Page 25 of The Perfect Prey

But his fear of what Ash Pierce might do to him was less powerful than his desire to please Jessie, not his Jessie but the other one.How grateful would she be when he came clean about what he knew?

Not as grateful as you think, his Jessie hissed.She’s just using you.

“That’s okay,” he whispered back to her.“I’m using her too.”

He realized that he’d already made his choice.DespitehisJessie’s disapproval, he stood, left his cell, and walked over to the nearest guard.

“I need to make a call,” he said.

The guard looked at him with amused indifference.

“It’s too late,” the man told him.

“No, it’s not,” Mark insisted.“I still have eleven minutes before the cutoff.”

“I’m telling you that for tonight, it’s too late,” the guard repeated, seeming to enjoy himself.

“But this is a really important call,” Mark said, deciding to shade the truth a little.“It has to do with my case.”

“You had all evening to call,” the guard said evenly.“If it was that important, you would have done it earlier.Now it’s too late.”

He stared at Mark and his expression suggested that it would be ill-advised to pursue the matter.There was no point in arguing.It wouldn’t get him to the phone, and it might piss off someone who controlled his circumstances.

“Thank you,” he said, hoping he was projecting meekness.

He turned and headed back to his cell, accepting that he’d have to try in the morning before he was transported to court.He entered the cell and sat back down on his sagging mattress.He did his best to keep his frustration in check.He’d learned the hard way that expressing it in here only led to bad outcomes for him.

Instead he focused on something he did have control of.He thought about what was scrawled in crayon on the underside of his mattress.It was simple enough—the initials “J.H.”, followed by a series of numbers.None of that would make any sense to the guards.In fact, they were more likely to assume it was a bible verse than what it really was: a code.

He smiled to himself as he thought about it.In his box of personal effects, locked away in Twin Towers’ secure storage room, was a necklace with what looked like a large pillar bar pendant.It was admittedly a little elaborate for a twenty-two-year-old dude.But it had to be to hide what it really was.

The pendant was actually a tiny flash drive designed to look like jewelry.And on that flash drive was information that could be useful to any number of people.But it was only intended for one of them: J.H.—Jessie Hunt—the initials written in crayon on the underside of his mattress.And it could only be accessed via the code that followed those initials.

He wondered if he should mention the mattress when he talked to Jessie tomorrow morning in case he was transferred immediately after his conviction.No, that would have to wait.His calls could be recorded, and he didn’t want the wrong person to hear such valuable information.He’d have to wait until he saw her in person to share that tidbit.It was his trump card, and he didn’t want to risk losing it.

For now, there was a more pressing matter.Ash Pierce wanted to escape, and she’d asked for his help.That nugget might not be worth as much as what was on the flash drive, but it had to be worth something.He’d find out tomorrow

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jessie’s eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them.

It was well past 11 P.M.now, and she was really struggling.The last few hours hadn’t been as fruitful as she would have liked.

After leaving Valentina Russo’s apartment and returning to the station, she and Susannah had harbored hopes that, with the help of Jamil and Beth, they would have found some connection between these wild parties that she had helped organize and their victims, Richard and Cynthia Hartley.But they’d hit dead end after dead end.

Russo had turned over the locations and dates for all the secret parties going back nearly two years.Like she had said, they were never held at the same place twice.Amazingly, there was almost nothing in the way of ownership records.Yes, the warehouses often had owners, just like the empty houses.But they were never the same, and based on the calls that the team had made so far, the owners were totally unaware, even now, that their properties had been used for parties of any kind, much less secret, extremely wild ones.To make matters worse, the last date that Russo gave them for a party was four months ago.After that, the trail went completely cold.

Even more frustrating, Jamil’s analysis of both Hartley’s phone and vehicle GPS data showed that neither of them had ever been to any of the party locations.There was no indication, other than the masks, that they had ever been to any of them.

And yet, they were wearing the masks when they were found.It was always possible that whoever killed them brought the masks with them, that they didn’t belong to the Hartleys at all, and that trying to tie them to the parties was a waste of time.

But Jessie didn’t buy that.The parties were somehow relevant, if not to the victims, then at least to their killer.She was sure that if she could find any connection between the couple and these events, it would unlock all kinds of other possibilities.And if only the cobwebs of exhaustion clouding her brain could be swept away, she felt certain that she could find the key to that lock.

Her phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.It was Ryan.He should have been long asleep by now.That fact he was calling had her concerned, and she picked up before the end of the first ring.

“Are you okay?”she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, sounding surprised by the question.

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