Page 2 of Twelve
“Care to try again?” she asked me.
The best part of my week really had been the development in Texas.But the worst…
“I’m having the dreams again.” I should have hated Lia for making me admit that, but what was the point? Like me, Dean was a profiler. Michael was a Natural at reading emotions. Even if I hadn’t said anything, they would have clued into the fact that something was up.
Eventually.
“You can call me, you know,” Dean said on the other end of the phone line. “Any time.”
Ididknow that, but I wasn’t a teenager anymore. It had been five years since I’d been captured by the Masters. Five years since my mother’s death. As much as I knew about the ins and outs of the human mind, I couldn’t help wanting my own to work differently.
I could deal with being wounded. I didn’t like feeling scarred.
“Most Improbable is next!” Sloane interjected brightly. People were harder for her to understand than numbers, but I was fairly certain she knew that I needed the distraction.
“The most improbable part of my week…” I allowed myself to be distracted and felt a grin nudging the edges of my lips upward. “Laurel made a friend.”
My sister was nine years old. She’d spent the first four years of her life being raised by a cult of serial killers. To say that she wasdifferentwould have been an understatement. Friendship didn’t come easily to her. Neither did “not creeping people out.”
“Her new friend,” I added, “has a pony.”
The idea of my morbid, introspective, too-quiet little sister with a perky, pony-riding best friend was almost unfathomable—and such a relief that I could physically feel the muscles in my stomach relaxing when I pictured the way Laurel hadalmostsmiled after delivering the news in an utter deadpan.
“Did you know there’s an ongoing debate about what constitutes a pony?” Sloane couldn’t help herself, in part because of the caffeine and in part because she was Sloane. “Depending on who you believe, the maximum qualifying height varies between one-hundred-and-forty-two centimeters and one-hundred-and-fifty centimeters, which is also the height of one-point-four-four very tall wallabies.”
There was a single beat of silence.
“The guys fall down on coffee-interception duty again?” Lia asked me.
I nodded.
“As much as I love the criticism strongly implied in that question,” Michael cut in, “I’ll completely ignore it and go next. Best part of my week: I annoyed six out of seven of our instructors. Worst part of my week: the seventh is proving a deceptively hard nut to crack. Most improbable…” He paused. “Lia doesn’t hate me this week.”
The termon-again, off-againhad been invented for a reason. Michael and Lia were that reason.
“Best part of my week: hating Michael.” Lia shot a sly smile at the phone. “Given that all of our communications are currently of the long-distance variety, expressing my distaste for his person was far more emotionally gratifying than I’d expected.”
I stifled a snort.
“Worst,” Lia proceeded, “the Naturals program has been assigned a new FBI liaison. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s breaking in a new special agent.”
That was part of the reason that Michael, Dean, and Sloane had gone to Quantico. Once we’d hit eighteen, the five of us had been classified as “civilian consultants.” But to work Bureau cases, we needed a Bureau team.
This was the first year any of us were old enough to attend the Academy.
“Most improbably, however,” Lia continued, rounding out her trio, “our new liaison is Celine.”
Celine Delacroix was Michael’s half sister, just enough older that she’d already made it through new agent training. That made her Special Agent Delacroix now.
“Speaking of Celine…” Lia trailed off meaningfully. “Sloane, perhaps you’d like to go next?”
Sloane had never been one for teenage crushes, but she and Celine sharedsomething.And whatever it was—lately, it had gotten more intense.
Celine had just gotten back from Quantico.
“I can’t share the best part of my week or the most improbable part,” Sloane said. “Due to the fact that they are both classified.”
“Classified by the Bureau, or classified by Celine?” I asked.
