Page 1 of The Perfect People

PROLOGUE

Trey Killian was feeling no pain.

He wasn’t sure if it was the two rum and Cokes he’d had. Or the two vodka and cranberries. Or maybe it was the Jell-O shot he’d gulped down. Or the three beers. Or the weed.

Whatever it was, as Trey walked through the kitchen of Shasta Mallory’s Manhattan Beach, California, beach house with a teriyaki tofu skewer in hand, he was borderline numb with good vibes. When he reached the entrance to Shasta’s giant living room, he actually had to lean against the wall for support.

He looked out at the sea of people and allowed himself to take it all in. There were more gorgeous women here than his eyes could process. In addition, most of the guys looked like they had just come from auditioning for roles in action films. The music—a thumping dance track—was making Trey’s bones rattle happily.

Who would have thought that a long-haired, scraggly-looking guy who was working as a Nashville session guitarist just six months ago would be in L.A. today, playing on the albums of some of the biggest artists in the world, and even getting an invitation to a huge Labor Day weekend beach blowout held by an uber-powerful music manager like Shasta Mallory?

Okay, maybe that was an overstatement. He didn’t actually play on those mega-artists’ albums. But he was there as a backup session performer if the regular guitarist ever got sick or didn’t show. That hadn’t happened yet. And while Shasta hadn’t actually invited him to her party, her assistant had invited his buddy Dale, who ran the studio mixing board, and he’d mentioned it to Trey.

Since Trey lived in Hermosa Beach, just one beach town and half a mile south of here, he figured he’d crash the party. It turned out to be a good call. There was no security checking names at the door. In fact, there was no door to wait at. Everyone came and went as they chose through the open patio doors. The party spilled out onto the sand in front of the house.

Even though this was just the Thursday night before Labor Day, the place was rocking. To Trey’s bleary eyes, there appeared to be at least a couple hundred people here already and it was only 10 p.m. He wondered what it would be like in an hour.

As he carefully made his way down the short set of stairs into the living room, he noticed something odd over on the parquet dance floor at the far end of the room. Some people were legitimately dancing, but one couple was acting oddly. The guy, heavyset with a long beard and wearing a white tuxedo and top hat, appeared to be choking out his dance partner, who didn’t seem to be into it.

Everyone around the couple had stopped dancing and was staring but no one was doing anything, which made Trey think that maybe he was imagining things, that perhaps this wasn’t anything disturbing after all, but just some weird West Coast party performance art that a guy who grew up in Louisiana wasn’t clued into.

But then he realized he recognized the woman. It was Shasta Mallory, the big-time music manager who was also the owner of the house and hostess of the party. She definitely didn’t seem to be on board with the tuxedo guy’s act because she was swatting his hands away.

By the time Trey got to the dance floor, it was clear that some of the other onlookers were equally uneasy with what was going on. He exchanged looks with one big blond dude who looked like a long-lost Hemsworth brother, and they seemed to silently make the same assessment: they had to do something.

At the same time, they moved forward. Each of them grabbed one of the tuxedo guy’s arms and yanked it off Shasta Mallory’s neck. The guy tried to fight them off and grab at her again. That seemed to open the floodgates. A half dozen other people joined in, all helping pull the guy off Shasta.

The Hemsworth-looking dude even got in a couple of solid punches to the chest before the guy in the tuxedo scrambled away through the mass of bodies and darted out the door. Trey lost sight of him as he ran off into the darkness. When he turned around, he saw several people assisting Shasta to a nearby couch.

“Are you okay?” one young woman in a bikini asked. “Should we call the cops?”

Shasta waved her arms and shook her head vehemently. After swallowing a few times, she finally spoke.

“No, if the police come, they might end up closing down the party. I can’t have that. I hired caterers. I have clients coming. I’m not shutting everything down because of some drunk psycho in a bad tuxedo. If someone could just get me some water, I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Trey was about to offer but someone else volunteered first. That was cool with him. He’d already done his part, and the idea of fighting through the crowd to go back to the kitchen for water and come all the way back here wasn’t appealing. He was already on the verge of losing his buzz as it was. He had proven himself to be a Good Samaritan. He didn’t need to go overboard.

Besides, this might be a good chance to earn some face time with Shasta, maybe see if he could actually play on one of her clients’ albums for real. He kicked aside the top hat that the attacker had left behind and sat down on the couch beside her, nudging a petite young thing in glasses out of the way so that he could get closer and offer his best supportive smile.

***

The man walked casually back into the party a half hour later. Without the tuxedo, the beard, or the fat suit, no one had any reason to take extra notice of him, even with the small backpack he had slung over his shoulder. He maneuvered through the swath of people in the living room and found the top hat he’d left behind earlier still lying on the floor at the edge of Shasta Mallory’s in-home dance floor.

He picked it up, took it to the kitchen, and stuffed it into one of the trash cans that he knew would be dumped out sooner rather than later. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about residual DNA from the hat being used to identify him later. Then he unobtrusively made his way to the hallway and up the stairs.

He could see Shasta Mallory down below, chatting with some of her guests. But he knew that at some point during the night, she’d have cause to come upstairs. It might be soon. It might not be for several hours.

But whenever she came up, he’d be waiting for her.

CHAPTER ONE

Jessie Hunt took her time getting ready.

It was a rare day when she got to have a leisurely morning and she intended to make the most of it. She could already hear her police captain husband, Ryan Hernandez, and her younger sister, Hannah Dorsey, in the kitchen of their Mid-Wilshire Los Angeles home, prepping breakfast, but she refused to let that rush her.

Hannah wasn’t leaving for another couple of hours. And since Jessie didn’t have a pending case, she and Ryan were letting themselves arrive at LAPD’s downtown Central police station at 9 a.m. instead of their typical 7:55.

Of course, the leisurely morning didn’t mean Jessie wouldn’t still dress for potential chaos. One never knew when investigative turmoil might strike for a criminal profiler like herself. That’s why she was slipping into her black sneakers, which could almost pass for loafers to the casual eye but worked great when chasing a suspect.

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