All In (The Naturals, #3)(67)

“You used to look at me and feel something,” Michael said. “I know you did.”

Michael was marked for death. A serial killer from Judd’s past was stalking us all. But we were doing this—right here, right now.

“I never had friends,” I said. “Growing up, it was just me and my mom. There was never anyone else. She never let there be anyone else.”

For the first time since I’d gotten the call from my father, I felt something about my mother’s death. Anger—and not just at the person who killed her. She’d gone away, and even if that hadn’t been her choice, she was the reason there was no one else—no friends, no family, nothing until social services tracked down my dad.

“When I joined the program,” I told Michael, “I didn’t know how to really be with people. I couldn’t…” The words wouldn’t come. “I kept everyone at a distance, and there you were, smashing through every wall. I felt something,” I told Michael. “You made me feel something, and I am grateful for that. Because you were the first, Michael.”

There was a long silence.

“The first friend,” Michael said finally, “that you ever had.”

“That may not mean much to you.” It hurt me to admit that. “To you, I might not be worth anything, if I’m with Dean. But it means something to me.”

The silence that followed was twice as long as the first.

“I don’t like running away.” Michael brought his eyes from the floor to mine. “I don’t run, I don’t hide, I don’t cower, I don’t beg, Cassie, because running and hiding and begging—it doesn’t work. It never works.”

Michael was repeating the words Dean had said to him. He was admitting it out loud. To me.

I looked down at the angry red numbers on his arm. 7761.

January twelfth. The Grand Ballroom. The knife.

“It’s not running,” I told Michael, “if we catch him first.”





We had eleven hours and twenty-seven minutes until midnight.

First order of business was calling Sterling and Briggs. It took them two hours to extract themselves from the case and get to us. They questioned Michael and Lia about their little foray to the Desert Rose. What had they done there? Who had they seen?

“You don’t remember anything out of the ordinary?” Briggs asked Michael. “Running into someone? Talking to someone?”

“Letting someone write a number on my arm in invisible, poison-ivy ink?” Michael suggested archly. “Shockingly, no. I remember dropping something. I remember bending down to pick it up.” He closed his eyes. “I dropped something,” he repeated. “I bent to pick it up. And then…”

Nothing.

“Pattern interruption,” Sloane said. “It’s the second-quickest method of inducing hypnosis.”

To be hypnotized, you have to want to be hypnotized. Tory’s words rang in my ears. Either she was lying, or Michael hadn’t been on guard around the UNSUB.

Or both.

“You don’t remember anything else?” Dean said.

“Well, when you phrase it like that, I remember exactly what happened. You have unmasked the killer, Redding. How do you do it, you profiling fiend?”

“You know who the killer is?” Sloane’s eyes went comically wide.

“That was sarcasm,” Dean told her, sparing a glare for Michael.

“What about the moments leading up to the gap in your memory?” Agent Sterling said, redirecting the conversation. “You said you were playing poker, Lia?”

“With a group that included Thomas Wesley,” Lia filled in. “I trounced all of them. Michael was just my arm candy. After that, we split up. He went to cash in the chips, and I went to sign him up for mud wrestling against his will.”

I tried to picture it in my mind—Lia at a poker table, Michael beside her. Lia is winning. Her fingers play at the tips of her dark hair. Beside her, Michael fastens and unfastens the top button on his blazer.

What had made our UNSUB stop and take notice? Why Michael?

“What happens if the intended victim isn’t in the Grand Ballroom on January twelfth?” Briggs posed the question to the room as a whole.

“Four variables.” Sloane tapped the thumb on her right hand to each of her fingers as she rattled them off. “Date, location, method, and victim.”

“If the equation changes, the UNSUB has to adapt.” Sterling worked her way through the logic out loud. “The date and the method are necessary to achieve the UNSUB’s primary objective. The location and making sure the number shows up on his victim’s wrist—those are psychologically meaningful, symbols of mastery. To adapt, the UNSUB would have to give up some portion of the power and control that mastery represents.”

“I’ll want that back,” Dean said. “The power. The control.”

January twelfth. The knife. Those were the constants in this equation. If it came down to the location and the victim…

The spiral is your greatest work. A sign of rebellion. A sign of devotion. It’s perfect.

“You would change victims rather than location,” I said, sure enough of that.

“I’ll adapt,” Dean ruminated. “I’ll choose someone new—and whoever I choose will pay for the fact that I had to.”