The Naturals: All In Part 9

My mind went to what I knew about Sloane's half brother. He'd grown up in a family where wealth and power were givens. I was betting he'd been raised to follow in his father's footsteps. It wouldn't be hard for someone like that to get used to blurring moral lines. But there had also been something gentle about the way he'd interacted with Sloane, and that something gave me pause.

Is it you Tory's scared of? I thought, picturing Aaron in my mind. Or is it your father?

Dean sent the text. A moment later, we heard Agent Sterling excuse herself from the interrogation. Dean got a text back less than a minute later. "Anything else?" he read out loud. "Ca.s.sie?"

The fact that Agent Sterling had directed that question to me told me that she was looking for something specific-a confirmation of her own hunch, or some aspect of Tory's personality that I would be more likely to pick up on than Dean.

"I'm not sure," I said quietly, "but we might be looking at a history of a.s.sault. Verbal, physical, s.e.xual-or maybe just the ongoing threat thereof."

Saying those words felt like violating a confidence. Michael must have heard that in my voice, because he leaned over Dean and pa.s.sed me the flask. I raised an eyebrow at him. He shrugged.

"I can't help you." The increase in volume drew my attention back to the tablet. Clearly, Tory had reached a breaking point. "If you have any more questions, you can address them to my attorney."

"Everything okay here?" Sterling reentered the conversation, stepping into the frame.

Briggs cleared his throat. "I was just asking Ms. Howard if anyone could verify her whereabouts after she parted ways with Ms. Holt." And she asked for her attorney. Briggs let the second half of that statement go unsaid.

She doesn't trust people in power, I told him silently. And she certainly doesn't trust you.

"I can." A male voice carried over the microphone several seconds before its owner appeared on-screen, stepping directly between the FBI agents and Tory. Male. Young. Early twenties at most. My brain started cataloging his demographics before my mind recognized his face.

"Beau Donovan," Dean said. "One of our persons of interest. The twenty-one-year-old dishwasher who won the amateur spot at the poker tournament."

"Tory was with me," Beau was saying on-screen. "Last night, after she and Camille parted ways, Tory was with me."

"Funny story," Lia mock-whispered. "She totally wasn't."

You're lying. That alone was enough for Beau to command my full attention. He was about the same height as Tory, but he stood slightly in front of her. Protective.

"You and Beau were together last night?" Agent Briggs pressed Tory.

"That's right," Tory said, staring down the agents. "We were."

"She really is good," Lia commented. "Even I might not have pegged that one for a lie."

"And how do you two know each other?" Sterling asked.

Beau shrugged, looking for a moment like the kid slumped in the back of the cla.s.sroom, barely paying attention to what was said at the front. "She's my sister."

There was a beat of silence.

"Your sister," Agent Sterling repeated.

"Foster sister." Tory was the one who supplied that information. She was older than Beau by two years, maybe three. Something told me the protectiveness ran both ways.

"You still need help with fixing the lights?" Beau asked Tory, as if the FBI wasn't even standing in the room. "Or what?"

"Mr. Donovan," Agent Sterling said, forcing his attention back to her, "would you mind if we asked you a few questions?"

"Knock yourself out."

Tory isn't the only one who's not overly fond of people with power.

"I understand you've advanced to the finals of the Vegas multi-casino poker tournament," Agent Sterling said. "You're getting quite a bit of attention."

"Everyone likes an underdog story." Beau shrugged again. "I'm thinking of selling the rights to Hollywood," he deadpanned. "It'll be one of those really inspirational stories."

"Beau," Tory said, a warning note creeping into her voice. "Just answer the questions."

Interesting. She didn't want him to aggravate the authorities. For a split second, I felt like I was watching some alternate-universe version of Lia and Dean, where she was the older one and he had Michael's mouth.

"Fine," Beau told Tory, then he turned back to Agent Sterling. "What do you want to know?"

"How long have you been playing poker?"

