When I didn’t reply, Agent Sterling went silent. The temperature in the car was becoming unbearable. “You’re making a bad decision here, Cassie.” I said nothing, and her eyes narrowed. “Just tell me this,” she said. “Is there anything I should know?”
I caught my bottom lip in my teeth and thought of Dean and the lengths he was going to, to get even the smallest bit of information out of his father.
“Emerson was involved with her professor,” I said finally. I owed it to Dean to share that information. “The one who was writing a book about Dean’s dad.”
Agent Sterling slipped off her jacket. Clearly, the heat was getting to her, too. “Thank you,” she said, turning in her seat to face me. “But listen and listen well: when I told you to stay away from this case, I meant it. The next time you take so much as a step out of Quantico without my permission, I’ll have you fitted for an ankle tracker.”
I barely heard the threat. I didn’t reply. I couldn’t form words. I couldn’t even think them.
When Agent Sterling had removed her jacket, she’d dislodged her shirt slightly. It gapped in the front, giving me a view of the skin underneath. There was a scar just under her collarbone.
A brand, in the shape of the letter R.
Sterling looked down. Her face absolutely expressionless, she righted her shirt. The scar was covered now, but I couldn’t stop staring.
Bind them. Brand them. Cut them. Hang them.
The entire time we’d been in the observation room, she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Daniel Redding.
“My team was investigating the case,” Sterling said calmly. “I got a little too close, and I got sloppy. Redding had me for two days before I escaped.”
“That’s how you know Dean.” I’d wondered how they’d developed a relationship based only on the fact that she’d arrested his father. But if she’d been one of Redding’s victims…
“I’m not a victim,” Sterling said, following my line of thought so closely it was eerie. “I’m a survivor, and Dean is the reason that I survived.”
“Was this the case you were talking about before?” I couldn’t seem to find my voice. It came out cracked and hushed. “When you said that getting emotionally involved was a recipe for getting someone killed, were you talking about someone Daniel Redding murdered?”
“No, Cassie, I wasn’t. And that’s the last question I’m going to answer about Daniel Redding, my past, or the brand on my chest. Are we clear on that?” Sterling’s voice was so even, so utterly matter-of-fact, that I couldn’t do anything but nod.
The door to the prison opened, and Briggs and Dean exited. They were only accompanied by one guard, the older one. I watched as the guard handed something to Agent Briggs—a file. Beside them, Dean stood perfectly, unnaturally still. His shoulders were hunched. His head was down. His arms hung listlessly by his sides.
“Don’t ask Dean about any of this.” Agent Sterling issued those words as a command, desperate and fierce. “Don’t even tell him you saw the brand.”
“I won’t. Ask him. I won’t ask him anything.” I struggled to form sentences and fell silent as Dean and Briggs walked toward the car. Dean opened the car door and climbed in. He shut the door, but didn’t look at me. I forced myself not to reach for him. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the seat in front of me.
Briggs handed the file to Agent Sterling, slapping it down into her hand. “Visitor logs,” he said. “Redding wasn’t supposed to have visitors. The warden is out of his mind. I wouldn’t even bet on the logs being complete.”
Agent Sterling flipped open the file. She ran down the list of names. “Conjugal visits?” she asked.
Briggs spat out the answer. “Several.”
“You think our UNSUB is on this list?” Sterling asked.
“That would make sense,” Briggs replied tersely. “It would make our lives easy, so, no, Ronnie, I don’t think our UNSUB is on that list, because I don’t think this is going to make sense. It’s not going to be easy. We’re just not that lucky.”
I expected Sterling to snap back at him, but instead, she reached out and touched his forearm lightly with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t let him get to you,” she said quietly. Briggs relaxed slightly under her touch. “If you let him in,” she continued, “if you let him under your skin, he wins.”
“This is stupid.” Dean shook his head, his upper lip curling in disgust. “We knew what would happen if I came here. He promised he’d talk. Well, he talked, and now we have no way of knowing how much of what he said was true and how much is just him leading us around, like dogs on ropes.”
It shouldn’t have been me behind that glass, I thought. It should have been Lia watching the interrogation. I didn’t care about the difference between active cases and cold cases. I cared about Dean.
Agent Sterling turned around in her seat. I expected to see the gentleness with which she’d just reproved Briggs, but instead, her eyes were glittering, hard as diamonds, as she addressed Dean. “Don’t,” she told him, jabbing a finger in his direction.
“Don’t what?” Dean shot back. I’d never heard him so angry.
“You really want to play this game with me?” Sterling asked him, her eyebrows nearly disappearing into her hairline. “You think I don’t know what it was like for you in there? You think I don’t know what he said, what you’re thinking? I am telling you, Dean, don’t. Don’t go there.”
As Briggs drove back past the gate and off prison grounds, the three of them settled into a tense silence. I put my hand on the seat, palm up. Dean turned toward the window, his fingers curling into fists.
I looked down at my hand, open and waiting, but couldn’t move it. I felt utterly out of place and useless. I’d accompanied them on this trip for Dean’s sake, but I didn’t need to be a profiler to know that he didn’t want me here now. With a single conversation, his father had jammed a wedge between Dean and the rest of the world, cutting him off as effectively as a blade severing a ruined limb. The unspoken closeness that had been building between Dean and me was a casualty of that blow—gone, as if it had never existed at all.
I’m in you, boy. In your blood, in your mind, in every breath you take.
In the front seat, Briggs pulled out his cell phone. Seconds after he dialed the number, he was barking out orders. “Redding gave us a location on the professor’s writing cabin. Catoctin.” Briggs paused. “No, I don’t know whose name the deed to the cabin is under. Try the professor’s parents, ex-wife, college roommates.…Try everyone and their damned dog, but find it.”