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I could practically hear him winking on the other end of the line.
I rolled my eyes. Dean and I had been together since we were teenagers, and Michael had taken great joy in singing the same song nearly the whole time.
Lia Zhang, civilian FBI consultant, long-term thorn in my side, Natural, and—against all odds—one of my closest confidantes, appeared in the kitchen of our Colorado house. Or, more specifically, our base of operations.
“You can call me, you know,” Dean said on the other end of the phone line. “Any time.”
“Did you know there’s an ongoing debate about what constitutes a pony?” Sloane couldn’t help herself, in part because of the caffeine and in part because she was Sloane.
Most improbable…” He paused. “Lia doesn’t hate me this week.” The term on-again, off-again had been invented for a reason. Michael and Lia were that reason. “Best part of my week: hating Michael.” Lia shot a sly smile at the phone. “Given that all of our communications are currently of the long-distance variety, expressing my distaste for his person was far more emotionally gratifying than I’d expected.” I stifled a snort.
“I’m not going to tell the two of you to get a room,” Michael announced, “because that is geographically impossible. So instead, I will suggest, quite delicately, that the two of you get a metaphorical room.” Dean remained unruffled. After years of exposure, he was pretty much Michael-immune. “I don’t think Townsend would like it if I said the worst part of my week is not being there to wake you up from the dreams, Cassie.” There had been a time when I’d been the one who’d woken Dean up from memory-ridden nightmares, instead of the reverse. “Come now, Redding,” Michael enunciated, “the worst
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If my analysis said the Naturals program would be for them—or one of them, anyway—what it had been for the five of us. A sanctuary. An opportunity. A home. That was the real reason I’d recruited so few young Naturals since we’d taken over. The Naturals program was designed to provide training and experience to gifted individuals whose brains were still developing—adolescents. But after everything I’d been through as a result of working with the FBI, I couldn’t and wouldn’t bring any kid here unless I thought they would be better off with us than in the life they were leaving behind.
“Cassie?” FBI Director Tanner Briggs was closer to family than friend. He was the one who’d founded this program. He’d recruited me when I was seventeen years old. He was also my boss. “I have a case in Maine.” I waited for the details to come. What I got was: “It has to be you.”
Because she needed to matter—to be seen and heard.
“Aren’t you a little young to be FBI?”
Studies come easily to Celine. It’s the seventh grade, not rocket science.
For someone who had a fondness for throwing gasoline on fires, Celine was also surprisingly adept at putting them out.
“Briggs.” Even now that he was the FBI director, the founder of the Naturals program had a habit of answering the phone with his last name. Efficient—and just a little egocentric.
It is not Sloane’s mother’s fault that Sloane is Sloane. That hurts, and it is not precisely true.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told our newest Natural, my voice catching in my throat. “Lots of things in your life—things that have happened, things that are going to happen—won’t be, but you will.” I let that register. No kid gloves, no sugarcoating. “You won’t ever be normal, Mackenzie, but you’ll be okay.” “Personally,” Lia commented, “I find normal overrated.”
From the passenger seat of our government-issued SUV, I glared at Lia. I knew she was just pushing my buttons—because the more she pushed them, the less mental space I could devote to how I could have played things differently with Mackenzie. Why we’d failed.
Might I suggest that until then, we handle this old-school?” “Old-school as in sneaking out of the FBI Academy like an unruly teenager and opting to ask for forgiveness instead of permission?” Lia asked innocently. All things considered, that was probably a pretty accurate depiction of what Michael had done when he’d realized that the case we were working now had ties to one of our old ones.
“You with the righteously indignant, yet distinctly guilty expression on your face! Hands in the air!”
“Batman said to put your hands in the air,” Lia told her. “And while you’re at it, repeat what you just said about the death of Kelley Peterson.”
Michael’s father has a history of buying his son’s way out of trouble. Michael has a history of making that difficult. It’s a point of pride, really.
But Briggs and Sterling’s twins were expected to make their arrival early—and that meant any day. “I vote yes on the onesies,” I declared. “All in favor?” Sloane asked formally. I leaned back against Dean, and Lia leaned against me before we all chorused in unison, “Aye.”
