by Blake Pierce
Maybe I should have let them pick someone with the will to match his vision.
Her moment of introspection was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” she bellowed.
“Monica,” came the timid response.
That girl needs to find a backbone.
She got up and opened the trailer door.
“What is it?”
The girl looked like she was about to cry.
“Anton says we’re wrapping for the night. When he told Terry he wouldn’t be finishing the scene, he walked off the set. I heard him say something about filing a grievance as he left.”
“Let him,” Corinne countered. “And I’ll file a grievance about him manhandling me.”
Monica nodded meekly, clearly not wanting to argue.
“Anton says that we can’t move forward until the producers resolve it…”
“I am a producer,” Corinne shot back.
“I think he meant the studio’s producers, the money guys. Regardless, he said we’re done for the night. Your call time tomorrow is nine a.m. He hopes to have everything squared away by then.”
“Fine. I need to get a decent night of sleep anyway.”
Monica nodded. She clearly wanted to say something else but was afraid to.
“Spit it out,” Corinne said irritably.
“It’s just…do you need anything else from me tonight, Ms. Weatherly? I was hoping to get to the drugstore to pick up a prescription. They close in twenty minutes.”
Corinne fought the urge to make a snarky comment about the potential nature of the medication. Looking down, she saw that the girl was shaking slightly, apparently terrified. For the briefest of moments, Corinne felt guilty. She wanted Monica to be compliant but causing the kid to quiver with fear made her wonder if she’d gone a little too far.
“Go ahead,” she said, trying not to sound too sympathetic. “But I expect you to be here before me tomorrow, with my iced coffee. You know how I like it by now, right?”
“I have the order prefilled on the app,” Monica assured her.
“Good. Nice to see you’re learning.” She shut the door again before Monica could respond.
Sighing heavily, she made a quick bathroom pit stop, and then collected her things from the bed at the far end of the trailer.
She realized she should have told Monica to bring her car over from the parking garage. It was a five-minute walk across the lot to get there. She considered calling her back but decided to give her a pass, what with the medication thing. She didn’t want the girl to collapse from whatever pathetic ailment she had and then have the tabloids blame it on her.
She turned off the main light and moved to turn off the one for the makeup mirror. That’s when she saw it. Written on the mirror in neat, block letters with what looked like her own red lipstick was a word—a name actually. She recognized it immediately, of course. How could she not? She’d thought about this person every day for the last decade. But she had no idea how it had gotten there. The mirror had been clean when she was staring at her wrinkles earlier.
She glanced around, confused. And then in the shadows behind her, she saw movement, someone coming toward her with a cord extended. Before she could turn around or react, she felt the cord wrap around her neck and tighten. In the makeup mirror, she could see that her assailant was wearing a black ski mask, exactly like the one the Marauder wore in the scene she’d just shot.
She struggled to break free but that only seemed to make the cord constrict more. She tried to gasp for air but nothing came in. As she began to sink to the ground, her heart pounding with fear, her brain exploding with panic, she had a weird, unexpected thought: Compared to this, Terry Slauson’s fumbling attempt to wring her neck seemed almost tender.
She was dead before she had a chance to appreciate the irony.
CHAPTER TWO
Jessie Hunt hit snooze on her phone and lay quietly in bed with her eyes closed, hoping to drift back to sleep. After all, she didn’t have anywhere she had to be.
But it was no use. Her mind was already racing, despite her best efforts to slow it down. It was Monday morning. This was supposed to be a relaxing day, or at least as relaxing as she was capable of having these days. There was no job to go to. She didn’t have to rush Hannah off to school. With one exception, her schedule was whatever she wanted it to be. And yet, the gnawing sense that she had work to do ate at her. She sat up.
The action sent a wave of discomfort rippling through her body. Her bad shoulder ached, probably from inadvertently sleeping on it. And the still-raw skin on her lower back felt weird and tight, like an itch she knew she couldn’t scratch.
Looking across the small bedroom at the other bed, she saw that Hannah Dorsey, the half-sister for whom she was the full-time guardian, was still asleep, snoring softly. Jessie got up and tiptoed outside and down the hall to the bathroom. She saw that the other bedroom door was closed, which meant that Kat was either still asleep or, more likely, getting dressed for her day. Either way, it meant the bathroom was free.
Katherine “Kat” Gentry, Jessie’s best friend, was letting her and Hannah stay at her place until they found a new one. Jessie couldn’t bear the thought of living in her condo anymore. Too many awful things had happened there.
She had promised Kat that they’d be out in a month and though it had only been two weeks since they moved in, she was feeling the pressure. Part of that was because she felt bad that Kat couldn’t comfortably have her boyfriend over, a Lake Arrowhead sheriff’s deputy named Mitch Connor. They usually only got to see each other on weekends as it was. Even that was on hold for now.
But beyond that, finding a new place that had enough room for two people—hopefully three at some point—and met her security requirements wasn’t easy. Even though her ex-husband, Kyle Voss, was no longer a threat, Jessie still had lots of other enemies, many of whom would relish the chance to have a go at her.
