“If you were being reasonable, I would listen. But keeping Dean Redding away from this case isn’t reasonable.” The director gave her a moment to reply to that, and when she didn’t, he continued. “You can stand there and tell me how wrong this program is, but inside, you want to shut down this killer just as badly as I do. It’s everything you can do not to use the Naturals to do it, and sooner or later, you’ll forget all about your principles. You’ll be the one telling me we need to cross that line.”

I expected Sterling to tell him he was wrong. She didn’t. “Of course I want to use them!” she shot back. “But this isn’t about me. Or you. Or the Bureau. This is about the five teenagers who live in that house. Five actual people whose only protection is rules that you put in place and then break, again and again. You’re the one who let Cassie Hobbes work on the Locke case. You’re the one who insisted we bring Dean to talk to Redding. You’re making rules and breaking them, sending mixed messages—”

“That’s not what this is about,” the director broke in. Unlike his daughter’s voice, his remained completely impassive. “You’re not upset about whatever messages you think I’m sending. Five years later, you’re still upset that I sided with your husband on this program instead of with you.”

“Ex-husband.”

“You left him. You left the FBI.”

“Go ahead and say it, Dad. I left you.”

“Do you know what kind of position that put me in, Veronica? How am I supposed to command the loyalty of the entire Bureau when my own daughter couldn’t be bothered to stick around? After the incident with the Hawkins girl on the Nightshade case, morale was low. We needed to present a united front.”

Agent Sterling turned her back on her father, and when she turned back around, the words shot out of her like bullets from a gun. “Her name was Scarlett, and it wasn’t an incident. A psychopath snuck into our labs and murdered one of our people. Tanner and I both had something to prove—” She cut herself off, breathing in raggedly. “I left the Bureau because I didn’t belong there.”

“But you came back,” the director said. “Not for me. You came back for the boy. What Redding did to you, what happened to Scarlett on the Nightshade case—it’s all tied up in your mind. You couldn’t save her, so you’ve decided to save him.”

Sterling took a step toward her father. “Someone has to. He’s seventeen years old.”

“And he was helping dear old daddy out when he was twelve!”

It was all I could do not to fly off the roof and go at the director myself. Beside me, all the tension melted out of Lia’s body. She looked relaxed. Friendly, even. For Lia, that meant she was almost certainly out for blood.

Some people will always look at Dean and see his father, I thought dully. The director didn’t just hold Dean responsible for the sins of his father—he considered Dean an accomplice.

“I am done talking about this with you, Veronica.” The director’s temper frayed. “We need to know if any of Redding’s visitors is a likely suspect on this case. Do I need to tell you who some of Colonial University’s alumni are? The pressure to put this one to bed is coming from on high, Agent.” His voice softened slightly. “I know you don’t want to see the bodies stacking up.”

“Of course I want to catch this guy before anyone else gets hurt.” Agent Sterling had cautioned me against making cases personal, but this one had snuck through the chinks in her armor. “That’s why I went to see Redding myself.”

The director froze. “I intercepted you before you executed that ill-thought-out plan.”

Agent Sterling smiled at him, baring her teeth. “Did you?”

“Veronica—”

“Right now, I think I prefer Agent. You wanted someone to get underneath Daniel Redding’s skin. You don’t need Dean for that. I’m the one who got away, Director. You know what that means to a man like Redding.”

“I know that I don’t want you anywhere near him.” For the first time, the director actually sounded like a father.

“Let me talk to Dean.” Sterling wasn’t above pressing her advantage, however slight it might have been. “Let me be the one who shows Dean the visitor logs. If he knows anything that might prove relevant, he’ll tell me. Dean trusts me.”

After a good ten or fifteen seconds of silence, the director nodded curtly. “Fine. But if you and Briggs can’t get me results, I’ll bring in someone who can.”

Lia and I did not say a word until both Agent Sterling and the director were out of sight.

“And I thought my family had issues.” Lia got up and stretched, arching her back and then twisting from one side to the other. “She was telling the truth when she said that she had our best interests at heart. Not the whole truth, but it was true. Heartwarming, isn’t it?”

I was too busy sorting through the implications of what we’d heard to reply. After last summer, Sterling had threatened to shut down the program. The director had kept her from going over his head by pointing out exactly what I’d told Sterling: that normal wasn’t an option for any of us anymore. At least I had somewhere to go back to. Dean didn’t. Lia didn’t. Michael’s father was abusive. There was a very high likelihood that Sloane’s family were the ones who’d hammered home the idea that she said and did the wrong thing 86.5 percent of the time.

My mother was dead, my father barely involved in my life. And I was the lucky one.

“The director calls Dean the boy.” I paused to consider the significance of that. “He doesn’t want to see Dean as a person. The boy is an extension of his father. The boy is a means to an end.”

This from the man who referred to his own daughter as Agent.

She’s the one who followed in your footsteps. Of all your children, she’s the most like you. She was your legacy, and then she was gone.

“The director really does believe that Dean helped his father.” Lia let me chew on that for a few seconds before continuing. “What exactly he thinks Dean helped Redding do is up in the air, but that wasn’t conjecture I heard in his voice. For him, Dean’s culpability is fact.”

“Dean was twelve when his father was arrested!” The objection burst out of me. Realizing that I was preaching to the choir, I reined in the indignation a bit. “I know that Dean knew,” I said softly. “I know he thinks that he should have found a way to put a stop to it, that if he’d done things differently, he could have saved those women, but according to Professor Fogle’s lecture, Redding had been killing for five years before he was caught. Dean would have been seven.”

Dean had told me once that he hadn’t known about his father at first. But later…

He made me watch. Dean’s words stuck in my head, like food wedged between my teeth.

I forced my attention back to the present, to Lia. “Was Sterling—our Sterling—telling the truth when she said she’d ask Dean about the visitor logs?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Lia replied. “She was.”

“Maybe she’s starting to realize that she can’t protect Dean from this,” I said. “All she can do is run interference and make sure he’s not going through it alone.”

My words hung in the air. I’d thought all along that Sterling and Briggs weren’t doing Dean any favors by keeping him in the dark, but from his perspective, Lia, Michael, and I had done the exact same thing. When I was the one at the center of a case, I thought slowly, if I’d discovered that the others were investigating behind my back, I wouldn’t have felt protected.

I would have felt betrayed.

“Whatever you say, Cassandra Hobbes.” Lia pivoted and began making her way back to her bedroom window. She walked on the tips of her toes, like the roof was a tightrope and she was seconds away from performing a death-defying move.

“You forgot the ice cream,” I called after her.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “And you forgot the most interesting thing we learned from this little excursion.”