The Naturals (The Naturals #1)(53)

I didn’t fight the orders.

I didn’t fight to stay there in the room, looking for clues.

There weren’t any. This was never about me figuring out who this killer was. This was always, always about the UNSUB playing with me, forcing me to relive the worst day of my life.

Sloane slipped an arm around my waist. “There are fourteen varieties of hugs,” she said. “This is one of them.”

Locke put a hand on my shoulder and steered the two of us out of the room, Dean on our heels.

This is a game. I heard Dean’s voice echoing through my memory. It’s always a game. That was what he’d told Michael, and at the time, I’d agreed. To the killer, this was a game—and suddenly, I couldn’t help thinking that the good guys might not win this one.

We might lose.

I might lose.





CHAPTER 33


I wasn’t allowed to go into the house until Judd and the agents on my protection detail had swept it, and even then, Agent Starmans accompanied me to my bedroom.

“You okay?” he asked, giving me a sidelong glance.

“Fine,” I replied. It was a stock answer, perfected around the Sunday night dinner table. I was a survivor. Whatever life threw at me, I came out okay, and the rest of the world thought I was great. I’d been faking things for so long that, until the past few weeks with Michael, Dean, Lia, and Sloane, I’d forgotten what it was like to be real.

“You’re a tough kid,” Agent Starmans told me.

I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and I especially wasn’t in the mood to be patted metaphorically on the head. All I wanted was to be left alone and given a chance to process, to recover.

“You’re divorced,” I replied. “Sometime within the past four years, maybe five. Long enough ago that you should have moved on.”

I normally made it a rule not to take the things I deduced about people and turn them into weapons, but I needed space. I needed to breathe. I stood and walked over to the window. Agent Starmans cleared his throat.

“What do you think the UNSUB is going to do?” I asked wearily. “Take me out with a sniper rifle?”

Not this killer. He’d want up close and personal. You didn’t have to be a Natural profiler to see that.

“Why don’t you cut the poor agent some slack, Colorado? I’m fairly certain making grown men cry is Lia’s specialty, not yours.” Michael didn’t bother knocking before entering the room and giving Agent Starmans his most charming smile.

“I’m not making anyone cry,” I said mutinously.

Michael turned his gaze on me. “Underneath your ticked-off-that-they-won’t-leave-me-alone-and-even-more-ticked-off-that-I’m-scared-to-actually-be-alone exterior, I detect a slight trace of guilt, which suggests that you did say something below the belt, and you’re feeling the tiniest bit bad for using your powers for evil, and he”—Michael jerked his head toward Agent Starmans—“is fighting down-turned lips and furrowed eyebrows. I don’t need to tell you what that means, do I?”

“Please don’t,” Agent Starmans muttered.

“Of course, there’s also his posture, which suggests some level of sexual frustration—”

Agent Starmans took a step forward. He towered over Michael, but Michael just kept smiling, undeterred.

“No offense.”

“I’ll be out in the hall,” Agent Starmans said. “Keep the door open.”

It took me a moment after the agent retreated to realize that Michael had put him on the spot on purpose.

“Were you really reading his posture?” I whispered.

Michael ducked his head next to mine, a delightfully wicked smile on his face. “Unlike you, I have no problems using my ability for nefarious purposes.” He reached up and ran his thumb over the edge of my lip and onto my cheek. “You have something on your face.”

“Liar.”

He brushed his thumb over my other cheek. “I never lie about a pretty girl’s face. You’re carrying so much tension in yours that I have to ask: should I be worried about you?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Liar,” Michael whispered back.

For a second, I could almost forget everything that had happened today: Genevieve Ridgerton; the coded message on the bathroom wall; the UNSUB butchering a woman and using her body as a prop to recreate my mother’s death; the fact that all of this killer’s actions were designed to manipulate me.

“You’re doing it again,” Michael said, and this time, he ran the middle and index fingers of each hand along the lines of my jaw.

In the hallway, Agent Starmans took a step back. And then another, until he was almost out of sight.

“Are you touching me just to make him uncomfortable?” I asked Michael, keeping my voice low enough that the agent wouldn’t overhear.

“Not just to make him uncomfortable.”

My lips twitched. Even the possibility of a smile felt foreign on my face.

“Now,” Michael said, “are you going to tell me what happened today, or do I have to drag it out of Dean?”

I gave him a skeptical look. Michael amended his previous statement. “Are you going to tell me what happened today, or am I going to have to have Lia drag it out of Dean?”