Bad Blood (The Naturals, #4)

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“You faked your own kidnapping.” In Sloane’s world, that passed for a greeting. “It is my understanding that is highly abnormal behavior.”

“I don’t say anything like it’s perfectly normal,” Sloane clarified. “Ninety-eight percent of the time I’m not normal at all.”

Dean must have sensed that the look in Lia’s eyes didn’t bode well—for Celine, for Michael, for Lia—because he chose that moment to enter the game. “Never have I ever,” he said slowly, “made out with Michael Townsend.” “Someday, big guy,” Michael told him with a wink. “If you’re very, very good.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lia filled it. “Never have I ever let someone beat the crap out of me.” That brought Michael’s attention from Celine to Lia. “You got me,” he said, gesturing toward his swollen lip. “Very insightful.” Instead of replying, Lia dropped her left hand. It took me a moment to realize that, in doing so, she’d brought down her middle finger, too. With a start, I realized that was Lia’s way of telling Michael that she’d been exactly where he was.

“What can I say?” he replied. “Good taste runs in the family.” The subtext to those words was deafening.

Sloane clearly had no idea how to reply, so she went with the path of least resistance. “Goldfish don’t have stomachs or eyelids. And their resting attention span is actually one-point-oh-nine times that of the average human.”

Lia’s tone wasn’t cutting, but that meant nothing. She was more than capable of coating razor blades in sugar.

“You went to see your sister today, and no amount of Townsend Baby Daddy Drama can make you forget what you saw.”

“That’s the thing,” Sloane replied. “It isn’t a Social Security number—or at least, it’s not anymore. I’ve been going in circles trying to figure out what else it could be, but then instead of cross-referencing it against current Social Security numbers, I decided to do a historical search.” “How much of this required illegal hacking?” a voice asked from the doorway. I looked up to see Lia and, behind her, Michael and Dean. “Almost all of it,” Sloane answered without skipping a beat. “When I went back a few decades, I found it. That Social Security number was given to a baby boy born in Gaither, Oklahoma, forty-three years ago. His name was Mason Kyle.”

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” I can, I thought, and I will.

But I could live—even when I didn’t want to, even when it hurt. I could feel.

“I need to go to Gaither, Oklahoma.”

In an attempt not to look like a cop, she’d chosen to wear jeans. She still looked like a cop.

Dean walked ahead and stopped at the sign in front of the gates. “Either Redding is constipated,” Michael said as he took in a subtle shift in Dean’s body posture, “or things are about to get interesting.”

I did as instructed. St. John’s wort. Yarrow. The alder tree. Hawthorne. As I passed each labeled plant in the garden, I parsed my first impressions. My gut said that the older man had lived in Gaither all of his life. Widow’s Peak was protective of him—and of the museum.

I forced air into and out of my lungs, forced my racing heart to slow. This is the break we’ve been waiting for. This is our chance. And based on the unearthly calm with which Agent Sterling had spoken, the way she’d gone from person to agent in two seconds flat—she knew it.

“You’re pushing down an adrenaline rush.” Michael took his time reading Agent Sterling. “You’re frustrated. You’re scared. But more than anything, beneath the Agent Veronica Sterling mask, you look the way a thrill seeker does frozen at the top of the roller coaster, hovering on the verge of plunging down.”

“First rule of raising kids, Ronnie?” he said, in a way that reminded me that he’d had a hand in raising her. “Don’t forbid them from doing something if you’re certain they’re going to do it anyway.” Judd’s discerning gaze landed back on me. “It’s a waste of a good threat.”

“Oh, honey.” Ree reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Then, with the no-nonsense manner of a woman who’d raised multiple generations of children, she turned to Sloane and Michael and took their orders. You know grief, I thought. You know when to comfort and when to let things be.

Ree narrowed her eyes at Dean. “You trouble?” she asked. “No, ma’am.” She turned to Michael. “You?” He offered her his most charming smile. “One hundred percent.” Ree snorted. “That’s what I thought.”

“We’re about three seconds away from Draco Malfoy over there throwing a punch,” Michael said, his voice low. “Three… two…”

Lia’s expression dared us to argue that her need for a wardrobe change had nothing to do with the temperature. Beside me, Michael watched her walk away. No matter how good she was at hiding her emotions, he was better at reading them. He knows what you’re feeling. You know that he knows.

Sloane’s blue eyes darted toward mine. I could see her trying to calculate the odds that continuing would hurt me.

“On a scale of one to ten,” she said, “how psychic do I look?” “Six-point-four,” Sloane replied without hesitation.

Sloane looked at me, looked at Lia, then looked at me again. “There is a very high probability,” she whispered, “that Lia’s about to tell you that you’re lying.”

“Sterling’s conflicted about letting us on the front lines, Judd has that look on his face that he gets when he’s thinking about Scarlett, and Agent Starmans desperately has to go to the bathroom,” Michael murmured to Lia and me. “In case you were wondering.”

But more than anything, you hate that you don’t hate putting us in the line of fire nearly as much as you should.

Dean reached for the door to the museum, then held it open for Sterling. “After you,” he said, a gesture an onlooker would have taken for Southern chivalry, but that I recognized as an unspoken promise: we’d follow her lead.

I forced my attention from the open page to the old man. Thanes smiled softly. “The line between medicine and poison was quite thin, you know.” That line appeals to you. Immediately, my brain went into overdrive. You find poisons enthralling. You took Nightshade in when he was just a boy.

