“How did you…?” Michael sputtered.
“Are you telling me the pity party was an act?” Lia sounded impressed despite herself.
“It wasn’t an act,” I told her. “I fully expected to lose. I just hadn’t actually looked at my final cards yet.”
I’d figured that if I didn’t know what my hand held, there was no way for Michael or Lia to figure it out, either.
Dean was the first one to start laughing.
“Hail Cassie,” Michael said. “Queen of loopholes.”
Lia huffed.
“Does this mean I get to keep your shirts?” I asked, reaching for my belt and snagging an Oreo while I was at it.
“I think it would be best if everyone maintained possession of their own shirts. And put them on. Now.”
I froze. The voice that issued that command was female and crisp. For a split second, I was taken back to my first weeks in the program, to our supervisor, my mentor. Special Agent Lacey Locke. She’d trained me. I’d idolized her. I’d trusted her.
“Who are you?” I forced myself back to the present. I couldn’t let myself think about Agent Locke—once I went down that rabbit hole, it would be hard to fight my way out. Instead, I focused on the person barking out orders. She was tall and thin, but nothing about her seemed slight. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a tight French knot at the nape of her neck, and she held her head with her chin thrust slightly forward. Her eyes were gray, a shade lighter than her suit. Her clothes were expensive; she wore them like they weren’t.
There was a gun holstered to her side.
Gun. This time, I couldn’t cut the memories off at the knees. Locke. The gun. It was all coming back. The knife.
Dean laid a hand on my shoulder. “Cassie.” I felt the warmth of his hand through my shirt. I heard him say my name. “It’s okay. I know her.”
One shot. Two. Michael goes down. Locke—she’s holding a gun—
I concentrated on breathing and fought back the memories. I wasn’t the one who’d gotten shot. This wasn’t my trauma. I was the reason Michael had been there in the first place.
I was the one that, in her own twisted way, the monster had loved.
“Who are you?” I asked again, clawing my way back to the here and now, my voice crisp and pointed. “And what are you doing in our house?”
The woman in gray raked her eyes over my face, leaving me with the uncomfortable feeling that she knew exactly what was going on in my head, exactly where I’d been a moment before.
“My name is Special Agent Veronica Sterling,” she said finally. “And as of right now, I live here.”
“Well, she’s not lying.” Lia broke the silence. “She’s really a special agent, her name really is Veronica Sterling, and for some reason, she’s operating under the misguided belief that she resides under our roof.”
“Lia, I presume?” Agent Sterling said. “The one who specializes in lies.”
“Telling them, spotting them—it’s all the same.” Lia executed a graceful little shrug, but her eyes were hard.
“And yet,” Agent Sterling continued, ignoring both the shrug and the intensity of Lia’s gaze, “you interacted on a daily basis with an FBI agent who was moonlighting as a serial killer. She was one of your supervisors, a constant presence in this house for years, and no alarm bells went off.” Agent Sterling’s tone was clinical—just stating the facts.
Locke had fooled us all.
“And you,” Agent Sterling said, her eyes lighting on mine, “must be Cassandra Hobbes. I hadn’t pegged you for the type to play strip poker. And no, you don’t get credit for being the only person in this room besides me who’s still wearing a shirt.”
Agent Sterling pointedly turned her attention from me to the pile of clothes on the coffee table. She folded her arms over her chest and waited. Dean reached for his shirt and tossed Lia’s to her. Michael didn’t appear overly bothered by the crossed arms, nor did he seem at all compelled to get dressed. Agent Sterling stared down the length of her nose at him, her gaze settling on the bullet scar on his chest.
“I take it you’re Michael,” she said. “The emotion reader with the attitude problem who’s continually doing stupid things for girls.”
“That’s hardly a fair assessment,” Michael replied. “I do plenty of stupid things that aren’t for girls, too.”
Special Agent Veronica Sterling didn’t show even the slightest inclination to smile. Turning back to the rest of us, she finished her introduction. “This program has a vacancy for a supervisor. I’m here to fill it.”
“True,” Lia said, drawing out the word, “but not the whole story.” When Agent Sterling didn’t rise to the bait, Lia continued. “It’s been six weeks since Locke went off the deep end. We were starting to wonder if the FBI would ever send a replacement.” She raked her eyes over Agent Sterling. “Where did they find you, central casting? One young female agent swapped in for another?”
Trust Lia to cut through the niceties.
“Let’s just say I’m uniquely qualified for the position,” Agent Sterling replied. Her no-nonsense tone reminded me of something. Of someone. For the first time, her last name sank in, and I realized where I’d heard it before.
“Agent Sterling,” I said. “As in Director Sterling?”
I’d only met the FBI director once. He’d gotten involved when the serial killer Locke and Briggs were hunting had kidnapped a senator’s daughter. At the time, none of us had known that the UNSUB—or Unknown Subject—was Locke.
“Director Sterling is my father.” Agent Sterling’s voice was neutral—too neutral, and I wondered what daddy issues she had. “He sent me here to do damage control.”
Director Sterling had chosen his own daughter as Locke’s replacement. She’d arrived when Agent Briggs was out of town on a case. I doubted the timing was accidental.
“Briggs told me you left the FBI,” Dean said quietly, addressing the words to Agent Sterling. “I heard you transferred to Homeland Security.”
“I did.”
I tried to pinpoint the expression on Agent Sterling’s face, the tone of her voice. She and Dean knew each other—that much was clear, both from Dean’s earlier statement and from the way her face softened, almost imperceptibly, when she looked at him.