Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

It had seemed standard to me, but to Lia, lies were as jarring as off-key singing was to a person with perfect pitch.

A grim expression on his face, Dean stood and marched toward Lia. For a moment, I thought he might say something to her about spoiling the moment, but he didn’t. He just picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Hey!” Lia protested. Dean grinned and threw her onto the sofa with Michael and me and then resumed his perch on the edge of the couch like nothing had happened. Lia scowled, and Michael poked her cheek.

“Given individual differences in serotonin levels, the probability that any four people would be experiencing identical levels of happiness simultaneously is quite—” “Sloane,” Michael said, without bothering to turn around. “If you don’t finish that sentence, there’s a cup of fresh ground coffee in your future.” “My immediate future?” Sloane asked suspiciously. Michael had a long history of blocking her consumption of caffeine. Without a word, Michael, Lia, and I all turned to look at Dean. He got the message, stood up, and strode toward Sloane, giving her the exact same treatment he’d given Lia.

“You’re nothing like Locke.” He wiped his palms on his jeans, and I heard the words he wasn’t saying. You’re nothing like me. “Maybe,” I said softly, “to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.” A breath caught in Dean’s throat, and for the longest time, the two of us stood there in silence: breathing in, breathing out, breathing through the truth I’d just uttered.

“I was… somewhere else.” “I know.” The night before, when Agent Sterling’s arrival had sent me into a tailspin, he’d been the one to break the hold that somewhere else had on me. Dean held my gaze for a moment, and understanding flickered in his eyes.

I wouldn’t do this for you, or for Michael, or even for Sloane. But I would waltz into hades and make nice with the devil himself for Dean, so either you put on the damn dress or you get the hell out of my way.”

Well at least shes honest

“Now,” she said, “we make friends.” A profiler, an emotion reader, and a lie detector went to a party.…

I caught Michael’s eye and had to duck my head to keep from bursting out laughing. I’d chosen Agent Sterling’s first name as my alias, and Michael had chosen Agent Briggs’s.

NO TRESPASSING. Michael didn’t miss a beat at the sign. “Do you want to trespass first, or should I?”

“She can stay,” Dean told Briggs. His words fell on the room like a thunderclap. For as long as I’d known Dean, he’d been pushing me away. Alone was the name of his game. I caught his eye. Are you sure? I asked him silently. Dean ran the heels of his hands over the fronts of his jean-clad thighs. “Stay,” he told me. Dean wants me here. He turned back to Briggs. “What do you need?”

Beside me, Dean stared fixedly out the window. I laid my hand on the seat between us, palm up. He tore his gaze from the window and looked over, not at me, but at my hand. He laid his hand palm-down on the seat, inches away from mine. I slid my hand closer to his. His dark eyes closed, his eyelashes casting a series of tiny shadows onto his face. After a small eternity, his hand began to move. He rotated it slowly clockwise until the back of his hand was flat against the seat, mere centimeters from mine. I slid my hand into his. His palm was warm. After several seconds, his fingers curled upward, closing around mine.

“If we’d had normal childhoods, we wouldn’t be Naturals.”

“Tell me you didn’t go to Colonial.” “We didn’t go to Colonial,” Lia replied without missing a beat. Dean stared at her for a few seconds, then turned to me. Clearly, I was easier prey. “You went to a college campus knowing that a murder had just been committed there, wearing two-fifths of a dress and looking for people who might be connected to the killer?” “If it’s any consolation,” Michael told Dean, “I went along for the ride.” Dean went very still. For a second, I thought he might actually hit Michael. “Why in the world would that be a consolation?” “Because,” Michael replied, a glint in his eyes, “if I hadn’t been there, Cassie would have gone off alone with a college senior who has an unhealthy fascination with your dad’s case.” “Michael!” I said. “Cassie!” Dean turned a thunderous look on me. I threw Lia under the bus. “At least I didn’t actually go off by myself with two strange guys in Fogle’s class.” Dean turned back to Lia. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.” Lia’s innocent act was as good as they came. Dean threw his hands up in the air. “Do you all have a death wish?” he asked.

