“You’re the profiler,” she said. “You tell me how okay Dean is going to be if the FBI botches this case. Then tell me that you are one hundred percent certain that we won’t pick up on something they miss.”
The FBI had profilers and interrogators. Those agents had training. They had experience. They had a million and one things that we didn’t—but no one had instincts like ours. That was the whole point of the program. That was the reason Judd was afraid that if the FBI started using us on active cases, they wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Who do you think college students are going to get chatty with,” Lia asked me, “FBI agents or two scantily clad and passably nubile teenage girls?”
Even setting aside our abilities, Lia was right. No one would suspect we were part of the investigation. They might tell us something the FBI didn’t know.
“If Sterling implied that she could, in any way, get the director to disband this program, she was lying. I can guarantee you that’s outside her purview. At most, she could send one of us home, and I would bet you a lot of money that the director wouldn’t let her send you home, because you’re a nice, shiny alternative to Dean, who the director has never trusted and never liked.” Lia took a step back, allowing me some breathing room. “You say you care about Dean,” she told me, her voice low. “You say you want to help. This will help. I’d lie to you about a lot of things, Cassie, but helping Dean isn’t one of them. I wouldn’t do this for you, or for Michael, or even for Sloane. But I would waltz into hades and make nice with the devil himself for Dean, so either you put on the damn dress or you get the hell out of my way.”
I put on the dress.
“Are you sure this isn’t a shirt?” I asked, eyeing the hemline.
Lia manhandled my face and slathered it with base before brandishing a tube of pink lip gloss and a container of black mascara. “It’s a dress,” she swore.
It was times like these I really wished Lia weren’t a compulsive liar.
“How are we even getting to this party?” I asked.
Lia smirked. “It just so happens I know a boy with a car.”
Michael’s Porsche was a remnant of his life before the program. Watching him behind the wheel, it was easy to picture the person he’d been then, the trust-fund brat bouncing from one boarding school to another, summering in the Hamptons, jetting out to Saint Barts or Saint Lucia for a long weekend.
It was easy to picture that Michael bouncing from girl to girl.
Lia sat in the front seat beside him. She was leaning back, the leather seat caressing her cheek, her long hair whipping in the wind. She’d rolled down her window and showed no signs of wanting to roll it back up. Every once in a while, her gaze flitted over to Michael. I wished I could read the inscrutable expression on Lia’s face. What was she thinking?
When she looked at Michael, what did she feel?
Michael kept his eyes locked on the road.
As hard as I tried not to profile the two of them, I kept thinking that Lia was the one who’d asked Michael to join us on this ill-advised outing, and that he’d agreed to help her. Why?
Because opportunities for trouble were not to be missed. Because he owed her. Because as much as Michael enjoyed jabbing at Dean, he didn’t like watching him bleed. The answers flooded my brain, and Michael caught my gaze in the rearview mirror. He’d told me once that when I was profiling someone, my eyes crinkled slightly at the corners.
“We’ll want to make a quick detour,” Lia said. Michael glanced over at her, and she gestured with the tip of one dark purple nail. “Pull off at the next exit.” She glanced back at me. “Enjoying the ride?”
She was in the front seat. I was in the back. “I’m not doing this for enjoyment,” I told her.
She let her gaze trail from me to Michael and then back again. “No,” she agreed. “You’re not doing this for enjoyment. You’re doing it for Dean.”
Lia lingered on Dean’s name just slightly longer than the other words in that sentence. Michael’s hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. Lia wanted him to know I was doing this for Dean. She wanted him dwelling on that fact.
“Gas station,” Lia directed, her hair whipping in the wind. He pulled in and threw the car into park. Lia smiled. “You two wait here.”
It was just like her to stir things up and then leave. No matter how well he masked it, I knew Michael was sitting there asking himself what—exactly—had led me to do this for Dean. The same way I’d spent the ride wondering why Michael had said yes to Lia.
“Ta,” Lia said, sounding fairly satisfied with herself. In an impressive feat of flexibility, she snaked her body out the open window without ever opening the door.
“This is a bad idea,” I said as Lia sauntered toward the mini-mart.
“Almost certainly,” Michael agreed. From the backseat, I couldn’t see his face, but it was all too easy to imagine the unholy glint in his eyes.
“We snuck out of the house to go to a frat party,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure this isn’t a dress.”
Michael turned around in his seat, took in the view, and smiled. “Green’s a good color for you.”
I didn’t reply.
“Now it’s your turn to say something about the way this shirt really brings out my eyes.” Michael sounded so serious that I couldn’t help cracking a smile.
“Your shirt is blue. Your eyes are hazel.”
Michael leaned toward me. “You know what they say about hazel eyes.”
Lia opened the passenger door and flopped back into her seat. “No, Michael. What do they say about hazel eyes?” She smirked.
“Did you get what you needed?” Michael asked her.
Lia handed a brown paper bag back to me. I opened it. “Red Gatorade and cups?”
Lia shrugged. “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When at a frat party, drink questionable fruit punch out of a red Solo cup.”
Lia was right about the punch. And the cups. It was dark enough in the dimly lit frat house that no one noticed that our drinks were a slightly different shade of red.
“What now?” I asked Lia over the deafening music.
She began to move her hips, and her upper body followed suit in a way that made it fairly clear that she’d excel at limbo. She eyed a trio of boys at the edge of the room and shoved Michael toward a blond girl with red-rimmed eyes.
“Now,” she said, “we make friends.”