Bad Blood

“Townsend Senior turned me onto a case,” Director Sterling said, addressing those words to Briggs and ignoring his daughter and Judd altogether. “I’d like you to take a look at it.”

“Now?” Briggs asked. The subtext there was clear: We have our first lead on the Masters in months, and you want us to do Michael’s abusive father a favor now?

“What Thatcher Townsend wants,” Michael said tightly, “Thatcher Townsend gets.”

Agent Sterling took a step toward him. “Michael—”

He brushed past her and out of the room, that same deceptively pleasant smile plastered to his face.

Briggs’s jaw clenched as he turned back to the director. “What case?”

“There’s a situation with Townsend’s business partner’s daughter,” the director replied calmly. “And given his support of the Naturals program, he would like us to look into it.”

“His support of the program?” Lia repeated incredulously. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the man more or less sell Michael to you in exchange for immunity from prosecution on a laundry list of white-collar crimes?”

Director Sterling ignored Lia. “It would behoove us,” he told Briggs, each word issued with precision, “to consider taking this case.”

“I believe that decision is mine.” Judd’s words were just as precise—and just as uncompromising—as the director’s. A former marine sniper would have struck most people as an odd choice of housemother for a bunch of teenagers in an FBI training program, but Judd would have taken a bullet for any of us.

“Michael’s father hits him,” Sloane blurted out. She had no filter, no protective layer to keep her raw spots from the world.

Judd met Sloane’s wide blue eyes for a moment, then held up a hand. “Everyone under the age of twenty-one, out.”

None of us moved.

“I’m not going to ask you twice,” Judd said, his voice low. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d heard that tone in his voice.

We moved.

On my way out, Agent Briggs caught my arm. “Find Michael,” he told me quietly. “And make sure he doesn’t do anything…”

“Michael-ish?” I suggested.

Briggs eyed Director Sterling. “Ill-advised.”

We found Michael in the basement. When the FBI had purchased the house that served as our base of operations, they’d converted the bottom floor into a lab. Model crime scenes lined the walls. A quick scan of the room told me that Michael hadn’t set anything on fire.

Yet.

Instead, Michael stood at the far end of the room, facing a wall that had been papered from ceiling to floor with photographs. The Masters’ victims. I’d spent hundreds of hours down here, staring at that wall the way Michael was now. As I came to stand beside him, my gaze went automatically to two photos set apart from the rest.

One was a picture of a skeleton the authorities had found buried at a crossroads. The other was a photograph of my mother, taken shortly before she’d disappeared. When the police had uncovered the remains in the first picture, the working theory had been that they were my mom’s. Eventually, we’d discovered that my mother was alive—and that she was the one who’d killed our Jane Doe.

All are tested, a voice said from somewhere in my memory. All must be found worthy.

That was what one of the Masters, a serial killer known as Nightshade, had told me when we’d captured him. The Pythia was forced to prove her worth by fighting her predecessor—to the death.

Masters and apprentices, I could hear Daniel Redding saying lightly, rituals and rules, and at the center of it all, a woman.

Dean laid a hand on my shoulder. I forced myself to turn and meet his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t see the naked vulnerability in mine.

Casting a glance at Dean and me, Lia walked up behind Michael and snaked an arm around his stomach, pulling him close. Dean narrowed his eyes at the two of them.

“We’re on again,” Lia informed us. “In a very big—and, might I add, overtly physical—way.”

I knew better than to take Lia at her word, but Sloane played right into her hands. “Since when?”

Michael never tore his gaze from the wall. “Remember when Lia slammed me up against that wall in Vegas?”

It occurred to me then that Lia might not be lying. “You’ve been together since Vegas, and none of us knew?” I tried to wrap my mind around that. “You live in a house with three profilers and a marine sniper. How—”

“Stealth, deception, and an excellent sense of balance,” Michael said, preempting the question. Then he glanced at Lia. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.”

“The weight of our treachery was weighing on my soul,” Lia deadpanned. In other words: she wanted to distract Dean from thinking too hard about what was going on with me, and if she could also take Michael’s mind off the chain of events that had brought him down here, all the better.

“I’m not really in the mood to be distracted,” Michael commented. He knew Lia. Biblically. He knew exactly what she was doing, and right now, some part of him didn’t want to be saved from the dark place. He turned back to the wall.

“I love you,” Lia said softly. There was something intense in her tone, something vulnerable. No muss, no fuss, no misdirection. “Even when I don’t want to, I do.”

Despite himself, Michael whirled back around to face her.

Lia fluttered her eyelashes. “I love you like a drowning man loves air. I love you like the ocean loves the sand. I love you like peanut butter loves jelly, and I want to have your babies.”

Michael snorted. “Shut up.”

Lia smirked. “I had you going there for a second.”

Michael studied her expression, beyond the smirk, beyond the mask. “Maybe you did.”

The thing about Lia that made her so difficult to read was that she would have said the exact same thing with the exact same smirk regardless of what she felt. She would have said it if she was falling in love with him. She would have said it if she was just jerking his chain.

“Question.” Michael held up his index finger. “I know why Lia is looking particularly pleased with herself and why Cassie’s wearing her profiling face, and I could make an educated guess about why Redding looks downright constipated every time Lia touches me, but why is Sloane wildly avoiding my gaze and shifting her weight to the balls of her feet like the effort of not saying something might actually cause her to explode?”