Killer Instinct

“…to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.”

Brief Synopsis:

The Naturals were able to solve their first active murder, but the FBI isn’t about to let that slide. They don’t seem super grateful for their help when, six weeks after they uncovered the truth about Agent Locke, the director sends his uptight daughter in Locke’s stead to train the Naturals. This training seems, to them, more like a way to watch them and keep them so strictly in line it’s not any sort of fun or enjoyment anymore. Cassie’s pretty surprised when they find out that Dean knows Agent Sterling quite well, as she and the one leading the Naturals program, Agent Briggs, were the ones that worked on and solved his father’s case all those years ago. Another shock comes when they find out that Sterling and Briggs were once married, but are no longer.

Another reason that Sterling was sent to them was that there’s an active case that she and Briggs have both been assigned to. They’re not about to tell the Naturals anything about it, but thank god for reporters and the internet, because they figure it out for themselves. What they weren’t expecting was for Dean to kind of go off of the deep end when he realizes that whoever committed this murder and very publicly staged it at a local college’s professors’ lawn is mimicking his own father’s murders. Cassie instantly voices her suspicion that not only would someone begin recreating her mother’s death over and over, six weeks later, it’s happening to another Natural?

Lia’s quick to call her selfish and say some pretty crappy things, of course, but she’s getting uncomfortable with Cassie altogether, it seems. Michael had told her those six weeks ago that he was patient and would wait for her to choose which one of them, out of him and Dean, Cassie wants. It seems like she hasn’t made a decision yet, and Lia keeps dropping hints (and outright telling Cassie) that she and Michael have begun to hook up yet again. I’m just not sure if I believe it though, and I’ve got to say, at this point in the story I haven’t found much to like about Lia. From Sloane recreating the murder scene in their cool basement to Cassie asking questions, Agent Sterling gets fed up and tells them to knock it off, pretty much threatening to have the whole Naturals program disbanded.

Lia’s not ready to believe the threat, though, and somehow she convinces both Cassie and Michael to sneak out with her to a frat party at the aforementioned university. She figures that a couple of scantily-dressed and pretending to be drunk teenagers are going to suss out more information from these college students than the FBI. And lo and behold, it doesn’t take very long for a pompous philosophy major to invite Cassie to a classroom to view a lecture. This lecture is important, as the main suspect in the case thus far is a professor at the school that teaches a class about serial killers. More than likely, he teaches about Dean’s dad, and they want answers from the lecture.

Michael and a girl he randomly chose follow Cassie to the classroom and they all watch the lecture that the professor had created. It covered a lot of the big ones: Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy… and then comes up the topic of Dean’s father. The guy, Geoff, rattles off statistics and information in a very unfeeling way that doesn’t sit right with Cassie. The girl, Bryce, does talk to them about the murder victim and seems like she cares a bit more. However, Cassie and Michael have to leave pretty abruptly when they get a text from Lia saying that she left the party with not one, but two guys, and they happened to be hanging out on a roof on the other side of campus.

When they find Lia and these boys, they find a lot. The one is pompous and posturing, the one is a lot demurer. The unsure one, Clark, gets pretty pissed off when insinuations are made about the victim and the professor being a lot more than a studious pairing. They leave thinking that they’ve accomplished something pretty awesome. The next day, Dean is approached and told that his father might have some answers about the case but won’t tell anyone but Dean. Dean agrees to go and visit his father, but asks that Cassie at least gets to come along for the ride for moral support. Everyone at the jail is kind of acting like entitled assholes, and Cassie and Agent Sterling get taken into the interrogation room, just the two-way mirror side, to watch Dean chat with his dad.

It doesn’t go well, and Cassie’s so uncomfortable having to sit and witness all of this. It ends with what could possibly be some decent information about the professor and a cabin he retreats to, but without Lia or Michael with them, it’s honestly kind of hard for them to know. Since Cassie and Agent Sterling had retreated back to the vehicle first, they talk and Sterling tells Cassie that she’s well-aware that Cassie had snuck out the night before, and asks for answers. Cassie doesn’t tell her much, but she does tell her about the potential indecent relationship they learned about. Cassie also finds out something pretty shocking: Agent Sterling was one of the women that was taken by Dean’s father, but somehow she was able to get away. When Dean returns to the vehicle, he finds out that the others snuck out for him, and he’s pissed. He’s not the only one: Cassie gets a pretty proper telling-off from Agent Briggs as well.