But when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d run, not just from her father, but also from mine.

“Sometimes one emotion can mask another.” Michael paused. “What I got off the good doctor was a combination of anger, guilt, and dread. Whatever else might have been buried underneath, that particular cocktail of emotions is something Kane Darby has felt before. Those three emotions are intertwined for him, and when they arrive, they arrive all at once.” “Anger that someone else has all of the power and you have none.” Lia strolled ahead of the rest of us, turning to walk backward, light on her toes. “Guilt, because you’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no greater sin than disloyal thoughts.” She turned back around. “And dread,” she finished softly, her face hidden from view, “because you know, deep down, that you will be punished.” You’re not talking about Kane Darby. “In other words,” Michael translated, acting as if Lia hadn’t just shown us a glimpse of her deepest scars, “the good doctor has daddy issues.” Like Lia, Kane Darby had been raised in a cult. Based on the fact that he’d spoken negatively about his father, I assumed that, like Lia, he’d gotten out.

Sometimes, I thought, seeing the world through Lia’s eyes, you have to become the monster to survive.

“You didn’t use to be this brave.” “You didn’t use to be so antisocial,” I countered. Shane snorted. “You know what they say, Red: dance it off.”

I’d had a plan to find out more about Kane Darby. But apparently, I wasn’t the only one. All roads in Gaither led back to the friendly neighborhood cult, and it didn’t take much profiling for me to figure out which of my fellow Naturals might have decided to follow up on that lead. On her own.

You’ll play his game better than he does. You’ll find out what he’s hiding. And if it costs you—whatever it costs you—so be it.

“I’m not going to take a swing at anyone.” Dean did his best to look like he wasn’t on the verge of letting his darkest self come out to play. “But I’m also not staying in the car.”

For a brief instant, Lia’s eyes met mine. You know exactly what you’re doing, I thought. He’s a doll-maker who likes broken toys, and you know how to play the shattered, broken doll.

“Don’t start with me, Townsend.” A muscle in Dean’s jaw ticked. “Consider me warned.”

“I’m confused, Redding,” Michael said, taking a lazy step toward Dean. “Is talking about our feelings something you and I do now?”

“Stop.” The word exited Sloane’s mouth in a whisper. “Stop. Stop. Stop!” She’d been silent since we’d made it back, and as her volume escalated to a yell, the boys froze. I’d never seen Dean pick a fight with Michael before. I’d never seen the two of them in an all-out brawl. “It’s not Michael’s fault.” Sloane’s voice was barely audible. “It’s mine.” She moved backward until she hit the wall. “I saw Lia leaving. She asked me not to tell.” Sloane sucked in a breath, her middle finger on her right hand tapping against her thumb. She was counting something—counting and counting and unable to pull it together. “We’d just gotten back, and she changed clothes. She was wearing white, and Lia only wears white thirteen percent of the time. I should have known.” “Sloane,” Judd said gently. “Sweetheart…” “I offered to go with her,” Sloane continued, picking up the pace of both her words and her tapping. “She said no. She said…” Sloane looked down. “She said I’d just get in the way.” You knew how much that would hurt Sloane, Lia. You knew. Objectively, I could see that Lia had been trying to protect our most vulnerable member, but Sloane didn’t know that. She wouldn’t understand it even if I tried to explain what the combination of anger, fear, and dread that Michael had seen in Kane Darby had drudged up for Lia. Years later, it can still hit you in a moment. Dean was wrong. This wasn’t about Michael, or what had happened in New York, or any of us. This was about ghosts that Lia had n...

The identity of the caller was clear in the way Sterling stood, her shoulders squared to ward off emotion, her free hand dangling loosely by her side.

And then, Ronnie?” Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at the nickname or the emotion that made its way into Briggs’s voice as he said it. “Get her out.”

but don’t let her choices pull you down in the meantime. Life is full of drowning people, ready and willing to drown you, too.”

“You look like your mother.” Kane’s voice was muted, like he thought I was a dream and if he spoke too loudly, he might wake up. I shook my head. “She was beautiful, and I’m…” I searched for the right words. “I can fade into the background. She never learned how.”

There was a thin line between a warning and a threat. I wanted to believe that Kane Darby had been warning me, not threatening me, when he’d suggested I leave town, but if my time with the FBI had taught me anything, it was that violence didn’t always simmer just below the surface. Sometimes, the serial killer across from you quoted Shakespeare. Sometimes, the most dangerous people were the ones you trusted most.

Dean fell in beside me. “I made a promise to the universe,” he said, “that if Lia gets out of this unscathed, I’ll go forty-eight hours without brooding. I will purchase a colored T-shirt. I’ll sing karaoke and let Townsend pick out my song.”

but right now, I wasn’t the one that Dean would have given anything to protect.

Because I might remember something I don’t want to know?”

All of us had a way of regaining the control that life had taken from us. For Sloane, it was numbers. For Lia, it was keeping her true self buried beneath layers of lies. Michael intentionally provoked anger instead of waiting for someone else’s fuse to blow. Dean did everything he could to keep his emotions in check. And I use knowing things about people as an excuse to keep them from knowing me. Becoming a part of the Naturals program had meant letting a piece of that control go.

Agent Sterling danced the line between offering specifics and offering truth.