The Naturals: All In Part 21

"Luckily for us," Michael replied airily, "I've never met a bad idea I did not immediately embrace like the dearest of friends." He went into his room, and when he came out, he was putting on a casual blazer, looking every inch the trust-fund kid. "I believe Lia when she says that she will make me regret going after her," he told Dean. "But it just so happens regrets are a specialty of mine."

Michael b.u.t.toned the top b.u.t.ton on his jacket and waltzed out the door.

"Michael and Lia have been physically involved no fewer than seven times." Sloane seemed to think volunteering that information might prove helpful.

Dean's jaw tightened slightly.

"Don't," I told him. "She's safer with him than she is alone."

Whatever Lia had been feeling when she walked out the door, Michael would have seen it. And my gut was telling me that he'd felt it, too. Of all of us, Michael and Lia were the most similar to each other. It was why they'd been drawn together when he'd first come to the program, and why, as a couple, they'd never worked long-term.

"Would you feel better if you knew where they were going?" Sloane asked. Dean didn't reply, but Sloane texted Lia anyway. I wasn't surprised when she got a reply. Lia was the one who'd told me we were at issue capacity. She wouldn't ignore Sloane-not in a city where Sloane had spent most of her life being ignored by her own flesh and blood.

"So?" Dean said. "Where are they going?"

Sloane walked over to the window and stared out-through the spiral. "The Desert Rose."

It was forty-five minutes between the time Michael walked out the door and the time Judd walked in. Agent Sterling followed. Briggs entered last. He came to stand in the middle of the suite, staring at the papers covering the floor.

"Explain." Briggs resorting to one-word commands was never a good thing.

"Based on Sloane's projections, we're looking at nine victims every three years for a period of at least sixty years, with a different signature underlying each set." Dean kept it brief, his voice remarkably dispa.s.sionate, given the content of what he was saying. "The cases are spread out geographically, no repeating jurisdictions. The methods of killing go in a predictable order, and that order mirrors our UNSUB's first four kills. We believe we're dealing with a fairly large group, most likely one with a cult-like mentality."

"Our UNSUB isn't a part of the cult," I continued. "This isn't a group that advertises its existence, and that's exactly what the additional elements of our UNSUB's signature-the numbers on the wrists, the fact that the Fibonacci sequence determines not only the dates on which he kills but also the exact location-effectively do."

"He's better than they are." Sloane wasn't profiling. She was stating what was, to her mind, a fact. "Anyone can kill on certain dates. This..." She gestured to the papers carefully arranged on the floor. "It's simplistic. That?" She turned toward the map on the window, the spiral. "The calculations, the planning, making sure the right thing happens in the right place at the right time." Sloane sounded almost apologetic as she continued, "That's perfection."

You're better than they are. That's the point.

"We knew the numbers written on the victims' wrists were a message," I said. "We knew they mattered. We knew it wasn't just our attention he wanted."

It's theirs.

"That's it." Judd's voice was rough. "You're done." He couldn't order Agent Sterling off this case. That was outside of his purview. But the rest of us weren't. He was the final word on our involvement in any investigation. "All of you," he addressed those words to Dean, Sloane, and me. "It's my decision. It's my call. And I say we're done."

"Judd-" Sterling's voice was calm, but I thought I could hear a note of desperation underneath.

"No, Ronnie." Judd turned his back on her, staring at Sloane's window, his entire body bow-string tight. "I want Nightshade. Always have. And if there's a larger group involved in what happened to Scarlett, I d.a.m.n well want them, too. But I won't risk a single one of these kids." The idea of walking away was killing Judd, but he refused to waver. "You've got what you need from them," he told Sterling and Briggs. "You know where the UNSUB is going to strike. You know when. You know how. h.e.l.l, you even know why."

I could make out a hint of Judd's reflection in the window. Enough to see his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.

"It's my call," Judd said again. "And I say that if you've got anything else you need a consult on, you can d.a.m.n well ship it to Quantico. We're leaving. Today."

Before anyone could respond, the door to the suite opened. Lia stood there, looking supremely satisfied with herself. Michael stood behind her, soaked from head to toe in mud.

"What-" Briggs started to say. Then he corrected himself. "I don't want to know."

Lia strolled into the foyer. "We never left the suite," she announced, lying to their faces with disturbing conviction. "And I certainly didn't beat the pants off a bunch of professionals playing recreational poker at the Desert Rose. In related news: I have no idea why Michael's covered in mud."