Back home, things fall apart pretty quickly. Not only is Dean and Briggs mad at her, but Lia’s pissed that she got them caught and Sloane’s feeling are hurt because she wasn’t included in anything. Slowly trying to fix the damage that one night caused, Cassie talks to both Sloane and Michael. While talking to Michael, she realizes that Dean profiled Michael, but not in a nice way, and it created a lot of the animosity that is so apparent between the two males. Before they’re able to finish chit-chatting, Agent Sterling gets back from the lead about the professor’s cabin, and before anyone can even tell them, Cassie can tell that they found the professor, but they didn’t find alive.

The Naturals are tasked with online profiling. The director of the FBI wants them to go through each student of the professor’s social media accounts and see if there’s any way that they could be connected, or possibly be the one following in Dean’s father’s footsteps. A video’s found that shows the students taking a test on the morning that the victim was murdered, literally giving anyone that they were beginning to suspect an airtight alibi against it being any of them. After this idea is thwarted, Lia and Cassie end up on the roof together, sharing a pint of ice cream to drown some of their sorrows. Both Agent and Director Sterling show up and don’t know the girls are in the house, so they listen in on the convo. It’s apparent that the director is annoyed that his daughter up and left the FBI all those years ago, and he also says he doesn’t trust Dean and think he’ll be like his dad.

They also figure out that one of the reasons that Agent Sterling left is that her recklessness got someone else murdered: Judd’s daughter (the man that lives with and takes care of the Naturals). The Sterlings are there because they want something else from Dean. They want him to go through the visit/call logs for his father and see if anyone really stands out to him. One person does, and he takes off to go and see this person without anyone knowing. Cassie’s still on the roof, though, and she follows him and convinces him to at least wait until the next morning so he can have some help. Michael and Cassie are tasked with going with him to his home town.

The woman that he goes to see if a middle-aged woman that is seemingly in love with Dean’s father. She believes that he “did what he had to” and it was all for a reason, whatever the hell that reason could possibly be, and while they’re talking to her, her young son gets hostile with them, grabs Cassie, and almost gets pretty badly hurt from Dean. He leaves after that, and though they don’t know it at the time, he reports Dean to the police. This alerts the FBI that he took off to talk to this potential suspect without anyone knowing, and Sterling is waiting for them when they get back. While she’s busy telling them off, something happens: there’s another body, and it’s the woman they just visited.

Oh yeah, Dean also detoured to his childhood home where his dad tortured women and told Cassie about his mom. The one that abandoned them and started his dad’s crazy spree. Anyway, they can’t figure out what connects the first death, Emerson the college girl, with this middle-aged woman. Dean has an idea and calls Briggs, and when they realize a playing card was left behind, Dean tells them that he doesn’t think they’re dealing with someone that wants to copycat his dad. He thinks that his father has a partner. However, this isn’t exactly the case. They discover that his father has a protégé. Though they had previously told Lia that she couldn’t watch the tapes of when they interview Dean’s dad, they bring all of them to the Naturals the following day.

While watching the tapes, they make a pretty startling discovery: Dean’s dad claims that when he had Agent Sterling held captive, Dean asked if he could take over. He was the one that cut Agent Sterling, and was even the one that branded her. Agent Sterling urges them to keep watching, and right after they watch her visit Dean’s father and tell him the entire truth: that Dean literally saved Sterling’s life at such a young age and only did the things that he did to her to help her escape him. He’s obviously livid, and when Dean tries to visit again to get more answers, he refuses to see him but kind of hints that it is likely that another murder is coming soon. He also said next time, to ‘bring the girl’.

