Page 55 of The Naturals
“Enough.” Locke put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He stiffened, and for a second, I thought he might hit her.
“Enough,” Dean echoed, expelling a breath. He let Michael go and took a step back. Then he just kept walking backward until his back hit the opposite wall. He was a person who didn’t lose control, who couldn’t afford to, and he’d come close enough with Michael just now that it scared him.
“So what do we do now?” I asked, pulling everyone’s attention from Dean and giving him a second to recover.
Briggs jabbed his index finger in my direction. “You’re still not working this case. Either of you.” He spared a glare for Dean before returning that laser focus to me. “I’ve assigned a team to watch the house. I’ll introduce you all to Agents Starmans, Vance, and Brooks. Until further notice, none of you will be leaving this residence, and Cassie is never alone.”
Closing ranks around me wasn’t going to bring us any closer to this UNSUB.
“You should take me with you,” I told Briggs. “If this guy wants me, we should use that. Set a trap.”
“No!” Michael, Dean, and Briggs responded at the exact same time. I turned beseeching eyes to Agent Locke.
She looked like she was on the verge of agreeing with me, but at the last second, she bit her lip and shook her head. “The UNSUB has only made contact once. He’ll try again, whether you’re here or elsewhere, and at least here, we have the home court advantage.”
I’d been taught that there was no such thing as the home court advantage, but my mother’s lessons had been geared toward reading people, not playing cat and mouse with killers.
“The UNSUB is breaking pattern.” Locke reached out and touched the side of my face softly. “As scary as it is, that’s a good thing. We know what he wants, and we can keep him from getting it. The more riled up he gets, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”
“I can’t just do nothing.” I locked my eyes onto my mentor’s, willing her to understand.
“You can do something,” she said finally. “You can make a list. Everyone you’ve spoken to, everyone you’ve met, every place you’ve been, every person who’s spent even a second looking at you since you got here.”
My mind went immediately to the man who’d interrupted my reading that afternoon by the Potomac—without telling me his name. Was that him? Was it nothing?
It was hard not to be paranoid, given what I knew now.
“The UNSUB mailed the package,” Lia pointed out, jarring me from my thoughts. “He doesn’t have to be local.”
Dean jammed his hands into his pockets. “He’d want to see her,” he said, his own gaze flicking toward my face, just for a second.
“We weren’t able to trace the package,” Locke said grimly. “Busy post office, busy day, less than observant mail clerk, and no security cameras. Our UNSUB paid cash, and the return address is obviously faked. This guy is good, and he’s playing with us. At this point, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
For the next three days, I could barely manage to go to the bathroom without someone else following me in. And every time I looked out the window, I knew that the FBI was out there, watching and waiting, hoping the killer would try again.
“There are approximately thirty thousand working morticians in the United States.”
Sloane—who was the only person in the house I couldn’t justify throwing out of my room, since it was her room, too—had pulled Cassie babysitting duty when I’d tried to sneak away for some time alone.
“Morticians?” I repeated. I eyed her suspiciously. “Did someone give you coffee?”
Sloane very pointedly did not answer the coffee question. “I thought you could use a distraction.”
I plopped down on my bed. “Don’t you have any more cheerful statistics?”
Sloane frowned in contemplation. “Are balloon animals cheerful?”
Oh dear lord.
“Balloonists are more likely than other circus performers to suffer from subconjunctival hemorrhages.”
“Sloane, subconjunctival hemorrhages are not cheerful.”
She shrugged. “If you had a balloon, I could make you a dachshund.”
Another few days of this and I might willingly serve myself up to the UNSUB. Who would have thought my fellow Naturals would take Briggs’s decree that I not be left alone so seriously? Dean and Michael could barely stand to be in the same room with each other, but the second I stepped out of my bedroom, one or both of them would be there waiting for me. The only thing that could have made this whole situation more awkward was if Lia hadn’t magnanimously decided to stay out of the fray.
“Knock, knock!”