The unpleasantness factor increased dramatically when she spoke to the Wards. Lucy, a lean, athletic woman with ripped arms, was nice enough, but she was overtly evasive. Susannah couldn’t tell why. Was it because she didn’t want to admit to all the drugs she’d consumed or out of some sense of guilt that she hadn’t even noticed that her longtime friend was dead while she was six feet away, doing tequila shots? The harder Susannah pressed, the more she shut down.

  Dr. Glenn Ward was even more frustrating. A short, bespectacled man with a pale complexion and a sloppy comb-over that left black, cobweb-like strands of hair on his scalp, he was obviously still a little buzzed, which didn’t help.

  “You, Lucy and Eddie were friends since college?” she confirmed to start off.

  “Since freshman year,” he told her, before adding snarkily, “right after our first threesome.”

  “Is that true?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” he scoffed. “Eddie once described Lucy as cute, like a poodle. He wasn’t into her. I never told her that. I didn’t think she’d like it.”

  “You’re probably right,” she agreed.

  “I bet he would have gone for you though,” Ward said, suddenly salacious. “In fact, with the way you look, I bet everyone goes for you.”

  Susannah stared at him in disgusted disbelief.

  “Dr. Ward, are you really hitting on me right now, with your wife on the other side of that door and me questioning you about the death of your longtime friend and patient?”

  His lascivious grin faded.

  “I guess I’m still a little drunk,” he said. “Still, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

  And just like that, the interview turned sour. His fuzzy mental state, combined with his general arrogance, embarrassment at being called out, and irritation at being questioned at all, made him petulant. He seemed intent on turning every question she had back on her, as if she was the one who ought to be feeling self-conscious.

  “How did you verify his death?” she asked.

  “Using my doctor skills,” he spat, “You know—the ones that I got at doctor school.”

  “Do you recall the time you confirmed it?” she pressed, ignoring his sarcasm.

  “No, I was a little busy processing the loss of one my oldest friends. I didn’t think to check my watch.”

  She exhaled slowly to allow the exasperation to pass.

  “You were his personal physician, correct?”

  “Yes. I’m a concierge physician. I find getting direct payments from my patients less complicated than the whole insurance thing. How do you get paid, Detective—in shooting range coupons?”

  Susannah smiled mildly, as if humoring a grouchy child.

  “As his physician, are you aware of any pre-existing conditions that might have put him at risk for something like this?”

  “At risk of what exactly—dying on a private jet returning from his fiftieth birthday bash? No, I’m not aware of anything that pre-disposed him to that outcome. Beyond that, HIPAA regulations prevent me from having a gab session about my patient’s medical history. Anything else, Suzy?”

  Susannah was tempted to inform him that information could be disclosed to law enforcement when there was suspicion that the death might be the result of criminal conduct. But doing that would reveal that they suspected foul play, and she and Jessie Hunt had agreed not to do that at this point. So she bit her tongue.

  “That will be all for now.”

  She thought things couldn’t get worse than that. But Gareth Thacker proved her wrong. The man made Glenn Ward seem like a fuzzy bunny. Because all the other offices were in use, his interview was held in a storage room just off the hangar.

  He settled into the folding chair she’d put out for him and spread his legs wide, a leer on his face. She sat down opposite him, pretending not to notice. Before speaking, she looked at him closely for the first time.

  There’d been lots of talk in her other interviews about his outlandish behavior but this was the first chance she’d had to observe him up close. She guessed that he was about forty. Physically, he was a mess. His longish blond hair shot in every direction. Several days’ worth of stubble covered his double chin. His blotchy face was flushed and his eyes were bloodshot. She could smell the alcohol and pot wafting off him more than with anyone else.

  Beyond that, he was disheveled. His shirt, a loud Hawaiian number, was misbuttoned and his copious chest hair was poking out everywhere. He wore black leather pants that were way too tight for his ample waist. In fact, he’d unbuttoned them and the zipper was half open. He had on pink slippers, the only part of his outfit she actually liked.

  “So I hear you made the most of the weekend,” she began, hoping to win him over before getting to the tough stuff.

  “I make the most of every weekend, baby,” he told her. “This was one of the best until the last couple of hours or so.”

  “You sound really broken up about your friend’s death,” she noted.

  “We weren’t really friends, sweet cheeks,” he said. “More like friendly acquaintances that proved useful to each other. He only invited me to his big bash because he was afraid I was about to jump to another label. He was wooing me.”

  “Was he successful?” Susannah asked, doing her best to ignore his crass nicknames.

  “I hadn’t decided. But I gotta tell you, it’s not looking too good now. Once word gets out about Eddie, you can count on an exodus of talent. I doubt any artist not under contract will stick around. It’s not like his partner, little Joey Baldwin over there, is good at the relationship thing. He’s better with numbers. Not that he’ll care. After that Middle Eastern outfit gave them a cash infusion, he’s rolling in it. He’d probably be happy to re-issue the label’s catalogue in greatest hits compilations and watch the cash flow in.”

