All In (The Naturals, #3)(11)

She was quiet for a few seconds, and then she looked down at her feet. “I wanted him to like me,” she admitted, like that was some terrible thing.

“Aaron?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Sloane walked over to a shelf full of blown-glass objects and began sorting them, largest to smallest, and for objects of similar size, by color. Red. Orange. Yellow. She moved with the efficiency of a speed-chess player. Green. Blue.

“Sloane?” I said.

“He’s my brother,” she blurted out. Then, on the off chance that I might not have understood her meaning, she forced herself to stop sorting, turned, and elaborated. “Half brother. Male sibling. We have a coefficient of relatedness of point-two-five.”

“Aaron Shaw is your half brother?” I tried to make that compute. What were the chances? No wonder Sloane had behaved so strangely around him. As for Aaron, he’ d noticed Sloane. He’d smiled at her, talked to her, but she could have been anyone. She could have been a stranger on the street.

“Aaron Elliott Shaw,” Sloane said. “He’s 1,433 days older than I am.” Sloane looked back at the glass objects, perfectly arrayed in front of the mirror. “In my entire life, I’ve seen him exactly eleven times.” She swallowed. “This is only the second time he’s seen me.”

“He doesn’t know?” I asked.

Sloane shook her head. “No. He doesn’t.”

Sloane’s last name isn’t Shaw.

“Forty-one percent of children born in America are illegitimate.” Sloane lightly traced her index finger along the edge of the shelf. “But only a minority of those are born as a result of adultery.”

Sloane’s mother wasn’t her father’s wife. Her father owns this casino. Her half brother doesn’t even know she’s alive.

“We don’t have to stay here,” I told her. “We can go back to the other hotel. Michael would understand.”

“No!” Sloane said, her eyes wide. “You can’t tell Michael, Cassie. You can’t tell anyone.”

I’d never known Sloane to keep a secret. She didn’t have much of a brain-to-mouth filter, and what little she had disappeared under the influence of even the smallest bit of caffeine. The fact that she wanted to keep this between us made me wonder whether those were her words or someone else’s.

You can’t tell anyone.

“Cassie—”

“I won’t,” I told Sloane. “I promise.”

Looking at her, I couldn’t keep from wondering how many times Sloane had been told, growing up, that she was a secret. I wondered how many times she’d watched Aaron or his father from afar.

“There’s a high probability that you’re profiling me,” Sloane stated.

“Occupational hazard,” I told her. “And speaking of occupational hazards, the numbers on the victims’ wrists—any thoughts?”

Sloane’s brain worked in ways that were incomprehensible to most people. I wanted to remind her that here, with us, that was a good thing.

Sloane took the bait. “The first two victims were 3213 and 4558.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, then plowed on. “One odd number, one even. Four digits. Neither are prime. 4558 has eight divisors: 1, 2, 43, 53, 86, 106, 2279, and, of course, 4558.”

“Of course,” I said.

“In contrast, 3213 has sixteen divisors,” Sloane continued.

Before she could tell me all sixteen of them, I interjected, “And the third victim?”

“Right,” she said, turning to pace the room as she spoke. “The number on the third victim’s wrist was 9144.” Her blue eyes got a faraway look in them that told me not to expect decipherable English any time soon.

The numbers matter to you, I thought, turning my mind to the killer. The numbers are the most important thing.

Very few aspects of this UNSUB’s MO had remained constant. Victimology was a wash. You’ve killed one woman and two men. The first two were in their twenties. The third was almost eighty. Our killer had killed in a different location each time, using a different methodology.

The numbers were the only constant.

“Could they be dates?” I asked Sloane.

Sloane paused in her pacing. “4558. April fifth, 1958. It was a Saturday.” I could see her searching through her encyclopedic store of knowledge for details about that date. “On April fifth, 1951, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death as Soviet spies. In 1955 on that date, Churchill resigned as England’s prime minister, but in 1958…” Sloane shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Knock, knock.” Lia announced her presence the way she always did, without giving anyone time to object before she sauntered into the room. “I come bearing news.”

Lia slipped personas on and off as easily as most people switched clothes. Since we’d arrived, she’d changed into a red dress. With her hair pulled back into a complicated swirl, she looked sophisticated and a little bit dangerous.

That did not bode well.

“The news,” Lia continued with a slow smile, “involves some fascinating revelations about how our very own Cassandra Hobbes spent her Christmas vacation.”

Lia knew. About my mother. About the body. I felt like there was a vise around my chest, tightening centimeter by centimeter until I couldn’t manage more than shallow breaths.