All In

Judd waited a beat. “That all?”

No. That wasn’t all. I wanted, desperately, for the body the police had found not to be my mother. And I wanted it to be her. And it didn’t matter that those things were contradictory. It didn’t matter that I was setting myself up to lose, no matter what.

I bit down, my teeth digging into the inside of my cheek. After a moment, I answered Judd’s question out loud. “No, that’s not all. I also want to take down the person who did this to her.”

That, at least, was simple. That was clear. I’d joined the Naturals program to put killers behind bars. My mother deserved justice. I deserved justice, for everything I’d lost.

“I ought to tell you that hunting down the person who killed her won’t bring her back.” Judd switched lanes, seemingly paying more attention to the road than to me. I wasn’t fooled. Judd was a former marine sniper, always aware of his surroundings. “I ought to tell you,” he continued, “that obsessing over this case won’t make it hurt any less.”

“But you won’t,” I said.

You know what it’s like to have your world torn apart. You know what it’s like to wake up each day to the awareness that the monster who tore it apart is still out there, free to do it again.

Judd wouldn’t tell me I needed to let this go. He couldn’t.

“What would you do,” I said softly, “if it were Scarlett? If there were a lead, no matter how small, on her case?”

I’d never spoken Judd’s daughter’s name in his presence before. Until recently, I hadn’t even been aware she existed. I didn’t know much about her, other than the fact that she’d been the victim of a serial killer known as Nightshade.

The one thing I did know was how Judd would have felt if there were a development in that case.

“It was different for me,” Judd said finally, his eyes fixed out on the road. “There was a body. Don’t know if that makes it better or worse. Better, probably, because I didn’t have to wonder.” His teeth clamped together for a moment. “Worse,” he continued, “because that’s something no father should ever see.”

I tried to imagine what Judd must have gone through when he saw his daughter’s body and immediately wished that I could stop. Judd was a man with a high tolerance for pain and a face that hid nine-tenths of what he felt. But when he saw his daughter’s lifeless body, there would have been no hiding, no gritting his teeth through the pain—nothing but the roar in his ears and a devastation I knew all too well.

If it were Scarlett whose body had just been found, Scarlett whose necklace had just turned up, you wouldn’t sit idly by. You couldn’t—no matter the cost.

“You’ll tell Briggs and Sterling to get me the files?” I said. Judd wasn’t an FBI agent. His first and only priority was the well-being of the Bureau’s teenage assets. He was the final word on our involvement in any case.

Including my mother’s.

You understand, I thought, staring at him. Whether you want to or not—you do.

“You can look at the files,” Judd told me. He pulled the car into a private airstrip, then fixed me with a look. “But you’re not doing it alone.”

The private jet seated twelve, but when I stepped onto the plane, only five of those seats were filled. Agents Sterling and Briggs sat at the front of the plane, on opposite sides of the aisle. She was looking at a file. He was looking at his watch.

All business, I thought. Then again, if it had really been all business between them, they wouldn’t have needed the space provided by the aisle.

Behind them, Dean sat with his back to the front of the plane. There was a table in front of him and a deck of cards on the table. Lia was sprawled across two seats, catty-corner from Dean. Sloane was perched, cross-legged, on the edge of the table, her white-blond hair pulled into a lopsided ponytail on top of her head. If she’d been anyone else, I would have been seriously concerned that she was about to topple over, but knowing Sloane, she’d probably already done the math on her current position and taken whatever steps necessary to ensure the laws of physics fell in her favor.

“Well,” Lia said, shooting me a lazy grin, “look who finally decided to grace us with her presence.”

They don’t know. The realization that Briggs hadn’t told the rest of the team about my mother—about the body—washed over me. If he had, Lia wouldn’t have been lazily poking at me; she would have been jabbing. Some people comforted. Lia prided herself on providing distractions—and not the kind you wanted to thank her for.

My assumption was confirmed when Dean turned to look at me. “Don’t mind Lia,” he said. “She’s in a mood because I beat her at Chutes and Ladders.” A small smile played around the edges of his lips.

Dean wasn’t crossing the plane. He wasn’t putting a calming hand on my shoulder or neck. And that meant that he definitely didn’t know.

In that moment, I didn’t want him to.

The smile on his face, the way he’s teasing Lia—Dean was healing. Each day we were together, the barriers came down a little. Each day, he inched out of the shadows and became a little more himself.

I wanted that for him.

I didn’t want him thinking about the fact that my mother was a victim. I didn’t want him thinking about the fact that his father was a killer.

I wanted to hold on to that smile.