The Naturals (The Naturals #1)(57)

“Cassie, if you hang up this phone and do something stupid,” Locke said, channeling Nonna and my mother and Agent Briggs all at once, “I will spend the next five years of your life making sure you deeply, deeply regret it. I want you to find Dean. If anyone in that house knows how to spot a killer, it’s him, and I trust him to keep you safe. He knows the combination to the safe in Briggs’s study. Tell him I said to use it.”

It took me a moment to realize that the safe in question must be a gun safe.

“Get to Dean and get out of the house, Cassie. Don’t let anyone else see you leave. I’ll send the coordinates of our DC safe house. Briggs and I will meet you there.”

I nodded, knowing that she couldn’t see me, but unable to form intelligible words.

“Stay. Calm.”

I nodded again and finally managed to say, “Okay.”

“You can do this,” Agent Locke said. “You and Dean are an incredible team, and I’m not going to let anything happen to either of you.”

Three sharp raps on the bathroom door made me jump, but I forced myself to follow Locke’s primary directive and stay calm. I could do this. I had to do this. Hanging up the phone, I stuffed it into my back pocket, turned the faucet off, and glanced at the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me.”

Michael. I cursed inside, because there was calm and there was calm, and with Michael’s knack for emotions, he’d know in a heartbeat if I was faking.

Calm. Calm. Calm.

I couldn’t be angry. I couldn’t be scared. I couldn’t be panicked or guilty or show any signs that I’d just talked to Agent Locke—not if I wanted to keep Michael out of this. At the last second, as I opened the door, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

He was going to realize that something was wrong—so I did the only thing I could think of to do. I opened the door, and I lied.

“Look,” I said, allowing the bevy of emotions I’d been holding back to show on my face, allowing him to see how tired I was, how overwhelmed, how upset. “If this is about the kiss, I really just cannot deal with this right now.” I paused and let those words sink in. “I can’t deal with you.”

I saw it the second the words hit their mark, because Michael’s facial expression utterly changed. He didn’t look angry or sad—he looked like he couldn’t have cared less. He looked like the boy I’d met in the diner: layers upon layers, mask upon mask.

I brushed past him before he could see that it hurt me to hurt him. Hitting the final nail in the coffin, I stalked down the hallway, knowing he was watching me, and I walked right up to Dean.

“I need your help,” I said, my voice low.

Dean glanced over my shoulder. I knew he was looking at Michael. I knew Michael was glaring at him, but I didn’t turn around.

I couldn’t let myself turn around.

Dean nodded, and a second later, I followed him up to the third floor, to his room. True to Agent Locke’s words, Agent Starmans received a phone call that kept him from following.

“Sorry—” I started to say, but Dean cut me off.

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Just tell me what you need.”

I thought of the way he’d looked, walking in on Michael and me. “Locke wants me out of the house,” I said. “Either there’s a leak in the FBI and the UNSUB has a way in, or the UNSUB is already here and we just don’t know it. Locke said to tell you to use the combination to the safe in the study.”

Dean’s phone buzzed. A new text.

“That will be the location to the safe house,” I said. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to get down to the study and out of the house without anyone seeing us, but—”

“I do.” Dean kept things simple: no more words than absolutely necessary. “There’s a back staircase. They blocked it off years ago: too unsteady. Nobody but Judd even knows it’s there. If we can get down to the basement, I know a way out. Here.” He threw me a sweatshirt off his bed. “Put this on. You’re freezing.”

It was the middle of summer. In Virginia. I shouldn’t have been freezing, but my body was doing its best to go into shock. I slipped the sweatshirt on as Dean ushered me down the back staircase and into the study. I kept watch at the door as he knelt next to the safe.

“Do you know how to shoot?” he asked me.

I shook my head. That particular skill hadn’t been part of my mother’s training. Maybe if it had been, she’d have still been alive.

Dean loaded one of the guns and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans. He left the other one where it was and shut the safe. Two minutes later, we’d made it to the basement, and a minute after that, we were on our way to the safe house.





YOU


You weren’t supposed to make mistakes. The plan was supposed to be perfect. And for a few hours, it was.

But you messed it up. You always mess everything up—and there His voice is again in your head, and you’re thirteen years old and cowering in the corner, wondering if it will be fists or his belt or a poker from the fire.

And the worst thing is, you’re alone. Surrounded by people or throwing your hands up to protect your face, it doesn’t matter. You’re always alone.