gone, and he’s not coming back.” The director’s verbal onslaught stopped, but only for a moment. “Briggs has three bodies, Veronica. Three crime scenes, three victims, three sets of persons of interest. That is where your attention should be focused—and starting tonight, it will be.”

  There was a long pause—Agent Sterling donning her inner armor. “The last time you pulled me off a case, Scarlett had just been murdered.” Sterling could be just as merciless as her father. “If you hadn’t interfered then, we might not be in this position now.”

  “Have you even told the Hobbes girl about the third body?” Director Sterling shot back. His voice was soft, but his words hit me like a hammer to the chest.

  He’d asked if she’d told me. Not Dean, not Lia, not Michael, not Sloane. Me. My throat tightened as I pictured the first two victims in my mind.

  I pushed the door to the basement open and stepped out. “What about the third body?”

  Michael came to stand beside me, his gaze locked on Agent Sterling’s face. I had no idea what he saw there, but whatever it was had him stepping in front of me, like he could protect me from the answer to the question I’d just asked.

  “The third victim,” I reiterated, my voice dry and hoarse, focusing on Agent Sterling and ignoring her father. “You and Briggs never said anything about the third victim.”

  Michael glanced wordlessly at Dean, who moved to my other side, his body close enough to mine that I should have been able to feel the heat off of it.

  I couldn’t feel anything.

  “Cassie…” Agent Sterling took a step forward. I took a step back.

  “The first two victims were persons of interest in our prior cases,” I said. “Following the same pattern…”

  I trailed off, because even without Michael’s ability, I could see in Agent Sterling’s eyes that the third victim wasn’t just a person of interest in one of our cases.

  I’d thought that our killer’s choice of victims was either meant as punishment for coming to Gaither or a distraction to lure us away.

  Not us, I realized. It was never about us.

  I went for my cell phone. It was dead. How long had it been since I charged it? How many phone calls had I missed?

  “Cassie,” Agent Sterling said again. “The third victim—you know her.”

  YOU

  Too little, too late. If they’d discovered anyone’s identity but Nine’s, you could order the leak eliminated at the source—and, oh, how you’d like to see the old bastard bleed.

  To make him bleed.

  But he commands the others’ respect—their reverence—and you’re the one who’s bleeding. You’re the one they chain, the one they purify with flame and blade and fingers wrapped around your throat.

  They want you to pass judgment. They want you to say yes.

  Lorelai would die to protect Cassie. Lorelai would never give them what they want. But you aren’t Lorelai.

  When you say the words, they release you from the chains. Your body slumps to the floor. They leave you with nothing but a torch to light the tomb.

  “Mommy?” The little voice echoes through this cavernous space as Laurel emerges from the shadows. You can see Lorelai in the child, see Cassie.

  Lorelai tries to fight her way to the surface as Laurel comes closer, but you’re stronger than she is.

  “Mommy?”

  Your gaze locks onto hers. Laurel is silent and still, and then, looking more like a ghost than a child, her eyes harden.

  “You’re not my mommy.”

  You hum under your breath. “Mommy had to go away,” you tell her, stepping forward to caress her hair, a smile playing at the edges of your lips. “And Laurel? Mommy isn’t coming back.”

  When my phone was charged, I saw that I had a half-dozen missed calls—all of them from my grandmother. Nonna had raised seven children. She had nearly two dozen grandchildren.

  One less now. I’d spent five years living with my father’s family. Kate was the cousin closest to my own age, just three years my senior. And now, she was dead—strung up like a scarecrow and burned alive. Because of me.

  You di
d this, I thought. I forced myself to repeat the words a second time, aiming them not at myself and not at the UNSUB.

  Every instinct I had said that the person who’d marked my cousin for death was the one person I’d loved more than anything—forever and ever, no matter what.

  You wanted me out of Gaither, didn’t you, Mom? You wanted me safe. You wouldn’t bat an eye at trading Kate’s life for mine. You’ve done it before.

  My mother had left her little sister—the sister she’d protected for years—with an abusive father as soon as she’d found out she was pregnant with me. She’d traded Lacey’s future, her safety, for mine.

  You knew that if the ties to our previous cases didn’t work, if those didn’t get me out of Gaither—this would.

  “What are you going to do?” Sloane asked me quietly. We were back at the hotel.

  “Malcolm Lowell is in the wind. We solved the Kyle murders.” I paused, looking out the window at historic Main Street. “My mother knew exactly what I would do.” I swallowed hard. “I’m going to go home.”

  I had one stop to make before leaving Gaither. I’d spent years not knowing if my mother was dead or alive. I’d lived that limbo, unable to mourn, unable to move on.

  Ree Simon deserved to know what had happened to her daughter.

  When we got to the diner, the others split off, giving me the space to do what needed to be done. As Michael, Dean, Lia, and Sloane slid into a booth, Agent Sterling came up beside me. “Are you sure you want to do this alone?”

  I thought of my cousin Kate. We’d never been close. I’d never let her get close. Because I’d been raised to keep people at a distance. Because I was my mother’s daughter.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  Sterling and Judd took seats of their own. Agent Starmans joined them several minutes later. It occurred to me, on some level, to wonder where Celine had gone, but when Ree saw me standing in front of the counter, I did what I could to keep myself in the moment.

  To feel for her what I couldn’t feel for myself.

  After filling cups with coffee for both Sterling and Judd, Ree turned to me. She wiped her hands on her apron and gave me an assessing once-over. “What can I do for you, Cassie?”