All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

But I’m not the same. I couldn’t dodge that thought. I’ve changed. The new Cassandra Hobbes had more scars—figuratively and literally.

here was a difference between presumed dead and dead, a difference between coming back to a dressing room that was drenched in my mother’s blood and being told that after five long years, there was a body.

“They found this.” My father held out a thin silver chain. A small red stone hung on the end. My throat closed up. Hers.

I’d known my mother was almost certainly dead. I’d known that. I’d believed it. But now, looking at the necklace she’d worn that night, I couldn’t breathe.

None of us had normal childhoods. Those were the words I kept thinking, over and over again, four days later as I stood at the end of my grandmother’s drive, waiting for my ride to arrive. If we had, we wouldn’t be Naturals.

or the way we’d said no matter what instead of I love you, because she didn’t just love me—she loved me forever and ever, no matter what.

all too well.

The smile on his face, the way he’s teasing Lia—Dean was healing. Each day we were together, the barriers came down a little. Each day, he inched out of the shadows and became a little more himself.

f I could make this better for you, I would.” Dean’s voice caught slightly on the last word. He had dark places and horrible memories of his own. He had scars—visible and invisible—of his own. I brought my hand to the side of his neck, felt his pulse, slow and steady beneath my touch. “I know.”

‘This is why we can’t have nice things.’”

“I know what happened to my mom wasn’t my fault.” Dean picked up my hand, holding it in his, sheltering it in his. “I know it, Dean, but I don’t believe it. I won’t ever believe it.” “Believe me,” he said simply. I laid my hand flat on his chest. His hand closed around mine, holding on to it and on to me. “It wasn’t your fault,” Dean said.

Believe me, he’d said. I believed that he knew what it was like to be broken. I believed that I wasn’t broken to him.

“You’re nothing like him, Dean.” I ran my hand along his jaw. Dean’s greatest fear was that he had something of his father in him. Psychopathy. Sadism. “I know that,” he told me. You know it, I thought, but you don’t believe it. “Believe me,” I whispered. He cupped a hand around my neck, and he nodded—just once, just a little. My chest tightened, but inside me, something else gave. You’re nothing like your father. What happened to my mother wasn’t my fault.

“You make him happy.” Lia narrowed her eyes slightly. “As happy as Dean can be,” she modified. “We’d have to ask Sloane for the exact numbers, but I’m estimating a two hundred percent reduction in brooding since the two of you embarked on … this thing of yours.”

“Raise your hand if you didn’t realize Dean was a hugger,” Michael said, raising his own hand. Lia snorted.

Beau wasn’t our UNSUB. He was mimicking our UNSUB.

Dean walked into the kitchen. He opened one drawer, then another. A moment later, he went back to the front door. Carrying a butcher’s knife.

I can’t do this. I did it anyway, because that was what I’d signed up for. That was what profilers did. We lived through horror. We submerged ourselves in it again and again and again. The same part of me that let me compartmentalize my mother’s case would let me do this, and the same part of me that couldn’t always fight the memories meant I would pay for it.

He didn’t tell her it was okay. We all knew it wasn’t.

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

My mother was dead. For five years, she’d been dead. I was supposed to feel something. I was supposed to mourn her and grieve and move on. “Hey.” Dean came up beside me. He wove his hand into mine. Michael took one look at my face and put a hand on my shoulder. He hadn’t touched me—not once—since I’d chosen Dean. “You’re crying.” Sloane stopped short in front of us. “Don’t cry, Cassie.” I’m not. My face was wet, but I didn’t feel like I was crying. I didn’t feel anything. “You’re an ugly crier,” Lia said. She brushed my hair lightly out of my face. “Hideous.”

My mother’s dead. She’s dust, and she’s bones, and the person who took her away from me buried her. He buried her in her best color. He took that away from me, too.

Dean was my voice when I had none.

My eyes landed on the arm Lia had bared. Breath rushed out of my lungs like I’d been hit with a block of cement. There, raised against Michael’s skin like welts, were four numbers. 7761.

Beside me, Dean shook his head. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Townsend’s unpredictable. He has no regard for his own safety. He’s constitutionally incapable of backing down from a fight.” “Tell you what, Dean,” Lia replied. “When Michael gets back, we’ll get the two of you a room. Obviously, there are feelings involved.”

