t h e   p e r f e c t

i l l u s i o n

(a jessie hunt psychological suspense—book 39)

b l a k e   p i e r c e

Blake Pierce

USA Today and #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce is the author of numerous series in the mystery and thriller genres, spanning 10 years of work, including the Jessie Hunt, Ella Dark, Rylie Page, Faith Bold and Rachel Gift series. Blake's most recent latest releases are the Jenna Graves, Alison Payne, Isla Rivers and Kari Blackhorse series.

Many of Blake’s titles are available for free. Please visit Blake’s author page to find out more.

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Copyright © 2025 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Nina Buday used under license from Shutterstock.com.

SERIES BY BLAKE PIERCE

KATE VALENTINE

KARI BLACKHORSE

ISLA RIVERS

ALISON PAYNE

JENNA GRAVES

THE GOVERNESS

RACHEL BLACKWOOD

SHEILA STONE

FINN WRIGHT

MORGAN CROSS

JULIETTE HART

FAITH BOLD

FIONA RED

DAISY FORTUNE

AMBER YOUNG

CAMI LARK

NICKY LYONS

CORA SHIELDS

MAY MOORE

PAIGE KING

VALERIE LAW

RACHEL GIFT

AVA GOLD

A YEAR IN EUROPE

ELLA DARK

LAURA FROST

EUROPEAN VOYAGE

ADELE SHARP

THE AU PAIR

ZOE PRIME

JESSIE HUNT

CHLOE FINE

KATE WISE

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE

RILEY PAIGE

MACKENZIE WHITE

AVERY BLACK

KERI LOCKE

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

PROLOGUE

Patricia Hollinger studied herself in the closet mirror for the fourth time now.

She’d already changed outfits three times but finally felt that this one nailed it.

She wanted to wear the perfect evening gown for tonight’s charity event. It wasn’t fair to ask so much of one gown but here she was, doing it anyway. The dress had to ooze philanthropic class while showing attendees that she could still pour herself into the same kind of form-fitting outfit from her beauty pageant days.

This one, sparkling black and white, with a slight plunge at the neckline, was an off-the-shoulder classic that highlighted her toned arms and revealed her svelte curves, if not much skin. She was satisfied with it.

Some part of her felt mildly guilty about spending so much time on her look when the focus should be on the homeless shelter she’d recently helped expand from 30 to 50 beds, including a dedicated section for women and children. She was incredibly proud of the accomplishment, but she still wanted to look good while announcing it.

That was especially true since she was attending the event solo. Robert had planned to be back tonight but the company board’s big post-convention “steak & cigars” dinner had been pushed back a night, so he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow morning. He apologized profusely, which she’d accepted with grace after pouting briefly. She didn’t like to give him too hard a time, considering that her husband was worth about $70 million and liked spending it on her.

She heard a door close downstairs and briefly got excited, thinking Robbie might have somehow made it home in time. But that only lasted long enough for her to remember that their housekeeper, Rosa, had said she’d be heading out in ten minutes. Looking at her phone, Patricia saw that it was currently 6:06 P.M., almost exactly ten minutes since that conversation. That closing door was just Rosa leaving.

She returned her attention to the full-length mirror and began to ponder her next important decision: what shoes to wear. She picked three from her shoe closet and laid them out on the carpet in front of her feet. She was just about to slide into the first pair when she heard what sounded like glass breaking.

“Rosa?” she called out, turning and heading into the bedroom.

For half a second, she thought that their dog, Randy, had gotten into something. But then she remembered that he was still at the vet's, recovering from his dental cleaning. They were keeping him overnight.

She was halfway across the bedroom when she stopped, reconsidering her choice. If Rosa was gone and the dog wasn’t here, what had caused that noise? Though she couldn’t put her finger on why, something felt off to her.

Patricia turned and headed back to the bathroom, where her phone was resting on the vanity. She didn't know if calling 911 was overkill, but she at least wanted to call Robbie to get his take. As she stepped into the bathroom, she caught sight of a flash of movement behind her in the vanity mirror.

She spun around to find a figure rushing toward her. But her eyes were quickly diverted to what the figure was holding in their gloved hand. It was a large piece of broken glass.

Patricia froze in place. Unable to move, she found that she was still able to scream.

But not for long.

CHAPTER ONE

Jessie Hunt made a sharp right turn at the last second, nearly clipping the curb.

Then she glanced behind her to see if any cars had followed them down the one-way side street. Her passenger did the same thing. Neither of them noticed anything unusual so far.

She would be glad when this sort of thing was no longer required, but for the time being she was trying to be patient. So she continued to engage in these unconventional driving maneuvers.

After all, in just three days, her best friend Kat Gentry, who was seated beside her in the car, would be moving into her new apartment. That meant she'd be moving out of the home of Jessie and her husband, Detective Ryan Hernandez. It also meant that Jessie would no longer have to follow Kat's elaborate driving routine to avoid being followed.

Jessie understood where Kat was coming from. After all, her friend was legitimately concerned about the hitwoman who’d been paid to kill her. Even though Ash Pierce had escaped from prison and the country just two weeks ago, there was the very real possibility that she might try to return to the U.S to finish the job, if she wasn’t already back.

So Kat had set up elaborate protections for herself. Living with Jessie and Ryan in their fortress of a home until she found a new place was one of them. Changing the location of her private detective office was another. And so was altering her route from Jessie’s place into work every day.

Unfortunately, that meant that Jessie—and sometimes Ryan—had to engage in all manner of driving trickery. That included running red lights, making unexpected U-turns, occasionally going down one-way roads, and as in this instance, making out-of-the-blue last second turns onto side streets.

That was only half the battle. Once Jessie eventually dropped her friend off at a mall, or a metro station, or in this case, at a crowded mid-morning farmers market, Kat would bob and weave her way through people to get to her rideshare driver, who was waiting to take her to another location, where she would follow the same evasion procedure before finally getting dropped off at the parking garage where her recently purchased used car was waiting to finally drive to her office.

“Can you make a left at the next intersection?” Kat asked, a request that would send them back in the direction they’d originally come from.

“Not a problem,” Jessie assured her. “How far away is today’s farmers market?”

“About six blocks to the west,” Kat told her. “Do you think I should order the rideshare now or wait another minute?”

"Tough call," Jessie acknowledged. "You don't want to be standing around waiting for the car, but if you're not there when they show up, they might bail. I'd probably err on the side of waiting to order it. You can always dart around the market for an extra minute until they show up."

“That makes sense,” Kat agreed. “Okay, I’ll hold off a little longer. You’re headed into the station after you drop me off?”

The station was LAPD’s downtown Central Station, where Jessie was the criminal profiler for a dedicated unit called Homicide Special Section, or HSS. The small unit, consisting of five detectives and two researchers, specialized in cases with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—typically involving multiple victims or serial killers. Her husband, Ryan, ran the unit’s day-to-day operations and was overseen by Captain Gaylene Parker.

“Yeah,” Jessie said. “Since my case from yesterday wrapped up late, Captain Parker said I could sleep in today. I’m hoping to get in by 10:30.”

“I noticed that Ryan was already gone when I woke up this morning,” Kat said.

“Yeah, he was assigned to a different case,” Jessie explained. “He’s paired up with Jim Nettles. I was working with Karen Bray.”

“Your husband didn’t need your profiling services for his case?” Kat teased.

“Apparently not,” Jessie replied, before jokingly adding, “Maybe I’m not as valuable as I’d like to think I am.”

Kat nodded, though her expression suggested she wanted to say something more.

“What is it?” Jessie asked.

“Nothing,” Kat said, before going ahead anyway. “It’s just that you and Ryan are usually paired together so I found it odd that you weren’t this time. Also, I’ve noticed a hint of tension since I’ve been staying with you guys. I’m worried that I’ve been invading your ‘couples’ space’ for too long now. I swear that I’ll be out this weekend.”

“It’s fine,” Jessie said, not expounding beyond that.

The truth was that, while Kat’s continued presence was a bit of a strain on their personal space, she wasn’t the primary reason for the simmering tension she accurately sensed. That had more to do with issues she had no part in.

For example, it wasn’t Kat’s fault that Jessie and Ryan had been at loggerheads for months over the idea of having a child, either naturally or through adoption. Jessie had been adamantly opposed to giving birth herself for both professional and health reasons. And once Ryan had made peace with the alternative idea of adopting, another complication had cropped up.

Actually, "cropped up" was a diplomatic term for the situation. In recent weeks, Ryan had cast cold water on the idea of adopting, primarily because of a concern to them both. The concern was Jessie's ongoing and increasingly intense desire to exact violent retribution against anyone she perceived to be a wrongdoer.

More specifically, Jessie felt a relentless bloodlust, one that she’d always had inside her but until recent months, had managed to subdue by identifying and capturing killers in order for them to face the justice system. Of late, she’d determined that perhaps she should be doling out justice rather than the courts.

This bloodthirsty desire to punish the guilty had been with her for a long time, an unwanted gift from her now-dead serial killer father. Known as the Ozarks Executioner, he’d slaughtered dozens of people over decades before Jessie eventually stopped him.

But whereas his need to kill had manifested in the murders of countless innocents, Jessie had somehow managed to channel her cravings—ones she believed she’d inherited from him—into something more constructive. She studied forensic psychology at school and eventually became a criminal profiler, using her own darkness to better understand how and why killers did what they did.

For a long time, catching these twisted offenders satiated her desire for vengeance. Knowing that they were off the streets and in prison, where they couldn’t hurt anyone else, was enough for her. But not anymore.

On multiple occasions in the last few months, she'd come dangerously close to using her own hands to make these killers pay. In at least two instances, only last-second questions or comments from her partners snapped her out of a violent moment.

That was what had Ryan so concerned. He reasonably wondered—if she couldn’t control herself when it came to the work she’d dedicated her life to, what would happen if that lack of control manifested itself in their personal life?

It was a legitimate issue, one she’d tried to resolve in multiple ways. Her long-time therapist, Dr. Janice Lemmon, had been working with her to find some way to get a handle on her compulsions. But so far, they’d proved fruitless.

Just last week, she made a disastrous attempt to curb her desires through medication. Unfortunately, while the pill had reduced her craving for violence, it also made her a fuzzy-headed, rundown mess. That was a bad combination for someone who depended on her powers of perception to solve crimes. In that instance, she managed to fake it long enough for the effect of the medication to wear off, but she knew she’d been lucky.

Jessie had investigated another option. Her younger half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, had expressed similar urges, and even acted on them in an incident that was later generously determined to be self-defense. When Hannah admitted to her struggles and asked for help, Dr. Lemmon had found a treatment facility where she spent several months learning how to redirect her desires into more constructive directions.

That was great for Hannah, who had been a high school senior at the time. She was able to continue her studies at the facility, where no one knew her identity. It wasn’t so easy for Jessie. For one thing, she couldn’t just take off several months for treatment.

Another problem was that because of her success at apprehending multiple serial killers, she was a minor celebrity in Los Angeles, often seen on the local news. When she and Ryan visited a facility near Santa Barbara, two people had recognized her. That was a problem.

If her presence at a residential facility was discovered, it could jeopardize her job. Even if higher-ups in the LAPD assumed she had a substance abuse issue rather than a psychological one in which she wanted to violently end people, it could be a death knell for her career. So, at least for now, she was stuck treading emotional water.

Even though Kat was her best friend, she wasn't aware of the magnitude of this issue, and Jessie wanted to keep it that way. So she kept it to herself. Kat seemed to sense that she wasn't willing to go into anything personal, so she changed gears.

“How’s your head doing?” she asked. “No bumps or bruises working your most recent case?”

Kat was referring to Jessie’s multiple concussions while engaging with suspects, which had led to her being diagnosed with Second Impact Syndrome, a dangerous, potentially deadly condition that had led her neurologist to keep her away from field work for months.

“Nope,” Jessie assured her, as she punched the gas to speed through a light that was just changing from yellow to red. “Everyone I work with is diligent about jumping into danger so I don’t have to. It’s both heartwarming and guilt-inducing.”

“Guilt is better than the alternative,” Kat reminded her. “Remember, you’re not a detective. You’re a profiler. You do the brain work and let the cops do the heavy lifting.”

“Hey,” Jessie objected. “They do brain work too. You make it sound like my husband is a dock worker or something. He solves crimes just like I do.”

“You know what I mean,” Kat said with a dismissive wave before quickly switching subjects to avoid further ire. “Heard from Hannah lately?”

Jessie decided to let her friend off the hook.

“We were texting last night,” she said of her sister, who was currently in the last quarter of her freshman year at UC Irvine, about an hour away. “She’s planning to come home this weekend.”

“Any more word on her romantic situation?” Kat asked, turning slightly pink.

She was clearly a bit embarrassed to be asking about a nineteen-year-old’s love life, but she still couldn’t help herself. Jessie noted that the long vertical scar on the left side of her face—the result of an IED explosion during her time as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan—remained white.

“She’s pretty cagey about that stuff these days,” Jessie said as she slowed down suddenly on the mostly empty street to see if any of the few vehicles behind them would do the same. None did. “I think things are a little sketchy with that frat boy she’s been on and off with. I try not to pry.”

“But she’s good otherwise?” Kat asked, keeping an eye on the passing cars for any paid assassins she might recognize. “You know I consider myself her Aunt Kat, so I have to stay up on things.”

“She views you the same way,” Jessie assured her, “although maybe not as much when she was interning for you at the detective agency last summer. Aunt and boss are an odd combo. But to answer your question, she’s doing great. I know her classes this quarter have been harder than the last two, but she seems to be handling them okay. I hope to learn more on all fronts this weekend.”

“Maybe I’ll delay my move-out by a day so I can get the skinny,” Kat said, before adding, “Just kidding. I know she’ll want to sleep in her old room without me cramping her style.”

Jessie didn’t reply as she was focused on crossing four lanes of traffic in quick succession so she could make one final turn onto the street with the farmers market.

“You better get out here,” she said when she saw the traffic backup in front of them. “I’m going to be stuck here for a minute and I assume you’ll want to keep moving to avoid detection.”

“You know me too well,” Kat said, already opening the door of the still-moving vehicle. “I’ll catch you tonight back at the house.”

She slammed the door closed before Jessie could respond and quickly jogged over to the plaza, which was filled with multiple vendor stands. In less than five seconds, she had completely disappeared from view, which was exactly what she'd intended. Even Ash Pierce would find it challenging to keep up with her in that crowd.

As Jessie waited for the light to change, her thoughts drifted to how she needed to clean up the house a little for Hannah's return. One piece of that process was finding a spot for the bankers box sitting on the living room floor. Of course, it wasn't just any old box.

This particular one contained the personal effects of a serial killer named Mark Haddonfield, who had been adamant that she receive it after his recent death. But even after looking at every item in the box multiple times, she still had no idea why Haddonfield had been so insistent that she get it.

She still recalled the cryptic message that Haddonfield had said to both Hannah and herself before his death: If you want to be independent, you have to go to the mattresses. She didn’t know what that meant. But his insistence on repeating the phrase told her it was somehow significant.

She was debating whether to review the contents again tonight when her phone rang. Glancing down, she saw that it was Captain Parker, who ran Central Station and oversaw HSS.

“Hey Captain,” Jessie said, putting the call on speaker. “What’s up?”

“Where are you?” Parker asked in her typically gruff, no-nonsense way.

"On my way into the station," Jessie said. "I should be there in less than ten minutes."

“Change of plans,” Parker said. “I need you to head to Brentwood.”

“Brentwood?” Jessie repeated, surprised. “Isn’t that a little out of our station’s jurisdiction?”

“When it comes to unconventional murders, our jurisdiction is pretty much everywhere, Hunt, and this one is pretty unconventional.”

CHAPTER TWO

“What does that mean?” Jessie asked.

Parker wasn’t known for being dramatic, so this situation must be especially unusual.

“I don’t have many details,” Parker conceded. “All I know for sure is that some beauty queen was killed in her house and then posed like she was in a pageant or something.”

“Okay. That definitely sounds different, but is it really so wild a murder that West Los Angeles Station can’t handle it?” Jessie asked, referring to the station that typically dealt with cases from the tony Brentwood neighborhood.

“They are handling it,” Parker said. “But the detective in charge was so eager for our assistance that he agreed to let HSS take the lead. He specifically asked for you and Detective Hernandez but since your husband is working another case right now, you’re all I could offer.”

Jessie tried not to take offense at the back-handed comment, giving Parker the benefit of the doubt that she hadn’t intended it that way.

“Who’s the detective?” she asked.

“The name is Brady Bowen,” Parker told her.

Now, it all made sense. Jessie knew Brady Bowen well. Not only was he Ryan’s old partner from years ago, but he was also the intended best man at their wedding, before that ceremony was interrupted by Jessie’s kidnapping.

Brady was a good guy and, in Jessie’s limited experience, a solid detective, even if he wasn’t the most personally disciplined person she’d ever met. Squat, with a barrel chest and an ample gut, he had a mustache that looked cribbed from a 1970s porn actor.

“Got it,” Jessie said, not commenting on any of those details to Captain Parker.

“He’s expecting you at the crime scene, which I’m about to text to you,” Parker said.

“Great,” Jessie said as traffic finally opened up a little in front of her. “I’m on my way.”

***

Jessie drove down the quiet Brentwood street, passing by multiple police cars, an ambulance, a crime scene unit truck, and a medical examiner’s van, before ultimately parking just down the street from the mansion.

She knew from painful personal experience that high profile cases generated media attention, and that when those news crews saw her at a crime scene, the feeding frenzy only escalated. As a result, she’d learned that parking well away from the scene, then approaching in a bit of a disguise, often served her—and the case—better.

She got out of the car, threw on a navy “crime scene unit” windbreaker over her top, and tucked her brown hair under her LAPD baseball cap before pulling the brim low on her face. This bit of concealment wouldn’t trick a veteran crime reporter who was actively on the lookout for her, but it might help her sneak past a less observant one.

She walked up the sidewalk, taking in the enormity of the home she was approaching. It was in the Spanish Revival style and comprised nearly a third of the neighborhood block. There were humble white stucco outer walls and low-pitched, red clay roof tiles. But unlike the standard cottage-style homes that typically employed this look, the home she was staring at looked like a cottage on steroids, about ten times the size of a normal house.

As she ducked under the police tape, Jessie took note that at least so far, there was only one news van here. The reporter, a blonde woman in her thirties, was on her cell phone facing the other direction. Her cameraman was leaning against the side of the van, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Jessie moved quickly to the front door, hoping to get inside before either of them took notice of her. A young officer with short black hair and a frown stood at the open front door, eyeing her cautiously as she pulled out her ID and showed it to him.

“That says you’re a criminal profiler,” he noted. “Why are you wearing a crime scene unit jacket?”

Jessie appreciated his observational skills but didn’t have time for them.

“Because when the press sees that I’m involved in a case, they tend to lose it a little bit,” she said quickly, “so I’m trying to avoid them noticing me. It’s the same reason I’m using the cap to cover my face. It’s also why I’d like to get inside before they start paying attention. I’m looking for Detective Bowen.”

“I got ya,” the officer said, seemingly satisfied. “He’s upstairs in the main bedroom. That’s where they found the victim.”

“Thanks,” she said, stepping past him into the house.

The interior of the place matched the outside, only with ornate additions like intricate iron decorations and multiple terracotta busts on marble pedestals. She made her way up the circular stairwell. At the top was another officer, who pointed right, down one end of a long hallway that appeared to extend the entire length of the house.

She could identify the room where the murder occurred because there was an additional officer station outside it. As she walked that way, she noticed that a section of the hardwood-floored hall had been cordoned off with tape about halfway to the bedroom. Inside the taped-off area were dozens of chunks of glass, apparently knocked out of the frame of a large painting hanging on the wall just above the spot. She moved carefully around it and continued on to the main bedroom door.

“I’m Jessie Hunt,” she told the officer stationed in front of it. “Detective Bowen is expecting me.”

The officer waved her in, and she stepped inside the bedroom. It was huge, double the size of an average living room, much less a bedroom. Blood covered huge swaths of the floor. She counted at least eight people in here, and even then, the place didn't feel crowded. That count didn't include the victim, who she could see out of the corner of her eye, lying on a divan near a giant window.

Jessie didn't typically like to look at a body until she'd had a chance to take in the rest of the scene. She'd found that sometimes, seeing the victim first made her jump to conclusions. But before she could take in much of the scene at all, a booming voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Jessie Hunt!” bellowed the familiar voice.

She followed the sound to find Detective Brady Bowen bounding toward her. He appeared just as he had the last time she'd seen him, about two months ago. His gray suit jacket looked two sizes too small for him and appeared in danger of ripping in half. His shirttails were poking out of his slacks, which looked about to burst at the seams. The knot of his tie, which seemed to have some kind of sauce stain on it, was already coming loose. And even though they were in an air-conditioned house in early May, sweat poured off his brow, making his unkempt blond hair stick to his forehead.

“Hey Brady,” she said with a smile just before he picked her up and gave her a bear hug that felt like a very friendly vise was squeezing the air out of her. When he put her down again, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, which he subsequently wiped on his slacks.

“How’s it going?” he demanded eagerly, his bright blue eyes sparkling with warmth and enthusiasm. “And why the hell is Ryan working a different case than you? I was hoping to make this a complete reunion.”

Jessie was amazed at his ability to be so jocular with a murdered person lying less than twenty feet away. Of course, he’d been at this a lot longer than she had, but she doubted she’d ever reach his level of relaxation.

“Short version: the case he’s working doesn’t need a profiler so I was available and he wasn’t,” she told him. “Maybe we can save the longer version until after you’ve read me in on—you know—this whole murder scene thing?”

“Of course,” he said, not at all put out by her reticence. “You want to see the body?”

“Give me the details first,” she requested, “then we can review the scene, and finally the body.”

"You got it," he said, "although it's the body that made me think this case was HSS-worthy. Anyway, our victim's name is Patricia Hollinger. Thirty-two years old. Married to real estate magnate Robert Hollinger, 62, who discovered the body. She's a former beauty pageant type. Was Miss Orange County or something. Runner-up in the Miss California pageant a while back. Gave up the pageanting life and settled down a couple of years ago. She was supposed to go to some charity gala last night, but she obviously didn't make it."

Jessie nodded and glanced into the bathroom, where she saw three sets of high heels resting on the floor next to her.

“Looks like she hadn’t finished getting ready for the night,” she noted.

“Nope,” Brady agreed.

“How did someone get in the house and all the way up here without her noticing?”

“I think we have an answer for you on that,” he said, “We checked the home security footage and the housekeeper left just after 6 P.M. last night. The video shows someone hiding in the bushes to the right of the door. They shoved something that we later determined to be putty into the hole in the door frame’s strike plate so that it wouldn’t completely close. Once the housekeeper was gone, they entered the house. They left again the same way about fifteen minutes later.”

“Any identifying features on the person?” Jessie asked.

"Nothing that leapt out to me," Brady said. "We were going to forward the footage to your research team, but I'm not optimistic. The person wore all black, including a bulky sweatshirt with a hoodie that makes gauging their real height and weight challenging. They wore a mask, as well as gloves. As you can see, CSU is checking for prints and DNA, but whoever did this appears to have planned ahead to avoid leaving any evidence behind."

“Okay,” Jessie said, impressed with his thoroughness. Sometimes she forgot that Brady’s slovenly appearance and puppy-like enthusiasm didn’t extend to his investigative technique, which might explain why Ryan had so much affection for him. “Please do still send everything to Jamil and Beth. Who knows what they might uncover?”

Jamil Winslow was the head of HSS's two-person research department, and Beth Ryerson was his deputy and sole employee. Together they made a pretty incredible team that been essential to solving multiple cases. If anyone could glean a hidden detail from the footage, it was them.

“Will do,” Brady said. “Now is it ‘look at the body’ time?”

“Almost,” she assured him. “Just a few quick questions first.”

“Go for it,” Brady said, again wiping at the accumulated perspiration on his head.

“You said the killer got in right after the housekeeper left. Have you spoken to her yet?”

"No," Brady conceded. "Today is her day off and Robert Hollinger asked to be the one to break the news to her. Apparently, she's older and has been with him forever. He's worried that she'll have a breakdown."

“Well, then we’ll need to have him call her over here ASAP,” Jessie said. “There’s already one news van outside. This story will probably be on the noon newscast. Besides, if she—what’s her name?”

“Rosa Montero.”

“It’s possible that Rosa was the last person besides the killer to see Patricia Hollinger alive,” Jessie noted. “She might have valuable insight into the victim’s state of mind just prior to her death. Where is the husband now?”

"He's in the backyard with an officer," Brady said. "He's the one who found her and called it in. You're the profiler, but to my eye, he seemed legitimately messed up by the whole thing."

“Have you questioned him yet?”

“No, I wanted to wait until you were here so we could do it all in one go,” Brady said. “But we should get to him soon. He’s been cooling his heels back there for close to an hour now.”

“Okay, then I guess I should check out that body,” Jessie told him.

"Right this way," Brady said, motioning to the divan in the corner that Jessie had been scrupulously avoiding until now. As they approached, the CSU techs and the medical examiner stepped out of the way.

What Jessie saw in front of her was enough to cause a barely stifled gasp.

CHAPTER THREE

Despite her best efforts, Hannah Dorsey blushed at the question.

“You’re making more of it than there is,” she insisted to Lizzie. “It’s just a study session over coffee.”

“If you say so,” Lizzie replied with a knowing smile.

Even though she was being teased, Hannah was happy to see her roommate so playful. Last fall, Eliza “Lizzie” Dempsey was in a bad way and would never have joked around like this. She was being anonymously harassed by someone on the campus of UC Irvine, the school where they were both in their freshman year.

Hannah had eventually determined that Lizzie’s own roommate was responsible for the harassment. The girl left school and, since Hannah wasn’t clicking with her own roommates, she moved in with Lizzie.

In the months since then, Hannah had seen Lizzie slowly lower her defenses and actually begin to participate in campus life. Dark-haired and pale, with a quiet demeanor and a sweet smile, Lizzie was understandably slow to warm up to folks. But this felt like one of the final steps to embracing college life: tweaking Hannah over her get-together later today with fellow psychology major Dallas Henry.

“We’re in the same class,” she insisted, pushing her blonde hair out of her eyes, “and the midterm is next week. Studying over coffee is a time-honored tradition in these circumstances.”

“That’s true,” Eliza agreed. “However not everyone does their studying with muscular dudes with wavy black hair, blue doe eyes, and charm to spare.”

“That’s immaterial,” Hannah maintained, though she noticed as she glanced in her mirror that her own flashing green eyes and flushed cheeks betrayed her claim. “When I told him I might be open to a coffee date, he said I should wait until I was really ready for that.”

“Sounds like he was playing hard to get,” Lizzie noted.

“We’ve agreed that, at least until after midterms, this is a strictly collegial relationship.”

“So you’ve discussed the nature of the relationship changing after midterms,” Lizzie pointed out, acting like some kind of co-ed prosecutor.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Hannah asked, leaning back on her bed.

“Very much so,” Lizzie replied before seeming to re-think her answer. “As long as you’re sure he’s a good guy. We both know you’ve had some bad luck.”

That was an understatement. It felt like more than bad luck to have a fellow student pretend to need help with what he claimed was a stalker, then try to assault her in a library study room. That had turned out badly for her attacker, but it still wasn’t much fun.

And then there was frat boy Finn Anderton. Initially a suspect when Hannah was searching for Lizzie’s harasser, Finn had turned out to be uninvolved and cute. The two of them hit it off and developed something beyond a flirtation.

But when they worked together to locate a missing pledge in his fraternity, Finn had shown a troubling willingness to put the frat's good name ahead of the well-being of the pledge. He'd apologized profusely in the weeks since, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth.

Since then, he’d exhibited some mildly disturbing behavior. Hannah was pretty sure he was following her around campus. She’d noticed him on more than one occasion when she entered or left a class. Considering that he was a business major and none of his classes were near hers, she found that beyond odd.

There was also his vehement hostility to Dallas. Hannah understood part of it. She’d shut down any romantic potential and he’d likely just gotten jealous when he saw her talking to another guy. But in their recent conversations, he’d actively tried to sabotage Dallas, calling him a sketchy guy but offering no evidence to back it up.

And she was in a position to know. Almost immediately after Dallas had first asked her for help with a class assignment, she’d done some research on him. Since she’d spent an entire summer working at the detective agency of Kat Gentry, her sister’s best friend, Hannah, was well-versed in how to conduct comprehensive background checks.

Considering her recent string of bad luck, she’d done an especially deep dive on Dallas, combing through his social media history, family background, and even accessing his medical records through a backdoor trick that Kat had taught her. The guy had a brief stretch acting out early on in high school, coinciding with the time just after his father died in a car accident where he appeared to have been drunk. The acting out included a few disciplinary issues, specifically a couple of fights with other students and an allegation of once being high on campus, although that was never proven.

But he’d eventually pulled himself together and turned things around. He stuck to the straight and narrow for the back half of high school, and after spending a year at a community college, he’d transferred to UC Irvine for his sophomore year. There were no other red flags.

Of course, that didn’t give someone a clean bill of interpersonal health. Hannah had come across multiple truly evil people that presented as “nice” and “normal” on paper and in conversation. But seeming normal also wasn’t automatically a warning sign that someone was a freak. If she walked around with that mindset, she’d go crazy pretty quick.

Besides, she wasn't without her own red flags. She was the illegitimate daughter of a serial killer. She still regularly dealt with the trauma of being kidnapped once and nearly killed on multiple occasions. Until recently, she had no ability to handle the violent urges that led her to kill a man. That act had been ruled self-defense., but she knew better. If anything, Dallas should be the one running in the other direction.

Part of Hannah wondered if Finn had it in for Dallas because he was "an older man" or a transfer student and he was embarrassed to admit that prejudice out loud. Whatever was going on, it wasn't her concern as long as it didn't escalate. She still believed that Finn was just going through a rough time rather than being some kind of imminent threat. But that wouldn't stop her from keeping her guard up around him.

And she’d do the same thing with Dallas when they met later. Cute, polite, and deferential were appreciated qualities in a guy, but far more crucial was lack of violent intent. So far, Dallas had passed the test on that basic character threshold. But the key element there was “so far.”

