All In: (The Naturals #3) (36 page)

“Dance it off.”

My mother was a survivor.

The back door opened. After a moment’s pause, Dean came to stand behind me. I leaned back into him, my hands held palms up in front of me, my eyes on my wrists. Webber had bound them
behind my back.
Did they bind your arms, Mom? Did they give you a chance to win your freedom? Did they tell you that yours was a higher purpose?

Did they kill you for fighting?

By the time they killed you, did you want to die?

“I’ve been trying to imagine,” Dean said, “what this is like for you. And instead…” His voice caught in his throat. “I keep imagining seeing her, choosing
her, taking her—” Dean cut off abruptly.

You hate yourself for imagining it. You hate how easy it is to put yourself in the mind-set of my mother’s killer—or killers.

You hate that it makes any kind of sense at all.

“I imagine taking her,” I told him. “I imagine being taken.” I swallowed. “Whatever this group is, they operate by certain rules. There’s a ritual, an
uncompromising tradition….”

Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine.

Wordlessly, Dean reached around my body. He took my right hand in his. His thumb grazed my wrist, exactly where Webber’s zip ties had dug into my flesh.

Like mother, like daughter—

All thoughts cut off as Dean lifted my wrist to his lips, pressing a soft, silent kiss to the once-abused skin. He closed his eyes. I closed mine. I could feel him, breathing behind me. I
matched my breaths to his.

In. Out. In. Out.

“You don’t have to be strong right now,” Dean told me.

I turned, opened my eyes, caught his lips in mine.
Yes. I do.

Like mother, like daughter—I was a fighter.

My neck arched. I pulled back from Dean, my face less than an inch from his.

“You should really put a tie on the door or something.” Lia sauntered onto the back porch, utterly unremorseful about interrupting us. “Serial-killing cults and citywide
manhunts aside, a little discretion on the PDA front goes a long way.”

I took that to mean Lia hadn’t received any updates on the case. Briggs and Sterling hadn’t called.
Nightshade’s still out there. The FBI is still looking.

“Lia.” Dean’s tone clearly requested that she vacate the premises.

Lia ignored him and focused on me. “I told Michael to put on his big-boy pants,” she informed me. “I think the near-death experience might have put a damper on his downward
spiral, and besides…” Lia met my gaze. “I told him it was your turn.”

There was a beat of silence as I absorbed the full meaning of Lia’s words. She was here for me. Michael was here. Sloane—shattered, grieving Sloane—was here.

Briggs saved my life
, Judd had said.
He saved me, the day he brought me Dean.

I wanted Nightshade behind bars. I wanted answers—but when I let myself, I wanted
this
more. Dean and Lia and Michael and Sloane—
home is the people who love you
most.

Forever and ever.

No matter—

“Guys.” Michael stood frozen at the back door. Behind him, I could see Sloane, dark circles ringing her eyes.

I knew, then, that there was news. The thudding of my heart, the roar in my ears—I knew there was news, and I was terrified to let Michael say a single word.

“They got him.”

Nightshade.

The man in the picture.

They got him.

“The woman?” I heard, as if from a distance.
My voice. My question.
“The little girl?”

Michael shook his head, which I took to mean that they hadn’t been with Nightshade.

The Pythia. The child.

My heart raced as I thought of the man I’d seen, the man I’d remembered.

You killed Judd’s daughter. You killed Beau. You know why that symbol was carved onto my mother’s coffin.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Lia’s voice was low.
“Michael.”

I couldn’t read Michael the way he would have been able to read me, but in the second it took him to reply to Lia’s question, his expression was enough to knock the breath from my
lungs.

“Nightshade stuck Briggs with some kind of needle.” Michael looked from Lia to Dean to me. “Injected him with something. They don’t know what.”

My mouth went dry and the roaring sound in my ears surged.
Poison.

O
ne last trick up Nightshade’s sleeve
. Your grand finale. Your au revoir.
I’d been worried that the FBI
wouldn’t catch him. It hadn’t occurred to me, even for a second, to worry about what might happen once they did.

Undetectable. Incurable. Painful.
I didn’t want to remember what Judd had said about Nightshade’s poison, but the words kept repeating themselves in a loop in my head.

“Cassie.” Judd appeared, his face grim. “We need to talk.”

What else was there to say?

Undetectable. Incurable. Painful.

Sloane’s lips were moving as she silently went through a list of every poison known to man. Dean had gone ashen.

“He claims there’s an antidote,” Judd said. Our guardian didn’t specify who “he” was. He didn’t have to.

Nightshade.

“And what does he want?” Dean asked hoarsely. “In exchange for that antidote?”

I knew the answer—knew it based on the way Judd had said my name, the number of times I’d seen Nightshade, the time he’d spent watching me.

My mother fought, tooth and nail. She resisted whatever it was you people wanted from her, whatever you wanted her to be.

I looked from Dean to Judd. “He wants me.”

I stood on one side of a two-way mirror and watched as guards escorted the man I’d identified as Nightshade into the room on the other side. The man’s hands were
cuffed behind his body. His hair was mussed. A dark bruise was forming on one side of his face.

He didn’t look dangerous.

He didn’t look like a killer.

“He can’t see you,” Agent Sterling reminded me. She looked at me, her own eyes shadowed. “He can’t touch you. He stays on that side of the glass, and you stay
here.”

Behind us, Judd placed one hand on my shoulder.
You won’t put me in the same room as Scarlett’s killer,
I thought.
Not even to save Briggs.

