The Naturals: All In Part 2

"How do we know it wasn't an accident?" Lia swung her legs over the side of her seat, letting them dangle off.

"The calling card." Dean and I answered at the exact same time.

I turned my mind from Alexandra to the UNSUB. You made it look like an accident, but left something to tell the police that it wasn't. If they were smart enough, if they connected the pieces of the puzzle, they'd see. See what you were doing. See the elegance in it.

See how clever you are.

"What was it?" I voiced the question Dean had asked earlier. "What did the UNSUB leave?"

Another click from Briggs, another picture on the screen, this one a close-up of a wrist. Alexandra's. Her arm lay palm-up on the pavement. I could see the veins beneath her skin, and just above them, on the outside edge of her wrist, were four numbers, inked into her skin in fancy script: 3213. The ink was dark brown, with a slight orange tint to it.

"Henna," Sloane offered, playing with the edge of her sleeve, judiciously avoiding eye contact with the rest of us. "A dye derived from the flowering plant Lawsonia inermis. Henna tattoos are temporary and, at any given time, less common than permanent tattoos by a factor of about twenty to one."

I could feel Dean beside me, processing this information. His gaze was locked onto the picture, as if he could will it to tell him the full story. "The tattoo on her wrist," he said. "That's the calling card?"

You're not just leaving messages. You're leaving them inked onto the bodies of your victims.

"Is there any way to get a time stamp on the tattoo?" I asked. "Did he mark her, then drown her, or drown her, then mark her?"

Briggs and Sterling exchanged a look. "Neither." Sterling was the one who answered the question. "According to her friends, she got the tattoo herself."

As we processed that information, Briggs cleared the screen and brought up a new photo. I tried to look away, but couldn't. The corpse on the screen was covered in blisters and burns. I couldn't tell if the victim was male or female. There was only one patch of unmarred skin.

The right wrist.

Briggs gave us a close-up.

"4-5-5-8." Sloane read out loud. "3-2-1-3. 4-5-5-8." She stopped talking, but her lips kept moving as she went over and over the numbers.

Meanwhile, Dean and I were staring at the photograph.

"Not henna this time," he said. "This time I had the numbers burned into my target's skin."

My preferred p.r.o.noun for profiling was you. I talked to the killer, to the victims. But when Dean slipped into an UNSUB's head, he imagined being the killer. Doing the killing.

Given who and what his father was-and the way Dean couldn't shake the fear that he'd inherited some trace of monstrousness-that didn't surprise me. Every time he profiled, he faced that fear head-on.

"I suppose you're going to tell us victim number two burned the numbers into his own arm?" Lia asked Briggs. She did a good job of sounding unaffected by the gruesomeness of what we were seeing, but I knew better. Lia was an expert at masking her true reactions, showing only what she wanted the world to see.

"In a manner of speaking." Briggs brought up another picture, side by side with the wrist. It looked like some kind of wristband. Set back into the thick material it was made of were four metal numbers: 4558, but flipped-a mirror image of the numbers on the victim's skin.

Agent Sterling enlightened us. "Fire-r.e.t.a.r.dant fabric. When our victim caught fire, it heated the metal, but not the fabric, leaving a legible brand underneath."

"According to our sources, the victim received the bracelet with a parcel of fan mail," Briggs continued. "The envelope it was mailed in is long gone."

"Fan mail?" I said. "And that makes the victim...who?"

Another picture flashed onto the screen in response to my question, this one of a twentysomething male. His face was striking and gaunt, sharp angles offset by violet eyes-probably contacts.

"Sylvester Wilde." Lia let one of her feet fall to the floor. "Modern-day Houdini, illusionist, hypnotist, and jack-of-all-trades." She paused, then translated for the rest of us. "He's a stage magician-and like most of his kind, an excellent liar."

From Lia, that was a compliment.

"He had a nightly show," Briggs said, "at the Wonderland."

"Another casino." Dean mulled that over.

"Another casino," Agent Sterling confirmed. "Mr. Wilde was in the midst of his evening performance on January second when he-to all appearances-accidentally set himself on fire."

