“She more or less threatened to shut down the entire program.”
Michael leaned back in his chair. “She’s a profiler. She knows exactly what threats to issue to keep people in line. She’s got your number, Colorado. You’re a team player, so she didn’t just threaten you. She threatened the rest of us, too.”
Michael and I were in the living room. Sloane, Lia, and Dean had passed their practice GEDs the day before with flying colors. Neither Michael nor I had actually taken one, but somehow, answer sheets had been turned in with our names on them. Apparently, Lia had been feeling generous—but not generous enough to ensure that we passed, too. As a result, Michael and I were under strict orders to study.
I was better at following orders than Michael was.
“If you were the one issuing threats,” he said, a wicked grin working its way onto his face, “how would you threaten me?”
I looked up from my work. I was going over the test Lia had filled out for me, correcting the wrong answers. “You want me to threaten you?”
“I want to know how you would threaten me,” Michael corrected. “Obviously, threatening the program wouldn’t be the way to go. I don’t exactly have the warm fuzzies for the FBI.”
I tapped the edge of my pencil against the practice test. Michael’s challenge was a welcome distraction. “I’d start with your Porsche,” I said.
“If I’m a bad boy, you’ll take away my keys?” Michael wiggled his eyebrows in a way that was both suggestive and ridiculous.
“No,” I replied without even thinking about it. “If you’re a bad boy, I’ll give your car to Dean.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Michael put a hand over his heart, like he’d been shot—a gesture that would have been funnier before he’d taken an actual bullet to the chest.
“You’re the one who asked,” I said. Michael should have known by now not to throw down the gauntlet unless he wanted me picking it up.
“The depravity of you, Cassie Hobbes.” He was clearly impressed.
I shrugged. “You and Dean have some kind of pseudo-sworn-enemy, pseudo-sibling-rivalry thing going on. You’d rather I set your car on fire than give it to Dean. It’s the perfect threat.”
Michael didn’t contradict my logic. Instead, he shook his head and smiled. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a sadistic streak?”
I felt the breath whoosh out of my lungs. He couldn’t have known the effect those words would have on me. I turned back to the practice test, allowing my hair to fall into my face, but it was too late. Michael had already seen the split second of horror—loathing—fear—disgust on my face.
“Cassie—”
“I’m fine.”
Locke had been a sadist. Part of the pleasure she’d gotten out of killing had been imagining what her victims were going through. I had no desire to hurt anyone. Ever. But being a Natural profiler meant that I instinctively knew other people’s weaknesses. Knowing what people wanted and knowing what they feared were two sides of the same coin.
Michael wasn’t really calling me sadistic. I knew that, and he knew that I’d never intentionally hurt anyone. But sometimes, knowing that you could do something was almost as bad as having actually done it.
“Hey.” Michael tilted his head upside down to get a good look at my face. “I was kidding. No Sad Cassie face, okay?”
“This isn’t my sad face,” I told him. There was a point in time when he would have pushed the hair out of my face and let his hand linger on my jaw. Not anymore.
The unspoken rules said it had to be my choice. I could feel him, watching me, waiting for me to say something. He stayed there, staring at me upside down, his face just a few inches away from mine.
His mouth just a few inches away from mine.
“I know a Sad Cassie face when I see one,” he said. “Even upside down.”
I brushed my hair over my shoulders and leaned back. Trying to hide what I was feeling from Michael was impossible. I shouldn’t have even tried.
“You and Lia back on speaking terms?” he asked me.
I was grateful for the subject change. “Lia and I are…whatever Lia and I normally are. I don’t think she’s plotting my immediate demise.”
Michael nodded sagely. “So she’s not going to go for your throat the moment she figures out you broke the holy commandment of Thou shalt give Dean his space?”
I’d thought my visit to Dean last night had gone unnoticed. Apparently, I’d thought wrong.
“I wanted to see how he was doing.” I felt like I had to explain, even though Michael hadn’t asked for an explanation. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”
Reading emotions made Michael an expert at concealing them, so when I saw a flicker of something in his eyes, I knew that he’d chosen not to hide it from me. He liked that I was the kind of person who cared about the people
in this house. He just wished that the person I’d spent last night caring about wasn’t Dean.
“And how goes Sir Broods-A-Lot’s familial angst?” Michael did a good imitation of someone who didn’t really care about the answer to that question. He might have even been able to fool another emotion reader—but my ability wasn’t just about posture or facial expressions or what a person was feeling at any given moment.
Behavior. Personality. Environment.
Michael was snarking to hide the fact that he did care about the answer to that question.
“If you want to know how Dean’s holding up, you can just ask.” Michael shrugged noncommittally. He wasn’t going to admit that Lia,
Sloane, and I weren’t the only ones worried about Dean. A noncommittal shrug was as close to an expression of concern as I was going to get.
“He’s not okay,” I said. “He won’t be okay until Briggs and Sterling close this case. If they’d just tell him what’s going on, it might help, but that’s not going to happen. Sterling won’t let it.”
Michael shot me a sideways glance. “You really don’t like Agent Sterling.”
I didn’t think that statement merited a reply.
“Cassie, you don’t dislike anyone. The only time I’ve ever seen you get persnickety with someone was when Briggs assigned agents to dog your every move. But you disliked Agent Sterling from the moment she showed up.”
I had no intention of replying to that statement, either, but Michael didn’t need verbal replies. He was perfectly capable of carrying on conversations completely on his own, reading my responses in my body language and the tiniest hints of expressions on my face.
