The Perfect Ruse, page 2
After a few seconds, she decided to text Greg at the gym to get an explanation, even though he was mid-workout, but remembered that her phone was still on her bedside table. The idea of walking back down the hall to the bedroom was suddenly unsettling. She wondered if she’d acted too quickly by locking the door. What if someone had already snuck in? Maybe, despite the cold, despite being in just her robe and slippers, she should just leave and go to the neighbors’ house.
Then she had an idea. The carafe of hot coffee, just a few feet away, might serve as a dual weapon. If there was someone in the house, she could toss the hot liquid at them and smash them with the glass. Without hesitation, she stepped across the room and grabbed the plastic handle, pulling the carafe out of its cradle and popping off the plastic top so that she could fling the entire contents at anyone who might come her way. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, she did a slow turn, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing.
Her eyes fell on the land line at the far corner of the breakfast bar. She hadn’t actually picked up that phone in months, but right now it could be her best friend. She didn’t need a pre-programmed contact list or voice activation right now. All she needed was three little numbers: 911.
Her eyes still darting everywhere, she moved over to the phone and picked up the handset. She switched the coffee carafe to her left hand and pushed the “talk” button to get a dial tone on the phone. But nothing happened. She tried again and still got no response. Then she looked at the back of the cradle and saw the cord that was normally connected to the phone’s base was missing. It had been disconnected.
She was just processing that fact when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye, coming from the door near the security panel. Turning quickly, she dropped the handset and swung the coffee pot in that direction, even before she could see what was coming at her. The pot smashed into the oncoming presence but that didn’t stop it.
She didn’t get a good look at her attacker, just that the person was wearing black and had on a ski mask with holes for their eyes, nose, and mouth. The person didn’t cry out in pain at being smashed by glass or hot coffee. Instead, they wrapped one of their arms around Kim’s neck and began to squeeze forcefully.
Kim wasn’t a big person, about five-foot-three and 125 pounds, and trying to push the person in black away from her was nearly impossible, especially as she struggled to breathe and felt panic starting to overtake her. She reached out for the handset on the breakfast bar, hoping to use it to smash the attacker’s head, but her fingers fumbled as she grasped at it, and it fell to the floor.
She heard pieces of the plastic shatter as it landed, but the sound was muffled and distant. She wasn’t sure if that was because of the attacker’s arm wrapped around part of her ears or because she was starting to lose consciousness. Fearful that it was the second one, she lashed out, trying to poke the assailant in the eyes with her thumbs and fingers, but the angle was awkward, and she was getting weak fast. Her legs were quivering, and her vision was beginning to blur.
She made one final attempt to jab back with her elbow, hoping to hit her attacker in the gut hard enough to break free, but even to her, when contact was made, it felt limp, like a soggy noodle. And that was Kim Carrigan’s last conscious thought—of her arm as a wet noodle, flopping listlessly in the air—before coming to unwanted rest.
CHAPTER ONE
Jessie Hunt sat quietly in the passenger seat, sipping her coffee, happy to let Ryan deal with the hazards of morning rush hour.
One theoretical advantage of working at the same police station as her LAPD police captain was that if their shared commute got really bad, he could always turn on the siren and beacon light. Of course, that wasn’t really Captain Ryan Hernandez’s style, and he’d never used it for personal benefit. So, they usually plodded along with everyone else.
Another theoretical advantage of commuting to work with her husband was that if they ever arrived late to Central Station, her boss couldn’t bust her for it, because he was her boss. Then again, as the dedicated criminal profiler for Homicide Special Section, LAPD’s most celebrated investigative unit, she didn’t really have to punch a clock anyway.
The truth was that most of HSS’s cases—typically investigations with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—involved multiple victims or serial killers and usually required long hours with few breaks, so showing up a bit late on a quiet Tuesday morning wasn’t the end of the world. Not that they were going to be late. Jessie glanced at the car’s clock. It was 7:48 a.m. right now, and she guessed that they’d still make it to work before eight.
“So, did you get a chance to think about it anymore?” Ryan asked hesitantly from the driver’s seat.
Jessie looked over at him and felt a mix of affection and frustration. She knew exactly what he was referencing. Last night he had delicately broached something that he had only mentioned once prior to their getting married two and half months ago: the idea of her changing her last name.
“I’m not asking you to do it,” he had said over dinner, “I’m not even asking you to consider doing it. I’m just asking you to consider considering it.”
He had looked almost apologetic as he took a bite of the leftover lasagna, which he stared at aggressively while he waited for her answer.
“I thought you didn’t care about that,” she had said. “Back when we were engaged and you mentioned it, you said you could take it or leave it. Has something changed?”
He had shrugged sheepishly. “My mother brought it up last week,” he admitted. “But with everything going on with your health concerns and recovery, I didn’t want to throw another thing at you until I thought you could handle it. I figured you seem pretty calloused up now, so I’d broach it.”
“I didn’t even know you were talking to your mom these days,” she had said. “Why does she care anyway?”
