The Naturals

That night, Cassie goes for a swim again, and Michael joins her. He gives Cassie another opportunity to ask him questions. Cassie asks him why he is so careful about not being profiled. He reveals that he is not typically violent, but when he is, he loses control, and he is afraid of what a profiler might say about the kind of person that makes him. Cassie also learns that his family is extremely wealthy and that Michael seems to resent their indifference to his well-being. He also reveals that he has had an on-off relationship with Lia in the past. They wrestle in the water, when Dean suddenly appears and rejects Michael’s coy invitation to join them. When Dean leaves, Michael kisses Cassie and is satisfied with her facial expression afterward. The next morning, Cassie is confused about her feelings for both boys and angry with Lia for provoking the situation.

Cassie heads to the library to begin reading the prison interviews and is again disturbed by her curiosity and her ability to easily dive into a killer’s head. Lia appears and detects Cassie’s confusion about Michael and Dean. She tells Cassie that Dean is like a brother to her and that he would want Cassie to stay away from him. She also asks Cassie not to talk to Dean about what she reads in the interviews. Over the next four days, Cassie digs into the interviews in the library. When she gets bored of the house, she reads outside by the river and is approached by a random man who claims to know Judd. Michael saves her from making small talk with the man and joins her outside to read a novel. Eventually, Cassie gets to an interview with a serial killer named Daniel Redding and realizes he is Dean’s father.

After reading that Daniel Redding tortured and killed at least 12 women, Cassie races back to the house to confront Dean about why he kept this from her when they worked together so closely. He seems to be expecting her and anticipates her questions about his father. When Cassie tries to reassure him that this does not change who he is, he vehemently denies this and rejects the idea that he and Cassie are partners. He also admits that while he was not aware at first of what his father was doing, he should have been. Cassie is hurt when he tells her to leave him alone, and Lia angrily comes to his defense.

Cassie immediately regrets confronting Dean. Michael tries to distract Cassie by setting off fireworks in the basement. Sloane joins them, but when Michael mentions Locke, Sloane’s facial expressions reveal that she is hiding something. Sloane claims that Locke dislikes her and admits that she stole a USB drive from Locke’s briefcase. They figure the USB contains information on the case she and Briggs are working and consider looking at it.

After Sloane cracks the encryption on the USB, Cassie feels guilty for spying but tells Sloane to print the files anyway because she wants to help. The three of them read the files and sort them based on victimology. There are files on seven girls who were killed using a knife over the past nine months; some victims had red hair, and some were psychics. Cassie notes the similarities to her mother’s case and shows Michael and Sloane a photo of her red-haired mother. Based on the blonde “before” pictures of the victims, she concludes the killer is dyeing the victims’ hair red. Cassie decides it cannot be a coincidence and is shocked to discover that the UNSUB Locke and Briggs are hunting is killing women who resemble Cassie’s mother.

Cassie is determined to convince Briggs to let her work on the case, but she knows he will be difficult to persuade. Dean apologizes to Cassie for his outburst earlier and asks her about the files from Locke’s USB. He claims that Lia likes to eavesdrop and overheard them discussing the stolen files. Cassie tells him about the connections she has made between the recent victims and her mother. She describes the moment she found the crime scene. Cassie was scoping out the crowd while her mother was in the dressing room at the back of the theater where she did her “psychic” readings. When Cassie went back and pushed open the door of the dressing room, there was blood everywhere, and it got all over her. She instinctively knew the crime was personal, and she knows these recent killings are somehow personal to the UNSUB as well, although she is unsure if it could be the same killer. Dean tells her that he will look over the files and talk to Briggs for her.

Briggs approaches Cassie after discovering the Naturals’ theft of the USB files thanks to Judd’s watchful eye. He has confiscated them from Michael and Sloane and warns Cassie that the FBI would not approve of her involvement in the ongoing case. However, his body language tells Cassie that he is open to receiving information from her. She tells him about her suspicions regarding the hair dyeing, but he tells her that if she keeps digging into the case, he will remove her from the program. Cassie warns Briggs that the case is probably about to get worse, while she secretly plots to ignore his orders.

Michael visits Cassie that night and reveals that he kept a copy of the files on his own computer; he gives her a new printed copy, which Cassie hides under her mattress. The next day, Locke gives Cassie and Dean a large folder containing information on a cold-case shooting and possibly related crimes. The size of it suggests this task is a busywork punishment for stealing her USB drive. When Locke leaves, Cassie takes Dean down to the soundproof basement and asks him to look at the stolen case files. After reading through them, Dean agrees with Cassie’s suspicions about a possible connection to her mother. He believes the killer is either reliving an earlier kill or fantasizing about killing someone else.