Page 24 of The Perfect Prey

“I don’t know what I would say to him anyway,” she said, frustrated.“You still haven’t told me what this is all about?What crime occurred?”

“For now, you’re better off if we don’t tell you,” Jessie said.“The less you know, the less you can be pressured to share.If Coy asks, tell him we asked about who hosted these events, and you told us you didn’t know.That’s true, right?”

“Yes,” Russo confirmed, her eyes darting away nervously.

Jessie let that go for now.The young woman was definitely hiding something, but this wasn’t time or place to push her on it, with Coy in the other room.

“Then just tell him that,” she instructed.“Say we kept pushing you, but you stuck to your story.Don’t mention your plan for tomorrow morning.You should be good.”

“Okay,” Russo said.

They got up to leave.Jessie could tell that Susannah would have preferred to bring the woman into the station right now.But Jessie feared that she would clam up even more if they tried to pry any more information out of her tonight.Coy might even call their boss to warn about this conversation.

Whatever Valentina Russo was hiding, Jessie was confident that she could discover it tomorrow.Once the woman brought that memo into the station, she was an accomplice to their investigation.She was committed.

That was when they’d really turn the screws

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lights out was only thirty minutes from now and as Mark Haddonfield lay in the bottom bunk of his cell, he was having trouble deciding what to do.

If he was going to call Jessie Hunt, it needed to be now.The guards in his unit of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility stopped letting inmates make collect calls from the payphones fifteen minutes before lights out.

Mark was well aware that the jury on his case might very well come back with a verdict tomorrow.He had little doubt about the outcome.They were going to find him guilty of multiple counts of murder.He could see it in their eyes.Once that happened, his access to phone calls might be severely limited.

His mother had wanted to hire a private criminal lawyer to defend him, but Mark told her not to.He was nearly certain that he’d be convicted, and he didn’t want her spending her retirement savings in what was sure to be a futile effort.Besides, the public defender who’d argued on his behalf had done an admirable job.But it was always going to be an uphill battle.

There was a mountain of evidence against him, proving that he was responsible for seven murders.And that didn’t even include the testimony of Dr.Janice Lemmon, who was in the hospital room the night that he’d tried to kill Jessie.The prosecutors were so confident in their case that they hadn’t even called Jessie to testify.Even though he would have liked to have seen her up close again, he understood.They didn’t want to subject her to that trauma, and they didn’t really need her anyway.

The truth was that he didn’t want to subject her to any more trauma, either.After all, she’d agreed to meet with him to discuss some of her ongoing cases.That’s what he’d wanted all along, from back when he tried to enroll in her seminar on criminal profiling at UCLA—to be her protégé.

And in a way, now he was.In exchange for sharing details of cases with her, he’d agreed to renounce his manifesto, an online document that called for his followers to kill her and all of her loved ones.She had promised that even after his inevitable conviction, she would continue to meet with him.He would have liked to think it was because she was warming to him, but he knew deep down that she only came out of obligation.

And he felt an obligation to her, too.That was what the call he was considering making was all about.He wasn’t sure when he’d get another chance.

A few weeks ago, on a prison transport bus returning to the jail from court, another prisoner being held there had made him an offer.Ash Pierce, the hitwoman who had tortured and nearly killed Jessie’s best friend, Kat Gentry, not to mention her little sister, Hannah, had suggested that, with their convictions imminent, they work together to escape.

He’d thought about the idea for a long time, weighing the pros and cons.There was one obvious “pro”—he might escape.Ash Pierce was formerly a Marines special operator and an off-book assassin for the CIA.If anyone knew how to do this, it was her.She’d already escaped from one prison transport vehicle.Was it that big a stretch to think that she could do it again, especially if she had assistance?

But then there was the major “con”—he could die.Pierce might be an expert at evasion and escape tactics, but he certainly wasn’t.He was just a tall, skinny college kid with pale skin, curly blond hair and glasses who’d become obsessed with a teacher and killed a bunch of people when she didn’t pay enough attention to him.

That’s not true, his Jessie told him.You deserved that attention!

Mark looked over at the version of Jessie that apparently only he could see, standing in the corner of his cell.His cellmate, a large, heavily bearded guy named Oscar, had given no indication that he’d heard her.

His Jessie had been both a thorn in his side and a great comfort to him.She had kept him sharp when he committed his murders, reminding him not to leave evidence at the scene and cajoling him to finish the job when he grew faint of heart.

But she’d also brutally scolded him from time to time, telling him that he’d never win over the other Jessie, who only deigned to speak to him because she had to.He knew that his Jessie was speaking the truth in those moments, even as she was lying to him now to make him feel better.He could see himself more clearly now than he could in the past, even if his Jessie was still wearing rose-colored glasses.She only wanted the best for him.But this was his call, not hers.

As he sat up in his bunk and swung his feet over onto the floor, he acknowledged that he needed to be honest with himself about his options.There were others besides escape or death.He could tell Jessie or the jail administrator about Pierce’s plan.If his assistance helped foil the escape plans of someone as dangerous as Pierce, it might earn him some post-incarceration consideration—maybe a single-person cell or more free time in the yard.

But if he was going that route, he needed to do it fast.If Pierce tried to escape on her own before he said anything, he’d have wasted his chance.And he would lose a lot of leverage after he was convicted, likely tomorrow.Right now, prosecutors might be open to a plea deal or special privileges if he was helpful.But after the jury had passed judgment on him, there would be a lot less wiggle room.

Of course, if Pierce found out that he’d squealed, there was a real chance that he’d be dead before he could take advantage of any of the perks for doing it.He didn’t know when or how she’d take him out, but she’d find a way.It was her special gift.

That was a big part of why he’d done nothing up until now.No one could get too angry with him if he didn’t upset the status quo.Jessie couldn’t be upset with him for not warning her about an escape plan if she didn’t know that he knew about it.And as long as he kept his mouth shut, Pierce would likely leave him be.At least that’s what heusedto think.

Lately, he’d begun to suspect that she might want to eliminate him simply because he knew too much.Right now, everyone thought she was a reformed amnesiac.That gave her at least an outside chance at a hung jury.But not if he came forward to say she had a Machiavellian plan to break out of jail.And if he revealed her plan, the guards would obviously increase security around her, making any escape that much more difficult.Mark knew he was a loose end and feared she might snip it.

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