She reminded herself that there was one additional necessity. It would also have to be handicapped-accessible. Jessie’s live-in boyfriend, LAPD Detective Ryan Hernandez, was nowhere near ready to leave the hospital. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure he ever would be. But if he did one day get the go-ahead to leave, he’d need wheelchair ramps, safety bars, and all manner of other equipment she hadn’t begun to think about.
Jessie gave herself a once-over in the mirror before washing her face. She didn’t have the relaxed look of a woman on a day off. The shadows under her bright green eyes had faded but they were still tinged with a redness that hinted at unsettled sleep. Her shoulder-length brown hair wasn’t tied back in her standard, professional ponytail but looked as worn out as she felt. She was hunched over the sink, making her athletic, five-foot-ten frame appear significantly smaller. Even her sculpted cheekbones seemed somehow less pronounced than usual. She had only recently turned thirty but on this morning, she felt about a decade older than that.
She finished washing up and stepped out of the bathroom, where she found Kat waiting patiently. Her friend was dressed casually in jeans and a loose-fitting top that hid her chiseled physique. Though she was no longer an Army Ranger or the head of security at a psychiatric prison, she still had the look of someone who shouldn’t be messed with. That was probably a good thing because her new gig as a private detective still afforded opportunities to get in a few scrapes now and then.
“Have you been waiting out here long?” Jessie asked guiltily.
“Just a few minutes,” Kat assured her. “I’m in no rush. I just need to run a brush through my hair. There’s coffee brewing if you want some.”
“Thanks. I could use it.”
“Another rough night?” Kat asked sympathetically, well aware of Jessie’s recent struggles.
She nodded.
“I don’t remember the specifics of the nightmares this time. But I still have images floating through my head.”
“Any you care to share?” Kat asked delicately.
Jessie debated whether she did. She worried that if she discussed her bad dreams, then it would give them more power. But keeping it all bottled up, as she often had in the past, hadn’t done her much good either. Finally she decided to err on the side of openness.
“It’s always the same stuff. I picture Kyle strangling Garland Moses to death in that beach house. I see him plunging the knife in Ryan’s chest. I picture myself giving Ryan CPR until my arms can’t move. I flash to Kyle slamming Hannah into the couch, her slumping over. I relive the feeling of choking the life out Kyle, the pleasure I took in hearing his windpipe crack. You know, fun stuff like that.”
Kat was silent for a moment. Jessie could tell she was weighing how to respond. Her friend certainly knew about processing trauma. She’d seen most of her unit blown to smithereens by an IED while serving in Afghanistan. The incident had left her with recurring headaches and a long vertical scar running down her face from her left eye. Jessie still didn’t know the details of what happened that day.
“Are you still seeing Dr. Lemmon?” Kat finally asked, referring to Jessie’s therapist, who had been guiding her through multiple ordeals for years now.
“Me and Hannah both,” Jessie confirmed. “In fact, I saw her just last Friday.”
“Did she have any special advice?” Kat asked.
“Sure, the usual: Don’t bottle it up. Talk about it but don’t wallow. Stay busy. Exercise as much as your injuries will allow.”
The reference was to both the dislocated left shoulder she got in the death match with Kyle and the burns to her back that she’d suffered rescuing a woman from a burning house with a serial killer in it.
“How much do they allow?” Kat wondered.
“Whatever my pain tolerance permits. The burns aren’t too bad anymore. The doctor says they’re healing well and I should be able to stop wearing bandages in another week or so. The shoulder still hurts but at least I don’t have to wear the sling anymore. But I’m supposed to go to physical therapy for another two to four weeks.”
“Well, at least you won’t have any professional distractions to complicate appointments,” Kat said optimistically. “This is your first official day being unemployed, right?”
Jessie nodded. It was technically true. Last Friday was her final day as a criminal profiler for the LAPD, not that she’d done much work lately. She’d given her notice, much to her captain’s disappointment, two weeks ago.
Despite his pleas that she just take a sabbatical and see how she felt when it was over, Jessie was adamant. She needed to break free of the cycle of violence that dominated her professional and personal life in recent years. Plus, wandering the same offices where she saw Garland every day just kept the wound of his loss too raw.
Because of her injuries, Ryan’s hospitalization, helping close out Garland’s cases, the condo move, and keeping tabs on Hannah, she had actually only been into the office a couple times. The last was on Friday, when she’d cleared out her desk.
“Hopefully the unemployment thing will be temporary,” Jessie said. “I have interviews lined up at multiple universities next week to discuss teaching positions in the fall. In the meantime, I’m trying to embrace not having a huge to-do list.”
Neither of them mentioned the primary reasons she could be so unhurried in her job search. Her divorce from Kyle had been lucrative. Before his conviction, he helped run a successful wealth management fund, so she would have done well in divorce proceedings regardless. But the fact that he’d tried to frame her for murder and then attempted to kill her made the case a slam dunk.
Beyond that, she also received a generous inheritance from her adoptive parents, who had been murdered by her serial killer birth father a few years ago. Garland’s lawyer had also told her that she should expect to receive a substantial gift when his will was read later this week. Jessie felt guilty for living comfortably as a result of so much pain and suffering. But with Hannah to take care of, mounting medical bills, and involved home security requirements, she’d made her peace with it.