A glop of mud fell from Michael's hair onto the tile floor.

"Get cleaned up," Judd told Michael. "And all of you, get packed." Judd didn't wait for a reply before turning to retreat to his own room. "Wheels up in one hour."

"I do hope you found your stay to your liking." The concierge met us in the lobby. "Your departure is a bit abrupt."

His tone made that sound like a question. It was closer to a complaint.

"It's my leg," Michael told him in a complete deadpan. "I walk with a limp. I'm sure you understand."

As far as explanations went, that one held little to no explanatory power, but the concierge was fl.u.s.tered enough that he didn't question it. "Yes, yes, of course," he said hurriedly. "We just have a few things for you to sign, Mr. Townsend."

While Michael dealt with the paperwork, I turned to look back at the lobby. At the front desk, dozens of people stood in line, waiting to check in. I tried not to think about the fact that in three days, any one of them-the elderly man, the guy wearing the Duke sweatshirt, the mother with three small children-could be dead.

The knife is next. I knew-personally, viscerally-how much damage could be done with a knife. We're not finished, I thought vehemently. This isn't done.

Leaving felt like running away. It felt like admitting failure. It felt the way I had at twelve, each time the police had asked me a question I couldn't answer.

"Excuse me," a voice said. "Sloane?"

I turned to see Tory Howard, dressed in her standard uniform of dark jeans and a tank. She seemed hesitant-something she'd never struck me as before. "We didn't get a chance to meet the other night," she told Sloane. "I'm Tory."

The hesitation, the softness in her voice, the fact that she knew Sloane's name, the fact that she'd lied to the FBI to keep her relationship with Aaron a secret-you love him, too, I realized. You can't un-love him, no matter what you do.

"You're leaving?" Tory asked Sloane.

"There is a ninety-eight-point-seven percent chance that statement is accurate."

"I'm sorry you can't stay." Tory hesitated again, and she said, softly, "Aaron really did want to get to know you."

"Aaron told you about me?" Sloane's voice wavered slightly.

"I knew he had a half sister he'd never met," Tory replied. "He wondered about you, you know. When you stepped in front of him that night at the show, and I saw your eyes..." She paused. "I did the math."

"Strictly speaking, that wasn't a mathematical calculation."

"You matter to him," Tory said. I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that it cost her to say the words, because there was a part of her that couldn't be sure that she mattered to Aaron. "You mattered to him before he even knew who you were."

Sloane absorbed that statement. She pressed her lips together and then blurted out, "I have gathered that there is an overwhelmingly large chance that your relationship with Aaron is intimate and/or s.e.xual in nature."

Tory didn't flinch. She wasn't the type to let you see her hurting.

"When I was three..." Sloane trailed off, averting her eyes so that she wasn't looking straight at Tory. "Grayson Shaw came to my mother's apartment to meet me." The words were costing Sloane to say-but they were even harder for Tory to hear. "My mother dressed me up in a white dress and left me in the bedroom and told me that if I was a good girl, my daddy would want us."

The white dress, I thought, my stomach twisting and my heart aching for Sloane. I knew how this story ended.

"He didn't want me." Sloane didn't go into the particulars of what had happened that afternoon. "And he didn't want my mother so much after that."

"Trust me, kid," Tory replied, steel in her voice, "I've learned my lesson about getting in bed with Shaws."

"No," Sloane said fiercely. "That's not what I meant. I'm not good at this. I'm not good at talking to people, but..." She sucked in a breath of air. "Aaron brought the FBI evidence that Beau acted in self-defense-evidence they never would have seen otherwise. I'm told there's a very high probability he did that for you. I thought that Aaron was like his father. I thought..."

She'd thought Tory was like her mother. Like her.

"Aaron fights for you," Sloane said fiercely. "You say I matter to him, but you matter, too."

"Beau was cleared of all charges this morning," Tory said finally, her voice rough. "That was Aaron?"

Sloane nodded.

Before Tory could reply, my phone rang in my bag. I considered ignoring it or declining the call again, but what was the point? Now that we'd been pulled off the case, there was nothing left to distract me. Nowhere else to run.

"h.e.l.lo." I turned away from the group as I answered.

"Ca.s.sie."

My father had a way of saying my name, like it was a word in a foreign language, one he could get by in, but would never fluently speak.

"They got the test results back." I said it so that he wouldn't have to. "The blood they found. It's hers, isn't it?" He didn't reply. "The body they found," I pressed on. "It's her."

