Cassie is a profiler, meaning that she can read people and know everything about them, to their age, their preferences, their history, and whether they have families. This skill attracts the attention of the FBI’s program for Naturals, people with abilities like Cassie’s. The Naturals program aims to use these special skills to crack cold murder cases. The FBI offers to give her a spot in the program, meaning that she has to move to their safehouse in Washington DC. This also means that she has to leave her home and her aunts and uncles. She is inspired to go because her mother was murdered in a dressing room before a theatrical performance. Young Cassie walked into the room to find her mother, only to realize after turning on the lights that the room was coated in blood and her mother’s body dragged away. The case remained unsolved, and Cassie thought that if she joined the Naturals program, she might be able to work on and solve her mother’s murder case. The Naturals program turns out to consist of four other teens with special skills. Michael can read people’s emotions, even in the dark when he can’t see their faces. Lia can detect when people are lying and is an excellent and undetectable liar herself. Sloane is amazing with any numbers, probabilities, and predictions, and is essentially a walking dictionary. Dean is another profiler like Cassie. He was the first Natural to be part of the program. His father was a serial killer, and the FBI rescued him. He helped solve other active murder cases before the government restricted the program’s ability because they thought it was too risky to involve teens with current criminals. There are three other people who become part of their lives. Judd is the house caretaker and cooks, cleans, and makes sure that the teens are attended to. Agent Briggs is the one who founded the program after rescuing Dean from his father and Agent Locke is a woman who trains the teens and works on active murder cases. When Cassie arrives, Agents Locke and Briggs are working on a serial killer case and won’t let the teens help. Cassie and the others become curious about the case, and Sloane steals a case file from Agent Briggs’s briefcase. They begin to investigate, but suddenly the case becomes a big deal in their lives. Cassie is sent a present from the person behind the multiple killings, which contains a lock of blonde hair from the latest victim. Lia finds a case of makeup on her bed, which also turns out to be from the killer. The case contains a tube of lipstick that was the same shade that Cassie’s mother wore. Sloane gets a letter from the killer containing a photograph of a hostage that the killer has taken, Genevieve, a senator’s daughter. All of the people that the murderer has killed so far have some things in common. They are all blond psychics and look like Cassie’s mother. The killer is clearly targeting Cassie. Cassie receives a call from Agent Locke that there has been a leak in security and that she and Dean should go to a different safehouse. Locke tells Cassie that she will meet them there and that Dean should get a gun from Agent Briggs’s office just in case. Michael secretly follows them and they realize that he is there when they arrive. Agent Locke shoots Dean and Michael, then brings out Genevieve. It turns out that she was the killer and set up the scene to frame Dean. She tricked him into bringing a gun so that the police would think that it was his fault. She tried to get Cassie to kill Genevieve. Cassie refused, and Agent Locke told Cassie her background story. Locke is Cassie’s mother’s sister. Growing up, they had an abusive father. When Cassie’s mother got pregnant with Cassie, she left the house in order to protect her baby. Locke begged to leave with her and escape their abusive father, but Cassie’s mother refused. Locke became extremely angry and wanted to hurt and kill Cassie’s mother. However, Cassie’s mother was murdered in the dressing room before Locke could get to her. Locke had been killing women who looked like Cassie’s mother because she was angry that she could not kill Cassie’s mother herself. Then she found Cassie and wanted to kill her or for Cassie to become a murderer like herself. Michael was semi-conscious during this whole ordeal, so he picked up Dean’s gun and shot Locke so that she could not hurt Cassie. Cassie never discovered who her mother’s real murder was.
I liked this book because it was very suspenseful and I couldn’t put it down. I also tried to figure out who the killer was, thinking that it was Judd, but ended up being completely wrong. It was a really interesting and engaging book.