“She doesn’t like this program,” I said, just to get him to stop reading me so intently. “She doesn’t like us. And she really doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t dislike you as much as you think she does.” Michael’s voice was quiet. I found myself leaning toward him, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more. “Agent Sterling isn’t fond of me, because I’m not fond of rules. She’s afraid to spend more than a few seconds looking at Dean, but she’s not scared of him. She actually likes Lia, even though Lia’s not any fonder of rules than I am. And Sloane reminds her of someone.”
The difference between Michael’s gift and mine was as obvious as it had been playing poker. He saw so much that Sterling was trying to hide. But why she was hiding it—that was a question for me.
“How’s the studying coming along?”
I glanced up at Judd, who stood in the doorway. He was a Marine, not a den mother. The question sounded completely foreign coming out of his mouth.
“Haven’t started,” Michael replied flippantly at the exact same time that I said, “Almost done.”
Judd arched an eyebrow at Michael, but didn’t push the issue. “You mind giving us a moment?” he asked instead.
Michael cocked his head slightly to one side, taking in the expression on Judd’s face. “Do I have a choice?”
Judd almost smiled. “That would be a no.”
As Michael made his way out of the room, Judd crossed it and lowered himself onto the sofa next to me. He watched Michael go. Something about the way he tracked Michael’s progress made me think he was forcing himself to take in the way Michael favored his injured leg.
“You know why this program is restricted to cold cases?” Judd asked me once Michael was gone.
“Because Dean was twelve when this program was started?” I suggested. “And because Director Sterling wants to minimize the chances of anyone finding out the program exists?” Those were the easy answers. Judd’s silence pushed me into giving the hard one. “Because on active cases,” I said softly, “people get hurt.”
“On active cases, people cross lines.” Judd took his time with the words. “Everything is urgent, everything is life-and-death.” He rubbed his thumb across the pads of his fingers. “In the heat of battle, you do what needs to be done. You make sacrifices.”
Judd was military. He didn’t use the word battle lightly.
“You’re not talking about us crossing the lines,” I said, sorting through what I was hearing—and what I knew. “You’re talking about the FBI.”
“Could be I am,” Judd allowed.
I tried to parse my way through Judd’s logic. Reading interviews, going through witness statements, looking at crime scene photos—those were all things we already did. What did it matter if the files were a year old versus a day? Theoretically, the risks were the same—minimal. But with active cases, the stakes were higher.
This UNSUB that Locke and Briggs were hunting, he was out there now. He might be planning his next kill now. It was easy enough to keep us out of the field on cold cases. But with lives on the line, if bringing us along could make a difference…
“It’s a slippery slope.” Judd rubbed the back of his hand over his jaw. “I trust Briggs. Mostly.”
“You trust Agent Sterling,” I said. He didn’t contradict me. “What about the director?”
Judd met my eyes. “What about him?”
The director was the one who’d caved to political pressure and trotted me out as bait on the Locke case. I’d wanted to help. He was the one who’d
let me.
“I heard you and Ronnie butted heads,” Judd said, closing the door on further discussion. He put his palms on his knees, pushed off, and stood. “I think it would do you some good to stay out of the basement.” He let that sink in. “For a few weeks.”
Weeks? It took me a second to figure out what was going on here. Had Agent Sterling tattled on me? “You’re grounding me from the basement?” I said sharply.
“You’re a profiler,” Judd said mildly. “You don’t need to be down there. And,” he added, his voice hardening slightly, “you don’t need to be poking your nose into this case.”
In all the time I’d been here, Judd had never told any of us what we
needed to do. This had Agent Sterling’s fingerprints all over it.
“She’s a good agent, Cassie.” Judd seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. “If you let her, there’s a lot she could teach you.”
Locke was my teacher. “Agent Sterling doesn’t have to teach me anything,” I said sharply. “If she can catch whoever killed that girl, we’ll call it even.”
Judd gave me a look. “She’s a good agent,” he repeated. “So is Briggs.” He started for the door. His back to me, he kept talking, his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear him.
For a long time after he left, I wondered over the words I’d barely heard. He’d said that Sterling was a good agent. That Briggs was a good agent. And then, as if he couldn’t stop himself, as if he didn’t even realize he was saying the words out loud, he’d said one last thing.
“There was only ever one case they couldn’t solve.”
YOU
At first, it felt good. Watching the life go out of her eyes. Running your thumb across the bloodstained knife. Standing over her, your heartbeat accelerating, pounding out a glorious rhythm: I did that. I did that. I did that.
But now—now, the doubts are starting to worm their way into your brain. You can feel them, wiggling through your gray matter, whispering to you in a familiar voice.
“You were sloppy,” it says. “Someone could have seen you.”
But they didn’t. They didn’t see you. You’re better than that. You passed this test with flying colors. You bound her. You branded her. You cut her. You hung her.
You did it. You’re done. But it doesn’t feel like enough. You don’t feel like enough.
Good enough.
Strong enough.
Smart enough.
Worthy.
If you’d done it right, you’d still be able to hear her screams. The press would be giving you a name. They’d be talking about you on the news, not her. She was nothing. No one. You made her special.
But no one even knows you’re alive. “I’ll do it,” you say. “I’ll do it again.”
But the voice tells you to wait. It tells you to be patient. What will be will be—in time.
