All In ((The Naturals #3))

"Are you ready?" Dean asked, his hand on my shoulder. I stared at the tombstone marked with my mother's name a moment longer. For Laurel's sake, the cult needed to think we hadn't put the pieces together. They needed to think that I believed I'd buried my mother. They needed to think that we hadn't read much into the fact that the woman I'd mistaken for Laurel's mother was actually a nanny, a disposable Las Vegas native Nightshade had hired earlier that week. They needed to believe that the FBI had put Laurel into protective custody because of her connection to Nightshade, not her connection to me. We dont kill children. I thought of Beau, wandering the desert, and pushed back the bitter taste in my mouth. “I'm ready," I told Dean. I turned, meeting each of the others eyes, one by one. Home is the people who love you. I was ready to go home. To do whatever it took to find the Masters. To protect Laurel. Forever and ever. To find my mother. Find the Pythia. Find the room. No matter what.

"The Master hired her. To watch me when we came here." Laurel's chubby baby hands went to an old-fashioned locket around her neck. She let me open it. Inside, there was a picture. That's my mommy," Laurel said. Not possible. The necklace. The bones. The blood -it was her blood. I felt the world closing in on me. Because there were two people in the It was recent. The tests said it was her blood. photo, and Laurel looked exactly the same in the picture as she did today. my mother, too. have come back to me. Somehow, some way, if she'd survived- matter what." That's my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was I always knew-I always thought that if she'd survived, she would «Forever and ever," Laurel whispered, each word a knife in my gut. "No Laurel," I said, my voice hoarse. "Where is Mommy?" "In the room." Laurel stared at me and into me. “Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room."

"I'm Cassie," I said. The child said nothing. What's your name?" I asked. She looked down. Beside her on the ground, there was a white origami flower, soaked in blood. "Nine," she whispered. “My name is Nine." A chill ran down my spine, leaving nothing but fury in its wake. You're not a part of them, I thought, fiercely protective. She was just a babyjust a little, little girl. the name the woman had used that day at the fountain. the ground. Her face held no hint of emotion. She didn't flinch at the blood. "Your mommy called you something else," I said, trying to remember "Laurel. Mommy calls me Laurel." She turned to look at the woman. "Don't look at Mommy, Laurel." I moved to block her view. "That's not my mommy." The little girl's tone was dispassionate. me."

Blood. On the walls. On my hand. I feel it. I smell it But this time, there was a body. The woman -strawberry blond hair, younger than I rememberedlay in her own blood, her white dress soaked through. She'd been killed with a knife. Wielded by Nightshade, before he was captured? One of the other Masters? A new Pythia? I didn't know. And for the first time since I'd joined the Naturals program, I wasn't sure I wanted to know. This woman had killed my mother. Whether she'd had a choice, whether it was kill or be killed, whether she'd enjoyed it- I couldn't be sorry she was dead. The little girl sat in a chair, her small legs dangling halfway to the ground. She was staring blankly ahead, no expression on her face.

"Two-one-one-seven." Until Nightshade spoke, I hadn't realized the speaker was still on. At first, I thought he was saying a Fibonacci number, but then he clarified. "If you want to see the woman, you'll find her in room two-one-one-seven." The Pythia chooses to live. The words echoed in my mind. Perhaps one day, that choice will be yours. Room 2117.

There can only be one. The woman," I said. The one I saw with you." My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. “She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother." "We all have choices," Nightshade replies. "The Pythia chooses to live." Why bring me here? I thought, aware, on some level, that my body was shaking. My eyes were wet. Why tell me this? Why give me a glimpse of something I'm not blessed enough to know? "Perhaps someday," Nightshade said, "that choice will be yours, Cassandra."

"I like to think of the Pythia more as Lady Justice," he said. "She is our counsel, our judge and our jury, until her child comes of age. She lives and dies for us and we for her." Lives and dies. Lives and dies. Lives and dies. "You killed my mother," I said. "You people took her. You attacked her You misunderstand." Nightshade made the words sound reasonable, gentle even, when the room around him was charged with an unholy energy. Power. Games. Pain. This was the cult's stock-in-trade.