“I think it’s because the anniversary of my father’s death was a few weeks ago, and the family name was on her mind, so she reached out.”
“I’ll consider considering it,” she had told him last night, effectively ending the conversation.
If she was honest, she hadn’t given it a second thought since then, but now it was the next morning and he was bringing it up again, ever so diffidently. Even as he glanced over at her, she could sense his apprehension. There was something sweet about a six-foot, 200-pound, powerfully built police captain looking so meek. His warm, brown eyes were wide, and his short, black hair made him seem even more emotionally naked than usual. He was equal parts sexy and adorable.
And yet she was irked. Did he really want her to become Jessie Hernandez or Jessie Hunt-Hernandez? Or was he just doing this to satisfy his mother, who Jessie had never met and who he’d never expressed any interest in placating before? In fact, he hardly ever spoke of her. To the best of Jessie’s knowledge, she’d been a disengaged parent who had largely disowned him when his first marriage fell apart. She hadn’t even been invited the wedding.
“No,” she said, after taking her time with another gulp of coffee, “I haven’t had time to think about last name changes, Ryan. Is it really that pressing?”
“No, of course not,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to push.”
A car one lane over cut in front of him, and he had to hit the brakes forcefully to avoid rear-ending them. He honked at them long and hard but didn’t take any further action. Pulling them over would just make them later for work.
Jessie wondered what this was really about. Beyond that, she was annoyed that he was adding it to her pile of “big stuff to deal with.” He may have thought that her pile of thick life files was a little lower these days, but he was wrong.
On paper, it may have seemed like things were getting easier, and maybe technically, in some ways, they were. After all, her younger half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, had just graduated from high school. And considering Hannah’s situation when Jessie had assumed legal guardianship of her less than two years ago, it was amazing that she was a functional human being, much less a high school graduate.
When Jessie first met her, the girl was tied up in a chair, being forced to watch as her adoptive parents were murdered by a serial killer. Together, she and Jessie had managed to overcome and kill the man, who happened to be Jessie’s father. Only later did they learn that he was also Hannah’s.
Jessie took her in, and despite the trauma that the girl endured and her subsequent, intense desire to numb that pain by inflicting suffering on other violent perpetrators, Hannah had worked hard to curb her urges, find some inner peace, and still graduate with honors. So, that was one life file that Jessie could almost take off the pile. Almost.
And as Jessie celebrated her thirty-first birthday last month at a low-key dinner with Ryan, Hannah, and her best friend, Katherine “Kat” Gentry, Jessie had admitted aloud to them that another thick file could be at least partially removed from the large pile. Her health was improving.
It was only ten weeks ago that crazed, obsessive killer Andrea “Andy” Robinson had kidnapped her on her wedding night and nearly blown her up in a mine explosion. The incident had left her with cracked ribs, a badly bruised ankle, a fractured wrist, and a severe concussion. All but the last one had completely healed.
She could now do her morning run without any twinges of pain in her ankle or soreness in her chest. As far as work went, she hadn’t had any major, physical altercations with any suspects since a woman who had been poisoning rich, Beverly Hills women attacked her six weeks ago, but she was confident that she could handle herself if she had to.
But it was that last medical issue, the concussion, that still loomed over her, a life file so thick as to deserve its own cabinet. It consumed more of her waking hours than she cared to admit, which was why throwing last name change suggestions at her was so irritating.
Even now, as Ryan weaved in and out of traffic, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking back to her appointment last Thursday with Dr. Varma. Ryan had held her hand the whole time as Priya Varma, one of the most renowned neurologists on the west coast, met with them for the fourth time in eight weeks.
As at all the other appointments, her staff conducted a series of tests that ranged from showing her images on screens and asking her to identify them, to using playing cards as part of a memory game, to testing her limb strength, vision, and hearing. After that, Dr. Varma joined them and reviewed the tests silently, even gravely, before finally looking up.
“As per usual,” the doctor had said, not wasting time with silly greetings, “we’ll have you go for an MRI after we’re done here. In the meantime, let’s review your status.”
Jessie was mildly curious to see if Dr. Varma would simply skip ahead to ask how things had been going since they last saw her, but as with all the prior appointments, she insisted on starting fresh.
“So, your issues with memory, concentration, and headaches became pronounced after the mineshaft incident in late March when a grenade exploded in close proximity to you and the mine collapsed around you, correct?”
Dr. Varma, statuesque and attractive in a taciturn way, had repeated the litany of events as if it was a grocery list.
“That’s right,” Jessie had said.
“But you indicated that you may have also bumped your head multiple times when you were unconscious in the trunk of her car while traveling on the mountain road to get to the mine.”
“Also true,” Jessie had confirmed.
“And you’ve indicated that in apprehending past suspects as part of your job over the last two years, you’ve suffered myriad injuries that including being knocked out on several occasions.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds kind of bad,” Jessie had muttered jokingly.