It's not hard for them figure out that he means Cassie, so after some back and forth, they agree that all of them are going to go but most of them (Michael, Lia and Sloane) are going to be behind the two-way mirror while Cassie and Dean are in the interrogation room with Agent Briggs. They devise a set of misleading, negating questions to trip Dean’s father up about his protégé, thinking that it will get them answers. It definitely does, but it doesn’t make any sense. According to Lia, he never lied. This can’t be true, because he claimed his protégé was but wasn’t a college student, was but wasn’t over the age of twenty-one, and so on and so forth. Just when they’re wrapping up with the interview, he hits Cassie with a message, saying she’ll never find her mother’s murderer.

Refusing to let him see how much that one comment got under her skin, they leave him alone, but not before he tells them that Agent Briggs will get a report on the next murder any time now. While chatting, they figure it out: the only way that he was telling the truth with all of those answers was if he didn’t have one protégé, but two, possibly even more. Right after that, they find out a couple of different things: the pushover college student they met, Clark, is dead. Not only that, but his DNA was a match to the DNA found at the middle-aged woman’s murder site. So, Clark was one of the protégé’s, but apparently one of the others thought he was a flight risk, and got rid of him.

Going through the information in front of them, it’s Cassie that makes another startling connection: if there is more than one killer, then that means that just because the middle-aged woman’s son had an alibi at the time of her death, that doesn’t mean that the son, Christopher, isn’t another one of the protégés. Knowing this to be true, they begin the search for him, and it’s really grueling for them to sit there and wait to see if he’s found, or if another victim is found. Dean joins her on the steps, and she asks him what he feels for her. He tells her that he feels ‘something’ but he’s not sure if it’s enough. I’m gonna tell you, I wasn’t sure who I liked more, but at this point I’m rooting for Michael. He’s been more straightforward and to the point about his emotions all along.

They apprehend Christopher and there’s enough evidence in his vehicle to arrest him. Right after, Michael is really sweet and lays it all out on the line, telling Cassie that he’s RIGHT THERE and he wants her. They’re interrupted by Lia, OF COURSE, who I still just really don’t like, and their little bubble is popped for the time being. Something about the case is bugging Cassie, and she’s sure that it isn’t over yet. She wakes up in a panic and goes to talk to Agent Sterling, finally proposing the question of ‘what if there was more than just the two proteges and someone is still out there?’ Pretty much as soon as this is put out in the world, Sterling gets a call from the director, her father, telling her that Christopher was found hung in his cell, a presumed suicide from being caught.

Agent Sterling gets up instantly and goes to leave, with Cassie trailing her. They don’t get far, though: the third protégé is at the house, and he takes them both. It’s the jackass guard that was there during the interrogations that wasn’t nice to either of them, which I really wish I would’ve seen coming. Did I tell you guys that an ankle tracker had been put on Cassie previously? Because it did, and she figured it would be used to track them, but Agent Sterling said that she had never really activated it, so they were pretty much out in a cabin in the middle of the woods, tied up and on their own, with this wack-a-doo killer that is hell-bent on causing them pain.

He comes in and tells them that he’s going to hunt them, and give them a two-minute headstart. He starts with Cassie, sending her out into the woods. She thinks that backtracking is her best bet, but two minutes is really no time at all, and pretty soon he’s on her. She climbs a tree, he finds her, and she throws a big ass rock at his head before falling out of the tree directly onto him. The two of them wrestle, but he overcomes her… just in time to be shot by Briggs, who turned on her tracker remotely and found her and Agent Sterling just in time. Who else is there, but Dean, who comes up to her and says ‘ blah blah, I’m ready now’ and kisses her. I guess for now she chooses him, and Michael’s really upset about it, but there’s two more books so I’m still #teammichael.

The books ends up with Agent Sterling pulling some strings behind her director father’s back and having the Naturals program dialed up a notch. Not only will the Naturals work behind-the-scenes on active cases now, but they’re under the direction of Judd, NOT Sterling’s jerk dad. As Cassie says, this is a whole new world.

My Rating:

The world definitely just keeps growing for me, but I’m going to stay at 8/10 for now.

Devastation Rating:

Okay, I actually think it was pretty dang low for this book. I’m gonna say 4/10.

Favorite Quote(s):

“It’s not the bad memories that tear a person apart like that, it’s the good ones.”

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Until next time <3