All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“There’s a high probability you’re going to tell me to get off the table,” she said. Briggs almost smiled. “Get off the table.”

Across from us, Lia eyed our hands and then brought her own to her forehead in a melodramatic motion. “I’m a dark and angsty profiler,” she intoned. “No,” she countered in a falsetto, bringing her other hand up, “I’m a dark and angsty profiler. Ours is a star-crossed love.”

“Too young to party, just old enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder.” Lia let out an elaborate sigh. “Story of my life.”

Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.

Lia slipped personas on and off as easily as most people switched clothes. Since we’d arrived, she’d changed into a red dress. With her hair pulled back into a complicated swirl, she looked sophisticated and a little bit dangerous. That

“When you lose the remote control to your television, four percent of the time it ends up in the freezer!” Sloane blurted out loudly.

Michael didn’t press her on it, the way he would have if it were Dean or Lia or me. “And what a pleasant digesting face it is,” he declared.

“Not going to lie,” Michael put in. “I had no idea that was a number.”

“If you make me go up to the suite right now, there’s a very good chance that I will give a full-length performance of The Ballad of Cassie and Dean. Complete with musical numbers.” “And there is a very good chance,” Michael added, “that I will be forced to accompany those musical numbers with a stunning display of interpretive dance.”

I believed that he knew what it was like to be broken. I believed that I wasn’t broken to him.

You want to be needed. You want to be useful. You want to matter, even a little.

“Dean,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “I’m pregnant.” Dean’s eyelid twitched.

“Based on my calculations …” she started to say, and then she just launched herself at me.

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

“You’re an ugly crier,” Lia said. She brushed my hair lightly out of my face. “Hideous.”

“It’s always personal,” Dean said, his thoughts working in tune with mine. “Even when it’s not.”

“The pattern, it goes back a lot further than the 1950s. I’ve tracked at least one case as far back as the late 1800s.”

Without warning, Lia slammed Michael back against the wall, pinning his hands over his head. “Now really isn’t the time or the place,” Michael told her.

“Well, when you phrase it like that, I remember exactly what happened. You have unmasked the killer, Redding. How do you do it, you profiling fiend?” “You know who the killer is?” Sloane’s eyes went comically wide.

You don’t like hurting women. I turned that over in my head. You will, of course, to suit your goal. But given a choice, you’d prefer it to be neat.

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.”

Michael hesitated just a moment longer, then he took one step forward and then another, collapsing to the ground beside us. Sloane latched her arms around him and held on for dear life. I could feel the heat from their bodies. I could feel their shoulders racked with sobs.

Sloane had tried to watch, too, but she couldn’t. She’d been wearing the shirt Aaron gave her for three days straight.

“Briggs saved my life.” Judd forcibly shifted his eyes away from the man in the picture and turned to look at me. “He saved me, the day he brought me Dean.”

“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.

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

“Perhaps someday,” Nightshade said, “that choice will be yours, Cassandra.”

That’s my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.

“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 Pythia lives in the room.”

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.