Bad Blood

“In five seconds,” Michael said instead, his gaze intent on Lia, “I’m going to tell you that I love you. And if you’re still in the room when I say it, you’re going to know.”

Whether he loved her. Whether he didn’t.

If she’d known for certain that the answer was the latter, Lia wouldn’t have moved. If no part of her wanted him to love her, she wouldn’t have cared. Instead, she looked at Michael with something like hatred in her eyes.

And then she ran.

It was several seconds before I found my voice. “Michael—”

“Don’t,” he told me. “Because I swear to God, Colorado, if you say a single word right now, I’m not going to be able to keep from telling you exactly what combination of emotions I saw flash across your face when you started to think that Celine might not have been taken by one of your precious Masters.”

My mouth went dry. If Celine had been taken by the Masters on a Fibonacci date, she was already dead. But if this case was unrelated, she might still be alive. And I…

I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t hopeful. Part of me—a sick, twisted part of me that I barely even recognized—wanted her to be a victim of the cabal. Because if she was their victim, there was a chance they’d left evidence behind. We desperately needed a lead. I needed something to go on.

Even though I knew Celine mattered to Michael. Even though he mattered to me.

YOU

Some things you remember. Some things you don’t. Some things you’ll shudder at—and some things you won’t.

When had I become a person capable of being disappointed that a missing girl might still be alive?

This is the cost, I thought as I left Michael alone in Celine’s room and made my way back toward the crime scene. Of being willing to make a deal with any devil, to pay any price.

Dean took one look at my face and his jaw tightened. “What did Townsend do?”

“What makes you think Michael did anything?”

Dean gave me a look. “One: he’s Michael. Two: he’s scheduled for a meltdown. Three: Lia has been Miss Rosy Sunshine since she got downstairs, and Lia doesn’t do roses or sunshine unless she’s screwing with someone or deeply upset. And four…” Dean shrugged. “I may not be an emotion reader, but I know you.”

Right now, Dean, I don’t even know myself.

“I went to see your father.” I wasn’t sure if saying those words to Dean was confession or penance. “I told him about us so that he’d tell me about the Masters.”

Dean was quiet for several seconds. “I know.”

I stared at him. “How—”

“I know you,” Dean repeated, “and I know Lia, and the only reason she would have told me that there was something going on between her and Michael was to distract me from something worse.”

I told your father what it’s like when you touch me. I told him that he haunts your dreams.

“I don’t know what that monster said to you.” Dean held my gaze. “But I do know that he has a very particular reaction to anything beautiful, anything real—anything that’s mine.” His fingers lightly traced the edge of my jaw, then moved to lay flat on the back of my neck. “He doesn’t get to do that anymore, Cassie,” Dean said fiercely. “And you don’t get to let him.”

My chest tightened, but I didn’t pull back from his touch. I didn’t step away.

“Celine Delacroix wasn’t taken by one of the Masters.” I let the heat from Dean’s skin warm mine. I pushed down the echo of his father’s voice. “I’m not sure how, but Michael knew. Lia suspected he was hiding something. And a very large part of me wishes…”

“You wish there were a lead,” Dean cut in. His Southern accent was more audible in those words than any I’d heard him speak in a long time. “You wish we had a trail to follow. But you don’t wish this girl had been burned alive, Cassie. You don’t wish she’d died screaming. You’re not capable of it.”

He sounded so certain of that, so certain of me, even after what I’d told him. I thought of my mother, fighting her predecessor to death. We never really know what we’re capable of.

I changed the subject. “You weren’t surprised when I said that Celine hadn’t been taken by one of the Masters.”

“I suspected.” Dean had stayed behind to walk through the crime scene again because something didn’t feel right. I wondered why he’d seen it and I hadn’t. I was supposed to be a Natural. I was supposed to be better than this. I’d recognized that this was our UNSUB’s first time. Why hadn’t I taken that a step further and seen that the Masters would never have allowed someone that out of control, that messy into their ranks?

“You were in the girl’s head,” Dean said softly. “I was in her assailant’s. From her perspective, it wouldn’t have mattered if the intruder had chosen her as the first of nine kills or if she was the one and only target. It wouldn’t have mattered if there was an element of ritual to his movements or only desire and anger. Either way, she still would have fought back.”

I closed my eyes, picturing myself in Celine’s shoes once more. You fought back. You didn’t run. You knew the UNSUB. You might have been terrified, but you were angry, too.

“Celine has a secret laptop,” I told Dean. “The police missed it. And whatever’s going on here, I think it has something to do with Michael’s father.”

“We knew this was a long shot.” Briggs addressed those words to Sterling, even though Dean and I were the ones who’d come bearing the news. “But the dates matched, and the MO was in the ballpark. We had to check it out.”

“So you said.” Sterling clipped the words. “And so said the director.”

I thought back to what I’d seen of that exchange. Director Sterling had spoken only to Briggs—not to his daughter, not to Judd.

“Don’t make this about your father,” Briggs told Sterling, his voice low.

“I didn’t. You did.” Sterling’s tone reminded me that Briggs was her ex-husband as well as her partner. “This was never a long shot, Tanner. If you’d asked me—if you or my father had even bothered to remember that there was a profiler in the room—I could have told you that there was too much anger here to fit with what we know about the Masters, too little control.”