The Naturals: All In Part 4

"So was there news?" Sloane asked Lia curiously. "Or were you just making conversation?"

That's one term for it.

"There's definitely news," Lia declared, turning back toward the door and walking out of the room. I glanced at Sloane, and then we hurried to catch up with her. As we rounded the corner, Lia finally shared.

"We have a visitor," she said airily. "And the news is that she's very unhappy."

Agent Sterling stood in the middle of the Renoir Suite's sprawling living room, her eyebrows arched so high, they practically disappeared into her hairline. "This is your idea of low-key?" she asked Judd.

Judd walked into the kitchen and started a cup of coffee. He'd known Agent Sterling since she was a kid. "Relax, Ronnie," he said. "No one is going to connect five spoiled teenagers and an old man in a four-thousand-dollar-a-night suite to the FBI."

"Given the average yearly salary of an FBI agent," Sloane interjected before Agent Sterling could say anything, "that seems true."

Michael strode into the room, dressed in what appeared to be a swimsuit and a fluffy white robe. "Agent Sterling," he said with a tip of an imaginary hat. "So glad you could join us." He made quick work of studying her. "You're annoyed, but also concerned and a bit peckish." He crossed the room and picked up a bowl of fruit. "Apple?"

Sterling gave him a look.

Michael took the apple for himself and crunched into it. "You don't have to worry about our cover." Dean entered the room, and Michael gestured first toward him, then toward the rest of us. "I'm a VIP. They're my entourage."

"Four teenagers and a former marine," Agent Sterling said, folding her arms over her chest. "That's your entourage."

"The fine folks at the Majesty don't know they're teenagers," Michael countered. "Dean and Lia could pa.s.s for early twenties. And," Michael added, "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."

Agent Sterling seemed to realize that she'd lost control of the situation. Rather than argue with Michael, she crossed the room and perched on the arm of the sofa. She nodded to the seats and waited for us to follow the unspoken order. We sat. The position she'd taken up meant she was seated higher than the rest of us, looking down.

I doubted that was an accident.

"Persons of interest." Agent Sterling laid a thick file folder down on the coffee table in front of her, then reached back into her briefcase. "Schematics of the first two crime scenes." She pa.s.sed those to me, and I pa.s.sed them to Sloane. Finally, she held up a DVD. "The Desert Rose's security footage from the casino floor for the hour before and the hour after Eugene Lockhart was shot."

"That's it?" Lia asked. "That's all you brought us?" She leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the mahogany coffee table. "It's like you want me to entertain myself."

The evidence Agent Sterling had just handed over gave Sloane plenty to work with. Dean and I could weave through the information they'd collected on the persons of interest. Even Michael could scan the security footage for any emotional outliers.

But Lia needed witness interviews-or at the very least, transcripts.

"We're working on it," Agent Sterling told her. "Briggs and I will be conducting interviews of our own. I'll make sure they're recorded. If there's something we need a consult on, you'll be the first to know. In the meantime"-she stood up and glanced around the ma.s.sive, sprawling suite-"enjoy your accommodations, and stay out of trouble."

Lia's expression was all innocence-and all too convincing.

Sterling headed for the door. She stopped to talk to Judd on the way out. After a quiet exchange, Sterling called back to me. "Ca.s.sie?" she said. "A word."

Hyperaware of the fact that the others were watching, I met Agent Sterling at the door. She pressed a USB drive into my hand. "That's everything we have on the developments in your mother's case," she said softly.

No matter what. I hadn't let myself think those words in years. And now, they were the only thing I could think. Forever and ever, no matter what.

"You've been through the files?" I asked Agent Sterling, my mouth going dry.

"I have."

My hand closed tighter over the drive, as if part of me was afraid she'd take it away.

"Judd said he told you not to look at the files alone. If you want me with you when you look at them, Ca.s.sie, you have my number." With those words, Sterling slipped out the door, leaving me to face the inquisition alone.

I forced myself to ignore the looks I was getting from Michael and Lia, the look I was getting from Dean. Part of me wanted to walk past them, shut myself in my room, and look at the contents of the drive in my hand, to read it, memorize it, devour it whole.

Part of me wasn't sure I was ready for what I would find.

Trying my hardest to keep those thoughts from my face, I made my way back to the others and to the files Agent Sterling had brought us on the current case. "Let's get to work."

The FBI had collected the local police department's notes on five persons of interest in the deaths of Alexandra Ruiz and Sylvester Wilde. I started with the first file.