She rested her head back on her pillow and shook her head slightly.

“What is it?” Lizzie asked.

Hannah wanted to tell her. She wanted to say “I’m a nineteen year old college student. I shouldn’t have to game out whether every guy I meet is a potential rapist, stalker, kidnapper, or serial killer.”

She’d encountered all of those in the last three years and she was pretty sick of it. But she said nothing about any of that. After what Lizzie had been through, she was still healing and didn’t need to be consoling Hannah. So she smiled as sincerely as she could and offered a sigh.

“I guess I’m just not in the mood for drama these days,” she said, which was true, if incomplete.

“I hate to break it to you, girlfriend,” Lizzie said with a naughty smile, “but you attract drama like a flame attracts moths.”

Hannah nodded amiably and didn’t say what she was thinking: that her roommate had no idea just how right she was.

CHAPTER FOUR

Jessie stared at Patricia Hollinger, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

“You said she was going to a charity event, right?” Jessie reconfirmed with Brady, “not a pageant of some kind.”

"That's right," Brady said. "It was a gala celebrating the opening of a new wing at a homeless shelter she supported."

“Then why is she dressed like that?” Jessie asked.

“That’s why I called you,” Brady said.

Jessie blinked several times in an attempt to clear her head. Patricial Hollinger was an attractive strawberry blonde with brown, now vacant eyes who looked a half decade younger than her thirty-two years. She appeared to have been posed on the divan, her right arm draped over the back of it and her legs dangling over the front of the cushion as if she enjoyed lounging about in a pricey evening gown.

But that wasn’t what threw Jessie. Hollinger was wearing a diamond tiara, along with a sash that read: Miss Huntington Beach 2015. More importantly, she had a gaping hole on the left side of her neck, just above the clavicle. That explained the blood spray all over the floor and even some walls. The killer must have hit an artery, sending the stuff everywhere.

Jessie immediately made two mental notes. First, because the wound was on the left side of the neck, it suggested that their killer was right-handed. Secondly, the sash was mostly still pristine white, indicating that it had been placed on Hollinger by the killer well after she stopped bleeding out.

A wave of empathy washed over Jessie. She could envision the woman seeing her attacker come at her and the fear she must have felt. Was she even still alive when her killer began dolling her up as a beauty contestant? How helpless and confused she must have felt. Jessie found herself hoping that Patricia Hollinger had died before that point.

“Post-mortem additions of the pageant items, I gather?” she said more than asked.

“We think so,” said a middle-aged woman wearing protective plastic coverings over her clothes. Jessie didn’t recognize her.

“Jessie, this is our deputy medical examiner, Meg Cronin,” Brady said.

“Good to meet you,” Cronin told her.

"Likewise," Jessie said. "I know it's early, but does your preliminary estimated time of death match what the home security footage showed?"

“Very early yet,” Cronin cautioned, “but we’re estimating between 5 and 10 P.M.”

“That fits,” Brady said, “The killer arrived at 6:06 and left at 6:21.”

“How long would it take for her to bleed out based on the size of that wound and the blood spray we see?” Jessie asked.

Cronin sighed and closed her eyes. Jessie didn't know if she was simply doing a mental calculation or, like Jessie, was also imagining how long the woman had suffered before she finally faded away.

“Not more than two minutes, I’d say,” the M.E. concluded.

Jessie took some minor solace in that.

“That would give the killer a decent chunk of time after she died to pose her,” she said, “and then to collect the pageant items and put them on her before leaving.”

Everyone in the room stood silently. Jessie had no doubt that most of them were doing the same thing as her: picturing the killer methodically setting up their display. One thing was clear to her: this wasn’t a crime of passion, committed suddenly. It had been planned out by someone with an agenda, maybe even a vendetta.

“I want to talk to the husband,” she said suddenly as she turned and left the bedroom.

She needed a break from the stench of death.

***

Jessie stepped out onto the expansive patio.

She saw Robert Hollinger seated facing away from her, on a cushioned sofa in front of an impressive rectangular gas fire pit, complete with glass rocks. A female officer stood beside him, shifting nervously from foot to foot, clearly unsure what to say to the man. Jessie glanced at Brady Bowen, who was standing next to her, tucking in his shirttails.

“You want to make the introduction?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, leading her over.

They walked around the couch and stopped next to the fire pit. Jessie studied the now-widower, who was bent over with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Hollinger seemed to sense their presence and removed his hands from his face, though he couldn’t bring himself to look up.

Even under the circumstances, the man looked dashing. His slightly disheveled gray hair framed a sculpted, if slightly lined face. His gray eyes were understandably red and puffy but still soulful. He was wearing a tailored suit that oozed sophistication.

“Mr. Hollinger,” Brady said quietly as the man raised his eyes. “This is the criminal profiler I told you I was waiting for before we talked to you in detail. Her name is Jessie Hunt.”

Hollinger sat up straighter as he squinted at her.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said, his tone soft, defeated. “You’re the one who helps catch the worst of the worst. Serial killers and the like. Is that what happened to Tricia?”

Jessie sat down on the terrazzo edge of the fire pit, studying him. This was always a delicate situation. Robert Hollinger was theoretically in the early stages of mourning so she had to be careful how she dealt with him. But she couldn’t forget that he was also a potential suspect.

“We don’t know yet, Mr. Hollinger,” she said quietly. “But we’re going to make every effort to find out. The reason I was called in was because of the—unusual—nature in which Tricia was found. Detective Bowen and I are hoping that you can offer us some insight that could help in our investigation. Would it be okay if we asked you a few questions?”

“Of course,” he said blankly, tugging at the lapels of his jacket in what seemed like some attempt to center himself. “Anything I can do to help.”

"Right," Jessie said, glancing at Brady to make sure he was cool with her going first. He nodded supportively, so she continued. "We understand that you found Tricia. Can you tell us about that?"

“Yes,” he said, his voice becoming stronger now that he had some specifics to focus on. “I was supposed to be home last night actually. I was planning to go to the gala with her. But my firm—I’m an executive at a corporate real estate company—was at a major convention. It was held in Denver this year. But because of an unexpected late spring snowstorm, we pushed our traditional firm dinner back from Monday to last night. That meant that rather than getting home at seven last night and going straight from the airport to meet Tricia at the event, I had to spend an extra night in Denver. I caught an early flight back this morning and got here around 9:30. I went straight upstairs. That’s when I found her.”

“When was the last time you were in touch with her?” Brady asked.

Hollinger pulled out his phone and scrolled through it.

“We actually spoke at 5:45 last night,” he said. “She was getting ready, deciding among dresses and such. I texted her hugs and kisses later, at 7:08. I congratulated her again on the shelter and apologized for missing the event.”

“But she didn’t get back to you?” Jessie checked.

“No, but I didn’t think that was so odd,” he explained. “I figured she was busy with the event. I texted her one last time to say goodnight from the firm dinner. I didn’t hear back that time either but it was almost 11 p.m. I assumed she was already asleep. She keeps her phone set to silence notifications after 10:30. I didn’t reach out to her this morning in case she was sleeping in. I had hoped that I might be able to surprise her by waking her up in bed.”

His voice cracked with emotion as he finished. Jessie gave him a second to regroup. In a circumstance like this, she couldn't always be sure if her interviewee was sincere or acting. She was good at reading body language. But some guilty people were brilliant actors, and some innocent ones came off squirrelly because of the intensity of the moment. In her estimation, Robert Hollinger was either innocent or a great actor, but she couldn't be sure which.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?” she asked after waiting several seconds.

Hollinger shook his head vehemently.

“No,” he said. “She was a good person. People were always surprised that a beauty queen like her could be so kind and warm. She had a gentle soul.”

“How did you two meet?” Brady asked, cleverly mixing seemingly genuine interest with a subtle attempt to suss out any complications in their marriage.

“We were set up,” Hollinger said. But rather than expounding further, he put his head back in his hands, perhaps recalling that first time they met.

“We understand that you wanted to tell your housekeeper about Tricia’s death,” Jessie said, hoping to draw him back to the present. “Why is that?”

For the first time since they had been in his presence, the man managed something close to a wry smile.

“Rosa has been with me for over thirty years,” he said wistfully. “She used to clean my bachelor apartment once a week back before I was earning six figures a year, much less what I make now. She’s been with me through thick and thin—three marriages including Tricia, two children, several bouts with clinical depression and one with cancer. My mother died when I was ten and Rosa—she's 76 years old now—is the closest thing I've had to one since. She's actually my most stable female relationship. I consider her family and I value her opinion. She didn't especially love my first wife, and she despised the second one. But she immediately took to Tricia when I introduced them. When we got married three years ago, she was a bridesmaid. She loved my wife as much as I did. She is going to be devastated when she hears this, so I want her to hear it from me."

"All right," Brady said, "when we're done talking, we'll ask you to call her to come over. I know it's her day off, but Jessie made an excellent point earlier. Because of your wealth and your wife’s minor celebrity status, this will make the local news sooner rather than later. We all need to talk to Rosa before that happens.”

“I understand,” Hollinger said.

“One more thing before you call her,” Jessie said. “Do you have any idea why someone might have positioned your wife like that, with all the pageant accoutrements?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I met her after she’d parted ways with the pageant world. She was proud of her accomplishments but it wasn’t really a part of her life anymore, at least not until recently.”

“What do you mean?” Jessie pressed.

"Just that she mentioned that someone recently reached out to her about being a judge in an upcoming competition. I told her that she should do it if she thought it would be fun, but she said that she'd already declined. When I asked why, she wouldn't say but she got agitated and said she didn't want to discuss it anymore. That was rare for her, so I dropped it. I didn't even think about it again until just now."

“When did she say she was contacted about judging?” Brady asked.

“A couple of weeks ago,” he answered. “Do you think this was related to that?”

“I don’t know,” Jessie told him honestly. “But we intend to find out.”

CHAPTER FIVE

It was well past lunchtime, but Jessie wasn't hungry.

She and Brady were holed up in a conference room at LAPD’s West Los Angeles station, where they’d been reviewing every data point they could find on Patricia Hollinger.

That hadn’t stopped Brady from ordering a foot-long sub which he’d inhaled more than eaten, leaving nothing but drops of mayo and mustard on both the table and his slacks as evidence that the sandwich had ever existed. Jessie was too focused on making progress in the case to eat. And they were nowhere near as far along as she would have hoped.

They had managed to talk to Rosa Montero back at the house, but only briefly. They delayed letting Robert Hollinger reveal the truth about what happened to Patricia until they posed a few questions. According to the housekeeper, Patricia seemed fine when she left her in the main bedroom.

“She was a little anxious about picking the right dress for the evening,” Rosa had explained, “but nothing more than that. I wished her a good night, went to the bathroom downstairs, collected my things, and was gone by just after six.”

That matched the timeline on the security footage. When they brought up pageant accessories Patricia might have worn, Rosa looked completely befuddled by the question and demanded to know what was going on.

At that point, Hollinger couldn't hold back any longer and told her the truth. After a brief moment of denial, she broke down, crying uncontrollably. When her level of upset escalated to a near panic-attack, the EMTs on scene had to sedate her and take her to the hospital. Hollinger went with her.

They had made some progress since they came to the station. The CSU team had determined that the murder weapon—very likely a jagged piece of glass from the smashed painting frame—was not at the crime scene.

“Maybe the killer took it with them,” Brady surmised, “either to avoid leaving evidence, or possibly due to a cut. Even wearing gloves, it’s possible that they might have suffered some kind of injury.”

It wasn't a crazy theory, and the CSU folks were already checking to see if all of the blood found in the bedroom belonged to Patricia. They had already concluded that no fingerprints besides those of Patricia, Robert, and Rosa were in the bedroom.

"You guys have any luck lately?" Jessie asked Jamil and Beth over the speakerphone line they'd shared all day. She felt bad as this was the third time she'd asked essentially the same question in the last two hours. If they had something new, they surely would have told her.

The HSS research team was not known for resting on its laurels. Jamil was a legitimate genius, skilled at filtering through massive databases, sorting surveillance video into manageable buckets, or making complex financial records understandable, all seemingly without even trying. What required actual effort for him was the social side of the equation. His proficiency on that front didn’t always match his intellectual abilities.

Luckily, his deputy more than compensated for him in that area. Beth was as adept with people as Jamil was with numbers. Her perpetually chill, friendly vibe was the complete inverse of Jamil’s jittery intensity. And while not a human supercomputer like him, she had an incredibly sharp mind, which people tended to underestimate because she was an attractive, six-foot-plus former college volleyball star.

“Nothing yet,” Jamil said patiently. “We usually look for any unusual financial patterns with either spouse, something that might suggest malfeasance, or even blackmail. There’s nothing like that here, at least not so far.”

“What kind of patterns are you finding?” Brady asked.

“On the personal front, lots of standard stuff,” Beth said. “They lived a lavish lifestyle. Lots of travel. He owns a sailboat. They co-own a private jet with another couple. She shopped a lot. But honestly, it's nothing we haven't seen before. There are also a ton of charitable donations. The homeless shelter addition cost $9 million, and they footed the bill for half of that."

"And on the corporate side, everything looks above board so far," Jamil added. "Obviously, I need to do a lot more digging. He has a lot of business costs but nothing jumps out at me yet."

“What sort of costs are we talking about?” Jessie asked.

“He has all kinds of consultants,” Jamil explained. “Everything from financial advisors to communications gurus to marketing experts. None of it seems out of the ordinary, at least not on the surface. Of course, I plan to dive much deeper.”

“What about this person who reached out about judging a pageant?” Brady asked. “Considering how Patricia was found, that seems worth pursuing.”

"We have been," Beth assured him. "Since her husband gave us full access to her phone, I've been going through her calls and texts for the last month, just to be safe. So far, I haven't found anything that seems even vaguely connected to pageants. Jamil is doing the same with her e-mail."

"That's been a little trickier," the head of research conceded. "Mr. Hollinger didn't know any of her passwords, so it took a while to crack them. But my searches so far haven't revealed—hold on."

“What is it?” Brady asked excitedly.

“I just noticed that Patricia occasionally CCs e-mails to herself at another e-mail account,” he said. “I’m trying to access it now.”

Everyone else waited silently as they listened to Jamil’s fingertips fly across his keyboard. After thirty seconds, they all heard him speak more enthusiastically than Jessie thought possible.

“Yes!” he whispered breathlessly.

“Care to share with the group?” Jessie wondered.

"Patricia Hollinger has a really old AOL account," he explained. "It uses the same password as her other ones, but it looks like she mostly stopped using it about a half dozen years ago. But she set up the account to forward e-mails sent there to her current ones. There have only been two in the last six months that weren't spam. They're both from someone named Marcus Sullivan."

“What do they say?” Jessie asked.

"I'll screenshot them for you," Jamil said, "But they're related. Apparently, he runs several pageants in Orange County. In the first e-mail, dated ten days ago, he says: Long time, no talk. It’s been far too long. Would love to catch up by having you be a guest judge at Miss Costa Mesa Pageant. He goes on to provide details. Her response came the same day. It’s just one word: No.”

“That’s pretty definitive,” Beth muttered.

“And the second e-mail?” Brady wanted to know. “What does it say?”

“It’s from three days later,” Jamil told them. “It says: Just checking back in to see if you’d reconsider judging. I’d love to discuss the possibility more but this is my only contact information for you. Please get back to me. He then reiterates the offer details.”

“And you have no indication that she ever replied to that one?” Jessie confirmed.

“Correct,” Jamil said.

“One might wonder if Marcus got a little more aggressive in his attempts to get in touch,” Brady mused.

"It's definitely worth looking into, "Beth said animatedly. "I just started checking into Marcus Sullivan's background, and it's not all peaches and cream. He's had multiple allegations of sexual harassment made against him by various pageant contestants over the years. I'm finding at least two out-of-court settlements in the last decade. He was even charged with assault once a dozen years ago, although the charge was dropped when the alleged victim refused to testify. The prosecutor's notes indicate that he thought the woman was threatened, though they couldn't prove that."

“Does Patricia Hollinger’s name come up in any of those harassment allegations?” Brady asked.

“Back then, her last name was Corning, so I’ve been searching that,” Beth said. “But I’m coming up empty.”

“Just because nothing official shows up doesn’t mean harassment wasn’t happening,” Jessie noted. “And based on her terse reply to his offer, I’m guessing that Patricia was none too pleased to get any kind of communication from Sullivan. I think it’s time we pay him a visit to find out why.”

CHAPTER SIX

The corkboard would have been a dead giveaway if the authorities ever found it.

But that wasn’t going to happen. As they got up from their chair to study the board more closely, they couldn’t help but smile slightly. So far—other than a cut from the chunk of glass on the palm of the right hand that required a small bandage—almost everything had gone as planned.

Getting into the mansion had been easy. The old housekeeper was too oblivious to notice that the front door didn’t close completely when she left. And killing Hollinger had been much easier than expected.

This was the first attempt at it, and there were some concerns about whether they'd have the courage of their convictions when the moment came. But Hollinger had been so frozen in terror that she forgot to fight back. All she did was scream, which just made them angry.

That fury was what gave them the extra oomph needed to grip that chunk of glass tight and jam it in the beauty queen's neck. Fortunately, the arterial spray shot out mostly to the side, so that only a smattering of blood landed on them. The clothes they wore were currently burning in the fireplace, but that wasn't a problem. They'd purchased multiple sets of black outfits for these occasions.

The next one would be soon. Staring at the corkboard, they looked over the newspaper clippings. The ones about beauty pageant winner and all around whore Patricia Hollinger could come down now. But the other clippings would remain.

They stared at the stories on the next target. In addition to those were the surreptitious photos that had been taken. They would help immeasurably when the next mission happened. That wasn't until tonight but there was much work to do before then. First and foremost was a shower. Some of Hollinger's blood had landed on their face. For the last few hours, they'd left it there as a totem of their accomplishment.

But now it was time to get clean. That is, before getting dirty again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jessie reminded herself to stay cool.

The drive south to Marcus Sullivan’s Westport Beach office had taken nearly an hour and she’d gotten increasingly agitated on the way. That was partly due to the traffic. But it was also because this was the community where she had once lived.

At one time, it was where she’d thought she would spend her life—with her then-husband, Kyle, in their McMansion, possibly raising a family. That was all before he turned out to be a sociopathic killer who tried to frame her for murder and then kill her.

It might not have been fair, but by the time she and Brady had parked at Sullivan's building and gotten into the elevator up to his floor, she was ready to go off on the man. Even if he wasn't a killer, the record showed that he was, at the very least, a predator. And sometimes predators had to be put down.

“You okay?” Brady asked her, snapping her out of her revenge fantasy.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Your whole body is clenched up and it sounds like you’re grinding your teeth,” he said before adding with a smile, “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you if this guy gets handsy.”

She knew the crack was just an attempt to lighten the mood. Brady wasn’t in the kind of shape required to protect himself, much less her. He knew that. Besides, he was well aware of her self-defense training. She’d even taken a course with the FBI once. If she had to, she could kick Marcus Sullivan’s ass.

But despite Brady's attempt at humor, she wasn't amused. Sullivan had a comeuppance coming his way. A big part of her hoped he was their guy so she would have an excuse to get physical. As she processed that realization, Jessie realized she needed to rein things in.

“I just want to be ready for how this guy reacts when we come at him,” she lied. “I guess that’s making me a little tense.”

The truth was that she wasn’t tense at all. She was primed in anticipation of what she might get to do. And it scared her. If she could almost taste the pleasure she’d take in beating Sullivan down before knowing his guilt or innocence, what might she do if she had proof of his involvement?

Jessie closed her eyes for a second, hoping that by focusing on centering herself, she could get a grip. It felt like that grip was loosening every day. Of late, even small affronts had her clenching her fists or grinding her teeth. She feared that it wouldn’t take much to make her cross the line into acting on her bloodlust.

It didn't help that she didn't see any path forward to resolving the tension she constantly felt pressing on her from the inside out. Therapy wasn't helping. The side effects of medication made them a no-go. Treatment facilities didn't offer enough privacy for someone with her public profile. What other options did she have? It felt like the walls were closing in on her, and the only way out was to blow a hole in whatever got in her way.

The elevator dinged and her eyes snapped open. She noticed that Brady was staring at her apprehensively.

“You sure you’re good?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said with a conviction she didn’t feel as she stepped out into the hallway.

Though this office tower was impressive from the outside, the interior left a lot to be desired. The carpeting along the hallway was worn beyond repair. The wallpaper looked like it hadn’t been replaced since the 1980s. The whole floor smelled musty.

They walked until they reached the door for suite 807, which had a doorplate that read: Sullivan Events. Jessie wasn’t sure if that meant the guy did more than pageants or that he just preferred to keep things vague for an air of mystery.

Brady tried the door handle, but it was locked. Jessie pointed to the old-fashioned buzzer to the right of the door. Brady pushed it, and a static-y voice came through the small speaker box.

“Yes?” asked a scratchy female voice.

“This is Detective Bowen of the Los Angeles Police Department,” Brady said firmly. “We need to speak with Mr. Sullivan.”

After a brief pause, the voice returned.

“Hold on.”

Jessie looked at her partner for the day.

“Do you find it odd that a pageant organizer in a nondescript office in a decrepit building feels the need to lock his door?” she asked.

“What are you saying—that he gets a lot of angry walk-ins and this is his way of avoiding them?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Jessie said.

Before Brady could reply, the door opened to reveal a woman in her sixties with short, gray curly hair. Bifocals hung from a chain around her neck, and she wore a threadbare magenta sweater that looked like it was on its last legs.

“IDs,” she said in the same, unimpressed scratchy voice they’d heard over the speaker as she held her glasses up to her face.

They both held them up for her. She squinted at them, then, apparently satisfied, motioned for them to enter. Jessie stepped in first and looked around. There wasn’t much to see. The waiting room was comprised of the woman’s desk, three filing cabinets, two metal folding chairs, and another door.

“Mr. Sullivan is in his office,” the woman said. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

She walked the six steps to the door and rapped on it.

“What?” Sullivan barked from the other side.

The woman opened the door and poked her head in.

“Police,” she barked back. “They want to chat.”

They heard scrambling, and for half a second, Jessie thought the guy might be trying to make a run for it. Instead, he appeared in the doorway with a scowl on his face.

Marcus Sullivan looked as weathered as his office. She already knew from the information that Jamil and Beth provided that he was 49. But the photos they’d sent of him didn’t reflect just how the years had worn him down.

His face was a strange, unnatural mix of wrinkles and smooth lines. It was if he’d gotten Botox treatments but didn’t have enough money to finish the whole job yet. His hair was black, but the roots and ends had hints of gray where the dye job was starting to fade. He was dressed in jeans and an Oxford shirt that was one button too open for Jessie’s taste. The sport coat he’d clearly just thrown on was fraying at the lapels. If his attire was any indication, it didn’t appear that the pageant business was doing all that well.

“What’s this about?” he demanded.

“We’d like to talk to you about a former employee,” Brady said, keeping things as vague as he could until they felt obligated to get more specific.

“Am I in some kind of trouble?” he asked, “because I’ve been the victim of a bunch of witch hunts.”

"No, not at all," Brady told him, lying with a warmth and friendliness that Jessie found impressive. "We just heard that you'd be a real asset in providing some background information on a case we're looking into. It shouldn't take more than five minutes. Mind if we have a seat?"

He stepped into the office without waiting for permission, and Jessie followed suit. This room was no more impressive than the rest of the place. The carpet was so worn in places that the flooring was visible underneath. Sullivan's desk, a rickety wooden behemoth, looked like it might collapse at any moment. The frame of the decaying couch intended for guests was so compromised that it sank in the middle. It also had multiple stains on it. Jessie remained standing.

The walls were covered with plaques and framed certificates. But as Jessie peered closer, she realized that nearly all of them merely announced Sullivan’s participation in various events and weren’t actual awards of accomplishment.

The one saving grace of the place was the window, which would have offered a nice view, if not for the equally tall, older building across the way that obscured any chance to see what was beyond it.

“We wanted to ask you about one of your upcoming pageants,” Brady said, plopping down on the couch. He apparently had no reservations about its hygiene.

“I thought you had a question about a former employee,” Sullivan said suspiciously.

“We’ll get to that,” Brady promised.

“Okay, what do you want to know?” Sullivan asked, returning to the chair behind his desk. When he sat down, it groaned loudly.

“How do you select the judges for something like that?” Jessie asked, doing her best to sound genuinely interested.

Sullivan leaned back in his chair. As she'd hoped, the question relaxed him. It was an opportunity to mansplain to her, and he leapt at the chance.

“It’s a complicated process,” he said. “I like to get a mix of judges from different walks of life. Sometime we’ll include a local community leader, like a council person or member of a chamber of commerce. We might also pursue a celebrity of some kind. The size of the pageant often determines how big a name we can get. And then we’ll want some kind of expert, maybe a past pageant winner or a consultant of some kind.”

“Are you using a pageant winner for the Costa Mesa event?” Jessie wondered.

"As a matter of fact, we are," he said. "We're going with a charming young lady who was Miss Altadena, 2019."

“Oh,” Jessie said, feigning surprise.

“What’s wrong with that?” Sullivan asked, leaning in uncertainty.

“Nothing,” she said with a wave. “I just figured you’d prefer a pageant winner from the area where the event was taking place, to make it more personal for everyone there.”

Sullivan eyed her, clearly weighing how forthright to be in his next answer. To Jessie’s mind, there was no legitimate reason not to come clean. If he wasn’t involved in Patricia Hollinger’s death, there was no point in hiding his invitation to her. And if he was responsible, he had to know why they were here. Pretending to be clueless would only make him look more guilty.

“I actually did try a local first, or at least a former local,” he said. “My go-to pageant rep for Orange County moved to Florida in January so I reached out to our former Miss Huntington Beach from a while ago, but she declined.”

“Who was that?” Brady asked.

"Her name is Patricia Corning, or at least it was when I knew her," Sullivan said. "It's been almost a decade, so she might have gotten married and changed it."

“You haven’t spoken to her in all that time?” Jessie pressed.

“No. We kind of fell out of touch.”

“Why did she decline?” Jessie asked.

“She didn’t say,” he told her, his tone more guarded now. “Is she the former employee you mentioned?”

Jessie looked over at Brady, who was sitting casually on the couch as if everything was chill. She wanted to catch his eye to see if he was on board with her getting more aggressive with Sullivan. But he was focused on the man and didn’t look her way. She decided to go for it anyway.

"Do you think it might be because of the slew of harassment claims you've faced over the years?"

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sullivan’s jaw dropped open briefly before he recovered. His eyes, already suspicious, turned into narrow slits.

“I’m sure that I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said huffily.

“I’m sure you do,” Jessie replied. “We’re LAPD, Mr. Sullivan. We obviously have access to all your legal records. It might be better to dispense with the denials and just answer the questions you’re being asked.”

“Look, lady, I don’t know what you heard, but I never touched Tricia,” he growled. “Anyone who says different is full of it.”

Jessie could feel that Brady's eyes were now on her and she glanced in his direction. He was clearly surprised that she'd gone all in so early. But his expression seemed to say, "Now that you've started, you may as well keep going." So she did.

“We’re less concerned about if you touched her than if you killed her.”

She let the words hang there, studying his reaction. Unfortunately, the Botox complicated matters, as the ability of Sullivan's facial muscles to respond normally was severely compromised. His brow furrowed slightly, and he pursed his lips in either shock or anger.

“Tricia’s dead?” he asked. His tone expressed mild surprise but neither sadness nor curiosity.

“She is,” Jessie replied. “Murdered. And only weeks after tersely refusing to judge your pageant. That must have annoyed you.”

“It did,” he answered, apparently fully over the news of Patricia’s death. “I thought it was quite rude of her to pass on it without any explanation or get back to me when I reached out again. But I hope you’re not suggesting I killed her over something like that. Like I said, I never even touched her.”

“You seem really intent on making it clear that you never physically harassed her,” Brady noted, somehow managing to still sound amiable under the circumstances. “But you’ll forgive us for wondering if maybe Tricia was aware of the other allegations against you and didn’t want any part of you. If you were worried about that, maybe you were also worried that she’d say something that could damage your reputation. Is that possible?”

Sullivan pushed himself up from his chair, making the thing squeak in what sounded almost like pain.

"Listen," he said with dripping condescension, "I answered your questions because you're cops and all. But now you're making accusations, and I'm not feeling so helpful. All I can tell you is that I didn't ever harass that bitch, even though she was uppity enough to deserve it."

Jessie seethed. She felt an invisible fist squeeze her insides, as if it was attempting to force the fury out of her and into the open. She didn't know if Sullivan was a killer or just a scumbag, but his lack of respect for the dead made her want to beat some reverence into him.

She glanced at the handset for his phone on the desk and briefly imagined picking it up and smashing one end into the man’s temple. She pictured herself doing it repeatedly, slamming the plastic into his now-soft skull even after he’d slumped in his chair. With Brady leaning back on the couch, she suspected she could get in at least half a dozen blows before he’d be able to get up and stop her.

“That’s not very nice talk, Mr. Sullivan,” Brady said, grabbing onto the armrest and pulling  his considerable body upright, “Especially considering that I noticed that while you repeatedly deny harassing Patricia, you haven’t actually denied killing her. That seems weird to me.”

“Okay,’ Sullivan said petulantly, “I didn’t kill her.”

“Can you prove that?” Brady asked.

Jessie, standing silent as she watched this back and forth, realized she’d been holding her breath and slowly exhaled.

“How would I do that?”  Sullivan wanted to know.

“You could start by telling us where you were last night between five and seven,” Brady suggested.

At that, Sullivan smiled smarmily.

“That’s easy,” he said. “I was at a run-through for the pageant this Saturday.”

“Can people vouch for your presence the whole time?” Brady asked.

"I can do better than that," he said, opening a desk drawer.

“Careful,” Brady warned, his hand going to his right hip, where his gun holster rested.

“I’m just getting out a thumb drive,” Sullivan said. “Is that okay?”

“What’s on it?”

“It’s a recording of the run-through,” Sullivan said. “I like to review them later to see where there are issues: timing lulls, poor spacing—that sort of thing.”

