The Naturals: All In Part 3

Judd snorted. "It'll do, Lia."

"What if I told you it didn't have to?" That question came from the parking lot behind us. I recognized the voice instantly.

Michael.

As I turned to face him, I wondered which Michael I would see. The boy who'd recruited me to the program? The raw, unguarded Michael who'd shown me brief glimpses of his oldest wounds? The careless, indifferent one who'd spent the past three months acting like nothing and no one could touch him?

Especially me.

"Townsend," Dean greeted Michael. "Nice car."

"Aren't you a bit young for a midlife crisis?" Lia said.

"Life in the fast lane," came Michael's reply. "You have to adjust for inflation."

I looked at the new car first, then at Michael. The car was a cla.s.sic-a convertible in deep cherry red with a style I a.s.sociated with the fifties or sixties. It was in mint condition. Michael gave every appearance of being in mint condition, too. There were no bruises on his face, no marks on the arm resting on the back of the pa.s.senger seat.

Michael's eyes lingered on my face, just for an instant. "Don't worry, Colorado," he told me, a sharp smile pulling at the edges of his lips. "I'm all in one piece."

That was the first time he'd responded to something I hadn't said in weeks. The first time he'd acted like I was a person worth reading.

"In fact," Michael announced, "I'm feeling like a new man. An incredibly generous, incredibly well-connected new man." He glanced around at the others, his gaze coming to rest on Judd. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "but I made us a reservation of my own."

Michael's reservation was at the Majesty, the most expensive luxury hotel and casino in the city. Sloane hesitated as we approached the grand entrance, bobbing back and forth slightly like a magnet repelled by an invisible field. Her lips moved rapidly as she rattled off the digits of pi under her breath.

Some children had security blankets. I was fairly certain Sloane had grown up with a security number.

As I tried to figure out what about the Majesty had triggered this particular episode, our expert statistician forced her lips to stop moving and stepped over the threshold. Lia met my eyes and raised an eyebrow. Clearly, I wasn't the only one who'd noticed Sloane's behavior. The only reason Michael hadn't noticed was that he was several yards ahead, sauntering through the lobby.

As the rest of us followed, I stared up at the sixty-foot ceiling. Judd hadn't put up a fight about moving. The profiler in me said Judd had sensed that Michael needed this-not the luxury offered by the Majesty.

Control.

"Mr. Townsend." The concierge greeted Michael with all of the formality of a diplomat greeting a foreign head of state. "We're so pleased you and your party will be joining us. The Renoir Suite is one of the finest we have to offer."

Michael took a step toward him. Months after being shot in the leg, Michael still had a noticeable limp. He made no attempt at hiding it, his hand coming to rest on his thigh, daring the concierge to let his gaze drop.

"I do hope the suite has elevator access," Michael said.

"Of course," the concierge replied nervously. "Of course!"

I caught Dean's eyes. His lips twitched slightly. Michael was messing with the poor guy-and enjoying it just a little bit too much.

"I believe the Renoir Suite has private elevator access, does it not, Mr. Simmons?" A blond-haired man in his twenties smoothly interjected himself into the conversation as he came to stand beside the concierge. He was wearing a dark red shirt-silk, from the looks of it-under a black sports jacket. As he raked a.s.sessing blue eyes over Michael, his fingers casually fastened the top of two b.u.t.tons on the jacket-less of a nervous gesture than one that called to mind a soldier readying himself for battle.

"I'll take it from here," he told the concierge.

The concierge nodded his head slightly in response. The interplay told me a few things. First, the concierge had no problems taking orders from a man at least twenty years his junior. And second, the man in question had no problems whatsoever giving them.

"Aaron Shaw." He introduced himself to Michael, holding out a hand. Michael took it. At second glance, I realized Aaron was younger than I'd initially thought-twenty-one or twenty-two.

"If you'll follow me," he said, "I'd be glad to personally show you to your rooms."

My mind arranged and rearranged what I knew about Aaron Shaw. Behavior. Personality. Environment. Aaron had come to the concierge's rescue. As he walked through the lobby, he nodded and smiled at various people, from bellhops to guests. He clearly knew his way around.

