All In (The Naturals, #3)(61)

I let myself be bundled away. I let myself retreat into Dean and Michael, Lia and Sloane. But as the valets pulled our cars around, I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder.

At the little red-haired girl and her mother. At the man who joined them and tossed his own coin into the fountain before lifting the girl onto his shoulders once more.





The private airstrip was clear, but for the jet. It sat on the runway, ready to spirit us to safety. This isn’t over. It isn’t done. The objection was just a whisper in my head this time, drowned out by a dull roar in my ears and the numbness that had settled over my whole body.

The agony of not knowing what had happened to my mother—of never being able to silence that last sliver of maybe—had been with me so long, it felt like a flesh-and-blood part of me. And now, that part of me was gone. Now, I knew. Not just in my gut. Not just as a matter of deduction.

I knew.

I felt hollow, empty inside where the uncertainty had been. She loved me more than anything. I tried to summon up the memory of her arms around me, what she smelled like. But all I could think was that one day, Lorelai Hobbes had been my mother and a mentalist and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and the next, she was just a body.

And now, just bones.

“Come on,” Michael said. “Last one on the plane gets their initials shaved into Dean’s head.”

Every time I felt myself going under, they pulled me back up.

Dean was the last one on the plane. I went in front of him, trying to fight through the fog with each step. I was better than this—better than giving in to the numbness and going hollow inside because I’d found out something I already knew.

I knew. I made myself think the words. I always knew. If she’d survived, she would have come back for me. Somehow, some way. If she’d survived, she wouldn’t have left me alone.

By the time I turned down the aisle, Lia, Michael, and Sloane had already claimed seats near the back. On the first seat to my left, there was an envelope with Judd’s name on it, written in careful cursive scrawl. I paused.

Somewhere, beneath the numbness and under the fog, I felt something.

This isn’t over, I thought. This isn’t done.

I picked the envelope up. “Where’s Judd?” I said. My voice was rough against my throat.

Dean eyed the envelope in my hand. “He’s talking to the pilot.”

My heart beat once in the time it took Dean to turn around and go for the cockpit.

This wasn’t Agent Sterling’s handwriting. It wasn’t Agent Briggs’s. I’d learned, months ago, to stop telling myself it’s nothing, it’s probably nothing when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Judd.” Dean’s voice reached me a second before I turned toward the cockpit myself.

“Just a little electrical trouble,” Judd assured Dean. “We’re taking care of it.”

This isn’t over. This isn’t done.

I held the envelope wordlessly out to Judd. My hand didn’t shake. I didn’t say a word. Judd eyed it for a moment, then looked at me.

“It was on the seat.” Dean was my voice when I had none.

Judd took the envelope. He turned his back on us to open it. Fifteen seconds later, he turned back around.

“Get off the plane.” Judd’s voice was gruff, no-nonsense, calm.

Michael responded like Judd had shouted. He grabbed his bag and Sloane’s. He pushed Sloane lightly in front of him and turned to Lia. He didn’t say anything—whatever she saw in his face was enough.

Off the plane. Into Judd’s rental car. Michael didn’t say a word about leaving his own car behind.

“The envelope,” Dean said as we pulled away from the runway. “Who was it from?”

Judd gritted his teeth. “He signed it ‘an old friend.’”

I froze, unable to exhale, a breath turning stale in my lungs.

“The man who killed your daughter.” Lia was the only one with balls enough to say it out loud. “Nightshade. What did he want?”

I forced myself to start breathing again.

“To warn us,” I answered without meaning to. “Threaten us. Those electrical problems with the plane. They weren’t an accident, were they?”

Judd was already on the phone with Sterling and Briggs.

Nightshade’s here in Vegas, I thought. And he doesn’t want us to leave.

I’d feared that thinking about Scarlett’s killer might conjure him up like a ghost in the mirror. I’d known that our UNSUB was attempting to attract the attention of Nightshade and the others like him. I hadn’t thought about what it would mean if the UNSUB succeeded. The organization—group—cult—

They’re here.

Five minutes later, Judd was at the airport ticket counter, attempting to book us on the next commercial flight anywhere. But the moment the woman behind the counter typed his name into the computer, her brow knit.

“I already have tickets reserved under your name,” she said. “Six of them.”

I knew before I’d even fully processed what she was saying that this was Nightshade’s doing, too. You chose Scarlett for your ninth, I thought, unable to stop myself. You chose her because she mattered to Sterling and Briggs and they dared to think they might stop you. You chose her because she was a challenge.