“Go ahead,” Jessie said.

Sullivan took out the thumb drive and held it up between his thumb and forefinger for them to see. Something about the thing jogged a memory for Jessie. It took a moment for her to make the connection. The thumb drive looked very similar to the decorative pendant on a necklace in Mark Haddonfield’s box of personal effects. Could that be what the pendant actually was—a thumb drive hidden as a decoration? She knew what she would be doing when she got home.

Sullivan plugged the drive into his desktop and motioned for them to come around to look at the screen. A video popped up with a wide shot of a ballroom with a stage at the back. There was a timestamp in the upper corner. Sullivan moved the video to 5 P.M.

“That’s me,” he said, pointing at a man shown from the back who seemed to be wearing the same sport coat that Sullivan had on now. When he turned around, it was clear that it was him.

“Where was this run-through held?” Jessie asked.

“Same place as the pageant will be,” Sullivan said. “The Costa Mesa Grand Hotel.”

He fast-forwarded at double speed, repeatedly pointing himself out every time he appeared on camera. From 6:06 to 6:21 P.M., the official window of death for Patricia Hollinger, he was never off-screen for more than four minutes. That stretch of time was barely long enough to run to the bathroom and back, much less drive to Brentwood. That didn’t mean that Sullivan couldn’t have hired someone to do his dirty work. But based on their current surroundings, Jessie had doubts that he could afford anything that ambitious.

They’d need to follow up to be sure, but it was looking increasingly likely that, while Marcus Sullivan was a reprehensible person, he was not Patricia’s killer. That didn’t stop Jessie from reconsidering grabbing the phone handset and doling out some justice for the crimes he had committed. She felt that invisible fist squeezing her again and turned to Brady.

“I was going to run to the restroom,” she said. “You got this?”

“Sure,” he said, clearly slightly surprised that she would exit the interview before it was over. But he said nothing more.

She left the inner office and rushed through the outer one too. After stepping into the hall, she pulled the door closed behind her and leaned against the wall. Taking long deep breaths, she waited for the fist to release its grip, and along with it, the anger bubbling inside her.

It took quite a while.

CHAPTER NINE

Dallas Henry showed up to the coffee shop just off campus ten minutes early.

He knew should have been nervous but what he felt was closer to anticipation.

They were supposed to meet at 5 P.M. but he didn’t want to take any chances and end up arriving late. That wasn’t the impression he wanted to present.

This was his first get-together with Hannah Dorsey since their big conversation. That was when he’d suggested that they hold off on any social interaction outside class until she was sure that’s what she really wanted.

They had, of course, chatted on the way out of class several times. He'd even walked her to her next class on a couple of occasions. But that was about it. He didn't want to push for fear that it would alienate her. Despite her casual confidence, it was clear that Hannah was skittish around guys she didn't know that well.

And as Dallas adjusted the napkins on the table where he waited for Hannah, he silently wondered who could blame her? Based on the research he’d done, she been through more in her nineteen years than most people deal with in ten lifetimes.

Her father, a notorious serial killer known as the Ozarks Executioner, drugged and killed her mother when she was a baby. He returned years later to torture her and murder her adoptive parents. If not for the famous profiler Jessie Hunt, the man would have killed her too. Amazingly, that serial killer was Hunt’s father as well, making them half-sisters. After the incident, Jessie had formally adopted Hannah.

That horrific event would have been enough for most people to deal with, but based on what Dallas has gleaned, not long after that, another serial killer—one who idolized The Ozarks Executioner—kidnapped Hannah and tried to brainwash her into turning against Jessie and killing her. There was more, including Jessie’s ex-husband attempting to kill both women, as well as Jessie’s fiancé. Compared to all that, the incident in which a fellow student tried to assault Hannah in a university library seemed comparatively tame.

If Dallas had gone through even a fraction of what Hannah had, he suspected he’d be institutionalized right now. He’d had his fair share of tragedy, including the death of his father in a car crash six years ago. But his suffering couldn’t hold a candle to hers. And if things went as planned, that suffering would continue soon.

"Salted caramel latte for Dallas," the barista called out and he got up to grab it. He'd already been given his drip coffee, but he'd asked Hannah a week ago what her favorite coffee drink was. Now, he hoped to surprise her by having it waiting when she arrived.

It was all part of his plan to make her as comfortable with him as possible, no matter how many baby steps it took. All her emotional callouses served to protect her. And he needed to scrape them away before he could truly put his plan into action.

The things he intended to do to her would be more effective—and more painful—if the actual physical horrors were accompanied by a sense of betrayal at the hands of someone she’d grown to trust. So it was his job to win that trust.

He knew that he'd already made it part of the way there, or she wouldn't be meeting with him at all, much less alone and off-campus. That meant he'd scrubbed his personal history effectively. He knew that Hannah was adept at searching the web in ways the average person couldn't. So there couldn't be any record of his dark web activity, especially his participation in several men's rights groups that engaged in conversations some might consider "outside the bounds of acceptable discourse."

He didn’t however scrub evidence of his troubled early teen years, the stretch soon after he learned that his father had actually committed suicide in a “car accident” after his mother left him for her boss. He needed some dirt on him. Looking too goody-two-shoes would be suspicious to Hannah. But his official record could actually work to his advantage.

The image he presented was of a young man, upset over his father’s death, who got into some fights at school leading to detentions and even a brief drug-related suspension. But after a rough freshman year of high school, he “turned it around” in the middle of his sophomore year, finding the strength to move forward.

At least that’s how it looked to an outsider. Of course what really happened was that he decided he could do more for the cause from the inside than the outside. So he pretended to forgive his whore mother, who had destroyed their family and ultimately his father’s life.

His dad was a decent man undone by a bitch who put her own needs first, no matter who it hurt. She was what was wrong with women today. But because she had birthed him, Dallas couldn’t quite bring himself to make her pay. Other females would take her place on his firing line. Until justice was done, he’d shoved down those feelings around her and even play-acted at getting along with her beta husband.

He improved his grades and joined clubs far afield from his real interests. No ROTC or football for him. Instead, he played mixed doubles for the tennis team. He helped establish the Allies Club, which provided pre-approved high school students—always one guy and one girl—to walk or drive teenage girls home if they felt uncomfortable in a situation. It made him a little sick inside to actively work against the interests of guys his age who might just want a little action. But he knew that his cover was more important in the long run.

So he continued on the respectable path. His grades for the last two and a half years of high school were really good, but because of how he tanked the first year and a half, he ended up at community college in his hometown of Bakersfield. He hoped that if he excelled there, he could transfer to somewhere with cachet. He would use the top-tier school as a springboard to gain entry to the levers of power, where he could make a real difference and give men the rightful due they'd been denied for generations.

But that was a distant amorphous goal. He found a more concrete one in the fall of last year. That was when he learned about Mark Haddonfield, who quickly became his hero.

Haddonfield had done some real heavy lifting for the cause by going after Jessie Hunt, the celebrated, self-congratulatory profiler who seemed to delight in bringing good men down. Haddonfield took on the skank by killing people she’d saved and sullying her reputation for protecting victims. He’d almost taken her out completely at one point, along with her slut sister, who somehow escaped and injured his knee in the process.

After Haddonfield was captured, Dallas was briefly devastated. But that all changed when the killer’s manifesto appeared online, imploring others to take up his cause and butcher those close to Hunt. Dallas almost went out that night to answer the call. But ultimately, he held back, deciding that he needed a longer term plan if he was really going to live up to Haddonfield’s legacy.

So he came up with a strategy. He now knew which school to transfer to: UC Irvine, the one that Hannah Dorsey attended. He had a mission.

But that mission was nearly upended when, a few months later, Haddonfield retracted his manifesto in a video that was made public. In it, he said that no harm should come to Jessie Hunt or her loved ones. Dallas felt betrayed. His hero had gone soft.

But after a long, sleepless night, he came to a realization about what must have really happened. Haddonfield had been forced to retract the manifesto. Behind those prison walls, he had likely been tortured too, maybe even subjected to brainwashing. Hunt was a profiler with expertise in psychology. She almost certainly led those indoctrination sessions.

With that newfound awareness, Dallas wrote a letter to Haddonfield in prison, telling him that he knew the video was made under duress. He assured his hero that he wouldn’t let his false repudiation of the manifesto distract him from the mission that Haddonfield hadn’t been able to complete. He would eliminate the one person that the whore Jessie Hunt cared most about: her little sister.

But that required work. He learned everything he could about Hannah Dorsey. He studied up on her sordid personal history. He discovered a gap in her academic record during which she simply disappeared from school for several months, but he had yet to discern what that was about. He was intrigued to pry open that secret.

His application to UC Irvine was accepted and he declared the same major as one of hers—Psychology—for the spring quarter. He worked out religiously so that he would look attractive to her. Even sly girls like Dorsey could be hoodwinked by a sculpted torso, and he intended to keep her in the dark by blinding her with his looks and charm.

That put a lot of pressure on this meet-up. He needed to be slightly flirtatious but not overly so. He needed to make her feel safe with him but not come across as so innocuous as to be boring. He needed to leave her wanting more. It was a delicate balance, one he’d have to walk right now.

Hannah had just wandered in. He caught her eye and waved her over. She maneuvered around the tightly-packed tables, her eyes darting all around the place. He could tell she was looking for anyone who might be trouble, as well as exits if he turned out to be that trouble. When she sat down, she gave him a hesitant smile before scanning the table.

“Two drinks?” she noted, “you’ll never be able to sleep tonight.”

"Oh, actually, the salted caramel latte is for you. I remember you saying it was your favorite coffee drink a while back."

Hannah's smile tightened, and he knew what was coming.

"Thanks Dallas, but I don't accept any kind of beverages that I haven't seen prepared," she said politely but firmly, without any hint of embarrassment. "I can pay you back, or you can chug it yourself."

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just chalk this up as a valuable learning experience—don’t make assumptions. Check!”

“Good,” she said, apparently relieved at his reaction, “you’re learning.”

"I should have known better anyway," he said. "That's very smart of you. You know, I co-founded this club in high school that gave free rides to girls in need. And on more than a few occasions, I was pretty sure the rider wasn't just drunk but had been slipped something. In one case, we had to take her to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped. So don't ever feel the need to apologize for keeping yourself safe."

“I didn’t apologize,” she reminded him.

He could feel himself blowing this and focused on getting things back on the rails. “Touché!” he said quickly. “If you don’t mind though, I’m just going to take a few sips of your drink to prove my integrity. If I keel over, you’ll know to go after the barista.”

That got a chuckle. After he chugged half the drink, she gave him a full-on smile, revealing her pearly whites.

He smiled back as he imagined some future get-together, when those teeth would be bloody. He could hardly wait.

CHAPTER TEN

Kat Gentry sat at the desk in her office, staring at the grainy video footage, trying to discern if what she saw was real or if her mind was playing tricks on her. After all, it was after five, and she'd been at this for hours.

The footage was from a security camera in the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil. That was where she believed she had tracked Ash Pierce to. The woman in the footage certainly looked like Pierce, the hitwoman who had tried to kill Kat before escaping prison and the country.

Pierce, somewhere in her mid-thirties, had a tiny frame, short black hair, arched nose, and pale skin, all suggesting someone quite fragile. The woman in the footage was about the same size and had the same frail build as Pierce, though her hair was long and blonde and she was mostly covered up so that it was impossible to clearly discern her skin tone.

The angle of her logo-less gray baseball cap made seeing her facial features equally difficult. That could have been by design or simply a woman trying to protect herself from the brutal Southern Hemisphere sun. Kat had considered asking Jessie to have Jamil run the footage through his facial recognition database. But she'd likely only get to call in a favor like that once, and she wanted to wait until she had more visual samples to offer the researcher.

The truth was that Kat couldn’t even be certain that she had the right city, much less the right woman. Pierce had escaped the U.S. via the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana. The hitwoman had even made time to send Kat an unsigned postcard from the city that read simply: Been missing you. Be seeing you.

Kat’s reaction, after getting over the initial shock of the correspondence, was a simple thought: not if I see you first. In the service of that goal, she had used a process of elimination—along with what she knew about how Pierce operated—to determine that among the countries that didn’t have extradition treaties with the U.S., Ecuador made the most sense as a place for the killer to hide.

And there was no question that Pierce, a former Marines Special Operations element leader and CIA assassin before becoming a freelance hitwoman, had the knowledge and skill set to get there. The larger question was: even if the woman in the footage was Pierce, was she even still down there? The security video was five days old. That meant the woman could still be holed up somewhere in Guayaquil, or in a worst case scenario, she could have found a way back to the States and be in L.A. again right now.

To answer that question, Kat had been diligently reviewing any footage she could find outside cheap local motels and hostels. She had briefly investigated short-term rentals but ultimately dismissed the idea. They almost always required credit card deposits and background information. Pierce would avoid that hurdle if possible, looking for places that accepted cash and didn’t ask too many questions.

Kat had been working with a local Guayaquil cop named Estrada, who didn’t want a former CIA assassin in her town any more than Kat did. The officer had shared reams of footage with her. So far, none of it had definitively shown Pierce or the blonde woman from the port. But Kat was confident that if Pierce was still in Ecuador, it was only a matter of time before she caught a break. She knew she was close.

A loud clanking sound from the hallway outside her office made her jump slightly in her chair. Pulling out the handgun that was resting in her shoulder holster, she glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 5:14 P.M. A sound like that at a time like this was suspicious.

Kat had learned that almost everyone on her floor of the building poured out of their offices and headed for the stairs and elevator right at five. That was one of the reasons she’d chosen this place. It was quiet, comprised of fairly conventional businesses where no one worked overtime and everyone looked presentable. There was a CPA, a therapist, a restaurant supply company, and the local headquarters for a small in-home senior care business. Her detective agency was the most unconventional office on the floor, which was how she liked it.

So why was there noise just outside of it at a time when the whole floor should have been a ghost town? Kat didn’t want to jump to conclusions but she had to be careful. So she got up from her desk, exited her inner office and moved to the waiting area, which was essentially a tiny foyer comprised of two hardbacked chairs that she got for free from a dentist two floors below her.

As she pressed her ear against the locked door, she reminded herself that it was incredibly unlikely that Ash Pierce was standing on the other side of it. Even if she had somehow returned to L.A. undetected, how could she find this place?

Kat had emptied out both her old apartment and office within days of Pierce’s escape. Her new office and the apartment she would move into this weekend were not under her name. Yes, she was staying at Jessie’s and Ryan’s house for a few more days, but the precautions she took in getting from their home to her current office were thorough. It would be nearly impossible for Pierce to follow her on her evasive, circuitous, irregular route at all, much less without being detected.

Still, it was never a wise move to underestimate the woman. She had escaped from custody twice and convinced almost everyone that she’d suffered memory loss that made her forget that she was a killer.

As Kat listened at the door, she tried to slow her breathing and keep as quiet as possible. She held still, staring at her reflection in the mirror on the far wall of the foyer. She noted the scar that marked the entire left side of her face from just below her eye, as well as the burn marks, both remnants of the IED that took out much of her unit.

She glanced down at her body. At five foot seven and 140 pounds, she was powerfully built, with arm muscles that bulged without even flexing. Her fiancé, Mitch Connor, who was murdered last fall, had embraced all her features, even the ones she wasn’t totally comfortable with. She wondered if anyone ever would again.

Despite all her training and formidable physicality, a primal fear gripped her. The idea that Ash Pierce might be on other side of that door was messing with body in ways that her mind couldn’t stop. She felt a quaver in her chest. Her hands, which she refused to look at, were shaking ever so slightly. Beads of sweat formed out of nowhere on her forehead. Her vision felt slightly fuzzy.

A clinking noise just outside quickly cleared her head, as did the sound of a key sliding into the lock of the door. Kat took a half step back from it, raised her weapon chest high, and waited.

She reminded herself that Ash Pierce, even if she'd found this place, would almost certainly not be this clumsy in accessing it. Either she'd hired someone less professional than herself, or this was another threat entirely. There had to be an explanation, and she made a silent promise not to fire the gun unless she absolutely had to.

A head popped into view, facing backward as it entered the foyer. Kat recognized it and quickly slid her weapon back into the holster just before the intruder looked over at her.

“My lord!” Ernesto shouted, jumping shockingly high for a man in his sixties. He clutched at his shirt and muttered. “You scared me.”

Ernesto was the night janitor for the building, the one tasked with cleaning each office after people had left. Kat had spoken with him on several occasions when she stayed late. But he’d never come to clean her office this early.

“Sorry to startle you,” she said, stepping out from behind the door to see that Ernesto’s cleaning cart was keeping the door open. “But I thought you didn’t get to this floor until well after six.”

“I usually don’t, Ms. Gentry,” he said. “I always start with the tenth floor and work my way down. But since the printer repair business right above us is having some kind of party, I thought I’d save that floor until later when they were all gone. So I started with the ninth tonight. I hope I didn’t startle you!”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can come back later if you’re still busy.”

“No, that’s okay,” she told him. “I was close to wrapping up for the night anyway. This is a sign that I should close up shop. Just give me two minutes.”

Kat was serious. She’d been staring at that grainy image of the blonde at the port for so long that she could barely see straight. She needed a break. When she came back tomorrow, she’d start with fresh eyes. And that’s when she’d find Ash Pierce.

She had a good feeling about it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rebecca Martinez could barely keep her eyes open.

If she was in her own house, she’d be in bed already. But instead she was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror with a decidedly lost expression. Because of the remodel on their Bel Air home twenty minutes north, they’d been living in this rental for a week and would be stuck here for another three. That meant that she was constantly tracking down her stuff.

Her exfoliant wasn’t in the drawer she was used to. She had misplaced her hand cream. Even her water bottle had gone missing until she found it on her dresser instead of the bedside table.

Rebecca tried to let her frustration go. It wouldn’t help with sleep. Besides, other than the organizational hassles, this place was quite nice. Cheviot Hills wasn’t as fancy as Bel Air, but it was still a great neighborhood and for a month, this cookie cutter mansion would do just fine.

Admittedly, she didn't love that it lacked the security of Bel Air. This wasn't a gated community, and there was no guardhouse. There were no roving patrols. And this house didn't have the ten foot high security fencing that their regular place did.

She wasn’t as concerned about her own welfare as she was for her husband’s. Kai Cody was an outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels. And while, at 39, he was no longer the star player he had been a decade ago, his name still had status in this town, which sometimes meant they got unwanted visitors at the house. Between the neighborhood’s security staff and the fence, no one had ever got inside, but it was still a concern.

At one point in her life, Rebecca also had to deal with a few alarmingly intense fans, but not in a number of years. She was 26 now, a full five years removed from when she’d won Miss San Diego and competed in the Miss California Pageant.

Since then, she’d met Kai and got married, which made working a luxury rather than a necessity. She still did some modeling, mostly for catalogues and the occasional local TV ad. But that was mostly just to keep busy.

Between her lower profile of late, Kai’s reduced role on the team, and the fact that almost no one even knew they were staying here right now, she felt pretty safe. Still, since Kai was out of town on a team road trip, she resolved not to take any chances.

Before she crashed for the night, she planned to go around to all the doors and windows to make sure they were closed and locked, assuming she could remember all of them. She would also turn on the alarm, that is if she could find the booklet with the security code.

Sometime soon after that, she expected a call from Kai. They always shared one last goodnight call when he was on the road, and tonight would be no exception. His last text indicated that he expected to call before 10. That was a half hour from now. She could make it that long.

But for now, she just needed to wash the day off her face. She ran her finger under the water and, determining that it was warm enough, grabbed her facial cleansing bar, ready to get it sudsy.

She stared at her reflection and wondered how much longer she had before the good looks that had helped win her the pageant title would fade. She didn’t yet have any lines on her face. Her long, lustrous black hair was years away from any hint of gray. But despite her intense workout regimen, she was already seeing the tiniest sag in her backside. She wondered what was next.

She just happened to glance in the mirror behind her. At first, she thought that shadows from the bedroom were playing tricks on her eyes. She could have sworn that she saw a figure there. When the figure moved, she knew it wasn't her imagination.

She spun around as the figure, clad all in black, quickly approached her. She began to scream and threw the only thing in her hand—the bar of soap—at the figure. It hit the figure square in the head, but it didn't even seem to faze them.

 As they got closer, Rebecca noticed something in their hand. It was only when they raised it above their head that she processed what it was: a fireplace poker.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Jessie pulled into the garage, she was happy to see that Ryan’s car was already there.

They hadn’t had a chance to really talk at all today, what with the case he’d been working on since early morning, as well as her own busy day. She even harbored hopes that they might get a chance for a romantic moment.

With Kat staying at the house and Ryan being on desk duty until just recently, their opportunities for private time together had been limited. The Kat situation would be remedied this weekend. And Jessie hoped that she and Ryan would be assigned a case together again soon. But for now, those private moments were few and far between. They could really use one.

Jessie parked the car and entered the house. She found Kat in the kitchen fixing herself a mug of tea.

“Welcome home, Ms. Hunt,” she said with a smile.

“Thanks,” Jessie said. “You look like you’re settling in for the night.”

“Yeah,” Kat told her. “Long day. How was yours?”

“After I dropped you off this morning, I got a call from Captain Parker,” she explained. “A former beauty queen was murdered in the bedroom of her Brentwood mansion and then posed in her sash and tiara. So that’s been fun.”

“And you’re working this with Brady, right?” a familiar voice said from behind her.

She turned around to find her husband coming out of their bedroom. Ryan was dressed comfortably in sweatpants and a t-shirt. The casual look did nothing to diminish his visual appeal. His warm brown eyes and sweet smile—highlighted by impressive dimples—were contrasted by his impossibly square jaw and the well-muscled frame that strained at his slightly-too-tight t-shirt. He looked as great as ever.

“I am,” she said as he came over and gave her a kiss. ‘It looks like you’re officially done for the day.”

“Yep,” he said, “I got home about ten minutes ago and I’m wiped out. Luckily all Nettles and I have left is some paperwork on our case, which we pushed off until tomorrow morning. Getting back into the groove of field duty has been a process.”

Jessie was slightly surprised by the admission. Captain Parker had been slowly reintegrating him back into the HSS team after a poisoning incident that nearly killed him and left him weakened for over a month.

Ryan had told her in a private moment that he knew getting re-acclimated to work would be slow going. But she didn’t expect him to admit it in front of Kat. She considered that a promising development in his ability to be more open.

“Well, you should definitely take it easy the rest of the evening,” she recommended. “And I plan to join you in that endeavor.”

“I would have thought that between you and Brady, you’d have closed this case already,” he teased, squeezing her hip to let her know he was messing with her.

“We had a pretty good suspect there for a while,” Jessie told him, unfazed by the playful dig. “He was a pageant coordinator with a record of harassment. But he has an ironclad alibi. So first thing tomorrow, we’re going to go through the victim’s other contacts. Jamil and Beth have reams of names for us, maybe too many.”

“I’m happy to help once Nettles and I wrap up tomorrow,” he offered.

“I’ll let Brady know that,” she said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to have you on board.”

“That is if he doesn’t consider three to be a crowd,” Ryan said, though neither of them thought he’d object.

“Speaking of three being a crowd, I’m going to head to my bedroom,” Kat said. “Could I please hitch a ride with someone tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll take you in,” Ryan said. “Where am I dropping you this time—street market, train station, mall?”

“Let’s play it by ear,” Kat told him as she headed down the hallway. “It’s more exciting that way.”

After she closed the door, Ryan turned to Jessie.

“You want to change into your jammies?” he asked. “I’d be happy to accompany you.”

“That would be lovely,” she said as he took her hand and led her back to their room. Maybe this would be their romantic moment.

She hadn’t expected one, with the tension that had been hovering over them of late. There was the ongoing issue of whether they would have a child, whether via birth or adoption. It was already on the back burner even before Ryan had put a formal pause on the process.

He’d initially been the one pushing for them to become parents, but of late his attitude had changed. He’d told her flat out that until she got a handle on the churning ball of rage inside her—the one that seemed on the verge of exploding any time she encountered a truly objectionable perpetrator—he wasn’t comfortable bringing a child into their lives.

Some small part of her was relieved that it wasn’t a constant discussion point for them. But that was overwhelmed by the shame she felt at knowing that her life partner didn’t think she was a safe person for a child to be around. But in this moment, when Ryan was tenderly holding her hand as they stepped into the bedroom, she decided to push her concerns to the mental back burner.

She moved into the closet to pick her jammies for the night and was just sliding off her shoes when a thought occurred to her: she was supposed to check out the pendant necklace in Mark Haddonfield’s box of personal effects to see if it might actually be a thumb drive like the one Marcus Sullivan used.

But doing that would upset the mood, and she wasn’t sure the next time one might come around. Haddonfield would have to wait. Instead of jammies, Jessie grabbed a slinky satin nightgown she thought better fit the occasion. She was just sliding her pants off when her phone rang. She glanced at it and groaned.

“Who is it?” Ryan asked from the bedroom.

“Brady,” she told him.

“I thought you guys weren’t picking up again until tomorrow.”

“We weren’t. That’s what worries me. He wouldn’t call unless it was important,” she said as she answered the call. “What’s up Brady?”

“Sorry to bug you at this hour,” he said. “but there’s been another murder and it looks connected to the Hollinger killing. I was going to head there now. Are you able to meet me?”

“Of course,” Jessie said with a sigh she tried to hide. “Send me the address and I’ll be there ASAP.”

She hung up, then proceeded to pull her pants back up again.

“Rain check?” she asked of Ryan, who was now standing in the closet doorway with a hangdog expression.

“Absolutely,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. “Looking forward to it.”

Jessie was too. In the meantime, she turned her attention from the potential merging of bodies to the investigation into a dead one.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jessie made good time.

It was 11:19 P.M. and at this late hour travelling from Mid-Wilshire to Cheviot Hills only took less than fifteen minutes. Brady was already waiting for her outside the mega-mansion. Unlike her, he hadn’t made the effort to change back into his work clothes. He had on jeans, a Chico State University sweatshirt, and sneakers.

“What do we know so far?” she asked when she joined him.

“The victim’s name is Rebecca Martinez. I’ve already had preliminary discussions with the M.E. and with CSU,” he said. “They’re still working on the official time of death, but we already have a pretty good idea of it.”

“How’s that?” she asked.

"Apparently her husband saw her on a home security camera and called it in," Brady explained. "He's on his way back now on a private plane, but I have a call set up with him in a few minutes."

“A private plane,” Jessie noted. “Where was he?”

“This is an unusual one,” Brady explained. “The husband’s name is Kai Cody. He plays for the L.A. Angels baseball team. He was on a road trip with the team in St. Louis. The team owner gave him his private jet to fly back as soon as he heard what happened. He should be here in about four hours.”

“In that case,” Jessie said, trying to process all this, “maybe I should change up my process and look at the body before we talk to the husband. I don’t want to go into that conversation without knowing the details of the situation.”

“Sure thing,” Brady said, leading her into the house. “The reason we think this is connected to the other case is that Martinez was found wearing a sash and tiara, and just like Patricia Hollinger, it appears that she was posed in a specific position post-mortem.”

“So she’s a beauty queen too?” Jessie asked as she followed Brady down a long hallway to a door where a uniformed officer stood guard.

“Her sash says Miss San Diego 2018,” he said. “A preliminary web search confirmed that she won the title that year. You ready to go in there?’

Jessie nodded. Brady took a step inside, and she did too. To her surprise, they weren't in a bedroom as she'd expected. They were in a living room. The group of people hovering around a figure on the sofa revealed where Martinez was. Before Jessie focused her attention there, she honed in on the trail of blood on the carpet leading from the sofa all the way to another doorway.

“She was killed somewhere else and moved in here?” she said more than asked.

“The bathroom,” Brady confirmed. “It’s a mess in there. We’re confident that the murder weapon was a fireplace poker that was found on the floor next to the vanity. It’s covered in blood. CSU is checking it for prints, but I’m not hopeful.”

“I’ll check that out later,” she said. “For now, let’s take a look at the victim.”

She and Brady walked over to the couch. The deputy M.E. and CSU team stepped aside without having to be asked. Jessie stared at Rebecca Martinez.

The woman wore a lavender negligee, not unlike the one that Jessie had planned to change into tonight. She was propped up halfway on the sofa so that it looked like she was lounging there casually, very much like Hollinger had been posed. As Brady mentioned earlier, she had a sash across her chest and a tiara on her head. Both were largely devoid of blood, suggesting they were placed on her post-mortem.

The woman had likely once been beautiful but it was hard to tell that now. There was significant bruising on her face and neck, along with multiple deep, bloody gashes. It appeared that her left side below the ribs had been deeply pierced, likely by the poker. Her long, black hair was matted with blood, and her green eyes were blank and glassy.

Jessie felt a profound sadness for this woman. She guessed that Rebecca Martinez was in her mid-twenties. She was a beauty queen married to a baseball star living in a giant mansion. Her whole life was ahead of her. Until it wasn’t.

The sound of Brady’s ringing phone jarred her out of her thoughts.

"It's Kai Cody," he said. "We agreed to talk at 11:30, but he's calling a little early. You up for this?"

“Not much choice,” Jessie said.

“Let’s do it somewhere else,” he said, leading her out of the living room to the back patio as he answered the call. “Hello, Mr. Cody.”

“Detective Bowen?” the man asked over speaker, his voice sounding scratchy and raw.

“That’s right,” Brady said as both he and Jessie sat down at the patio table. “I’m here with Jessie Hunt, one of our profilers. We’re both terribly sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Cody said. “I’m just trying to keep my head above water right now. You’ll have to forgive me if I seem a little out of it.”

“We understand,” Brady said. “And we get that this is an incredibly difficult time for you. Having said that, we’re hoping that you can tell us a little more about what happened tonight. The more information we have, the better chance we have of catching whoever did this.”

“Right,” Cody said, sounding beaten down, before sighing heavily. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to employ a technique that I use during games in order to get through this.”

Jessie glanced over at Brady, not sure what that meant. He asked the question for her.

“We’re not sure what that means exactly, Mr. Cody,” he said carefully.

