by Blake Pierce
She didn’t want to wake him over what was probably nothing, so she rolled out of bed, using the cracks of dim, pre-dawn light coming through the blinds as her guide to find her robe. She put it on while willing herself not to look at the drawer where the gun was calling out to her. She tiptoed to the bedroom door, unlocked it and poked her head out.
She could hear two voices speaking quietly from the end of the hall, where it opened up into the living room. After closing the door behind her, she shuffled quietly past the adjoining bedroom where her sister, Hannah, was sleeping. Her instinct was to hug the wall as she moved forward but she instructed herself not to do it, to just walk normally.
When she reached the living room threshold, she leaned forward, not quite furtively but not exactly naturally either. In the living room were two large men facing away from her, both armed. One of them seemed to sense a presence behind him and, with his hand resting on his holster, turned around.
“Good morning, Ms. Hunt,” he said mildly, dropping his hand.
“Hi Sam. What’s the word?”
“Nothing new to report,” U.S. Marshal Samuel Mason replied casually. With his broad shoulders and meaty hands, he looked like a former college linebacker, which he was. “I wish there was.”
“Me too,” she sighed, before adding playfully, “aren’t you supposed to be calling me Jennifer Barnes, by the way?”
“I thought we’d let you go with your real name inside the safe house. But out there, we’ll stick to the fake identities.”
“Out there? Is there still a world outside this house?” she asked wryly, trying to keep her voice from tipping into bitterness.
“Yes, Ms. Hunt, I assure you there is,” Marshal Mason replied, not commenting on her tone. “Tommy made some coffee if you’re interested.”
“I am,” Jessie said, nodding at Marshal Tom Anderson, who looked a lot like his partner, just in a slightly smaller package. “Let me just wash up and I’ll be back out.”
She headed back down the hall to the bedroom and delicately opened the door. Ryan was still sleeping. She silently moved to the bathroom and closed the door, where she finally allowed herself a deep sigh.
It had been a week since they’d been rushed to this safe house; a week since an elderly serial killer called the Night Hunter, who was playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with her, had insinuated his way into her home and almost poisoned her little sister and boyfriend while she was right outside.
Normally there would have been more red tape in getting protection. But Jessie had been through this whole protective custody routine once before when her own serial killer birth father was hunting her, so she had connections that expedited the process.
What kind of life do I lead where I have U.S. Marshal connections because I’ve had to go into hiding previously?
However messed up it was, one call to Patrick “Murph” Murphy, who had been the lead marshal on her protective detail the last time around, was all it took. Now a supervisor, he went straight into action, giving them a half hour to collect some clothes and personal items.
In fact, it was only twenty minutes after he hung up that a black SUV rolled up to their house that night. Three marshals escorted Jessie, Ryan, and Hannah into the vehicle and whisked them away, cutting through the Hollywood Hills to a nondescript ranch house in Sherman Oaks.
That was last Tuesday. The good news was that in the week since then, the Night Hunter hadn’t killed anyone else, at least no one that could obviously be connected to his prior murders. In addition, they felt fairly safe where they were.
No one outside the Marshals Service knew where they were. All three of their phones had been replaced, at least temporarily and they had to get formal permission before giving their new numbers out to anyone. The list of approved people was small.
Captain Roy Decker, Ryan’s boss at LAPD Central Station, took being in the dark in stride. He’d been through this before as well. But explaining the situation to the dean at UCLA, where Jessie taught a seminar in forensic profiling, was a little trickier. Hannah’s high school was less of a hassle. They were so used to her leaving school for extended stretches that they didn’t even ask why this time.
Beyond that, the marshals were a constant presence. There were always two inside the house and usually between two and four outside. The house was gated and set back from the street with unobstructed sight lines for fifty yards in every direction. The closest neighboring house was a football field away.
Despite the comprehensive protection regime, there were major downsides too. The Night Hunter may not have struck in a week, but he hadn’t been caught either. Despite being elderly and scurrying out of her home only moments before a team of cops arrived, he’d somehow managed to escape their dragnet. Jessie knew that if they hadn’t captured him in that first hour, the chances of finding him now, a week later, were remote.
This was a man who, after wreaking bloody havoc along the eastern seaboard for much of the 1980s and 1990s, had gone into hiding for the two decades since. In fact, many people assumed he’d died. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d learned how to hide in the shadows and bide his time. The question was, how long could Jessie, Ryan, and Hannah put their lives on hold, living cloistered, away from the world, while he was out there waiting?
They’d already missed the funeral of Delia Morris, the retired neighbor the Night Hunter had murdered and stolen the identity of to infiltrate their home. Nor could they attend the funeral of Detective Alan Trembley, who had been killed by the Night Hunter when he inadvertently came across him at the hostel where the killer had been staying.
Jamil Winslow, the unit’s crack researcher had FaceTimed Trembley’s funeral for them, but it wasn’t the same as being there. The cemetery looked serene, with rolling hills, large overhanging trees, and not far from Trembley’s gravesite, memorial benches surrounded by rose bushes. Still, there was something hollow about watching it on a screen, even with a massive contingent of LAPD there, all in their dress uniforms.
