All In: (The Naturals #3) (26 page)

They.
The word settled over me and refused to leave. “Who’s doing this?” I asked, looking down at the pictures. “Why?”

Hundreds of victims killed over decades. Different killers. Different methods.

“They’re doing it because someone told them to.” Lia managed to sound utterly bored, but she couldn’t look away from the pictures splayed out on the floor.
“They’re doing it because they believe this is how it has to be done.”

When I was nine years old, I killed a man.

I grew up in a cult.

Lia’s statements from Two Truths and a Lie came back to me, and suddenly, it occurred to me that—per the rules of the game—both of those statements could be true, so long as
what she’d said about considering shaving Michael’s head was not.

It would be just like Lia to tell outrageous truths and a joking, mundane lie.

Once upon a time, your name was Sadie.
Now wasn’t the time to profile Lia, but I couldn’t stop it, any more than Sloane could have stopped looking for the Fibonacci dates.
Someone used to give you gifts for being a good girl. You were on the streets by the time you were thirteen. Sometime before that, you learned not to trust anyone. You learned to lie.

Dean’s brown eyes settled on Lia. Their history was palpable in the air. For a moment, it was like no one else was in the room.

“You think we’re dealing with some kind of cult,” Dean said.

“You’re the profiler, Dean,” Lia responded, never looking away from his face. “You tell me.”

A string of victims every three years, killed in prescriptive ways on dates dictated by the Fibonacci sequence.

There was an unquestionable element of ritual to that.

“Say we are dealing with a cult,” Michael said, keeping his voice casual, never looking at Lia. “Does that make our guy a member?”

I turned the question over in my head. Lia answered it.

“Cult 101,” she said. “You don’t talk to outsiders.” Her voice was strangely flat. “You don’t tell them what they’re not blessed enough to
know.”

The numbers on the wrists. The Fibonacci spiral.
If there was some kind of group operating behind the scenes, they’d managed to avoid detection for more than six
decades—until someone had turned Sloane onto the code.

Lia didn’t need experience with
this
cult to see meaning in that. “I’m going to go play some poker.” She stood up, shedding her previous affect as easily as
someone stepping out of a dress. “If you try to stop me,” she said with a smile that looked so real, I almost believed it, “if you try to come with me, I will make you regret
it.” She flounced to the door. Dean started to stand, and she gave him a look. A silent conversation passed between them.

She loved him, but right now, she didn’t want him. She didn’t want anyone.

Lia rarely showed us her true self. But what we’d just seen was more than that. The flat voice, the words she’d said—that wasn’t just the real Lia. That was the girl
she’d spent years running from.

That was
Sadie
.

“Parting gift,” Lia said on her way out, twirling a finger through her jet-black hair, no sign of that girl in her now, “for those of you who might be a little slow on the
uptake. Whoever our killer is, I’d bet a lot of money that he’s not a part of this group. If he were, the cult would be monitoring him. And if they were monitoring him and they found
out that he’d shared even one of their secrets?” Lia shrugged, the very picture of careless indifference. “He wouldn’t be our problem. He’d already be dead.”

YOU

You step out into the fresh air. Inside, you’re smiling. Outside, you show a different face to the world. People have their expectations, after all, and you would hate
to disappoint.

Drowning, fire, the old man impaled on the arrow, strangling Camille.

The knife is next.

Then beating a man to death with your bare hands.

Poison will be easy. Eloquent.

And then the last two—dealer’s choice. There should be nine ways. If you were in charge, there would be.

Three times three times three.

Nine is the number of victims. Three is the number of years between.

Nine seats at the table.

You pause at the doors to the Desert Rose. Not your preferred hunting grounds, of course. But a fine place to visit. A fine place to look at what you have made.

A fine place to anoint number five.

Everything is going according to plan. Word of your kills is spreading. You know they monitor others with similar proclivities. Looking for talent. For threats.

The Masters will finally see you for what you really are.

What you have become.

M
ichael announced he was going after Lia less than a minute after she left.

“She doesn’t want you there, Townsend,” Dean said tersely. Lia didn’t want
Dean
there, either. It was killing him not to go after her, but as protective as he
was, Dean would only push Lia so far.

“Luckily for us,” Michael replied airily, “I’ve never met a bad idea I did not immediately embrace like the dearest of friends.” He went into his room, and when he
came out, he was putting on a casual blazer, looking every inch the trust-fund kid. “I believe Lia when she says that she will make me regret going after her,” he told Dean. “But
it just so happens regrets are a specialty of mine.”

Michael buttoned the top button on his jacket and waltzed out the door.

“Michael and Lia have been physically involved no fewer than seven times.” Sloane seemed to think volunteering that information might prove helpful.

Dean’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Don’t,” I told him. “She’s safer with him than she is alone.”

Whatever Lia had been feeling when she walked out the door, Michael would have seen it. And my gut was telling me that he’d felt it, too. Of all of us, Michael and Lia were the most
similar to each other. It was why they’d been drawn together when he’d first come to the program, and why, as a couple, they’d never worked long-term.

“Would you feel better if you knew where they were going?” Sloane asked. Dean didn’t reply, but Sloane texted Lia anyway. I wasn’t surprised when she got a reply. Lia was
the one who’d told me we were at issue capacity. She wouldn’t ignore Sloane—not in a city where Sloane had spent most of her life being ignored by her own flesh and blood.