"Another accident." Dean bowed his head slightly, his hair falling into his face. Already, his concentration was so intense, I could see it in the lines of his shoulders, his back.

"Or so the authorities believed," Agent Briggs said. "Until..."

One last picture, one last victim.

"Eugene Lockhart. Seventy-eight. He was a regular at the Desert Rose Casino. He came once a week with a small group from a local retirement home." Briggs didn't say anything about how Eugene had died.

He didn't need to.

There was an arrow protruding from the old man's chest.

How did a killer go from staging accidents to shooting someone with an arrow in broad daylight?

As the jet descended into Las Vegas, that was the question I kept coming back to. Our briefing hadn't stopped with the picture of Eugene Lockhart, skewered through the heart, but that was the moment when every a.s.sumption I'd made about this killer had started to change.

Beside me, I could feel Dean mulling over what we'd been told, too. Part of being a Natural was not being able to turn off the parts of our brains that worked differently than other people's. Lia couldn't choose to stop recognizing lies. Sloane would always see numbers everywhere she looked. Michael couldn't help picking up on every last micro-expression that crossed a person's face.

And Dean and I compulsively pieced people together like puzzles.

I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried-and knowing what my brain would cycle back to the second I stopped thinking about this case, I didn't fight it.

Behavior. Personality. Environment. There was a rhyme and reason to the way even the most monstrous killers behaved. Decoding their motivations meant trying to step into the UNSUB's shoes, trying to see the world the way he or she saw it.

You wanted the police to know that Eugene Lockhart was murdered, I thought, starting with the obvious. People didn't get "accidentally" shot with hunting arrows in the middle of busy casinos. Compared to the earlier murders, that was definitely an attention-getter. You wanted the authorities to take notice. You wanted them to see. See what you were doing. See you.

Are you used to going unnoticed?

Are you sick of it?

I went back over what we'd been told. 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."

Hence the police looking back over all recent accidental deaths and homicides and the discovery of the numbers tattooed on Alexandra Ruiz's wrist and burned into Sylvester Wilde's.

Why Latin? I turned that over in my head. Do you consider yourself an intellectual? Or is the use of Latin ritualistic? A slight s.h.i.+ver ran down my spine at that possibility. Ritualistic how?

Without meaning to, I leaned into Dean's body. Brown eyes met mine, and I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered if climbing into this killer's mind was giving him chills, too.

Dean laid a hand on my arm, his thumb tracing along the back of my wrist.

Across from us, Lia eyed our hands and then brought her own to her forehead in a melodramatic motion. "I'm a dark and angsty profiler," she intoned. "No," she countered in a falsetto, bringing her other hand up, "I'm a dark and angsty profiler. Ours is a star-crossed love."

Toward the front of the plane I heard Judd cough. I deeply suspected he was covering a laugh.

"You never did tell us why the locals called in the FBI so quickly," I told Agent Briggs, easing my body away from Dean's and trying to redirect Lia's attention before she did a reenactment of our entire relations.h.i.+p.

The plane landed. Lia stood and stretched, arching her back before taking the bait. "Well?" she prompted the agents. "Care to share with the cla.s.s?"

Briggs kept his answer brief and to the point. "Three murders at three different casinos in three days. The casino owners are obviously concerned."

Lia grabbed her bag and slung it neatly over one shoulder. "What I'm hearing," she said, "is that the powers that be at the casinos, worried that murder might be bad for business, used their substantial political capital to get local law enforcement to call in the experts." A slow, dangerous smile spread over Lia's lips. "Dare I hope this means those same casino owners will also see to it that we get the Vegas VIP treatment?"

I could practically see visions of nightclubs and VIP rooms dancing in Lia's head.

Briggs must have been thinking the same thing, because he grimaced. "This isn't a game, Lia. We're not here to play."

"And," Agent Sterling added sternly, "you're underage."

"Too young to party, just old enough to partic.i.p.ate in federal investigations of serial murder." Lia let out an elaborate sigh. "Story of my life."