With each step he took, people got out of his way.

"Your family owns the casino?" I asked.

The rhythm of Aaron's stride faltered, just for a second. "Am I that obvious?"

"It's the silk shirt," Michael told him in a conspiratorial whisper. "And the shoes."

Aaron came to a stop in front of a gla.s.s elevator. "Outed by my footwear," he deadpanned. "There goes my future in espionage."

You expect other people to take you seriously, I thought, but you're capable of laughing at yourself.

Beside me, Sloane was staring at the hotelier's son like he'd just reached into her rib cage and ripped out her heart.

"I was joking about the espionage," Aaron told her with a smile more genuine than any he'd offered Michael. "Promise."

Sloane searched her store of mental heuristics for an appropriate response. "There are 4,097 rooms in this hotel," she told him, an oddly hopeful tone in her voice. "And the Majesty serves over twenty-nine thousand meals a day."

I turned back to Aaron, ready to run interference, but he didn't bat an eye at Sloane's version of "conversation."

"Have you stayed with us before?" he asked her.

For some reason, that question hit Sloane hard. Silently, she shook her head. Belatedly, she remembered to smile at him-the same painfully large smile she'd been practicing on the plane.

You're trying so hard, I thought. But for the life of me, I wasn't sure exactly what it was that Sloane was trying to do.

The elevator doors opened. Aaron stepped on and held the door for the rest of us. Once we were all on, he glanced at Sloane. "Everything okay, miss?"

She nodded furtively. As the elevator doors closed, I b.u.mped my hip lightly into Sloane's. After a moment, she snuck a hesitant look at me and b.u.mped back.

"Did you know," she said brightly, making another attempt at conversation, "that elevators only kill about twenty-seven people per year?"

The much-touted Renoir Suite had five bedrooms and a living area large enough to host the majority of a football team. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall, giving us a panoramic view of the Vegas Strip, neon and glowing, even during the day.

Lia hopped up on the bar, her legs dangling down as she considered our digs. "Not bad," she told Michael.

"Don't thank me," Michael returned easily. "Thank my father."

A ball of unease began to unfurl in my stomach. I didn't want to thank Michael's father for anything-and under normal circ.u.mstances, neither did he. Without another word, Michael sauntered toward the master bedroom, claiming it for his own.

Dean came up behind me. He laid one arm lightly on my shoulder.

"This doesn't feel right," I told him softly.

"No," Dean said, staring after Michael. "It doesn't."

Sloane and I ended up sharing a room. As I peered out our balcony window, I wondered how long it would take her to tell me what was wrong.

How long will it take me to tell her? To tell all of them? I pushed back against the questions.

"Did you have many nightmares while you were home?" Sloane asked softly, coming to stand behind me.

"Some," I said.

I'd have more now that there had been a break in my mother's case. And Sloane would be there. She'd tell me factoids and statistics until I fell back asleep.

Home isn't a place, I thought. My throat muscles tightened.

"We shared a room for forty-four percent of the last calendar year," Sloane said wistfully. "So far this year, we're at zero."

I turned to look at her. "I missed you, too, Sloane."

She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she looked down at her feet. "I wanted him to like me," she admitted, like that was some terrible thing.

"Aaron?" I asked.

Instead of answering, Sloane walked over to a shelf full of blown-gla.s.s objects and began sorting them, largest to smallest, and for objects of similar size, by color. Red. Orange. Yellow. She moved with the efficiency of a speed-chess player. Green. Blue.

"Sloane?" I said.

"He's my brother," she blurted out. Then, on the off chance that I might not have understood her meaning, she forced herself to stop sorting, turned, and elaborated. "Half brother. Male sibling. We have a coefficient of relatedness of point-two-five."

"Aaron Shaw is your half brother?" I tried to make that compute. What were the chances? No wonder Sloane had behaved so strangely around him. As for Aaron, he' d noticed Sloane. He'd smiled at her, talked to her, but she could have been anyone. She could have been a stranger on the street.