“So?” Dean said. “Where are they going?”

Sloane walked over to the window and stared out—through the spiral. “The Desert Rose.”

It was forty-five minutes between the time Michael walked out the door and the time Judd walked in. Agent Sterling followed. Briggs entered last. He came to stand in the middle
of the suite, staring at the papers covering the floor.

“Explain.” Briggs resorting to one-word commands was never a good thing.

“Based on Sloane’s projections, we’re looking at nine victims every three years for a period of at least sixty years, with a different signature underlying each set.”
Dean kept it brief, his voice remarkably dispassionate, given the content of what he was saying. “The cases are spread out geographically, no repeating jurisdictions. The methods of killing
go in a predictable order, and that order mirrors our UNSUB’s first four kills. We believe we’re dealing with a fairly large group, most likely one with a cult-like
mentality.”

“Our UNSUB isn’t a part of the cult,” I continued. “This isn’t a group that advertises its existence, and that’s exactly what the additional elements of our
UNSUB’s signature—the numbers on the wrists, the fact that the Fibonacci sequence determines not only the dates on which he kills but also the exact location—effectively
do.”

“He’s better than they are.” Sloane wasn’t profiling. She was stating what was, to her mind, a fact. “Anyone can kill on certain dates. This…” She gestured
to the papers carefully arranged on the floor. “It’s simplistic. That?” She turned toward the map on the window, the spiral. “The calculations, the planning, making sure the
right thing happens in the right place at the right time.” Sloane sounded almost apologetic as she continued, “That’s perfection.”

You’re better than they are. That’s the point.

“We knew the numbers written on the victims’ wrists were a message,” I said. “We knew they mattered. We knew it wasn’t just our attention he wanted.”

It’s theirs.

“That’s it.” Judd’s voice was rough. “You’re done.” He couldn’t order Agent Sterling off this case. That was outside of his purview. But the rest
of us weren’t. He was the final word on our involvement in any investigation. “All of you,” he addressed those words to Dean, Sloane, and me. “It’s my decision.
It’s my call. And I say we’re done.”

“Judd—” Sterling’s voice was calm, but I thought I could hear a note of desperation underneath.

“No, Ronnie.” Judd turned his back on her, staring at Sloane’s window, his entire body bow-string tight. “I want Nightshade. Always have. And if there’s a larger
group involved in what happened to Scarlett, I damn well want them, too. But I won’t risk a single one of these kids.” The idea of walking away was killing Judd, but he refused to
waver. “You’ve got what you need from them,” he told Sterling and Briggs. “You know where the UNSUB is going to strike. You know when. You know how. Hell, you even know
why.”

I could make out a hint of Judd’s reflection in the window. Enough to see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

“It’s my call,” Judd said again. “And I say that if you’ve got anything else you need a consult on, you can damn well ship it to Quantico. We’re leaving.
Today.”

Before anyone could respond, the door to the suite opened. Lia stood there, looking supremely satisfied with herself. Michael stood behind her, soaked from head to toe in mud.

“What—” Briggs started to say. Then he corrected himself. “I don’t want to know.”

Lia strolled into the foyer. “We never left the suite,” she announced, lying to their faces with disturbing conviction. “And I certainly didn’t beat the pants off a bunch
of professionals playing recreational poker at the Desert Rose. In related news: I have no idea why Michael’s covered in mud.”

A glop of mud fell from Michael’s hair onto the tile floor.

“Get cleaned up,” Judd told Michael. “And all of you, get packed.” Judd didn’t wait for a reply before turning to retreat to his own room. “Wheels up in one
hour.”

“I
do hope you found your stay to your liking.” The concierge met us in the lobby. “Your departure is a bit
abrupt.”

His tone made that sound like a question. It was closer to a complaint.

“It’s my leg,” Michael told him in a complete deadpan. “I walk with a limp. I’m sure you understand.”

As far as explanations went, that one held little to no explanatory power, but the concierge was flustered enough that he didn’t question it. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said
hurriedly. “We just have a few things for you to sign, Mr. Townsend.”

While Michael dealt with the paperwork, I turned to look back at the lobby. At the front desk, dozens of people stood in line, waiting to check in. I tried not to think about the fact that in
three days, any one of them—the elderly man, the guy wearing the Duke sweatshirt, the mother with three small children—could be dead.

The knife is next.
I knew—personally, viscerally—how much damage could be done with a knife.
We’re not finished,
I thought vehemently.
This isn’t
done.

Leaving felt like running away. It felt like admitting failure. It felt the way I had at twelve, each time the police had asked me a question I couldn’t answer.

“Excuse me,” a voice said. “Sloane?”

I turned to see Tory Howard, dressed in her standard uniform of dark jeans and a tank. She seemed hesitant—something she’d never struck me as before. “We didn’t get a
chance to meet the other night,” she told Sloane. “I’m Tory.”

The hesitation, the softness in her voice, the fact that she knew Sloane’s name, the fact that she’d lied to the FBI to keep her relationship with Aaron a secret—
you love
him, too,
I realized.
You can’t un-love him, no matter what you do.