Before she could expound on her job prospects further, her bedroom door opened. Out walked a sleepy-eyed Hannah, wearing underwear and a tank top, and sporting a shock of bed-head hair.
“She’s the spitting image of you,” Kat said snarkily.
Despite the gentle dig, Jessie couldn’t deny it was true. Even without the extra four inches of height the unruly hair gave her, Hannah, at five foot nine, was almost as tall as Jessie. They shared the same lean, athletic build. And when she finally opened her eyes fully, she’d be looking at them with the same intense green-hued gaze as Jessie.
“How’s it going, Sleeping Beauty?” Jessie called out.
“Any exciting plans today, princess?” Kat piled on.
Hannah scowled at both of them before entering the bathroom and closing the door without a word.
“She’s darling,” Kat said drily.
“Always a ray of light,” Jessie agreed sarcastically. “She’s surly because her summer break is almost over. She has to go to summer school next week and she’s not happy about it.”
“Only one more week to lie around and do nothing,” Kat noted. “Poor baby. I wish I had that schedule.”
“What is your schedule for the day?” Jessie asked.
“Nothing exciting—reviewing court documents in the morning. Then some rich couple wants me to find out who’s dealing to their son. Philip Marlowe, I’m not.”
“Need any help? I could look over the docs and—”
“No ma’am,” Kat cut her off. “You’re supposed be giving both your body and your brain a break. Take a walk. See a bad movie. But no matter what, no work for you.”
Jessie was about to reply when her phone rang. By now she knew the number well. She answered immediately.
“This is Jessie Hunt.”
“Hello, Ms. Hunt. This is Nurse Janelle from the ICU at the Medical Center. Dr. Badalia would like you to come by so he can speak to you. When are you available?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said before hanging up.
She looked at Kat, who seemed to sense what was going on.
“Get dressed,” her friend said. “I’ll pour you some coffee and toast a bagel. You can be out of here in five minutes.”
“What about Hannah?”
“Don’t worry about her. I’ll keep an eye on her this morning. When I have to go, Instagram can babysit her.”
Jessie was already halfway down the hall to her bedroom when she yelled out, “Thank you!”
CHAPTER THREE
Ryan’s hospital room was kept dark and cool. The hiss of the ventilator came in a regular rhythm. It would have been almost soothing if Jessie could forget why it was there. The nurse had told her that Dr. Badalia would be in soon. As she waited, she studied Ryan.
He looked better than he used to. His coloring wasn’t quite as pallid as during her last visit and his skin seemed less waxen. If she squinted, she could imagine he was just sleeping. He still had his dark good looks and, with the sheet covering him up to his neck, one couldn’t tell that the body he worked so hard to keep in optimal shape had already started to atrophy.
But it was just an illusion. Just over two weeks ago, Ryan Hernandez had been the top detective for LAPD’s Homicide Special Section (HSS) unit, which investigated cases that had high profiles or intense media scrutiny, often involving multiple victims and serial killers. Now he was lying helpless in a hospital bed, stabbed in the chest by Jessie’s ex-husband while in their own home. It was too much to think about and she pushed the memory from her mind.
Dr. Badalia appeared at the door and she got up to meet him in the hall. He was a tall, thin man in his late thirties, and with his permanently severe expression, Jessie could never tell whether he was about to deliver good or bad news.
“Thanks for coming down, Ms. Hunt,” he said mildly.
“Of course. Do you have an update?”
“I do. As you recall, we re
moved Ryan from the medically induced coma last week. Late last night, for the first time, he showed some responsiveness to stimuli. So we reduced his sedation slightly to see if it could be replicated. It was. He was able to open his eyes and responded to a few ‘yes or no’ questions by blinking. We were able to briefly explain his situation, why he was on the ventilator, and so on.”
She couldn’t speak at first. The emotion of the moment hit her unexpectedly and a lump filled her throat. Only then did she realize just how much she’d been holding back the anxiety and dread all these weeks. What had only leaked into her consciousness when she was tired or frustrated now poured in.
“Are you serious?” she said. “That’s fantastic. Why didn’t someone call me?”
“It was quite late, past midnight. And to be honest, the effort seemed to wipe him out. After about six minutes he conked out.”
“Oh. What about this morning? Has he been awake today?”
“We actually decreased the sedative level about an hour ago in the hope of trying again. That’s why we called. I’m hoping that if he regains consciousness and you’re here, he might be able to communicate a bit more.”
“Of course,” Jessie said. “How long will it be?”
Dr. Badalia glanced into the room.
“How about now?” he offered. “It looks like he’s trying to wake up as we speak.”
Jessie looked over and saw that Ryan was indeed trying to open his eyes. It appeared to be a struggle, as if they were glued shut and he was trying to pry them open through sheer will. But it seemed to be working. They returned to the room.
“Ryan,” Dr. Badalia said. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Through squinted eyes, he watched as Jessie crossed the room and came over to him, taking his right hand in both of hers.
“Hey, babe,” she whispered. “It’s good to see you awake. Can you hear me?”
He looked like he was trying to nod. But whether due to the massive tube in his mouth or a lack of strength, he couldn’t make it happen.