“Where did you get it, Lia?”
Lia opened her mouth to dish out a retort, then closed it again. Her eyes studied mine. “It was a gift,” she said quietly. “I don’t know from who. Someone left a bag of makeup on my bed last week. I just assumed I had a makeup fairy.” She paused. “Honestly, I thought it might be from Sloane.”
“I haven’t stolen makeup in months.” Sloane’s eyes were wide. My stomach lurched.
There was a chance that the UNSUB knew about the program.
The only people who would have been able to reconstruct my mother’s crime scene so exactly, the only people who would have known about the blood on the light switch, were people who had access to the crime-scene photos.
And someone had left a tube of my mother’s favorite lipstick on Lia’s bed.
Inside our house.
CHAPTER 34
“Cassie?” Lia was the first one to break the silence. “Are you okay? You look … not good.”
I was going to go out on a limb and guess that was about as diplomatic as Lia got.
“I need to call Agent Briggs,” I said, and then I paused. “I don’t have his number.”
Dean fished his phone out of his pocket. “There are only four numbers in my contacts,” he said. “Briggs is one of them.”
The other three were Locke, Lia, and Judd. My hands shaking, I dialed Agent Briggs.
No answer.
I called Locke.
Please answer. Please answer. Please, please answer.
“Dean?”
Like Agent Briggs, Locke didn’t bother with hello.
“No,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Cassie? Is everything okay?”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
“Are you alone?”
“No.”
Locke must have heard something in my voice, because she flipped into agent mode in a heartbeat. “Can you talk openly?”
I heard steps in the hallway. Agent Starmans opened the door without knocking, glared pointedly at Lia, then resumed standing guard, right outside the door.
“Cassie,” Locke said sharply. “Can you talk?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know anything except for the fact that there was a very real possibility that the killer had been inside our house—for all I knew, the killer could be inside the house now. If the UNSUB had access to FBI files, if he had access to us …
“Cassie, I need you to listen to me. Hang up the phone. Tell whoever’s around you that I’m in the middle of something and I’ll stop by the house as soon as I’m done. Then take the phone, go to the bathroom, and call me back.”
I did what she told me to do. I hung up the phone. I repeated her words to the rest of the room—and to Agent Starmans, who was standing right outside.
“What did she say?” Lia asked, her eyes locked on to my face, ready to call me out the second a lie passed my lips.
“She said, ‘I’m in the middle of something, and I’ll stop by the house as soon as I’m done.’”
Technically, Agent Locke had said those exact words. I wasn’t lying—and I’d just have to take the chance that Lia wouldn’t pick up any cues that I was withholding a chunk of the truth.
“Are you okay?” Dean asked.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, hoping they’d read that as me not wanting to admit that I wasn’t okay. I walked out of the room without ever looking Michael in the eye.
The second I closed the bathroom door behind me, I locked it. I turned on the sink faucet, and then I called Agent Locke back.
“I’m alone,” I said softly, letting the sound of running water mask my words for everyone but her.
“Okay,” Locke said. “Now, take a deep breath. Stay calm. And tell me what’s wrong.”
I told her. She cursed softly under her breath.
“Did you call Briggs?” she asked.
“I tried,” I said. “He’s not picking up his phone.”
“Cassie, I need to tell you something, and I want you to promise me that you’re going to keep it together. Briggs is in a meeting with Director Sterling. We have reason to believe that there might be a leak in our unit. Until we get firm evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that your protection detail has been compromised. I need you to get out: quietly, quickly, and without drawing anyone’s attention.”
I thought about Agent Starmans, out in the hallway, and about the other agents downstairs. I’d been so caught up in the case I hadn’t paid attention to them.
To any of them.
“I’ll call Starmans and the others,” Locke said. “I should be able to buy you a few minutes unguarded.”
“I have to get out of here,” I said. The idea that the UNSUB might be one of the people who was supposed to protect me—
“You have to calm down,” Locke said, her voice firm. “You live in a house full of very perceptive people. If you panic, they’ll know it.”
Michael. She was talking about Michael.
“He doesn’t have anything to do with this,” I said.
“I never said he did,” Locke replied, “but I’ve known Michael for longer than you have, Cassie, and he’s got a history of doing stupid things for girls. The last thing we need right now is someone playing hero.”
I thought of the way that Michael had slammed Dean into the wall when Dean had called the killer’s obsession with me a game. I thought of Michael in the pool, telling me about a time when he’d lost it.
“I have to go,” I said. The farther away I was from Michael, the safer he’d be. If I left, the UNSUB would follow. We could flush this psychopath out. “I’ll call you once I’m clear.”
“Cassie, if you hang up this phone and do something stupid,” Locke said, channeling Nonna and my mother and Agent Briggs all at once, “I will spend the next five years of your life making sure you deeply, deeply regret it. I want you to find Dean. If anyone in that house knows how to spot a killer, it’s him, and I trust him to keep you safe. He knows the combination to the safe in Briggs’s study. Tell him I said to use it.”
It took me a moment to realize that the safe in question must be a gun safe.
“Get to Dean and get out of the house, Cassie. Don’t let anyone else see you leave. I’ll send the coordinates of our DC safe house. Briggs and I will meet you there.”
I nodded, knowing that she couldn’t see me, but unable to form intelligible words.