"A while."

"You must be good at it."

"Better than some."

"What's your secret?"

"Most people are c.r.a.ppy liars." Beau let that sink in. "And for a high school dropout, I'm pretty good at math."

I saw Sterling filing those words away for future reference, and I did the same.

Agent Briggs took over the questioning. "Were you at the New Year's Eve party on the roof of the Apex?"

"Yeah," Beau said. "Thought I'd see how the other half lives."

"Did you know Camille Holt?" Agent Sterling asked.

"I did. She was a nice girl," Beau replied.

"Lie," Lia sing-songed.

"Well," Beau amended, as if he'd heard Lia, "Camille was nice to me. We were the outsiders in the inner circle. She was a chick. I'm a dishwasher." He managed a small, crooked smile. "A girl like that? She wouldn't normally give a guy like me two seconds. But once I joined the tournament, she went out of her way to make me feel welcome."

"She was trying to figure you out."

I recognized Agent Sterling's statement for what it was-an attempt to see how Beau dealt with rejection. Tell him Camille was only nice to him because she was manipulating him, see what happens.

Beau shrugged. "Of course she was."

"A swing and a miss," Michael said under his breath. In other words: Sterling's words hadn't gotten a rise out of her target. At all.

"Camille was compet.i.tive," Beau said. "I respected that. Besides, she decided pretty early on that I wasn't the one she needed to worry about."

Agent Sterling c.o.c.ked her head to the side. "And who was Camille worried about?"

Beau and Tory both answered the question, and they both said the exact same thing. "Thomas Wesley."

While Briggs and Sterling went to track down Thomas Wesley, the rest of us were left to entertain ourselves. Michael took out his earpiece and tossed it onto the carpet with no more care than one might use to throw away a crumpled napkin. "Call me when the show's back on," he said, reclaiming his flask and heading for his room. Lia shot me a look that said, I told you we were at issue capacity. See?

Yes, I thought, watching Michael go. I do.

"I'll go check on Sloane," I said. Michael wouldn't want my concern. Sloane, at least, might be glad for the company.

When I got to our room, I was greeted by the sound of upbeat techno music. I opened the door, half expecting Sloane to be wearing goggles and on the verge of blowing something up. It helps me think, Sloane had explained to me once, like explosives were an alternative form of meditation.

Luckily, however, in the absence of her bas.e.m.e.nt lab, she'd taken a different-and less explosive-tack. She was lying upside down on the bed, the upper half of her body hanging over the end. Blueprints, schematics, and hand-drawn maps lay three-deep, covering the floor around her.

"Thirteen hours." Sloane yelled the words over the music, still hanging upside down. I went to turn the music down, and she continued, her voice softer, more vulnerable. "If our UNSUB is killing one a day, we have a maximum of thirteen hours until he kills again."

Briggs had told Sloane that he needed her to figure out where the UNSUB would strike next. She had clearly taken that request to heart. You want to be needed. You want to be useful. You want to matter, even a little.

I tiptoed around the papers and lay down on the bed next to Sloane. Hanging upside down, side-by-side, we turned to look at each other.

"You can do this," I told her. "And even if you can't, we'll love you just the same."

There was a beat of silence.

"She was wearing a dress," Sloane whispered after a moment. "The little girl." She shook her head slightly, then picked up a pen and began marking off distances on one of her maps, as easily as if the whole thing were right-side up.

My chest tightened. The grip Sloane had on the pen told me that even sinking herself into a project like this one wasn't enough to burn from her mind the memory of the doting father and his little girl.

"She was wearing a white dress." Sloane's voice was very small. "It was clean. Did you notice?"

"No," I said softly.

"Children stain white clothes within an hour of putting them on at least seventy-four percent of the time," Sloane rattled off. "But not her. She didn't ruin it."

The way Sloane said the word ruin told me that she wasn't just talking about children staining their clothing. She was talking about herself. And clothing was just the tip of the iceberg.

