Page 23 of The Naturals

The yard was dimly lit, the water gleaming black in the moonlight. Silently, I grabbed a swimsuit and slipped out of the room without waking Sloane. Minutes later, I was sitting at the edge of the pool. Even in the dead of night, the air was hot. I dangled my legs over the edge.

I lowered myself into the pool. Slowly, the tension left my body. My brain shut off. For a few minutes, I just treaded water, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood at nighttime: crickets and the wind and my hands moving through the water. Then I stopped—stopped treading water, stopped fighting the pull of gravity—and let myself sink.

I opened my eyes underwater, but couldn’t see anything. There was darkness all around me, and then suddenly, there was a flicker of light at the pool’s surface.

I wasn’t alone.

You don’t know that, I told myself, but I saw the faintest blur of motion, and that protest died a quick and brutal death. There was someone up there—and I couldn’t stay underwater indefinitely.

Just like that, I felt like I was back in the narrow hallway of my dreams, walking slowly toward something awful.

It’s nothing.

Still, I fought the need for air. I wanted—irrationally—to stay underwater, where it was safe. But I couldn’t. Water plugged my ears, and as my lungs screamed for air, the sound of my own heartbeat surrounded me.

I came up slowly, breaking the surface as quietly as I could. Treading water, I turned in a circle, my eyes scanning the yard for an intruder. At first, I saw nothing. And then I saw a pair of eyes, the moonlight caught in them just so.

Looking at me.

“I didn’t know you were out here,” the owner of those eyes said. “I should go.”

My heart kept right on pounding, even once I realized the voice belonged to Dean. Now that my brain had identified him, I could make out a few more of his features. His hair hung in his face. His eyes—which I’d seen as a predator’s a moment before—now just looked surprised.

Clearly, he hadn’t expected anyone to be swimming at three in the morning.

“No,” I said, my voice traveling along the surface of the water. “It’s your yard, too. Stay.”

I felt ridiculous for being so jumpy. This was a quiet, sleepy little town. The yard was fenced. No one knew what the FBI was training us to do. We weren’t targets. This wasn’t my dream.

I wasn’t my mother.

For an elongated moment, I thought Dean would turn and walk away, but instead, he sat a few inches away from the edge of the pool. “What are you doing out here?”

For some reason, I felt compelled to tell him the truth. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Dean gazed out at the yard. “I stopped sleeping a long time ago. Most nights, I get three good hours, maybe four.”

I’d given him a truth, and he’d given me one. We fell into silence then, him at the edge of the pool and me treading water at the center.

“It wasn’t real, you know.” He spoke to his hands, not to me.

“What wasn’t real?”

“Today.” Dean paused. “At the mall with Locke. Playing games in parking lots. That’s not what this is.”

In the scant light of the moon, his eyes looked so dark they were nearly black, and something about the way he was looking at me made me realize—he wasn’t criticizing me.

He was trying to protect me.

“I know what this is,” I said. I knew better than anyone. Turning away from him, I stared up at the sky, all too aware of the fact that he was staring at me.

“Briggs shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said finally. “This place will ruin you.”

“Did it ruin Lia?” I asked. “Or Sloane?”

“They’re not profilers.”

“Did this place ruin you?”