All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Nightshade had been watching—quite possibly since he’d killed Scarlett Hawkins and Judd had moved in with Dean.

“There’s a sleeping cobra on your chest,” the girl wearing Sloane’s body said. “What do you do?”

wait stop im scared

“What do you do?” The dirt was coming faster now. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. “What do you do?” “Wake up,” I whispered. “I wake up.”

It’s personal, I thought. It has to be.

There, raised against Michael’s skin like welts, were four numbers. 7761.

WHAT IS GOING OOOONNNN

Dean got up and went to stand toe to toe with Michael.

“I’m touched, Redding,” Michael said, bringing a hand to his heart. “You care.”

LOLL

I’m angry, and I’m terrified. I can’t do this. I can’t sit around and wait for them to identify your body, too.

“You used to look at me and feel something,” Michael said. “I know you did.”

I felt something,” I told Michael.

“You made me feel something, and I am grateful for that. Because you were the first, Michael.”

“To you, I might not be worth anything, if I’m with Dean. But it means something to me.”

“I don’t run, I don’t hide, I don’t cower, I don’t beg, Cassie, because running and hiding and begging—it doesn’t work. It never works.”

dropped something,” he repeated. “I bent to pick it up. And then…” Nothing. “Pattern interruption,” Sloane said. “It’s the second-quickest method of inducing hypnosis.”

You saw him at the poker table next to Lia. She’s got long, dark hair. Like Tory. And Michael? He fastens and unfastens the top button on his blazer, perfectly sure of his place in this world.

I knew who the killer was.

A man bumps into you. Apologizes. You barely hear him.

And then you start to slice.

“Michael was only ever a stand-in. Beau saw him with Lia, and it was like looking at Aaron with Tory.

Beau had probably hypnotized that girl into joining Aaron at Tory’s show, to give him an excuse to pick the fight.

“I was Aaron’s sister,” Sloane said simply. “And now I’m not. I’m not his sister anymore.”

He saw it, and he felt it, and I knew him well enough to know that he was thinking, It should have been me.

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.

You thought wrong.

“Sloane.” Judd stood in the doorway. “Sweetheart, turn that off.”

SWEETHEART. OH JUDD

Judd looked at Sloane for several seconds. Then he walked over to her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She won’t stop. She can’t. You know that.

PAPA

You knew exactly where you were going, exactly how to get there.

Aaron would never just be number five to her.

I wanted him to like me,

I knew her well enough to know that she found some comfort in the rhythm, the motion, the numbers—but not enough.

“I used to be Aaron’s sister. And now I’m not. And you used to be his person, and now you’re not.”

Things only matter if you let them. People only matter if you let them.

“Have you ever seen Beau draw a spiral?”

I wanted to tell her that I knew how it felt to have your insides carved out. I wanted to tell her I knew what it was like to feel hollow—like there was no grief left to be

It was always going to be you.

Dean had testified against his father. We were asking Tory to do the same to Beau.

Four more, and then you will be finished. Four more, and you can go home.

She’d been wearing the shirt Aaron gave her for three days straight.

You weren’t expecting this. You weren’t expecting the FBI to know. Beau went pale. The FBI can’t know.

You never meant for it to go this far.

“Let me tell you a story,” Briggs said on-screen. “It’s a story about a little boy who was found, half-dead, in the desert, when he was six years old.” Beau’s breath was coming quicker now.

“They left you to die. You weren’t good enough for them.” Sterling paused. “And they were right. Look at you. You got caught.” Her eyes trailed over his orange jumpsuit, his cuffs. “They were right.”

I’d seen it carved into the lid of a plain wooden coffin, uncovered at the crossroads on a country dirt road.

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.

Poison.

WHATSJSJSJJS

I saw her father, tossing a penny into the water. In my mind, I saw his face. I saw the water, and I saw his face—

Mother. Father. Child.

“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.”

This was Judd, trying to protect me. This was Judd, telling me to let it go.

needed my mom to be my mom—not a body, not bones, not a victim—my mom.