Riding with Lia was a bit like playing Russian roulette. She had a need for speed and a liar’s disregard for limitations. We barely made it to the safe house in one piece.
Michael shuddered. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that I am in dire need of either an adult beverage or a live feed on Sterling and Briggs as they dig into this case.”
Agent Starmans opened his mouth to reply, but Judd gave a quick shake of his head. We were here. We were under armed guard. We were safe. Judd knew as well as I did that, left to his own devices, Michael wouldn’t be any of those things for long.
The last time you went home, you came back covered in bruises and spiraling out of control. I couldn’t keep my mind from going there as Judd set up the video and audio feeds. And now, a girl you know is missing. One of the so-called Masters might have burned her alive.
Within minutes, the view from Briggs’s lapel pin came into focus on Judd’s tablet. We saw what Briggs saw, and all I could think, as Briggs and Sterling climbed out of their FBI-issued SUV, was that if this case was anything other than open-and-shut, none of us would be able to keep Michael from spiraling for long.
The Delacroix house was modern and vast. It was also, we soon learned, unoccupied. Celine’s parents had apparently decided to meet with the FBI on more neutral ground.
“Home, sweet home.” A sardonic edge crept into Michael’s voice a few minutes later as the house next door to the Delacroix’s came into view on the camera.
Large, I thought. Traditional. Ornate.
“Most people call it Townsend House,” Michael said lightly, “but I prefer to think of it as Townsend Manor.”
The more Michael joked, the more my heart thudded in my throat on his behalf. You were supposed to be done with this place. You were supposed to be free.
“Is that a turret?” Lia asked. “I love a man with a turret.”
If Michael was going to crack jokes about his own personal hell, Lia would find a way to one-up him. They’d both had plenty of practice over the years at making the things that mattered most matter least.
On-screen, Briggs and Sterling made their way to the front porch. Briggs rang the bell. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. The massive mahogany front door opened.
“Agent Briggs.” The man who’d answered the door had thick charcoal- brown hair and a voice that commanded attention: rich and baritone and warm. He reached out and clapped a hand on Agent Briggs’s shoulder. “I know you can’t have appreciated the lengths I went to in order to get you here, but if I didn’t do everything possible to help Remy and Elise at a time like this, I would never forgive myself.” He turned from Briggs to Sterling. “Ma’am,” he said, holding out a hand. “Thatcher Townsend. The pleasure is mine.”
Sterling took the proffered hand, but I knew in my gut that she wouldn’t offer the man even a hint of a smile.
“Please,” Townsend said smoothly, stepping back from the threshold, “come in.”
This was Michael’s father. I tried to wrap my mind around that fact. He had Michael’s air of confidence, Michael’s presence, Michael’s irrepressible charm. I waited for something to ping my inner profiler, for some hint, however small, that the man who’d answered that door was a monster.
“He hasn’t lied yet,” Lia told Michael.
Michael flashed her a sharp-edged smile. “It’s not lying if you believe every word you say.”
I’d expected Thatcher Townsend to be a man who threw his weight around, a man who needed to own and possess and control. I’d expected someone like Dean’s father, or Sloane’s. At the very least, I’d expected a man whose demons might be invisible to the average person, but not to me.
Nothing.
“What can you tell us about your father’s business partner?” Dean asked Michael as the introductions got under way on camera.
“Remy Delacroix?” Michael shrugged. “He likes pretty things and pretty people. He likes being in control. And, God knows why, he likes my father. The two have been in business together since before I was born. Remy frowns when he’s unhappy, snaps when he’s angry, and hits on anything in a skirt.”
What you see is what you get. Earlier, when Michael had said those words, he’d been parroting his father. And he’d been lying. Thatcher Townsend wasn’t transparent. If Michael’s father had been as easy to read as Remy Delacroix, Michael never would have become the type of person who could read a world of meaning in the blink of an eye.
“So you’re saying we’ll know fairly quickly if Delacroix had anything to
do with his daughter’s disappearance.” I focused on that in an effort to help Michael do the same.
“I’m saying that Remy wouldn’t touch a hair on Celine’s head.” Michael kept his gaze locked intently on the screen. “As I said, he likes pretty people, and CeCe’s been beautiful since the day she was born.”
