Twelve

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “In reality,” I continued, opening my eyes to his deep brown ones, “Nichols convinced himself that he had saved his sister. He was there for her, in the end. He told her it was okay. He let her go.”

  Dean’s head tilted down toward mine. “He gave her what mercy he could.”

  Dean and I had always acknowledged that to do what we did, a person needed a bit of monster in them. That was why he understood Nichols, why I could see the motive and understand it myself.

  “I killed my mother.” I’d said those words to Mackenzie’s psychologist. I could say them to Dean now. “I was holding the knife. I felt it go into her chest.”

  “You couldn’t stop it,” Dean told me. “The knife was in your hands. Her fingers wrapped around yours.”

  I laid my hand on his chest. There was a spot, just inside the rib cage…

  “You need to talk to someone,” Dean told me.

  I closed my eyes. “I know.” For almost a minute, I sat there, listening to the sound of his heart, feeling it beat beneath my palm.

  “Best part of this case.” Dean always knew exactly when I’d reached my limit, exactly how to distract me. He laid his hand on my chest. I could feel the warmth of it through my thin white T-shirt. I could feel him feeling my heartbeat.

  “The best part of this case was Mackenzie.” I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “Before she came in—she danced.”

  She was going to survive, just like she always had.

  “You talked to her parents?” Dean asked.

  I nodded. “She’ll come to us when she’s fifteen—if she still wants to.”

  Mackenzie’s parents were hedging their bets on their daughter joining the Naturals program, but the profiler in me knew that their daughter wouldn’t change her mind about this. She’d spend the next three years convincing them that normal wasn’t an option.

  Not for her.

  Not anymore.

  Without warning, Dean’s mouth descended over mine. I rose up to meet him, my hands on either side of his face, my legs wrapping themselves around his body.

  I wasn’t normal.

  Neither was he.

  “The new girl can’t have my room.” The voice that issued that statement was completely matter-of-fact and utterly unbothered by what Dean and I were up to on the bed.

  We split apart.

  Laurel tilted her head to one side. “Do you prefer the screams,” she asked Dean softly, “or the blood?”

  There was a single beat of silence, and then Lia sauntered into the room behind my little sister.

  “I give that a nine out of ten for delivery,” Lia told Laurel. “But a ten for creepy content.”

  Laurel shrugged, her expression unchanging. “I try.”

  Most of the time, Laurel tried not to be creepy—and failed. But my sister was strangely at ease with Lia, who was already training her to use her unnatural solemnity to her advantage and to spot lies.

  “The new girl can’t have my room when she gets here,” Laurel repeated emphatically. “I don’t care if it’s not for another three years.”

  Technically, my grandmother was the one raising my sister. Technically, our base of operations was not Laurel’s house. Technically, she didn’t have a room here, but when we’d returned from this case, we’d found the bedroom Laurel sometimes stayed in completely decorated with ponies.

  I belong here. That was what the expression on Laurel’s tiny face said. Her mouth, in contrast, addressed Dean. “I was just messing with you about the blood.” She paused. “And the screams.”

  I glanced at Lia, and she shrugged, which I took to mean that statement was mostly true.

  “Come on, short stuff.” Lia tweaked the end of Laurel’s ponytail. “Let’s leave Angsty and the Brood here to their special alone time, and I’ll teach you how to convince your teacher that the dog really did eat your homework.”

  Before Lia could actually leave Dean and me to our own devices, her cell phone rang.

  “Video call,” she told us. “It’s Sloane.”

  It took all of two seconds before Lia had helped herself to a slice of the bed. The moment she did, Laurel took off.

  “Hey, Sloane.” Lia answered and angled the phone’s screen so that Dean and I could see.

  “The nine millimeter Luger was designed by a German weapons manufacturer in 1902.” Sloane’s greeting was unconventional, if not entirely unexpected. “In 2015, the FBI shifted to using a one-hundred-and-forty-seven grain nine millimeter Gold Dot G2 for ammunition.”

  Lia took one for the team and responded to that statement. “Either you’re in the middle of weapons training, or you’ve spent the past forty-eight hours with Celine.”

  Special Agent Delacroix had fired a shot in the line of duty. She’d saved Mackenzie’s life—and taken the life of a killer. There was a process that had to be followed in the wake of an event like that. Celine had to be cleared—legally and psychologically—before she could return to the field.

  “Celine needs me.” Sloane fiddled with something, though I couldn’t quite make out what she held between her fingers. “No one has ever needed me before.”

  “We all need you,” Dean told her. Sloane was our light in the darkness.

  “Dean,” Sloane said very seriously, “I hope this is not oversharing, but Celine needs me in a very different way.” Knowing Sloane, I half expected her to share exactly what that very different way entailed—possibly with graphs, almost certainly with precise description of angles and body parts—but she spared us the explicit details and opted instead for another statistic. “Did you know that forty-six percent of Texans meditate at least once a week?”

  “You don’t say.” Lia grinned.

  Sloane frowned into the camera. “I just did say. And, Cassie? I looked into those brothers in Texas, and the thing is, they aren’t.”

  “Aren’t brothers?” I asked.