“Just that I’ve developed this thing over the course of my career that helps me in a big moment in a game, or when I’m being heckled by fans at an opposing team’s stadium. I kind of shut out everything except the minute details of the task in front of me. For example, how much is the pitcher that I’m facing sweating? Is the wind making the flags at the back of the stadium blow at all? Is the bat I’m holding positioned at the perfect angle? Zoning in on the particulars allows me to block out any distractions. I call it focused detachment. The only downside is that it makes me into a bit of a stone-faced zombie. Some people say I come across as an emotionless jerk. I’m hoping that if I can go to that place in my head right now, I can answer your questions without completely losing it emotionally.”

“Got it,” Brady said.

Jessie said nothing, pondering Cody's odd comment. It was entirely possible that he was pre-warning them about his impending emotional detachment as a way to explain away a suspicious-seeming lack of feeling at his wife's death. But for now, at least, she was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. And if this "focused detachment" thing really worked, she wondered if it might be a tool she could use to temper her own hard-to-control urges. But that was an issue for another time.

“What do you want to know?” Cody asked.

Brady looked over at Jessie to see if she wanted to start off the questioning. She leaned in to get closer to the phone mic.

“Mr. Cody, this is Jessie Hunt,” she said. “We were hoping you could walk us through what led you to call the police. What made you think something was wrong?’

“Becks and I have a routine when I’m on the road,” he said quietly. His voice became instantly monotonous as he was apparently already using his focused detachment technique. “We always talk about an hour before game time. I find some corner of the locker room and we check in. Then I always call her after the game is over so we can say our goodnights.”

“But not tonight?” Brady prodded.

"It was the same as usual," he answered, his voice as calm as still water on a lake. "The game started at 6:45 P.M., or 4:45 L.A. time. I called her around 3:30, and we talked for ten minutes. The game ended around 7:30 her time, or 5:30 your time. I showered and changed and then did a little press with the beat writers. Then we took the bus back to the hotel and had a team meal. I texted her that I'd call after that was over, and she said she'd be waiting. The meal ended around 11:45 here, or 9:45 for her. I called as soon as I got back to my room. She didn't answer. So I texted. No response. I thought maybe she'd fallen asleep despite our plan to talk. It's happened on occasion."

“So if it wasn’t that uncommon, why did you have concerns?” Jessie wondered.

“I didn’t at first,” Cody said, his voice quavering slightly before returning to the monotone. “I just figured I’d check in on her. We had to move out of our place in Bel Air for some renovations. The house in Cheviot Hills is a rental. And since it doesn’t have the same security as our home, I had a company set up all kind of cameras as an extra precaution. Some are inside the house. So I checked them.”

He paused for a moment, as if gathering himself for what he had to say next. Jessie and Brady waited silently, not wanting to prod him. They didn’t need to. After five seconds, he resumed.

"I saw her on the camera set up in the living room," he said slowly, doing his best to control his tone. "At first I just thought she'd fallen asleep watching TV or something. But then I noticed that she had some kind of crown on her head. That was weird, so I zoomed in on the video. That's when I noticed…the injuries. I called 911 right away."

He stopped at that point. After ten more seconds, it became clear that he was done. Jessie looked over at Brady. She didn't have any more questions for the man right now. Apparently, neither did Brady.

“Okay, thanks for your time, Mr. Cody,” he said softly. “We may have more questions for you once you get back into town, but that’s it for now.”

“Where do I go when I get back?” he asked, sounding like a helpless child. “The police station? A funeral home? I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll send a police liaison to meet your plane,” Brady told him. “They’ll walk you through next steps. For now, we’ll need to take Becks to the medical examiner’s for an autopsy. The house will be temporarily closed off as a crime scene. By the time you arrive, the liaison will have an action plan to help you get through the next few hours and days. They’ll also ask to get access to your home security footage and Rebecca’s phone.”

“Okay,” Cody said, barely audible. “Thank you.”

“Sorry again for your loss,” Brady said.

The line went dead. It took both of them a few seconds to regroup. Jessie got there first.

“We need to get our hands on that security footage as soon as possible,” she said. “And if they haven’t already, your officers should do a thorough sweep of the house to find out how the killer got in. In the meantime, we need to find any possible connection between these women. Obviously, there’s the pageant angle, which feels pretty strong. But I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”

“I’m right there with you,” Brady said.

“I was going to call Jamil and ask him to work an all-nighter, assuming he’s not still at the office anyway,” Jessie said. “We’re not going to sleep any time soon either, so I think we should order some coffee. By the morning, we may end up mainlining the stuff.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jessie preferred to wake up to the dawn.

But on this morning, she discovered the first hints of morning sunlight by glancing out the window of the West Los Angeles police station conference room where she and Brady had been holed up all night. She only wished she had more to show for her lack of sleep.

Both Jamil and Beth had agreed to go back into the office without hesitation and had also been up all night. Among the four of them, they gathered the names and contact information for every person in the pageant community that had interacted with both Patricia Hollinger and Rebecca Martinez. There were more than a few.

Including other contestants, judges, organizers coordinators, and other behind-the-scenes personnel, they already had 16 names. And Jessie was sure they were missing a lot. They planned to start setting interviews up with all of them—starting with those who had criminal records—once the hour wasn't so ungodly.

In the meantime, they'd pursued every other angle they could think of. Officers on the scene had pretty quickly found the killer's entry point. A side gate was unlocked, and so was the sliding door from the backyard into the living room. They'd been able to simply waltz in.

The security video that arrived an hour after Kai Cody touched down in L.A. reinforced that fact. They were able to see the exact moment when the killer walked inside: 9:28 P.M.

The murderer was dressed as they had been in the footage outside Patricia Hollinger’s home—in all black, including a bulky, hooded sweatshirt, a mask, and gloves. Their face was completely hidden, at least to the cameras.

And despite the solid quality of the video, the camera placement, in conjunction with the clothes, made it hard to discern the perpetrator’s height or weight. Even when the killer dragged Rebecca’s lifeless body across the living room carpet and lifted her onto the sofa, gauging their size was difficult to impossible.

What they were able to see was the killer’s methodical method of placing the pageant accoutrements on Martinez. They seemed to be enjoying the process. In that moment, the sight lit a fire in Jessie’s gut that was more powerful than her exhaustion.

But that fire was temporarily extinguished as the hours dragged on. The thought of how long she’d been up—over twenty-four straight hours now— made her eyes suddenly grow heavy. She checked the time. It was 6:09 A.M. This felt like the perfect opportunity for another coffee break. She stretched her arms above her head and then stood up.

“I’m going to get some more liquid fuel,” she said before turning to Brady. “You want anything?”

“I’ll take another cup, thanks,” he told her. “You know how I like it?”

She did, primarily because it was so objectionably memorable. Last night, she’d watched in horror as the detective had dumped a huge serving of cream in his mug before adding a half dozen sugar packets. Of course, as almost always happened with Brady, a solid quarter of the beverage had ended up on his clothing. The “o” in the word “Chico” on his sweatshirt was completely brown.

“I remember,” she assured him, then added for the benefit of the researchers on speakerphone. “You two should take a breather too.”

“I’m going to, but I’ll have to grab something for Jamil,” Beth said. “He’s a little fixated right now.”

“On what?” Jessie asked.

“You asked us to check other possible connections between the victims and we haven’t done that yet,” she explained. “Since things have slowed looking at pageant people, he shifted over to look at other options while I stick with this. He’s deep into it.”

“Understood,” Jessie said as she headed for the door. She expected nothing less from Jamil. And she knew from experience that suggesting he take a break was like yelling into the wind. “Keep me posted.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Beth added. “Detective Hernandez wanted us to pass along word that he won’t be able to help you guys out today as he’d hoped. Apparently he and Detective Nettles hit a snag in their case and they’re going to be stuck here at Central Station for most of the day.”

Jessie had actually forgotten about the late-night offer from her husband. That felt like an eternity ago.

“Okay, thanks for letting us know,” she said, opening the door. “I guess it’s just you and me, Brady.”

“I think we’ll get by,” he replied with a grin that she found impressive considering the all-nighter they’d just had.

She left the conference room and headed down the hall to the break room. Even though this was a police station, the place was deathly quiet. Admittedly, it was very early and West L.A. station wasn’t the madhouse that her place of work, downtown’s Central station, was. But she was still a bit surprised.

The break room was empty so she didn’t have to compete for the cream or the sugars. As she prepped Brady’s cup, she tried to switch gears mentally to give her brain a break. She thought about Kai Cody and whether they could eliminate him as a suspect.

A quick search showed that he had no history of violence. He’d never even got into a fight on the baseball field. Past news stories following his courtship of, and subsequent marriage to Rebecca, made their romance sound like a Cinderella story. Yes, he was thirteen years older than her, but that didn’t seem to be an issue. Every indication they had so far was that the couple was happily married.

Jessie wondered if the Cinderella romance thing might be a motive for someone else. It wasn’t inconceivable that some disturbed person who was a fan of either Cody or Martinez had gotten jealous. But it seemed unlikely. After all, the couple had been married for two years now. An envy-related attack would have probably come soon after the wedding. Besides, that theory didn’t explain why Patricia Hollinger was killed.

She walked back down the hallway to the conference room, this time armed with two large cups of coffee. She opened the door with her elbow and stepped inside. Immediately, she sensed a different energy in the room. Brady was sitting upright instead of slouching. And she thought that she could almost hear an excited crackle through the speakerphone.

‘What’s going on?” she asked.

“Jamil just said he thinks he found a new lead,” Brady explained. “I was about to come get you when you walked back in.”

“Well, I’m here now,” she said, trying to keep cool as she walked over with the coffees. “What have you got, Jamil?”

“I just did a general search for shared contacts of both victims,” he explained. “other than in pageant circles, there was minimal overlap. But I did notice something that didn’t jump out at me before. Both these women were previously divorced. They both married young. Hollinger to her high school sweetheart, who went on to play college football. He’s a TV analyst now. Martinez married a male model she met on a photo shoot. Neither marriage lasted more than two years.”

“Did they have the same lawyer?” Brady asked excitedly.

“No, which was a disappointment to me too,” Jamil answered with a tone that Jessie knew well. It was as close as the researcher got to genuine excitement. It was clear that he was anticipating telling them something good. “But then I checked the attorneys for their exes. It’s the same guy.”

“Who?” Jessie asked, her own sense of anticipation building.

“His name is Benjamin Moran,” Jamil said. “He represents wealthy men, especially younger ones. He has a lot of clients who are actors, athletes, and tech bros. And he’s got a reputation for playing hardball. The word ‘gold digger’ comes up a lot in his court filings. He seems to like to use colorful, even inflammatory language. In fact, both of his initial filings involving these women use the same phrase—‘gold-digging beauty queen.’ That seemed relevant.”

“I would say so,” Brady agreed. “It would be interesting to find out if Mr. Moran simply used that term because it served his professional purposes, or if there’s a more personal element to it. What do you think, Jessie?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she said. “In fact, this lead feels as strong as any of the pageant connections. I say we chat him up first thing. What’s the earliest we can knock on his door without him claiming harassment?”

“You might not have to wait,” Beth told them, her own voice suddenly enthusiastic. “It looks like Moran is a big social media enthusiast. And he just posted a photo ten minutes ago. It’s a selfie of him in the gym at his country club. The caption reads: Shoulder day. Loving the burn!”

“Sounds like a real charmer,” Jessie muttered. “What club is it?”

“The Santa Monica Country Club," she answered. "It looks like it's about a seven-minute drive from the station."

“Do you know the place?” Jessie asked Brady.

“I’m familiar,” he said.

“Is that where you like to get pumped?” Jessie couldn’t help but tease him. “Or do you prefer to go there to get in a quick nine holes?”

“Why can’t it be both?” Brady asked with a crooked grin.

“Great,” Jessie replied. “Then you can show me around after we say hi to Moran. Shall we head out so we catch him before he leaves?”

“Sounds good,” he said. “Just give me five seconds to change into something more presentable.”

“Actually, maybe you don’t change,” Jessie suggested.

“Why not?”

“I like the look,” she told him. “If you go into this fancy club in your coffee-stained sweatshirt, playing up the slobby detective vibe—no offense.”

“None taken,” he assured her.

“If you play up that vibe, I think it’s more likely to crack a few eggs,” she said, “and with an egotistical lawyer like Moran, I think the more cracked he is, the better.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jessie was impressed.

Brady was leaning into the slob energy with reckless abandon. And it was having the desired effect. He’d started even before they found Moran, when pulling up to the valet station at the front of the Santa Monica Country Club, which was on its own compound on a cliffside overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

“I’m gonna leave the car here,” he said to the valet who jogged over, about to tell him he couldn’t park his dented 2010 Nissan Sentra in the “loading only” zone. The young man was just opening his mouth to object when Brady flashed his badge. “Where’s the gym?”

The valet pointed them in the right direction. As they entered the lobby, the sound of their rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the Carrara marble-tiled floor got the attention of a man in a full suit speaking to a member near the entrance to the club café. The man scurried over to them quickly.

“Lay it on thick,” Jessie muttered to Brady. “We want to make a scene. That way, Moran will hopefully talk just to get rid of us.”

“Hello,” the suited man whispered breathlessly as he sidled up next to them. “My name is Cal. I’m the club manager. How may I help you?”

“Yeah,” Brady said loudly, seeming to jut his already abundant belly out even further than normal, “we’re looking for the gym. Your valet pointed down the hall to the left. That right?”

“It is,” Cal assured him, “However our gym facilities are intended exclusively for club members and their guests.”

“How do you know I’m not a member?” Brady demanded belligerently as he started down the hallway. “That’s pretty rude, don’t you think?”

Jessie had to jog to keep up with him, as did Cal.

“Sir, I apologize if that’s the case,” he said. “But I do pride myself on knowing most members on sight. Perhaps we’ve just missed each other. If I could just see your membership card, that should clear everything up.”

“That’s okay, Cal,” Brady said, pointing out the door to the gym to Jessie. “I forgive you for your classist assumption. Me and my lady friend are just going to check out the facilities. No need for an escort.”

He started to open the gym door, but Cal pushed it closed.

"Sir, I'm sorry, but I must insist that you either show me your membership card or leave the club facilities. Of course, I'm happy to take you back to the office where we can discuss membership pricing options."

Brady stared at the man, dead-eyed.

“Cal,” he growled, using a tone Jessie had rarely heard from the happy-go-lucky-detective, “you’re going to want to take you hand off the door.”

Cal left his hand there for another second, then seemed to think better of it. He stepped back and adjusted his suit jacket.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to involve security, sir,” he said huffily.

“You go get ‘em, Cal,” Brady said. “We’ll be in here.”

He opened the door for Jessie. She stepped inside quickly, trying to hide the smile on her face.

“How’d I do?” he asked.

“Great,” she told him. “Hopefully we can find Moran before Cal comes back with security. I want us to be with him when they arrive, so as to really amp up the embarrassment factor for him.”

“Then we better move quick,” Brady said. “Cal’s got a real bee in his bonnet. He’ll be back soon.”

They walked up to the reception desk, where an attractive young blonde sat, wearing a confused expression. She must have seen the dustup at the doorway.

“We’re looking for Benjamin Moran,” Brady told her. “Where can we find him?”

“Um, I saw him pass by from the free weight section over to cardio a couple of minutes ago,” she said, pointing to an area directly behind her. “But I think I’m supposed to ask for your membership card.”

“Don’t have it on me today,” he said. “Maybe next time.”

He headed back to the cardio area. As Jessie followed him, she whispered to the receptionist, “thanks for your help.”

The cardio room was full of people on ellipticals, stationary bikes, and treadmills, but they found Moran without much trouble. He was on the treadmill closest to the doorway, pounding his legs as he ran at what Jessie considered near-sprinting pace. The 34-year-old was in great shape, well-toned, with bronzed skin and light brown hair that flopped slightly with each footfall. Sweat was flying off him and splattering the machine's display. Brady glanced at Jessie.

“Am I still keeping up the obnoxious jerk routine with the guy?”

“If anything, I’d say now’s the time to take it to the next level,” she suggested.

“You got it,” he said and walked over so that he was right in front of Moran’s treadmill.

“Hi, Benji,” he said. “You should take a break. We need to talk.”

Moran gave him a disdainful glare, unsure what to make of this random, slovenly dude now in his eyeline.

“I don’t know you,” he grunted breathlessly. “So don’t call me Benji. And also, screw off.”

He turned his attention back to the display screen, perhaps calculating how this brief interruption had messed with his pace.

“Benji, you can stop running or I can stop the machine for you,” Brady said loud enough to be heard over the spinning treadmill belt and Moran’s heavy strides. He seemed to really be getting into his role now. “It’s up to you.”

The people on the nearby machines were starting to take notice of the growing conflict, just as Jessie had hoped. Behind them, she heard a bit of commotion. Glancing back, she saw Cal, with two security guards, standing at the reception desk. The young blonde was pointing them back to the cardio room.

“Cal’s back,” she said under her breath. “I’ll deal with him while you pull the plug on the treadmill. Then it’s showtime.”

As Brady moved to literally pull the treadmill cord out of its wall outlet, Jessie turned and headed for the cardio room entrance. She met Cal just as he was trying to enter. He opened his mouth, clearly about to read her the riot act, when she held up her ID in front of her face.

"We're LAPD, Cal," she said sweetly. "We're here to have a conversation with Benjamin Moran, and we're so happy to have your support. I'm sure we can count on the assistance of your security officers if Mr. Moran gets testy."

Cal stopped in his tracks, his mouth frozen open, unable to come up with a response. Behind her, Jessie heard the belt of the treadmill slowly come to a stop. That was followed by angry words from Moran.

“What the hell is your problem, man?” he demanded through gasps for air.

Jessie turned around to see the sweaty lawyer extricating himself from the treadmill and moving toward Brady, who waited until the very last second before holding up his badge.

“Thanks for taking the time, Mr. Moran,” he said crisply, his tone now professional even if his appearance still wasn’t. “We need to have a word with you.”

Moran looked at the badge, then at Jessie standing behind him with Cal and the guards nearby. He turned around to see that nearly everyone in the cardio room had stopped their own machines and was watching intently. Wiping the sweat off his brow with a white towel, he sighed heavily.

“You’re trying to embarrass me at my club,” he said, still breathing heavily. “Why?”

“We certainly didn’t mean to embarrass you, Mr. Moran,” Brady said with a broad smile. “We just need to talk with you and this is where you are, so this is where we came.”

“What’s this about?”

“Do you want to talk about that here, in front of your fellow members?” Brady asked. “Or would you rather join us somewhere more private, where any unsavory details can be more closely held.”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” he said, now pointedly looking at Jessie with a shark-like grin. “What you see is what you get.”

“I guess we’re not getting much then,” Jessie mocked, engaging him directly for the first time. “And I’m not sure your clients would like you being so chatty in front of the general public.”

Moran seemed to weigh that point before replying.

“You know, I don’t think I want to be chatty under any circumstances,” he snarled. “So I’m just going to cut my workout short, take a shower, and head into the office. You two enjoy your day.”

He started to leave the cardio room, but Jessie stepped in front of him. She tried to ignore the sudden urge to punch him in the nose.

“We’re having a conversation one way or another, Mr. Moran,” she told him. “It can be here or down at the station. Which do you prefer?”

“Neither,” he said, as he tried to slide past her.

Unfortunately for him, he slightly misjudged the space between them and clipped her left shoulder with his left arm. Under normal circumstances, Jessie would have used this bump as an excuse to take out his knee, drop him to the ground, and pin him while she slapped on some cuffs. But considering that he was an attorney, she fought down the desire and went another way.

She allowed the mild force of their collision to send her “flying” backward as she toppled to the ground, landing on her butt. Moran stopped in his tracks.

“That was an accident,” he said quickly. “I was just trying to get by.”

“Actually,” Brady said, whipping out his own handcuffs, “that was battery. Now we’re definitely chatting at the station.”

He slapped the cuffs on Moran before the man realized what was happening. Jessie, playing into the scenario, moaned dramatically as she rubbed her lower back.

“Are you all right, miss?” Cal asked, scurrying over and helping her to her feet.

Moran’s expression morphed into a combination of disdain and fear.

“I’m not sure,” she said shakily as she slowly stood up. She winced as she straightened her back. “Oh wow, that smarts.”

“You’re just playing it up so you can bring me in,” Moran objected as he struggled against the cuffs.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Brady snarled. “Blame the victim much?”

Jessie looked pleadingly at Cal.

“Do you think one of your security officers could help me back to my car,” she pleaded. “I’m feeling a little uncertain of my footing.”

Though he clearly didn’t buy her act, Moran stopped struggling against Brady. He seemed to sense that there was no point.

“Of course,” Cal said. “Marco, can you please assist the lady?”

As Marco took her forearm and eased her out of the cardio room, Jessie glanced back. Benjamin Moran was staring at the floor, muttering something to himself. But Brady was looking at her with a big smile on his face. He was very proud of himself, as he should be.

Jessie gave him a wink before turning around and hobbling out.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Benjamin Moran lawyered up fast.

Jessie had expected it. She and Brady stared through the one-way mirror into the West L.A. station interrogation room, watching Moran talking to his attorney. The speakers were off, as they legally had to be, so they couldn't hear a word, but it wasn't hard to guess what was being said. The lawyer was instructing his client to just keep his mouth shut, which was par for the course.

But Jessie and Brady still had a card to play. They anticipated that Moran wouldn’t be cooperative, especially after the way he’d been brought in. So rather than press him for answers about these murders right away, they’d decided to hold off until they could really come at him. Even if he said nothing, they might be able to glean something from his physical reaction to their questions.

“So to be clear,” Brady said as they waited for Moran and his attorney to finish up, “we’re hoping to stun him into cooperating?”

"We're hoping to stun him into something," Jessie said. "We get him riled up with the background material Jamil and Beth got for us. Then, when he's primed, we tell him why he's really here and see how he responds. We can watch his body language—see if he clams up even more. That would certainly raise my suspicions. And if he's not our guy, one would think he'd do his best to convince us of that."

“If he’s smart, he’ll keep his mouth shut no matter what,” Brady noted.

“Oh, I believe he’s smart,” Jessie conceded. “I also think he’s a total narcissist. It’ll just be a matter of which side of him wins out.”

“Well, the lawyer’s knocking on the door, so I guess they’re done,” Brady pointed out. “How about we get this party started?”

***

“As I’ve already told you twice,” Colm Missner said, “I’ve advised my client not to answer any of your questions. We’re happy to litigate the accidental bump of Ms. Hunt in court if need be, but I won’t allow Mr. Moran to be interrogated in this manner.”

Missner, a well-put-together attorney in his fifties with wispy gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, spoke with clipped precision.

“But we’re not interrogating him,” Jessie reminded him. “We’re just bringing to Mr. Moran’s attention our awareness of the multiple complaints filed against him with the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles County Bar Association. One would think he’d want to take this opportunity to address them.”

“Those are not criminal allegations and they have no bearing on the current situation,” Missner said. “You got my client into this room under, at best, dubious pretenses. And you still have yet to share why you harassed him at his club in the first place.”

“You know, harassment is an interesting word to use,” Brady replied, “because that’s the exact term used by the three female attorneys who filed complaints with the county bar association and the two others that did the same with the state bar.”

“That’s right, Detective,” Jessie said collegially as if they were hosting a talk show rather than questioning a suspect. “Specifically, it seems that Mr. Moran has an alleged pattern of harassment against fellow attorneys, always female, and always ones who represent female clients. He’s been accused of getting into their personal space and using inflammatory terms to describe them, including: whore, bitch, skank, and cow. In at least two instances, attorneys claim that he made actual physical contact with them in a way that made them fear for their safety.”

“That was crap,” Moran blurted out. “There was no proof of that.”

“Be quiet, Ben,” Missner hissed.

“So it was crap with two different women?” Jessie goaded, “just like you didn’t make contact with me?”

“They’re liars,” Moran grunted.

“Shut up!” Missner ordered.

Jessie decided now was as good a time as any to address the murders. Moran was agitated and not listening to his lawyer. There might not be a better chance to sandbag him.

“It’s those kinds of allegations and your current lack of self-control that has us wondering what else you’re capable of, Mr. Moran.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Moran protested.

To Jessie’s surprise, Missner didn’t interject. He was clearly intrigued. She kept going.

“You sure about that?” she challenged, “because we’ve got two dead bodies that might say different.”

Both men stared at her silently. Jessie kept her focus on Moran, whose expression had gone from confused belligerence to confused apprehension. It was clear that he was both worried and befuddled. But it wasn’t obvious whether the latter was because he didn’t know what she was referencing or because he was surprised that they’d found out what he’d done.

“What exactly does that mean?” Missner managed to ask.

“It means that two women, both of whom were previously in divorce proceedings with Mr. Moran’s clients have turned up dead. And we have your guy here using derogatory terms to describe each woman both on and off the record. His disdain seems almost personal. And we’re just wondering how personal. Did you kill those women, Mr. Moran?”

“Don’t say a word, Ben,” Missner ordered, putting his hand on Moran’s forearm before fixing Jessie with a hard stare. “Are you seriously alleging that my client killed two women? Is that really why we’re here today?”

“We’re here because of the battery your client inflicted upon me earlier this morning,” Jessie said, “but as long as we’re all hanging out, maybe we can clear up the whole murder thing. One would assume that if Mr. Moran wasn’t involved, he’d be shouting it from the rooftops, rather than letting you keep him quiet.”

"You know that's not how it works, Ms. Hunt, or at least you should,” Missner said condescendingly. “You are making serious allegations, And even if my client was at a children’s hospital at the time of these murders, doling out toys for terminally ill kids, I wouldn’t allow him to discuss it until I’ve had the opportunity to review the matter with him privately.”

“Really?” Brady jumped in, “because we’ve had two women, both involved in legal proceedings with your client, killed in the last two nights. An innocent man would surely want to clear his name, especially if he knew that resources being used to investigate him should be going elsewhere. If another woman dies because your guy kept silent, when he could have given us proof of his innocence and allowed us to move on—well I could see some prosecutor considering that a chargeable offense.”

"So you're saying that if you wrongfully charge my client and another woman is murdered because he exercised his Fifth Amendment rights, he's going to be charged with obstruction or something?" Missner challenged. “That’s patently absurd.”

“That’s your opinion,” Jessie countered. “You can share yours and I’ll share mine. I’ve got quite a platform these days. If I called a press conference to address my concerns along with your client’s lack of cooperation, I wonder what it would do for his future business. Are potential clients going to want to hire a man tainted by a murder investigation? Personally, I wouldn’t, but that’s just me. Of course, all this could be resolved if Mr. Moran would just come clean about his whereabouts for the last two nights. That is, unless he has something to hide.”

Jessie had watched as Moran’s body increasingly clenched up with each word she said. To his credit, he didn’t blurt anything out this time. Instead, he leaned over and whispered something to Missner. The lawyer whispered back. Moran replied with a longer, more impassioned response. That seemed to seal whatever deal they’d made. Missner sighed heavily, then spoke aloud.

“My client is willing to give a limited response to your most recent question about his whereabouts,” Missner said. “That will have to suffice for now.”

“Go ahead,” Brady said, apparently not wanting to argue particulars when they generally were getting what they wanted.

“Who was killed?” Moran asked.

“Not your concern for now,” Brady told him. “Where were you on Tuesday between 5 and 7 P.M. and then last night between 9 and 10 P.M.?”

Moran checked his phone.

"On Tuesday, I had a client meeting that ran late," he said. "We were going to be in court the next day so I was reviewing material with him from four until six. Then he left, and I stuck around for another hour to prep. After that, I went home."

“This meeting was in your office?” Brady asked.

Moran nodded.

“Where is that?” Jessie asked.

“The Wilshire Tower in Westwood.”

She looked at Brady and sensed that they were thinking the same thing: That tower was only a ten-minute drive from the crime scene, maybe fifteen in rush hour traffic. Still, it was unlikely he could have made it there in time to sneak in the Hollinger house by 6:06 P.M.

“Was anyone with you after the client left?” she pressed. “Any other lawyers or support staff?”

“My legal assistant, Maryanne, never leaves until I do,” Moran said. “We left together at seven. Took the same elevator down to the parking garage.”

“And last night?” Jessie demanded, trying to keep him off balance even as she saw their hopes of nailing him starting to fade.

“From 9 to 10?” he reconfirmed. “I was at a movie with a friend.”

“Where did you see the movie and who was the friend?” Brady asked.

“It was at the Landmark in Westwood Village,” he said. “Do I really need to say the friend?”

Jessie wanted to clap back at that but let Brady do it.

“Only if you want to confirm your alibi during a murder,” the detective told him.

“Her name is Maryanne,” he said quietly.

“The same Maryanne that serves as your alibi for the first night?” Brady pressed. “Are you seeing your legal secretary, Mr. Moran?”

“We’ve gotten friendly,” he admitted.

“So friendly that she might cover for you while you committed crimes?” Jessie wondered.

“Not that friendly,” Moran said through gritted teeth. “Besides, you should be able to confirm what I said through other means. My office building has security cameras. I’m sure the movie theater does too. It shouldn’t be too hard to prove I was where I said I was.”

Jessie was inclined to agree. But before she gave up on Moran as a suspect, she decided to try to poke him one more time to see if something slipped.

“Does Maryanne know about how you called both Patricia Hollinger and Rebecca Martinez gold-digging beauty queens?”

Moran took a moment to process the names of the dead. This was the first time that anyone had revealed them to him. But it only took a couple of seconds for him to find his footing.

“She’s only been my legal secretary for a year, but she knows my style,” Moran said. “She also knows that I’m a zealous advocate for my clients. If she was that offended, she wouldn’t work for me, or sleep with me.”

“Zealous is one way to put it,” Jessie pushed. “Some might call it overzealous. Others might call it casually cruel. Would Maryanne still sleep with you if she knew that you’d once harangued Patricia Hollinger when you came across her in the supermarket? Or that you went on Kai Cody’s social media and commented that his wife, Rebecca was “a dirty whore?’ That doesn’t feel like standard advocacy.”

“She would probably still sleep with me,” Moran replied with a snide tone and a toothy grin. “I’m really good in bed.”

Jessie noted that he made no attempt to apologize for his behavior, nor did he express any sympathy for the dead. She wanted to needle him a little more but Missner had apparently had enough.