"Lia." Dean leveled his own version of Briggs's look at her.

"I know, I know, don't agitate the nice FBI agents." Lia waved away Dean's objection, but dialed it back a notch anyway. "Are we at least getting our rooms comped?" she asked.

Briggs and Sterling glanced briefly at each other.

"The FBI has been given a complimentary suite at the Desert Rose," Judd said, stepping in and answering on their behalf. "I, on the other hand, have secured two rooms at a modest hotel just off of the Strip."

In other words: Judd wanted to keep some distance between us and the FBI's base of operations. Considering that I'd been taken captive by not one, but two UNSUBs in the past six months, I certainly wasn't going to complain about the idea of keeping our visibility low.

"Sloane," Dean said suddenly, drawing my attention in her direction. "Are you okay?"

Sloane's teeth were bared in what was, quite possibly, the largest, fakest smile I'd ever seen. She froze like a deer in headlights. "I'm not practicing smiling," she said quickly. "Sometimes people's faces just do this."

That statement was met with silence from every single person on the plane.

Sloane hastily changed the subject. "Did you know that New Hamps.h.i.+re has more hamsters per capita than any other state?"

I was used to Sloane spitting out statistics at random, but given that we were getting ready to disembark in Vegas, I would have expected something a little more thematically applicable. That was when I realized-Vegas.

Sloane had been born and raised in Las Vegas.

If we'd had normal childhoods, we wouldn't be Naturals. I didn't know much about Sloane's background, but I'd caught pieces here and there. Sloane hadn't gone home for Christmas. Like Lia and Dean, that meant she had nowhere to go.

"Are you okay?" I asked her quietly.

"Affirmative," Sloane chirped. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Lia said bluntly. Then she reached over and pulled Sloane to her feet. "But put me in charge of your life decisions for the next few days, and you will be." Lia punctuated those words with a glittering smile.

"Your statistical track record for decision-making is somewhat concerning," Sloane told her seriously. "But I'm willing to take this under advis.e.m.e.nt."

Briggs brought one hand to his temple. Sterling opened her mouth-probably to decree that Lia not be allowed to make anyone's Vegas-related decisions, including her own-but Judd caught the female agent's eyes and shook his head slightly. He had a soft spot for Sloane, and it was clear to everyone on this plane that she wasn't happy to be home.

Home isn't a place, Ca.s.sie. 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.

I stood and pushed back against the memory. I couldn't dwell on my mother. We were in Vegas for a reason. There was work to do.

The door to the jet opened. Agent Briggs turned to Agent Sterling. "After you."

YOU.

Three is the number. The number of sides on a triangle. A prime number. A holy number.

Three.

Three times three.

Three times three times three.

You run your fingertips over the edge of an arrowhead. You're a good shot. You knew you would be. But killing the old man brought you no joy. You prefer the long game, the careful planning, lining up dominoes in loops and rows until all you have to do is knock over one- The girl in the pool.

The flames burning the skin from number two.

Perfect. Elegant. Better, by far, than skewering the old man.

But there is an order to things. There are rules. And this was how it had to be. January third. The arrow. An old man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Have you gotten their attention yet?

You pocket the arrowhead. In another life, in another world, three would be enough. You could be happy with three.

Three is a good number.

But in this life, in this world, three is not enough. You can't stop. You won't.

If you don't have their attention yet, you will soon.

I'd spent most of my childhood in motels and apartment buildings where rent was paid by the week. Compared to some of the places my mother and I had stayed, the hotel Judd had booked for us looked nice enough-if a bit run-down.

"It's everything I dreamed it would be." Lia sighed happily. In addition to detecting lies, she also had an apt.i.tude for telling them. With every appearance of sincerity, she eyed the building's exterior like she had stumbled across a long-lost love.

"It's not that bad," Dean told her.

Like a switch had been flipped, Lia dropped the act and tossed her long black hair over one shoulder. "This is Las Vegas, Dean. 'Not bad' isn't exactly what I was aiming for."