Killer Instinct

Briggs's ex-wife arrives to judge the program she'd dismantle

The Naturals are still riding the high of rescuing six-year-old Mackenzie McBride when Agent Veronica Sterling materializes in their living room during a strip poker game.

Briggs's ex-wife arrives to judge the program she'd dismantle

The Naturals are still riding the high of rescuing six-year-old Mackenzie McBride when Agent Veronica Sterling materializes in their living room during a strip poker game. She's the FBI director's daughter, a profiler with a French-knot hairstyle and a gun on her hip, sent to evaluate the program after their former supervisor Locke turned out to be a serial killer. Sterling catalogues each teen's weaknesses—Michael's attitude, Lia's failure to spot Locke, Cassie's naïveté—and announces she's moving in. Cassie profiles her right back: hypercontrolled, armored in expensive clothes, hiding a former self beneath clear nail polish and clinical speech. Dean reveals the buried history. Sterling was Briggs's partner, his wife, and part of the team that arrested Dean's serial-killer father, Daniel Redding. Their divorce and Sterling's disdain for this program are deeply intertwined.

A dead girl at Colonial bears Daniel Redding's exact signature

A breaking news segment shows a college girl's corpse displayed on a car hood at Colonial University—bound, hung with black rope, tortured. Dean goes rigid, murmuring four words seared into memory: bind them, brand them, cut them, hang them. His father's ritual. The victim, Emerson Cole, was a sophomore in Professor Fogle's popular serial-killer class, and Fogle—who's been interviewing Redding in prison for a book—is named a person of interest. Sterling and Briggs take the case, ordering the Naturals to stay out. Dean can barely function. That night Cassie finds him in the garage, beating a punching bag bare-fisted until his knuckles bleed. She cleans his wounds, and the two trade confessions in the dark—she still keeps her dead mother's lipstick; he whispers that his father made him watch the murders.

Three teenagers in borrowed dresses hunt a killer's classmates Lia wakes Cassie at midnight, hands her a dress that might be a shirt, and announces they're infiltrating a Colonial frat party. Michael drives. At the party, Cassie is approached by Geoffrey, the class's arrogant teaching assistant, who lures her to the lecture hall to display Fogle's slides on Redding's crimes. Michael follows with Bryce, a student from Emerson's study group. Meanwhile Lia goes off alone with Derek and Clark—two other members of that group. Derek is a preening braggart; Clark is shy, round, and volatile. The critical discovery: Derek reveals Emerson was sleeping with Professor Fogle. Clark erupts at the mention of it, insisting she wasn't like that. Back in the car, the three Naturals debrief and agree not to tell Dean what…