The Naturals Read Online Free PDF

to stare.”
    He said all of this without ever taking his eyes off the road. My gaze flitted to the speedometer, and I realized how fast we were going.
    “Do you
want
to get pulled over?” I squeaked.
    He shrugged. “You’re the profiler,” he said. “You tell me.” He eased off the accelerator ever so slightly. “That’s what profilers do, isn’t it? You look at the way a person is dressed, or the way a person talks, every little detail, and you putthat person in a box. You figure out what
kind
of individual you’re dealing with, and you convince yourself that you know
exactly
what everyone else wants.”
    Okay, so he’d had an experience—and not a good one—with a profiler in the past. I took that to mean that the difficulty I’d been having getting a read on him was no accident. He
liked
keeping me guessing.
    “You wear a different style of clothing every time I see you,” I said. “You stand differently. You talk differently. You never say anything about yourself.”
    “Maybe I like being tall, dark, and mysterious,” Michael replied, taking a turn so quickly that I had to remind myself to breathe.
    “You’re not that tall,” I gritted out. He laughed.
    “You’re annoyed with me,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “But also intrigued.”
    “Would you stop that?” I’d never realized how irritating it was to be the one under the microscope.
    “I’ll make you a deal,” Michael said. “I’ll stop trying to read your emotions if you stop trying to profile me.”
    I had so many questions—about the way he’d grown up, about his ability, about why he’d warned me to stay away—but unless I wanted him making an intense study of my emotions, I’d have to get my answers the normal way.
    “Fine,” I said. “Deal.”
    He smiled. “Excellent. Now, as a show of good faith, sinceI’ve already spent a good chunk of time getting inside your head, I’ll give you three questions to try to get inside mine.”
    The puzzle solver in me wanted to ask what kind of clothes he wore when there was no one around to see him, how many siblings he had, and which one of his parents had turned him into the kind of guy who was a little angry at the world.
    But I didn’t.
    Anyone comfortable driving this fast wasn’t going to shy away from a few little white lies. If I asked him what I wanted to know, all I would get was more mixed messages—so I asked him the only question I was fairly certain he’d answer honestly.
    “What’s with the Porsche?”
    Michael took his eyes off the road just long enough to flick his gaze over to me, and I knew that I’d surprised him.
    “The Porsche?” he repeated.
    I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’s not standard FBI issue.”
    The edges of his lips curved upward, and for once, there was no dark undercurrent to the expression. “The Porsche was a present,” he told me. “From my life before. Getting to keep it was one of the conditions I gave Briggs for joining up.”
    “Why wouldn’t he have let you keep it?” I asked, realizing belatedly that I’d just burned question number two.
    “Tax fraud,” Michael replied. “Not mine. My father’s.”
    From the tightness in his voice, I got the feeling that keeping the Porsche probably hadn’t been the only condition of Michael’s participation in the program. Whether he’d asked for the government to overlook his father’s crimes or his father had bartered away his son in exchange for immunity, I wasn’t sure.
    I didn’t ask.
    Instead, I stuck to safer ground. “What’s it like? The program?”
    “I’ve only been there for a few months,” Michael said. “Briggs sprung me to come get you. Good behavior, I guess.”
    Somehow, I doubted that.
    Michael seemed to sense that I wasn’t buying it. “And also possibly because Briggs needed someone to read your emotions and figure out whether or not you’re a secret bottle of rage who shouldn’t be granted access to confidential files.”
    “Did I pass?” I