CHAPTER ONE
It was already a crazy morning.
Jessie had gotten up early to run five miles, part of her revamped fitness routine, now that she wasn’t in hiding from a serial killer. By the time she got back home, her fiancé, Ryan Hernandez, had done his workout, showered and gotten dressed. Her half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, was still in sweats, but at least she was up and moving around the kitchen.
“Don’t forget, we have to be out the door in twenty minutes,” Jessie told her as she started for the bedroom to prep for her own shower.
“You’re kidding, right?” Hannah asked in disbelief.
“About what?”
“I told you this last night,” her sister said, exasperated. “It’s a teacher in-service day. I don’t have school. Why do you think I’m moving around so leisurely?”
“Oh right. Sorry. I forgot,” she admitted. “With everything going on this week, I’m all turned around. Say, as long as you’re in leisure mode, do you think you could make me one of your famous pesto egg breakfast sandwiches to go? Otherwise, I’ll never make it to the station on time.”
“What will you do for me?” Hannah asked, only half-joking.
“Well, here’s my offer: Kat is coming by to return an old textbook I lent her on Behavioral Criminology and if you make my sandwich, I might not ask her to stick around and watch you for the day. How’s that for an even trade?”
Hannah rolled her eyes almost completely out of her head.
“First of all, you two middle-aged women and your shared textbooks are shockingly lame.”
“You know I’m thirty—,” Jessie said, but Hannah wasn’t done.
“And secondly, we need to have a real talk about how quid pro quo works. I will make your sandwich but I expect that it will engender some goodwill that will pay off in unexpected ways down the line.”
“Thank you,” Jessie said, deciding to leave it there and head for the shower.
All things considered, it was a decent interaction, of which there had been surprisingly many recently. Of course, it was all relative. Everything short of shooting and killing an unarmed, handcuffed man to death counted as “decent” these days.
Admittedly the man that Hannah had shot went by the title of the Night Hunter and was a notorious serial killer who had stalked their whole family. But that didn’t change the troubling fact that when Hannah killed him, he was no longer a threat.
That’s why she’d been seeing Dr. Janice Lemmon regularly for the two and half weeks since the incident, though she had yet to admit to the psychiatrist what happened that night. Despite that fairly large omission, Hannah seemed to be making progress in therapy. And in most other ways, she was thriving.
As Jessie reminded herself while getting in the shower, there had been no additional acting out—that is, not putting herself in danger for the thrill of it. She was doing well in school, so well in fact that Jessie wondered if she ought to reconsider Hannah’s plan to go to culinary school in the fall. At this rate, despite all the traumas she’d suffered and school time she’d missed, she was on target to graduate with honors and could probably get into most public schools in the state.
In addition, Hannah still planned to go to the mountain town of Wildpines this summer. That’s where she, Jessie, and Ryan had hidden out from the Night Hunter for a few nights. While there, she’d learned that a local private school, the Wildpines Arts Conservatory, had a culinary arts program. Conveniently, a cute boy named Chris that she’d met in town would also be in the Conservatory’s summer program.
Jessie got out of the shower and dressed quickly in her standard work attire: comfortable but professional shirt, along with pants that looked nice but that she could run in. She tied her brown sneakers, which could pass for loafers, and grabbed a jacket to protect against the early February bite.
She gave herself a once-over in the bathroom mirror and declared herself satisfied. Those early morning workouts were paying dividends. She looked healthy and refreshed. Her shoulder-length brown hair had lost its former limpness and her green eyes were bright and clear, with none of the typical exhausted bleariness. Standing straight rather than slouching, she looked even taller than her five-foot-ten-inches.
When Jessie came out of the bedroom, there was a pesto egg sandwich and a to-go cup of coffee waiting for her on the breakfast table. Ryan was seated in his chair, sipping a coffee. Hannah was munching on a breakfast bar by the sink.
Jessie’s best friend, Katherine “Kat” Gentry was in another chair at the table, nibbling at a banana. Her work clothes—she was a private detective— were even more casual than Jessie’s. She wore jeans, a casual shirt and a brown leather jacket. Her dirty blonde hair was in a loose ponytail.
“Thanks for the sandwich, Hannah,” Jessie said.
“Earn it,” her sister muttered dramatically under her breath.
“Kat says she’s got news,” Ryan said, diverting Jessie’s attention.
“Oh yeah?”
“I left your textbook in the living room,” Kat said. “Thanks for letting me borrow it, though it was pretty dry stuff.”
