Page 42 of The Naturals
For a split second, Michael let those words—that confession—hang in the air.
“Besides,” he continued, “if I’d told you that between Redding and myself I was the safe option, I would have lost all of that carefully built-up bad-boy cred.”
From self-loathing to sardonic in under two seconds.
“Trust me,” I said lightly, “you don’t have any cred.”
“Oh, really?” Michael said. When I nodded, he stood up and took my hand. “Let’s fix that, then, shall we?”
A wiser person would have said no. I took a deep breath. “What did you have in mind?”
Blowing stuff up was surprisingly therapeutic.
“Clear!” Michael yelled. The two of us scuttled backward. A second later, a string of fireworks went off, scorching the floor of a fake foyer.
“Somehow, I don’t think this is what Agent Briggs had in mind when he built this basement,” I said.
Michael adopted an austere look. “Simulation is one of our most powerful tools,” he said, doing a passable imitation of Agent Briggs. “How else are we to visualize the work of the infamous Boom-Boom Bandit?”
“Boom-Boom Bandit?” I repeated.
He grinned. “Too much?”
I held my index finger up an inch from my thumb. “Just a little.”
Behind us, the door to the basement opened and slammed shut. I half expected it to be Judd, asking what precisely we thought we were doing down here, but Michael had assured me the basement was soundproof.
“I didn’t know anyone was down here.” Sloane looked at the two of us suspiciously. “Why are you down here?”
Michael and I looked at each other. I opened my mouth to answer, but Sloane’s eyes widened as she took in the evidence.
“Fireworks?” she said, folding her arms over her middle. “In the foyer?”
Michael shrugged. “Cassie needed a distraction, and I needed to give Briggs a few more gray hairs.”
Sloane eyed him mutinously. Considering the amount of time she spent down here, I could see why she might take any misuse of the crime sets seriously.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You should be,” she replied sternly. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
What followed was a ten-minute lecture on pyrodynamics. And several more explosions.
“Well,” Michael said, surveying our work. “That’ll teach Briggs and Locke to leave us to our own devices for too long.”
I shoved my hair out of my face with the heel of my hand. “They’re working a case,” I said, remembering the look on Locke’s face—and the details I’d managed to glean about what she and Briggs were up to. “I think that’s a little bit of a higher priority than training us is.”
“Sloane,” Michael said suddenly, drawing out her name and narrowing his eyes.
“Nothing,” Sloane replied quickly.
“Nothing what?” I asked. Clearly, I was missing something here.
“When I said Locke’s name, Sloane looked down and to the side and her eyebrows pulled up in the center.” Michael paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. “What did you take, Sloane?”
Sloane made a careful study of her fingernails. “Agent Locke doesn’t like me.”
I thought back to the last time I had seen Sloane and Locke together. Sloane had come into the kitchen and rattled off some statistics about serial killers. Locke hadn’t had a chance to reply when Briggs came into the room with an update on their case. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Locke say anything to Sloane, though she traded barbs easily enough with Michael and Lia.