"That's all," he said. "You got the answers to your questions. You may not consider my client a paragon of gentlemanly virtue, but he's provided alibis for both murders, which you can validate through a variety of means. He's cooperated well beyond what is required. I think it's time you let him go."

Jessie, still hung up on the arrogance of Moran’s last comment, worried that any response from her might include a dollop of violence so she said nothing. Luckily, Brady was more chatty.

“We’ll check the alibis,” he said, “but in the meantime your client isn’t going anywhere. He’ll need to be arraigned on that battery charge, so we’ll put in the paperwork on that.”

“You’re just stalling,” Missner said. “He’s going to post bond in milliseconds so why go through this charade?”

Brady stood up, and Jessie did the same.

“You may call it a charade, counselor, but when my partner is attacked by a sweaty wild-eyed harasser, I take it seriously,” he said. “We’ll process your client as time permits. In the meantime, he’s going in a cell.”

As they left the room, Jessie fought back the urge to hug Brady. Even with coffee stains and pastry crumb bits all over him, it would have been worth it. Only her desire to leave Moran twisting in the wind prevented it.

Once they closed the door behind them, Brady turned to her.

“Sorry I couldn’t do more,” he said.

“I thought you did pretty well.”

“Yeah, but it won’t amount to much, He said, looking dejected. “If Moran’s alibis hold up, and I think they will, our best lead just disappeared in a puff of smoke.”

He was right, but Jessie refused to let the setback get her down.

“Then we just have to look for new fires,” she told him.

Unfortunately, they didn’t know exactly where to look. But with two murders in two nights, she wasn’t about to take a break.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kat finally felt like she was making some progress.

The first real breakthrough was when she got near-definitive confirmation that hitwoman Ash Pierce was in Ecuador. And it happened because Pierce made a rare error.

Over the course of the day at her tiny office, Kat reviewed material from Gabriela Estrada, the Ecuadorian cop who’d been working with her. Estrada had sent her every conceivable video clip she could find that matched either the original photos of Pierce or the woman at the Guayaquil port with the long, blonde hair and the baseball cap. The mistake Pierce made was the cap.

It was distinctly indistinct, gray, and without any logo. Very few baseball caps these days are completely blank. Kat understood why Pierce might have chosen one like that. If it had a logo, then that could be tracked using recognition databases, making her easier to find. But wearing a cap without any logo was also a tell of sorts.

Once Kat came to that realization, she had Estrada send her footage or still photos of any shortish woman wearing a cap like that near hostels or cash-only motels. Stunningly, she got multiple hits.

As Kat looked them over, she became increasingly confident that they had the right woman. Over the last five days, she counted a dozen images near a hostel not far from the port. One image was outside a local drugstore. The woman in the video had long, black hair but otherwise fit Pierce’s description.

When Estrada reached out to the store, a counter clerk recalled that the woman in the footage had purchased hair-blonding bleach, scissors, and plastic gloves, all with cash. It stuck in the clerk’s memory because she noted to herself how dramatic it would be for the woman to go from long, black hair to a shorter blonde style, especially doing it herself.

Part of Kat didn’t want to get her hopes up. Would someone as adept at disguise as Ash Pierce really make the mistake of wearing the same cap all around Guayaquil? Then again, Pierce was a sociopathic narcissist. Maybe her confidence had bled into arrogance.

After escaping from a county courthouse and eventually the country, she might have gotten a little cocky and assumed no one would find her in such a far-flung place. And even if they did locate her, Ecuador had no formal extradition treaty with the U.S. She probably felt somewhat safe, even if she was still taking precautions.

It was after Estrada sent her a more recent photo, taken just this morning, that Kat felt ready to act. It showed a petite blonde woman wearing the logo-less gray cap as she exited the aptly named GuayaHostel. Even with the surgical mask she wore, along with a light jacket and pants, her pale skin reflected off the sunlight. There was also a slight bulge on the woman’s right hip, a sure sign that she’d recently secured a weapon. The combination gave Kat certainty that she had the right woman and allowed her to finally make the call.

She dialed a number she’d only used twice in her life, and never professionally. It rang three times before Dalton Tepper picked up.

“You okay?” he asked with urgency in his voice.

“I am,” Kat answered, “but thanks for the concern.”

“No offense, but I haven’t heard from you since that incident in the desert with the crazy hitwoman, so I’m always a little on edge when I see your name when my phone rings.”

“Sorry, Tepp,” she told him. “I realize I never seem to call just to say ‘hi.’ I wish this time was different, but it’s not.”

“I’m used to it, Gentry. What’s up?”

“Is your line secure?” she asked.

“My line is always secure. You should know that. The question is whether your line is.”

“It’s not,” she told him, “which is why I’m about to call you back on a burner. Give me twenty seconds.”

She hung up and opened the drawer with all her burner phones. She picked one she’d never used and which she intended to toss once her interactions with Tepper were done. Dalton Tepper had been one of her fellow Army Rangers back when they served in Afghanistan.

When an IED took out their vehicle, it killed three other Rangers, leaving Kat and Tepp as the only survivors. She still had the facial scars from the incident as permanent reminders. Tepp lost three fingers on his left hand and had his spleen removed. They were the lucky ones.

After the incident, Kat left the military, serving as the security chief at a maximum security prison before eventually transitioning into private investigation. Tepp went a different route. He transitioned from the Rangers to military intelligence and eventually to civilian intelligence. He was currently the CIA station chief in Argentina.

Her burner call connected. She was about to speak, but Tepp jumped in first.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m finding a quiet, secluded spot. Somehow I feel like this needs to be a private conversation.”

“Trust your gut on that, Tepp,” she said.

“How’re you doing by the way?” he asked. “I heard about your fiancé. I’m sorry I never called after that.”

“That’s okay,” she told him, “I wasn’t in the chattiest mood back then.”

“All right,” he said gently. “A conversation for another time, I guess. For now, I’m in a broom closet in the bowels of the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires. What’s going on?”

“From what you said earlier, you obviously remember the thing with the hitwoman who kidnapped me and took me out into the California desert to torture me?”

“I do,” Tepp said. “I think the last time we talked was after that, when you asked me to confirm her association with my employer, which I wasn’t able to formally do.”

“Yes,” Kat said. “I know that on the record, you couldn’t be forthcoming. And I have no recollection of any off-the-record conversations to the contrary.”

“Good,” he said. “Then you have to know that I can’t share any information now that I couldn’t then.”

"That's not what I want," Kat told him. "You've been out of the country for a while, so I'm not sure how much access you get to local L.A. news. Did you hear about the escape?"

“I don’t think so,” he admitted.

“Just over two weeks ago, Ash Pierce escaped from the L.A. County Courthouse on the eve of her trial for multiple murders. Along the way, she killed six more people, including two law enforcement officers. She subsequently escaped the country via the San Ysidro border crossing. After that, she disappeared.”

“I had no idea,” Tepp said. “And I’m really sorry to hear it. Based on what I’ve read about the woman, exclusively through public media accounts of course—.”

“Of course,” Kat agreed sarcastically.

“Based on those accounts of her prior history, I’d imagine finding her again will be a virtual impossibility.”

“You’d imagine so,” Kat said, “but you’d be mistaken. I’m 99% sure I just found her.”

The other end of the line was silent for a good three seconds. Kat could almost hear Tepp processing the news and deciding how to respond. She could also hear her own heart hammering against her chest as the anticipation and dread of an inevitable confrontation with Pierce became more of a reality.

“Where?” he finally asked.

“Guayaquil, Ecuador,” Kat said simply.

“Oh, that’s smart,” Tepp replied, sounding impressed. "No extradition treaty with us, but not actively hostile either. A low-profile location that would allow her to hide in plain sight. How are you so sure?"

“I’ve got a local cop who’s been feeding me footage from municipal security cameras,” she explained. “I won’t bore you with all the details, but I have the address of the hostel I believe she’s staying at or at least was, as of this morning.”

“That’s great,” he said guardedly, “so why are you calling me instead of having your cop friend head over there?”

“Because Estrada doesn’t have confidence in her department,” Kat said. “It’s one thing for her to share data with me. That’s a one-on-one secure communication. But getting a police special operations unit to raid the hostel to secure a former Marines Special Operations element leader and—forgive my bluntness—CIA assassin, is a big deal. She’s worried that word might get out and someone with questionable affiliations might warn Pierce in return for a big payday.”

“So you want my help?”

“Or the help of friends of yours. I know the CIA station in Ecuador is based out of Quito. I was hoping you could have your buddies follow up on this lead, and if it had merit, escort the asset back to the States.”

“To be clear, you want our agents in-country to kidnap Pierce and secrete her out of a sovereign nation back to the U.S.”

“You guys do that sort of thing all the time,” Kat teased. “Is it really that big an ask?”

“We actually don’t do that anywhere near as often as you might think,” Tepp objected. “and it is a huge deal. Not to mention risky. I’d have to get approval at some pretty high levels.”

"Yeah, but imagine the reward," Kat cajoled. "You run the op and get credit for it. You'd be a hero, bringing in someone who knows the agency's secrets and is clearly volatile enough to reveal them. She's a loose cannon. Wouldn't your bosses like to get hold of her? Isn't it preferable if the public thinks she's still on the lam, but she's really safe and secure at a CIA black site where she can't do any more damage? That's worth the risk, right?"

Again, there was a long silence on the phone.

“How long to get from Quito to Guayaquil?” he asked. “I know you’ve already broken it all down.”

“About eight hours by car,” she answered immediately. “Less than an hour by plane.”

Tepp exhaled deeply.

"All right," he said. "Let me see what I can do. In the meantime, I'm going to give you a secure link to send me the hostel address along with every identifying photo you have of her. Okay?"

“Thanks, Tepp,” she said.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” he warned her.

"I know, but you will," she said. "Two things. You should move quickly. She just bleached her hair. That could just be to keep hidden in general. Or it could be a sign that she's planning to move again soon. She needs to be wrapped up while there's still time."

“Understood,” he said. “What’s the other thing?”

“It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway,” Kat replied. “Pierce is incredibly dangerous. I know you have files on her that indicate as much. But she’s quite sneaky in person. She’s tiny. She projects vulnerability. She uses that to lull people into complacency. Then she strikes. Don’t let your people underestimate her.”

“You’re right,” Tepp said. “It goes without saying.”

"Yeah, well, I felt obligated," Kat said. "I still have nightmares about her. I don't want anyone else to deal with that or worse. Keep me posted."

“You know I will.”

Kat hung up, feeling genuinely optimistic about this whole thing for the first time in weeks.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There were little fires everywhere.

Jessie was starting to feel overwhelmed. Jamil and Beth had kept busy while she and Brady were questioning Benjamin Moran. And they’d found so many potential leads that Jessie felt she needed to take a break. Since lunch had just arrived, it felt like the perfect time.

“I’m be back in a few,” she announced to Brady and to the researchers on speaker. “I just need to clear my head.”

Jamil and Beth had done fantastic work, expanding the list of potential connections between the two victims—pageant and otherwise— from 16 to 29. But rather than go out and start questioning them, Jessie and Brady had decided to hold off, looking for other details that might help them narrow their search.

That’s why they were waiting for criminal record checks on half of the shared connections. In the interim, Beth had been scouring potential suspects’ social media profiles to see if any of them were out of town on either night. It might not completely eliminate them as suspects, but it would lower those folks on the priority interview rankings.

Jessie stepped out the back of the building. Unlike Central Station, West L.A. station didn’t have an interior courtyard where she could go to gather her thoughts. But the back of the building, where many officers went to smoke, had several benches facing a row of trees. She sat down on one and, despite her apprehension that she might completely drift off, closed her eyes.

As Jessie settled in on the bench, she allowed her mind to drift. Oftentimes, she found that she did her best work when she stopped pressing so hard and let her instincts guide her. Right now, her brain was so cluttered with the names of pageant contestants, coordinators, judges, and even fans, that she was having trouble seeing the forest.

There had to be some other connection between Patricia Hollinger and Rebecca Martinez, or at least a perceived connection in the mind of their killer. It made sense that it had something to do with pageants, especially considering how both women were posed with tiaras and sashes. But that wasn’t a certainty.

Maybe the killer just happened to see those items in the victims’ houses and thought that mocking their pageant history in death was a nice, cruel touch. Maybe adorning them that way was a comment on their shared unattainable attractiveness rather than a specific attack on their pageant background.

Neither of those options seemed as likely as the idea that this was punishment by someone affiliated with a past pageant, but considering them was already loosening up the knots in her brain, so she went with it.

The truth is that there were other connections between the women. They lived close to each other. Even though Martinez had temporarily moved to Cheviot Hills, her normal house was in Bel Air, less than fifteen minutes from Hollinger’s Brentwood residence.

It was possible that they shared other connections—perhaps the same utility company, which might employ an obsessed fan. Or maybe a food delivery driver who frequented their homes and became fixated on them both. There were countless possibilities, many of which Jamil had already plugged into the system, hoping for a hit.

And of course, there was the more obvious connection—the one that had originally led them to question the divorce attorney, Benjamin Moran, in the first place. Both women had married young, then gotten divorced before remarrying older men.

In both their cases, the original husbands had made out well in the divorce proceedings, managing to avoid alimony payments entirely while still leaving the marriages with sizable assets. That gave them little motive to be upset with their exes, at least financially.

But neither woman was kneecapped by ending up on the wrong end of their divorce settlements. Patricia Hollinger remained active in the pageanting world, earning a healthy six-figure salary. And Rebecca Martinez did even better than that through her modeling work.

So neither of them was desperate when they met their second husband, although the increase in wealth for them after remarrying was exponential. Still, it was hard to view either of them as the gold-diggers that Benjamin Moran had portrayed them as.

In Martinez’s case, her new husband was almost a decade and a half older than her. But he was also an athlete, good looking and in great shape, and well-liked by everyone in the city. It wasn’t as if Rebecca would have to scrunch her eyes closed when she kissed the man.

And while real estate magnate Robert Hollinger was a full thirty years older than Patricia, he wasn’t ancient by any means. And after having met him, Jessie could see the appeal. In addition to his doting nature, the man was a silver fox type, attractive and charming.

One could never be certain, but so far, based on both women’s online correspondence and social media posts—along with interviews with their friends—everything suggested that they’d both legitimately married for love and were generally happy with their husbands. There was no sign, in either instance, that they were looking to break up or secretly involved with someone else.

Taking a more expansive view, Jessie had to concede that these divorces and remarriages had worked out for everyone—ex-husbands, ex-wives, and new husbands. That is until two days ago, when the wives started dying.

Jessie felt a nagging itch as she turned over that last conclusion in her head. These divorces and remarriages had seemingly worked out for all directly involved here. But was that always the case with Moran’s clients? Maybe this process wasn’t so smooth for everyone.

She couldn’t help but wonder if any of his previous clients had experienced less satisfactory outcomes when they got divorced. Could one of them have been so unhappy with how things went that they got violent?

Of course, the logical target of their ire would be Moran, the lawyer who theoretically let them down. But taking him out would make them an obvious suspect. The same suspicion would fall on them if they decided to get revenge on an ex-wife who’d gotten the better of them.

But then Jessie allowed her mind to wander and consider a more avant-garde strategy on the part of the killer. What if they went after other women, ones who had fared less well in their divorce proceedings? It would allow the murderer to fill some need for vengeance without putting the spotlight on themself. And it would put Moran—the lawyer who'd failed them—under the microscope as a potential suspect. It would be a more complicated but still effective way to get retribution.

Admittedly, it was a wild, convoluted theory. But it was no crazier than some others she’d come up with that had been spot on. It was certainly worth looking into. All she needed was for Jamil to check specifically on Moran’s clients who didn’t fare as well in their divorces and might have an axe to grind.

She opened her eyes and popped up off the bench, slightly rejuvenated despite her sleepless night. She had something new to go on, and that was better than the situation sixty seconds ago.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hannah was late for class.

She and Lizzie had met up for lunch at a campus café and got so involved in their conversation that she completely lost track of time.

Now it was 1:58. Even after saying a quick goodbye to Lizzie, she still had a five minute walk to get to her 2 P.M. class. She thought about running but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. She’d just take the hit if the professor gave her a hard time.

As she veered onto the walking path with the most direct route to her building, her eyes focused on the sidewalk in front of her. She was briefly startled as someone fell into step beside her. She jolted her head upright as her fists clenched, ready to defend herself.

It was Finn Anderton. She unclenched her fists, though she wondered if she really should. Finn had been acting awfully strange of late, and she found it unsettling. He didn’t look great either.

Usually his blond hair looked casually windswept but today it was plastered to his forehead. His gray eyes, normally open wide like an enthusiastic puppy, looked troubled. The crooked grin that typically highlighted his pronounced dimples was nowhere in sight. And his lean but powerfully built frame was currently obscured by his hunched shoulders and tense bearing.

“Sorry if I surprised you,” he said, “I just saw you across the quad and was rushing to catch up. You headed to class?”

“Yes, and I’m late,” she told him, picking up the pace to a near-jog.

“Mind if I talk to you about something while we walk?” he asked.

“I’m really in a rush, Finn,” she told him.

“Please,” he said, “it’s not about Chaz.”

Chaz was Charlie “Chaz” Newman, a pledge in Finn’s fraternity who had gone missing for several days a couple of months ago during a hazing-esque scavenger hunt. Finn had enlisted Hannah’s help to find the guy. But during their search, Hannah was appalled to learn that Finn seemed as focused on protecting his fraternity’s reputation as on finding Chaz, if not more so.

Hannah ultimately located Chaz, who had fallen down a wooded hill during an epileptic seizure and got disoriented and lost. But even after his recovery, the bad taste remained in Hannah's mouth. She no longer saw Finn as the cute boy she was having an extended flirtation with. He was also the guy whose priorities shifted uncomfortably when the heat was on. She'd gone from feeling a real connection with Finn to being unsure if she could trust him at all. That was a deal breaker for her, and things had never been the same since.

They were still friendly, but she put the brakes on the flirting, which he didn't seem to be handling all that well. In recent weeks, she'd noticed him showing up in places where he had no business. It was off-putting, to say the least.

“What is it about, then?” she asked, not slowing her pace, “and please be quick.”

“I know you’ve been hanging around with that Dallas dude,” he said. “But I just had to tell you—I don’t think he’s a good guy.”

Hannah felt a surge of self-righteous anger rise in her chest but forced herself to take a deep breath before responding.

“First of all,” she said, noting that her tone was even but cold, just as she intended, “do you really think you’re in a position to be passing judgment on the moral failings of other people—?”

"I've already apologized for that—" he interrupted.

But she was having none of it.

"More importantly," she continued, cutting him off as he had done to her, "it's none of your business, Finn. I didn't ask for your input on other guys, and I don't want it."

“Just hear me out for two minutes,” he pleaded as he tried to keep up with her.

“No,” she said, annoyed at the anger that was leaking into her voice but needing to make herself clear. “Listen, I know you’ve been spying on me, following me around campus. And it’s really starting to creep me out. I thought if I just let you work out your feelings on your own timetable, things would settle down. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. We’re not an item and I’m starting to think that friendship is off the table at this point too. So here’s what’s going to happen—.”

“Can I just say one thing?”

"That won't be necessary," she said flatly. "I don't know what my situation is with Dallas, but I do know it's not your concern. I understand that may be hard for you to hear, but that's not my responsibility to solve for you. However you do that, you have to let all this go. If you can't do that, I'll have to get serious."

“What does that mean?” he demanded. “Are you going to sic campus security on me for trying to look out for you?”

She amped up the pace even more. Her building was in sight, and she couldn't get there soon enough.

“I don’t need security. I can take care of myself, as you’ve seen in person,” she assured him. “But do you hear yourself, Finn? What you consider ‘looking out for me’ feels a lot like obsession. I need you to stop, for both our sakes.”

“But—!” he started to object.

“I’m going to keep walking,” she said over him. “That’s my building, as you already know. You are going to stop walking, go in some other direction, and hopefully go find a quiet spot where you can take a long, hard look at yourself and ask whether you like who you’ve become lately. But unless I initiate a conversation with you, this is the last time we’ll be talking for a while.”

Then she did actually break into a jog as she hurried up the building’s steps, leaving him behind. She could feel Finn’s presence, his eyes on her as she ascended the stairs.

But she never looked back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“I don’t know,” Brady said. “That feels like a longshot. Maybe we should stick to the pageant connections for now. They’re way more direct.”

The detective was referring to Jessie’s theory that an unhappy client of Benjamin Moran’s might be murderously taking out their frustration on the ex-wives of other clients as a way to make Moran look suspicious and keep the spotlight off themself.

“I agree that they are more direct,” Jessie told him, sitting down at the conference room table, “but there’s no harm in plugging this alternative idea into the database and seeing what pops up. Especially since those pageant connections haven’t given us any obvious suspects yet.”

Despite Brady’s reservations, it didn’t take Jamil long at all to search through Benjamin Moran’s past clients for ones with an axe to grind. In fact, it had taken longer for Jessie to explain her hypothesis to the group than it had for Jamil to find a decent suspect.

“I have one,” Jamil interrupted.

“That’s fast,” Jessie marveled, “but just one?”

"Amazingly, yes," Jamil said. "In almost every case on file, Moran either got his client an advantageous distribution of assets or, at the very least, an equitable one. Except in one case."

“Who is he?” Jessie asked.

“It’s not a ‘he’ actually,” Jamil corrected. “Her name is Diana Hughes. She's 51, a womenswear fashion executive. Worth close to $30 million, according to industry estimates. She got married to a much younger woman two years ago. But it didn't last long. Her wife left her for a guy a year ago. The ex got a large settlement, including alimony. From what I can glean here, the judge wasn’t very sympathetic to Hughes. He seemed to think that she took advantage of her young wife. In fact, he didn’t seem to like adjudicating a lesbian divorce at all. His language is pretty caustic. Regardless, Hughes ended up paying through the nose.”

“How did Moran blunder on this one case and no others?” Brady wondered.

“From what I can tell,” Jamil said. “It looks like he didn’t engage in the vitriolic hyperbole this time around that marked his other cases.”

“Maybe he was being strategic,” Beth suggested. “He might have thought that calling one woman all those names—dirty whore, for example—wouldn’t be as effective when both parties were women.”

“Whatever his reasoning,” Jamil continued, “it didn’t work. By any measure, he lost this one.”

“I’m guessing Diana Hughes didn’t react well,” Jessie mused.

“Your guess would be correct,” Jamil told her. “In the six months since the divorce was finalized, she’s kept very busy. First, she filed suit against Moran for incompetence. She has also been accused of both harassing and stalking her ex. She actually had a restraining order filed against her last month.”

“This sounds promising,” Jessie said, looking over at Brady. To her surprise, he appeared far less impressed. “What’s wrong?”

He sighed before answering.

“I’m just as frustrated as you are about how our leads haven’t panned out,” he replied carefully. “And I’m not saying this one is bad. I just think it doesn’t make sense for our next interview to be with the ex-wife of a woman who isn’t a murder victim.”

“Yet,” Jessie prompted. “She might be saving the most personal kill for last.”

“Possibly,” Brady conceded. “But to be angry at her ex, her lawyer, and maybe even the judge, but take it out on two other women entirely feels like a stretch.”

“It’s a stretch if this is all ‘crime of passion’ stuff,” Jessie insisted, “but if this was well planned out in order to throw us off the scent of the logical suspect while satisfying her urge to kill, it suddenly makes a lot more sense.”

As she spoke, Jessie silently acknowledged to herself that she might be describing herself as much as Diana Hughes. Was she projecting her ever-simmering impulse to exact violent retribution on wrongdoers onto Hughes? It was certainly a possibility, but that didn’t mean she was wrong. But however confident she felt, Brady still looked skeptical.

“Then why dress them up like they were in pageants?” Brady pressed. “What does that have to do with Diana Hughes’s divorce? Was her ex a beauty queen too?”

“Not according to what I see here,” Jamil said. “It looks like she’s done some modeling but was never on the pageant circuit.”

“Look,” Jessie said in frustration. “The connection to the pageant stuff might end up being clear cut. Or it could ultimately only be explained via the mindset of our killer. We might not be able to truly understand the motive until we catch this person.”

“I understand,” Brady said, sounding irritated himself, “but I think we should start with the low-hanging fruit before we try to snag one on a branch high up.”

“Maybe you guys should see what Captain Parker thinks is the best path forward,” Beth suggested, clearly trying to smooth things over.

But Jessie wasn’t in the mood to wait around for a decision from her boss, who didn’t know all the intimate details of the case and might not put as much stock in Jessie’s intuition as she might hope.

“That’s okay,” she said, standing up from the conference table. “We don’t have to agree on everything. Brady, you stay here and work with Jamil and Beth to determine which pageant-related folks are the best suspects. In the meantime, I’ll go have a friendly chat with Diana Hughes.”

“Hold up,” he said. “You shouldn’t go talk to her alone just in case she is our killer.”

“I realize that I’m just a profiler and not a cop, but I can take care of myself,” she told him. “Besides, if Hughes is innocent, she might be more forthcoming if she doesn’t have a detective in her face. And if she’s guilty, she might get overconfident without you there and let something slip.”

“Or she could just grab something heavy and whack you in the skull, which has been concussed multiple times,” Brady reminded her. “Ryan would kill me if I let you go alone.”

“Then I won’t go alone,” Jessie told him, knowing that her pride was now bordering on petulance. “Jamil, where’s Hughes’s office?”

“It’s downtown,” he said, “not too far from here, at the edge of the garment district.”

“Okay,” she said as she headed for the door. “Please send me the address. Then put out a request for a volunteer—a uniformed officer who can spare an hour. Have them meet me at the front of the building. They can accompany me to the interview. Then I’ll be extra safe.”

She could hear Brady express his continued reservations as she walked out the door. But she didn’t turn around or reply.

This was going to be a solo effort.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Caroline Walters was trying not to speed.

She peeked at the clock. It was 2:12 P.M., almost ten minutes since she'd left the grocery store. With the perishables in her car, most notably the ice cream, she couldn't help but press her foot down a little harder on the accelerator.

But as she pulled off the main street and into her residential neighborhood, she slowed down some. People walked their dogs here. Parents pushed strollers. Kids rode bikes. She didn’t want to accidentally hit someone because she was trying to get her mint chocolate chip in the freezer before it melted.

Not that Frank would care. Unlike her ex, who had a real temper and could be incredibly controlling, her current spouse was a teddy bear. Caroline had some suspicions that he might not be all sweetness and light at work, but he had an excuse. As a renowned heart surgeon, he dealt with life and death situations on a regular basis. If he was short with folks in the operating room, he deserved a little understanding.

Caroline slowed at a stop sign and took half a second to glance at herself in the rear-view mirror. She was happy that she didn’t look as frazzled as she felt. Though her modeling days were now well behind her, she thought that she still looked fairly desirable, even after a day like today. Her dirty blonde hair still had bounce and her light blue eyes hadn’t lost their sparkle.

No one would have believed that Carrie Madrona—as she was known back in her college modeling days—would prefer being in jeans and a plaid button-down shirt as opposed to a fancy dress, especially when the jeans had paint and dried spaghetti sauce on them. But that’s what the modeling was for in the first place.

Carrie always wanted to teach elementary school, specifically kindergarten. And the modeling that she took up in high school and continued through college allowed her to get her degree without any student debt. But once she got her current position with the kids at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School, there was no need to keep doing all those time-consuming photo shoots.

Her previous spouse wasn’t happy that she quit modeling. Carrie suspected that they liked the cachet that came with being married to a model. Maybe that was one of the reasons the marriage didn’t work out, although Carrie thought that there were other, more serious issues.

The divorce left her flush so that she didn't have to return to modeling to help pay the bills. But she'd never really been a person who put an emphasis on money, so her life didn't change that dramatically. Her joy came from helping those little kiddos with their little hands, the ones that accidentally spilled paint on her jeans and, today at least, intentionally threw a handful of cafeteria pasta on her.

Carrie pulled onto her own street as she marveled at how different her life was from just months ago. Back then, she was a recent divorcee, still working as a kindergarten teacher but living in a one-bedroom apartment. Now she lived with her surgeon husband in a chichi part of town in a mansion that had multiple bathrooms which were bigger than her old bedroom.

But she was still a teacher, and that’s what mattered most, though that might change soon. For a while now, she and Frank had discussed her "retiring," as odd as that sounded for a twenty-five-year-old woman. It was his idea, actually.

His pitch was two-fold. First, he’d made it clear how important travel was to him. He loved to check out exotic parts of the world, and he loved doing it with her. But her school year schedule only gave them a limited window in the summer to explore the globe.

The other part of his pitch was more sensitive. Frank, at 53, was more than double her age, which hadn’t been a barrier to them falling in love. More of an issue was his concern that if they had kids—which he badly wanted—he wouldn’t be able to play with them on the floor if they waited too long. Or worse, not make it to their high school graduation.

Carrie thought he was being unnecessarily morbid but she didn’t say that. After the interpersonal coldness of her last spouse, Carrie was happy to be with someone who could express their vulnerability. And she knew that if she insisted on continuing teaching, he’d make his peace with it.

So they’d come to an agreement. Carrie stipulated that she wanted to teach for at least two more years. She loved the kids too much to put a stop to it so soon after starting. Then she’d switch over to being a substitute so that they could travel more and hopefully get pregnant. She teased him that if he stayed in shape, he should still be able to get on the ground with an infant without too much trouble.

But she had one more request—which was really a politely worded demand. Once she transitioned out of full-time teaching, she wanted him to help her bankroll a foundation that would help underprivileged children with an emphasis on two major priorities: providing nutrition and early reading assistance in public schools like the one where she worked. He agreed before she’d even finished explaining the idea.

Carrie pulled into the driveway and popped the trunk. She had four bags of groceries, so she'd need to make two trips. She grabbed the first load and headed for the front door. After fumbling with the keys for a moment, she got the door open and headed into the house to drop off the bags on the kitchen counter. Then she’d go back for the rest.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The woman followed Caroline Walters down the street, making sure not to get too close.

She glanced at the time. It was already 2:15. She said that she’d be back at the office by 3 P.M., which could get complicated, depending on how this went.

