The Naturals: All In Part 25

You don't like hurting women. I turned that over in my head. You will, of course, to suit your goal. But given a choice, you'd prefer it to be neat. That made me wonder about the UNSUB's other relations.h.i.+ps. A mother? A daughter? A love?

My temples pounded. What else? I couldn't stop, I couldn't let myself stop. We had five hours before Michael left for the Majesty. No matter how heavily guarded he was, no matter how much we knew, that wasn't a risk I wanted to take.

January twelfth. The Grand Ballroom. The knife.

I had to keep going. I had to think. I had to see whatever it was that we were missing.

Think. We were looking for someone highly intelligent, organized, charming enough to put people at ease. Alexandra Ruiz. The girl at Tory's show. Michael. The UNSUB had hypnotized at least three people.

"Ca.s.sie." Michael's voice broke into my thoughts. "Go to bed."

"I'm fine," I said.

"Liar." Lia was two-thirds asleep on the couch. She didn't even open her eyes to speak. She'd been going back over interviews, looking for anything she might have missed the first time.

Sloane had been staring at the pattern for hours.

"Briggs and Sterling are calling in the cavalry," Michael said. "There will be no fewer than a dozen agents, armed to the teeth, watching my every move. The moment they catch sight of a knife, the UNSUB goes down."

That was how this was supposed to go, but there was a reason this plan was a last resort.

Victimology, I thought. Four victims. I couldn't stop. I didn't. Not until the agents came the next morning to take Michael away.

They put Michael in a bulletproof vest. They put a wire on him. Video, audio-whatever he saw, whatever he heard, Sterling and Briggs would, too. The other agents were also wired-video only-and those feeds would be accessible not only by Briggs as he coordinated the mission, but by the rest of us back at the safe house.

It only takes one detail, I thought. One moment, one realization for everything to fall into place.

I couldn't push down the part of me that was thinking that it only took one moment, one mistake, for this to go wrong, too.

Dean, Lia, Sloane, and I sat huddled on the couch as we waited. Lia refused to show any sign of nerves. Sloane, in contrast, was rocking back and forth.

Beside me, Dean shook his head. "I don't like this," he said. "Townsend's unpredictable. He has no regard for his own safety. He's const.i.tutionally incapable of backing down from a fight."

"Tell you what, Dean," Lia replied. "When Michael gets back, we'll get the two of you a room. Obviously, there are feelings involved."

"We're all worried," I told Dean, ignoring Lia. "I don't like this any more than you do."

Sloane whispered something beside us. I couldn't make out what she said.

"Sloane?" I said.

"January twenty-third," she whispered. "February first, February third, February thirteenth."

It took me a second to register that she was rattling off the next four Fibonacci dates.

I need nine.

We'd been focused on the next kill-January twelfth. But if we didn't catch the UNSUB, this was what was next.

"The parking garage," Sloane said. "Then the buffet, then the day spa." The spiral was centered on the Majesty. It started out and spiraled in-and once it settled there, it kept going, closer and closer to the spiral's center.

"Where does it end?" I asked her. We'd been so focused on what the UNSUB had already done that I hadn't given much thought to the rest of the pattern. My heart pounded.

One detail. It only takes one detail.

Michael was still in transit. He wasn't there yet. It would be minutes yet before the plan was put in motion.

Please, I thought, not sure who or what I was begging-or even what, precisely, I was begging for.

"It ends in the theater," Sloane said, truly surprised the rest of us didn't know. "On February thirteenth."

"The poker tournament ends today." Lia pointed out the obvious. "It's going to be hard for most of the players to explain hanging around Vegas for long."

Wesley. The professor.

"I chose the Majesty for a reason," Dean said. "It was always going to end here. I knew, from the beginning, how this was going to end."

Why the Majesty? My eyes were so dry they hurt, my throat the same. My heart threatened to shatter my rib cage in my chest.

On the coffee table, the tablets Briggs had left for us jumped to life one by one, the screens going from black to active.

The video feeds were live.

The Grand Ballroom. January twelfth. Michael was there.

"The theater." I said the words out loud, my eyes on the screens, looking for anything, any hint of someone moving Michael's way. "It ends in the theater with victim number nine."

And that was when I saw it.

Alexandra Ruiz. Sylvester Wilde. Camille Holt.

What did they have in common?

"Victimology," I told Dean. "We don't have four victims. We have five."

Michael's not a victim. Not Michael. Not our Michael. I pressed back against the chorus in my head. The UNSUB had chosen him.

Why Michael?

"If you add Michael into the profile," I said, "then four out of the five victims are under the age of twenty-five."

Most killers had a type. If you set aside Eugene Lockhart as an outlier, our UNSUB's type was young. Beautiful. By some definition, privileged.

"A college girl celebrating the new year in Vegas. A stage magician with a show at the Wonderland. An actress who moonlighted playing professional poker." It hurt me to look at Michael on the screen. "A trust-fund boy."

"Average age of twenty-two," Sloane commented.

The spiral ends in the Majesty theater, I thought.

"Alexandra had long dark hair." The words tumbled out of my mouth, one after the other. "Who would she look like if you looked at her from behind?"

