Page 2 of The Perfect Obsession
He jumped back slightly, startled at her being right there.She smiled at his reaction.Not much startled her husband.The veteran detective had seen just about everything and was impressively even-keeled about most of it.
Even when he was surprised, he could usually handle things.She noted that as she looked at him admiringly.Not only was Ryan great at his job, but he also cut an imposing figure.Square-jawed and well-muscled at two hundred pounds and six feet, some suspects gave up just at the sight of him.
Jessie had a different reaction to seeing him.Looking at his kind brown eyes, shy grin, and adorable dimples—the features that had first attracted her to him—she felt a mix of attraction and gooey affection.
“Didn’t mean to scare you, big boy,” she teased.
“Why do I think you enjoyed it a little, though?”
“I’m just a simple girl trying to get into the shower so I’m not late for work.”
“Just a simple girl, huh?”he said, smiling, those dimples nearly blinding her.
“That’s right,” she said, leaning over to give him a kiss, before whispering, “I enjoyed our morning workout.”
“Me too.”
“I could tell,” she said, “With your effort level, I wouldn’t be surprised if you knocked me up.”
It was intended as a joke, but she knew it was a mistake the second the words were out of her mouth.His smile faded.
“I’ll let you get in there,” he muttered quietly, stepping aside.
She wanted to say something, but worried that she’d just make it worse.Better to leave it be for now.
“Thanks,” she said as she entered the bathroom.“I’ll be out as quick as I can.”
She closed the door and stared at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at her idiocy.It wasn’t a laughing matter.As she looked at her, now fully awake, with green eyes and disheveled brown hair, she wondered how she could fix this.
She brushed her teeth as she mentally revisited her mistake.Joking about having a child was pretty thoughtless considering their situation.Until recently, Ryan had been seriously talking about having one.Jessie had pushed back on getting pregnant for a variety of reasons and had floated the idea of adoption instead, even though she was reticent about that too.Ryan was just coming around to that possibility when he’d learned about what they’d come to call the “bloodlust problem.”
For eight months, Jessie had been dealing with an increasingly intense desire to personally punish the suspects they were after.On multiple occasions, she’d nearly killed them.And then, while engaged in a physical confrontation with one, she finally did it.
Admittedly, it was technically self-defense, and the LAPD’s Force Investigation Division had cleared her.But she knew the truth: she enjoyed plunging that knife into the heart of Rachel Thompson, the serial killer she’d been after.Yes, the woman would have used the weapon on her if she’d gotten the upper hand in the fight, but that didn’t change the fact that Jessie had gotten pleasure from what she did.
She didn’t know if the urges she felt were an unwanted hereditary gift from her own now-dead serial killer father.Or maybe it was just the accumulation of horrors she’d seen and been through that took her down that road.But whatever the reason, when she finally confessed how she felt to Ryan, he told her that he thought they should postpone discussing children until she got a handle on those feelings.
Jessie stepped into the shower as she recalled what had happened next.The nearly daily sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr.Janice Lemmon.The attempts to medicate away the dark impulses.And finally, a two-month stint at a secretive Sicilian treatment facility where she couldn’t even tell the staff the real reason she was there.She had to use the euphemistic phrase “anger management issues.”
The funny thing was that now she finally felt like she was making progress on controlling her violent desires, and it wasn’t because of any of those efforts.She’d been debating whether and when to tell Ryan about her growth and its source.But now, with her ill-timed joke—one that Ryan surely saw as rubbing salt in a wound—she wasn’t sure when or how to bring up the topic.
She grabbed the body wash and tried to put the whole mess out of her head.After all, she needed to focus on getting ready.They were running late, and Captain Parker, who wasn’t known for her patience or easygoing manner, would be pissed if she needed them for a case and they ambled in without a care in the world.
Jessie had learned that the hard way.
CHAPTER TWO
They arrived with five minutes to spare, at 7:55.
While Jessie was relieved, she felt a little guilty too.That was because, for part of the commute, Ryan turned on his siren and cherry light.It wasn’t proper procedure, but sometimes the rules had to be bent, especially when it came to avoiding Captain Parker’s ire.
All their machinations turned out not to be necessary.When they walked into the bullpen of Central Station, where the rest of the HSS team was assembled, the captain was nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Parker?”Jessie asked when they stopped at the bank of desks that comprised Homicide Special Section, a unit that specialized in cases with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—typically involving multiple victims or serial killers.
“She’s been in her office for the last ten minutes,” answered Susannah Valentine, a beautiful, entertainingly volatile detective that Jessie had formerly despised before they eventually buried the hatchet and became friends.“She got a call that made her go in there and close the door without saying a word.I think something’s up.”
“Do we know what?”Ryan asked.He was the lead detective for the unit and would have expected to be read in if the issue was related to HSS.