What did they ask you to do, Beau? What kind of monster were they molding you to be? I couldn't let my mind go down that path. I had to concentrate on the here and now. On Nightshade. "And the little girl?" I said. "The one I saw you with. Is she worthy? Is she the new heir? A true heir?" I took a step forward, toward the glass. "What are you doing to her?" I don't believe in wishing. “Are you her father?" I asked. "The girl has many fathers." That answer senta chill down my spine. "Seven Masters," I said, hoping to jar him into telling me something I didn't know. "The Pythia. And Nine." "All are tested. All must be found worthy."

You dont kill children. That was a rule they lived by. A sacred law. But you have no problems leaving them in the desert to die of their own accord. "What was Beau to you? Why raise him at all, if you were going to turn him out?" Nightshade smiled slightly. “Every dynasty needs its heir." My brain whirred. "You weren't raised the way Beau was." The rest of them, Beau had said, they're recruited as adults. The term Master suggests an apprentice model," I continued. “I'm assuming Masters choose their own replacements-adults, not children. The cycle repeats every twenty-one years. But the ninth member, the one you call Nine Nine is the greatest of us. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation. Your leader, I filled in. Beau hadn't just been born in their walls. He'd been born to lead them. "You left him to die," I said.

"He claims there's an antidote," Judd said. Our guardian didn't specify who "he" was. He didn't have to. Nightshade. antidote?" the number of times I'd seen Nightshade, the time he'd spent watching me. people wanted from her, whatever you wanted her to be. "And what does he want?" Dean asked hoarsely. "In exchange for that I knew the answer-knew it based on the way Judd had said my name, My mother fought, tooth and nail. She resisted whatever it was you I looked from Dean to Judd. He wants me."

I couldn't read Míchael the way he would have been able to read me, but in the second it took him to reply to Lia's question, his expression was enough to knock the breath from my lungs. "Nightshade stuck Briggs with some kind of needle." Michael looked from Lia to Dean to me. "Injected him with something. They don't know what." My mouth went dry and the roaring sound in my ears surged. Poison.

"Guys." Michael stood frozen at the back door. Behind him, I could see Sloane, dark circles ringing her eyes. I knew, then, that there was news. The thudding of my heart, the roar in my ears- knew there was news, and I was terrified to let Michael say a single word. "They got him." Nightshade. The man in the picture. They got him. The woman?" I heard, as if from a distance. My voice. My question. "The little girl?"

Seven Masters. A child. And the child's mother. The woman at the fountain had strawberry blond hair. It would be red in some lights-like my mother's. Nine members. Seven Masters. A woman. A child. "The Pythia was the name given to the Oracle at Delphi," Sloane said. "A priestess at the Temple of Apollo. A prophetess." I thought of the family--the picture-perfect family I'd looked at, knowing to my core that it was something I'd never have.

"Enjoying a bit of light reading ?" The voice echoed through my memory, and this time, I could make out the speaker's face. "You live at Judd's place, right? He and I go way back." "Nightshade," I forced out the word. "T've seen him." Lia looked almost concerned despite herself. "We know." "No," I said. "In Vegas. I've seen him here. Twice. I thought...I thought I was watching him." But maybe-maybe he was watching me. "He had a child with him," I said. There was a woman, too. The girl, she came up next to me at the fountain. She was little-three, four at most. She had a penny in her hand. I asked if she was going to make a wish, and she said..." I couldn't coax my lips into forming the words. Dean formed them for me. "I don't believe in wishing."

"Seven Masters." Sloane appeared in the doorway, as if the mere mention of numbers had called her to us. "Seven circles. Seven ways of killing." I pulled my eyes from the screen to look at Sloane. "I always wondered why there were only seven methods," she said, her eyes swollen, her face pale. "Instead of nine." Three. Three times three. Three times three times three-but only seven ways to kill. Because this group-whatever it was, however long it had been around -had nine members at a time. Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine.

Poison. "Breathe," Dean repeated. "We need help in here!" Sterling was screaming. Beau is screaming, and Sterling is screaming-and finally, the convulsions stopped. Finally, Beau was still. Seven small circles forming a heptagon around a cross. I forced myself to suck in a breath. And then another and another. Beau's cracked lips moved. He looked at Briggs in one final moment of clarity. "I don't," he struggled to say. "I don't wish I was Nine." He sounded like a child. "You've been poisoned," Briggs told him. "You need to tell us "I don't believe in wishing," Beau murmured. And then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he died.

