Bad Blood: (The Naturals #4) (Naturals, The)

“There’s a field office in Denver,” Briggs said. “And I hear Michael has acquired a large house not far from your grandmother’s. Dean and Sloane are in. Celine Delacroix has thrown her hat in the ring. Lia’s holding out for a raise.”

“We don’t get paid,” I commented.

Director Briggs shrugged. “You do now. We’ve got a task force running down the remaining Masters emeriti. The director of national security would prefer to keep any teenagers in our employ away from it, given the attention the case is likely to attract. But you’re no longer minors, and there are other cases….”

“What about Agent Sterling?” I asked.

Briggs smiled ruefully. “I proposed. She keeps turning me down—something about the two of us having been down that road before.”

Judd smiled slightly. “Your grandmother,” he said. “She’s single?”

Lia arched an eyebrow at me. “I didn’t cry when you were gone,” she informed me. “I didn’t break things. I didn’t feel like someone had put me in a hole.”

For the first time since I’d known her, Lia’s voice caught on a lie.

leaned back into Briggs. And his arm wrapped around her.

We’re the same, I thought, watching Sterling let go. Now more than ever. Laurel was Agent Sterling’s, and she was mine—just like what had happened in the Masters’ tomb. What we’d done. What we had to live with now.

“I love you.” Dean lifted the words from my mind. “Today, tomorrow, covered in blood, haunted and waking up in the middle of the night screaming—I love you, Cassie, and I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

I knew, just by the way he was standing, the way his eyes drank me in, like a man dying of thirst in a desert, unsure whether he was beholding a mirage—you didn’t care what you had to do, who you had to hurt, what you had to threaten.

All you care about is me.

Michael had a physical grip on Dean. Every muscle in my boyfriend’s body was tensed.

Agent Sterling stared at her father, and for an instant, I could see the little girl she’d been. You adored him once. You respected him. You joined the FBI for him.

She pulled the trigger.