"Aaron Elliott Shaw," Sloane said. "He's 1,433 days older than I am." Sloane looked back at the gla.s.s objects, perfectly arrayed in front of the mirror. "In my entire life, I've seen him exactly eleven times." She swallowed. "This is only the second time he's seen me."

"He doesn't know?" I asked.

Sloane shook her head. "No. He doesn't."

Sloane's last name isn't Shaw.

"Forty-one percent of children born in America are illegitimate." Sloane lightly traced her index finger along the edge of the shelf. "But only a minority of those are born as a result of adultery."

Sloane's mother wasn't her father's wife. Her father owns this casino. Her half brother doesn't even know she's alive.

"We don't have to stay here," I told her. "We can go back to the other hotel. Michael would understand."

"No!" Sloane said, her eyes wide. "You can't tell Michael, Ca.s.sie. You can't tell anyone."

I'd never known Sloane to keep a secret. She didn't have much of a brain-to-mouth filter, and what little she had disappeared under the influence of even the smallest bit of caffeine. The fact that she wanted to keep this between us made me wonder whether those were her words or someone else's.

You can't tell anyone.

"Ca.s.sie-"

"I won't," I told Sloane. "I promise."

Looking at her, I couldn't keep from wondering how many times Sloane had been told, growing up, that she was a secret. I wondered how many times she'd watched Aaron or his father from afar.

"There's a high probability that you're profiling me," Sloane stated.

"Occupational hazard," I told her. "And speaking of occupational hazards, the numbers on the victims' wrists-any thoughts?"

Sloane's brain worked in ways that were incomprehensible to most people. I wanted to remind her that here, with us, that was a good thing.

Sloane took the bait. "The first two victims were 3213 and 4558." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, then plowed on. "One odd number, one even. Four digits. Neither are prime. 4558 has eight divisors: 1, 2, 43, 53, 86, 106, 2279, and, of course, 4558."

"Of course," I said.

"In contrast, 3213 has sixteen divisors," Sloane continued.

Before she could tell me all sixteen of them, I interjected, "And the third victim?"

"Right," she said, turning to pace the room as she spoke. "The number on the third victim's wrist was 9144." Her blue eyes got a faraway look in them that told me not to expect decipherable English any time soon.

The numbers matter to you, I thought, turning my mind to the killer. The numbers are the most important thing.

Very few aspects of this UNSUB's MO had remained constant. Victimology was a wash. You've killed one woman and two men. The first two were in their twenties. The third was almost eighty. Our killer had killed in a different location each time, using a different methodology.

The numbers were the only constant.

"Could they be dates?" I asked Sloane.

Sloane paused in her pacing. "4558. April fifth, 1958. It was a Sat.u.r.day." I could see her searching through her encyclopedic store of knowledge for details about that date. "On April fifth, 1951, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death as Soviet spies. In 1955 on that date, Churchill resigned as England's prime minister, but in 1958..." Sloane shook her head. "Nothing."

"Knock, knock." Lia announced her presence the way she always did, without giving anyone time to object before she sauntered into the room. "I come bearing news."

Lia slipped personas on and off as easily as most people switched clothes. Since we'd arrived, she'd changed into a red dress. With her hair pulled back into a complicated swirl, she looked sophisticated and a little bit dangerous.

That did not bode well.

"The news," Lia continued with a slow smile, "involves some fascinating revelations about how our very own Ca.s.sandra Hobbes spent her Christmas vacation."

Lia knew. About my mother. About the body. I felt like there was a vise around my chest, tightening centimeter by centimeter until I couldn't manage more than shallow breaths.

After a few seconds, Lia snorted. "Honestly, Ca.s.sie. You go away for two weeks and it's like you've forgotten everything I taught you."

She was lying, I realized. When Lia said the news she'd heard was about me, she was lying. For all I knew, there might not even be news.

"Interesting, though," Lia continued, her eyes eagle sharp, "that you believed me. Because that seems to suggest that something interesting did happen while you were home."

I said nothing. Better to stay silent in Lia's presence than to lie.