The Naturals
Page 35
“You’re a tough kid,” Agent Starmans told me.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and I especially wasn’t in the mood to be patted metaphorically on the head. All I wanted was to be left alone and given a chance to process, to recover.
“You’re divorced,” I replied. “Sometime within the past four years, maybe five. Long enough ago that you should have moved on.”
I normally made it a rule not to take the things I deduced about people and turn them into weapons, but I needed space. I needed to breathe. I stood and walked over to the window. Agent Starmans cleared his throat.
“What do you think the UNSUB is going to do?” I asked wearily. “Take me out with a sniper rifle?”
Not this killer. He’d want up close and personal. You didn’t have to be a Natural profiler to see that.
“Why don’t you cut the poor agent some slack, Colorado? I’m fairly certain making grown men cry is Lia’s specialty, not yours.” Michael didn’t bother knocking before entering the room and giving Agent Starmans his most charming smile.
“I’m not making anyone cry,” I said mutinously.
Michael turned his gaze on me. “Underneath your ticked-off-that-they-won’t-leave-me-alone-and-even-more-ticked-off-that-I’m-scared-to-actually-be-alone exterior, I detect a slight trace of guilt, which suggests that you did say something below the belt, and you’re feeling the tiniest bit bad for using your powers for evil, and he”—Michael jerked his head toward Agent Starmans—“is fighting down-turned lips and furrowed eyebrows. I don’t need to tell you what that means, do I?”
“Please don’t,” Agent Starmans muttered.
“Of course, there’s also his posture, which suggests some level of sexual frustration—”
Agent Starmans took a step forward. He towered over Michael, but Michael just kept smiling, undeterred.
“No offense.”
“I’ll be out in the hall,” Agent Starmans said. “Keep the door open.”
It took me a moment after the agent retreated to realize that Michael had put him on the spot on purpose.
“Were you really reading his posture?” I whispered.
Michael ducked his head next to mine, a delightfully wicked smile on his face. “Unlike you, I have no problems using my ability for nefarious purposes.” He reached up and ran his thumb over the edge of my lip and onto my cheek. “You have something on your face.”
“Liar.”
He brushed his thumb over my other cheek. “I never lie about a pretty girl’s face. You’re carrying so much tension in yours that I have to ask: should I be worried about you?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Liar,” Michael whispered back.
For a second, I could almost forget everything that had happened today: Genevieve Ridgerton; the coded message on the bathroom wall; the UNSUB butchering a woman and using her body as a prop to recreate my mother’s death; the fact that all of this killer’s actions were designed to manipulate me.
“You’re doing it again,” Michael said, and this time, he ran the middle and index fingers of each hand along the lines of my jaw.
In the hallway, Agent Starmans took a step back. And then another, until he was almost out of sight.
“Are you touching me just to make him uncomfortable?” I asked Michael, keeping my voice low enough that the agent wouldn’t overhear.
“Not just to make him uncomfortable.”
My lips twitched. Even the possibility of a smile felt foreign on my face.
“Now,” Michael said, “are you going to tell me what happened today, or do I have to drag it out of Dean?”
I gave him a skeptical look. Michael amended his previous statement. “Are you going to tell me what happened today, or am I going to have to have Lia drag it out of Dean?”
Knowing Lia, she’d probably managed to pry at least half of the story out of Dean already—and with my luck, she would pass it on to Michael with embellishments. It was better that he heard it from me—so I started at the beginning with Club Muse and the message on the bathroom wall and didn’t stop until I’d told him about the crime scene in Arlington and its resemblance to my mother’s.
“You think the similarity was intentional,” Michael said.
I nodded. Michael didn’t ask me to elaborate, and I realized how much of our conversation happened in silence, with him reading my face and me knowing exactly how he’d respond.
“The theory is that the UNSUB staged all of this for me,” I said finally. “It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill. It was about making me relive it.”
Michael stared at me. “Say the second sentence again.”
“It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill,” I repeated.
“There,” Michael said. “Every time you say the words reliving the kill, you duck your head slightly to the right. It’s like you’re shaking your head or being bashful or … something.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that he was wrong, that he was reading too much into that single sentence, but I couldn’t form the words, because he was right. I didn’t know why I felt like I was missing something, but I did. If Michael had seen some hint of that in my facial expression …
Maybe my body knew something that I didn’t.
“It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill,” I said again. That was true. I knew it was true. But now that Michael had pointed it out, I could feel my gut telling me, loud and clear, that it wasn’t the whole truth.
