Page 9 of The Perfect Prey

“I think your sister may be in a similar situation,” he said.

To his surprise, Hannah shrugged.

“We already knew that,” she replied.“She admitted to me a long time ago that one of the reasons that she studied forensic psychology and became a profiler in the first place was because she wanted to redirect those feelings into something productive.So rather than pour her energy into personally making these people pay, she’d catch them and turn them over to the justice system.That’s how she channels those urges into something worthwhile.”

“Right,” Ryan said, not sure how make his point clear.

“And,” she continued, “that’s part of why I help other students out at school.By finding solutions to their problems so they don’t have to go to campus police, I feel like I’m doing an amateur version of the same thing.I’m helping people, but it really helps me too.”

“And both Jessie and I are so glad that you’ve found that outlet,” he told her, “even if we do worry a little about who you choose to help.”

“I’ll admit that I made one bad call,” Hannah said.“But now I do more background research on the folks who approach me so they’re less likely to try to—you know—assault me in a secluded corner of the college library.”

Hannah was referring to the student who made up having a stalker so he could get her alone to “discuss the case,” when his real motives were much darker in nature.In the end, it hadn’t gone too well for him, as Hannah’s self-defense training left him writhing in pain on the floor.But in Ryan’s view, the incident had one small positive: it was a reminder to Hannah that not everyone who approached had the purest of motives.

“We appreciate that,” he said, realizing that despite his best intentions, he was still stalling.“But setting that aside, Jessie’s struggling.Lately, she hasn’t just been catching people and turning them over for prosecution.She has been inflicting some retribution of her own.”

Hannah took in his words.When she replied, it was slowly.

“Well, some of the people you guys catch fight back, right?They don’t always give up and offer their wrists to be cuffed.Occasionally, a physical response is required.”

“That’s absolutely true,” he acknowledged.“The people we pursue are incredibly dangerous.We never know what they’re capable of when we corner them, and sometimes, taking them down is an ugly business.But I’m talking about after they’ve been subdued, when they’re no longer threats.”

“What do you mean?”Hannah asked.

“I mean that in at least three instances recently, Jessie was in such a state of rage that I feared she might kill the suspect after they’d been taken down.And the last two times, I worry that if I hadn’t said something to snap her out of it, she’d have gone through with it.With the guy who poisoned me, she was about a half-second from sending a rolling pin handle through the guy’s mouth and out the back of his spine.Frankly, I’m a little concerned about what might happen on the case she’s working today.”

“But she didn’t actually kill the guy,” Hannah said, sounding defensive on her sister’s behalf.

“No, but she came close,” Ryan insisted.“And Internal Affairs was worried enough to do their own investigation.She was cleared, but that might have been more because of her reputation and the intensely challenging circumstances of the situation than anything else.She knows she went too far.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she’s acknowledged it and because she’s addressing it with Dr.Lemmon in therapy,” he said.“I probably shouldn’t be revealing that either, but I want you to know the severity of things.”

“Okay,” Hannah said, leaning against the back of the couch, “so how’s it going?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan admitted.“Remember that she was on medical leave until today for the injuries she sustained when she took down the poisoner.This will be her first time in the field since then.There’s no telling if the work she’s been doing with Lemmon will get the job done.But I’m worried that it won’t.”

“Why not?”

“It didn’t for you,” he pointed out.“As you said, you ended up going to a secluded facility for months to work through what was happening to you.”

“Well, kind of,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Going to that place helped,” she said, “although if you’ll recall, there were issues there that complicated my recovery.But I still had to eventually come back to the real world and put what I’d learned into practice.I had to face challenging situations and navigate them to see if the work I’d done there was useful.”

“And was it?”

“I think so,” Hannah said, “but not in a vacuum.It was an accumulation of things.I used the techniques I’d learned there.But I also became more cognizant of what was valuable to me, which was the people in my life.I didn’t want to lose the friends and family I’d created over the last few years.Keeping that front and center in my mind and in my gut made a big difference.And working these cases at school has been good too.Like I said, it allows me to redirect those feelings somewhere useful, which is what Jessie is already doing.”

“I’m not sure it’s enough,” Ryan said before taking a slurp of soup.

“Well, it’s not like Jessie can just take time off to go to a facility,” Hannah told him.“I was gone for months, and I assume she’d have to give some kind of explanation for her absence.‘I’m trying to reduce the urge to murder bad people’ probably wouldn’t go over too well with Captain Parker.Besides, she’s so well-known that his presence would probably get out publicly anyway.That would be disastrous.She has to find a way to deal with this that doesn’t put her at the mercy of other people.”

“Any suggestions?”Ryan asked.

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