Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

According to Michael, the McBrides’ lawyer had felt a thrill just mentioning the little girl’s name.

We did it,

we did it joe

Mackenzie McBride isn’t going to be some statistic. She’s not going to be forgotten. Mackenzie McBride was going to grow up, because of us.

Michael caught me staring at them. He scanned my face, like a person skimming a book. Then he smiled, and slowly, deliberately, he winked.

ah.

Lia had told me once that she and Dean were like siblings—and right now, Dean looked every inch the overprotective big brother.

LOL

“I’m in.” Lia twirled her gleaming black ponytail around her index finger before sliding the requisite number of Oreos to the center of the coffee table.

Before joining the Naturals program, Sloane had been Las Vegas born and raised. She’d been counting cards since she’d learned to count. She sat out about a third of the hands, but won every single hand she played.

“How would you feel about a second cup of coffee?” Forty-five seconds later, Sloane was in the kitchen, and neither of the boys was wearing a shirt.

you will not refer to yourself as a profiler, because at the end of the day, you’re just a kid.”

Oh nuh uh

Locke’s real name had been Lacey Hobbes. She was the younger sister of Lorelai Hobbes—fake psychic, presumed murder victim. My mother.

Agent Briggs had led that team. Shortly thereafter, he’d started using Dean—the son of a notorious serial killer—to get inside the head of other killers. Eventually, the FBI had discovered what Briggs was doing and, instead of firing him, they’d made it official. Dean had been moved into an old house in the town outside of Marine Corps Base Quantico. Briggs had hired a man named Judd to act as Dean’s guardian. Over time, Briggs had begun recruiting other teenagers with savant-like skills. First Lia, with her uncanny ability to lie and to spot lies when they exited the mouths of others. Then Sloane and Michael, and finally me.

*recap*

YOU

ITS BACK.

It has begun.

Judd Hawkins was in his sixties. His official job description involved both looking after the house and looking after us.

Judd gave me a look. I sat.

HAHAH

“She was also his wife.”

oh ma gad

Clearly, nepotism and shadiness are alive and well at FBI headquarters.”

always

Dean had lived with a killer—a true psychopath—day in, day out, for years.

Dean was the son of a serial killer. Michael had anger management issues and a father who’d traded him to the FBI for immunity from prosecution on white-collar crimes. Lia was a compulsive liar—and apparently had some kind of juvie record. Sloane had her catapult aimed at Agent Sterling’s head.

There was an intimate connection between a killer and the person they’d killed. Bodies were like messages, full of symbolic meanings that only a person who understood the needs and desires and rage that went into snuffing out another life could fully decode.

Dean looked up. Blond hair hung in his face.

“Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.”

“Being a Natural isn’t just about being born with an incredible aptitude for something. You have to hone it. Your whole life has to hone

Briggs was the agent conducting the prison interview. He’d just asked Dean’s father to verify the identity of one of his victims.

Briggs: And what are they? Redding: They’re mine.

eugh

“You deserve better.” “Better than a game?” I asked. Or better than you?

“My father made me watch.”

woke to find a face hovering three inches above my own. I jerked backward in bed, and Sloane blinked at me. “Hypothetically speaking,” she said,

The video we’d seen of the crime scene had been taken from a distance and lasted less than forty-five seconds, but she’d encoded every last numerical detail: the length and width of the rope tied around the victim’s neck; the exact positioning of the body; the height of the grass; the make, model, and specs of the car.

Clearly, Sloane had misinterpreted my look to mean the exact opposite of what I’d been trying to communicate.

Standing over her, your heartbeat accelerating, pounding out a glorious rhythm: I did that. I did that. I did that.

Tanner was Briggs’s first name.

“Now it’s your turn to say something about the way this shirt really brings out my eyes.”

The fact that Geoffrey could talk so casually about the murder of a girl he knew made me reconsider my earlier analysis—maybe he would have been capable of murder.

I might have been imagining it, but I saw the barest hint of a smile around the edges of his lips.

The last time Michael had followed me, he’d gotten shot.

“I want to know about you, Dean. What have those hands been doing the past five years? What sights have those eyes seen?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Is that what you want to hear? That these hands, these eyes—they’re nothing?” “They’re everything,” Redding replied, his voice vibrating with intensity. “And there is so much more you could do.”

“I am not your son.” Redding’s hands shot out. In a flash, he was on his feet. Dean must have been leaning forward, because somehow, Redding managed to get hold of his shirt.

You never really submit, I thought. You never give in. You get what you want—and you want Dean.

forehead. I elaborated. “You’ve called me Cassandra since

I put my hand on the seat, palm up. Dean turned toward the window, his fingers curling into fists. I looked down at my hand, open and waiting, but couldn’t move it. I felt utterly out of place and useless.

Im dead im sorry that was funny

“He said that the only truly remarkable letters he’d received were from a student in that class.”

He always knew when I was profiling him and never let me get away with it for long.

“All of you, inside!” Briggs snapped.

HAHAH father is mad

“Enough.” Briggs put one hand on Michael’s shoulder and one on mine and steered the two of us into the house.

“Move!” Agent Briggs’s voice edged up on a yell. Michael and I moved.

I CANT LMAO

He was telling her that we really weren’t helping the situation, that everything we’d done up until this point had hurt Dean.

Dean preempted whatever she was going to say. “I’ll stay out of it.” His tone was expressionless, but there was something bitter in his eyes. “That’s what I excel at, isn’t it? Staying out of things until it’s too late.”

My baby deaaannnn

“According to my calculations, Cassie was gone for two hours, forty-three minutes, and seventeen seconds. And she was only wearing two-fifths of a dress.” “Sloane!” I said. “What?” she shot back. “If you wanted me to keep my mouth shut, you should have taken me with you.”

Im cracking up