“I’m missing something.” The horror at the crime scene had been familiar. Almost too familiar. What kind of killer remembered the details of a crime scene so exactly? The splatter, the blood on the mirrors and the light switch, the knife marks on the floor …
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” Michael’s words penetrated my thoughts. I focused on his hazel eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow in the doorway. Agent Starmans. Had he overheard us? Was he trying to overhear us?
Michael grabbed my neck. He pulled me toward him. When Agent Starmans glanced in the room, all he saw was Michael and me.
Kissing.
The kiss in the pool was nothing compared to this. Then, our lips had barely brushed. Now, my lips were opening. Our mouths were crushed together. His hand traveled from my neck down to my lower back. My lips tingled, and I leaned into the kiss, shifting my body until I could feel the heat from his in my arms, my chest, my stomach.
On some level, I was aware of the fact that Agent Starmans had hightailed it back down the hall, leaving me alone with Michael. On some level, I was aware of the fact that now was not a time for kissing, of the vortex of emotion I felt when I looked at Michael, of the sound of someone else coming down the hallway.
My fingers curled into claws. I dug them into his T-shirt, his hair. And then finally—finally—I realized what I was doing. What we were doing.
I pulled back, then hesitated. Michael dropped his hands from my back. There was a soft smile on his face, a look of wonderment in his eyes. This was Michael without layers. This was Michael and me—and Dean was standing in the doorway.
“Dean.” I forced myself not to scramble backward, not to lean away from Michael in any way. I wouldn’t do that to him. The kiss might have started as a distraction, he might have taken advantage of the moment, but I’d kissed him back, and I wasn’t going to turn around and make him feel like nothing just because Dean was standing in the doorway and there was something there between him and me, too.
Michael had never made any secret of the fact that he was pursuing me. Dean had fought any attraction he felt for me every step of the way.
“We need to talk,” Dean said.
“Whatever you have to say,” Michael drawled, “you can say in front of me.”
I gave Michael a look.
“Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of me, unless Cassie wishes to speak to you privately, in which case I completely respect her right to do so,” Michael corrected himself.
“No,” Dean said. “Stay. It’s fine.”
He didn’t sound fine—and if I was picking up on that, I didn’t want to know how easy it was for Michael to see what Dean was feeling.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk, and I especially wasn’t in the mood to be patted metaphorically on the head. All I wanted was to be left alone and given a chance to process, to recover.
“You’re divorced,” I replied. “Sometime within the past four years, maybe five. Long enough ago that you should have moved on.”
I normally made it a rule not to take the things I deduced about people and turn them into weapons, but I needed space. I needed to breathe. I stood and walked over to the window. Agent Starmans cleared his throat.
“What do you think the UNSUB is going to do?” I asked wearily. “Take me out with a sniper rifle?”
Not this killer. He’d want up close and personal. You didn’t have to be a Natural profiler to see that.
“Why don’t you cut the poor agent some slack, Colorado? I’m fairly certain making grown men cry is Lia’s specialty, not yours.” Michael didn’t bother knocking before entering the room and giving Agent Starmans his most charming smile.
“I’m not making anyone cry,” I said mutinously.
Michael turned his gaze on me. “Underneath your ticked-off-that-they-won’t-leave-me-alone-and-even-more-ticked-off-that-I’m-scared-to-actually-be-alone exterior, I detect a slight trace of guilt, which suggests that you did say something below the belt, and you’re feeling the tiniest bit bad for using your powers for evil, and he”—Michael jerked his head toward Agent Starmans—“is fighting down-turned lips and furrowed eyebrows. I don’t need to tell you what that means, do I?”
“Please don’t,” Agent Starmans muttered.
“Of course, there’s also his posture, which suggests some level of sexual frustration—”
Agent Starmans took a step forward. He towered over Michael, but Michael just kept smiling, undeterred.
“No offense.”
“I’ll be out in the hall,” Agent Starmans said. “Keep the door open.”
It took me a moment after the agent retreated to realize that Michael had put him on the spot on purpose.
“Were you really reading his posture?” I whispered.
Michael ducked his head next to mine, a delightfully wicked smile on his face. “Unlike you, I have no problems using my ability for nefarious purposes.” He reached up and ran his thumb over the edge of my lip and onto my cheek. “You have something on your face.”
“Liar.”
He brushed his thumb over my other cheek. “I never lie about a pretty girl’s face. You’re carrying so much tension in yours that I have to ask: should I be worried about you?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Liar,” Michael whispered back.