I tried not to think about Briggs and instead focused on the man on the other side of the glass. He looked older than he had in my memory—younger than Judd, but significantly older than
Agent Sterling.

Older than my mother would have been, if she’d lived.

“Take your time,” Nightshade said. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, it felt like he was looking directly at me.

He has kind eyes.

My stomach twisted with unexpected nausea as he continued. “I’m here when you’re ready, Cassandra.”

Judd’s grip tightened slightly on my shoulder.
You’d kill him, if you could,
I thought. Judd wouldn’t have lost a single night’s sleep over snapping this
man’s neck. But he didn’t make a move. Instead, he stood still, with me.

“I’m ready,” I told Agent Sterling. I wasn’t, but time was a luxury we didn’t have.

Judd met Agent Sterling’s gaze and gave a curt nod. Sterling stepped to the side of the room and hit a button, converting the two-way mirror in front of us to a clear pane.

You can see me,
I thought as Nightshade’s eyes landed on mine.
You see Judd. Your lips curve slightly.
I kept my face as blank as I could.
One last card to play. One
last game.

“Cassandra.” Nightshade seemed to enjoy saying my name. “Judd. And the indomitable Agent Sterling.”

You watched us. You get off on Judd’s grief, on Sterling’s.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I said, my voice unnaturally calm. “Talk.”

I expected the man on the other side of the glass to say something about Scarlett or about my mother or about Beau. Instead, he said something in a language I didn’t recognize. I glanced
at Sterling. The man opposite us repeated himself. “It’s a rare snake,” he translated after a moment. “Its venom is slower-acting than most. Find a zoo that has one, and
you’ll find the antivenom. In time, I hope.” He smiled, and this time, it was chilling. “I always have had a certain fondness for your Agent Briggs.”

I didn’t understand. This man—this killer—had brought me here. He’d used the only bargaining chip he had to bring me here, and now, having seen me, he was handing it
in?

Why? If you enjoy tormenting Judd and Sterling, if you want to leave them with the taste of fear in their mouths, with the bitter knowledge that the people they love will never be safe, why
cure Briggs?

“You’re lying,” Agent Sterling said.

We should have brought Lia,
I thought. And a second later:
I shouldn’t be here.
The feeling started in my gut and snaked its way out to my limbs, weighing them down.

“Am I?” Nightshade countered.

“Incurable. Painful.” I spoke the words out loud without meaning to, but didn’t pull back from talking once they’d made their way out of my mouth. “You
wouldn’t just hand away your secret. Not this easily. Not this fast.”

Nightshade’s eyes lingered on mine a moment longer. “There are limits,” he admitted, “to what one might say. Some secrets are sacred. Some things you take to the
grave.” His voice had taken on a low, humming quality. “But then, I never said your Agent Briggs had been afflicted with
that
poison.”

That poison. Your poison. Your legacy.

“Go.” Judd spoke for the first time since the man who’d killed his daughter had been brought into the room. He met Sterling’s gaze and repeated himself. “He’s
telling the truth.
Go.
”

Go get the antivenom.

Go save Briggs.

“We’re done here,” Sterling said, reaching for the button on the wall.

“Stop.” The word burst out of my mouth. I couldn’t draw my gaze away from the killer’s.
You brought me here for a reason. You do everything for a reason—you all
do.

Nightshade smiled. “I thought,” he said, “that you might have some questions for me.”

I saw now, the game he was playing. He’d brought me here. But staying? Listening to him? Asking him for answers?

That was on me.

“Go,” Judd told Sterling again. After a split second’s hesitation, she did as he said, dialing her phone on the way out. Judd turned back to me. “I want to tell you not
to say another word, Cassie, not to listen, not to look back.”

But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t make me walk away. I wasn’t sure he could walk away himself.
You can look at the files,
Judd had said, back when this all began,
but
you’re not doing it alone.

Neither one of us was doing this alone now.

“Beau Donovan.” I turned back to the monster waiting patiently on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t make my mouth form the words to ask about my mother, not yet. And I
couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—bring up Scarlett. “You killed him.”

“Was that a question?” Nightshade asked.

“Your people left him in the desert fifteen years ago.”

“We don’t kill children.” Nightshade’s tone was flat.

You don’t kill children.
That was a rule they lived by. A sacred law.
But you have no problems leaving them in the desert to die of their own accord.

“What was Beau to you? Why raise him at all, if you were going to turn him out?”

Nightshade smiled slightly. “Every dynasty needs its heir.”

My brain whirred. “You weren’t raised the way Beau was.”

The rest of them,
Beau had said,
they’re recruited as adults.

“The term
Master
suggests an apprentice model,” I continued. “I’m assuming Masters choose their own replacements—adults, not children. The cycle repeats
every twenty-one years. But the ninth member, the one you call Nine—”

“Nine is the greatest of us. The constant. The bridge from generation to generation.”

Your leader,
I filled in. Beau hadn’t just been born in their walls. He’d been born to lead them.

“You left him to die,” I said.

“We do not kill children,” Nightshade repeated, his voice just as flat as it had been the first time he said the words. “Even if they prove themselves unworthy. Even when they
fail to do what is asked and it becomes clear they will never be able to take the mantle to which they were born. Even when the way must be cleared for a true heir.”

What did they ask you to do, Beau? What kind of monster were they molding you to be?
I couldn’t let my mind go down that path. I had to concentrate on the here and now.

On Nightshade.

“And the little girl?” I said. “The one I saw you with. Is
she
worthy? Is she the new heir? A
true
heir?” I took a step forward, toward the glass.
“What are you doing to her?”

I don’t believe in wishing.