  “Aren’t in Texas,” Sloane corrected. “At least, they’re not there anymore. The whole family picked up and moved with no warning. Even weirder? I can’t figure out where they went.”

  “And if you can’t figure it out…” Michael plopped down beside Sloane and squeezed into the frame. “There’s a very good chance they’re off the grid.”

  “A ninety-seven point four percent chance,” Sloane clarified.

  “Exactly,” Michael declared. “Now, on a somewhat unrelated note: adorable onesies for the Sterling-Briggs Wonder Twins, yay or nay?”

  He held up what appeared to be a custom-made infant onesie emblazoned with the words SPECIAL AGENT BABY.

  “I was thinking of putting something inappropriate, but humorous and endearing, on the back,” he clarified.

  There were nine and a half weeks left until Michael and Sloane would be home. Nine and a half weeks before I could look at Dean and know he wasn’t leaving the next day.

  Three years until Mackenzie would join the program.

  Who knew how long to find the brothers.

  But Briggs and Sterling’s twins were expected to make their arrival early—and that meant any day.

  “I vote yes on the onesies,” I declared.

  “All in favor?” Sloane asked formally.

  I leaned back against Dean, and Lia leaned against me before we all chorused in unison, “Aye.”

  “This one’s all you, Rodriguez.”

  “No way. I took the drunk tank after the Bison Day parade.”

  “Bison Day? Try Oktoberfest at the senior citizen center.”

  “And who got stuck with the biter the next day?”

  Officer Macalister Dodd—Mackie to his friends—had the general sense that it would not be prudent to interrupt the back-and-forth between the two more senior Magnolia County police officers arguing in the bullpen. Rodriguez and O’Connell had both clocked five years on the force.

  This was Mackie’s second week.

  “I’ve got three letters and one word for you, Rodriguez: PTA brawl.”

  Mackie sh
ifted his weight slightly from his right leg to his left. Big mistake. In unison, Rodriguez and O’Connell turned to look at him.

  “Rookie!”

  Never had two police officers been so delighted to see a third. Mackie set his mouth into a grim line and squared his shoulders.

  “What have we got?” he said gruffly. “Drunk and disorderly? Domestic disturbance?”

  In answer, O’Connell clapped him on the shoulder and steered him toward the holding cell. “Godspeed, rookie.”

  As they rounded the corner, Mackie expected to see a perp: belligerent, possibly on the burly side. Instead, he saw four teenage girls wearing elbow-length gloves and what appeared to be ball gowns.

  White ball gowns.

  “What the hell is this?” Mackie asked.

  Rodriguez lowered his voice. “This is what we call a B.Y.H.”

  “B.Y.H.?” Mackie glanced back at the girls. One of them was standing primly, her gloved hands folded in front of her body. The girl next to her was crying daintily and wheezing something that sounded suspiciously like the Lord’s prayer. The third girl stared straight at Mackie, the edges of her pink-glossed lips quirking slowly upward as she raked her gaze over his body.

  And the fourth girl?

  She was picking the lock.

  The other officers turned to leave.

  “Rodriguez?” Mackie called after them. “O’Connell?”

  No response.

  “What’s a B.Y.H.?”

  The girl who’d been assessing him took a step forward. She batted her eyelashes at Mackie and offered him a sweet-tea smile.

  “Why, officer,” she said. “Bless your heart.”

  Catcalling me was a mistake that most of the customers and mechanics at Big Jim’s Garage only made once. Unfortunately, the owner of this particular Dodge Ram was the type of person who put his paycheck into souping up a Dodge Ram. That—and the urinating stick figure on his back window—was pretty much the only forewarning I needed about the way this was about to go down.

  People were fundamentally predictable. If you stopped expecting them to surprise you, they couldn’t disappoint.

  And speaking of disappointment… I turned my attention from the Ram’s engine to the Ram’s owner, who apparently considered whistling at a girl to be a compliment, and commenting on the shape of her ass to be the absolute height of courtship.

  “It’s times like this,” I told him, “that you have to ask yourself: Is it wise to sexually harass someone who has both wire cutters and access to your brake lines?”

  The man blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. And then he leaned forward. “Honey, you can access my brake lines any time you want.”

  If you know what I mean, I added silently. In three…two…

  “If you know what I mean.”

  “It’s times like this,” I said meditatively, “that you have to ask yourself: Is it wise to offer to bare your man-parts for someone who is both patently uninterested and holding wire cutters?”

  “Sawyer!” Big Jim intervened before I could so much as give a snip of the wire cutters in a southward direction. “I’ve got this one.”

  I’d started badgering Big Jim to let me get my hands greasy when I was twelve. He almost certainly knew that I’d already fixed the Ram and that if he left me to my own devices, this wouldn’t end well.

  For the customer.

  “Aw hell, Big Jim,” the man complained. “We were just having fun.”

  I’d spent most of my childhood going from one obsessive interest to another. Car engines had been one of them. Before that, it had been telenovelas, and afterward, I’d spent a year reading everything I could find about medieval weapons.

  “You don’t mind a little fun, do you, sweetheart?” Mr. Souped-Up Dodge Ram clapped a hand onto my shoulder and compounded his sins by squeezing my neck.

