Page 3 of The Perfect Accomplice

Haddonfield decided that if he couldn't become Jessie's protégé, he would become her nemesis, and went about it by murdering multiple people that Jessie had previously rescued from serial killers she had tracked and caught. Ultimately, he came after Jessie herself when she was hospitalized after suffering a serious head injury. But she managed, with the assistance of both Ryan and Dr. Lemmon, to stop him before he could complete his mission. He was currently being held at downtown L.A.'s Twin Towers Correctional Facility, awaiting trial for his crimes.

Unfortunately, before he was caught, he’d written a long screed, which he timed to post online on Thanksgiving day. It was an unhinged description of how Jessie had wronged him, why he had to punish her, and how he’d gone about it. Then it turned into a call to action, asking for someone to take up the mantle of vengeance and pick up where he’d left off.

Authorities had discovered the manifesto within hours of its posting and managed to get it pulled down almost everywhere. But before that happened, there was no way to know how many people had seen and embraced his entreaty. In the two weeks since the manifesto posted, no crimes associated with any of Jessie’s past cases had been committed. But that didn’t set her mind at ease. Someone might just be taking their time.

“Yes, because of the manifesto,” Jessie finally answered.

“Do you want to talk about that?” Lemmon asked.

“Not really,” Jessie said. “There’s not anything I can do about it right now. And as long as nobody’s acted on it, I’d rather keep my attention on issues I can actually impact positively.”

“That’s a healthy attitude,” Lemmon agreed. “So which issue would you like to tackle in our remaining time?”

Jessie sighed.

“Well, we’ve been dancing around the Ryan stuff,” she conceded. “maybe we should just dive in.”

“I’m all ears,” Lemmon said, leaning back in her chair. “What ‘stuff’ are we talking about? The boss stuff or the trust stuff?”

“Neither actually,” Jessie told her. “Since he resigned as captain of Central Station and returned his attention exclusively to leading HSS, the boss/employee dynamic hasn’t been a problem. He runs the unit, but Captain Parker has final say so there’s not much friction there. And the trust thing—we’re working through it.”

The “trust” issue that Lemmon mentioned was in regard to an incident last spring, when Ryan kept secret a threat from a killer that he thought might stress Jessie out unnecessarily, especially since the killer had already been caught and he thought it was just empty talk. Unfortunately, the threat was real and almost resulted in the deaths of Hannah and Kat. It had taken a long time for him to convince her that he could be trusted to be straight with her, even when he thought it might be detrimental to her emotional health. In fact, there were times when she still had her doubts that he’d completely changed his stripes, but he was clearly trying, and it felt petty to keep holding it over him.

“What then?” Lemmon asked.

“Do you remember how I told you that he’d expressed interest in having kids and that I was. . . less enthusiastic.”

“Of course,” Lemmon said. “I know that he wanted to have children with his previous wife but that in six years of marriage it never happened.”

"Correct," Jessie said. "He's told me that, in retrospect, he views that as a blessing. He didn't want to bring children into what ultimately became a broken home. But's that's made him even more committed to having them now, since he doesn't have the doubts about us that he did with his ex."

“But you’ve expressed reservations in light of your recent health issues, among other things,” Lemmon recalled.

“That’s right,” Jessie replied. “You know all about the physical concerns I’ve had in the last few years. Since I started working as a profiler, it feels like I’ve sustained injuries to every part of my body, especially my head.”

Jessie didn’t need to repeat the details for Lemmon. The doctor was well aware of the multiple concussions Jessie had suffered, the last of which ultimately led to brain surgery ten weeks ago.

“But that’s not your primary source of reticence if I recall,” Lemmon prodded.

Jessie could tell the doctor wasn’t going to let her off the hook on this one. Truth be told, she didn’t really want her to.

“No,” she conceded, “there’s the standard concern I’m sure lots of women in my position face. I’m just not sure I’m ready to put my career on hold to have a baby. But we both know that’s not what’s really holding me back.”

“The miscarriage,” Lemmon said.

Jessie nodded, though that simple phrase failed to convey the gravity of what had happened. Barely three years ago, when Jessie was married to her previous husband, Kyle Voss, she got pregnant and was excited about it.

What she only learned later was that Kyle was a cheating, murderous sociopath who killed his mistress and tried to frame Jessie for it. However, before that revelation, when he had learned about pregnancy, Kyle had secretly poisoned Jessie as means of ending it. It turned out that he didn't consider himself the fathering type, and that was his way of handling it.

Jessie had struggled with the pain of losing the baby for months before she discovered her husband’s true nature and what he’d done. Ultimately, she’d barely survived his attempt to frame and subsequently kill her. But she wasn’t sure her feelings toward motherhood had survived the experience along with her.

“I’ve pushed dealing with what happened back then into such a hidden place that I’m not sure I can even access those feelings anymore,” she admitted. “Until I can work through what happened to me, I’m not sure I have any business being a parent, which makes the choice I made recently a strange one.”

“What choice is that?” Lemmon asked.

"I went to see my OB/GYN earlier this week to see if I'm even able to have children after all the physical trauma I've suffered lately. I figured, why go through the emotional rollercoaster if it's a moot point?"

“And when do you expect the results?” Lemmon asked.

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