Page 64 of The Perfect Accomplice

“I saw her run out the back door to the left,” she said. “I assumed she was going to the restroom back there, but I couldn't locate her anywhere.”

“I’ll find her,” Jessie said. “A detective named Ryan Hernandez will be back here any minute. Please tell him everything you can about the incident—the nature of the gunshot wound, anything Mitch Connor might have said before he died. Details matter.”

She didn’t wait for a response, instead rushing to the back of the emergency room and pushing through the doors. She immediately saw the restroom the nurse had mentioned. But something else caught her eye. Just to the left of them was a bank of elevators. Suddenly, a heart-stopping thought entered her mind.

She knew this hospital like the back of her hand, which meant that she knew far better than most where those elevators led. On the fifth floor was the secure unit where Ash Pierce had been held for the last eleven weeks. Kat knew it too. There was no way that she could have seen those elevators without the same thought entering her head.

Kat was going after Pierce.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

“Oh god,” Jessie muttered to herself as she dashed over and hit the “up” button.

The doors to one elevator opened immediately and she leapt in, pushing the button for the fifth floor. A young man in a white coat stepped in too and reached out to push the button for the third floor.

“Nope,” Jessie barked. “We’re going to five first. You can get three on the way back down.”

“What are you talking about?” the man demanded before extending his hand closer to the button.

Jessie reached out, snagged his hand, and twisted his wrist backward, making him drop to his knees in pain.

"You'll wait, or I'll break your wrist, got it?"

He nodded, his eyes watering. Still, she kept him in that position until the doors opened on her floor.

“Thanks, Doc,” she said, releasing his hand and stepping out into the hall, “you understand—police business.”

He grunted something unintelligible as the door closed behind her. She hurried over to the nearest nurses’ station.

“Where is Ash Pierce being held?” she demanded, holding up her ID. “I’m with LAPD.”

The two nurses at the station looked startled, but one, older and apparently less inclined to get into an argument with law enforcement, pointed down the hall to the left.

“Room 522,” she said.

“Thanks,” Jessie said, dashing in that direction.

She pushed through a pair of double doors, went down a long hallway and then, following the room number listings on the wall signs, made a right. That’s when she saw her.

Kat was about twenty paces ahead of her, peering through a small window for a closed set of doors marked with a sign reading, “Secure Area: medical and law enforcement personnel only.” Jessie noted that her right hand was shoved deep in her jacket, clearly intended to hide the gun she was holding.

“Kat,” she said in what she hoped was a normal speaking voice.

Her friend spun around, the gun still in her pocket but protruding forward prominently. She looked emotionally untethered. Her dirty blonde hair was all over the place, and parts of it appeared to be matted with blood. So were her clothes. Her eyes were as intense as Jessie had ever seen them.

"Hey, Jessie," she replied, her voice flat and emotionless.

“What are you doing?” Jessie asked, though she already knew the answer.

“Righting a wrong,” Kat answered simply.

“I get that,” Jessie said, moving toward her friend, “but we can’t be sure that she’s behind this. And even if she is, if you do that, the prosecutors won’t view it as justified homicide. They’ll view it as murder.”

“I don’t care,” Kat told her.

Jessie nodded.

“I don’t blame you,” she replied. “If I was in your situation, I’d feel the same way. But remember, there are officers in there guarding her. They’re not just going to let you take her out. What are you going to do, shoot them too in order to get to her? Those are innocent people doing their jobs.”

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