I found Michael working on his car. Or, more specifically, I found him holding some kind of power sander and staring at his car with a diabolical expression. “Judd let you play with the power tools?” I asked. Michael turned the sander on and off experimentally, then he smiled. “Judd is a man of discerning tastes and good sense.” “Meaning that Judd doesn’t know that you’re playing with the power tools,” I concluded. “I’m going to have to plead the Fifth on that one,” Michael told me.

“How was the professor killed?” I asked. The director, Sterling, and Briggs all turned to stare at me. So did Dean. I realized belatedly that no one had ever said that the professor was dead. That was information that we weren’t supposed to know. It was a guess. Based on their reactions, I knew I’d guessed right.

Sloane grabbed my phone and dialed a number from memory. When no one answered, she called again. And again. And again. “What?” Irritation made Briggs’s voice loud enough that I could hear it from a distance. “It’s considered impolite to talk above seventy-five decibels,” Sloane sniffed. “I believe it’s called shouting.”

Wordlessly, Lia tilted the carton of rocky road toward me. I dug my spoon into the ice cream and gouged out a hefty spoonful. Lia delicately arched one brow. “Someone’s courting an ice cream headache.” I nibbled a bite off the end of my spoon. “We should have brought bowls.” “There’re a lot of things we should have done.” Lia sat perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the horizon. The sun was just now setting, but I got the distinct feeling that if I hadn’t been with her, she would have stayed out here all night, two stories off the ground, her feet brushing up against the edge. She was a person who hated being boxed in. She hated being trapped. She always had an exit strategy.

“People are allowed to care about you, and don’t tell me that when people care about you, they get hurt. That’s not you talking. That’s something you were told. It’s something your father wants you to believe, because he doesn’t want you to be close to anyone else. He’s always wanted you all to himself, and every time you push us away, you’re giving him exactly what he wants.” Dean still didn’t turn around, so I took three steps, until I was standing in front of him. The tip of his hood hung in his face. I pushed the hood back. He didn’t move. I put a hand on each side of his face and tilted it up. The same way that Michael had tilted my face up to his. What are you doing, Cassie? I couldn’t pull back from Dean, not now. No matter what it might mean. Dean needed this—physical contact. He needed to know that I wasn’t afraid of him, that he wasn’t alone. I brushed the hair off his cheekbones, and dark eyes met mine. “Anyone ever tell you that you see too much?” he asked me.

Dean put his hands on my wrists and pulled my hands away from his neck. He didn’t let go, just stood there on the sidewalk, his fingers working their way from my wrists to my fingers, until our hands were interwoven.

If you stay here, you’ll get us all caught. Besides,” she added, a smirk settling over her features, “Tweedledee and Tweedledum over here will be less likely to get themselves killed—or to kill each other—if you’re along for the ride.” I thought of Lia and Michael dancing together just to get a rise out of Dean, and Michael’s inability to keep from poking bears with sticks. Michael, Lia, and Dean locked in a car together would be a disaster. “Dibs on being Tweedledee,” Michael said blithely. “Fine,” I told Lia. “I’ll go with them.”

We passed the ride to Broken Springs, Virginia, in tense and uncomfortable silence. “Okay, I’m calling it,” Michael announced when the quiet got to be too much. “I’m turning on the radio. There will be singing. I would not be opposed to car-dancing. But the next person whose facial expression approaches ‘brood’ is getting punched in the nose. Unless it’s Cassie. If it’s Cassie, I punch Dean in the nose.”

“That’s enough,” Christopher said, crossing the room. “You need to go.” He reached for my elbow and wrenched me off the couch. I stumbled, trying to catch a look at Christopher’s eyes, to know what he was thinking, whether he’d meant to grab me so hard— One second Dean was next to me, and the next he had Christopher pinned to the wall, his forearm pressed against Trina’s son’s throat.

