Page 16 of The Perfect Illusion

The angle of her logo-less gray baseball cap made seeing her facial features equally difficult. That could have been by design or simply a woman trying to protect herself from the brutal Southern Hemisphere sun. Kat had considered asking Jessie to have Jamil run the footage through his facial recognition database. But she'd likely only get to call in a favor like that once, and she wanted to wait until she had more visual samples to offer the researcher.

The truth was that Kat couldn’t even be certain that she had the right city, much less the right woman. Pierce had escaped the U.S. via the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana. The hitwoman had even made time to send Kat an unsigned postcard from the city that read simply: Been missing you. Be seeing you.

Kat’s reaction, after getting over the initial shock of the correspondence, was a simple thought: not if I see you first. In the service of that goal, she had used a process of elimination—along with what she knew about how Pierce operated—to determine that among the countries that didn’t have extradition treaties with the U.S., Ecuador made the most sense as a place for the killer to hide.

And there was no question that Pierce, a former Marines Special Operations element leader and CIA assassin before becoming a freelance hitwoman, had the knowledge and skill set to get there. The larger question was: even if the woman in the footage was Pierce, was she even still down there? The security video was five days old. That meant the woman could still be holed up somewhere in Guayaquil, or in a worst case scenario, she could have found a way back to the States and be in L.A. again right now.

To answer that question, Kat had been diligently reviewing any footage she could find outside cheap local motels and hostels. She had briefly investigated short-term rentals but ultimately dismissed the idea. They almost always required credit card deposits and background information. Pierce would avoid that hurdle if possible, looking for places that accepted cash and didn’t ask too many questions.

Kat had been working with a local Guayaquil cop named Estrada, who didn’t want a former CIA assassin in her town any more than Kat did. The officer had shared reams of footage with her. So far, none of it had definitively shown Pierce or the blonde woman from the port. But Kat was confident that if Pierce was still in Ecuador, it was only a matter of time before she caught a break. She knew she was close.

A loud clanking sound from the hallway outside her office made her jump slightly in her chair. Pulling out the handgun that was resting in her shoulder holster, she glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 5:14 P.M. A sound like that at a time like this was suspicious.

Kat had learned that almost everyone on her floor of the building poured out of their offices and headed for the stairs and elevator right at five. That was one of the reasons she’d chosen this place. It was quiet, comprised of fairly conventional businesses where no one worked overtime and everyone looked presentable. There was a CPA, a therapist, a restaurant supply company, and the local headquarters for a small in-home senior care business. Her detective agency was the most unconventional office on the floor, which was how she liked it.

So why was there noise just outside of it at a time when the whole floor should have been a ghost town? Kat didn’t want to jump to conclusions but she had to be careful. So she got up from her desk, exited her inner office and moved to the waiting area, which was essentially a tiny foyer comprised of two hardbacked chairs that she got for free from a dentist two floors below her.

As she pressed her ear against the locked door, she reminded herself that it was incredibly unlikely that Ash Pierce was standing on the other side of it. Even if she had somehow returned to L.A. undetected, how could she find this place?

Kat had emptied out both her old apartment and office within days of Pierce’s escape. Her new office and the apartment she would move into this weekend were not under her name. Yes, she was staying at Jessie’s and Ryan’s house for a few more days, but the precautions she took in getting from their home to her current office were thorough. It would be nearly impossible for Pierce to follow her on her evasive, circuitous, irregular route at all, much less without being detected.

Still, it was never a wise move to underestimate the woman. She had escaped from custody twice and convinced almost everyone that she’d suffered memory loss that made her forget that she was a killer.

As Kat listened at the door, she tried to slow her breathing and keep as quiet as possible. She held still, staring at her reflection in the mirror on the far wall of the foyer. She noted the scar that marked the entire left side of her face from just below her eye, as well as the burn marks, both remnants of the IED that took out much of her unit.

She glanced down at her body. At five foot seven and 140 pounds, she was powerfully built, with arm muscles that bulged without even flexing. Her fiancé, Mitch Connor, who was murdered last fall, had embraced all her features, even the ones she wasn’t totally comfortable with. She wondered if anyone ever would again.

Despite all her training and formidable physicality, a primal fear gripped her. The idea that Ash Pierce might be on other side of that door was messing with body in ways that her mind couldn’t stop. She felt a quaver in her chest. Her hands, which she refused to look at, were shaking ever so slightly. Beads of sweat formed out of nowhere on her forehead. Her vision felt slightly fuzzy.

A clinking noise just outside quickly cleared her head, as did the sound of a key sliding into the lock of the door. Kat took a half step back from it, raised her weapon chest high, and waited.

She reminded herself that Ash Pierce, even if she'd found this place, would almost certainly not be this clumsy in accessing it. Either she'd hired someone less professional than herself, or this was another threat entirely. There had to be an explanation, and she made a silent promise not to fire the gun unless she absolutely had to.

A head popped into view, facing backward as it entered the foyer. Kat recognized it and quickly slid her weapon back into the holster just before the intruder looked over at her.

“My lord!” Ernesto shouted, jumping shockingly high for a man in his sixties. He clutched at his shirt and muttered. “You scared me.”

Ernesto was the night janitor for the building, the one tasked with cleaning each office after people had left. Kat had spoken with him on several occasions when she stayed late. But he’d never come to clean her office this early.

“Sorry to startle you,” she said, stepping out from behind the door to see that Ernesto’s cleaning cart was keeping the door open. “But I thought you didn’t get to this floor until well after six.”

“I usually don’t, Ms. Gentry,” he said. “I always start with the tenth floor and work my way down. But since the printer repair business right above us is having some kind of party, I thought I’d save that floor until later when they were all gone. So I started with the ninth tonight. I hope I didn’t startle you!”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can come back later if you’re still busy.”

“No, that’s okay,” she told him. “I was close to wrapping up for the night anyway. This is a sign that I should close up shop. Just give me two minutes.”

Kat was serious. She’d been staring at that grainy image of the blonde at the port for so long that she could barely see straight. She needed a break. When she came back tomorrow, she’d start with fresh eyes. And that’s when she’d find Ash Pierce.

She had a good feeling about it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Rebecca Martinez could barely keep her eyes open.

If she was in her own house, she’d be in bed already. But instead she was staring at herself in the bathroom mirror with a decidedly lost expression. Because of the remodel on their Bel Air home twenty minutes north, they’d been living in this rental for a week and would be stuck here for another three. That meant that she was constantly tracking down her stuff.

---