“Victimology,” I told Dean. “We don’t have four victims. We have five.” Michael’s not a victim. Not Michael. Not our Michael. I pressed back against the chorus in my head. The UNSUB had chosen him. Why Michael?

I’d asked myself about our UNSUB’s relationships, about why he only chose to kill women when he could kill them cleanly. The pattern ends in the Majesty theater. The final kill. The greatest sacrifice. Nightshade’s ninth kill had been Scarlett. “Yours,” I said out loud, “was always going to be Tory.” The Majesty. Tory. Planning ten steps ahead— I knew who the killer was. My fingers scrambled for the phone. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Sterling.

On-screen, the lights flickered back on. Over the phone, I heard a piercing scream. My eyes darted from one video feed to the next. Beside me, Sloane slipped off the sofa and to her knees in front of the coffee table, her hands on either side of one of the tablets. The agent wearing the camera ran forward. The image shook. A crowd formed. The camera was jostled, and then the agent knelt. Next to the body of Aaron Shaw.

The symbol. I know that symbol. Seven circles around a cross. I’d seen it carved into the lid of a plain wooden coffin, uncovered at the crossroads on a country dirt road.

“Dean,” I wheezed. He was with me in an instant. “I see it,” he said. “I need you to breathe for me, Cassie. I see it.” The symbol Beau had carved into his own flesh had also been carved into my mother’s coffin. Not possible. June twenty-first. Not a Fibonacci date. My mother died in June.

On-screen, Beau’s hands were still trembling. His fingers tensed. They clawed at his neck. His back arched. And then he fell to the floor, convulsing. Screaming. I registered the sound as if it were coming from very far away. He’s screaming. And then he was gargling, choking on blood as it poured from his lips, his fingernails clawing violently against his own body, against the floor. Poison.

Beau’s cracked lips moved. He looked at Briggs in one final moment of clarity. “I don’t,” he struggled to say. “I don’t wish I was Nine.” He sounded like a child.

I stumbled backward and grabbed the edge of the counter for balance, thinking of Beau’s last moments, the words he’d said. I don’t believe in wishing. I saw the little girl in the candy store, staring at a lollipop. I saw her father come and put her on his shoulders. I saw her beside the fountain, holding the penny. I don’t believe in wishes, she’d said.

And just like that, I was back on the banks of the Potomac, a thick black binder on my lap. “Enjoying a bit of light reading?” The voice echoed through my memory, and this time, I could make out the speaker’s face. “You live at Judd’s place, right? He and I go way back.” “Nightshade,” I forced out the word. “I’ve seen him.”

I was my mother’s daughter.

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—

“They got him.” Nightshade. The man in the picture. They got him.

“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.

“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.”

“One woman to provide counsel. One woman to bear the child. One child—one worthy child—to carry the tradition on.” One woman. One child. You killed her. We did no such thing. All are tested. All must be found worthy.

“The woman,” I said. “The one I saw with you.” My voice lowered itself to a whisper, but the words were deafening in my own ears. “She killed my mother. You made her kill my mother.”

“I’m Cassie,” I said. The child said nothing. “What’s your name?” I asked. She looked down. Beside her on the ground, there was a white origami flower, soaked in blood. “Nine,” she whispered. “My name is Nine.”

“That’s my mommy,” Laurel said. Not possible. The necklace. The bones. The blood—it was her blood. The tests said it was her blood. I felt the world closing in on me. Because there were two people in the photo, and Laurel looked exactly the same in the picture as she did today. It was recent. That’s my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.

survived, she would have come back to me. Somehow, some way, if she’d survived— “Forever and ever,” Laurel whispered, each word a knife in my gut. “No matter what.” “Laurel,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Where is Mommy?”

“In the room.” Laurel stared at me and into me. “Masters come, and Masters go, but the ...

What I did know was that my mother was alive.

My mother hadn’t been killed. She hadn’t been buried at the crossroads with care. She’d buried her predecessor. My mom’s favorite color. Her necklace. Traces of her blood. From the beginning, Dean and I had seen the funeral rites as rife with remorse. My mother’s.

I was ready to go home. To do whatever it took to find the Masters. To protect Laurel. Forever and ever. To find my mother. Find the Pythia. Find the room. No matter what.