"Sloane-"

"He brought her to the bar to get a cherry." Her hand stilled, and she turned to look at me again. "He brought me cherries," she said. "Just once."

Sloane could have told me the number of cherries, the exact day and time, the number of hours that had pa.s.sed since-I could see that information, repeating itself over and over again in her head.

"Does it help if I hate him for you?" I asked. Him. As in her father.

"Should it?" Sloane asked, wrinkling her forehead and sitting up. "I don't hate him. I think that maybe, someday, when I'm older, he could not-hate me."

When you're older-and better and normal and good, my brain filled in. Sloane had told me once that she said and did the wrong thing over eighty-four percent of the time. The fact that her biological father had played a role in teaching her that lesson-the fact that she still hoped that he might develop even the barest hint of affection for her someday, if only she could do things right-physically hurt me.

I sat up and latched my arms around her. Sloane leaned into the hug and rested her head on my shoulder for a few seconds. "Don't tell anyone," she said. "About the cherries."

"I won't."

She waited a moment longer, then pulled back. "Al Capone once donated a pair of cherry trees to a hospital as thanks for treating his syphilis." With those memorable words, Sloane lay back down, hanging upside down off the end of the bed and staring out at the maps and schematics she'd collected. "If you don't leave," she warned me, "there's a high probability that I'm going to tell you some statistics about syphilis."

I rolled off the bed. "So noted."

Back in the living room, Michael had apparently seen fit to return. For reasons I could not begin to fathom, he and Lia were arm wrestling.

"What-" I started to say, but before I could finish, Dean spoke up.

"Show's back on," he said.

Lia took advantage of Michael's distraction and slammed his hand down. "I win!" Before Michael could complain, she resumed her spot on the back of the couch. I sat next to Dean. Michael stared at us for a second or two, then picked his earpiece up off the floor and went to stand behind Lia.

On-screen, I saw a hand-probably Briggs's-reach out and knock on a hotel room door. I fit my earpiece back into my ear just in time to hear Thomas Wesley's a.s.sistant answer the door.

"May I help you?"

"Agents Sterling and Briggs," I heard Sterling say from off-screen. "FBI. We'd like a word with Mr. Wesley."

"I'm afraid Mr. Wesley isn't available at the moment," the a.s.sistant said.

The look on Lia's face called BS on that one.

"I would be happy to pa.s.s along a message or to put you in touch with Mr. Wesley's legal counsel."

"If we could just have a few minutes of Mr. Wesley's time-" Briggs tried again.

"I'm afraid that's impossible." The a.s.sistant smiled daggers at Briggs.

"It's fine, James," a voice called. A second later, Thomas Wesley appeared on-screen. His salt-and-pepper hair was slightly mussed. He was wearing a teal silk robe and very little else. "Agent Sterling. Agent Briggs." Wesley greeted them each with a nod, like a monarch graciously acknowledging his subjects. "What can I do for you?"

"We have just a few questions," Agent Sterling said, "concerning your relations.h.i.+p with Camille Holt."

"Of course."

"Mr. Wesley," the a.s.sistant-James-said, his voice tinged with displeasure. "You are under no obligation to-"

"Answer any questions I do not want to answer," Wesley finished. "I know. It just so happens I want to answer the agents' questions. And," he said, turning his attention back toward the screen, "I'm a man who's used to doing what he wants."

I had the oddest sensation, then, that he was addressing those words less to Agent Briggs than to the camera.

"You switched hotels," Agent Briggs said, dragging the man's gaze up. "Why?"

A benign question whose sole purpose was to keep the man from looking too closely at the pen in Agent Briggs's pocket.

"Bad juju at the other one," Wesley replied, "what with that whole murder business." His tone sounded flippant, but- Michael filled in the blanks. "He's more disturbed than he wants to let on."

"You do realize," Agent Sterling replied to Wesley, "that there was-"