"Thomas Wesley," I said, hoping the others would follow my lead and focus on the case. I laid a finger on the man's picture-the same one Agent Briggs had put up on the screen on the plane.

"Self-satisfied," Michael declared, studying the photo for a moment. "And hyperaware."

Filing Michael's observations away for reference, I skimmed the file. Wesley had created and sold no fewer than three internet start-up companies. His net worth was eight figures, nearing nine. He'd been playing poker professionally for about a decade-and in the past three years, he'd ascended the ranks, winning multiple international compet.i.tions.

Intelligent. Compet.i.tive. I took in the way Wesley was dressed in the picture and processed Michael's read on the man. You like to win. You like a challenge.

Based on the party he'd thrown on New Year's Eve, he also liked women, excess, and living the high life.

"What are you thinking?" I asked Dean. He was a warm, steady presence by my side, reading over my shoulder, not asking the questions I knew he had to be thinking about the exchange between Sterling and me.

"I think our UNSUB likes a challenge," Dean answered quietly.

Just like Thomas Wesley.

"How many of our POIs are here for the poker tournament?" I asked. Picking out potential suspects was significantly easier when there was variation among the people you were profiling. By definition, anyone capable of playing poker at an elite level was highly intelligent, good at masking their own emotions, and amenable to taking calculated risks.

Lia thumbed through the files. "Four of the five," she said. "And the fifth is Tory Howard, stage magician. Four bluffers and an illusionist." Lia smiled. "I do like a challenge."

You're methodical, I thought, my brain turning back to the UNSUB. You plan six steps ahead. You get a rush out of seeing those plans come to fruition.

In most of the cases we'd worked in the past few months, the killers' a.s.sertions of dominance over their victims had been direct. The victims had been overpowered. They'd been chosen, they'd been stalked, and they'd died looking at the faces of their killers.

This UNSUB was different.

"Persons of interest two, three, and four." Michael drew my attention back to the present as he spread the files out one by one on the coffee table. "Or, as I like to call them," he continued, glancing at each POI's picture for less than a second, "Intense, Wide-Eyed, and Planning-Your-Demise."

The one Michael had referred to as Planning-Your-Demise was the only woman of the three. She had strawberry blond hair with a slight curl to it and eyes that looked several sizes too big for her face. At first glance, she could have pa.s.sed for a teenager, but the dossier informed me that she was twenty-five.

"Camille Holt." I paused after reading her name. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Because she's not just a professional poker player," Lia replied. "She's an actress."

The dossier confirmed Lia's words. Camille was cla.s.sically trained, had an undergraduate degree in Shakespearean literature, and had played small but critically acclaimed roles in several mainstream films.

She didn't exactly fit the profile of your typical professional poker player.

You don't like being put in boxes, I thought. According to the file, this was Camille's second major poker tournament. She'd gone far enough in the first to surpa.s.s expectations, but hadn't won.

I thought about what Michael had said about her facial expression. To the untrained eye, she didn't look like she was plotting anything. She looked sweet.

You like being underestimated. I rolled that over in my mind as I made my way through the next two files, skimming the information the FBI had gathered on Dr. Daniel de la Cruz (Intense), and the supposedly wide-eyed Beau Donovan, who looked more like he was scowling to me.

De la Cruz was a professor of applied mathematics. True to Michael's a.s.sessment, he seemed to approach both poker and his field of study with laser focus and an intensity unmatched by his peers.

For maximal contrast, Beau Donovan was a twenty-one-year-old dishwasher who'd entered the qualifying tournament here at the Majesty two weeks before. He'd won, giving him the amateur spot in the upcoming poker champions.h.i.+p.

"Shall we role-play?" Lia asked. "I'll be the actress. Dean can be the dishwasher from the wrong side of the tracks. Sloane is the mathematics professor, and Michael is the billionaire playboy."

"Obviously," Michael replied.

I picked up the final file, the one that belonged to Tory Howard, the only POI who wasn't an elite poker player.

The magician.

"I'm bored and approaching really bored," Lia announced when it became clear that none of us were going to take her up on the role-play suggestion. "And I think we all know that's not a good thing." She stood, smoothing one hand over her red dress while the other grabbed for the DVD. "At least on a security video, something might actually happen."

Lia popped the DVD into a nearby player. Sloane looked up from her spot on the floor just as the security footage began to play. A split screen showed the view from eight cameras. Sloane stood, her eyes moving rapidly back and forth, as she took in the data, tracking hundreds of people, some stationary, some moving from one frame to the next.

"There." Sloane reached for the remote and paused it. It took me a moment to zero in on what she'd seen.

