Page 39 of The Naturals

“Something like that.”

“I can’t take you anywhere.” Michael appeared on my other side and eased himself onto the ground next to me. “She’s too gregarious for her own good,” he told the man standing next to us. “Always chatting up complete strangers. Frankly, I think she over-shares. It’s embarrassing.”

I put the heel of my hand on Michael’s shoulder and shoved, but couldn’t push down the stab of gratitude I felt that I was no longer suffering through Small Town Talk Time alone.

“Well,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to say hello.”

Michael nodded austerely. “How do you do?”

I waited until our visitor was out of earshot before I turned to him. “‘How do you do’?” I repeated incredulously.

Michael shrugged. “Sometimes,” he said, “when I’m in a social pickle, I like to ask myself, WWJAD?” I raised an eyebrow, and he explained. “What Would Jane Austen Do?”

If Michael read Jane Austen, I was the heir to the British throne.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“Rescuing you,” he answered blithely. “What are you doing here?”

I gestured to the binder. “Reading.”

“And avoiding me?” he asked.

I repositioned my body and hoped the glare from the sun would compromise his view of my face. “I’m not avoiding anyone. I just wanted to be alone.”

Michael brought his hand up to his face to shield it from the sun. “You wanted to be alone,” he repeated. “To read.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said defensively. “That’s why we’re all here. To learn.”

Not to obsess over the fact that I’ve kissed more boys in the past week than I have in my entire life, I added silently. To my surprise, Michael didn’t comment on the emotions I had to be broadcasting. He just reclined next to me and held up some reading material of his own.

“Jane Austen,” I said, disbelieving.

Michael gestured toward my binder. “Carry on.”

For fifteen or twenty minutes, the two of us read in silence. I finished interview twenty-seven and started in on number twenty-eight.

REDDING, DANIEL

JANUARY 15-18, 2007

VIRGINIA STATE PENITENTIARY, RICHMOND, VA

I almost missed it, would have missed it had the name not been printed over and over again, documenting this particular serial killer’s every word.

Redding.

Redding.

Redding.

The interviewer was Agent Briggs. The subject’s name was Redding, and he’d been incarcerated in Virginia. I stopped breathing. My mouth went suddenly dry. I flipped through the pages, faster and faster, skimming at warp speed until Daniel Redding asked Briggs a question about his son.

Dean.

Dean’s father was a serial killer. While I was traveling the country with my mom, Dean had been living twenty yards away from the shack where his father tortured and killed at least a dozen women.

And Dean had never said a word to me: not when we were working our way through Locke’s puzzles and bouncing ideas off each other; not when he caught me swimming in the pool that first time; not after we’d kissed. He’d told me that spending time inside the minds of killers would ruin me, but hadn’t breathed a word about his past.