All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“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.”

“Did you know,” she said brightly, making another attempt at conversation, “that elevators only kill about twenty-seven people per year?”

“I may have led them to believe Judd was my butler.” That got nothing more than a slight eyebrow raise out of Judd, who poured himself a cup of coffee without responding.

“If anyone asks,” Michael called to him, “your name is Alfred.”

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

He turned back to Judd and said, “I believe your line is ‘This is why we can’t have nice things.’”

“Fair warning.” Lia eyed Dean and me before turning back to Judd. “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’m going to hurt you,” I muttered in Lia’s general direction.

“You can’t hurt me,” she shot back brightly. “It’s my birthday.”

I laid my hand flat on his chest. His hand closed around mine, holding on to it and on to me.

“Pretend for a moment,” Lia told her, “that we’re all very, very slow.” “I’m not very good at pretending,” Sloane told her seriously. “But I think I can do that.”

For a split second, I felt like I was watching some alternate-universe version of Lia and Dean, where she was the older one and he had Michael’s mouth.

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

“I’ve never seen any physical indication that you possess hypermobility,” Sloane said. Her hands stilled in her lap. “Oh.” The realization that I’d been telling the truth about the body washed over her, and she hesitated. “Based on my calculations…” she started to say, and then she just launched herself at me.

“My turn again.” Michael met my eyes. I waited for him to say something—something true, something real. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he told me. True. He turned to Sloane. “I’d be happy to punch your father, should the occasion arise.” True. Then he leaned back on the heels of his hands. “And I’ve magnanimously decided against shaving my initials into Dean’s head.”

Security holes that the world’s most elite crime-solving agencies seriously need to patch?

“You don’t have to say anything,” she agreed. “But I think you want to. I think there’s something you want us to know.” Michael took in Beau’s nonverbal response, then made a finger-gunning motion at the screen. “Point to the lady,” he said.

“Don’t,” Judd told her sharply. “Don’t you ever apologize for being what you are.”

“In Alaska, you can be criminally prosecuted for feeding alcohol to a moose.” “I’m going to take that as a no,” Michael said. “In America,” Dean pointed out, “you can be criminally prosecuted for underage drinking.” Lia and Michael ignored him.

Sloane raised her hand, like a student waiting to be called on in class. “I think I would like some whiskey now,” she said. “First,” Michael told her seriously, “I need to verify that you have no plans to feed this whiskey to a moose.” “He’s kidding,” Dean said, before Sloane could tell us the exact likelihood of stumbling over a moose in a Las Vegas casino. “And nobody’s drinking any more whiskey.”

“Luckily for us,” Michael replied airily, “I’ve never met a bad idea I did not immediately embrace like the dearest of friends.”

“You don’t remember anything else?” Dean said. “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. “That was sarcasm,” Dean told her, sparing a glare for Michael.