The Naturals
: Part 2 – Chapter 24

“Michael, can I have the—” I burst into the kitchen, only to replace that Michael and Sloane weren’t the only ones there. Judd was cooking, and Agent Briggs was standing with his back to me, a thin black briefcase by his feet.

“—the bacon,” I finished hastily.

Agent Briggs turned to face me. “And why does Michael have your bacon?” he asked.

As if this whole situation wasn’t awkward enough, Lia chose that moment to come sauntering into the room. “Yes, Cassie,” she said with a wicked grin, “tell us why Michael has your bacon.”

The way she said the phrase left very little question that she was using it as a euphemism.

“Lia,” Judd said, waving a spatula in her general direction, “that’s enough.” Then he turned to me. “Grub will be ready soon. I expect you can hold out until then?”

“Yes,” I said. “No bacon needed.”

From behind Briggs’s back, Michael pantomimed smacking his palm into his forehead. Apparently, my attempts at subterfuge left something to be desired. I tried to make a quick exit, but Agent Briggs stopped me in my tracks.

“Cassie. A word.”

I glanced at Michael, wondering what—if anything—Briggs knew about what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to.

“Ambidextrous,” Sloane said suddenly.

“This should be good,” Lia murmured.

Sloane cleared her throat. “Agent Briggs asked for a word. Ambidextrous is a good one. Less than point-five percent of the words in the English language contain all five vowels.”

I was grateful for the distraction, but unfortunately, Briggs didn’t bite. “Cassie?”

“Sure.” I nodded and followed him out of the room. I wasn’t sure where we were heading at first, but after we passed the library, I realized we were going to the only room on the ground floor I hadn’t been in yet—Briggs’s study.

He opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I walked into the room, taking in my surroundings. The room was full of animals, lifeless and frozen in place.

Hunting trophies.

There was a grizzly bear, reared up on its back legs, its mouth caught in a silent roar. On the other side of the room, a lifelike panther crouched, canines gleaming, while a mountain lion seemed to be on the prowl.

The most disturbing thing about this entire room—maybe this entire situation—was that I hadn’t pegged Agent Briggs for a hunter.

“They’re predators. Reminders of what my team deals with every time we go out in the world.”

There was something about the way Agent Briggs said those words that made me realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he knew what Michael, Sloane, and I had been up to in his absence. He knew that we knew the exact details of the case that he and Agent Locke were working now.

“How did you replace out?” I asked.

“Judd told me.” Briggs crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk. He gestured for me to take a seat in a chair in front of him. “You know, Judd might fade into the background around here, but there’s not much that goes on in this house that he doesn’t know. Information gathering has always been a specialty of his.”

Keeping his eyes fixed on me, Briggs opened his briefcase and took out a file: all of the papers we’d printed out earlier. “I confiscated this from Michael. And this,” he added, holding up the USB drive, “from Sloane. Her laptop will be making a trip to our tech lab to ensure that all traces of data have been wiped from the hard drive.”

I hadn’t even had a chance to tell Agent Briggs my suspicions, and he was already shutting me down—and shutting me out.

Briggs ran one hand roughly over his chin, and I realized that he hadn’t shaved in at least a day.

“The case isn’t going well.” I paused. “Is it?”

“I need you to listen to what I’m saying, Cassandra.”

That was only the second time he’d called me by my full name since I’d told him I preferred Cassie.

“I was up front with you about what this program is and what it is not. The FBI isn’t about to authorize teenagers to dive into the middle of active cases.”

His choice of words was more revealing than he knew. The FBI had qualms about throwing teenagers into the thick of things. Briggs—personally—did not.

“So what you’re saying is that using the twelve-year-old son of a serial killer as your own personal encyclopedia of murderous minds was fine, but now that the program is official, we can’t even look at the files?”

“What I’m saying,” Briggs countered, “is that this UNSUB is dangerous. He’s local. And I have no intention of involving any of you.”

“Even if this case has something to do with my mother’s?”

Briggs paused. “You’re jumping to conclusions.” He didn’t ask me why I thought this case had something to do with my mother’s. Now that I’d brought up the idea, he didn’t have to. “The occupations. The red hair. The knife. It isn’t enough.”

“The UNSUB dyed the latest victim’s hair red.” I didn’t bother asking if I was right about that, knowing in my gut that I was. “That’s above and beyond victim selection. It’s not just an MO anymore. It’s part of the UNSUB’s signature.”

Briggs crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not talking with you about this.”

And yet, he didn’t leave the room—and he didn’t stop listening.

“Did the UNSUB dye her hair before or after he killed her?”

Briggs didn’t say a word. He was playing this by the book—but he didn’t tell me to stop talking, either.

“Dyeing the victim’s hair before the kill could be an attempt to create a more ideal target, one who claims to be psychic and has red hair. But dyeing her hair afterward …” I paused, just long enough to see that Briggs was listening, really listening, to every word. “Dyeing her hair after she’s already dead is a message.”

“And what message is that?” Agent Briggs asked sharply, like he was dismissing my words out of hand, when both of us knew that he was not.

“A message for you: hair color matters. The UNSUB wants you to know that there’s a connection between the cases. He doesn’t trust you to come to that conclusion on your own, so he’s helping you get there.”

Briggs was silent for three or four loaded seconds.

“We can’t do this, Cassie. I understand your interest in the case. I understand your wanting to help, but whatever you think you’re doing, it ends now.”

I started to object and he held up a hand, silencing me.

“I’ll tell Locke to let you start working on cold cases. You’re obviously ready. But if you so much as sniff in the direction of this case again, there will be consequences, and I can guarantee that you will replace them unpleasant.” He leaned forward, his posture unconsciously mimicking the roaring bear’s. “Have I made myself clear?”

I didn’t respond. If he was looking for a promise that I’d stay out of this, he was going to be disappointed.

“I already have a Natural profiler in this program.” Briggs looked me straight in the eye, his lips set in a thin, forbidding line. “I’d prefer to have two, but not at the risk of my job.”

There it was: the ultimate threat. If I pushed this, Briggs could send me home. Back to Nonna and the aunts and the uncles and the constant awareness that I would never be like them, like anyone outside of these walls.

“You’ve made yourself clear,” I said.

Briggs closed his briefcase. “Give it a couple of years, Cassie. They won’t keep you out of the field forever.”

He waited for my reply, but I said nothing. He stood up and walked to the door.

“If he’s dyeing their hair, the rules are changing,” I called after him, not bothering to turn around to see if he’d stopped to listen or not. “And that means that before things get better, they’re going to get a whole lot worse.”