Jennifer Lynn Barnes - The Naturals стр 7.

she looks. We started her out on crime scene analysis.

And me? I asked.

He was silent for a moment, measuring. I glanced at the papers on his desk and wondered if any of them were about me.

Youre a Natural profiler, he said finally. You can look at a pattern of behavior and figure out the personality of the perpetrator, or guess how a given individual is likely to behave in the future. That tends to come in handy when we have a series of interrelated crimes, but no definite suspect.

I read in between the lines of that statement, but wanted to be sure. Interrelated crimes?

Serial crimes, he said, choosing a different word and letting it hang in the air around us. Abductions. Arson. Sexual assault. He paused, and I knew what the next word out of his mouth was going to be before he said it. Murder.

The truth hed been dancing around for the past hour was suddenly incredibly clear. He and his team, this programthey didnt just want to teach me how to hone my skills. They wanted to use them to catch killers.

Serial killers.

YOU

She shouldnt be dead yet, but she is .

She should be perfect now, but shes not .

She didnt scream enough, and then she screamed too much, and she called you names. Names that He used to call you. And you got angry.

It was over too fast, too soon, and it wasnt your fault, damn it. It was hers. Shes the one who made you angry. Shes the one who ruined it.

Youre better than this. Youre supposed to be looking at her body and feeling the power, the rush. Shes supposed to be a work of art.

But shes not .

You drive the knife into her stomach again and again, blinded to anything else. Shes not perfect. Shes not beautiful. Shes nothing.

Youre nothing .

But you wont stay nothing for long .

CHAPTER 5

I was going to do this. Id known that from almost the moment that Agent Briggs had started speaking. I cared about my grandmother. I did. And I knew how hard she and the rest of the family had tried to make me feel loved, no matter how Id come to them or how much of my mother there was in me. But Id never really belonged here. A part of me had never really left that fateful theater: the lights, the crowd, the blood. Maybe I never would, but Agent Briggs was offering me a chance to do something about it.

I might never solve my own mothers murder, but this program would turn me into the kind of person who could catch killers, who could make sure that another little girl, in another life, with another mother, would never have to see what I had seen.

It was morbid and horrifying and the very last life the family would have imagined for meand I wanted it more than I had ever wanted

anything.

I combed my fingers through my hair. Wet, it looked dark enough to pass for brown instead of auburn. The steam from the shower had brought some color into my cheeks. I looked like the type of girl who could belong here, with this family.

With wet hair, I didnt look so much like my mother.

Chicken. I leveled the insult at my own reflection and then pushed back from the mirror. I could stay here until my hair driedin fact, I could stay here until my hair went grayand that wouldnt make the conversation I was about to have any easier.

Downstairs, Nonna was curled up in a recliner in the living room, reading glasses perched on her nose and a large-print romance novel open in her lap. She looked up the second I stepped in the room, her eagle eyes sharp.

You are ready for bed early, she said, no small amount of suspicion in her voice. Nonna had successfully raised eight children. If Id been the type to make trouble, there would have been none that I could have stirred up that she hadnt already seen.

I quit my job today, I said, and the sparkle in her eyes told me those had been the wrong words to lead with. I dont need you to get me a new one, I added hastily.

Nonna made a dismissive sound under her breath. Of course not. You are independent . You do not need anything from your old Nonna. You do not care if she worries.

Well, this was going well.

I dont want you to worry, I said, but somethings come up. An opportunity.

Id already made the executive decision that Nonna didnt need to know what Id be doingor why. I stuck to the cover story that Agent Briggs had given me. Theres a school, I said. A special program. The director came to see me last week.

Nonna harrumphed.

He talked to Dad.

The director of this program talked to your father, Nonna repeated. And what did my son say to this man who could not be bothered to introduce himself to me?

I explained as much as I could. I gave her a pamphlet that Agent Briggs had given meone that didnt mention words like profiling or serial killers or FBI .

Its a small program, I said. At a kind of group home.

And your father, he said you could go? Nonna narrowed her eyes at the smiling kids on the front of the pamphlet, like they were personally responsible for leading her precious granddaughter astray.