The Naturals The Naturals #1

"So take whatever time you need. Figure out how you feel. Figure out if Dean makes you feel the way I do, if he'll ever let you in, and if you want him to, because the next time my lips touch yours, the next time your hands are buried in my hair the only person you're going to be thinking about is me."

A killer who was still out there. A killer who not even a psychotic, obsessive FBI agent had been able to find. Since joining the program, I'd gained and lost a mentor and seen my mother's only other living relative shot dead. I'd helped take down a killer who'd been re-creating my mother's death for years -but I was still no closer to finding the monster who'd actually killed her. I might never get answers. They might never find her body.

Michael had months of physical rehabilitation ahead of him. The doctors said he might never walk without a limp again. Dean had barely said a word to me. Sloane couldn't talk about anything other than the absolute unlikelihood of a serial killer being able to pass the psych evals and background check necessary to join the FBI, even under an assumed name. And I was dealing with the fact that Lacey Locke, née Hobbes, was my aunt. Her story had checked out. They'd grown up in hell. My mother had gotten out. Lacey hadn't.

"Did you really think you could win?" she asked. "Did you think you Behind her, Michael had the gun in his hand. He rolled onto his side. "I never expected you to believe me," I said. "0r to let me live. I just Her eyes met mine. They widened. A gunshot went off. Then two, could fool me?" He aimed. needed you to listen." then three, four, five. And my aunt Lacey fell to the floor, her body splayed out next to Genevieve. Dead.

"You joined the FBI because you wanted to find my mother's killer." Not because she was upset that my mom was dead. Because she'd wanted to be the one to kill her. "I changed my name. I studied. I planned. I passed the psych exams with flying colors. Even once Briggs andI started working together and he brought me in on the Naturals program, no one really saw me. They only saw what I wanted them to see. Lia never caught me in a lie. Michael never saw a hint of unsavory emotion. And Dean was like family to him."

We'd known that the UNSUB was fixated on my mother. We just hadn't known why. "She was my sister, and she just left me there. She knew what he was like after Mama left. She knew what he would do to me once she was gone, and she left anyway. Because of you. Because Daddy was right, and Lorelai was a little whore. She did all the wrong things, and when I found out she was pregnant with that air force boy's baby..." Locke was completely caught up in the memory. I eyed her gun on the floor, wondering if I could reach it in time. "I thought that Daddy would kill her if he knew. I wasn't even supposed to know, but I found out, and he found out, and he wasn't even angry! He didn't slit her throat, didn't carve up her pretty little face until the boys didn't want her anymore. She was pregnant, and he was happy. And then she left. In the middle of the night.

Dean aims his gun at you, but you're not frightened. You've seen inside this boy's head. You know exactly what to say, exactly how to play him. You're the one who told him to bring the gun. You're the one who made sure that no one knew that he and Cassie were leaving the house. You're the one who brought them here. It's all part of the plan-and Dean is just one more body, one more thing standing between you and your heart's desire. Cassie. Lorelai 's daughter. You told her not to do anything stupid. She and Dean were supposed to come alone. You're going to have to punish her for that.

My ears ringing, my gut twisting, bile rising in my throat, I tried to figure out which gun had gone off. Michael's hand was by his side. His mouth opened in a tiny O, and I watched with horror as red blossomed across his pale blue shirt. He'd been hit. Twice. Once in the shoulder. Once in the leg. His eyes rolled back in his head. The gun dropped from his fingertips. He fell. I turned to see Dean with the gun still in his hand. He was aiming at me. No. No no no no no no no. And that was when I hearda voice behind me and realized that Dear sn't the one holding the gun that had gone off. He wasn't aiming at me. He was aiming at the person standing behind me. The one who'd shot Michael. He was aiming at Special Agent Lacey Locke.

Michael's gaze wavered. For the first time, he looked from Dean to me, andI saw it the moment he realized that I wasn't afraid of Dean. That I was afraid of him. "You were gone. Dean was gone. One of Briggs's guns was gone." Michael took a ragged breath. The guarded expression fell from his face, bit by bit, until I was looking at the boy I'd kissed: confused and hurting, longing for me, terrified for me, breakable. "I would never hurt you, Cassie."

What are you doing here?" I asked. Looking at him, at the gun, I felt like the stupid girl in the horror movie, the one who couldn't see what was right in front of her face. The one who went to check on the radiator in the basement when there was a masked murderer on the loose. Michael was here. Michael had a gun. The UNSUB had a source on the inside. No. "Why do you have a gun?" I asked dumbly. I couldn't keep from taking a step toward Michael, even though I couldn't quite read the look on his face. In front of me, Dean raised his right arm, gun in hand. “Put it down, Townsend."

Dean loaded one of the guns and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. He left the other one where it was and shut the safe. Two minutes later, we'd made it to the basement, and a minute after that, we were on our way to the safe house.