Lia didn’t stiffen, didn’t bat an eye, didn’t so much as lean away from Michael. But she would have heard the truth in those words. She would have heard the affection when Michael referred to Celine Delacroix as CeCe.
“Whatever resources you need, you’ll have them.” Remy Delacroix’s words brought my attention back to the video feed. He looked like a shadow of Michael’s father: slightly shorter, slightly blander features, more tightly wound. “I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care what laws you have to break. You get my little girl home.”
Agent Sterling didn’t tell the man that the FBI wasn’t in the business of breaking laws. Instead, she eased him into questioning with a query that should have been easy to field. “Tell us about Celine.”
“What is there to tell?” Delacroix replied, obviously agitated. “She’s a nineteen-year-old girl. A damn Yale student. If you’re trying to say that she might have done something to bring this on herself—”
Beside him, his wife laid a hand on his arm. I knew from reading the case file that Elise Delacroix was older than her husband, a former economics professor with an Ivy League education and the connections to match. As Remy’s ranting subsided, Elise glanced at Michael’s father, and after a moment, Thatcher went to pour his business partner a drink.
“What do you see?” I asked Michael.
“On Remy’s face? Agitation. Part bluster, part fear, part righteous indignation. No guilt.”
I wondered how many parents wouldn’t feel guilty if they’d discovered their daughter had been missing for nearly a week before anyone had noticed.
“Celine is independent,” Elise Delacroix told the agents once her husband had a drink in his hand. She was an elegant African American woman with her daughter’s tall, lithe build and shoulders she kept squared at all times. “Passionate, but unfocused. She has her father’s temper and my drive, though she tries her best to hide the latter.”
That the woman had mentioned her husband’s temper to the FBI stuck out to me. You have to know that the parents are always suspects in cases like these. Either you have nothing to hide or you simply don’t care about throwing your husband under the bus.
“Elise is always in control,” Michael told me. “Of her husband, of her emotions, of the family image. The one thing she can’t control is Celine.”
“Does she miss her daughter?” Dean asked, his eyes still on the screen. Michael was quiet for the longest time as he watched Elise Delacroix. The
tone in her voice never changed. The control she exerted over her facial features never wavered.
Michael managed an answer to Dean’s question. “She’s broken. Terrified.
Guilt-ridden. And disgusted—with her husband, with herself.” “With Celine?” I asked quietly.
Michael didn’t answer.
On-screen, Agent Briggs had moved on to establishing a time line, and I tried to put myself in Celine’s shoes, growing up with a father who, when asked about his daughter, said there was nothing to tell, and a mother whose first instinct had been to talk about her daughter’s temper and drive.
Independent, I thought. Passionate. Stubborn. I could see shades of Elise in the Celine from the pictures. Solid colors, not prints. You paint like you’re dancing, paint like you’re fighting—and you look at cameras like you know the secrets of the world.
In the background of the feed, Thatcher Townsend made two more drinks: one for Elise and one for himself. It occurred to me for the first time to wonder where Michael’s mother was. It also occurred to me to wonder why Remy and Elise had chosen to give this interview in the Townsends’ house.
“What’s your father feeling?” I asked Michael, hating myself for asking, but knowing we had to treat this like any other case.
Michael scanned his father’s face as Thatcher held, but didn’t drink, his bourbon on the rocks. Within seconds, Michael was texting Agent Briggs.
“You want to know what I see when I look at my father, Colorado?” he asked, his voice utterly devoid of emotion, like whatever he’d read on Thatcher Townsend’s face had numbed something inside him, deadened it like a dentist would before removing a dying tooth. “Beneath that somber expression, he’s furious. Affronted. Personally insulted.”
Insulted by what? I wondered. By the fact that someone took Celine? By the FBI’s presence in his home?
“And every time someone says CeCe’s name, he feels exactly what he’s always felt, every time he’s looked at Celine Delacroix since she was fourteen years old.” Michael’s words set my gut to twisting, deep inside me. “Hunger.”
YOU
You know the Seven, almost as well as they know you. Their strengths. Their weaknesses. The Masters thirst for power. They drape you in diamonds—one for each victim. Each sacrifice. Each choice.
Diamonds and scars, scars and diamonds. The men who’ve turned you into this pretty, deadly thing go out into the world. They live their lives. They prosper.
They kill. For you.