Varma hadn’t laughed. Neither had Ryan, who squeezed her hand as if to silently beg her not to quip. It was easy for both of them to be so serious. Their brains weren’t potential scrambled eggs. Hers was. If this was how she wanted to cut the tension for herself while she waited for the doctor’s feedback, then she’d damn well do it. The doctor thumbed through the file again.
“I’ve reviewed the preliminary results of the in-office studies from today compared to your previous visits,” Varma had said, “and you’ve made discreet but measurable progress in every metric, just as you have on all your prior appointments. Your strength function seems to be close to a hundred percent. Memory and concentration aren’t to that level, but both are trending upward, which is what we’re looking for. These are good indicators, and we’ll see what the final results reveal when they come back in the next few days. And obviously, we’ll need to see if the MRI confirms what we’re seeing here in the office.”
“That’s great news,” Ryan had blurted out, far louder than he clearly intended.
“So, what does this mean?” Jessie had asked, more measured. “I don’t hear you saying I’m all better, Doctor.”
“Because that’s not what I’m saying,” Varma replied simply. “My suspicion is that you’ve suffered multiple concussions in recent years, and this is just the first one that was formally diagnosed. The trend lines are looking positive right now. But I want to review the images to confirm them. Even if they do, that’s not positive proof. I understand that you still get headaches?”
“Yes,” Jessie had conceded, “but they’re not as intense as they were.”
“Do they ever make you lose vision? Feel unsteady or nauseated? Have you ever thrown up as a result of one?”
“Not lately,” Jessie had answered, though that depended on the definition of the word “lately.” One headache about a week ago had coincided with some queasiness, but she’d also spent twenty-nine straight hours working just before the feeling and was inclined to attribute it to that, so she decided not to mention it.
“All right,” Varma had said. “You’ve got the MRI this afternoon. We’ll reach out to you to discuss the results sometime next week. They should go a long way to helping us determine next steps.”
“Next steps?” Jessie had asked.
Yes,” Varma had replied, “as in, whether your injury is temporary, and if you can continue as is, or if it’s advisable for you to curtail your work in a profession where you risk additional potential head trauma that could do lasting damage to your brain.”
They hit a pothole, and Jessie nearly lost her grip on her coffee as she snapped out of her thoughts and back into the moment.
“You okay?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re still expecting those MRI results from Dr. Varma this week, right?”
“Yeah,” he said as he pulled onto Wall Street, where the Central Station parking garage was located. “Any day now. Why?”
“I’m just tired of having this hanging over my head.”
He nodded sympathetically and seemed about to say something when his phone rang. “It’s Chief Decker,” he said, pulling over to the side of the road just before the garage entrance. “I better take it here, so I don’t lose the connection underground.”
He answered the call and put it on speaker.
“Hi, Chief,” he said. “How can I help?”
“Captain Hernandez,” replied someone who was definitely not their former captain and now interim LAPD Chief Roy Decker, “this is Lydia from Chief Decker’s office. I’m afraid he was just called in to testify before the City Council, but he asked me to convey a priority request to you.”
“Of course,” Ryan said. “What’s the request?”
“Apparently the wife of a local news anchor was found strangled in their home about forty-five minutes ago. He believes this is an ideal case for HSS and asked you take ownership of it immediately. I have the contact information for the sergeant on the scene. Shall I pass it along?”
Ryan looked over at Jessie, and she knew he was thinking the same thing that she was: their quiet Tuesday morning had come to an unceremonious end.
CHAPTER TWO
Jessie waited for her partner to arrive.
As she stood in Ryan’s office, anticipating him bringing in Detective Sam Goodwin, she tried to relax. While she and Goodwin had interacted multiple times in the two months since he’d joined the unit, they’d never been paired together on a case.
She’d only heard good things about his intelligence and dedication but working with someone new for the first time was always a little nerve wracking. It was especially so when she wasn’t certain that her brain was operating at full capacity, a fact no one in the unit officially knew but Ryan. She didn’t want to have a mental hiccup while questioning a suspect, with him standing beside her.
Of course, that was out of her hands. What was in her control was how she presented herself to him at their first meeting as partners. So, feeling mildly ridiculous about it, she opened the small coat closet in the corner of Ryan’s office and looked herself over in his narrow, full-length mirror.
As far as she could tell, she looked like she did most other workdays. She was dressed in comfortable, gray slacks and a thin, long-sleeved, green shirt that matched her eyes. She wore brown sneakers that could pass as loafers but would work if she had to chase down a suspect. Her shoulder-length, brown hair was loose now but would end up in a ponytail the second they got to a crime scene. At five-foot-ten and 145 pounds, she was tall, lean, and imposing enough to make most people she questioned think twice before getting physical.
She didn’t know why she felt the need to make a good impression on the new guy. She was the unit veteran with multiple serial killer takedowns. He was the newbie, fresh from vice. Maybe it was because she felt vulnerable after everything she’d been through recently. Maybe it was that she didn’t want Goodwin to view her as a figure in need of sympathy. Whatever the reason, she just wanted to look professional and competent. And as she closed the coat closet door, she assured herself that she did.
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