Page 21 of Bad Blood
But what if there was no assailant?The possibility took root in my mind. Sloane had told us that the debris was the result of someone sweeping their hands across the table, knocking its contents violently to the floor. We’d assumed that the UNSUB had done it—to hurt Celine, to scare her, to dominate her.
But Celine was a person who painted her own self-portrait with a knife. She threw her whole body into everything she did. She was strong-willed. She was determined.You have a temper.
“She did it herself.” I tested the theory by watching Michael’s response to my words. “That’s why you thought your father went to see Celine the day she disappeared. Something set her off.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Michael’s voice was absolutely devoid of emotion.
“Yes,” Lia countered. “You do.”
You trashed your own studio. I slipped back into Celine’s perspective.You swept the glass off the table. You broke the easel. You turned the table over. You soaked the place in kerosene. Maybe you were going to burn it. Maybe you were going to send the whole thing up in flames, but then you stopped, and you looked around, and you realized what the destruction you’d wreaked looked like.
It looked like there had been a fight. Like you’d been attacked.
I wondered if that was all it had taken. I wondered if Celine had turned her artist’s eye on the destruction, thinking of ways to make it look even more realistic.The bloody handprint on the door. The drops of blood on the carpet. I wondered how she’d figured out how to delete the security footage, if she’d picked the lock on her own studio door.
“An artistic challenge.” Dean picked up where I’d left off. “A game. To see if she could fool everyone. To see how long…”
How long it would take them to notice you were gone.
“Someone care to tell me what I’m missing here?” Agent Sterling’s voice blared from the phone, reminding me that she was still on the line.
“Michael’s a liar,” Lia said flatly. “And Celine Delacroix is a poor, pathological little rich girl who kidnappedherself.”
“Don’t talk about her that way.” Michael’s response was instantaneous and instinctual. “Whatever she did, she had a reason for it.”
“Did you pine after her when you were growing up?” Lia asked the question like the answer didn’t matter to her in the least. “Did you pursue her, the way you got all moon-eyed over Cassie when she first showed up?” Lia was aiming below the belt. That was the only way she knew how to hit. “Did you convince yourself you weren’t good enough for her,” she said, her voice low, “because a person like you could only ever begood enoughfor someone as horrible as me?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Michael told her.
“Do you love her?” Lia asked, her voice dripping with syrupy sweetness.
I could see Michael’s temper fraying. He ran his thumb over his bloodied lip and stared at Lia. “Longer and better than I’ve loved you.”
We found Celine Delacroix the next morning, sitting on the edge of a dock a two-hour drive from her house—the same dock where she and Michael had been photographed years before. Beside me, Dean watched, stone-faced, as Michael walked toward the end of the dock—toward Celine. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face when she spotted him. I couldn’t hear his greeting or the words she offered in return. But I saw the exact moment when the fighter in Celine gave way to something softer.
Something vulnerable.
“This is what happens when they’re together,” Dean said, and I knew that he wasn’t talking about Michael and Celine. “Michael knows exactly what Lia’s feeling. Lia knows every time he lies to her. They hurt each other, and they hurt themselves.”
I thought about everything that had happened: Michael’s confrontation with his father, his fight with Lia, the realization that we’d been dragged away from hunting for my mother’s captors by what amounted to an elaborate prank. We’d been on this case for less than twenty-four hours, but even that felt like too much.
One day until Michael’s birthday. Three days until April second. As I watched Michael sit down next to Celine, the countdown to the next Fibonacci date resumed in my head.
“Relax, Dean,” Lia said, coming up behind us. “I’m fine. We found the girl. We saved the day. If you think I’m going to get all emotional over Michael Townsend, clearly I’ve been doing this cold-hearted shrew thing all wrong.”
Michael didn’t tell us what Celine had said. He didn’t tell us whether she’d explained why she’d done what she’d done or what she’d hoped to gain by it. By midmorning, we were back on the plane, a whole herd of emotional elephants in tow.
Briggs didn’t say a word to Sterling about the fact that she’d known from the get-go that this case had nothing to do with the Masters.
Sterling didn’t say a word to Briggs about the way he’d jumped the moment her father had indicated how high.
Michael and Lia didn’t acknowledge the angry words that had passed between them.
I didn’t tell Dean that the night before, I’d dreamed of his father, of my mother, of blood on the walls and blood on her hands—and on mine.
Once we were in the air, Judd pulled me to the back of the plane. He settled into one seat and nodded toward another. I sat. For several seconds, he said nothing, like the two of us were sitting side by side on the front porch of the Quantico house, enjoying our morning coffee and a bit of quiet.
“Do you know why I said yes to this case?” Judd asked finally.
