Michael and Sloane cleared out as if Locke had started a wildfire just by walking into the room. I don't know about you, but I do believe that my fellow Naturals don't fancy Lacey Locke as much as I thought they did.
Dean won't look me in the eyes, once again, and I wonder if I've done something wrong, but really, he's acting as if nothing happened at all last night. As if he barely knows me. Which I guess is the truth, but it doesn't feel that way.
We go over a few ideas for my first training day, and if Dean looked unhappy before, the emotion was even stronger now that the Agent decided on a field trip.
"You're driving," Locke says as she throws Dean the keys.
He walks out of the kitchen with an expression I've come to know as brooding, and without another word we all get into Lockes SUV. Me in the backseat and her in the passenger.
"Where to?" Dean grumbles.
She gives him an address and he murmurs something inaudible, although I do catch a slight southern accent in his tone.
Again, we fall into an awkward silence.
Dean doesn't seem shy. So if anything, I'd assume he saves his voice for when he feels it's really necessary.
Profiling. Is that what I'm doing right now? I wonder if he's doing the same to me...
He's a very careful driver, and his shoulders tense when he gets cut off. And when we got to the mall —which is apparently where we were heading— he gets out, shuts his door, and holds the keys out for Locke. All without even so much as glancing at me.
Obviously since I've never had any friends, I'm used to blending in, but Dean not even bothering to look at me feels like an insult. Like a dagger in my heart. Might as well call me Julius Caesar.
"Welcome to Westside Mall," Agent Locke says, snapping me out of my internal sorrows. "I'm sure this wasn't your idea of how your first day would go, Violet, but I wanted to get a chance to see what you can do with normal people before we dive into the abnormal end of the spectrum."
Deans eyes flick sideways.
"Something you'd like to add Dean?"
Dean shoves his hands into his pockets. "Nothing. It's just been a long time since someone told me to think about normal..."
A few minutes later, we find ourselves sitting at a table in the food court.
"The woman in the purple fleece, what can you tell me about her Violet?" Locke asks.
I sit and follow her gaze to the person in question. She wears running shoes and jeans. Sporty, and threw on the jeans last minute before coming to the mall, or isn't athletic at all and wants people to think she is. I say this out loud.
"What else?"
What else? They want to figure out why you can know things so easily and they can't. They want you to pick it apart. That's what Michael told me.
Locke wants the bigger picture.
Behaviour. Personality. Environment.
I look closer at the girl in fleece.
She chose to sit near the edge of the food court, even though there were plenty of tables closer to the restaurant she'd ordered from. And rather than looking at her surroundings, she keeps her eyes glued to her food.
"She's a student. Graduate school of some kind, although I bet it's medical. Not married but has a serious boyfriend. Comes from an upper-middle class family. Emphasis on the upper. She's a runner, but not a health nut. She most likely gets up early to do things others would find painful, and if she has any siblings than they're younger or all boys."
Locke doesn't reply, and neither does Dean. To fill in the silence I murmur, "and she gets cold easily..."
"What makes you think she's a student?" Locke asks.
I meet Deans eyes and I can tell that he saw it too.
"It's 11 in the morning, and she's not at work. She doesn't look dressed for the job and it's too early for a lunch break."
Locke raises a brow. "Maybe she works from home. Or maybe she's between jobs. Maybe she's an elementary school teacher and is on summer vacation."
All of those answers are 100% possible, but it doesn't feel right at all. And I have no idea how to explain it. Again, I remember Michaels warning that the FBI will never stop trying to understand how we do what we do.
"She's not even looking at them," Dean blurts.
"What?" Locke asks.
Well, look at that. Super Dean to the rescue.
"The other people around her age." He cocks his head towards some young adults and mothers with children. "She's not looking at them. They aren't her peers. She doesn't even know they're the same age, she pays more attention to the college aged kids because she doesn't quite view herself as an adult yet."
That's exactly what I was thinking, I just couldn't put it into words. It feels as if Dean himself were in my brain, looking and listening, when really he'd seen it completely on his own and was just thinking the exact same thing.
After a long silence Dean looks at me. "Why med school?"
"Because she's a runner," I say plainly.
He cracks a small smile. "You mean she's a masochist."
The girl we'd been looking at stands and leaves. Everything fits. I'm not wrong.
