Page 13 of The Perfect Poise

Again, Ortega sighed. When she replied, it was reluctantly.

“She wasn’t above blackballing artists or galleries who didn’t give her preferential treatment. Some artists and owners resented her. Others loved her, but they were all scared of her.”

“Including you?” Jessie wondered.

“It never came to that,” Ortega said. “Like I told you, she was a big supporter, and we were always on good terms. But yeah, in the back of my mind was always the concern that if I did something to upset or disappoint her, she could crush me.”

“Did she ever crush anyone so badly that they might have wanted payback?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ortega said. “Yes, she could make people’s lives uncomfortable, but I never encountered anyone who said their career was ruined by her. Being on Chloe’s bad side was a hindrance, but not a death knell.”

“Before you left last night,” Ryan pressed, “did you notice if she upset anyone during the auction?”

“I guess,” Ortega said. “She beat out Garrett Leach for a piece. They both bid pretty high, but he eventually had to beg off when the price went past seven hundred thousand. He didn’t seem happy. Then again, Garret never seems particularly happy.”

Suddenly Lena’s Ortega’s eyes widened. It was clear that she had an idea.

“What?” Jessie asked.

“This is crazy to say,” Ortega told her, shaking her head. “So much so that I hesitate to mention it, but it occurs to me that Garrett might be pretty adept with a knife.”

“Why do you say that?” Jessie asked.

“He’s a plastic surgeon.”

CHAPTER SIX

Kat Gentry felt guilty.

Then again, she always felt guilty these days.

Right now, it was because she’d convinced Dr. Janice Lemmon to meet with her well before normal practice hours so she could have her therapy session prior to anyone else arriving. So Lemmon, 70 years old and recovering from injuries, had traipsed to her downtown office at 7:30 instead of at nine, when she usually had her first session.

Kat decided not to address that source of guilt this morning. She already had enough on her plate, what with feeling responsible for the death of her murdered fiancé, Mitch Connor. In addition, she felt the ongoing shame of leaning too heavily on Jessie, Ryan, and Hannah, among others, for emotional support, as well as largely ignoring the clients of her private detective agency.

But none of those things was what had her in here this morning. Instead it was the topic that she’d refused to address with Lemmon in any of their prior sessions, the one that consumed more of her mental and emotional energy than anything else these days. She was finally going to talk to Lemmon about Ash Pierce.

As she settled into the cushy leather couch in Lemmon's office, she looked across at the older woman in the worn, floral high-backed chair, trying to decide how best to broach the subject. The psychiatrist might find it odd that Kat had been coming to see her for weeks and never brought this up.

Then again, Kat knew that Janice Lemmon wasn’t surprised by much. Though she looked meek, with her tiny body, thick glasses and tight, little gray ringlets of hair, Lemmon was no pushover. Prior to her work as a psychiatrist in private practice, she was also a highly decorated LAPD and FBI criminal profiler. Despite being out of that game for over a decade, the woman was still sharp as a tack. It was hard to get anything past her.

That’s why Jessie had suggested that Kat see her in the first place. Lemmon had been the go-to therapist for Jessie for over a decade, since she was in college. She was also helping Jessie and Ryan work through their relationship issues. And to keep it all in the family, she also periodically saw Hannah to help her with what everyone euphemistically called her “anger management issues.”

But until today, Kat had been hesitant to broach the subject of Ash Pierce. Even if it was a no-brainer topic to address, she had good reason to avoid it. After all, Pierce was the hitwoman who had kidnapped and tortured Kat in the desert, very nearly killing her before she was rescued by Hannah. That was after Pierce tricked Kat into thinking she was an abused wife who needed help getting free of her husband, who it turned out, didn't exist.

Later, Pierce had escaped from a prison transport truck and tried to hunt down Hannah as payback for besting her that night in the desert. Luckily, before Pierce could take her down, Hannah, Kat and an Israeli bodyguard named Gila Jabarin had combined to defeat the assassin in a hospital boiler room.

In the process, Hannah had stabbed Pierce in the neck. Kat, for reasons she still couldn’t totally explain, gave Pierce CPR until help arrived. The woman survived but ended up in a coma for a month. When she finally awoke just over seven weeks ago, she claimed to have no memory of her time as a hitwoman. That was why Kat was here this morning.

"I sense that something's different today," Lemmon said, pulling Kat out of her memories and back into the moment. "Are we finally going to get to the issue that you've been dancing around since our very first session?"

Kat, as usual, was amazed by the woman’s perception.

“How did you know?” she asked.

Lemmon smiled with a mix of maternal warmth and mischievousness.

“You forget who you’re dealing with, Katherine,” she teased. “Why don’t you just dive in? It’ll be easier that way.”

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