On the other end of the phone line, I heard a sharp intake of breath. I heard him jaggedly let it out.

While I waited for my father to find his voice and tell me what I already knew, I walked toward the exit. I stepped out into the sunshine and a light January chill. There was a fountain out front-ma.s.sive and the color of onyx. I came to stand at the edge of it and looked down. My reflection flickered over the surface, dark and shadowed.

"It's her."

I realized, when my father said the words, that he was crying. For a woman you barely knew? I wondered. Or for the daughter you don't know any better?

"Nonna wants you to come home," my father said. "I can get an extended leave. We'll take care of the funeral, bury her here-"

"No," I said. I heard the pitter-patter of small feet as a child ran up to the fountain next to me. A little girl-the same one I'd seen that day at the candy shop. Today she was wearing a purple dress and had a white origami flower tucked behind one ear.

"No," I said again, the word ripping its way out of my throat. "I'll take care of it. She's my mother."

Mine. The necklace and the shroud she'd been wrapped in and the blood-spattered walls, the memories, the good and the bad-this was my tragedy, the great unanswered question of my life.

My mother and I had never had a home, never stayed anywhere very long. But I thought she'd like being laid to rest near me.

My father didn't argue with me. He never did. I hung up the phone. Beside me, the little girl solemnly considered the penny in her hand. Her bright hair caught in the sun.

"Are you making a wish?" I asked.

She stared at me for a moment. "I don't believe in wishes."

"Laurel!" A woman in her mid-twenties appeared at the little girl's side. She had strawberry blond hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She eyed me warily, then pulled her daughter close. "Did you make your wish?" she asked.

I didn't hear the girl's reply. I stopped hearing anything, stopped registering any sound other than the running water in the fountain.

My mother was dead. For five years, she'd been dead. I was supposed to feel something. I was supposed to mourn her and grieve and move on.

"Hey." Dean came up beside me. He wove his hand into mine. Michael took one look at my face and put a hand on my shoulder.

He hadn't touched me-not once-since I'd chosen Dean.

"You're crying." Sloane stopped short in front of us. "Don't cry, Ca.s.sie."

I'm not. My face was wet, but I didn't feel like I was crying. I didn't feel anything.

"You're an ugly crier," Lia said. She brushed my hair lightly out of my face. "Hideous."

I let out a choked laugh.

My mother's dead. She's dust, and she's bones, and the person who took her away from me buried her. He buried her in her best color.

He took that away from me, too.

I let myself be bundled away. I let myself retreat into Dean and Michael, Lia and Sloane. But as the valets pulled our cars around, I couldn't help glancing back over my shoulder.

At the little red-haired girl and her mother. At the man who joined them and tossed his own coin into the fountain before lifting the girl onto his shoulders once more.

The private airstrip was clear, but for the jet. It sat on the runway, ready to spirit us to safety. This isn't over. It isn't done. The objection was just a whisper in my head this time, drowned out by a dull roar in my ears and the numbness that had settled over my whole body.

The agony of not knowing what had happened to my mother-of never being able to silence that last sliver of maybe-had been with me so long, it felt like a flesh-and-blood part of me. And now, that part of me was gone. Now, I knew. Not just in my gut. Not just as a matter of deduction.

I knew.

I felt hollow, empty inside where the uncertainty had been. She loved me more than anything. I tried to summon up the memory of her arms around me, what she smelled like. But all I could think was that one day, Lorelai Hobbes had been my mother and a mentalist and the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, and the next, she was just a body.

And now, just bones.

"Come on," Michael said. "Last one on the plane gets their initials shaved into Dean's head."

Every time I felt myself going under, they pulled me back up.

Dean was the last one on the plane. I went in front of him, trying to fight through the fog with each step. I was better than this-better than giving in to the numbness and going hollow inside because I'd found out something I already knew.

I knew. I made myself think the words. I always knew. If she'd survived, she would have come back for me. Somehow, some way. If she'd survived, she wouldn't have left me alone.

By the time I turned down the aisle, Lia, Michael, and Sloane had already claimed seats near the back. On the first seat to my left, there was an envelope with Judd's name on it, written in careful cursive scrawl. I paused.

Somewhere, beneath the numbness and under the fog, I felt something.

This isn't over, I thought. This isn't done.

I picked the envelope up. "Where's Judd?" I said. My voice was rough against my throat.

Dean eyed the envelope in my hand. "He's talking to the pilot."

My heart beat once in the time it took Dean to turn around and go for the c.o.c.kpit.