"Get to Dean and get out of the house, Cassie. Don't let anyone else see you leave. I'll send the coordinates of our DC safe house. Briggs and I will meet you there." I nodded, knowing that she couldn't see me, but unable to form intelligible words. "Stay. Calm." I nodded again and finally managed to say, "Okay." You can do this." Agent Locke said. You and Dean are an incredible team, and I'm not going to let anything happen to either of you."

There was a chance that the UNSUB knew about the program. The only people who would have been able to reconstruct my mother's crime scene so exactly, the only people who would have known about the blood on the light switch, were people who had access to the crime-scene photos. And someone had left a tube of my mother's favorite lipstick on Lia's bed. Inside our house.

The UNSUB responsible for the corpse I'd seen today was meticulous. Methodical. The type who needed to be in control and always had a plan. The person who'd killed my mother was none of those things. How is that even possible? I wondered. "Look at the light switches." "There's a single smear of blood on the light switch and plate in both photos," Sloane said. “But in this one"she gestured to the photo of the scene today"the blood is on the top of the switch. And in this one, it's on the bottom." "And the translation, for those of us who don't spend hours working on physical simulations in the basement?" Lia asked. "In one of the photos, the light switch got smeared with blood when someone with bloody hands turned it off," Sloane said. "But in the other one, it happened when the light was turned on.

Michael grabbed my neck. He pulled me toward him. When Agent Starmans glanced in the room, all he saw was Michael and me. Kissing. The kiss in the pool was nothing compared to this. Then, our lips had barely brushed. Now, my lips were opening. Our mouths were crushed together. His hand traveled from my neck down to my lower back. My lips tingled, and I leaned into the kiss, shifting my body until I could feel the heat from his in my arms, my chest, my stomach.

The UNSUB didn't kill her here." Locke was the first one who said it out loud. "There's virtually no blood pooled around the body. She was killed somewhere else." You killed her. You brought her here. You painted the room in blood. "For a good time, call Lorelai," I murmured. "Cassie?" Agent Locke raised an eyebrow at me. I answered the question that went along with the eyebrow raise. "She's just a prop. This is a set. This entire thing was staged to look like my mother's death. Exactly like it." My stomach twisted sharply.

Something about this didn't feel right. "She's left-handed." I turned to look at Dean, and he continued, “Victim's wearing her watch on her right hand, and her manicure is more chipped on her left hand than her right," he said. "Was your mother left-handed, Cassie?" I shook my head and realized where he was going with this. "They wouldn't have fought off an attacker in the same way," I said.

You don't need to see this, Cassie," he said. I could smell it-not rotten, not yet, but coppery: rust with just a hint of decay. I pushed past Briggs. He let me. The room was rectangular. There was blood smeared across the light switch, blood pooled near the door. The entire left-hand side of the room was lined with miOrs, like a dance studio. Like my mother's dressing room.

Kola and Thorn. "Symbolism?" Dean asked me, following my thoughts exactly. "An anagram?" Sloane had that faraway look in her eye, the same "Kola. Cola. Drinking. Thorn. Rose. Blood.." one she'd gotten the day I met her, kneeling over a pile of glass. "Ankh onto lard. Hot nodal nark. Land rand hook. Oak land north." North Oakland," Dean cut in. "That's in Arlington." For a good time, call Lorelai. Guaranteed plus one. North Oakland.

"Lorelai. What?" The sound of my mother's name was like a bucket of ice water thrown directly into my face. "567-3524 is the telephone number that corresponds to the word Lorelai. It also spells lose-lag, lop-flag, and Jose-jag, but the only seven- letter, single-word possibility "

The UNSUB left us a message," I said, but what I really meant was that he'd left me a message. I scrawled the words onto the page, then handed it to Briggs. "For a good time, call 567-3524. Guaranteed plus one. Kola and Thorn." Briggs lifted his eyes from the page to meet mine. "You're sure this is from the UNSUB?"

It took me a moment to realize that Dean was speaking from the UNSUB's perspective. He took a step toward me, making the small space feel even smaller. I stumbled backward, but there was nowhere to go. "Sorry," he said, holding his hands up. Channeling Genevieve, I felt my lips curl into a loopy smile. After all, this was a club, and he was kind of cute... chloroformed you." his. "You didn't." A second later, Dean had his hand over my mouth. "I could have I twisted out of his hold, all too aware of how close my body was to "No," he agreed, his eyes on mine. "I didn't." This time, he wrapped a hand around my waist. I leaned into him. Maybe I'm not just a little drunk," I said. "Maybe I'm drunker thanI should be."

Take her with you to the club, Briggs," the director grunted. "If anyone asks, she's a witness." He turned to me. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, Cassandra." I knew that. I also knew that I did want to