“Well, this is awkward,” Lia commented, looking from one boy to the other. “Are you two going to start braiding each other’s hair next?”
Someday, I was fairly certain that Lia would write a book entitled Making an Awkward Situation Worse.
“Cassie’s a big girl,” Lia continued. “She can make decisions for herself. If she wants to go, she can go.”
I wasn’t sure why she was so gung ho on my accompanying them, or why she was volunteering to stay home herself.
“Dean and I are both profilers,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t that make me kind of redundant?” The only thing I would bring to this venture was objectivity. Lia’s ability made her the more obvious choice.
“No offense”—Lia began her next sentence in a way that more or less guaranteed the next words out of her mouth would be insulting—”but you simply cannot lie, Cassie. Agent Sterling got the truth about our last little adventure out of you so quickly, it’s embarrassing. Really. If you stay here, you’ll get us all caught. Besides,” she added, a smirk settling over her features, “Tweedledee and Tweedledum over here will be less likely to get themselves killed—or to kill each other—if you’re along for the ride.”
I thought of Lia and Michael dancing together just to get a rise out of Dean, and Michael’s inability to keep from poking bears with sticks. Michael, Lia, and Dean locked in a car together would be a disaster.
“Dibs on being Tweedledee,” Michael said blithely.
“Fine,” I told Lia. “I’ll go with them.”
For a moment, I thought Dean would protest, but he didn’t. “I’m ready when you two are,” he said gruffly.
Michael smiled, first at Dean, then at me. “I was born ready.”
We passed the ride to Broken Springs, Virginia, in tense and uncomfortable silence.
“Okay, I’m calling it,” Michael announced when the quiet got to be too much. “I’m turning on the radio. There will be singing. I would not be opposed to car-dancing. But the next person whose facial expression approaches ‘brood’ is getting punched in the nose. Unless it’s Cassie. If it’s Cassie, I punch Dean in the nose.”
A strangled sound came from Dean’s direction. It took me a second to realize that the garbled sound was laughter. The threat was so very Michael—completely irreverent, even though I had no doubt he’d follow through with it.
“Fine,” I said, “no brooding, but no radio, either. We should talk.”
Both of the occupants of the front seat seemed somewhat alarmed by that suggestion.
“About the case,” I clarified. “We should talk about the case. What do we know about this woman we’re going to see?”
“Trina Simms,” Dean said. “According to the visitor logs Agent Sterling showed me, she’s visited my father with increasing frequency over the past three years.” He gritted his teeth. “There’s reason to believe that it may be romantic, at least on her part.”
I didn’t ask Dean to elaborate on what that reason was. Neither did Michael.
“I doubt she knew him before he was incarcerated,” Dean continued, saying each word like it didn’t matter—because if he let it, it would matter too much. “She’s in her forties. In all likelihood, she’s either convinced herself that he’s innocent or that the women he killed deserved to die.”
The real question wasn’t how Trina Simms had justified her interest in a man most people considered a monster. The real question was whether or not she was a killer herself. If so, had she considered the murders a romantic gesture? Had she thought Dean’s dad would be proud of her? That it would bring them closer together?
I knew instinctively Daniel Redding didn’t care about this woman. He didn’t care about people, period. He was callous. Unemotional. The closest he could come to love was whatever it was he felt for Dean, and that was more narcissistic than anything else. Dean was worth caring about only because Dean was his.
“What’s our game plan?” Michael asked. “Do we just knock on the front door?”
Dean shrugged. “You got a better idea?”
“This is your rodeo,” Michael told him. “I’m just the driver.”
“It would be better if I went in alone,” Dean said.
I opened my mouth to tell him that he wasn’t going anywhere alone, but Michael beat me to it.
“No can do, cowboy. They call it the buddy system for a reason. Besides, Cassie would try to go after you, and then I would go after her, so on and so forth….” Michael trailed off ominously.
“Fine,” Dean capitulated. “We go in as a group. I’ll tell her you’re my friends.”
“A clever ruse,” Michael commented. It hit me then that Michael hadn’t agreed to drive Dean here for me, or for Lia. Despite everything he’d told me about their history, he’d done it for Dean.
“I’ll do the talking,” Dean said. “If we’re lucky, she’ll be so fixated on me that she won’t be able to pay attention to either of you. If you can get a read on her, great. We get in. We get out. With luck, we’ll be home before anyone realizes we’ve left.”
On the surface, the plan sounded simple, but lucky wasn’t an adjective I would have applied to a single person in this car. That thought lingered in my mind as Michael drove past a sign: WELCOME TO BROKEN SPRINGS, POPULATION 4,140.
Trina Simms lived in a one-story house the color of an avocado. The lawn was overgrown, but the flower beds had clearly been weeded. There was a pastel welcome mat on the front porch. Dean rang the doorbell. Nothing happened.
“Bell’s broken.” A boy with a buzz cut came around the side of the house. He was blond-haired and fair-skinned and walked like he had someplace to be. At first glance, I’d put his age at close to ours, but as he came closer, I realized that he was at least a few years older. His accent was like Dean’s, magnified. He offered us a polite smile, more a reflex in this part of the country than a courtesy. “You selling something?”
His eyes skimmed over Dean and Michael and landed on me.
“No,” Dean replied, drawing the man’s attention back to him.
“You lost?” the man asked.
“We’re looking for Trina Simms.” Michael’s eyes were locked on the man. I took a small step sideways, so I could get a better look at Michael’s face. He would be the first to know if the polite smile was hiding something else.