Page 21 of The Perfect Betrayal

“I think we can rule out him tripping and accidentally stabbing himself with a corkscrew,” Riddell said.

“Especially since it’s nowhere to be found,” Jessie agreed. “My guess is that whoever did this tossed it over the side after they were done.”

“That makes sense,” Riddell conceded, surprising her by not arguing the point.

“There’s only one glass out here,” she continued, “which he was apparently holding when he was stabbed. That would explain why it’s in pieces now. But if I had to bet, there was another glass at one point. If we have CSU check the galley, I think we’ll find a missing slot for another one, just like on Daran Peterson’s boat.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Of course, it was Riddell who eventually broke the silence.

“Two friends from the same club killed on their boats on consecutive nights,” he mused. “Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to call in the profiler from Homicide Special Section.”

“Why do you say that?” Jessie asked.

“Because this case has all the makings of a serial killer,” he replied. “You love those, right?”

Riddell was wrong about that. She didn’t love serial killer cases. But she was no stranger to them, which should help with these murders. That is, if she could ever get her head right.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kat was pretty pleased with herself.

With the money she’d been paid to bust Angela McCumber’s cheating husband, she could afford to take several days off work and focus on her top priority: finding Ash Pierce.

That’s exactly what she’d been doing in her office all morning. Tracing the woman’s whereabouts was a challenge. Not at first, of course. There was video footage of Pierce crossing the border at the San Ysidro land port of entry separating San Diego from Tijuana. Even with the disguise she wore, facial recognition was able to identify her as she simply walked across the pedestrian bridge and disappeared into the city of over two million people.

That’s when things got challenging. The first problem was that video cameras were less ubiquitous in Tijuana than north of the border and getting access to the footage was a bureaucratic nightmare anyway, even for the LAPD and L.A. Sheriff’s Department. Considering that several officers from both agencies were killed in Pierce’s escape, they had a vested interest in finding the woman too. But the gears moved slowly.

Kat eventually decided that she might have more success if she stopped looking for footage and tried to think like Pierce. What would the former Marines Special Operations element leader, CIA assassin, and current hitwoman do to evade capture? If Kat were in her shoes, she’d try to get out of the city to a less populated area, where she could regroup before going to a country without an extradition treaty with the U.S.

According to Kat’s research, the Central and South American countries least likely to extradite Pierce, or anyone for that matter, included Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Cuba. While Nicaragua was technically the closest to Tijuana, itspolitical climate was volatile, which might complicate efforts to keep a low profile.

The next best bet seemed to be Ecuador. It was on the west coast, just like Mexico's state of Baja California, where Tijuana was located. That meant it was more easily accessible than some of the other options. And it was comparatively stable. That didn't mean it was a sure thing as Pierce's destination. But starting there made sense.

Since it was too risky to rent a car or book a flight from Tijuana, which would leave a digital trail, Pierce would likely take a bus or hitch a ride south to a location where she could travel by sea. The former would attract less attention and could be done using cash. So Kat reviewed the bus routes that could most easily get the woman where she wanted to goandallow her to return to the U.S. if she chose to.

As it turned out, there were buses that regularly made the 22-hour trip from Tijuana to La Paz, near the southern tip of Baja. From there, Pierce could catch all manner of boats across the Pacific Ocean, skirting the Galapagos Islands before landing in the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil.

After making that determination, Kat started scouring manifests of vessels that had made that journey in the last week and a half, hoping for anything that might jump out. Women traveling alone. Women traveling on passports from the U.S. or other English-speaking countries. The truth was that Pierce had the experience and skill set to secure a fake passport from just about anywhere, but Kat had to start somewhere.

After a solid hour of poring over names and corresponding nationality information, she stood up to stretch. As her brain unclenched, an unwanted memory popped into it.

She had a flash of the showdown with Pierce in the Los Angeles County Courthouse garage ten days ago. It still felt like it was ten minutes ago. She recalled how she’d noticedPierce acting oddly just before her escape and how she’d briefly considered warning the courtroom bailiff.

Ultimately, she chose not to. At the time, she told herself it was because she doubted anyone would believe her. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, she couldn’t help but wonder if part of her had hoped that Pierce would try to escape, so that she could be the one to put her down.

If that was her subconscious goal, she’d failed miserably. When she and Jessie had weapons drawn on Pierce in that parking garage, she’d done just about everything wrong. She’d been agitated, borderline panicky. That is, when she wasn’t being needlessly confrontational.

Pierce was holding an officer hostage with a gun to his head. Yet Kat had still taunted the hitwoman, telling her that the other serial killer in the garage at the time—Mark Haddonfield—was better at his "job" than she was. Hearing that, Pierce had fired a single shot at Haddonfield, sending the bullet straight through his mouth and killing him instantly.

Mark Haddonfield had murdered over half a dozen people and had tried to do the same to both Jessie and Hannah at various points. He was also ultimately responsible for the death of Kat’s fiancé, Mitch Connor, a Sheriff’s deputy who had dived in front of a bullet intended for her. She had no affection for Haddonfield, to put it mildly. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had baited Pierce into killing him. She didn’t like that feeling.

Standing in her office, she physically shook her head to try to force the thought out, but it was replaced by an even more unpleasant one. She thought back to how, down in the garage, she'd told Jessie that she had a shot at Pierce. But her best friend had warned her off out of concern that she might hit the officer being held hostage instead. Admittedly, her hands had been shaking at the time.

But as a former Army Ranger, she had confidence that she could have hit her target if she’d been given the opportunity. Jessie took that chance away. And moments later Pierce was gone, now who knows where. Was Pierce’s escape actually Jessie’s fault?

"No!" Kat said aloud, even though she was alone in her office.

That suggestion was both unhealthy and a bridge too far. Jessie had been protecting an LAPD officer, one with a weeks-old baby. And now she was protecting Kat, letting her stay at her home and helping her secure a new office, apartment and vehicle through back channels that would hide her identity and location should Pierce come looking. To countenance the notion that Jessie was in any way responsible for Pierce going free was not only unconstructive, but it was also an insulting betrayal.

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