Page 5 of The Perfect Deception
Unfortunately the therapists at the Ionian Center, however well-meaning, were used to dealing with anger issues like inappropriate yelling or getting into bar fights.Jessie didn’t ask but she doubted they’d ever dealt with a patient who’d jammed a knife into a murderer’s heart.
Oddly, her biggest breakthrough came not at the facility, but on one of her long strolls around the village.After passing more churches than people on that early morning walk, she came to an open field where several kids were kicking a soccer ball around.Somehow, the sight of them sparked a memory from her last case.And it was that memory, more than anything she experienced in Taormina, that made her think she might have a path forward.
“Have you decided what you’d like for breakfast?”The flight attendant was standing above her with a tired but patient smile.
She wasn’t really hungry but knew she should have something, so she picked the most bland thing she could find.“I’ll go with the pancakes, thanks.And some coffee too.”
The flight attendant made a note of her order before moving on.The interruption had allowed her a moment to pull herself out of the constant cycle of turning over the guilt in her mind.She used the opportunity to focus elsewhere.
First, she pulled out her compact mirror and gave herself a quick once-over.Her green eyes looked mostly clear and her brown, shoulder-length hair was only slightly mussed.She quickly tied it in a ponytail.After she ate breakfast, she’d go to the bathroom to throw on a hint of makeup.
She knew she wouldn’t have much time to decompress once she was back in L.A.Not only was she supposed to stop by the station, she’d be forced to deal with all the other issues that she’d left behind on her flight to Sicily but which hadn’t gone away.
There was Hannah, who was reeling from the attack on her friend, Finn Anderton.Jessie had almost stuck around just because of that, but Ryan had insisted she go, saying that she needed to get help now and that the head injury explanation might be the only way to get away for a while without being questioned.He promised that between him, Kat, and Dr.Lemmon, Hannah would be in good hands.
Jessie relented, though she didn’t feel good about it.In fact, because she was so far away and had to defer to others’ judgment when it came to her sister, she agreed to something that she normally would have opposed.When Hannah signed on for an internship in the research department of Jessie’s LAPD unit, she decided not to balk.
She told herself that the position would keep her sister busy and hopefully take her mind off Finn.Her one requirement was that Hannah’s time there be kept off the books until she was done for the summer.Folks who worked in Jessie’s unit were often targets of very dangerous people.The fewer people who knew Hannah was temporarily part of the team, the better.
She also didn’t feel great about another decision she’d made while she was gone, one she’d come to without Hannah’s knowledge or consent.Sometime soon after her return, she would have to come clean with her little sister and she expected the reaction would be ugly.
Hannah wasn’t her only source of angst.There was also Kat, still in mourning over the death of her fiancé.With that still fresh, she was now having to upend her whole life to protect herself from Ash Pierce, the hitwoman who’d tortured and nearly killed her, and who was on the lam, holed up god knows where.Kat had already been on edge when she left.She feared what state her friend would be in upon her imminent return.
And of course, there was Ryan.Not only was Ryan Hernadez her husband of a little over a year, but he was also the lead detective in Homicide Special Section, the unit she worked for too.The small team that comprised HSS consisted of five detectives, two researchers, and one profiler, Jessie.They specialized in cases with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—typically involving multiple victims or serial killers.Ryan ran the unit’s day-to-day operations and was overseen by Captain Gaylene Parker.
They’d need to have a heart-to-heart once she’d settled in.He’d want to know how her head was doing.But that wasn’t all.He’d want some sense of how she was grappling with her anger issues.Not only for professional reasons, as he was often paired with her on cases, but for personal ones too.
They’d been discussing the possibility of having children for months now.Jessie had made it clear to him that she didn’t want to go through childbirth for any number of reasons.He’d been disappointed but pivoted to adoption, which she was more open to.
But after seeing her struggle with her anger issues, and possibly succumb to them, he was having second thoughts.No longer confident that she could control her urges, he feared bringing a child into that environment.She couldn’t argue with his point and wasn’t even sure that she wanted to.
The thought of all these issues cropping up so soon after her return filled her with a low-level hum of anxiety.She briefly considered ordering one of those Bloody Marys but decided that wouldn’t prevent the storm from coming.It would just make her less prepared to deal with it.
Everything she’d left behind would be waiting for her when she stepped off that plane and there was no way to avoid that.She might as well take it on clear-eyed.Because in a little over an hour, she’d be back in the thick of it
CHAPTER FOUR
Katherine “Kat” Gentry decided the speeding ticket wasn’t worth it.
So she dropped down from 90 mph to a more defensible 79 and tried not to stress too much.She thought she’d make it on time.
It was currently 12:38 P.M.and Jessie’s flight was supposed to arrive just after two.Kat’s GPS told her that she was 77 minutes from LAX.Barring an accident on the freeway ahead, which was always a possibility, she should make it back in time to join Ryan and Hannah to greet her best friend at baggage claim.
It was her own fault that she was cutting it so close.The drive back from Las Vegas was well over four hours, even in the less-trafficked middle of the day.She should have left earlier than she did.But she had to check one last lead and it had taken longer than expected.The frustrating part was that it amounted to nothing.
When it came finding Ash Pierce, she’d been following every investigative path possible, no matter how unlikely.And so far at least, despite the fact that she was a professional private detective, she had nothing new to show for it.
She did know that the hitwoman was back in the States.She’d seen the surveillance footage from when the Fiesta Jamboree cruise ship docked in Long Beach.It showed a woman disembarking that facial recognition, even from a distance, said was a 93% match to Pierce.
Any doubts she had were put to rest when the body of an unidentified woman was found floating in a burlap sack off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico, two days after the ship returned.She was in bad shape, nibbled apart by fish and worse, and her teeth and fingertips had been removed.The second Kat heard that, she knew who the culprit was.
But it was only after co-workers of a Santa Clarita accountant named Camille Overton reported her missing when she didn’t return from her cruise vacation on the Jamboree that Kat put it all together.She checked the physical description of Overton and found that her height, weight, and skin coloring were a near-perfect match for Ash Pierce.
The fact that the cruise had stopped in Ensenada one day after a cargo ship arrived there from Guayaquil, Ecuador, where Kat knew Pierce had been hiding, was further proof that the assassin had carefully selected Overton as her doppelgänger victim.The final piece came when Kat checked “Overton’s” purchases after returning to the ship in Ensenada.
All her meals for over 36 hours were via room service.According to phone interviews Kat did with crew, she learned that “Overton” always requested that the food be left outside her room rather than brought in by waitstaff.Ash Pierce was clearly making sure that no one would see her and realize that she was not Camille Overton.
But by the time Kat put all that together, Pierce had been back in the States for nearly a week.Since Jessie was out of the country and shouldn’t be disturbed anyway, Kat immediately warned Ryan.Not only should he be aware in his professional capacity that a violent assassin had returned to the country, but there was also Hannah to think about.
