When had I become a person capable of being disappointed that a missing girl might still be alive?
This is the cost, I thought as I left Michael alone in Celine’s room and made my way back toward the crime scene. Of being willing to make a deal with any devil, to pay any price.
Dean took one look at my face and his jaw tightened. “What did Townsend do?”
“What makes you think Michael did anything?”
Dean gave me a look. “One: he’s Michael. Two: he’s scheduled for a meltdown. Three: Lia has been Miss Rosy Sunshine since she got downstairs, and Lia doesn’t do roses or sunshine unless she’s screwing with someone or deeply upset. And four…” Dean shrugged. “I may not be an emotion reader, but I know you.”
Right now, Dean, I don’t even know myself.
“I went to see your father.” I wasn’t sure if saying those words to Dean was confession or penance. “I told him about us so that he’d tell me about the Masters.”
Dean was quiet for several seconds. “I know.” I stared at him. “How—”
“I know you,” Dean repeated, “and I know Lia, and the only reason she would have told me that there was something going on between her and Michael was to distract me from something worse.”
I told your father what it’s like when you touch me. I told him that he haunts your dreams.
“I don’t know what that monster said to you.” Dean held my gaze. “But I do know that he has a very particular reaction to anything beautiful, anything real—anything that’s mine.” His fingers lightly traced the edge of my jaw, then moved to lay flat on the back of my neck. “He doesn’t get to do that anymore, Cassie,” Dean said fiercely. “And you don’t get to let him.”
My chest tightened, but I didn’t pull back from his touch. I didn’t step away.
“Celine Delacroix wasn’t taken by one of the Masters.” I let the heat from
Dean’s skin warm mine. I pushed down the echo of his father’s voice. “I’m not sure how, but Michael knew. Lia suspected he was hiding something. And a very large part of me wishes…”
“You wish there were a lead,” Dean cut in. His Southern accent was more audible in those words than any I’d heard him speak in a long time. “You wish we had a trail to follow. But you don’t wish this girl had been burned alive, Cassie. You don’t wish she’d died screaming. You’re not capable of it.”
He sounded so certain of that, so certain of me, even after what I’d told him. I thought of my mother, fighting her predecessor to death. We never really know what we’re capable of.
I changed the subject. “You weren’t surprised when I said that Celine hadn’t been taken by one of the Masters.”
“I suspected.” Dean had stayed behind to walk through the crime scene again because something didn’t feel right. I wondered why he’d seen it and I hadn’t. I was supposed to be a Natural. I was supposed to be better than this. I’d recognized that this was our UNSUB’s first time. Why hadn’t I taken that a step further and seen that the Masters would never have allowed someone that out of control, that messy into their ranks?
“You were in the girl’s head,” Dean said softly. “I was in her assailant’s.
From her perspective, it wouldn’t have mattered if the intruder had chosen her as the first of nine kills or if she was the one and only target. It wouldn’t have mattered if there was an element of ritual to his movements or only desire and anger. Either way, she still would have fought back.”
I closed my eyes, picturing myself in Celine’s shoes once more. You fought back. You didn’t run. You knew the UNSUB. You might have been terrified, but you were angry, too.
“Celine has a secret laptop,” I told Dean. “The police missed it. And whatever’s going on here, I think it has something to do with Michael’s father.”