"You have no idea what I am," Beau said, his voice shaking with emotion. You have no idea what I'm capable of. Neither do they. No one knows." His voice rose with each word. “I was born for this. The rest of them, they're recruited as adults, but number nine is always born within their wals. The child of the brotherhood and the Pythia blood of their blood. Nine." "Nine is a name to him," Dean said. "A title. Tell him it's not his. Tell him he doesn't deserve it." "You're not Nine," Sterling said. "You're never going to be Nine." Beau lifted cuffed hands to his own collar. He latched his fingers over his shirt and pulled it roughly off his shoulder. Underneath, etched onto his chest, was a series of jagged cuts, halfway healed and on their way to a scar. Seven small circles forming a heptagon around a cross. I stopped breathing. That symbol-I knew that symbol.

"He was killing in a patern." Sloane spoke suddenly, her whisper a match for Tory's. "It was going to end in the Majesty's theater. February thirteenth, the theaterthat was where it was going to end." "You matter to our killer, Tory." Dean bowed his head. “It was always going to be youjust like it had to be one of your biggest rivals, just like it had to be Camille, just like it had to be a young girl with dark hair that first night." "Just like it had to be Aaron," Tory choked out, her voice no longer a whisper. Michael caught my gaze. He held up a pad of paper. On the verge, it said. I gave a nod to show that I understood. Whatever we said next had the potential to push her one way or the other to believe or fight back against every word we said, to help us nail Beau or throw up a wall. I chose my words carefully. “Have you ever seen Beau draw a spiral?" That was a gamble, but the violence we'd seen these past few days was years in the making. If our profile was right, if Beau had been working toward this for years, if his sick needs and plan could be traced back to an early trauma...You planned and you dreamed and you practiced. You never let yourself forget. "Oh. God" Tory broke. I could hear the exact moment she shattered. I

"Plastic." Judd had never weighed in on one of our cases before. He wasn't FBI, He wasn't a Natural. But he was a former marine. "Something disposable. You wrap the knife in it, dispose of it separately." That 's it. My heart skipped a beat. That's our smoking gun. "So where did I dispose of it?" Dean asked. Not a trash can the police might look there. I forced myself to back up, to walk through it step by step. You make your way through the crowd- to Aaron. You come up behind him. You slice the knife across his neck quick. No hesitation. No remorse. You peel the plastic off, drop the blade. Thirty seconds. Forty seconds. How long has it been? How long do you have to make your way back to where you were when the lights went out? You push your way through the crowd. "The crowd," I said out loud. Dean understood before the others. "If I'm a killer who thinks of every contingency, I don't throw the evidence away. I let someone else do it for me.... "Preferably after they get home," I finished.

"Hypothetically speaking," Lia said to Judd, "if Sloane were hacking the Majesty's security feed, would you want to know?" Judd looked at Sloane for several seconds. Then he walked over to her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She wont stop. She can't. You know that. His mouth set into a firm line, Judd turned back to Lia. "No," he grunted. "If Sloane were illegally hacking her father's casino, I would not want to know." Then he glanced back at Dean and Michael and me. "But, hypothetically speaking, what can I do to help?"

What better way to avoid suspicion than being arrested for the crimes and then exculpated and released? You wrote the wrong number on his wrist. Misdirection. "Cassie?" Agent Sterling said again. On the flor, Sloane rocked back and forth, shuddering in Lia's arms. I told Agent Sterling what she needed to hear. “I'm sure.

We'd been going off the assumption that if given a choice, the UNSUB would revert to the original plan, targeting Michael. But if he'd discovered his intended victim had left Las Vegas, if he'd changed the plan, if he'd already found a way of regaining power and control- "Aaron," I told Agent Sterling. Those words were met with silence. The UNSUB is Beau Donovan, and he's targeting Aaron Shaw," I plowed on. Michael was only ever a stand-in. Beau saw him with Lia, and it was like looking at Aaron with Tory. If Beau thought, even briefly, that Michael wasn't an option, he'd compensate by going for the real thing."

Nine seats at the table. Three seconds until it begins. Three...two...and -the power goes off. Just like you planned. No lights. You walk with purpose. You sidle up behind number five. You catch him And then you start to slice. Chaos. Just like you planned. in a chokehold and press the blade to his throat.

The pattern ends in the Majesty theater. The final kill. The greatest sacrifice. Nightshade's ninth kill had been Scarlett. "Yours," I said out loud, "was always going to be Tory." The Majesty. Tory. Planning ten steps ahead I knew who the killer was. My fingers scrambled for the phone. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Sterling.