They listened to Captain Decker’s words as he described how Trembley had started as a goofy rookie detective apt to potentially contaminate a crime scene. But he went on to say that though the guy remained goofy, his acumen improved and his instincts sharpened to the point where he became an invaluable asset to the team. Beyond that, his good nature and unflagging enthusiasm for the job and the people he worked with often made the most difficult days more manageable.
Jessie had dabbed quietly at her eyes during the ceremony, trying to come to terms with the loss of yet another person in her life, used as a pawn by someone out to hurt her. Ryan had sat stone-faced beside her. He may have seemed unemotional but she knew he was taking Trembley’s death even harder than she was.
She felt guilty because the Night Hunter was destroying others to get to her. But Ryan felt a different burden. He’d told her how he believed Trembley would still be alive if he had been physically able to go into that hostel with his young partner. He’d also confessed how he’d frozen when the Night Hunter emerged from the hostel, unable to grab his gun and fire at the man before he disappeared into the Santa Monica crowd. She knew the shame was eating at him but she didn’t know how to help.
Less emotional than the culpability they both felt, but equally important, was the growing realization that working the investigation from a safe house wasn’t practical. They couldn’t go out in the field. They couldn’t access evidence in person. They couldn’t interview witnesses face to face to get a sense of what they might be hiding. It wasn’t sustainable. And it was wearing on her.
Jessie turned on the bathroom light and stared at herself in the mirror. Part of it was just waking up, but she thought she looked drab. Her shoulder length brown hair was limp. Her green eyes looked dull. Her athletic five-foot-ten inch frame seemed somehow slouchy. Though she was just thirty, on this morning she thought she looked a half decade older.
Ryan seemed to be doing better than she was. Maybe it was that he’
d spent much of the last few months home-bound, recovering from his injuries and rehabbing. He was used to casual confinement. In fact he seemed to be embracing it, using every free moment to do extra working out on top of his physical therapy exercises.
Jessie suspected it was primarily to get rid of his nervous energy, but it was working. Though he still held his cane as a security blanket, he mostly walked without it. Admittedly, it was more shuffling than normal walking, but it was a vast improvement from where he’d been just a few weeks earlier.
Hannah seemed to be doing okay too, but Jessie had lingering doubts. In the middle of the Night Hunter madness, she’d learned that her younger half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, had been secretly engaging in massively risky behavior. In the last year, she’d confronted a drug dealer, used herself as bait to bust up a sexual slavery ring, and broken into the home of a convicted pedophile to see if he had kidnapped a young girl.
On the surface it might have seemed like she was out for some kind of righteous justice on behalf of victims. But it eventually became clear that her actions were more about trying to get some kind of adrenaline high from putting herself in harm’s way.
It was only after Jessie’s best friend, Kat, admitted to her that she was aware of the behavior and had been hiding it from her that the full truth came out. Hannah had subsequently taken the initiative and resumed sessions with her therapist, Dr. Janice Lemmon. In fact, they’d had video sessions every weekday since going into hiding. But Jessie still sensed that her sister’s grip on the situation was tenuous.
It was understandable. After all, this was a girl whose adoptive parents had been murdered before her eyes by her birth father, a serial killer who also happened to be Jessie’s biological father. She’d also been kidnapped by another serial killer, an acolyte of their shared father, who hoped to seduce her into becoming a killer herself. It was a lot for anyone to handle, even if they didn’t already have underlying emotional issues. Now she couldn’t go to school, couldn’t see friends, couldn’t hang out in her favorite chair at the local coffeehouse.
Add that to the normal concerns facing a seventeen-year-old girl planning to graduate from high school in a few months—what she would want to do next year, if she’d ever meet a guy who wouldn’t be scared to take her on a date—and it was no wonder she seemed a little shaky.
It also explained why she was on a cooking frenzy. Hannah was already the cuisine master in the family, usually making dinner, often elaborate ones. But now she’d taken it to the next level, giving the marshals a daily list of required ingredients for the full menus she’d planned out. Jessie knew she was considering going to culinary school instead of college but recently it seemed like she was taking an independent study course right here in the safe house.
A groan from the bedroom told her Ryan was awake. She finished brushing her teeth and opened the bathroom door to find him easing himself upright at the edge of the bed. Tufts of his short black hair stuck up randomly, a result of bed head. She couldn’t see his kind, brown eyes but she pictured them blinking slowly as he took in the morning. He was shirtless and she noted that he’d regained some of the muscle tone he’d lost after the stabbing and coma.
She doubted that Detective Ryan Hernandez would ever get back to the chiseled six-foot, 200-pound specimen he’d once been, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. He looked so much healthier than last summer. For a few weeks back then he’d been comatose and unresponsive, at death’s door. All of that was a result of her ex-husband Kyle Voss’s elaborate plan to destroy Jessie’s reputation before killing everyone dear to her. It had almost worked.
In the end, he’d murdered her friend and profiling mentor, Garland Moses, nearly killed Ryan, and tried to do the same to Jessie and Hannah. The man sitting on the bed in front of her now was unrecognizable from the weakened patient lying in a hospital with tubes sticking out of him only six months ago.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” she said, sidling up next to him.