As she watched her target make a long, full pause at the stop sign, a singular thought popped into her head: Walters put on a better show than the others. Both of the prior victims made no secret of how much they relished their new, uber-luxurious lives with their wealthy, older husbands.

Walters had managed to keep her avarice under wraps so far. She still worked at some crappy, broken-down school, wiping drool from toddlers’ mouths. Her wardrobe hadn’t changed dramatically since the wedding, and she still drove the same Jeep Compass she’d had for the last seven years. To any casual observer, Walters was an angel.

But the woman knew it was all a front. Just like the others, Walters was a two-timer who had abandoned her spouse for an older, richer model. It was both obvious and offensive. And like the others, Walters would pay for her rapaciousness.

The woman observed Walters pull into her driveway, but she kept going down the street until she could find a spot to make a U-turn. When she returned, she noted that Walters had left the trunk open and was walking toward her front door with grocery bags in each hand.

The timing was perfect. The woman parked the car on the street behind a large hedge that blocked her own vehicle from being seen by any home security cameras. Then she got out of the car and looked around the neighborhood. There was no one in sight.

She was already dressed all in black, but now, as she walked toward the house, she pulled out the black ski mask and put it on her head. Then she slid on the black gloves. Finally, as she walked down the path, she tapped her right side to make sure the sheath was still connected to her waistband. In the sheath was a ten-inch hunting knife.

Satisfied that everything was in place, she walked through the open front door into the house.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Jessie made good time.

After zipping through traffic, she pulled into a loading zone spot just after 3 p.m. She looked up at the tall downtown building where Diana Hughes's womenswear company, XX ONLY, was based. She was just undoing her seatbelt when she was startled by a rap on her window.

Her hand went to her holster as she looked over. But she relaxed slightly when she saw that it was a uniformed male officer. She rolled down her window.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you,” the young man apologized. He barely looked old enough to be on the force, with brown hair parted neatly to the right, ruddy cheeks, and eyes that looked like they had yet to see many of the horrors his job could entail.

“Officer Devery?” she asked, making sure this was the cop Jamil had mentioned would be meeting her.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, nodding politely, “but you can call me Harper if you like.”

"Okay, Harper, she said, getting out of the car, "though we'll keep it formal when we're with the subject, okay? A little more intimidating, you know."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

“And you can call me Jessie,” she said, “or Ms. Hunt when we get upstairs.”

“Sounds good,” he said, holding the car door open for her as she got out. “I’ve been here for a bit so I went inside. The XX ONLY office is on the 18th floor.”

"All right, let's head up," Jessie told him, slamming her door shut. "By the way, Harper, if you don't mind me asking, how long have you been on the force?"

“I don’t mind, ma’am—er, Ms. Hunt,” he said with a sheepish smile. “I just got out of the academy last week. I specifically requested Central Station in the hope that I might be able to work with Homicide Special Section. So of course I volunteered right away when I heard you needed an officer to accompany you here.”

“We’re flattered, Harper,” she told him as they entered the lobby, “but don’t get your hopes up on this outing.”

“Yes, Ms. Hunt,” he said. “I meant to ask you about that. What exactly are we doing here? All I know is that you plan to talk to a woman named Diana Hughes.”

“That’s right,” Jessie explained as Officer Devery waved to the security guard, who he’d apparently already cleared their entrance with. “Hughes runs XX ONLY. She’s also a person of interest in a murder investigation I’m working with a detective from West L.A. Station.”

“You think she’s the killer?” Devery asked excitedly as they entered the elevator and he hit “18.”

“It’s possible,” she told him before tempering his expectations, “but like I said, don’t get your hopes up. Far more likely is that Hughes is just a disgruntled divorcee unhappy that her ex married someone else, in this case, an older man. She’s been cited for harassment and stalking, which makes her more intriguing than most, but that doesn’t mean she killed anyone. You’re mostly here to remind her—by your simple presence—not to do anything stupid, whether she has committed the crime or not.”

“So I’m here to intimidate her?” he checked as the doors opened and they started down the hallway.

Jessie smiled, hoping it didn’t come across as condescending. Harper Devery didn’t yet have the on-the-job experience to intimidate anyone, but she kept that to herself.

“I think the uniform and the gun will speak volumes without you having to,” she assured him. “Unless Hughes pulls out a mallet and comes at me, you shouldn’t have to do much at all.”

They reached the office doors of XX ONLY. Devery opened one for her, and they stepped inside. The place was hopping, with folks—mostly women—zipping around at breakneck speed with focused looks on their faces.

Jessie walked up to reception with Devery beside her and smiled at the young woman with the short, severe black hair, pale skin, and bored expression.

“Hi,” she said, in no mood to mince words. “I’m Jessie Hunt with the LAPD. This is Officer Devery. We need to speak with Diana Hughes immediately.”

She felt a tinge of satisfaction when her words made the boredom disappear from the receptionist’s face.

"I know she was out of the office for a while," the woman said, picking up her phone, "But she should be back now. I'll check with her assistant."

“Thank you,” Jessie said before glancing at Officer Devery, who was making a valiant but goofy attempt to look intense.

“Gail, is Ms. Hughes back from her appointment,” the young woman whispered into the handset before listening to the reply. Then she continued. “Okay, I’m going to send some folks back to you. They’re from the police and they need to speak with her.”

After a brief pause, the receptionist looked up at Jessie.

“Gail says she’s supposed to go into a meeting in a minute,” she said.

“Please tell Gail that the meeting will need to be postponed,” Jessie informed her. “Now if you could hang up and lead us back there, Officer Devery and I would be most appreciative.”

The receptionist nodded.

“We’re coming back now, Gail,” she said, then hung up.

She scurried out from behind the desk and motioned for them to follow her as she led them down a long hallway to a glass-walled office near the back corner of the floor. A wispy blonde that Jessie assumed was Gail sat at a small desk just outside the office. She stood as they approached. Behind her inside the office, a statuesque woman with bright red hair was looking out her corner window at the city.

“Thanks,” Jessie said to the receptionist before turning her attention to Gail. “I’m Jessie Hunt. I work for the Los Angeles Police Department, and this is Officer Devery. We’re here to speak with Ms. Hughes. Please let her know.”

“She’s on a call so I didn’t get a chance to tell her you were here yet,” Gail said, “but I’ll announce you.”

Gail knocked on the glass door and started to open it. Diana Hughes turned around. Jessie noted that she had an earpiece in her left ear.

“I told you to push the meeting until I finished the call,” Hughes barked at her. “Why are you interrupting me?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Hughes,” Gail said meekly. “But there are people here from the police who need to speak with you.”

Hughes turned her attention to Jessie and Devery, eyeing them skeptically.

“I’ll be with them in a minute,” she sneered. “I have to finish this call.”

Gail helplessly looked back at Jessie, who felt the animosity that was already simmering in her gut rise to a boil. She turned to Devery.

"Stay out here and look menacing," she said quietly. "If I wave my right arm above my head, that's your sign to come in. Otherwise, this is going to be a ladies' heart-to-heart. Okay?"

“Okay,” Devery said, spreading his feet wide to assume what he must have thought was an intimidating posture.

“Thanks for your help, Gail,” Jessie said, walking over to the door and yanking it open. Once inside, she fixed her gaze on Hughes, who had turned back to the window. She addressed the woman’s back. “Your call is over. We’re talking now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Jessie got way more satisfaction than she should have from Hughes’s reaction.

The woman, clad in tan pants, a black top, and a red power blazer that matched her hair, spun around. Her face turned as crimson as the rest of her. Jessie noted that Hughes’s hair looked slightly damp.

“This is an incredibly important call regarding our fall line,” she objected. “I can’t just push it off.”

"And this is an incredibly important visit about some very serious crimes," Jessie told her as she walked in and took a seat in one of the plush chairs opposite Hughes's desk. "That takes priority, so please hang up. I'd hate to ask Officer Devery to come in here and make things more formal.”

Hughes, clearly seething, took several seconds to compose herself before muttering into the phone. “I’ll call you back.”

“Thank you,” Jessie said with less sincerity than she’d intended.

“Who are you again?” Hughes asked, sitting down across the desk.

Jessie wasn’t sure if Hughes was playing dumb or really had no idea who she was. The woman was either genuinely unaware or very good at hiding that she wasn’t.

“My name is Jessie Hunt. I’m a criminal profiler with a special unit of the LAPD.”

“Your name sounds vaguely familiar,” Hughes said. “What is this all about?”

“We’re conducting an investigation and your name came up,” Jessie told her, keeping the particulars vague for now. “So we had a few questions for you.”

“My name came up?” Hughes said derisively. “What does that mean exactly?”

“I noticed your hair is a bit damp,” Jessie replied, ignoring the question. “Why is that?”

Hughes seemed surprised by the inquiry but answered.

“I just came from a spin class at my gym,” she said. “I took a quick shower after. I guess I didn’t dry my hair to police satisfaction. Is that a crime these days?”

“Not yet,” Jessie said, doing her best to keep a lid on her growing hostility toward the woman, but sensing that she was about to fail. “But harassment and stalking are crimes, as you well know, as does your ex-wife. What can you tell me about that?”

“Did she put you up to this?” Hughes demanded, slamming her palms down on the top of her desk, “because that sounds about right for that bitch.”

“Wow,” Jessie noted through gritted teeth, ignoring the urge to slap the smirk off the woman’s face, “for someone who has a restraining order out on them, you’re really not all that interested in changing the perception of you.”

"Why should I walk on eggshells?" Hughes said. "She blew the whole thing out of proportion, and now I look like the bad guy when she was the one who stepped out on me. She's a snake, and that's the nicest thing I can say about her."

“Is this how you talk about all younger women who take up with rich, older dudes or is it just your ex?”

“Can’t it be both?” Hughes asked acidly. “Now are you going to tell me why you’re here? Or are you just going to cast general aspersions on my character? Because I feel like we’re real close to ‘call my lawyer’ time.”

“Jumping straight to the lawyer thing?” Jessie needled, unable to help herself. “That doesn’t sound like the response of an innocent person.”

Hughes smirked, unintimidated.

“Innocent of what?” she demanded. “Besides, I thought asserting my right to an attorney was protected and didn’t imply any kind of guilt. Has that changed in the last five minutes?”

“Are you asserting that right?” Jessie asked, sensing that the woman would view doing so as losing the argument, something she was likely loathe to do. “Because if you are, we can end this chat now and continue it down at the station in the company of your attorney. Of course, that would mean that Officer Devery will have to lead you out of here in cuffs. Or you can help me clear up the issues I have questions about, and maybe I go on my merry way."

Hughes scowled. But even before she replied, Jessie could tell from her combative body language that she wasn’t going to invoke the right to counsel.

“What do you want to know?’

“Where were you the last two nights?” Jessie asked, diving in before Hughes had a chance to reconsider.

Hughes smiled.

“Are you even a cop?” she taunted.

“As I told you, I’m a criminal profiler,” Jessie answered, knowing she was being baited but biting anyway. “But Officer Devery is a cop. So is my partner on this case, Detective Bowen, who is following up on other leads. I said I’d handle this one because he thought you were less of a priority. But if you think you should move up the ladder, I can call him to join us.”

Jessie saw from the hardening of Hughes's face that she might have snapped back too hard. Her goal was to throw the woman off balance while still getting answers. But she worried that she'd been too aggressive.

“You’ve obviously got it in for me,” Hughes said, her voice full of self-satisfaction. “I don’t think I can get a fair shake from you. So screw you. Screw your buddy in blue out there. And screw your detective pal too. I’m not saying crap to you. The only person I’m talking to is my lawyer. So if you want to arrest me for ‘harassment’ or whatever, go right ahead. I’ll sue your whole damn department. But we’re done here.”

Jessie's whole body clenched up. She tried not to let Hughes see it but every bit of her was vibrating with anger, not just at the woman across from her, but at herself. She'd allowed her disdain for Hughes to interfere with the investigation, and it had shut the woman down. If she'd been even slightly less antagonistic, maybe Hughes would have answered her question. Certainly, if Brady had been here with her, he would have tempered the hostile vibe.

But now that it was too late to get anything from Hughes, Jessie felt even more furious. She noticed a letter opener lying on Hughes’s desk and felt an intense yearning to pick it up and jam it in the woman’s hand, or better yet, her chest.

She tasted the bile in her mouth and swallowed hard, forcing herself not to react as she preferred to. She was still in the chair opposite Hughes, silently debating how to proceed, when her phone rang. It was Brady. Happy for the distraction, she answered immediately.

“Jessie,” Brady said, “unless Hughes is currently covered in blood, I need you back here now.”

“Why?”

“There’s been another murder,” he said.

Jessie paused, making sure she’d heard him right. The timing was a surprise, as the other killings had taken place much later in the day.

“When?”

“In just the last hour,” he told her.

“What’s the name of the victim?”

“Caroline Walters.”

“Text me the address and I’ll meet you there,” she said, then hung up and stared at Hughes.

“What’s your ex’s name again?” she asked.

Hughes must have sensed that the pressure might be off her because she ignored her previous declaration that she wasn't talking.

“Annabeth Massey. Why?”

“You’re sure you were at the gym before you came here?”

“Pretty sure,” Hughes said sarcastically. “And so are the two dozen people who were in the spin class with me.”

Jessie stood up.

“You’re welcome to remain silent,” she said. “or you could share the names of everyone who can vouch for your attendance at that class with Officer Devery. If you go the latter route, you may not have to pay any attorney’s fees. I leave the choice to you.”

“So if I do that, are we done here?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jessie said as she headed for the door, “but it wouldn’t hurt.”

She left the office without waiting for a reply.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The traffic was much worse on the way back west.

When Jessie finally pulled up at the Santa Monica home of Caroline Walters, it was after 4 P.M.. Brady was standing in the driveway, talking to a tall, thin man in a lab coat that looked to be a medical examiner. She hopped out and joined them.

As she got closer, she allowed herself a moment to take in the home in question. This stretch of Santa Monica, just north of Montana Avenue, was all giant, impressive homes. The Walters’s place, on Georgina Avenue, was no different.

It was a three-story modern, with curved metal surfaces colliding into more traditional wooden exteriors. Though it was set well back from the street, Jessie was surprised to find that there was no gate protecting it from passersby with ill intent.

“Jessie Hunt,” Brady said as she arrived. “This is Dr. George Baines. He was just informing me of his preliminary conclusions. Can you repeat them for Ms. Hunt, Doc?”

Baines nodded.

“Based on body temperature and lividity, I’m estimating that the victim was killed sometime between 1:30 and 2:30,” he said. “It will be clear when you see the body, Ms. Hunt, but the manner of death was by a knife slice to the throat, likely with a serrated blade, based on the wound. There was no immediate sign of struggle, which suggests to me that the victim may have been attacked from behind and never known her assailant was there until it was too late.”

"Thanks, Doc," Brady said. "Unless Ms. Hunt has additional questions, we'll let you get back to it.

“Not right now, thanks,” Jessie said, “but I do have some questions for my partner.”

Baines returned to the house without another word.

“Where do you want to start?” Brady asked.

“First of all, do we even have jurisdiction on this thing?” she asked. “I noticed that Baines had a Santa Monica logo on his lab coat and I know the SMPD can be proprietary.”

“One of the SMPD officers who was first on the scene noted that the scene was similar to the ones from our other victims, so he called his bosses. They informed me and said that if I felt it was one of ours, they’d hand it over. They didn’t say it out loud but I’m sure they were happy to be rid of it. If LAPD takes over, it becomes part of our case closure stats, not theirs. And no one wants an open serial killer case on their books. As to the M.E., he was already here when I arrived so I figured we may as well let him continue his work.”

“Makes sense,” Jessie agreed. “How did it get called in?”

"A neighbor noticed Walters's car in the driveway with the trunk open for a while. When she walked over, she saw two grocery bags sitting there, so she went to the front door of the house to give a heads up. She rang the bell, but when no one answered, she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open more and saw what looked like blood droplets on the foyer tile. So she went in and found the victim. Then she ran out and called 911."

“Should we go in so I can get a look?” Jessie asked.

“Sure,” Brady said as they approached the house. “Just be aware that the husband, Frank Walters, is on his way over now and could be here soon.”

“Where was he?”

“In the OR,” Brady explained. “He’s a heart surgeon. How’d it go with Hughes, by the way?”

“I don’t think she’s going to end up being our killer,” Jessie conceded. “I’m having the officer who was with me check up on her alibi for this afternoon, but even without one, it’s hard to believe she could have made it from here to her downtown office in the time she would have had.”

“Too bad it didn’t pan out,” he said sincerely, not engaging in any of the “I told you so” commentary that he would have been justified in busting out. That wasn’t Brady’s style and right now, Jessie was glad for it.

She was already doubting her own instinct to press so hard to pursue Diana Hughes. In the moment, the lead seemed reasonable but Jessie feared that she’d projected her own attitude about retribution onto the woman. And then, when Hughes became difficult, she’d allowed her frustration to nearly boil over. It hadn’t been her finest moment.

Brady pushed open the front door, leading to a giant foyer with marble tile. On the floor were small, numbered cards next to multiple blood drops. She followed the detective past them and into a massive living room, where Jessie noted someone lying on a couch, surrounded by multiple crime scene techs. Even from this distance, fifty feet away, she could see that the couch and nearby carpet were soaked in blood.

“We think the actual murder was committed in the kitchen,” Brady said. “The blood is worse in there. It’s all over the walls, as if Walters was upright when she was attacked. There’s a messy trail of blood from there out to the couch, suggesting the killer dragged her out here while she was still bleeding out and then positioned her on the couch.”

Jessie walked over to the sofa, and the CSU folks stepped aside to let her pass. What she saw there made her heart sink. She hadn't had time to learn much about the victim. But she knew that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman on the sofa in front of her was only 25 years old.

The ugly slice along the front of her throat did nothing to diminish the casual beauty of Walters’s face, which had an unexpectedly serene expression. The rest of her was less composed. The entire front of her torso, from her plaid shirt to her jeans, was drenched in blood.

She wore no sash or tiara. Between that and the casual clothes, one might not have connected her murder to the others, except that she had been carefully positioned, just like the other two victims. Plus, there was the "younger woman married to an older, wealthy man" element.

“What do we know about her?” Jessie asked quietly. “I was getting text updates from Jamil as I drove over, but didn’t get a chance to look at them.”

“Caroline Walters, age 25,” Brady began. “She taught kindergarten at a public school in Mar Vista, about a half hour from here. Was previously married to Kenny Madrona, though they got divorced about eighteen months ago.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Jessie asked.

“He’s on the Formula 1 racing circuit, though he’s not very successful,” Brady said. “But I’m guessing you know him because he’s the son of Ephraim Madrona, a big-time shipping magnate. Kenny was always popping up in the tabloids as a teenager for getting into trouble. He and Caroline met in college and got married."

“Did she do the pageant thing?” Jessie wondered.

“Not as far as Jamil and Beth can tell,” Brady said, “though she did a fair bit of modeling in high school and college. After she dumped Madrona, she met Frank Walters. It was a whirlwind courtship, according to the news items Beth found. They got married ten months ago. But unlike the other victims, she never quit her job.”

Jessie looked into Caroline Walters’s empty blue eyes, and pictured the principal at her school having to somehow explain to a group of five and six year olds that their teacher would never be coming back. A wave of pained empathy washed over her, but it was quickly replaced by an upsurge of fury. Her whole body quaked in anger at the person who snuffed out this young woman. She had to turn away so that Brady couldn’t see her quivering with rage.

“Where’s Kenny Madrona now?” she asked, making sure her voice didn’t betray her emotions.

“We’re looking for him,” Brady said. “But we only discovered his connection to her about fifteen minutes ago, so it’s early times.”

“I assume that Benjamin Moran was Madrona’s divorce lawyer?”

“Actually, no,” Brady said. “That was one of the first things Jamil checked on. Madrona used a completely different firm.”

Jessie was stumped by that one.

“Let’s go back outside,” she said. “I want to hash this out.”

She waited until they were back in the front of the house again before sharing her thoughts.

“This is weird,” she said. “Yes, the positioning of the body is the same as with the others. And the marriage situation comports as well. But there’s a different divorce lawyer entirely, basically blowing up that whole line of inquiry. And the scene itself doesn’t match cleanly either. Not only is there no sash or tiara, but no pageant connection with Caroline at all, essentially making all those leads moot too. That doesn’t even account for the fact that this time, the killer brought their own weapon, that the attack took place in broad daylight and that the time between killings seems to be accelerating. It’s like everything we thought we knew has gone up in smoke.”

Before Brady could respond, they both heard a loud screech. Turning around, Jessie saw a man in his early fifties hop out of a bright red Rivian R1S and rush over.

The frenzied expression on his face made her nearly certain that it was Frank Walters.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

“I need to see her!” Frank Walters shouted as he sprinted up the driveway toward them.

Jessie noted that his eyes, apparently red from crying, were wild with intensity. Even in distress, like the husbands of the other two victims, he was attractive in a distinguished way. Trim and muscular for his age, his salt and pepper hair was cut short. Despite his duress, the creases near his eyeline added to his handsome bearing.

"Let me handle this," Brady said quietly to her as he positioned himself in front of the door. As Walters got closer, Brady held up his palms out in front of him and made a pantomimed pushing motion as if warding the man away with just the force of his will. Amazingly, it worked. For a moment at least, Walters stopped.

“You can’t go in there right now, Dr. Walters,” Brady said, his voice thick with sympathy. “We’re terribly sorry for your loss but there’s nothing you can do for her and our people need to do their work. Please come join me on the porch and we’ll try to help.”

“But I’m a doctor,” Walters pleaded. “I might be able to do something.”

"I'm afraid there's nothing to do, Dr. Walters," Brady said. "And I promise you'll get to see her soon. But this is a crime scene, and in order to catch the person responsible for your wife's death, we need to keep it secure for now. Plus, my colleague and I have some crucial questions for you. The best way that you can help Caroline right now is by helping us."

“Carrie,” Walters said mournfully.

“I’m sorry?” Brady asked.

“She went by Carrie,” Walters explained. Sharing that detail seemed to calm him slightly, as his eyes softened and his body untensed slightly.

“Carrie, then,” Brady allowed. “Let’s sit on the porch and talk about her.”

He guided Walters to an ornate metal bench on the porch and sat down beside him. Jessie joined them but remained standing.

“This is Jessie Hunt,” Brady said, motioning to her. “She’s our top criminal profiler. She’s working your wife’s case with me.”

“I’ve heard of you,” Walters said vaguely. “Why is that?”

"I handle cases like this, Dr. Walters," Jessie told him, not mentioning her minor celebrity status. "And I want to help get justice for Carrie. So we need you to focus on our questions now before you give yourself over to grief. It's the best way to find out who did this. Are you able to do that, sir?"

“I’ll try,” he muttered.

They were about to dive into the questions when they both got a text at the same time. It was from Jamil and read: Kenny Madrona is in Monaco for a Formula 1 race later this month. He’s been there for over a week.

Jessie glanced at Brady, who looked as frustrated as she felt. That was one more potential suspect to cross off their list. She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice as she spoke to Walters.

“Tell us about Carrie,” she said as she knelt down on the porch in front of the man, deciding that this might go better if Walters got a chance to say his piece before being pummeled with questions.

“I don’t know where to begin,” Walters said quietly, putting his head in his hands. “She’s been a blessing that I never thought I’d get again in life. She’s half my age but has so much more wisdom than me.”

“What do you mean?” Brady wondered.

“I used to be fixated on the rat race,” he explained. “Always wanting to do the most complicated surgical procedures, always looking to outdo my colleagues. That is until I met Carrie. She got me to return my focus to helping people, rather than battling for status.”

“How did she do that?” Jessie asked.

"In part, just by living her life," he answered. "You know she used to be a model before I met her. She's so beautiful. She could have kept doing that and raked in the money. But she wanted to be a teacher, to help children just starting out on their educational journey. So, even after we got married, she kept working at the same school, grinding away for mediocre pay and minimal recognition. She reminded me that it's about the people you're trying to help, not the accolades you achieve."

He was quiet for a moment, and Jessie was about to turn the conversation to more challenging topics. But then he went on.

“You know, when we first started dating, I think we were both surprised by our connection, especially with the age difference. But it all happened so fast. And she never asked me for a penny for herself, never indicated any desire to leave her job and eat bonbons on the beach. The only time she ever asked me to pay for something was to help set up a foundation to help underprivileged children get nutrition and reading assistance. I was the one who suggested she consider a more leisurely lifestyle.”

“Leisurely, how?” Jessie asked, deciding not to interrupt Walters’s flow. Maybe she could get the answers she needed in the course of normal conversation.

"It was selfish on my part, really," he said, sitting upright and fixing Jessie with a guilty stare. "I love traveling, especially adventure trips to more exotic locations. But with Carrie only getting a few months off each year, that was really challenging. So, I was pressing her to essentially retire at 25. In addition, I wanted kids. I was married once before, but it was never a priority for us. Now that I'm getting older, I wanted to add that element to my life. Plus, Carrie would make the most amazing mom."

Jessie noted that Walters continued to refer to his wife in the present tense. She didn’t correct him. Letting him have that illusion a little longer was harmless. He’d stop making the mistake once he saw her body.

“So did she agree to retire?” Brady asked.

"Eventually," Walters said. "She wanted to work a couple more years, then she agreed to teach as a substitute. That way, she could still help the kids but have a more flexible schedule."

Hearing the man talk about the parenting plans with Carrie that would never come to fruition made Jessie briefly think of her own situation. It wasn’t that dissimilar. In Ryan, she had a husband that, until recently, desperately wanted to have kids after never getting to with his first wife. And like Carrie, she was reluctant to give up her personal or professional autonomy when she was so passionate about the work she did. But it sounded like Carrie found a way to bridge that gap. Jessie wondered if she ever would.

“How did you two meet?” she asked.

Frank sighed.

“We were set up,” he replied stiffly. “I was reluctant to give it a shot, but amazingly, it worked out.”

Jessie cocked her head quizzically at that. It was the same answer that Robert Hollinger had given when asked how he’d met Patricia. Jessie hadn’t registered anything unusual about the first man’s response in the moment. But something about Walters’s answer just now felt off to her. She didn’t think he was lying outright, but the sigh before replying and the tightness in his voice when he did reply suggested that he wasn’t being completely forthright.

“Did Carrie have any enemies that you’re aware of,” Brady asked before she could follow up. “Or did she ever mention anyone threatening her? A co-worker, a student’s parent, or an ex?”

“No,” Walters said, shaking his head. “Everyone adored her. She even got along decently with her former husband, who I consider a real punk.”

“And she never competed in any pageants?” Brady pressed.

“You mean like beauty pageants?” Walters asked, perplexed.

Brady nodded.

"Not that I know of," he said. "She never mentioned it, and I feel like it would have come up."

Jessie couldn’t help but wonder—with so many differences between Carrie Walters and the other victims—was it possibly just a coincidence that she was posed like them? Or could it be a copycat killing? Brady looked over at her.

“Do you have anything more to ask before we let Dr. Walters go inside?”

Jessie was tempted to let it slide, considering how distraught the man clearly was. But if she didn’t follow up, she wouldn’t be doing her job. And that’s what she was here for—not comforting Frank Walters but finding his wife’s killer. She cleared her throat.

“I do have one more question,” she said. “Dr. Walters, how did you really meet your wife?”

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Jessie watched as Walters’s face morphed.

To her surprise, it wasn’t into anger, but rather embarrassment.

“I already told you—we were set up,” he said unconvincingly.

“I know,” she replied as gently as she could. “But I think we both know that you’re leaving out a lot. However you first got together, I’m sensing that it was a little untraditional. And that might be important. So I really need you to be honest with us.”

Walters’s gaze dropped so that he was no longer making eye contact with her.

“I’m not sure how this matters,” he said in something close to a whisper, “but if you think it will help catch who did this, I’ll tell you. We met through a matchmaking service.”

Jessie wasn’t entirely surprised. She wondered how a 25-year-old teacher and a 53-year-old heart surgeon would end up in the same social circles. But she got the sense from Walters’s obvious discomfort that this was more than a standard dating service.

“Tell us how that worked,” she said.

He looked up again, clearly trying to figure out how to put the best spin on things. But after a few seconds, he seemed to give up on that idea.

"Look," he said, "my first marriage ended because both of us were workaholics. After that, I didn't have much time at all for romance. It didn't matter to me for a long time. But recently, I started feeling the absence of a meaningful connection. I wanted to be with someone, but I didn't have the time for the standard dating rituals. I mentioned that to a golfing buddy of mine who is an executive at an oil company, and he told me about this service."

“What service?” Brady asked.

“It’s called Elite Introductions,” Walters said. “He told me that’s how he met his wife. They cater to more mature men who know what they want. I was reluctant to try it but he told me that I could include all my priorities in a woman: understanding that my work took precedence, being okay with my eclectic lifestyle, including travelling for weeks at a time, and so on. So I gave it a shot.”

“And that’s how you found Carrie?” Jessie confirmed.

“Not at first,” he explained. “I went through this involved interview process to give them sort of a profile of myself and my ideal mate. They even came to the house to conduct it in order to give me privacy. Then I went out with a woman they paired me with. It didn’t work out. She was clearly just looking for a sugar daddy.”

“So these women are younger?” Jessie said.

“Yes,” he said sheepishly. “That’s the tradeoff, I guess. Older men get matched up with younger, attractive women who theoretically have less baggage than those their own age. And the women get the perks of being with a wealthy man who can take care of their more prosaic financial needs.”

“But it didn’t work out at first?” Jessie prodded.

"Not the first time or the second," he said, the residue of frustration audible in his voice. "I was about to cut bait on the whole thing when Victoria asked me to give it one more shot. She said she'd found a woman she thought would be perfect for me, and if I didn't agree, she'd refund half of my membership fee. Since that fee is considerable, I was intrigued. The woman she introduced me to was Carrie. That was all she wrote."

“Victoria?” Jessie asked, trying to keep her tone casual.

“Victoria Sterling,” He said. “Elite Introductions is her company. She personally vets every client and every potential match. She's very hands-on. Like I said, she even came here for the interview for the sake of discretion.”

