Page 15 of The Perfect Illusion

At least that’s how it looked to an outsider. Of course what really happened was that he decided he could do more for the cause from the inside than the outside. So he pretended to forgive his whore mother, who had destroyed their family and ultimately his father’s life.

His dad was a decent man undone by a bitch who put her own needs first, no matter who it hurt. She was what was wrong with women today. But because she had birthed him, Dallas couldn’t quite bring himself to make her pay. Other females would take her place on his firing line. Until justice was done, he’d shoved down those feelings around her and even play-acted at getting along with her beta husband.

He improved his grades and joined clubs far afield from his real interests. No ROTC or football for him. Instead, he played mixed doubles for the tennis team. He helped establish the Allies Club, which provided pre-approved high school students—always one guy and one girl—to walk or drive teenage girls home if they felt uncomfortable in a situation. It made him a little sick inside to actively work against the interests of guys his age who might just want a little action. But he knew that his cover was more important in the long run.

So he continued on the respectable path. His grades for the last two and a half years of high school were really good, but because of how he tanked the first year and a half, he ended up at community college in his hometown of Bakersfield. He hoped that if he excelled there, he could transfer to somewhere with cachet. He would use the top-tier school as a springboard to gain entry to the levers of power, where he could make a real difference and give men the rightful due they'd been denied for generations.

But that was a distant amorphous goal. He found a more concrete one in the fall of last year. That was when he learned about Mark Haddonfield, who quickly became his hero.

Haddonfield had done some real heavy lifting for the cause by going after Jessie Hunt, the celebrated, self-congratulatory profiler who seemed to delight in bringing good men down. Haddonfield took on the skank by killing people she’d saved and sullying her reputation for protecting victims. He’d almost taken her out completely at one point, along with her slut sister, who somehow escaped and injured his knee in the process.

After Haddonfield was captured, Dallas was briefly devastated. But that all changed when the killer’s manifesto appeared online, imploring others to take up his cause and butcher those close to Hunt. Dallas almost went out that night to answer the call. But ultimately, he held back, deciding that he needed a longer term plan if he was really going to live up to Haddonfield’s legacy.

So he came up with a strategy. He now knew which school to transfer to: UC Irvine, the one that Hannah Dorsey attended. He had a mission.

But that mission was nearly upended when, a few months later, Haddonfield retracted his manifesto in a video that was made public. In it, he said that no harm should come to Jessie Hunt or her loved ones. Dallas felt betrayed. His hero had gone soft.

But after a long, sleepless night, he came to a realization about what must have really happened. Haddonfield had been forced to retract the manifesto. Behind those prison walls, he had likely been tortured too, maybe even subjected to brainwashing. Hunt was a profiler with expertise in psychology. She almost certainly led those indoctrination sessions.

With that newfound awareness, Dallas wrote a letter to Haddonfield in prison, telling him that he knew the video was made under duress. He assured his hero that he wouldn’t let his false repudiation of the manifesto distract him from the mission that Haddonfield hadn’t been able to complete. He would eliminate the one person that the whore Jessie Hunt cared most about: her little sister.

But that required work. He learned everything he could about Hannah Dorsey. He studied up on her sordid personal history. He discovered a gap in her academic record during which she simply disappeared from school for several months, but he had yet to discern what that was about. He was intrigued to pry open that secret.

His application to UC Irvine was accepted and he declared the same major as one of hers—Psychology—for the spring quarter. He worked out religiously so that he would look attractive to her. Even sly girls like Dorsey could be hoodwinked by a sculpted torso, and he intended to keep her in the dark by blinding her with his looks and charm.

That put a lot of pressure on this meet-up. He needed to be slightly flirtatious but not overly so. He needed to make her feel safe with him but not come across as so innocuous as to be boring. He needed to leave her wanting more. It was a delicate balance, one he’d have to walk right now.

Hannah had just wandered in. He caught her eye and waved her over. She maneuvered around the tightly-packed tables, her eyes darting all around the place. He could tell she was looking for anyone who might be trouble, as well as exits if he turned out to be that trouble. When she sat down, she gave him a hesitant smile before scanning the table.

“Two drinks?” she noted, “you’ll never be able to sleep tonight.”

"Oh, actually, the salted caramel latte is for you. I remember you saying it was your favorite coffee drink a while back."

Hannah's smile tightened, and he knew what was coming.

"Thanks Dallas, but I don't accept any kind of beverages that I haven't seen prepared," she said politely but firmly, without any hint of embarrassment. "I can pay you back, or you can chug it yourself."

“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just chalk this up as a valuable learning experience—don’t make assumptions. Check!”

“Good,” she said, apparently relieved at his reaction, “you’re learning.”

"I should have known better anyway," he said. "That's very smart of you. You know, I co-founded this club in high school that gave free rides to girls in need. And on more than a few occasions, I was pretty sure the rider wasn't just drunk but had been slipped something. In one case, we had to take her to the emergency room to get her stomach pumped. So don't ever feel the need to apologize for keeping yourself safe."

“I didn’t apologize,” she reminded him.

He could feel himself blowing this and focused on getting things back on the rails. “Touché!” he said quickly. “If you don’t mind though, I’m just going to take a few sips of your drink to prove my integrity. If I keel over, you’ll know to go after the barista.”

That got a chuckle. After he chugged half the drink, she gave him a full-on smile, revealing her pearly whites.

He smiled back as he imagined some future get-together, when those teeth would be bloody. He could hardly wait.

CHAPTER TEN

Kat Gentry sat at the desk in her office, staring at the grainy video footage, trying to discern if what she saw was real or if her mind was playing tricks on her. After all, it was after five, and she'd been at this for hours.

The footage was from a security camera in the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil. That was where she believed she had tracked Ash Pierce to. The woman in the footage certainly looked like Pierce, the hitwoman who had tried to kill Kat before escaping prison and the country.

Pierce, somewhere in her mid-thirties, had a tiny frame, short black hair, arched nose, and pale skin, all suggesting someone quite fragile. The woman in the footage was about the same size and had the same frail build as Pierce, though her hair was long and blonde and she was mostly covered up so that it was impossible to clearly discern her skin tone.

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