Dean answered first. "Tory," he said. "She'd look like Tory Howard." He turned to face me head-on. "Sylvester Wilde was a stage magician."

Like Tory.

Camille had died after going out for drinks with Tory that night. And Michael?

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 b.u.t.ton on his blazer, perfectly sure of his place in this world.

The pieces began falling into place in my head. I'd thought-multiple times-that we were looking for someone who planned ten steps ahead. Someone who planned as meticulously as this killer, my own thoughts played back on a loop, who was as grandiose as this killer, who prided himself on being better, being more, would have a plan to circ.u.mvent suspicion.

I'd asked myself about our UNSUB's relations.h.i.+ps, about why he only chose to kill women when he could kill them cleanly.

The pattern ends in the Majesty theater. The final kill. The greatest sacrifice.

Nightshade's ninth kill had been Scarlett.

"Yours," I said out loud, "was always going to be Tory."

The Majesty. Tory. Planning ten steps ahead- I knew who the killer was. My fingers scrambled for the phone. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Sterling.

YOU.

You make your way through the crowd toward the stage. Like you're supposed to be here. Like you own the place.

The knife is concealed by your sleeve.

There are cameras everywhere. Agents everywhere. They think you don't know. They think you can't see them, far more easily than they see you.

Your eyes land on your target. He's wearing a blazer. His fingers play at the top b.u.t.ton.

Everything can be counted. The steps until you reach him. The number of seconds it will take your blade to cross his throat. And to think, this almost went differently.

To think, you almost settled for an imitation.

Three.

Three times three.

Three times three times three.

This is your inheritance. This is what you were always meant to be. A man b.u.mps into you. Apologizes. You barely hear him.

1/1.

1/2.

1/3.

1/4.

1/12.

Nine seats at the table. Three seconds until it begins.

Three...two...and-the power goes off. Just like you planned. No lights. Chaos. Just like you planned.

You walk with purpose. You sidle up behind number five. You catch him in a chokehold and press the blade to his throat.

And then you start to slice.

The screens went black. I had the phone pressed to my ear. No answer. No answer. No- "Ca.s.sie." Agent Sterling came on. "It's fine. The UNSUB cut the power, but we have Michael secured."

Something gave inside of me, but I didn't have time for relief. The UNSUB's name was on the tip of my tongue. What came out was, "What if it's not Michael he's after?"

We'd been going off the a.s.sumption that if given a choice, the UNSUB would revert to the original plan, targeting Michael. But if he'd discovered his intended victim had left Las Vegas, if he'd changed the plan, if he'd already found a way of regaining power and control- "Aaron," I told Agent Sterling.

Those words were met with silence.

"The UNSUB is Beau Donovan, and he's targeting Aaron Shaw," I plowed on. "Michael was only ever a stand-in. Beau saw him with Lia, and it was like looking at Aaron with Tory. If Beau thought, even briefly, that Michael wasn't an option, he'd compensate by going for the real thing."

"Briggs." I heard Sterling call out, even though she was keeping her voice low. "We're looking for Beau Donovan, targeting Aaron Shaw."

On-screen, the lights flickered back on. Over the phone, I heard a piercing scream. My eyes darted from one video feed to the next. Beside me, Sloane slipped off the sofa and to her knees in front of the coffee table, her hands on either side of one of the tablets.

The agent wearing the camera ran forward. The image shook. A crowd formed. The camera was jostled, and then the agent knelt.

Next to the body of Aaron Shaw.

A high-pitched wheezing sound filled the air. Lia sank to the floor and wrapped her arms around Sloane.

"I told him," Sloane whispered. "I told my father. January twelfth. The Grand Ballroom. I told him. I told him. I told him."

He should have listened. But he hadn't, and now Aaron was pale and still and covered in blood. Dead.

"Ca.s.sie?" Agent Sterling's voice came back over the phone. I'd forgotten I was even holding it. "How sure are you about the UNSUB's ident.i.ty?"

On one of the other screens, I saw Beau Donovan, standing near the stage. He didn't look like he'd just killed someone. Without Michael to read him, I couldn't tell if that was satisfaction on his face.

You don't have to say anything, Agent Sterling had told Beau during his interrogation. But I think you want to. I think there's something you want us to know.

Michael had indicated that Agent Sterling was right. There was something Beau wanted them to know, something he wouldn't say. You wanted them to know how superior you are-better than the FBI, better than the group you're emulating.

He's got the potential for violence, Dean had told us. The rest of Dean's a.s.sessment echoed in my head. I'm guessing he's spent a lot of his life being tossed aside like garbage. Given the opportunity, he'd enjoy playing a game where he came out on top.

We'd known the Vegas UNSUB was capable of arranging deaths that seemed like accidents. It wasn't much of a leap to think he might be able to plan an attack that looked like self-defense. You picked a fight with Aaron. The Majesty's head of security came after you. You knew he would. You picked the fight with Aaron so that he would. Beau had probably hypnotized that girl into joining Aaron at Tory's show, to give him an excuse to pick the fight. You didn't kill Victor McKinney. You never meant to kill him-because he wasn't number five.

He was your defense.