Jessie’s mind was racing. Just like Carrie Walters, the other two victims were much younger than their wealthy husbands. Was it possible that both of those couples also met through Elite Introductions? If so, that opened up a whole new avenue for investigation.

She badly wanted to get up right now so that she could head straight to wherever Elite Introductions was located. But there was a grieving man sitting in front of her, trying to process the fact that, after searching for a soul mate and finally finding one, she’d been brutally torn from him.

“Do you want to go see Carrie now?” Brady asked delicately.

“Yes, please,” Walters said, stifling a sob.

“I’ll take you inside,” Brady said. “Ms. Hunt has to deal with another pressing issue.”

Jessie looked over at her partner. From his expression, it was clear that he had come to the same conclusion about the potential of the dating service as a lead and that he was giving her an escape hatch so that she could start pursuing it immediately.

She smiled in appreciation and did her best not to look anxious as she waited for the two men to enter the house. But the second they were out of sight, she pulled out her phone to call Jamil and hopefully, get some answers.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Rachel Thompson didn’t have long.

Her boss thought she was at a doctor's appointment, which was supposed to be over by three. But it was now 4:15, and she still hadn't left.

Of course, she wasn't at a doctor's office at all. She was standing on the sidewalk outside the yoga studio where Amanda Calloway was currently working up a mean sweat.

As Rachel watched through the window, she had twin emotions. One was admiration for Amanda’s remarkable flexibility and the body that allowed her to have it. The young woman was an impressive specimen.

At only 27, Amanda was an up-and-coming actress, about to be seen in a high-profile indie film that recently won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. She had a tanned and toned body, a gorgeous face, and long brown hair, which was currently tied back in a ponytail. The woman was currently engaged in the downward dog pose and her form was immaculate.

The other emotion that Rachel felt was something close to hatred. After all, Amanda was the new wife of Rachel’s ex-husband, James Calloway, a movie producer known for high-octane action films. The two had wed only six months ago in a lavish ceremony on James’s yacht, the very one that Rachel used to lounge on before she was tossed aside.

She was apparently just human garbage to James now, even though she didn’t look it. Though she was currently wearing a disguise so Amanda wouldn’t recognize her, she caught an extended glimpse of herself in the glass window of the yoga studio. At the horribly advanced age of 36, she thought she still looked good.

A combination of relentless workouts, plastic surgery, and daily semi-starvation had kept her in the kind of shape that allowed for two-piece bathing suits and form-fitting dresses. But apparently that wasn’t enough for James, who seemed to trade in his spouse for a new model every decade or so.

Rachel should have been suspicious when James—41 at the time—dumped his previous wife for her after 11 years of marriage. She was 26 at the time and a rising star in the beauty influencer space. But after nine years together, he sent her packing too, in favor of Amanda, apparently the new flavor of the decade.

Rachel, who had been so in love that she signed a deeply unfair prenup, was left not quite destitute, but certainly in rough shape. Having let her influencer work atrophy while on James’s arm, she was now behind the eight ball in terms of employment and was reduced to personal assistant work. It was embarrassing.

But all that changed when she saw an opening for a position that could reconfigure everything. When Victoria Sterling’s administrative aide left and she put up an online job posting, Rachel jumped at it. After all, this was the matchmaking service that had set James up with Amanda.

Of course, when Rachel applied, she did so under her maiden name, Thompson, rather than the married one, which might give her away. Victoria—no spring chicken herself—had been happy to hire her, in part because Rachel was “an adult,” unlike the collection of twenty-somethings who applied for the gig, likely in the hope of securing one of Sterling’s clients for themselves.

So she’d begun work at Elite Introductions three months ago. She quickly proved herself to be invaluable, earning Sterling’s trust to the point that she gave her access to client files, including payment history and personal information, like addresses.

Rachel wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been after when she took the job. Part of her thought that if she got some dirt on Amanda, maybe she could get back into James’s good graces. But that mission was soon replaced by a new, far more urgent one.

After seeing up close just how pathetic these rich men—like her ex—were, and how grasping their new arm candy was, she knew she had to get payback, not just for herself but for all the other wives who had been tossed aside.

The anger had been gurgling up in her for a long time now, and she was ready to let it out. Maybe it was regularly being treated like leftovers thrown into a dumpster. Maybe it was the insultingly pitying looks she got from former friends who had abandoned her. Maybe it was the indignity of having to budget her money for the first time in a decade. Or maybe it was the potent combination of all those personal humiliations, and the many more she'd endured, that brought her to this place. Whatever the reason, she was ready to inflict some pain rather than receive it.

Her first plan was to frame the husbands for their wives’ murders, but she quickly abandoned the idea, deciding that it was far too involved and beyond her skill set. What she could do was more simple but still effective. She could slaughter these women, leaving the men who were left behind broken, frightened, and most importantly, alone again.

Because Victoria had been to many of these men’s homes for the interview process, she had details on the places. She also often knew their schedules. That was because, even after setting up these couples, she would coordinate “romantic” events for them. That might include a string quartet performing in the living room, a homemade dinner prepared in their own kitchen by a celebrated chef, or a private screening of a sought-after film.

As a result, she knew when Robert Hollinger was at out-of-town real estate conventions. She was aware of Kai Cody’s baseball schedule, including road games. She’d even got access to Frank Walters’s surgery schedule. And she didn’t need Sterling’s file on James to know that he was on location in Atlanta right now for his latest sequel, leaving poor Amanda alone in the mansion that Rachel used to call home.

That was where she’d finish the job. It was the culmination of the mission she’d begun planning months ago and finally brought to fruition this week. These scheming climbers, who had all married for money, getting their claws into older, deluded men, had it coming.

Rachel had made her decisions about who to eliminate based on the most objectionable pairings in combination with the most advantageous schedules for accessing homes. Those decisions had unfortunate consequences for Patricia Hollinger, Rebecca Martinez, and just a few hours ago, for Caroline Walters, as they would soon have for Amanda Calloway.

The first killing had been a challenge. She had to psyche herself up to use the huge chunk of broken, jagged glass from the picture frame. But once she found the sash and tiara, it was as if an extra level of clarity emerged. By posing the woman with the accessories from her beauty contestant days, she was silently mocking her. Hollinger’s good looks and wealth hadn’t helped her when the time for her judgement came.

She’d been delighted when she found that Rebecca Martinez had some of the same pageant trappings in her closet and happily decked her out in them. Her one regret was that she couldn’t do the same with Caroline Walters. Apparently that one hadn’t kept her pageant circuit accoutrement. Either that, or she’d never competed and was just a garden variety whore.

But all of that had just been prelude to the big event. Amanda was the final girl and she would suffer the worst consequences, because unlike the others, this one was personal. And it would be happening soon.

But not right now. Rachel had been gone long enough. She had to get back to the office so as not to arouse Victoria's ire. The woman liked her, but she was also unpredictable. Unless James took her back, Rachel would need this job after her work was done, so she couldn't afford to alienate her boss.

She took one last look at herself in the window to make sure she was presentable. She’d dumped the black clothes she’d worn while slicing Caroline Walters’s throat and gone home to change back into the outfit she’d worn to work today. She’d replaced the small bandage on her right palm that covered the cut she got when jamming a chunk of glass into Patricia Hollinger’s neck. Victoria would suspect nothing.

And neither would Amanda when Rachel visited her later today, bearing a most unwanted gift.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Jessie was relieved.

Luckily the Elite Introductions headquarters—coincidentally located in the same Wilshire Tower building in Westwood as Benjamin Moran’s legal practice—wasn’t that far from the Walters’s Santa Monica mansion. Unfortunately, Jessie had to impatiently wait twenty minutes before Brady could extricate himself from Frank Walters, who understandably had a small breakdown upon seeing his wife’s body.

Now, as they stepped out of the elevator on the building’s 33rd floor, Jessie glanced at her phone. It was approaching 5 P.M. She had been tempted to call ahead to make sure the place was still open but didn’t want to give Sterling a heads up. So they were just showing up unannounced.

When they pushed through the frosted glass doors of the office, they found they were in a space that felt more like the reception area for an upscale spa than a matchmaking service. The lights were low, the chairs were plush, and the music had a relaxing ambient vibe. They walked up to the desk, where an attractive but intense-looking thirty-something offered them a polite smile.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“No, we’re a walk-in,” Brady said, not sharing any more information than necessary.

“Oh dear,” the woman said, “I believe Victoria was wrapping up for the day. Let me check on her availability. Who may I say is here?”

Jessie was impressed with the woman’s unruffled demeanor, considering that Brady, in his jeans, stained Chico State sweatshirt, and blazer that he’d thrown on as an afterthought, didn’t fit the profile for an Elite Introductions client. She gave no indication that it mattered. Then again, rich guys wore whatever they wanted whenever they wanted.

“Detective Bowen of the LAPD,” Brady said, holding out his badge. “And this is Jessie Hunt. We’re not here looking for a romantic pairing. We just have a few questions for her.”

The woman tried to stay professional, but it was clear from her expression that she was shocked. Even with the plastic surgery she’d obviously had done, her face had gone from blandly placid to startled and confused.

“Um, okay,” she said. “Just give me a moment.”

She stood up, her hands clenched into nervous fists, and moved to the office’s inner door. Jessie noted that the receptionist, with her expensive skirt and top, her pinched, over-exercised body, and her entitled bearing, could have easily been mistaken for the matchmaker rather than her assistant.

She knocked on the inner door and when a female voice said to enter, poked her head in.

“Victoria,” she said in a respectfully hushed voice, “there are some folks from the police here. They’d like to speak with you.”

“What about?” Sterling’s disembodied voice demanded sharply.

“They wouldn’t say, but they’re right out front here. Should I send them in?”

In response to the question, she got a long, annoyed sigh. Jessie was on the verge of short-circuiting the pleasantries and just shoving her way into the inner office. After all, Sterling was as much a credible suspect as she was a potential source of information. She didn’t need to be handled with kid gloves. But before Jessie could move, Sterling answered.

“Go ahead and send them in,” she said reluctantly.

"Okay," the receptionist said. "By the way, I was planning to head out. I'm supposed to meet a friend at 5:15, and I'll be late if I don't leave soon."

“Rachel,” Sterling said, “you are really pushing it today. First taking off all afternoon for that doctor’s appointment and now this? Can I count on you to—you know—be in the office the rest of the week?”

“Of course, Victoria, “the woman apparently named Rachel said. “I’m sorry. A lot of stuff just came up lately. Have a nice evening.”

Rachel reached out with her left hand and held the door open for them as she offered another tight smile.

“As I’m sure you heard, you can go in now.”

Jessie returned the smile, feeling for the receptionist, who was apparently trying to maintain some professional dignity in the face of a boss who didn’t think she’d earned it. She stepped into the office, followed by Brady. It had the same spa energy as the outer office, though the music was gone, the lighting was a little brighter, and the giant window facing the Hollywood Hills slightly mitigated the feeling of intimacy.

Victoria Sterling stood up to greet them. The woman was tall, easily equal to Jessie’s 5’10” height. She had a statuesque bearing, reinforced by an expensive lavender skirt suit and elaborate updo of her silver-blonde hair. The quick bio that Jamil had given them on the drive over revealed that she was 44 years old, a former advertising executive who had switched professions after an ugly divorce left her reeling. She was now re-married to a professor of art history at UCLA.

"So what's this all about?" she asked, coming around from behind her desk and sitting in a high-backed chair. She motioned for them to take the two chairs opposite her own. The setup reminded Jessie of a couples therapist’s office more than that of a matchmaker.

“We thought you might already know,” Jessie prompted as she sat down.

Sterling nodded.

“I can guess,” she admitted. “Does it have anything to do with the reports I saw on the news about the deaths of Patricia Hollinger and Rebecca Martinez?’

Jessie silently noted that Sterling hadn’t mentioned Caroline Walters. That made sense. If she wasn’t involved in her death, she’d have no idea about it yet, only a few hours after it happened. And if she was responsible, mentioning it would essentially be an admission of guilt.

“That’s correct,” Brady said, also not mentioning Walters. “You must have been thrown when you learned that two women that you paired up with clients had been killed on consecutive days.”

“I absolutely was,” she confirmed.

“Then we have to wonder, Ms. Sterling,” he said. “Why not reach out to us to make us aware of the connection?”

Sterling looked surprised by the question.

“I didn’t realize there was a connection,” she said. “I just assumed it was an awful coincidence. And in any case, it’s not my place to get involved in the personal lives of my clients beyond their specified preferences. This felt like it would be an invasion of their privacy.”

Jessie found herself irked by the woman’s seemingly cavalier attitude.

“I could understand not reaching out to the husbands in the immediate aftermath of their wives’ murders,” Jessie said. “That might be seen as an invasion of privacy. But not contacting the authorities? That seems odd.”

Sterling shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

“Well, when you put it that way, I see your point,” she conceded. “But frankly, I just wasn’t in the headspace to make that logical leap. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I was more focused on how this news would impact my business than what my civic responsibilities were. Having said that, you’re here now and I’m willing to help. How can I do that?”

While Jessie was put off by the admission that Sterling was more annoyed by how these deaths would affect her own professional situation than the impact on the actual human beings involved, she did at least appreciate the woman’s forthrightness. She decided to take advantage of the modicum of guilt Sterling appeared to be feeling now.

“You pair older, wealthy men with younger, attractive women,” she noted. “That kind of work seems like it might lead to a lot of hard feelings.”

“From whom?” Sterling wanted to know.

“I’m guessing from the young women who have yet to be matched and are missing out on the good life,” Jessie proffered. “Maybe from the ex-wives of these men, who likely resent being replaced by a newer, younger model. Or even from the men themselves, when some of the young ladies you match them with turn out to be busts, perhaps leaving them feeling frustrated and burned. Have you encountered any of those situations?”

Sterling offered her a condescending smile before replying.

“Not so much for the latter two,” she said. “The men I work with know this is a process and that it doesn’t always pan out at first. And I’ve never had an issue with an ex giving me grief. In these situations, I don’t think their anger is generally focused on me. I have had some potential matches—the young women you referenced—get antsy when they’re matched with a client and then it falls through. They often view it as defeat being snapped from the jaws of victory. There can be some resentment. But I typically remind them that a frog of a relationship is often soon followed by a princely one. I’ve certainly never had any of them express the kind of anger that would make me think they were capable of harming anyone.”

“Still,” Brady pointed out, “is it impossible to think that one of them might consider eliminating the competition so that they could slide into her spot?”

“Highly unlikely,” Sterling replied. “Impossible? I suppose not.”

“In that case,” Brady continued. “Would you be willing to share your files on the women who were either passed over or were matched up only to have it not pan out?”

Sterling didn’t look enthused by the request and seemed to be doing mental math in her head.

“I suppose,” she finally said, “but how far back are we going? Before I re-imagined this company as Elite Introductions, it operated under another name, Real World Communications. Do I need to include missed matches from back then too?”

“Yes, please,” Brady requested.

He didn't explain why, but Jessie knew the reason. As Jamil had discovered while filling them in on the company on their drive over, and to his great frustration, Real World Communications had been re-named Elite Introductions three years ago. That's why he hadn't made the connection to the dating service as a possible line of inquiry. It turned out that the communications guru that Robert Hollinger listed as a business expense was actually his dating advisor.

He and Patricia met through Real World Communications, though they didn’t advertise that. Kai Cody and Rebecca Martinez met through Elite Introductions, which they also kept to themselves. It was only when Frank Walters revealed that he’d also met his wife, Carrie, through Elite Introductions, that the connection among all three became clear.

“All right,” Sterling said, standing up to return to the computer on her desk. “You’ll need to give me a minute. Now that Rachel has left for the day, I’m going to have to collate all this on my own.”

“While you do that,” Brady said nonchalantly, “maybe you can tell us where you were the last two nights?”

“Is this your way of asking for my alibi?” Sterling asked, arching her eyebrows.

“It is,” he said flatly.

"Okay," she said, punching up a screen that Jessie assumed had her calendar on it. "On Tuesday evening, I met with a potential client over drinks. The reservation was on the early side, 5:30, because he was going to some sporting event with friends after that. I can give you his name if you want, along with the restaurant, where I assume the staff can vouch for me. Last night, I was at home with my husband. He's a professor of art history, and we're going to Florence next week where he's giving a speech. He was practicing it for me."

As Jessie listened, she came to a disappointing realization. Upon first learning of Elite Introductions, she had suspected that someone upset about a failed match was the killer. But until now, she’d held out the possibility that Sterling might be responsible. While her alibis would have to be confirmed, the specificity of them, especially on Tuesday, at the very time that Patricia Hollinger was killed, seemed to eliminate her.

“What about this afternoon?” Brady asked out of a sense of obligation. “Where were you between 2 and 3 P.M.?”

"Right here at this desk," Sterling said. "As you might have heard, my assistant was gone for an endless doctor's appointment so I couldn't very well leave. Now, if you want me to compile a list of the young women who expressed frustration at not being selected, I'll need a minute to concentrate."

“Of course,” Brady said.

Jessie focused her attention on the clickety-clack of Sterling’s fingers on her keyboard. The noise sounded almost like someone knocking gently on the side of her brain, persistently trying to get in. It took her a moment to process that it wasn’t a person knocking, but an idea. A thought was trying to make itself known to her, but she had to open her mind to let it in. She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate.

The soft mental knocking had started almost immediately after Sterling made her last comment about her assistant, Rachel, being at a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. That meant she would have been gone right in the window when Caroline Walters was killed.

Jessie’s mind filled with the image of Rachel. She recalled the pinched, slightly emaciated look of a woman who appeared intent on keeping up physically with the Joneses. She recalled the plastic surgery and the fancy clothes, both of which seemed pricey for a woman working as an assistant to a matchmaker. She also seemed a little older than expected for this kind of job, almost like someone who was starting over. Something about the disparate qualities of the woman didn’t quite fit.

Then she pictured how the woman had kept her hands balled up in fists and held open Victoria’s door with her left hand. It was almost as if she was trying to hide her right one and any possible damage it might have suffered, perhaps while holding a jagged chunk of sharp glass.

“What’s your assistant’s full name?” she asked suddenly.

“Rachel Thompson,” Sterling said, briefly looking up from her screen, “why?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jessie told her.

But the second the woman returned her attention to her monitor, Jessie began furiously texting Jamil.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“I have some names for you,” Victoria Sterling said two minutes later. “How do you want to do this?”

But Jessie was barely listening. Instead, she was reading the response that Jamil Winslow had just texted to both her and Brady. Sterling misinterpreted the lack of a response as an indication that she could proceed as she wanted.

"I have five young women who were vocally disappointed at being passed over," she said. "I'll share their names with you, but I have to say I'm skeptical of their involvement in this. I did detailed background checks on all of them before considering them as candidates. I even had a private investigator look into each of them. Not a single one had a criminal record, nor any mental health issues that we could find. I can give you all that information, but personally, I think it's a waste of time."

“I think you may be right,” Jessie agreed. “Tell me more about Rachel Thompson. How did you end up hiring her?”

Sterling looked perplexed but answered anyway.

“There’s not much to tell,” she said. “I put a posting on a couple of job boards. She applied. When I interviewed her, I liked that she was a little older than the other applicants. I was less concerned that she was just using the service as a way to find a man of her own. So I hired her.”

“When was that?” Jessie pressed.

“About three months ago,” she said. “Why are you suddenly asking about Rachel?”

Brady answered that question with one of his own.

“Did you know that Thompson is Rachel’s maiden name?” he asked, looking at Jamil’s text.

“No. Why?”

“Her married name was Calloway,” Jessie explained. “For nine years, she was married to a man named James Calloway. I guess he’s a big-time film producer. Does that name mean anything to you?”

For the first time, Jessie saw Victoria Sterling’s façade of cool professionalism crack. Her jaw dropped open.

“James is a client of mine,” she said, sounding stunned at her own words. “He’s one of my great success stories. I paired him with a young actress named Amanda. They just got married six months ago.”

“We’re going to need his address,” Jessie said.

“Why?” Sterling asked. “You really think my assistant killed two people?”

"Potentially three," Jessie told her. "Another woman was murdered just this afternoon around the time Rachel was at the doctor.'"

“Who?” Sterling asked in a hushed voice.

“Caroline Walters,” Brady told her.

“Oh no,” Sterling said, putting her hands over her mouth. “Carrie is the sweetest girl I’ve met since doing this. Are you sure?”

“We are,” Jessie told her. “Please get us Calloway’s address now. And while you’re at it, we’ll need Rachel’s too—ASAP!”

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Jessie checked her gun holster for the third time.

The drive from Victoria Sterling’s Westwood office to the Calloway home in tony Westgate Heights only took seven minutes but Jessie was champing at the bit the whole time. She’d insisted that they be the ones to go there, as the risk to Amanda Calloway was their top priority. Brady had ordered a squad car to go to Thompson’s apartment in case she’d gone there instead.

“You don’t think now that Thompson knows we’re close, she maybe went straight home to grab a bag and then bailed?” Brady asked as they pulled onto Calloway’s street.

Jessie shook her head.

“I think that all these other murders were just prelude to the main event,” she said. “She’s been gearing herself up to take out Amanda, the woman who replaced her. And now that she feels the pressure, that’s only going to make her more focused on finishing her mission.”

Brady pulled up in front of the giant plantation-style mansion, which was partially hidden from the street by enormous hedges. An ornate wrought iron fence protected the property, but the entry gate was slightly ajar. Across the street, Jessie noticed the black Mercedes that Jamil had told them Rachel Thompson Calloway drove. They were in the right place.

“Let’s get in there,” Jessie said, hopping out of the passenger seat. “And remember, Thompson used to live in this house, so she’ll know it well. Stay alert.”

As they passed through the open gate, Jessie noticed a numbered panel just to the right of it. Was it really possible that after the divorce, James Calloway didn’t think to change the code? When they reached the front door, they saw that it was already open too. Both of them unholstered their weapons. Brady counted to three, then pushed it open. He stepped inside, and Jessie followed quickly after him.

Three different hallways split off from the grand foyer. The two of them looked at each other. Jessie could see that her partner was as uncertain as she was. Which way should they go? The unspoken question was answered a moment later when a weak, plaintive voice broke the silence.

“Please stop!”

It sounded like it was coming from the central hallway. They both dashed in that direction. Brady, who was in front of her, was making quite a racket as his heavy footfalls landed on the hardwood floor. Jessie worried that he might tip off Thompson, but right now, getting to her was more important than being stealthy.

They emerged into a massive living room with vaulted ceilings. At the far end of the room, they saw a young woman in a high-backed leather chair. She was wearing yoga gear and had long brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders down to her elbows. But that wasn’t what caught Jessie’s eye.

The woman was tied to the chair with what looked like bungee cords wrapped around her arms and legs. She was also bleeding—profusely. She was still alive, but apparently only because she'd been stabbed in areas that didn't immediately lead to death.

Blood was seeping through her yoga top on the right side of her waist. Her left upper arm, just below the shoulder, had a deep gash. So did her right thigh. And both cheeks had cuts running from near her ears almost to her mouth. Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused, likely from the loss of blood.

Standing a couple of feet from her, tightly gripping what looked like a hunting knife, was Rachel Thompson. Only instead of what she'd worn at the Elite Introductions office, she was now dressed all in black. She was wearing gloves but no mask. Apparently, she wanted Amanda to know who was doing this to her. She must not have heard them arrive because her back was to them. But she seemed to sense eyes on her and spun around. She didn't look surprised to see them.

“Took you long enough,” she said. “But you’re too late. This stuck pig has been bleeding out for ten minutes now. I doubt she has that much time left before she fades away. Or I could end things quick for her.”

Next to Jessie, Brady quickly raised his gun and pointed it at Thompson.

“Drop the knife, Rachel!” he ordered.

The woman looked at him and then down at Amanda, whose head was lolling limply. Then she returned her attention to him.

“Why are you pointing that thing at me?” she demanded. “I’m not the one who turned their back on their vows. I’m not the snake who seduced another man’s husband. Make them pay for their crimes, and then we can talk about me."

The knife in her hand was less than a foot from Amanda’s throat. The younger woman whimpered softly but said nothing.

Jessie raised her weapon too but hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. She was, at best, an okay shot. She vaguely recalled Ryan telling her that Brady, despite his extra girth and generally unhealthy demeanor, was a ringer on the range. But with Rachel’s knife so close to Amanda, Jessie didn’t to want to risk testing that.

“We can discuss all that, Rachel,” she said to Thompson in the calmest tone that she could muster under the circumstances. “But in order to do that, we need you to put down the knife. We can talk about consequences for the people who wronged you, but not when you’re holding that.”

“Please!” Thompson shot back scornfully, waving the knife in the air, “I know how it works. This is the only thing stopping you from shooting me. It’s the only thing making you listen. The second I drop it, I lose all my leverage. Isn’t that right?”

"We can't negotiate under threat," Brady told her, managing to sound firm and understanding at the same time. "You have to give us a reason to believe that we can trust you. And under the circumstances, that's a little hard, Rachel."

 “Not my problem,” the woman said, the knife now back close to Amanda’s neck. “In fact, maybe I should order you two to drop your guns as a show of good faith to me. That will prove to me that you’re sincere about hearing me out.”

Jessie looked at Amanda, whose head was slumped on her chin. She had stopped whimpering. In fact, she wasn’t moving at all. Was she already dead? If not, she was dangerously close. Something had to give.

“How about this?” she said, raising her gun over her head. “I’ll drop my weapon as that show of good faith you wanted, and you take a step away from Amanda.”

It wasn't much of a concession, considering Jessie's lack of confidence in her own aim and the fact that Brady would still have his gun. But she was trying to keep the lines of communication open, and even a lame concession was better than none at all. Or so she thought.

“Don’t insult me,” Thompson said. “That doesn’t stop your partner there from blowing me away. Besides, I know who you are, Jessie Hunt. I read up on you after I left the office. I’m aware of all your run-ins with serial killers and how you tricked them. That won’t work with me.”

Despite her skepticism that it would do any good, Jessie laid her gun down on the floor. Then she raised her hands above her head.

"If you really read about me, you also know that I've worked hard to keep my promises to the people who surrendered to me. I've even testified on behalf of some of them in court, describing how the indignities they faced in their lives might have led to their acts of violence. You would know that I was married once before myself, to a rich wealth management advisor who was secretly having an affair, and who tried to kill me. I know what it's like to feel betrayed by someone you love. If anyone can understand what you're going through, Rachel, it's me. But I can't help you if you won't let me. So please just take a step away from Amanda, and let's all take a breath."

Thompson, the knife still gripped tight in her gloved hand, stared back at her, as if probing her, trying to gauge whether she was telling the truth. Then she did take a deep breath. Jessie tensed up, sensing a decision at hand but unsure what it would be. When Thompson spoke, her voice was loud and clear.

“Alexa, activate emergency sprinkler system.”

Almost immediately, water began spurting out of sprinklers embedded in the ceiling. At the same time, Thompson darted to her right. For a second, Jessie thought Brady might fire at her. But he must have come to the same conclusion as Jessie: because the woman was moving away from Amanda, she wasn’t an immediate threat.

Amid the spray of water suddenly drenching the room, Jessie saw Thompson continue moving right, scampering behind a half-wall. She was still holding the knife. Jessie reached down, grabbed her weapon, then followed.

"Wait," Brady barked, "Let's deal with Amanda first. Once she's stable, we can go after Thompson."

“You stay with Amanda,” Jessie countered as she moved toward the wall where Rachel Thompson had disappeared. “If Thompson gets away, she could go anywhere or after anyone. We can’t let that happen.”

“Where’s she going to go?” Brady demanded.

“Are you kidding?” Jessie said as she neared the wall. “She lived in this house. That means she knows all the ways out. She could be through a side door and down the block before we know she’s gone. There’s no more time to argue. Help Amanda. Call for backup. I’m going after Thompson.”

“Don’t go!” Brady shouted. “Ryan will kill me!”

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Jessie could hear the panic in his voice but chose to ignore it.

Instead, she focused her attention on the half-wall that blocked her view of where Thompson had gone. But with time running short and water spraying everywhere, she didn't have the luxury of caution.

Without hesitation, she dived past it, rolling into a somersault and popping up, her gun in front of her. But Thompson wasn’t there. What she saw instead was a false bookshelf built into the connecting wall. It had swung open to reveal a darkened narrow stairwell, which seemed to be a secret route upstairs.

Jessie pulled out her phone and turn on the flashlight as she made her way carefully up the steep stairs. She couldn't see anyone. As she neared the top, she turned off the light. She didn't need to give Thompson any extra warning that she was close.

She knelt down so that any knife swing coming her way would hopefully go over her head, then shimmied to her left once she reached the landing. In the dull light, she saw that the hallway she was facing was empty. She stood up and moved forward through the threshold of the doorway, realizing that this too was a faux bookshelf that served as a hidden entry point to the stairs from the second level.

She looked down and noted that the floor was carpeted. It was soaked from the sprinklers. Even though that might muffle her footsteps, she slid out of her shoes and continued barefoot, listening for any sound beyond the sprinkler heads spraying water and the squishing of her toes on the damp carpeting. She passed two closed doors on her left. Light streamed under them. She assumed it was from the sunlight coming through windows in the rooms. Then, without warning, the sprinklers stopped.

Jessie took a moment to regroup, letting the newfound silence settle in around her. Then she resumed walking down the hall. When she got to the third door, she noticed something. The light was partially obscured, as if there was something, or someone, near the door, blocking it. Jessie took another step closer. But to her dismay, she landed on a creaky spot on the floor.

Deciding that she’d lost the element of surprise, she decided to go a different route: brute force. Without pausing to think, she reared back, then slammed into the door with her shoulder. It shot open before banging into something hard and flying back toward her.

Before she could lift her hands to protect herself, the door smacked her, knocking the gun out of her hand and smashing into her right temple. Though slightly dazed, she tried to stay focused as she stepped into the room.

Even as her skull rattled in pain and her eyes watered, Jessie quickly took in the situation. When she had smashed into the door, she had knocked it into Thompson, who must have lost her balance. The woman was on the floor in front of an old-fashioned four-poster bed. The gun was nowhere in sight. The hunting knife was on the ground a few feet away.

