Page 60 of The Perfect People

Jessie stepped into the bedroom and prepared to order him to release Lola. But it only took a second to realize that wasn’t going to happen. The man barely seemed to have noticed that anyone had broken into the room. His eyes were filled with frenzied, murderous glee and they were fixed intently on the muscles of Lola’s neck.

Because the woman’s back was to him, he couldn’t see her face, but Jessie could, and it was clear that she was in bad shape. Jessie didn’t know how long Lola had been without oxygen, but it was clear that she couldn’t go much longer. Her eyes were bulging, and her face was bright red.

Unable to shoot, Jessie did the only thing she could think of—she charged at them. She focused attention on the man as she sprinted hard, hoping that she could make more physical contact with him than with his victim. At the last moment, he seemed to sense her presence and looked up, registering that a woman was running at him with a gun in her hand. He released his grip on Lola and shoved her toward Jessie.

Unfortunately for him, it turned out that his grip on her neck was largely what was holding Lola up. When he let go, she collapsed to the ground rather than into Jessie, leaving a clear path for the profiler to launch herself at him. She slammed into him shoulder-first and felt him careen backward a fraction of a second before she heard the glass balcony door shatter as he smashed through it.

His back hit the balcony floor and Jessie landed on his chest before shooting past him and banging hard into the metal balcony railing with the back of her head. Ignoring the sharp twinge of pain, she shot to her feet, feeling the crunch of broken glass under her shoes. She glanced back into the bedroom, where Lola was clutching at her throat. At least she was conscious.

“Run!” Jessie shouted at the woman before returning her attention to the man on the balcony with her who had rolled over into the fetal position, moaning. She didn’t see her gun, which had popped out of her hand during the collision, so she pulled out her handcuffs and snapped one on his left wrist. She was just snapping the other cuff to the railing when he suddenly spun around toward her.

In the moonlight, she saw a flash of something in his right hand and jumped back just in time to avoid getting slashed by a thick chunk of glass he was gripping in his right hand. But the sudden backward motion threw her off balance and she fell. She scrambled to slide backward away from him into the corner of the balcony as he got to his feet and prepared to advance on her.

She glanced behind her and realized that the balcony wasn’t long enough for her to evade him, even with one of his hands cuffed to the decorative railing. She was trapped. He was directly in front of her, bloody and wild-eyed. There was a wall behind her, along with more thick glass to her left, and a twenty-five-foot drop into a crowded courtyard below on her right.

For half a second, she panicked. But almost immediately, as it always did, the fear gave way to anger. She stood up.

“I guess the only way out is through you, asshole,” she said, “so bring it.”

The man smiled at her, and she saw that his teeth were covered in blood.

“I’m the plumber,” he hissed.

“I don’t care,” she shot back, getting into fighting position.

He lunged at her. Before he got close, a gunshot rang out. The man slammed against the railing and toppled over the side of it. But instead of falling to the ground, he came to an abrupt stop. He remained dangling there by his wrist, which was still handcuffed to the metal bar. Down below, people looked up, saw him, began to scream, and started running.

Jessie turned back into the bedroom to see where the shot had come from and saw Susannah Valentine standing in the doorway, re-holstering her weapon. Then her partner rushed over, stepped out on the balcony, and walked over to her.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“We smashed through the glass,” Jessie said. “I bumped my head a little bit. And then, after I thought I had him in custody, he almost gutted me. I think I’m a little bit in shock.”

“I can understand that,” Susannah said. “Well, the good news is that looking at him, I don’t think the guy’s going to be causing anybody else any problems, ever. The bad news is that your encounter with the door has you bleeding a bit here and there. I don’t think tennis uniforms were designed to repel glass that well. We’re also going to get that bump on your head checked out, okay?”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Jessie said. “Ryan will be mad at me if we don’t. How’s Lola?”

“She was running down the stairs as I was running up them, so she’s alive, which I think she has you to thank for,” Susannah said. “I’m sure the MBPD folks are here by now. We’ll get her looked at too. Why don’t you sit down on her bed, and I’ll reach out to them now.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” Jessie said, letting the detective guide her inside and ease her onto the bed. “And please tell Ryan what’s going on too. But not Hannah. It’s late. I don’t want to worry her. We can fill her in tomorrow.”

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

The Santa Monica Pier was starting to shut down.

The rest of the gang had gone back to the beach house for the night, but Hannah and Chris had made an excuse after they all finished their gelatos and managed to sneak away for one last wander around the shops.

That was just the official excuse, of course, and Hannah knew they weren’t fooling anyone when they said were hoping to find some late-night bargains. But that was okay. They weren’t really trying to hide things from the others anymore anyway.

So, as the rides started to turn off their lights and the eateries shooed their final customers out, Hannah and Chris lingered at those last few shops that still had open signs. They found a gift shop, where he bought her an overtly cheesy necklace that had the Pacific Wheel, the pier’s Ferris wheel, on it. She thanked him profusely, as if it was the Hope Diamond, and then planted a wet kiss on him. Finally, noting that it was almost midnight by pointing at the clock on the wall, even the shopkeeper at that place kicked them out.

“I just have to run to the restroom,” Chris said as they stepped out of the shop into the steamy night again. “Then do we want to head back?”

“Sure,” she agreed.

He headed off and she waited, leaning on the rickety pier railing, listening to the waves slosh against the dock pilings as she watched the gift shop lights flicker off. She wondered if she and Chris were the last people left on the pier tonight who didn’t work here.

“Nice night,” someone said from behind her, startling her so badly that she physically jumped.

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