I felt the breath whoosh out of my lungs. He couldn’t have known the effect those words would have on me. I turned back to the practice test, allowing my hair to fall into my face, but it was too late. Michael had already seen the split second of horror—loathing—fear—disgust on my face.
“Cassie—”
“I’m fine.”
Locke had been a sadist. Part of the pleasure she’d gotten out of killing had been imagining what her victims were going through. I had no desire to hurt anyone. Ever. But being a Natural profiler meant that I instinctively knew other people’s weaknesses. Knowing what people wanted and knowing what they feared were two sides of the same coin.
Michael wasn’t really calling me sadistic. I knew that, and he knew that I’d never intentionally hurt anyone. But sometimes, knowing that you could do something was almost as bad as having actually done it.
“Hey.” Michael tilted his head upside down to get a good look at my face. “I was kidding. No Sad Cassie face, okay?”
“This isn’t my sad face,” I told him. There was a point in time when he would have pushed the hair out of my face and let his hand linger on my jaw. Not anymore.
The unspoken rules said it had to be my choice. I could feel him, watching me, waiting for me to say something. He stayed there, staring at me upside down, his face just a few inches away from mine.
His mouth just a few inches away from mine.
“I know a Sad Cassie face when I see one,” he said. “Even upside down.”
I brushed my hair over my shoulders and leaned back. Trying to hide what I was feeling from Michael was impossible. I shouldn’t have even tried.
“You and Lia back on speaking terms?” he asked me.
I was grateful for the subject change. “Lia and I are…whatever Lia and I normally are. I don’t think she’s plotting my immediate demise.”
Michael nodded sagely. “So she’s not going to go for your throat the moment she figures out you broke the holy commandment of Thou shalt give Dean his space?”
I’d thought my visit to Dean last night had gone unnoticed. Apparently, I’d thought wrong.
“I wanted to see how he was doing.” I felt like I had to explain, even though Michael hadn’t asked for an explanation. “I didn’t want him to be alone.”
Reading emotions made Michael an expert at concealing them, so when I saw a flicker of something in his eyes, I knew that he’d chosen not to hide it from me. He liked that I was the kind of person who cared about the people in this house. He just wished that the person I’d spent last night caring about wasn’t Dean.
“And how goes Sir Broods-A-Lot’s familial angst?” Michael did a good imitation of someone who didn’t really care about the answer to that question. He might have even been able to fool another emotion reader—but my ability wasn’t just about posture or facial expressions or what a person was feeling at any given moment.
Behavior. Personality. Environment.
Michael was snarking to hide the fact that he did care about the answer to that question.
“If you want to know how Dean’s holding up, you can just ask.”
Michael shrugged noncommittally. He wasn’t going to admit that Lia, Sloane, and I weren’t the only ones worried about Dean. A noncommittal shrug was as close to an expression of concern as I was going to get.
“He’s not okay,” I said. “He won’t be okay until Briggs and Sterling close this case. If they’d just tell him what’s going on, it might help, but that’s not going to happen. Sterling won’t let it.”
Michael shot me a sideways glance. “You really don’t like Agent Sterling.”
I didn’t think that statement merited a reply.
“Cassie, you don’t dislike anyone. The only time I’ve ever seen you get persnickety with someone was when Briggs assigned agents to dog your every move. But you disliked Agent Sterling from the moment she showed up.”
I had no intention of replying to that statement, either, but Michael didn’t need verbal replies. He was perfectly capable of carrying on conversations completely on his own, reading my responses in my body language and the tiniest hints of expressions on my face.
“She doesn’t like this program,” I said, just to get him to stop reading me so intently. “She doesn’t like us. And she really doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t dislike you as much as you think she does.” Michael’s voice was quiet. I found myself leaning toward him, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more. “Agent Sterling isn’t fond of me, because I’m not fond of rules. She’s afraid to spend more than a few seconds looking at Dean, but she’s not scared of him. She actually likes Lia, even though Lia’s not any fonder of rules than I am. And Sloane reminds her of someone.”
The difference between Michael’s gift and mine was as obvious as it had been playing poker. He saw so much that Sterling was trying to hide. But why she was hiding it—that was a question for me.
“How’s the studying coming along?”
I glanced up at Judd, who stood in the doorway. He was a Marine, not a den mother. The question sounded completely foreign coming out of his mouth.
“Haven’t started,” Michael replied flippantly at the exact same time that I said, “Almost done.”
Judd arched an eyebrow at Michael, but didn’t push the issue. “You mind giving us a moment?” he asked instead.
Michael cocked his head slightly to one side, taking in the expression on Judd’s face. “Do I have a choice?”
Judd almost smiled. “That would be a no.”
As Michael made his way out of the room, Judd crossed it and lowered himself onto the sofa next to me. He watched Michael go. Something about the way he tracked Michael’s progress made me think he was forcing himself to take in the way Michael favored his injured leg.
“You know why this program is restricted to cold cases?” Judd asked me once Michael was gone.
“Because Dean was twelve when this program was started?” I suggested. “And because Director Sterling wants to minimize the chances of anyone finding out the program exists?” Those were the easy answers. Judd’s silence pushed me into giving the hard one. “Because on active cases,” I said softly, “people get hurt.”