We found Michael in the basement. When the FBI had purchased the house that served as our base of operations, they’d converted the bottom floor into a lab. Model crime scenes lined the walls. A quick scan of the room told me that Michael hadn’t set anything on fire.
Yet.
Instead, Michael stood at the far end of the room, facing a wall that had been papered from ceiling to floor with photographs. The Masters’ victims. I’d spent hundreds of hours down here, staring at that wall the way Michael was now. As I came to stand beside him, my gaze went automatically to two photos set apart from the rest.
One was a picture of a skeleton the authorities had found buried at a crossroads. The other was a photograph of my mother, taken shortly before she’d disappeared. When the police had uncovered the remains in the first picture, the working theory had been that they were my mom’s. Eventually, we’d discovered that my mother was alive—and that she was the one who’d killed our Jane Doe.
All are tested, a voice said from somewhere in my memory. All must be found worthy.
That was what one of the Masters, a serial killer known as Nightshade, had told me when we’d captured him. The Pythia was forced to prove her worth by fighting her predecessor—to the death.
Masters and apprentices, I could hear Daniel Redding saying lightly,
rituals and rules, and at the center of it all, a woman.
Dean laid a hand on my shoulder. I forced myself to turn and meet his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t see the naked vulnerability in mine.
Casting a glance at Dean and me, Lia walked up behind Michael and snaked an arm around his stomach, pulling him close. Dean narrowed his eyes at the two of them.
“We’re on again,” Lia informed us. “In a very big—and, might I add, overtly physical—way.”
I knew better than to take Lia at her word, but Sloane played right into her hands. “Since when?”
Michael never tore his gaze from the wall. “Remember when Lia slammed me up against that wall in Vegas?”
It occurred to me then that Lia might not be lying. “You’ve been together since Vegas, and none of us knew?” I tried to wrap my mind around that. “You live in a house with three profilers and a marine sniper. How—”
“Stealth, deception, and an excellent sense of balance,” Michael said, preempting the question. Then he glanced at Lia. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.”
“The weight of our treachery was weighing on my soul,” Lia deadpanned.
In other words: she wanted to distract Dean from thinking too hard about what was going on with me, and if she could also take Michael’s mind off the chain of events that had brought him down here, all the better.
“I’m not really in the mood to be distracted,” Michael commented. He knew Lia. Biblically. He knew exactly what she was doing, and right now, some part of him didn’t want to be saved from the dark place. He turned back to the wall.
“I love you,” Lia said softly. There was something intense in her tone, something vulnerable. No muss, no fuss, no misdirection. “Even when I don’t want to, I do.”
Despite himself, Michael whirled back around to face her.
Lia fluttered her eyelashes. “I love you like a drowning man loves air. I love you like the ocean loves the sand. I love you like peanut butter loves jelly, and I want to have your babies.”
Michael snorted. “Shut up.”
Lia smirked. “I had you going there for a second.”
Michael studied her expression, beyond the smirk, beyond the mask. “Maybe you did.”
The thing about Lia that made her so difficult to read was that she would have said the exact same thing with the exact same smirk regardless of what she felt. She would have said it if she was falling in love with him. She would have said it if she was just jerking his chain.
“Question.” Michael held up his index finger. “I know why Lia is looking particularly pleased with herself and why Cassie’s wearing her profiling face, and I could make an educated guess about why Redding looks downright constipated every time Lia touches me, but why is Sloane wildly avoiding my gaze and shifting her weight to the balls of her feet like the effort of not saying something might actually cause her to explode?”
Sloane made her best attempt at looking inconspicuous. “There are over one hundred ninety-seven commonly used slang terms for a male’s private parts!” she blurted out. And then, because she just couldn’t help herself, she continued, “Also, Briggs, Sterling, and Judd are not up there debating the merits of taking your father’s case!”
There was a beat of silence.
“As much as it pains me to say this, let’s table the discussion of inappropriate slang for a moment.” Michael’s gaze went from Sloane to Lia, Dean, and me. “And someone can elaborate on this case of my father’s.”
“Director Sterling wasn’t specific.” Dean answered Michael’s query, calm and ready to intervene if Michael tried to do something stupid. “All he said is that there’s some kind of situation with your father’s business partner’s daughter.”
Michael blinked. “Celine?” The name lingered on his lips for a second or two. “What kind of situation?” Michael must have been able to tell just from looking at us that we didn’t know the answer to that question, because the next instant he made for the basement door, every muscle in his body taut.
Dean caught his arm as he passed. “Think, Townsend.”
“I am thinking,” Michael countered, stepping forward to get in Dean’s face. “Specifically, I’m thinking that you have three seconds to remove your hand from my arm before I make you remove it.”
“Michael.” I tried and failed to get him to look at me. “One,” Michael told Dean.
“I do hope he says two next,” Lia told Sloane wistfully. “Nothing says virility in a man like misplaced anger and counting to the number three.”
That pierced Michael’s bravado enough that he actually paused. “Celine Delacroix is the only person from my life before the program who ever gave a crap about me or bothered to see the kind of person that the great Thatcher Townsend really is,” he told Dean. “If she’s in some kind of trouble, I’m going. If I have to go through you to do it, I will.”
“We’re all going.” Agent Briggs didn’t mince words as he descended the basement stairs. He was the one who had recruited Michael to the program. He knew exactly what kind of man Thatcher Townsend was.
So why would he send Michael back there? Why would Judd agree? The fact that Agent Sterling wasn’t with Briggs made me wonder if she’d fought them on this.
“You’re telling me that we’re just breaking camp and flying to upstate New York?” Lia narrowed her eyes at Briggs. “Out of the goodness of our hearts?”
“Not out of the goodness of our hearts. And not because Director Sterling thinks Townsend Senior could prove useful down the road.” Briggs looked to Michael. “Not even because a nineteen-year-old girl is missing, although we shouldn’t stop caring about things like that, no matter how focused we are on taking the Masters down.”
The word missing hit Michael like a physical blow. “Then why?” he asked.
Why would Director Sterling bring us this case? Why would Briggs and
Judd willingly bring Michael back into his abusive father’s sphere? Why would we drop everything to look for one girl?
I knew the answer in the pit of my stomach before Briggs said, “Because the police believe Celine was abducted eight days ago.”
My heart thudded in my chest. Eight days since the last Fibonacci date.
Five days until the next one.
“March twenty-first.” Sloane’s voice caught in her throat. “3/21.”
“This girl disappeared on a Fibonacci date.” Lia must have sensed Briggs was holding something back, because she tilted her head to the side. “And?”
There was a long pause.
“This girl disappeared on a Fibonacci date,” Briggs repeated, “and the entire crime scene was soaked in kerosene.”
YOU
The smell of burning flesh never really leaves you. Ash scatters. Skin scars. Pain subsides. But the smell is always there.
Pushing back against it, you concentrate. You know this slow and painful dance. You know the rules. But even as the wheel turns, the music changes.
You can hear it. This time, you know something that the others don’t.
You know her.
