The Naturals
: Part 5 – Chapter 38

Michael was in the hospital for two weeks. Dean was released after two days. But even once we were back at the house, even once the case was closed, none of us had really recovered.

Genevieve Ridgerton had survived—barely. She’d refused to see any of us—especially me.

Michael had months of physical rehabilitation ahead of him. The doctors said he might never walk without a limp again. Dean had barely said a word to me. Sloane couldn’t talk about anything other than the absolute unlikelihood of a serial killer being able to pass the psych evals and background check necessary to join the FBI, even under an assumed name. And I was dealing with the fact that Lacey Locke, née Hobbes, was my aunt.

Her story had checked out. She and my mother were born and raised outside of Baton Rouge, though both had shed their accents along the way. Their father, Clayton Hobbes, had been convicted twice of assault and battery—once against his wife, who ran off when my mother was nine and Lacey was three. The girls had attended school until the ages of ten and sixteen, but the system had lost them somewhere along the way.

They’d grown up in hell. My mother had gotten out. Lacey hadn’t.

The Bureau cross-referenced Lacey’s murders with cases that Briggs’s team had worked, and they discovered at least five more that fit the pattern. The agents would fly out on a case; Lacey would slip away, and somewhere, forty or fifty miles away, someone would disappear. They would die. And if a police report was filed, it never made its way to the FBI’s attention, because the crime didn’t appear to be serial in nature.

The woman who’d called herself Lacey Locke had paid attention to state lines. She’d never killed in the same state twice—until I joined the Naturals program. She’d escalated then, committing a series of murders here in DC as she became increasingly fixated on me.

At least fourteen people were dead, and a senator’s daughter had been kidnapped and gravely injured. The case was a nightmare for the Bureau—and a nightmare for us. The prohibition against Naturals’ participation in active cases was back and stronger than ever. Director Sterling had managed to keep our names out of the news this time. As far as he was concerned, all anyone needed to know was that the killer was dead.

My aunt was dead.

Just like my mother.

Two weeks after Michael had pulled the trigger, I could still see those last moments playing out, over and over again. I sat beside the pool, dangling my feet in the water and wondering what happened next.

Where did I go from here?

“If you’re going to leave the program, leave. But for God’s sake, Cassie, if you’re going to stay, stop moping around like your kitty cat has cancer, and do something about it.”

I turned to see Lia standing above me. She was the one person who hadn’t changed as a result of all of this. In a way, it was almost comforting to know that I could count on her to stay the same.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, pulling my feet out of the pool and standing up so that we were eye to eye.

“You can start by getting rid of that Rose Red lipstick I gave you,” Lia said. Leave it to her to know that I still had it, that I’d carried the tube she’d given me everywhere I went since discovering an ancient tube of Rose Red, worn to a nub, in my aunt’s hand the night she died. Apparently, it had been my mother’s color of choice even as a girl. Lacey had kept it all these years.

That was what she’d carried in her pocket.

That was what she’d held as I’d spun my story about my mother’s death.

The FBI had found a dozen other lipsticks in a cabinet at her house. Keepsakes that she took from each victim. A little sister, dying to be like big sis, stealing her lipstick until the end.

She was the one who’d given the makeup to Lia. She’d bought a fresh tube of Rose Red just for me, and Lia had played right into her hands. Now that it was over, I should have thrown the lipstick away, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to do it. It was a reminder: of the things my aunt had done, of what I’d survived, of my mother and the fact that Lacey and I had both joined the FBI in hopes of replaceing her killer.

A killer who was still out there. A killer who not even a psychotic, obsessive FBI agent had been able to replace. Since joining the program, I’d gained and lost a mentor and seen my mother’s only other living relative shot dead. I’d helped take down a killer who’d been recreating my mother’s death for years—but I was still no closer to replaceing the monster who’d actually killed her. I might never get answers.

They might never replace her body.

“Well?” Lia had done a good impression of a patient person, but clearly, her capacity for waiting for me to reply had been stretched to its limit and then some. “Are you in or are you out?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’m in this, but I’m keeping the lipstick.”

“Rawrrrrr.” Lia made a scratching motion. “Somebody’s finally growing claws.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly. “I love you, too.”

I turned around to walk into the house, but Lia’s voice stopped me halfway there.

“I’m not saying I like you. I’m not saying I’m going to stop eating your ice cream or stealing your clothes, and I’m certainly not saying that I won’t make your life a living nightmare if you jerk Dean around, but I wouldn’t want you to leave.” Lia strode past me, then turned around and flashed me a smile. “You make things interesting. And besides, I’m kind of into the idea of Michael’s war wounds, and having my way with him will be that much sweeter knowing you’re right down the hall.”

Lia flounced back into the house. I thought of the scars Michael would have once he’d healed, thought of the kiss, the fact that he’d almost died for me—and then I thought of Dean.

Dean, who hadn’t forgiven himself for not being able to pull the trigger.

Dean, whose father was as much of a monster as my aunt.

Weeks ago, Lia had told me that every person in this house was fundamentally screwed up to the depths of our dark and shadowy souls. We all had our crosses to bear. We saw things that other people didn’t—things that people our age should never have to see.

Dean would never just be a boy. He’d always be the serial killer’s son. Michael would always be the person who’d put a round of bullets in my aunt. And part of me would never leave my mother’s blood-soaked dressing room, just like another part would always be at the safe house, with Lacey and her knife.

We would never be like other people.

“I don’t know what the back door did to you,” an amused voice told me, “but I’m sure it’s really, truly sorry.”

Michael was supposed to be using a wheelchair, but he was already trying to maneuver on crutches—an impossible feat, considering a bullet had also been lodged in his shoulder.

“I’m not glaring at the back door,” I said.

Michael raised one eyebrow, higher and higher until I caved.

“Fine,” I said. “I might have been glaring at the back door. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Like you didn’t want to talk about that kiss?” Michael’s voice was light, but this was the first time either of us had brought up that moment in my bedroom.

“Michael—”

“Don’t.” He stopped me. “If I hadn’t been so jealous of Dean, I wouldn’t have bought your little story for a second. Even as it was, I didn’t buy it for much longer than that.”

“You came after me,” I said.

“I’ll always come after you,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that made the words seem like more of a joke than a promise.

Something told me it was both.

“But you and Redding have something. I don’t know what it is. I don’t blame you for it.” On crutches, he couldn’t lean toward me. He couldn’t reach out and brush the hair out of my face. But something about the curve of his lips was more intimate than any touch. “A lot has happened. You have a lot to figure out. I can be a patient man, Colorado. A devastatingly handsome, roguishly scarred, heartbreakingly courageous, patient man.”

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t bite back a smile.

“So take whatever time you need. Figure out how you feel. Figure out if Dean makes you feel the way I do, if he’ll ever let you in, and if you want him to, because the next time my lips touch yours, the next time your hands are buried in my hair—the only person you’re going to be thinking about is me.”

I stood there, looking at Michael and wondering how it was possible that I could instinctively understand other people—their personalities, their beliefs, their desires—but that when it came to what I wanted, I was just like anyone else, muddled and confused and stumbling through.

I didn’t know what it meant that my aunt had been a killer, or how I felt about the fact that she was dead.

I didn’t know who had killed my mother, or what losing her and never getting any closure had done to me. I didn’t know if I was capable of really letting someone else in. I didn’t know if I could fall in love.

I didn’t know what I wanted or who I wanted to be with.

But standing there, looking at Michael, the one thing I did know, the way I always knew things about other people, was that sooner or later, as a part of this program—a part of this team—I was going to replace out.