All In (The Naturals, #3)(17)

3213. 4558. 9144.

I wondered how much of Sloane’s fascination with numbers had arisen during moments like this one, when numbers were easy and people were hard.

“Well,” Lia said, snagging a bite of mint ice cream with her spoon. “I, for one, am ready for bed. I’m also considering joining a nunnery and have no interest whatsoever in hitting the shops.”

“I’m not going shopping with you,” Dean said darkly.

“Because you’re afraid I might try to introduce actual colors into your wardrobe?” Lia asked innocently.

Beside me, Sloane was still going, number after number drawn with the tip of her finger on the surface of her skirt.

“How many shops are there in Las Vegas?” Lia said. “Do you know, Sloane?”

The question was a kindness on Lia’s part—though she wouldn’t have liked me thinking of her as kind.

“Sloane?” Lia repeated.

Sloane looked up from her lap. “Napkins,” she said.

“Not going to lie,” Michael put in. “I had no idea that was a number.”

“I need napkins. And a pen.”

Judd fished a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and handed it to her. Dean grabbed some cocktail napkins off the bar.

3213. 4558. 9144. The second that Dean handed her the napkins, Sloane scrawled out the numbers, each sequence on its own napkin.

“It’s not three,” she said. “It’s thirteen. He cut off the one. I don’t know why he cut off the one.”

He as in the UNSUB. Sloane wasn’t a profiler. She’d never been trained to use I or You.

“That’s why I didn’t see it before.” Sloane added a vertical line to the left of the first number. “It’s not 3213,” she said. “It’s 13213.” She moved on to the next napkin. “4558. 9144.” With the pen, she began grouping the numbers into pairs. “Thirteen. Twenty-one. Thirty-four. Fifty-five. Eighty-nine.” Finally, she circled the last three digits. “One hundred and forty-four.” She looked up from the napkins, her eyes bright, as if she expected this to clarify everything. “It’s the Fibonacci sequence.”

There was a long pause. “And the Fibonacci sequence is what exactly?” Lia asked.

Sloane frowned, her forehead wrinkling. Clearly, it hadn’t occurred to her that the rest of us might not know what the Fibonacci sequence was. “It’s a series of numbers, derived from a deceptively simple formula where each subsequent integer is calculated by adding together the two previous numbers in the series.” Sloane sucked in a breath, but babbled on. “The Fibonacci sequence appears throughout the biological world: the arrangement of pinecones, the family tree of honeybees, nautilus shells, flower petals….”

Across the room, a man wearing a suit and an earpiece walked straight past the hostess. Even if I hadn’t spent the past few months interacting with FBI agents, I would have recognized him as security.

People walk differently when they’re the only ones in the room carrying a gun.

“The Fibonacci sequence is everywhere,” Sloane was saying. The man in the earpiece approached Mr. Shaw and bent to whisper something in his ear. The casino owner’s face remained carefully controlled, but when Michael followed my gaze, he must have seen something I didn’t. His eyebrows shot up.

“It’s beautiful,” Sloane continued. “It’s perfection.”

I met Michael’s eyes across the table. He held my gaze for a few seconds, then he raised one finger. “Check, please.”





The UNSUB’s calling card had just taken on a whole new meaning. I’d assumed the numbers might have personal significance to the killer. But if they really were part of some famous mathematical sequence, there was a chance the point of the numbers was less about fulfilling our killer’s emotional needs and more about sending a message.

What message? I smoothed a hand over my dress as we began the long walk back toward the main body of the hotel and casino. That your actions aren’t emotional? That they’re as predetermined as numbers plugged into an equation?

I barely noticed the lights and sounds that bombarded our senses when we hit the casino floor.

That you’re a part of the natural order, like pinecones and seashells and bees?

Judd, Dean, and Sloane hung a left toward the lobby. Michael began veering right. “Shopping?” he asked Lia.

Somehow, I doubted that Michael and Lia, if left to their own devices in Sin City, would spend their time perusing the shops. Judd must have been thinking the same thing, because he gave the two of them a look.

“I’ll have you know I’m very fashionable,” Michael told Judd.

You saw something when security came for Sloane’s father, Michael. You asked for the check an instant later. You’re not going shopping.

Dean knew me well enough to recognize when I was profiling someone. “I’ll go with Sloane to call Sterling and Briggs,” he told me. I heard what he wasn’t saying: Go.

Whatever Michael and Lia were about to do, I wanted in on it—and if part of the reason was that going back upstairs meant going back to the information that awaited me on that drive, Dean didn’t begrudge me that.

When I was ready, he would be there.

“Fair warning.” Lia eyed Dean and me before turning back to Judd. “If you make me go up to the suite right now, there’s a very good chance that I will give a full-length performance of The Ballad of Cassie and Dean. Complete with musical numbers.”