“This was a mistake.” Sterling waited until the two of us were ensconced in the car before saying those words.
“Going with the guard?” I asked.
“Bringing you here. Bringing Dean here. Staying in that room, watching that. All of it.” When Sterling said all of it, I got the sense that she wasn’t just talking about the way that Briggs and the director had chosen to handle this case. She meant the life Dean was living. The Naturals program. All of it.
“It isn’t the same,” I told her. “What we do as a team, and what they’re having Dean do in there with his father—it’s not the same.” Putting Dean in a room with Daniel Redding ripped open all the old scars, every wound that man had inflicted on Dean’s psyche.
That wasn’t what this program was. That wasn’t what we did. “You should have seen Dean when we got the call that the FBI had
recovered Mackenzie McBride,” I said, thinking of that Dean. Our Dean. “He didn’t just smile. He beamed. Did you know he has dimples?”
Agent Sterling didn’t reply.
“Dean was never going to have a normal childhood.” I wasn’t sure why it felt so important to make her understand that. “There are things you don’t come back from. Normal’s not an option, for any of us.” I thought of what Sloane had said. “If we’d had normal childhoods, we wouldn’t be Naturals.”
Agent Sterling finally turned to look at me. “Are we talking about Dean’s father or your mother?” She let that question sink in. “I’ve read your file, Cassie.”
“I’m Cassie now?” I asked. She wrinkled her forehead. I elaborated. “You’ve called me Cassandra since you showed up.”
“Do you want me to keep calling you by your full name?”
“No.” I paused. “But you want to keep calling me by it. You don’t like nicknames. They bring you closer to people.”
Sterling sucked in a breath. “You’re going to have to learn to stop that,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Most people don’t like being profiled. Some things are better left unsaid.” She paused. “Where were you last night?”
My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. The question came out of nowhere.
I played dumb. “What do you mean?” She’d threatened the program when all Sloane had done was make use of the basement crime sets. If she knew what Lia, Michael, and I had done the night before, there was no telling what she might do.
“You think that I dislike you.” Sterling was using her profiler voice, getting into my head. “You see me as the enemy, but I am not your enemy, Cassie.”
“You have a problem with this program.” I paused. “I don’t know why you even took this job. You have a problem with what Briggs is doing here, and you have a problem with me.”
I expected her to deny it. She surprised me. “My problem with you,” she said, enunciating each word, “is that you don’t do what you’re told. All the instincts in the world are worthless if you can’t work within the system.
Briggs never understood that, and neither do you.”
“You’re talking about what happened last summer.” I didn’t want to be having this conversation, but there was no way out. I couldn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t get away from her assessing stare. “I get it. Dean got hurt.
Michael got hurt. Because of me.”
“Where were you last night?” Agent Sterling asked again. I didn’t answer her. “Last summer, you and your friends hacked a secured drive and read through the case files for no reason, as far as I can tell, other than the fact that you were bored. Even after Briggs warned you to back off, you had no intention of doing it. Eventually, the killer made contact.” She didn’t give me time to recover from that brutal recitation of events. “You wanted in on the case. Your Agent Locke obliged.”
“So it’s my fault,” I said, angry, trying not to cry, terrified that she was right. “The people Locke killed, just to send me their hair in boxes. The girl she kidnapped. The fact that she shot Michael. That’s all on me.”
“No.” Sterling’s voice was low and uncompromising. “None of that was your fault, Cassie, but for the rest of your life, you will wonder if it was. It will keep you up late at night. It will haunt you. It will never leave. I know that sometimes you wonder if I look at you and see your aunt, but that’s not it. Dean’s not his father. I’m not mine. If I thought you were anything like the woman who called herself Lacey Locke, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Then why are you having this conversation with me?” I asked. “You say that I don’t know how to work within the system, but don’t try to tell me that the others do. Lia? Michael? Even Sloane. You don’t look at them the way you look at me.”
“Because they’re not me.” Agent Sterling’s words seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the car. “I didn’t read your file and see your aunt, Cassie.” She clamped her jaw shut. By the time she finally continued, I’d almost convinced myself that I’d misheard her. “When you break the rules, when
you start telling yourself that the end justifies the means, people get hurt. Protocol saves lives.” She ran a hand over the back of her neck. Midday, with no air-conditioning, the temperature in the car was approaching stifling.
“You want to know why you, in particular, concern me, Cassie? You’re the one who really feels things. Michael, Lia, Dean—they learned very early in life to shut down their emotions like that. They’re not used to letting people in. They won’t feel the need to put their own necks on the line every single time. Sloane cares, but she deals in facts, not emotions. But you? You won’t ever be able to stop caring. For you, it will always be about the victims and their families. It will always be personal.”
I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. But then I thought of Mackenzie McBride, and I knew that Agent Sterling was right. Every case I worked would be personal. I would always want justice for the victims. I would do whatever it took to save just one life, the way that I wished that someone had saved my mother’s.
“I’m glad you were able to be here for Dean today, Cassie. He needs someone, especially now—but if you’re serious about doing what we do, what I do, emotions are a luxury you cannot afford. Guilt, anger, empathy, being willing to do anything to save a life—that’s a recipe for getting someone killed.”
At some point before she’d left the FBI, she’d lost someone. Because she’d gotten emotionally involved in a case. Because in the heat of battle, she’d broken the rules.
“I need to know where you were last night.” She was like a broken record. “I’m giving you a chance to make a good decision here. I suggest you take it.”
Part of me wanted to tell her, but this wasn’t just my secret. It was also Michael’s and Lia’s.
“Briggs doesn’t know you snuck out. Neither does Judd.” Sterling let the implied threat hang in the air. “I’m betting you’ve never seen Judd really angry. I have. I don’t recommend it.”
When I didn’t reply, Agent Sterling went silent. The temperature in the car was becoming unbearable. “You’re making a bad decision here, Cassie.” I said nothing, and her eyes narrowed. “Just tell me this,” she said. “Is there anything I should know?”
I caught my bottom lip in my teeth and thought of Dean and the lengths he was going to, to get even the smallest bit of information out of his father.
“Emerson was involved with her professor,” I said finally. I owed it to Dean to share that information. “The one who was writing a book about Dean’s dad.”
Agent Sterling slipped off her jacket. Clearly, the heat was getting to her, too. “Thank you,” she said, turning in her seat to face me. “But listen and listen well: when I told you to stay away from this case, I meant it. The next time you take so much as a step out of Quantico without my permission, I’ll have you fitted for an ankle tracker.”
I barely heard the threat. I didn’t reply. I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t even think them.
When Agent Sterling had removed her jacket, she’d dislodged her shirt slightly. It gapped in the front, giving me a view of the skin underneath.
There was a scar just under her collarbone.
A brand, in the shape of the letter R.