Eugene Lockhart.

He was sitting in front of a slot machine. Sloane fast-forwarded the footage. I kept my eyes locked on Eugene. He stayed there, playing the same slot again and again.

But then, something s.h.i.+fted. He turned around.

Sloane set the DVD to play in slow motion. I skimmed each of the other cameras' footage. A blur of motion pa.s.sed first through one, then through another.

The arrow.

We watched as it buried itself in the old man's chest. I didn't let myself look away.

"The angle of entry," Sloane murmured, "the placement of the cameras..." She rewound the footage and played it again.

"Stop," Michael said suddenly. When Sloane didn't pause the footage, he reached for the control himself and toggled back, bit by bit. "See anyone familiar?" he asked.

I scanned the various camera shots.

"Bottom right." Dean found her first. "Camille Holt."

We spent the next six hours buried in the evidence. Sloane and Michael went over and over the video. Dean and I made our way through the final dossier, then worked back through all of them in more detail. We found everything we could online about Camille Holt. I watched interview after interview with her. She was a self-professed method actor, who embodied her characters the entire time she was filming a role.

You like trying different people's skin on for size. You're fascinated by the way the mind works, the way it breaks, the way people survive things no one should be able to survive.

It was there, in the roles she chose: a mentally ill woman on death row, a single mother weathering the loss of her only child, a homeless teenager turned vigilante after an a.s.sault.

So, Camille, I wondered, what role are you playing now? According to our files, she'd been at the party where Alexandra was killed. That meant she was present at a minimum of two of the three murders.

"Enough." Judd had stayed mostly out of our way, observing, but un.o.btrusive. Now, he reached for the remote control and turned the television off. "Your brains need time to process," he said gruffly. "And your stomachs need food."

We objected. That didn't go well for us.

After we pried ourselves away from the evidence, Lia "suggested" Sloane and I change for dinner, which I took as a threat that she would pick out an outfit for me if I didn't comply. Unwilling to tempt fate-and Lia's fas.h.i.+on sense-I put on a dress. When I went to fold my jeans, the USB drive Agent Sterling had given me fell out of the pocket. I bent to pick it up, half expecting Sloane to come out of the bathroom and catch me in the act.

She didn't.

I forced myself to open my hand and stared at the drive. No amount of throwing myself into the Vegas case could make this matter less. I'd wanted to see the files-needed to see them-but now that I held the answers in my hand, I was paralyzed.

When people ask me why I do what I do, Locke's voice whispered in my memory, I tell them that I went into the FBI because a loved one was murdered.

Sensory detail broadsided me: the light reflecting off the knife, the glint in Agent Locke's eyes. There wasn't always a rhyme or reason to what triggered my flashbacks-and there was nothing I could do except ride it out.

I was supposed to kill her, Locke continued in my memory, manic with the desire to have been the one to end my mother's life. I was supposed to be the one.

I shuddered. When I came back to the present, my palms sticky with sweat, I couldn't keep from slipping into Locke's mind. If you were here, if you had access to new information on my mom's case, I thought, you'd find the person who killed her. You'd kill him, for killing her.

I swallowed back the emotion rising up inside of me, grabbed my computer, and made my way out into the suite. Judd had forbidden me from looking at my mother's file alone. I'm not alone, I told myself. I was never really alone.

Part of me would always be in that blood-spattered dressing room with my mother. Part of me would always be at the safe house with Locke.

I made it to the door to the suite and began to open it, planning to slip out into the hallway. I just need a few minutes to look at-My thought cut off abruptly as I realized the hallway outside our suite was already occupied.

Lia was leaning against one wall, four-inch heels on her feet, one leg crossed over the other at the ankles. "We both know that when you told Ca.s.sie you were in one piece, you were lying."

From where I was standing, with the door only partially ajar, I couldn't see Michael, but I could imagine his facial expression exactly as he replied, "Do I look like I'm in multiple pieces to you?"

Still leaning against the wall, Lia uncrossed her ankles. "Take off your s.h.i.+rt."

"I'm flattered," Michael replied. "Really."

"Take off the d.a.m.n s.h.i.+rt, Michael."

There was silence then. I heard a light rustling, then Lia stepped out of my view.

"Well," Lia said, her voice light enough to send chills down my spine. "That's..."

"Leverage," Michael filled in.

Lia had a habit of sounding like things weren't important when they mattered the most. I eased the door open just far enough to see Michael, reb.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt.

Underneath, his chest and stomach were mottled with bruises.