The two women locked eyes. Then, at the same time, they scrambled for the weapon. Thompson—closer to it and seemingly not concussed—got there first. She grabbed it and rose to her feet, making a wild swing with the knife just as Jessie got to her.

Jessie reached her before the blow could land, diving headfirst and slamming her shoulder into Thompson's chest. They both flew back onto the bed, with Jessie landing on top of Thompson before her momentum sent her rolling past her and off the bed entirely. She landed with a hard thud as her upper back and neck bore the brunt of the fall.

Trying to ignore the sharp twinge of pain, she forced herself upright. In the meantime, Thompson had rolled over and was now on her knees on the bed, still clasping the knife. Her eyes were wild with fury.

"You're as bad as the rest of them," she snarled. "You talk a good game, but you're just another grasping, money-grubbing bitch."

Even slightly woozy, with blood dripping into her eyes from the collision with the door and a stinging sensation that ran down her back, Jessie felt anger rise in her gut. She pictured Patricia Hollinger, who had expanded a homeless shelter, dolled up in her tiara and sash, with a gaping hole in her neck. She thought of Carrie Walters, the model turned kindergarten teacher whose only financial request of her husband was to start a foundation for underprivileged kids, lying on a sofa with a giant slash across the entire length of her throat. She wasn’t a grasping bitch. She was just a woman who wanted to teach little kids. And Rachel Thompson had snuffed her out.

Thompson was a menace, one who wouldn’t be stopped on her own. One who had to be made to stop. And if Jessie didn’t do it, who would? Her hands clenched into tight fists as she stared at the woman in front of her. Her vision was shaky and Thompson appeared as vibrating twins in a halo of light. But Jessie didn’t care. This killer had to go down.

“Are you sure you’re not the grasping bitch?" she growled, not so much because she expected an answer but because she hoped the question would throw Thompson off guard. It seemed to work slightly as the blurry doubled faces of the woman took on an expression of surprise. In that moment, Jessie launched herself between the twin Thompsons, throwing up her forearm to block the woman's arm as it came down toward her, knife in hand.

She felt a sharp pain in her arm as she slammed into Thompson, sending her back on the bed. She was on top of the woman now, her knees pinning her attacker's waist in place. The knife was still in Thompson's hand, and as she brought it up, Jessie caught her wrist and twisted hard.

The knife fell onto the bed beside them, but Jessie didn't let go of Thompson. She looked at her own arm, blinking the blood out of her eyes, and saw where the knife had sliced into it, midway between the top of her wrist and the crook of her elbow. Blood was streaming out, but it didn't hurt as much as she expected.

Thompson let a loud snarl and flung herself upward, seemingly trying to headbutt Jessie. But before she made contact, Jessie slammed her left forearm into the woman’s chin, sending her back down to the bed. The force of the movement made Thompson’s left wrist slip out of Jessie’s blood-soaked grasp and land again on the hilt of the knife.

The killer's eyes gleamed as she realized what was under her gloved fingertips. In a flash, she grabbed the knife and brought it upward again. Jessie managed to reach out with both hands and snag Thompson's arm before she made contact. The two of them struggled for several seconds as if in a deadly game of arm wrestling. Jessie placed her fingers on top of Thompson's, twisting the knife away from herself and back toward the woman who was trying to kill her.

Her head was pounding and her eyes watered as she tried to force the knife away from her. Her back and neck were screaming. Her vision was clouded by the blood dripping from her temple. She could feel wooziness starting to creep around the edge of her consciousness and shook her head in an attempt to fight it off. But that only made her skull explode in pain.

She feared that she might pass out at any moment, making her easy pickings for the woman underneath her, whose mouth was twisted in the same rage that Jessie felt. Then, without warning, Thompson spit in her face.

The shock of the act gave Jessie a brief moment of clarity. But sensing that she didn’t have long before that vanished, Jessie allowed all the wrath bubbling up inside her to boil over, channeling it into a last gasp of fury that gave her an unexpected surge of strength as she plunged the knife downward.

Her vision went blurry as she felt Thompson, still trapped beneath her, tense up briefly before every part of her went slack. Jessie, unable to hold on any longer, collapsed. Her head landed on Thompson’s chest as everything around her went black.

***

Jessie’s eyes popped open.

It only took her a couple of seconds to process where she was. Her head was still resting on Rachel Thompson’s chest, with her nose just inches from the hunting knife, which was jutting out, right where the woman’s heart was.

Her first thought—an odd one in retrospect—was that she had probably only been unconscious for a few seconds. That conclusion came from the fact that blood was still gurgling up out of Thompson, spilling onto her chest around the knife blade. That suggested that the woman’s heart may have only just stopped beating.

The feel of the warm liquid on her left cheek and her lips snapped Jessie out of whatever haze she’d been in and reminded her what her focus should be on. She pushed herself upright, ignoring the throbbing in her head, neck and back, as well as the sharp stinging sensation in her right forearm. She used the back of her left hand to wipe some of her own blood out of her eyes as best she could.

Then she looked down at the carnage underneath her. Rachel Thompson was dead. Her eyes were wide, the rage that had filled them seconds earlier, replaced with a glassy emptiness. Her gloved fists were still wrapped around the hilt of the knife, but the fingers had unfurled slightly, now kept in place by gravity rather than intent.

Jessie stared at the scene, trying to process what had just happened. She had killed Thompson. She’d had to. The woman was trying to kill her and if Jessie hadn’t acted, she would have passed out, leaving herself vulnerable to whatever horrors Thompson wanted to inflict upon her. It was self-defense. Wasn’t it?

For the briefest of moments, Jessie flashed back to the pure rage she’d felt as she plunged the knife into Thompson’s chest. That fury had given her the last bit of strength she’d needed. But was her act of self-defense inevitable? Did she really have no choice? Or, Jessie wondered as she wiped Thompson’s salty blood from her lips, was this what she’d been after all along?

She forced the thought from her mind and instructed herself to focus on more immediate concerns. Brady was downstairs with Amanda. He needed her help. She had to get moving.

With what little reserves she still had, Jessie slid off the bed, landing hard on her butt. At least it wasn’t her head. She grabbed one of the bedposts and pulled herself to her feet. Once she was upright, she noticed how quickly the blood was dripping off her forearm onto the floor.

As quickly as she could under the circumstances, she stepped over to the head of the bed, grabbed a pillow, yanked off its floral-patterned pillowcase before tightly wrapping it around her arm, tying it off with her left hand and her teeth.

Then she left the bedroom, choosing not to look back. She returned back down the hallway the same way she’d come. When she got to the steep, narrow, hidden staircase, she slid into a crouch, then made her way down it on her backside, taking one stair at a time. In the distance, she thought she could hear sirens.

When she reached the bottom, she pushed herself up with just her left hand and stumbled around the corner, past the half wall, and into the living room. Brady had moved Amanda from the chair to the floor, where she was lying on her back. He was pressing a small sofa pillow into the wound on her right side, trying to stem the flow of blood, which was seeping through.

“How’s she doing?” Jessie asked, her voice dry.

Brady looked up at her, and his eyes filled with horror.

“What happened?” he gasped.

Jessie moved over to the chair that Amanda had been tied to and plopped down onto it.

“Long story,” she muttered before nodding at Amanda. “Is she still alive?”

“Just barely,” Brady said, starting to get up.

“No,” Jessie instructed. “Stay with her. I was only sliced once. She has it far worse.”

“You look like you suffered a lot more than just a knife wound, Jessie,” he said, apparently trying to sound calm but unable to keep the concern out of his tone.

Jessie sighed.

“I did slam my neck and back a little.”

“What about your head?” he asked. “You’re bleeding from your temple.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I had a little run-in with a door.”

Jessie saw Brady's face contort from concern into all-out fear. She wanted to ask him why, but before she could, her skull seemed to split open in pain. Lights flashed before her eyes. She felt herself losing her balance.

And as the lights stopped flashing and her vision cleared, she noticed that the living room floor seemed to be rushing up to meet her face.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Jessie kept blinking, hoping the act would remove the fuzziness from both her eyes and her brain.

“Ryan’s on his way,” said Brady, who was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair beside her hospital bed. “We’re at UCLA Medical Center and even using his car’s siren, he’s battling rush hour traffic coming from downtown.”

“I’m fine,” she said, her hoarse voice betraying her.

“Let’s let the doctor decide that,” he replied. “I’m pretty sure you got concussed. And we both know how bad that is.”

Jessie pushed the thought out of her head. She couldn’t deal with the prospect of another recurrence of Second Impact Syndrome, the potentially deadly condition that had essentially paused her life for several months late last year. What would they even call it: Third Impact Syndrome? Rather than focus on that possibility, she turned her attention elsewhere.

“How is Amanda Calloway?” she asked.

Brady paused before answering, as if he wanted to continue the prior conversation. But then he seemed to get that she wasn’t up for dealing with her own situation at the moment, so he relented.

“It was touch and go there for a while. She lost a lot of blood," he said. "And that knife wound to her side punctured her intestine. She's in surgery now, but they think she's going to pull through."

Jessie allowed herself a moment of relief before glancing down at her right arm, which was wrapped in a bandage. She had no recollection of that being done.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“Fully unconscious?” he said. “About ten minutes. The EMTs were able to wake you up pretty quick, but between your injuries and the pain meds they gave you, this is the first time you’ve been coherent in about an hour.”

“That’s not long enough for major arm surgery,” she noted.

“The doctors said you managed to avoid lasting injury,” he said. “The knife didn’t get any arteries and only did surface damage to the tendons and muscles. They stitched you up while you were floating in and out. The doctor said the procedure was straightforward and that you’ll supposedly have full function back in a few weeks. We’re obviously still awaiting results for some of the other stuff.”

“What did you tell Ryan when you called him?”

“That you were injured during a confrontation with a suspect,” he answered simply. “And that you suffered injuries to your arm, neck, back, and head. That’s all I knew at the time.”

“Confrontation with a suspect” was a very diplomatic description of what had occurred in that bedroom. Jessie wondered if he’d have described it differently if he’d actually seen it.

“What about Thompson?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“She’s very dead,” Brady said. “Do you want to talk about that? The scene was—something else.”

“It was self-defense,” Jessie said, noting that the emotion had drained from her voice. “We can worry about the details later.”

Brady looked like he wanted to get into them now, but before he could, his phone buzzed.

“It’s Ryan,” he said. “Give me a sec.”

While he typed away, Jessie realized she’d been tensing her entire body and settled back into the bed. The details of Rachel Thompson’s death could be shared with others later. But right now, it would be nice to get them clear in her own head.

She had to kill Thompson, or the woman would have killed her. That scenario had come up before for Jessie. On several occasions, she'd been forced to take out a killer before she or others lost their lives. This was no different. It was simply self-defense.

But it didn’t feel like self-defense. In that crucial moment on the bed, when she sensed that she was about to pass out, Jessie had used the very same rage she’d been fighting down for months. She used it to give her an extra jolt of energy when she plunged that knife into Rachel Thompson’s heart. Admittedly, she was woozy when it happened, but she did have a vague recollection that the act almost felt—good.

She wondered if that’s how her serial killer father had felt when he’d murdered people. She already knew, because her sister had told her so, that was how Hannah had felt when she shot and killed an old man. Yes, the man was a serial killer who had threatened their lives. But in the moment when Hannah fired the gun, he was in cuffs.

It seemed that bloodlust ran in her family. Was it always her destiny to end up in this place? Had she crossed a line she could never return from?

“Ryan’s five minutes away,” Brady said, snapping her out of her dark thoughts. “He wants to let Hannah and Kat know what happened so they can come see you too but he wants to make sure that’s okay with you.”

Jessie didn't want to worry either her sister or her best friend. But she knew that if she tried to keep what happened to them, it would only make them angry.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can tell him it’s okay.”

Some small part of her felt ashamed of the fact that she wanted everyone to be here. She was supposed to be tough, able to handle anything. But she didn’t feel tough right now. She felt scared, mostly of herself.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Kat was about to pack it in for the night when she got the call on the same burner phone she’d used to speak with Dalton Tepper earlier today. She answered it immediately.

“Hey, Tepp,” she said, trying not to let her voice sound too excitable. “This must be important for you to be calling me at—6:11 P.M. What is that Buenos Aires time?”

“We’re four hours ahead of you. It’s 10:11 here. And I think that you can guess the subject matter of my call.”

“I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“Always a good policy,” he said. “But since everything I’m about to tell you is off book, I’m going to share what happened as fast as I can. Even using secure lines and burner phones, this is radioactive. I don’t have to tell you that using CIA resources for a private civilian request, even one that serves the public good, is iffy at best.”

“I’m all ears,” Kat told him.

“I didn’t want to risk exposing assets in-country. So rather than using undercover agents in Quito, I had a SAC strike team based here in Buenos Aires follow up on the information you gave me,” he said, diving right in. “The team arrived at the Guayaquil address you provided at 7:16 local time. They showed the security footage of your suspect to the hostel manager, who gave them her room number. They breached the unit at 7:22. Ash Pierce wasn’t there.”

“Dammit!” Kat blurted out.

“We did find evidence that she had been there,” Tepp continued, unruffled by her outburst. “And that she had left pretty recently. My people don’t think she’s going back though.”

“Why not?”

“They did a quick and dirty fingerprint sweep and collected anything that might offer DNA,” he explained. “The place was wiped down pretty thoroughly, which suggested that Pierce was leaving for good and didn’t want to leave a trace. Plus, the manager said that when she left this morning, she paid her outstanding bill in full, with cash.”

“She didn’t want to flake on payment and have the hostel manager call the authorities,” Kat mused. “Nothing to draw attention to herself.

“Exactly,” Tepp agreed. “Having said that, they did find one partial print that matched Pierce’s.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” Kat demanded.

“I just wanted to give you context,” he answered.

“Any indication of where she might have gone next?” Kat asked, moving on.

“Maybe,” he said. “The team reviewed surveillance camera footage in the neighborhood for the last 24 hours. One bit led to an internet café a block over from the hostel. The café’s interior cameras showed her arriving there yesterday afternoon, timestamped at 4:04 P.M. One of our tech guys searched the computer terminal she used, checking all search activity around that time. Everything was anonymous, but because of security features on the computer, she couldn’t clear her cache, so we know what searches she did.”

“And?”

“There were several involving cargo ship departure dates and times for today,” he told her.

“Going where?”

“Multiple options were searched,” he replied. “She spent the most time on Managua, Nicaragua and both La Paz and Ensenada in Mexico.”

Kat went quiet, as a lump lodged in her throat.

“What is it?” Tepp asked, clearly sensing the change in her.

Kat swallowed hard before replying.

“From Ensenada, it’s just a short boat trip back to the U.S.,” she said quietly.

“You really think she’d risk that?” Tepp wondered.

“I think she loves the risk,” Kat told him. “Ash Pierce is done hiding. She’s coming back here.”

She was about to ask what else he could do to help her track Pierce down when her regular cell phone rang. It was Ryan Hernandez. She almost let it go to voicemail, but Ryan rarely called her, even though she was living with him and Jessie, at least for a few more days. He almost always texted.

Something about the ringing phone gave her pause, though she couldn’t say why.

“Hold on, Tepp,” she said. “I just have to answer this call.”

She pushed “accept,” picked up her cell phone, and apprehensively put it to her ear.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Ash Pierce rolled over on her sleeping pad.

Living in a shipping container for the next two weeks wouldn't be fun but she'd been through much worse. She'd slept in sand dunes in Middle Eastern deserts. She'd lived in bombed-out structures in eastern European war zones for days on end. She even spent two weeks hiking through the Amazon rainforest to acquire a target. This was a vacation by comparison.

At least in this situation, she’d paid off a crew member of the cargo ship to secretly bring her food and water and dump her bedpan overboard periodically. Once they arrived at the Port of Ensenada, she’d have to make him disappear, but for now he thought they were besties and she was happy to play into the illusion.

Ash glanced at the hand-scrawled calendar she’d made for herself, even though she knew the details by heart. The cargo ship would arrive in Ensenada one day before the Fiesta cruise ship Jamboree would pull into the same port. On the ship was Camille Overton, a single 33-year-old accountant who was travelling alone. Camille was taking her first vacation in three years and had booked a guided shopping excursion for the day in Ensenada.

Unfortunately for Camille, she and Ash were about the same age and had similar builds and skin coloring. That’s why, after hacking the cruise line’s database and doing tons of research, Ash had selected Camille.

Because of the sensitivity of this online search, instead of using the local internet café, she’d done it on a laptop she’d stolen from a student at the main library on the campus of the Universidad de Guayaquil. After completing the search, she dropped the laptop in the Rio Guayas.

If all went well, Ash would ambush Camille in town, kill her, take her clothes and ID, cut off her fingertips and remove her teeth, dispose of her unidentifiable body, and then return to the ship using the woman’s identity. She would stick to Camille’s stateroom for the remainder of the cruise to avoid detection. Then she would disembark at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.

For a brief moment, as she settled in on the sleeping pad, Ash allowed herself to marvel at how much her world had changed in the last few months. She still recalled how, after waking up from the coma she suffered after an ugly altercation with Hannah Dorsey and Kat Gentry, she'd been without any memory of who she was.

She remembered how that naïve version of herself had been stunned to learn that she was under arrest in that hospital bed, charged with multiple murders she had no recollection of. She remembered the shock she’d felt when she was informed that she was a hitwoman for hire, a former CIA assassin. The idea had appalled her.

But at one point, in an unexpected rush, her memory returned. And while her mind was suddenly filled to the brim with her violent personal history, she lost something too. Somehow, the conscience that had troubled the blank slate version of her disappeared into the ether.

She was glad for it. The guilt hadn’t suited her. And without it weighing her down, she felt unburdened. All she was left with was the deep desire to inflict pain and punishment on the people who had ruined her business, her reputation, her very life. The need for vengeance as her constant companion. Once her mind was free again, it didn’t take long for her to extricate her body from custody as well.

Now she decided where she went and what she did. After she reached L.A., she could go anywhere. And she already knew exactly where she would go. She had a few people to visit.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Jessie studied the object in her hand, trying to decide what to do next.

Ryan was sprawled out, fast asleep, in the same uncomfortable chair that Brady was in earlier. When Ryan arrived, her partner on this case had left to follow up on the Rachel Thompson case. Kat and Hannah were back at the house after having visited earlier.

“You should go back to school,” Jessie had instructed her little sister. “I don’t want you missing any classes on account of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hannah had replied almost angrily. “My sister is attacked by a serial killer, gets cut up with a hunting knife, and hits her head, and I’m just supposed to go back to Irvine for a lecture on Brain Dysfunction and Repair? Not happening.”

Jessie had relented and even allowed the two of them to gather some toiletries from the house after learning that she’d need to stay here for at least a couple of days while the doctors performed more tests on her brain. She wanted to feel a little more normal during that time.

She’d also requested that Kat do her one other favor. Something was itching at her, and as long as she was going to be stuck in a hospital bed for a few days, she decided to scratch it. She especially wanted to distract herself so that she didn’t have to think about the particulars of Rachel Thompson’s death.

So Kat, on her instructions, dug into Mark Haddonfield’s box of personal effects and grabbed the pillar bar pendant necklace inside. When she returned, she handed it over, along with the toiletry bag.

“Care to tell me what this is all about?” her friend had asked when Ryan and Hannah went to the cafeteria to get a bite.

Jessie quickly explained everything that had happened since Haddonfield’s death at the hands of Ash Pierce. How he’d left the box of personal items to her for reasons she didn’t understand. How the staff at the prison where he was being held had discovered a message scrawled in crayon on the underside of the mattress in his cell that included her initials—JH—followed by what she now believed was a code: 6-21-HD-44.

She reminded Kat of the message that Haddonfield had asked Hannah to convey to her in a call from the prison. The message was “if you want to be independent, you have to go to the mattresses.”

“So you now think that he was trying to tell you to look at his mattress, where the code was hidden?” Kat confirmed.

“Right,” Jessie said. “And what I didn’t get then was what the first part—‘if you want to be independent’—meant.”

“What does it mean?” Kat asked.

Jessie held up the pillar bar pendant necklace, and in one forceful motion, yanked the pendant from the bail. As she expected, it snapped out easily. She held up the end for Kat to see what she’d suspected from back when she’d been in the office of beauty pageant coordinator Marcus Sullivan and watched him plug a similar looking item into his computer. The pendant was actually a thumb drive.

“Haddonfield used the phrase ‘if you want to be independent’ when he talked to Hannah,” Jessie explained. “That was in case their conversation was being recorded. But what he was really secretly saying was ‘if you want to be in the pendant, you have to go to the mattresses.’ To access the thumb drive hiding in plain sight in the pendant necklace, you have to use the code written on the underside of his mattress.”

Kat whistled as she processed all of it.

“What do you think is on it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Jessie said, “but whatever it is, he went to incredible lengths to keep it hidden until after his death. That tells me it’s important.”

“Do you want me to look into it?”

“I appreciate it, but he meant it for me,” Jessie said. “I don’t know what kind of material is on there, and until I see it, I don’t want to subject anyone else to it.”

“You don’t think I can handle it?” Kat asked sharply, only half teasing.

Jessie got the strange sense that her friend was upset by something unrelated to Mark Haddonfield’s message from beyond the grave, but right now she just didn’t have the energy to ask what it might be. Instead, she kept her focus on her own issue.

“I’m sure you can,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if that was true. “But he intended it for my eyes. There had to be a reason for that. So for now, this is between me and him.”

“Okay,” Kat said, clearly slightly miffed but not wanting to push a hospitalized woman. “So when are you going to look at it?”

“Not tonight,” Jessie told her. “I think I want a few hours rest before diving into whatever this is.”

That was partly true, but it wasn’t the only reason she was holding off. Before exposing herself to whatever was on that thumb drive, Jessie had something else to deal with.

She couldn’t escape an ugly reality—that she'd given in to the bloodlust she'd been fighting off for months. That she'd used the power of her vengeful rage to plunge a knife into the heart of another human being. Yes, she'd been in danger. And yes, maybe she had no choice in that moment. But that didn’t justify the truth she was finally willing to accept: that she’d enjoyed it.

Before Jessie looked at any thumb drives or addressed the injury to her head with her doctor, or discussed the potential of having children with Ryan, she had to answer the question that made her head throb more than any concussion did.

What had she unleashed in herself? And was there any way to put it back in the box?

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Finn Anderton walked through the dark parking lot, trying not to let his nerves get the better of him.

It was just after ten, and the nighttime quiet of the lot was unnerving. He'd got Dallas Henry's class schedule and learned that his Statistical Models class ran from 8:30 to 10. So he'd waited outside the building until the guy emerged and followed him to the lot.

There were still a surprising number of cars there, which likely belonged to some other students in the same class. It was held at the very far end of campus, a twenty-five-minute walk away from the dorms and campus apartments. As a result, many students drove rather than risk walking across campus late at night.

He wondered if that was Dallas’s reason, though he doubted it. The guy was tall and muscular, and attempting to mug him seemed like a foolish choice. But Finn wasn’t here to mug Dallas. He was here to confront him. And now, only a few paces behind the guy, he decided the time had come.

“Hey,” he called out.

Dallas jumped slightly, nearly bumping into the pickup truck next to him, and turned around with a surprised expression on his face.

“Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that suggested he had no intention of helping.

“Actually, I was hoping to help you out,” Finn said. “I wanted to give you a piece of advice.”

“Do I know you?” Dallas replied unconvincingly.

Finn knew it was a charade. Dallas Henry was well aware of who he was. He let that lie go so as not to get distracted.

“You need to leave Hannah Dorsey alone,” he said emphatically.

“Are you serious right now?” Dallas demanded, looking like he might be on the verge of laughing.

Finn was very serious. He’d come to accept that there might not be any romantic future for him and Hannah anymore. That was his fault—a result of his moral weakness in an important moment. But even so, he still wanted Hannah to be safe and happy. And what he’d recently learned about Dallas Henry told him that she wouldn’t be safe with him.

“I know who you really are,” he said, deciding that the best way to keep Hannah safe was to put a little healthy fear in this guy.

“What does that mean?” Dallas demanded haughtily, though his eyes looked slightly panicked.

“I researched you,” Finn said, “just like Hannah does when she’s helping other students out of a jam. I even went to Bakersfield this last weekend to talk to some people. The hometown folks always know each other best, right? And you know what your old high school peeps told me?”

“This should be good,” Dallas said, pretending not to care, though his teeth were gritted.

“They said that early in school, something happened to you,” Finn told him. “You changed from a normal kid into some kind of incel type. I had multiple people tell me that they were scared that you’d end up as a school shooter. And then something changed.”

He waited to see if Dallas would respond, but the guy just stood there, staring at him, his whole body one big ball of tension. Finn continued.

“They said that you seemed to drop the whole ‘woman-hating’ thing, that you appeared to have turned over a new leaf. But the weird thing was that not everyone bought it. I had at least three people that I tracked down say they thought you were just putting on a good show so that you could get into college, but that you hadn’t really changed. They said the darkness was still in you.”

“What kind of freak are you?” Dallas demanded. “We’ve never spoken and then you come up to me in a random parking lot and start making accusations about my character? What kind of sicko decides that a fun time would be making the three hour trip from Irvine to Bakersfield— on a weekend, no less—to dig up lies on a total stranger? You think I’m some threat to Hannah, but the truth is that you’re the stalker, man.”

“Just stay away from her,” Finn said undeterred, “You act like you’ve changed but I know guys like you. There are a few in my own fraternity. I know what your type does when you think no one’s looking. I know the truth. We both do.”

Dallas paused, seemingly taking the words to heart. Then he took a step forward and muttered under his breath.

“The truth is that you should be less worried about the threat to Hannah and more worried about the threat to yourself.”

Finn saw a flash of motion at waist level and glanced down. He processed what was happening only after it had begun.

Dallas had a switchblade knife in his hand. It glinted in the moonlight just before Finn felt it sink into his gut. He started to gasp, but Dallas’s hand was suddenly covering his mouth. He felt the knife leave his abdomen, then re-enter it. More jabs happened in quick succession. He lost count as he dropped to his knees, unable to support his weight because of the excruciating pain.

He felt another puncture land in his chest and immediately knew it had pierced his lung. Lightheaded, he toppled from his knees to the parking lot asphalt, lying flat on his back, looking up at the moon amid the starlit sky.

Then Dallas stepped into his eyeline, blocking his view.

***

Dallas stood over Finn Anderton, looking down at him without pity. The kid was like a gutted fish, gasping for his last breaths.

He was about to bend down to finish the job with one sharp slice across the front of the punk’s throat when he heard voices nearby. Glancing around, he saw two girls from his class walking together in his direction. The pickup truck next to him was blocking him from their view, but not for long. If he took the time to deliver the death blow to Anderton, he risked them seeing him.

He glanced down at the pathetic creature. Anderton was bleeding out from at least a half dozen wounds. He was rasping unintelligibly. His eyes were fluttering. He didn’t have long left. Even if he was discovered, it would be too late to help him.

Dallas had to think of the bigger picture. Being discovered here—now—would ruin everything he worked so meticulously to make happen. So, despite his intense desire to cut into Anderton’s flesh one final time, he pulled his hoodie over his head, turned, and darted off, keeping low until he reached his car. He unlocked it and slid into the driver’s seat, where he peeked in his rearview mirror.

He could see three other people, including his professor, walking toward the parking lot now too. The place was getting surprisingly crowded, and he needed to leave fast. He wrapped the bloody knife in a collection of tissues, dropped it on the passenger seat, then started his car and backed out of his spot.

As he eased carefully out of the lot, an unexpected thought popped into his head. He’d never killed anyone before. It had all happened so quickly that he’d been denied the time to appreciate the moment.

He'd allow himself that luxury later. And then he'd review what he'd done right and wrong tonight and how things could be improved so that the next time would be easier.

Next time. The words sent a thrill up his leg. He was almost aroused.

But he would have to wait until the time was right. Only then would he do the deed. And when he finally did, all his work would be worth it. He deserved this. And so did Hannah.

She had it coming.

NOW AVAILABLE!

THE PERFECT DECEPTION

(A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Forty)

As elite profiler Jessie Hunt delves into a series of bizarre marital homicides, she uncovers a shadowy world where affluent couples engage in a perilous game of "life swaps." In this twisted society, the rich trade spouses, homes, and even children for thrills—but someone's deadly agenda is rewriting the rules.

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THE PERFECT DECEPTION is book #40 in a new psychological suspense series by bestselling author Blake Pierce, which begins with THE PERFECT WIFE, a #1 bestseller (and free download) with over 5,000 five-star ratings and 1,000 five-star reviews.

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“Right from the start we have an unusual protagonist that I haven't seen done in this genre before. The action is nonstop… A very atmospheric novel that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours.”

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THE PERFECT DECEPTION

(A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Forty)

Did you know that I've written multiple novels in the mystery genre? If you haven't read all my series, click the image below to download a series starter!

Blake Pierce

USA Today and #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce is the author of numerous series in the mystery and thriller genres, spanning 10 years of work, including the Jessie Hunt, Ella Dark, Rylie Page, Faith Bold and Rachel Gift series. Blake's most recent latest releases are the Jenna Graves, Alison Payne, Isla Rivers and Kari Blackhorse series.

Many of Blake’s titles are available for free. Please visit Blake’s author page to find out more.

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SERIES BY BLAKE PIERCE

KATE VALENTINE

KARI BLACKHORSE

ISLA RIVERS

ALISON PAYNE

JENNA GRAVES

THE GOVERNESS

RACHEL BLACKWOOD

SHEILA STONE

FINN WRIGHT

MORGAN CROSS

JULIETTE HART

FAITH BOLD

FIONA RED

DAISY FORTUNE

AMBER YOUNG

CAMI LARK

NICKY LYONS

CORA SHIELDS

MAY MOORE

PAIGE KING

VALERIE LAW

RACHEL GIFT

AVA GOLD

A YEAR IN EUROPE

ELLA DARK

LAURA FROST

EUROPEAN VOYAGE

ADELE SHARP

THE AU PAIR

ZOE PRIME

JESSIE HUNT

CHLOE FINE

KATE WISE

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE

RILEY PAIGE

MACKENZIE WHITE

AVERY BLACK

KERI LOCKE