All In (The Naturals, #3)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My father greeted me with a stiff smile, a shade or two off from the real deal.

When Michael was hurting, when there was even a chance he might be hurt, he sought out conflict.

zyzzyva,

In addition to the four-digit number written in permanent marker on the old man’s wrist, the medical examiner had also found a message inscribed on the arrow that had killed him. Tertium. Latin, meaning “for the third time.”

“Too young to party, just old enough to participate in federal investigations of serial murder.”

Home isn’t a place, Cassie. The memory crept up on me. Home is the people who love you most, the people who will always love you, forever and ever, no matter what.

“Outed by my footwear,” he deadpanned. “There goes my future in espionage.”

You expect other people to take you seriously, I thought, but you’re capable of laughing at yourself.

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

“Sloane?” I said. “He’s my brother,”

“He’s 1,433 days older than I am.”

“I’m sorry,” I heard Lia say. “Don’t be,” Michael told her. “It doesn’t suit you.”

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

“I’m digesting,” she told Michael. “This is my digesting face, that’s all.”

“And what a pleasant digesting face it is,” he declared.

“That mollified look people get when they’re offered free drinks in exchange for an inconvenience.”

Agent Sterling had told me once that I was the biggest liability on the team because I was the one who really felt things.

And though Sloane wore her heart on her sleeve, she would always see patterns first and people second.

“What do you see?” “Care.” Dean paused. “Honor. Remorse.”

Someone had to hold them together. Someone had to hold us together. And I needed that person to be me.

“Who picked the restaurant?” Sterling asked. Tory shrugged. “She did.” Behind me, Lia swung her legs off the couch and stood. “And there we have it,” she told us. “That’s the lie.”

“He brought me cherries,” she said. “Just once.”

“Al Capone once donated a pair of cherry trees to a hospital as thanks for treating his syphilis.”

“Dean,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “I’m pregnant.” Dean’s eyelid twitched. “No, you’re not.” “Who’s to say, really?” Lia countered.

“If you start at the origin of the spiral and work your way out, you can stop at any time. But if you start at the outside and work your way in, there’s a start, and there’s a finish. The pattern is set.”

“Lia,” Judd said mildly. “Don’t antagonize the casino mogul.”

“So are we all thinking that either Aaron’s little girlfriend is our killer and she just had a psychotic break, or that our killer somehow hypnotized her into delivering that message?”

eidetic

Different handwriting, same words.

“Enjoying a bit of light reading?” I looked up at the person who’d asked that question, but couldn’t make out his face. “Something like that,” I said, realizing even as I did that I’d said these words before. The river. The man.

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

Everything but true infinity has its end.

“Aaron,” I told Agent Sterling. Those words were met with silence. “The UNSUB is Beau Donovan, and he’s targeting Aaron Shaw,”

This is both his greatest asset and the fuel for much of his rage.”

Something stuck in the back of my brain, like food caught in between the teeth.

Seven Masters. A child. And the child’s mother.