“That’s your news?” Jessie asked, “That Behavioral Criminology textbooks are boring? What else have you got for me? That the sun is burn-y?”
“I’m getting to it, Jessie Hurts—er, Hunt,” she said, feigning bruised feelings. “Before I share my news, how are things going on the teaching front? Does the UCLA student body still adore you?”
“I actually had my first seminar since the whole Night Hunter thing,” Jessie said, unable to hide her excitement. “It was the best-attended one so far, although I have a sneaking suspicion that was a result of that very same Night Hunter thing. I thought I saw some students checking me for visible scars.”
“Silly kids,” Kat chuckled, “Don’t they know all the really impressive scars are on the inside? What about the other big event? How are things going on the wedding front? Choose a date yet? Got a venue? Picked out a pastor? Where’s the reception? Most importantly, who are your bridesmaids?”
“Ugh, my blood pressure just went up listening to you,” Jessie said.
“We’re taking it slow,” Ryan added. “Right now, we’re in the ‘tell our co-workers about it’ stage. That’s been interesting enough.”
“Yeah,” Jessie said. “Callum Reid already told me that he wants to give me away. He says now that he’s off the force he needs something to focus on.”
Jessie didn’t mention the other reason the recently retired detective was probably offering: all her other father figures had been murdered.
“We figure we’ll linger in the joy of engagement-hood for a little while before getting into the stressful stuff,” Ryan said, interrupting her thoughts. “Remember, I’ve been to this wedding rodeo once before and the planning part was definitely not my favorite.”
“See,” Jessie said. “That’s why he’s the guy for me. We’re simpatico on this. Enjoy now. Stress later.”
She flashed back to the proposal: up in the snowy mountain town of Wildpines, just after finally stopping the Night Hunter, with Ryan down on one knee in the snow, a small black ring box in his hand on a gorgeous, sunny morning. He really was the guy for her.
“I’m glad to hear no crucial decisions are imminent,” Kat said, pulling her back into the present, “because I wouldn’t be able to help with any of them.”
“Why not?” Hannah asked, expressing interest in the conversation for the first time.
“That’s the news I wanted to tell you about. I’m going to be out of town for a bit.”
“Why?” Hannah asked.
“For how long?” Jessie added.
“Whoa,” Kat said, taken aback, “it’s nice to be wanted but settle down. I’m just going up to Lake Arrowhead.”
“To see your boyfriend?” Hannah teased.
Kat’s long distance boyfriend, Mitch Connor, was a sheriff’s deputy up in the mountain town of Lake Arrowhead, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. They’d met when she assisted Jessie on a case last year and visited the town while following a lead. He helped her out; they hit it off and had been going back and forth to see each other every few weeks for months now.
“That’s part of it,” Kat said evenly, not taking the bait, “but I’ve also got a case. Mitch said some guy he knows who runs a ski resort in Big Bear thinks his wife is cheating on him and wants her tailed by someone who’s good but not local. Mitch said he had the perfect candidate.”
“So you’ve basically found a way to get a free ski vacation out of this,” Ryan observed.
“I don’t ski,” Kat said coquettishly. “So I guess Mitch and I will have to find other ways to keep busy when I’m not on a stakeout.”
“Oh my God,” Hannah said, pressing her hands to her ears as she hurriedly left the room, “You realize I’m still technically a child, right? Why am I being subjected to this? I’ll be in my room until either you all leave or my therapy appointment, whichever comes first.”
She dashed across the room, red-faced. As Jessie watched her go, she wished she could embrace the ‘technically a child’ assertion. It might be true, but her half-sister, just months from turning eighteen, had long since left childhood behind.
Apart from all the traumas she’d recently suffered, physically, no one would mistake her for a kid. She was barely an inch shorter than Jessie. They shared the same green eyes. And with her long, skinny frame, her medium length blonde hair, and her attitude, she sometimes looked closer to thirty than to twenty. At certain angles they could be mistaken for fraternal twins, though Jessie would never say that out loud. The three adults waited until Hannah slammed closed the door to her room to continue.
“I should keep you around all the time,” Jessie said. “That way I can deploy you whenever her sarcasm levels get too high.”
“Happy to be of assistance,” Kat told her, starting for the front door, “but not until after I conquer the sin in the snow. That’s what I’m calling this case.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Jessie said. “I hope it’s all you’re dreaming of and more. Let me know when you’re headed back to town and we can discuss your hot tub adventures.”
“Now you’re going to make me run out of the room,” Ryan threatened, though he was smiling.
They ignored him.
“Hey,” Kat remembered, “any updates on our unstable, ...
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