“I rebuilt the scene so Cassie could look at it,” Sloane said helpfully. “She said that Dean needed space, so we’re giving him space.”
“You call this giving him space?” Agent Sterling asked, flicking a hand toward the car. “I could kill the kid who leaked that video. Seeing that—it was the very last thing Dean needed. But you know what the second-to-last thing he needs is? Someone re-creating that scene in his basement. Did you learn nothing this summer?”
That question was aimed directly at me. Agent Sterling’s tone wasn’t angry or accusatory. It was incredulous.
“When the director discovered what Briggs was doing with Dean, using him to solve cases, it almost got Briggs fired. It should have gotten him fired. But somehow, my father and Briggs reached a compromise. The Bureau would provide Dean with a home, a guardian, and training, and Dean would help them with cold cases. Not active cases. Your lives were never supposed to be on the line.” Agent Sterling paused, the look in her eye caught somewhere between anger and betrayal. “I looked the other way. Until this summer.”
This summer—when we’d been authorized to work on an active case, because the killer had zeroed in on me.
Sloane jumped to my defense. “The killer contacted Cassie, not the other way around.”
Sterling’s expression softened when she looked at Sloane. “This isn’t about what happened this summer. This is about the fact that no one has authorized you to work on this case. I need your word the two of you will leave it alone. No modeling it, no profiling it, no hacking.”
“No hacking,” Sloane agreed. She held out her hand to shake on it, and before Agent Sterling could comment on her selective hearing, she added, “If the entire population of the town of Quantico shook hands with one another, there would be a total of 157,080 possible handshake combinations.”
Agent Sterling smiled slightly as she took Sloane’s proffered hand. “No hacking and no more simulations.”
Sloane took her hand back. The dark circles under her eyes made her look younger somehow, fragile—or maybe brittle. “I have to run simulations. It’s what I do.”
As a profiler, Agent Sterling should have been able to hear what Sloane wasn’t saying—that building this model was the only thing she could do for Dean. It was also her way of working through her own emotions. It was what she did.
“Not on this case,” Agent Sterling repeated. She turned from Sloane to me. “No exceptions. No excuses. This program only works if the rules are followed and enforced.” Agent Sterling had clearly cast herself in the role of enforcer. “You work on cold cases, and you do so only with the approval of myself and Agent Briggs. If you can’t follow these simple instructions, you’re not just a liability. This whole program is.” Agent Sterling met my eyes, and there was no question in my mind that she’d meant me to hear those words as a threat. “Am I clear?”
The only thing clearer was the fact that my earlier impressions of the woman had been right on target. This wasn’t just a job to her. This was personal.
“She more or less threatened to shut down the entire program.”
Michael leaned back in his chair. “She’s a profiler. She knows exactly what threats to issue to keep people in line. She’s got your number, Colorado. You’re a team player, so she didn’t just threaten you. She threatened the rest of us, too.”
Michael and I were in the living room. Sloane, Lia, and Dean had passed their practice GEDs the day before with flying colors. Neither Michael nor I had actually taken one, but somehow, answer sheets had been turned in with our names on them. Apparently, Lia had been feeling generous—but not generous enough to ensure that we passed, too. As a result, Michael and I were under strict orders to study.
I was better at following orders than Michael was.
“If you were the one issuing threats,” he said, a wicked grin working its way onto his face, “how would you threaten me?”
I looked up from my work. I was going over the test Lia had filled out for me, correcting the wrong answers. “You want me to threaten you?”
“I want to know how you would threaten me,” Michael corrected. “Obviously, threatening the program wouldn’t be the way to go. I don’t exactly have the warm fuzzies for the FBI.”
I tapped the edge of my pencil against the practice test. Michael’s challenge was a welcome distraction. “I’d start with your Porsche,” I said.
“If I’m a bad boy, you’ll take away my keys?” Michael wiggled his eyebrows in a way that was both suggestive and ridiculous.
“No,” I replied without even thinking about it. “If you’re a bad boy, I’ll give your car to Dean.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Michael put a hand over his heart, like he’d been shot—a gesture that would have been funnier before he’d taken an actual bullet to the chest.
“You’re the one who asked,” I said. Michael should have known by now not to throw down the gauntlet unless he wanted me picking it up.
“The depravity of you, Cassie Hobbes.” He was clearly impressed.
I shrugged. “You and Dean have some kind of pseudo-sworn-enemy, pseudo-sibling-rivalry thing going on. You’d rather I set your car on fire than give it to Dean. It’s the perfect threat.”
Michael didn’t contradict my logic. Instead, he shook his head and smiled. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a sadistic streak?”
I felt the breath whoosh out of my lungs. He couldn’t have known the effect those words would have on me. I turned back to the practice test, allowing my hair to fall into my face, but it was too late. Michael had already seen the split second of horror—loathing—fear—disgust on my face.
“Cassie—”
“I’m fine.”
Locke had been a sadist. Part of the pleasure she’d gotten out of killing had been imagining what her victims were going through. I had no desire to hurt anyone. Ever. But being a Natural profiler meant that I instinctively knew other people’s weaknesses. Knowing what people wanted and knowing what they feared were two sides of the same coin.
Michael wasn’t really calling me sadistic. I knew that, and he knew that I’d never intentionally hurt anyone. But sometimes, knowing that you could do something was almost as bad as having actually done it.
“Hey.” Michael tilted his head upside down to get a good look at my face. “I was kidding. No Sad Cassie face, okay?”