“He grabbed Cassie.” Dean let that statement hang in the air for a moment. “He could have gone for me. He could have gone for you. But he went for Cassie.” “And when you threatened him,” I added, “he left.”

i love watching their profiler minds at work

Dean’s voice was a perfect complement for Judd’s, and I realized that some of his mannerisms were the older man’s as well.

“You slammed Christopher into the wall when he grabbed Cassie?” Agent Sterling asked Dean. Of everything I’d said, it figured that she’d latch on to that. Dean shrugged unapologetically.

Sterling turned to Michael. I expected her to ask him something, but instead she just held out her hand. “Keys.” “Spatula,” Michael replied. She narrowed her eyes at him. “We aren’t just saying random nouns?” he asked archly.

“As far as accessories go, it leaves something to be desired.” Lia’s response to the tracker secured around my ankle was predictably blasé. “Although that exact shade of black plastic does bring out the color of your eyes.”

“I don’t have anything better to do,” Michael offered. His tone was casual, but his eyes were glittering with the same emotion I’d seen in him when he’d pulled Dean off of Christopher Simms. No one played games with the few people in this world he cared about.

I took a seat at the table and waited for Dean and Briggs to sit down beside me. They stayed standing, hovering over my shoulder like a pair of Secret Service agents flanking the president.

“I know,” he said. “I know that you care about him. I know that you’re attracted to him. I know that when he hurts, it hurts you. I know that he never looks at you the way he looks at Lia, that you’re not a sister to him. I know that he wants you. He’s in over his head with you. But I also know that half the time, he hates that he wants you.”

Briggs smiled wryly. “She hadn’t, but since she was on a playing-by-the-rules kick when she checked it out, she filled out all the paperwork. I’s were dotted. T’s were crossed. We had the serial number and were able to activate it remotely.” It was ironic—I’d saved Agent Sterling’s life by breaking the rules, and she’d saved mine by following them.

“Cassie.” Dean broke through the brush. “I told him to wait at the cabin,” Briggs said to me. “I told you to wait at the cabin,” he reiterated to Dean, annoyance creeping into his voice. But he didn’t stop me from taking three steps toward Dean, or Dean from crossing the remaining space between us in a heartbeat. The next second, he had a hand on each of my shoulders, touching me, confirming that I was okay, that I was here, that I was real.

“I hit him in the head with a rock. Then I jumped on him from up in that tree.” I gestured vaguely with one hand. Dean stared at me, his expression unreadable until the ends of his lips began to turn slowly upward. “I was wrong,” he said, “when I said I just felt something.” He was breathing heavily. I couldn’t breathe at all. “When I said I wasn’t sure it was enough.” He was scared, like me. But he felt it, and I felt it, and he was there. I’d spent so long trying not to choose, trying not to feel, and in an instant, I felt something inside of me break, like floodwaters bursting through a dam. Dean pulled me gently toward him. His lips brushed lightly over mine. The action was hesitant, uncertain. My hands settled on the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe when the smoke cleared, things would look different. But I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t keep living my life on maybes if I wanted to live. I rose up on my toes, my body pressed against his, and returned the kiss, the pain in my face fading, washed away with the rest of the world, until there was only this moment—one that I hadn’t thought I’d live to see.

I glanced at Dean, knowing instinctively, even before our eyes met, that his thoughts would be operating in tandem with mine.

“The Naturals program just got some oversight,” Agent Sterling replied. “There are going to be some new regulations. New protocols. And they’ll mean something. No more special exceptions—not even from me.” Her expression was stern, but Michael must have seen something I didn’t, because he broke into a grin. Agent Sterling smiled, too—directly at me. “We’re going to need those regulations,” she added, “because as of tomorrow, the five of you are cleared to consult on active cases.” They weren’t shutting us out. They were letting us in. Instead of taking away my purpose, they’d given it new life. This was a whole new world.