  Big Jim groaned as I turned my full attention to the real charmer beside me.

  “Allow me to quote for you,” I said in an absolute deadpan, “from Sayforth’s Encyclopedia of Archaic Torture.”

  One of the finer points of chivalry south of the Mason-Dixon Line was that men like Big Jim Thompson didn’t fire girls like me no matter how explicitly we described alligator shears to customers in want of castration.

  Fairly certain I’d ensured the Ram’s owner wouldn’t make the same mistake a third time, I stopped by The Holler on the way home to pick up my mom’s tips from the night before.

  “How’s trouble?” My mom’s boss was named Trick. He had five children, eighteen grandchildren, and at least three visible scars from breaking up bar fights. He’d greeted me the exact same way every time he’d seen me since I was four.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said.

  “Here for your mom’s tips?” That question came from Trick’s oldest grandson, who was restocking the liquor behind the bar. This was a family business in a family town. The entire population was just over eight thousand. You couldn’t throw a rock without it bouncing off three people who were related to each other.

  And then there was my mom—and me.

  “Here for tips,” I confirmed. My mom wasn’t exactly known for her financial acumen or the steadfastness with which she made it home after a late shift. I’d been balancing our household budget since I was nine—around the same time that I’d developed sequential interests in lock-picking, the Westminster Dog Show, and fixing the perfect martini.

  “Here you go, sweetheart.” Trick handed me an envelope that was thicker than I’d expected. “Don’t blow it all in one place.”

  I snorted. The money would go to rent and food. I wasn’t exactly the type to party. I might, in fact, have had a bit of a reputation for being antisocial.

  See also: my willingness to threaten castration.

  Before Trick could issue an invitation for me to join the whole family at his daughter-in-law’s house for dinner, I made my excuses and ducked out of the bar. Home sweet home was only two blocks over and one block up. Technically, our house was a one-bedroom, but we’d walled off two-thirds of the living room with dollar-store shower curtains when I was nine.

  “Mom?” I called out as I stepped over the threshold. There was an element of ritual to calling her name, even when she wasn’t home. Even if she was on a bender—or if she’d fallen for a new man, experienced another religious conversion, or developed a deep-seated need to commune with her better angels under the watchful eyes of a roadside psychic.

  I’d come by my habit of hopping from one interest to the next honestly, even if her restlessness was less focused and a little more self-destructive than my own.

  Almost on cue, my cell phone rang. I answered.

  “Baby, you will not believe what happened last night.” My mom never bothered with salutations.

  “Are you still in the continental United States, are you in need of bail money, and do I have a new daddy?”

  My mom laughed. “You’re my everything. You know that, right?”

  “I know that we’re almost out of milk,” I replied, removing the carton from the fridge and taking a swig. “And I know that someone was an excellent tipper last night.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I’d guessed right this time. It was a guy, and she’d met him at The Holler the night before.

  “You’ll be okay, won’t you?” she asked softly. “Just for a few days?”

  I was a big believer in absolute honesty: say what you mean, mean what you say, and don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.

  But it was different with my mom.

  “I reserve the right to assess the symmetry of his features and the cheesiness of his pickup lines when you get back.”

  “Sawyer.” My mom was serious—or at least as serious as she got.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I always am.”

  She was quiet for several seconds. Ellie Taft was many things, but above all, she was someone who’d tried as hard as she could for as long
as she could—for me.

  “Sawyer,” she said quietly. “I love you.”

  I knew my line, had known it since my brief obsession with the most quotable movie lines of all time when I was five. “I know.”

  I hung up the phone before she could. I was halfway to finishing off the milk when the front door—in desperate need of both WD-40 and a new lock—creaked open. I turned toward the sound, running the algorithm to determine who might be dropping by unannounced.

  Doris from next door lost her cat an average of 1.2 times per week.

  Big Jim and Trick had matching habits of checking up on me, like they couldn’t remember I was eighteen, not eight.

  The guy with the Dodge Ram. He could have followed me. That wasn’t a thought so much as instinct. My hand hovered over the knife drawer as a figure stepped into the house.

  “I do hope your mother buys Wūsthof,” the intruder commented, observing the position of my hand. “Wūsthof knives are just so much sharper than generic.”

  I blinked, but when my eyes opened again, the woman was still standing there, coiffed within an inch of her life and be-suited in a blue silk jacket and matching skirt that made me wonder if she’d mistaken our decades-old house for a charitable luncheon. The stranger said nothing to indicate why she’d let herself in or how she could justify sounding more dismayed at the idea of my mom having purchased off-brand knives than the prospect that I might be preparing to draw one.

  “You favor your mother,” she commented.

  I wasn’t sure how she expected me to reply to that statement, so I went with my gut. “You look like a bichon frise.”

  “Pardon me?”

  It’s a breed of dog that looks like a very small, very sturdy powder puff. Since absolute honesty didn’t require that I say every thought that crossed my mind, I opted for a modified truth. “You look like your haircut cost more than my car.”

  The woman—I put her age in her early sixties—tilted her head slightly to one side. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”