“Morning,” he replied, giving her a kiss on the cheek to spare her his morning breath, “how long have you been up?”
“Not that long. I checked in with the marshals. There’s coffee brewing.”
“Excellent,” he said, stretching his arms above his head, “although I feel bad that those highly skilled professionals have been reduced to prepping our morning joe.”
“I think they made it for themselves and just brewed some extra for us,” she assured him. “Don’t worry. They still consider their primary gig keeping bad guys away.”
He kissed her again for no obvious reason. She loved that he didn’t seem to need one.
“Is Hannah up?” he asked. “I’ve come to expect a massive morning spread.”
“She wasn’t out there earlier but who knows what’s happened in the few minutes since. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s whipped up a frittata in the interim.”
As if on cue, there was knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Jessie asked.
“Hannah. Can I come in for a sec?”
Jessie looked over at Ryan, who nodded.
“Sure,” she replied.
Her younger sister poked her head in. It was clear that she’d been up for a while. Her sandy blonde hair was brushed and styled. Her green eyes, the same as Jessie’s, gleamed with energy. She was just an inch shorter than her big sister but right now she looked positively statuesque in comparison.
“Morning,” she said sunnily. “I was checking to see if you guys were feeling more like crêpes or Belgian waffles this morning.”
“Wow, “Ryan said. “Both sound great.”
“Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “I’m happy with either.”
“Let’s do crêpes then,” Hannah said. “I’ve been meaning to experiment with a new, savory version. You can be my guinea pigs.”
She was gone as quickly as she’d come in, leaving the two of them alone and suddenly hungry. Ryan pushed himself up from the bed, notably leaving his cane untouched. It was a good sign. Despite the self-doubt he’d felt of late, he was pushing to get stronger. Neither of them needed to say why out loud.
He moved slowly to the bathroom as Jessie tried to decide which pair of yoga pants she’d wear today. Ryan was about to close the bathroom door when her phone rang. He stopped in his tracks.
“It’s Decker,” she said, looking at the screen. “Should I answer it?”
Ryan nodded. Decker was on both their approved contact lists.
“I don’t think he’d be calling at 7:14 a.m. just to say hi. Maybe it’s good news.”
“Good morning, Captain,” she said, putting the call on speaker.
“Morning, Barnes,” he said brusquely, pointedly using her alias as an extra precaution in case someone out of the loop was around. “Is Hosea there with you?”
“Right here, Captain,” Ryan called out. He was currently going by the name Randy Hosea. “We’re alone, by the way.”
“Good. I need you both to come into the station as soon as possible.”
“Did something break on the Night Hunter case?” Ryan asked excitedly.
There was a brief pause.
“No,” he finally said. “But I have something else important to show you both. And it needs to be in person. Are you on some beach in Maui or can one of your marshal friends get you in here within the hour?”
“We’re in driving distance but I think it will take longer than that,” Jessie said. “They’ll need to follow their standard security protocol. Plus there’s the typical traffic. We’ll be lucky to get there by nine.”
“See you at nine then,” Decker said, hanging up without another word.
“Still as charming as always,” Jessie noted.
“You think we’ll have time for crêpes?” Ryan asked.
“Maybe to go,” she replied. “We shouldn’t keep him waiting. Decker knows Marshals Service protocols as well as anyone. If he’s asking us to come in on short notice, it must be big.”
CHAPTER TWO
Even after everything she’d been through, Jessie still wasn’t used to it.
As the large black SUV with bulletproof glass pulled into the underground LAPD Central Station parking lot, escorted by two additional vehicles, she felt mildly ashamed. She wasn’t a head of state. This kind of security for a profiling consultant and an LAPD detective felt excessive. But it wasn’t up to her. She’d asked for their help. That meant she had to follow their rules.
So she didn’t complain when they waited in the vehicle while the marshals secured the garage, the stairs (no elevator for them), and the first floor corner storage room near the stairwell where Captain Decker would be meeting with them. The goal was for as few people as possible to know they were there. The chances that the Night Hunter might have a mole in the department were slim, but they weren’t none. And he’d already proved adept at sneaking into places he shouldn’t be, so the marshals weren’t taking any chances.
As well as he was moving, it still took a little extra time for Ryan to navigate the stairs from the basement garage to the first floor and they had to wait in the stairwell until they got the all clear. When they did, Marshal Sam Mason held the door open for them. Marshal Tommy Anderson did the same with the storage room door.
Once they were inside, Tommy stepped in too, closed and locked the door, and stood with his back to it, his eyes on the people in the room. From past experience, Jessie knew that Sam would take up a casually clandestine position just down the hall, where he could watch the storage room and anyone approaching it. Both men wore earpieces, as did the marshal still in the SUV in the garage, the marshal watching the station lobby, and the two marshals circling the block in separate vehicles.
It gave Jessie a sense of security to know that the contingent back with Hannah at the ranch house (or the Ponderosa—the code name it had been assigned) was equally diligent. When they’d left, there were two marshals inside, two more just outside and one parked down the block.