She was right. Dean wouldn’t want me reading this. His father had described him as a little boy who’d been born smiling, instantly lovable, effortlessly putting other people at ease, but the Dean I knew always had his guard up.
Especially with me.
“Tell me I’m wrong, Cassie, and I’ll make you a pretty apology. Tell me that Daniel Redding hasn’t already gotten under your skin.”
I knew better than to lie to Lia. There was something inside me, the part of me that saw people as puzzles to be solved, that wanted answers, that needed to make things—awful things, horrible things, like what had happened to my mother, like what Daniel Redding had done to those women—make sense.
“Dean wouldn’t want me doing this,” I conceded, catching my bottom lip in between my teeth, before plowing on. “That doesn’t mean he’s right.”
My first week in the program, Dean had tried to send me running. He’d told me that profiling killers would ruin me. He’d also told me that by the time Agent Briggs had started coming to him for help on cases, there was nothing left to ruin.
If our situations had been reversed, if I’d been the one drowning in all of this, Dean wouldn’t have backed off.
“I slept in Michael’s room last night.” Lia waited for those words to register before giving me a Cheshire cat grin. “I wanted a strip poker rematch, and Monsieur Townsend was oh-so-happy to oblige.”
I felt like she’d stabbed an icicle straight through my chest. I went very still, trying not to feel anything at all.
Lia reached over and snatched the binder off my lap. She snorted. “Honestly, Cassie, you’re too easy. If and when I choose to spend the night with Michael again, you’ll know it, because the next morning, you’ll be invisible, and Michael won’t be looking at anything but me. In the meantime…” Lia snapped the binder shut. “You’re welcome, because this is officially the second time in the past five minutes that I’ve saved you from going someplace you really don’t want to go.” Her eyes bore into mine. “You don’t want to crawl into Daniel Redding’s mind, Cassie.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “If you make me go for intervention number three, I’ll be forced to get creative.”
With those rather concerning words, she left the room—taking the binder and everything it contained with her.
Can she do that? I sat there, staring after her. Eventually, I snapped out of it and told myself that she was right, that I didn’t need to know the details of Dean’s father’s case to be there for Dean now, but even knowing that, even believing it, I couldn’t stop wondering about the parts of the interview I hadn’t gotten the chance to read.
What did you teach your son? Agent Briggs had asked.
I’d never even seen a picture of Dean’s father, but I could imagine the smile spreading over his face when he’d replied. Why don’t you ask your wife?
Dean skipped dinner. Judd fixed a plate for him and put it in the refrigerator. I wondered if Judd was used to Dean disappearing for hours on end. Maybe, when Dean had first come here, that had been a normal thing. I found myself thinking more and more about that Dean—the twelve-year-old whose father had been arrested for serial murder.
You knew what he was doing. I slipped into Dean’s perspective without even meaning to. You couldn’t stop it.
Empathizing with Dean: his feelings toward his father, what staring at that girl’s corpse must have done to him—I couldn’t tuck that away in a separate section of my psyche. I could feel it bleeding over into my own thoughts. Right now, Dean was almost certainly thinking about the fact that he had a killer’s blood in his veins. And I had Locke’s in mine. Maybe Lia was right. Maybe I couldn’t really understand what Dean was going through—but being a profiler meant I couldn’t stop trying to. I couldn’t keep from feeling his pain and recognizing in it an echo of my own.
After dinner, I meant to go upstairs, but my feet carried me toward the garage. I stopped, just outside the door. I could hear the muted sound of flesh hitting something—over and over, again and again. I brought my hand up to the doorknob, then pulled it back.
He doesn’t want you here, I reminded myself. But at the same time, I couldn’t keep from thinking that maybe shutting the rest of us out was less about what Dean wanted and more about what he wouldn’t let himself want. There was a chance—a good one—that Dean didn’t need to be alone so much as he thought being alone was what he deserved.
Of its own volition, my hand reached out again. This time, I turned the knob. The door opened a crack, and the sound of heavy breathing added itself to the rhythmic thwack thwack thwack I’d heard before. A breath hitching in my throat, I pushed the door open. Dean didn’t see me.
His blond hair was beaded with sweat and stuck to his forehead. A thin white undershirt clung to his torso, soaked and nearly transparent. I could make out the lines of his stomach, his chest. His shoulders were bare, the muscles so tense that I thought they might snap like rubber bands or fight their way out from underneath his tanned skin.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
His fists collided with a punching bag. It came back at him, and he fought harder. The rhythm of hits was getting faster, and with each punch, he put more and more of his body into it. His fists were bare.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, watching him. There was something animal about the motions, something feral and vicious. My profiler’s eye saw each punch layered with meaning. Losing control, controlled. Punishment, release. He’d welcome the pain in his knuckles. He wouldn’t be able to stop.
I took a few steps closer, but stayed out of range. This time, I didn’t make the mistake of trying to touch him. His eyes were locked on the bag, unseeing. I wasn’t sure who he was striking out at—his father or himself. All I knew was that if he didn’t stop, something was going to give—the bag, his hands, his body, his mind.
He had to snap out of it.
“I kissed you.” I wasn’t sure what possessed me to say that, but I had to say something. I could see the moment the words broke through to him. His movements became slightly more measured; I could feel him regaining awareness of the world around him.
“It doesn’t matter.” He continued punching the bag. “It was just a game.”
Truth or Dare. He was right. It was just a game. So why did I feel like someone had slapped me?