For a second, I could almost forget everything that had happened today: Genevieve Ridgerton; the coded message on the bathroom wall; the UNSUB butchering a woman and using her body as a prop to recreate my mother’s death; the fact that all of this killer’s actions were designed to manipulate me.
“You’re doing it again,” Michael said, and this time, he ran the middle and index fingers of each hand along the lines of my jaw.
In the hallway, Agent Starmans took a step back. And then another, until he was almost out of sight.
“Are you touching me just to make him uncomfortable?” I asked Michael, keeping my voice low enough that the agent wouldn’t overhear.
“Not just to make him uncomfortable.”
My lips twitched. Even the possibility of a smile felt foreign on my face.
“Now,” Michael said, “are you going to tell me what happened today, or do I have to drag it out of Dean?”
I gave him a skeptical look. Michael amended his previous statement. “Are you going to tell me what happened today, or am I going to have to have Lia drag it out of Dean?”
Knowing Lia, she’d probably managed to pry at least half of the story out of Dean already—and with my luck, she would pass it on to Michael with embellishments. It was better that he heard it from me—so I started at the beginning with Club Muse and the message on the bathroom wall and didn’t stop until I’d told him about the crime scene in Arlington and its resemblance to my mother’s.
“You think the similarity was intentional,” Michael said.
I nodded. Michael didn’t ask me to elaborate, and I realized how much of our conversation happened in silence, with him reading my face and me knowing exactly how he’d respond.
“The theory is that the UNSUB staged all of this for me,” I said finally. “It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill. It was about making me relive it.”
Michael stared at me. “Say the second sentence again.”
“It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill,” I repeated.
“There,” Michael said. “Every time you say the words reliving the kill, you duck your head slightly to the right. It’s like you’re shaking your head or being bashful or … something.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that he was wrong, that he was reading too much into that single sentence, but I couldn’t form the words, because he was right. I didn’t know why I felt like I was missing something, but I did. If Michael had seen some hint of that in my facial expression …
Maybe my body knew something that I didn’t.
“It wasn’t about the UNSUB reliving the kill,” I said again. That was true. I knew it was true. But now that Michael had pointed it out, I could feel my gut telling me, loud and clear, that it wasn’t the whole truth.
“I’m missing something.” The horror at the crime scene had been familiar. Almost too familiar. What kind of killer remembered the details of a crime scene so exactly? The splatter, the blood on the mirrors and the light switch, the knife marks on the floor …
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” Michael’s words penetrated my thoughts. I focused on his hazel eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow in the doorway. Agent Starmans. Had he overheard us? Was he trying to overhear us?
Michael grabbed my neck. He pulled me toward him. When Agent Starmans glanced in the room, all he saw was Michael and me.
Kissing.
The kiss in the pool was nothing compared to this. Then, our lips had barely brushed. Now, my lips were opening. Our mouths were crushed together. His hand traveled from my neck down to my lower back. My lips tingled, and I leaned into the kiss, shifting my body until I could feel the heat from his in my arms, my chest, my stomach.
On some level, I was aware of the fact that Agent Starmans had hightailed it back down the hall, leaving me alone with Michael. On some level, I was aware of the fact that now was not a time for kissing, of the vortex of emotion I felt when I looked at Michael, of the sound of someone else coming down the hallway.
My fingers curled into claws. I dug them into his T-shirt, his hair. And then finally—finally—I realized what I was doing. What we were doing.
I pulled back, then hesitated. Michael dropped his hands from my back. There was a soft smile on his face, a look of wonderment in his eyes. This was Michael without layers. This was Michael and me—and Dean was standing in the doorway.
“Dean.” I forced myself not to scramble backward, not to lean away from Michael in any way. I wouldn’t do that to him. The kiss might have started as a distraction, he might have taken advantage of the moment, but I’d kissed him back, and I wasn’t going to turn around and make him feel like nothing just because Dean was standing in the doorway and there was something there between him and me, too.
Michael had never made any secret of the fact that he was pursuing me. Dean had fought any attraction he felt for me every step of the way.
“We need to talk,” Dean said.
“Whatever you have to say,” Michael drawled, “you can say in front of me.”
I gave Michael a look.
“Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of me, unless Cassie wishes to speak to you privately, in which case I completely respect her right to do so,” Michael corrected himself.
“No,” Dean said. “Stay. It’s fine.”
He didn’t sound fine—and if I was picking up on that, I didn’t want to know how easy it was for Michael to see what Dean was feeling.
