Page 49 of The Perfect Illusion

“The doctors said you managed to avoid lasting injury,” he said. “The knife didn’t get any arteries and only did surface damage to the tendons and muscles. They stitched you up while you were floating in and out. The doctor said the procedure was straightforward and that you’ll supposedly have full function back in a few weeks. We’re obviously still awaiting results for some of the other stuff.”

“What did you tell Ryan when you called him?”

“That you were injured during a confrontation with a suspect,” he answered simply. “And that you suffered injuries to your arm, neck, back, and head. That’s all I knew at the time.”

“Confrontation with a suspect” was a very diplomatic description of what had occurred in that bedroom. Jessie wondered if he’d have described it differently if he’d actually seen it.

“What about Thompson?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“She’s very dead,” Brady said. “Do you want to talk about that? The scene was—something else.”

“It was self-defense,” Jessie said, noting that the emotion had drained from her voice. “We can worry about the details later.”

Brady looked like he wanted to get into them now, but before he could, his phone buzzed.

“It’s Ryan,” he said. “Give me a sec.”

While he typed away, Jessie realized she’d been tensing her entire body and settled back into the bed. The details of Rachel Thompson’s death could be shared with others later. But right now, it would be nice to get them clear in her own head.

She had to kill Thompson, or the woman would have killed her. That scenario had come up before for Jessie. On several occasions, she'd been forced to take out a killer before she or others lost their lives. This was no different. It was simply self-defense.

But it didn’t feel like self-defense. In that crucial moment on the bed, when she sensed that she was about to pass out, Jessie had used the very same rage she’d been fighting down for months. She used it to give her an extra jolt of energy when she plunged that knife into Rachel Thompson’s heart. Admittedly, she was woozy when it happened, but she did have a vague recollection that the act almost felt—good.

She wondered if that’s how her serial killer father had felt when he’d murdered people. She already knew, because her sister had told her so, that was how Hannah had felt when she shot and killed an old man. Yes, the man was a serial killer who had threatened their lives. But in the moment when Hannah fired the gun, he was in cuffs.

It seemed that bloodlust ran in her family. Was it always her destiny to end up in this place? Had she crossed a line she could never return from?

“Ryan’s five minutes away,” Brady said, snapping her out of her dark thoughts. “He wants to let Hannah and Kat know what happened so they can come see you too but he wants to make sure that’s okay with you.”

Jessie didn't want to worry either her sister or her best friend. But she knew that if she tried to keep what happened to them, it would only make them angry.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can tell him it’s okay.”

Some small part of her felt ashamed of the fact that she wanted everyone to be here. She was supposed to be tough, able to handle anything. But she didn’t feel tough right now. She felt scared, mostly of herself.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Kat was about to pack it in for the night when she got the call on the same burner phone she’d used to speak with Dalton Tepper earlier today. She answered it immediately.

“Hey, Tepp,” she said, trying not to let her voice sound too excitable. “This must be important for you to be calling me at—6:11 P.M. What is that Buenos Aires time?”

“We’re four hours ahead of you. It’s 10:11 here. And I think that you can guess the subject matter of my call.”

“I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“Always a good policy,” he said. “But since everything I’m about to tell you is off book, I’m going to share what happened as fast as I can. Even using secure lines and burner phones, this is radioactive. I don’t have to tell you that using CIA resources for a private civilian request, even one that serves the public good, is iffy at best.”

“I’m all ears,” Kat told him.

“I didn’t want to risk exposing assets in-country. So rather than using undercover agents in Quito, I had a SAC strike team based here in Buenos Aires follow up on the information you gave me,” he said, diving right in. “The team arrived at the Guayaquil address you provided at 7:16 local time. They showed the security footage of your suspect to the hostel manager, who gave them her room number. They breached the unit at 7:22. Ash Pierce wasn’t there.”

“Dammit!” Kat blurted out.

“We did find evidence that she had been there,” Tepp continued, unruffled by her outburst. “And that she had left pretty recently. My people don’t think she’s going back though.”

“Why not?”

“They did a quick and dirty fingerprint sweep and collected anything that might offer DNA,” he explained. “The place was wiped down pretty thoroughly, which suggested that Pierce was leaving for good and didn’t want to leave a trace. Plus, the manager said that when she left this morning, she paid her outstanding bill in full, with cash.”

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