Page 8 of Twelve

“We found you,” I said. “Lia and I did.”

“Six years ago?” Mrs. McBride couldn’t stop the question—or the skepticism that marked it. She’d hate herself for that later.

“You’re lying,” Mackenzie said, her voice shaking. I saw her feet move backward, a fraction of an inch, toward the edge. “I wanted to talk to Agent Briggs.”

I had seconds to establish a rapport. I didn’t know Mackenzie. I only knew where she was, what she was doing, and what I’d wanted when I was her age, and police officers had been tiptoeing around me.

Truth.

“I was seventeen years old when we found you. It was one of my first cases.” The Naturals program wasn’t public. I wasn’t supposed to be saying any of this, but right now, security clearances were the least of my concerns. “I guess you could say that I wasn’t a normal seventeen.”

There was more motion outside the window, another collective flinch from those inside.

I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink until Mackenzie’s face appeared on the other side of the boarded frame. She was crouched on the ledge now, her knees pulled tight to her chest.

Safe. Steady—but ready to stand if you need to. Ready to jump.She’d do it, if I backed her into a corner. I knew that the way I always knew things—instinctively.

“What’s your name?” Mackenzie asked me.

The muscles in my chest relaxed, but only slightly. I’d piqued her curiosity. She was engaging. We weren’t out of the woods, but it was something.

“My name is Cassie,” I told her. “Cassandra Hobbes.”

There was a pause, maybe two seconds in length. “I’m Mackenzie.” It was important to her, somehow, to maintain ownership over who and what she was. It was important to her to stay on even footing with me.

You can’t let yourself feel powerless. You’re out there—you’re uphere—because there’s a part of you that desperately needs to be in control.If something threatened that, she’d do what she had to do.

What part of her wanted to do, becausethatwas control.

“Tell me about the murders.” I did the only thing that I could do. I treated her like an adult. Like aperson. Like a witness.

Mackenzie was quiet for several seconds, and then she spoke again. “I’m not a normal twelve.”

They don’t want her to think of this as an interrogation room. Cassie knows that, just like she knows, objectively, that the blood has been scrubbed from her hands. They took pictures first—so many pictures of her hands, her clothes…

The blood on the walls.

Cassie wasn’t there for the crime scene photos. Of course she wasn’t, but she can read between the lines.Behavior. Personality. Environment.The BPEs are reliable when nothing and no one else is. They are constant.

Behavior.The detective pulls a chair over to her side of the table. He got her chips and a Coke, and he hands them to her now.

Environment.This is a police station, and not a well-funded one. For the detective, it’s his place of business. She’s the new element here, the thing that has the potential to throw him off-kilter.

She’s a kid.

She’s quiet.

She’s not crying.

“Is my mom dead?” Cassie’s voice is low, but she beats the detective to the first question.

“We don’t know, sweetheart.” That answer comes quickly. The truth takes a little longer. “At this point, it seems likely.”

Personality.Cassie forces herself to ignore the ringing in her ears and think. “You have kids.” This time, the words that come out of her mouth aren’t a question. The detective, she thinks, is probably divorced, and he probably has daughters, and it’s probably hard for him not to bring his work home.

He sees his kids when he looks at her.

“I have two little girls—Ally and Maura.”