Page 34 of The Perfect Poise

Jessie pulled her phone out of her pocket and saw that she’d missed a text and a call from Kolek. Apparently, she'd been too focused on the argument to notice.

“Put him through,” Parker said, and then addressed Kolek, “you’re on speaker. Hernandez and Hunt are here too.”

“Excellent,” the man said, sounding excited. “I wanted to let you know that our preliminary exam of Isabella Moreno revealed something interesting. We found a strand of hair on her body that wasn’t hers. We put it through the system and came up with a name.”

“Who?” Parker asked.

“Julian Crest,” Kolek said. "He was charged with statutory rape six years ago. Apparently, the case fell apart when the girl wouldn't testify, but his DNA is still in the system."

“I know that name,” Jessie said. “Isn’t he that fitness guru who’s hugely popular online?”

“I don’t know,” Kolek admitted.

“That’s all right,” Ryan said. “We’ll have Jamil and Beth give us a rundown, including his location, so we can get to him ASAP.”

“That is, assuming we’re still on the case,” Jessie prompted. “Are we, Captain?”

Parker scowled at her and for the briefest of seconds, Jessie thought the woman might actually dump them. Then she gave them both a curt wave.

“Get moving,” she growled.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hannah felt helpless.

It wasn’t a sensation she was accustomed to, and it had put her in a bad mood. Apparently, she wasn’t doing a great job of hiding it.

“Are you okay?” Finn Anderton asked with a frown as they sat at the Java City Kiosk, having a mid-afternoon snack of scones and iced tea.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize how unpleasant I was being.”

“Tell me what’s going on,” Finn said. “Maybe getting it off your chest will help.”

She fought off a smile. Finn looked like an enthusiastic puppy, with his wide gray eyes, casually windswept dirty blond hair, and crooked grin, highlighted his pronounced dimples. He was so eager to help and despite her best efforts, she found herself warming to his bro-tastic frat boy energy.

“I didn’t want to bore you with my stuff on what was supposed to be a relaxing, between-class study break.”

“I thought you didn’t have a class for the last little while,” he replied.

“True,” she said. “I’ve been spending the last few hours focused on something else.”

“Spill,” he said. “You know you want to.”

So she did, filling him in on Clayton Callum’s request to deal with Dana Douglas, the girl he thought was stalking him. She detailed the possible food poisoning incident of Bridget Lerner, the classmate working on Clayton’s project, and the photo with the word “hot” on it slid under his door.

“Do you know either of them?” she asked Finn when she was done.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Do you have pictures?”

“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” she scoffed. “Of course I do.”

She showed him photos of both students, but he shook his head when he saw them.

“I don’t know either of them,” he said. “I think I might have seen him around campus. I don’t recognize her at all. Then again, that’s not such a shock. There are over 28,000 students at this school.”

“Well, I’m having trouble finding anything concrete,” she said. “I did a shallow dive into Dana’s background and—” she started.

“A shallow dive?” Finn asked, puzzled.

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