Page 50 of The Perfect Illusion

“She didn’t want to flake on payment and have the hostel manager call the authorities,” Kat mused. “Nothing to draw attention to herself.

“Exactly,” Tepp agreed. “Having said that, they did find one partial print that matched Pierce’s.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” Kat demanded.

“I just wanted to give you context,” he answered.

“Any indication of where she might have gone next?” Kat asked, moving on.

“Maybe,” he said. “The team reviewed surveillance camera footage in the neighborhood for the last 24 hours. One bit led to an internet café a block over from the hostel. The café’s interior cameras showed her arriving there yesterday afternoon, timestamped at 4:04 P.M. One of our tech guys searched the computer terminal she used, checking all search activity around that time. Everything was anonymous, but because of security features on the computer, she couldn’t clear her cache, so we know what searches she did.”

“And?”

“There were several involving cargo ship departure dates and times for today,” he told her.

“Going where?”

“Multiple options were searched,” he replied. “She spent the most time on Managua, Nicaragua and both La Paz and Ensenada in Mexico.”

Kat went quiet, as a lump lodged in her throat.

“What is it?” Tepp asked, clearly sensing the change in her.

Kat swallowed hard before replying.

“From Ensenada, it’s just a short boat trip back to the U.S.,” she said quietly.

“You really think she’d risk that?” Tepp wondered.

“I think she loves the risk,” Kat told him. “Ash Pierce is done hiding. She’s coming back here.”

She was about to ask what else he could do to help her track Pierce down when her regular cell phone rang. It was Ryan Hernandez. She almost let it go to voicemail, but Ryan rarely called her, even though she was living with him and Jessie, at least for a few more days. He almost always texted.

Something about the ringing phone gave her pause, though she couldn’t say why.

“Hold on, Tepp,” she said. “I just have to answer this call.”

She pushed “accept,” picked up her cell phone, and apprehensively put it to her ear.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Ash Pierce rolled over on her sleeping pad.

Living in a shipping container for the next two weeks wouldn't be fun but she'd been through much worse. She'd slept in sand dunes in Middle Eastern deserts. She'd lived in bombed-out structures in eastern European war zones for days on end. She even spent two weeks hiking through the Amazon rainforest to acquire a target. This was a vacation by comparison.

At least in this situation, she’d paid off a crew member of the cargo ship to secretly bring her food and water and dump her bedpan overboard periodically. Once they arrived at the Port of Ensenada, she’d have to make him disappear, but for now he thought they were besties and she was happy to play into the illusion.

Ash glanced at the hand-scrawled calendar she’d made for herself, even though she knew the details by heart. The cargo ship would arrive in Ensenada one day before the Fiesta cruise ship Jamboree would pull into the same port. On the ship was Camille Overton, a single 33-year-old accountant who was travelling alone. Camille was taking her first vacation in three years and had booked a guided shopping excursion for the day in Ensenada.

Unfortunately for Camille, she and Ash were about the same age and had similar builds and skin coloring. That’s why, after hacking the cruise line’s database and doing tons of research, Ash had selected Camille.

Because of the sensitivity of this online search, instead of using the local internet café, she’d done it on a laptop she’d stolen from a student at the main library on the campus of the Universidad de Guayaquil. After completing the search, she dropped the laptop in the Rio Guayas.

If all went well, Ash would ambush Camille in town, kill her, take her clothes and ID, cut off her fingertips and remove her teeth, dispose of her unidentifiable body, and then return to the ship using the woman’s identity. She would stick to Camille’s stateroom for the remainder of the cruise to avoid detection. Then she would disembark at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.

For a brief moment, as she settled in on the sleeping pad, Ash allowed herself to marvel at how much her world had changed in the last few months. She still recalled how, after waking up from the coma she suffered after an ugly altercation with Hannah Dorsey and Kat Gentry, she'd been without any memory of who she was.

She remembered how that naïve version of herself had been stunned to learn that she was under arrest in that hospital bed, charged with multiple murders she had no recollection of. She remembered the shock she’d felt when she was informed that she was a hitwoman for hire, a former CIA assassin. The idea had appalled her.

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