"Why do you think she has a boyfriend?" Dean asks, and in his silence I hear genuine curiosity, and maybe, just maybe, a hint of awe.
I shrug at first, smirking, before giving in. "She's not looking at any of the men around the other tables," I say. But really, I mean that she wasn't looking at Dean. From faraway he'd look older. Even in jeans and a t-shirt, you can see the outlines of his muscles pressing against the thin fabric. And then the muscle not covered by his sleeve.
His hair. His eyes. The way he just naturally looks, if she were single she most definitely would've looked.
We do a few more people, but by the end of it I'm starving.
"Can we get something to eat?" I ask, and Locke smiles.
"Sure," she says. Passing us both $20.
Dean heads to a Japanese place, while I head to Mexican. I order myself a taco and stand off to the side to wait. Out of nowhere, I hear a low whistle coming from the table closest to me. I glance at it and notice three teenage boys sitting there.
I mentally roll my eyes and turn my gaze back to the ground.
"Hey gorgeous!" One of them yells, and I wince. Not just because strangers are catcalling me, but because that was one of the many nicknames my dad used on me.
"Hey baby girl!"
"Hot stuff!"
"Oh come on, don't be scared. Come on over."
"Order 8712!" A worker yells, and I scramble to grab my food. When I turn, out of nowhere, one of the boys stands right behind me.
"Now are you deaf? Or just really bratty?"
"Neither..." I mutter.
"Uh uh, I don't think so. My bets on bratty. But I know how to shut you up, you just gotta say "make me.""
My eyes widen at him in disgust when I feel an arm around my waist.
"Hey babe, what's taking so long?"
I turn to see Dean at my side.
"Oh nothing, I just grabbed my food. This gentleman was just leaving." I turn to the boy with a smile and he grunts, storming off back to his table.
Dean tugs lightly on my torso before leading me away, arm still around my waist, to our table across the room.
"Thank you..." I whisper.
"No problem."
When we get to our seats he lets go, and I catch a settle smirk on Lockes face as we eat...
...
Ten or so minutes later we get outside again.
"Okay Violet. New game. I point at a car and you tell me who owns it. That one. Go."
I open my mouth and shut it. After being at the mall for almost three hours I thought we were done. Guess not.
"In our line of work. We don't get to see a person from the very beginning. We look at the little things and work our way up. You know how they killed, but you don't know why. You take the evidence and make something out of it. So Violet? Who owns this car?"
The car model does nothing for me. Neither does color. White. They parked in front of the food court, which tells me nothing about destination.
"They were in a hurry. They didn't care to fix their parking job, or look for a better spot." Which tells me they don't have the kind of ego that tells them that your parking space is a show of worth.
"No car seats so no kids. No bumper stickers and it's freshly washed... They wouldn't be coming to eat, because there's no need to be in a hurry for that. Which leaves the fact that whatever store they've intended to shop at is nearby."
I pause, waiting for somebody to say something helpful, but instead Locke says, "don't say they."
"I don't mean they as in plural," I say defensively. "I just haven't decided a gender yet."
Dean glances at the mall entrance and then back at me. "That's not what she means. They keeps you on the outside. So does he and she."
"So what am I supposed to say?" I ask, exasperated.
"Officially, we use the term Unknown Subject- or UNSUB," Locke says.
"And unofficially?"
Dean shoves his hands in his pockets again. "If you want to climb into someone's head," he says. "You use I."
I think about that for a second. But it's not like pretending to be Lia to help me fall asleep. I'd be getting into the head of a killer. A killer like my parents. A killer like me...
"What if I don't want to be them?" I say. "What if I can't?"
"Then you're lucky," Dean grunts. His voice is quiet but his eyes are hard as he says, "and you'd be better off at home."
I glare at him slightly. "And where's that," I mumble. It's not that I can't get into their heads. But if I did, then the nightmares would only get worse.
And what nerve does he have to even say that? He doesn't know me, or what I've been through. Suddenly I'm thrown with the memory that yesterday when he'd said "Nice to meet you" it'd been a lie.
Locke places a hand on my shoulder, and I meet her eerily familiar eyes. "If you don't want to get in the killers head there's another word you can use."
I turn my back on Dean, trying my best to calm down. "And what word is that?"
Locke meets my gaze. "You."