  “So you don’t think he’s upset about Eddie’s death?” she asked, wondering if getting such a massive bailout might have a deleterious effect on Baldwin’s mindset. Was there any chance that the guy might want to get out of the rat race badly enough that he’d be willing to eliminate the one major obstacle to that: his partner?

  “I didn’t say that, miss lady lumps,” he countered, popping each word grotesquely. “I’m sure he’s broken up over it. I’m just saying that from a cash money perspective, he’s probably good either way. And now he doesn’t have to deal with Eddie’s…volatility.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Thacker smiled wryly.

  “Just that Edward Morse could be a little combative from time to time. And I say that as someone with a well-earned reputation for being a top-tier asshole.”

  Susannah could tell he wasn’t going to share more gossip than that and decided to switch topics, hoping to catch him off guard.

  “What do you remember about him on the flight? Did you notice that he seemed ill at any point?”

  “Listen hot stuff, I’m going to be straight with you” he said conspiratorially, “I don’t remember much about the flight. I confess that I imbibed a few adult beverages and consumed some other mind-altering substances.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that you don’t remember anything?” she asked flat out.

  “It’s true,” he insisted with a sneering grin. “Other than providing my fellow passengers with a free striptease, most of my time up there is hazy. Having said that, if you had been on that plane, I’m pretty sure my recollection would be clearer. Speaking of which, how much would it cost me to get a little private lap dance right now, maybe with some extras? I’ve got five hundred in my wallet. Hell, if you’ve got a halfway decent singing voice, I could get you a recording contract, though probably not at Eddie Records anymore.”

  That was about the time that Susannah got the urge to throw that punch. Instead she stood up and, not wanting to give Thacker the satisfaction of knowing he’d gotten to her, gestured elaborately for him to leave the storage room.

  “You can go back to the office you were in, Mr. Thacker,” she said as professionally as she could. “We’ll let you know where things go from here momentarily.”

  He stood up and started to shuffle out, obviously disappointed that he hadn’t gotten her worked up.

  “You sure you don’t want to take me up on that offer?” he whispered dramatically as he ambled past.

  “Not unless you want to get arrested for solicitation,” she whispered back with equal theatricality.

  As she watched him make his way back to the office, she tried to paint a picture in her mind. It was clear that everyone she’d spoken to, with the exception of the co-pilot, was hiding something. The Wards, despite their shared friendship with Morse, didn’t seem as broken up as she would have expected. And though he pretended to be an open book, it was clear that Gareth Thacker was using his outsized personality and claims of drug-induced amnesia to mask something. Even Anna the flight attendant seemed to be holding back. But hiding something didn’t automatically equate to murder. And she hadn’t found anything yet that tied one of them to that.

  She saw Jessie Hunt standing at the far end of the hangar, waving at her. She waved back and headed over. As she did, she straightened her back and adopted her most confident stride. The last thing she needed was for the legendary, intimidating profiler to question whether she was up to this task.

  It was strange to think that Hunt was only two years older than her. The woman seemed so much more mature and accomplished, likely because she was. And now, after weeks of trying to prove her mettle to the profiler from afar and worrying that she was failing miserably, she was finally getting the chance to work with her and show her that she deserved to be here, on the HSS team, in her company.

  Hunt had a look of grim determination her face. Susannah didn’t know her well enough to determine if that meant she’d made some kind of breakthrough in her interviews or that she’d come up empty too. Either way, she was about to find out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hannah Dorsey stood at the bank of elevators in the lobby, waiting to see which one would take her to her moment of reckoning.

  Once one arrived and she stepped inside, it would take her up to the office of Dr. Janice Lemmon, the highly regarded psychiatrist and former criminal profiling consultant who happened to be her therapist. When their 2 p.m. session started, Hannah intended to finally tell Lemmon what she’d originally planned to say two weeks ago and then again last week, but never did: that she was a cold-blooded murderer, and worse, that she liked it.

  It happened a little over a month ago, at an isolated log cabin in the picturesque mountain town of Wildpines. She, Jessie, and Ryan had gone there to evade the elderly serial killer called the Night Hunter. Somehow, he still found them and almost killed them all before they managed to outwit him.

  But once he was incapacitated, sitting on the floor in handcuffs, still taunting them, she shot him, shutting him up forever. At the time she’d told herself that she had no choice, that as long as he was still alive, the man would find a way to come after them or get someone to do it on his behalf. That might have been true. But looking back now, that wasn’t why she had done it.

  She had killed him because she could, because she was curious to learn how it would make her feel, and because she was nearly certain that she wouldn’t face consequences for gunning down a man who had murdered hundreds of people over the years.

  She was right on that last point. Jessie, Ryan, and an older woman who’d been held hostage by the Night Hunter all covered for her that night, letting the investigating cops believe that she’d acted in self-defense. And she’d satisfied her curiosity too. It turned out that killing another human being, or at least this one, gave her a thrill that she’d never felt before.

  For as long as she could remember, even before her adoptive parents were slaughtered by her birth father—the one she shared with Jessie—she’d been trying to feel emotions like other people did. For her, they were all muted, as if the volume was turned way down on her entire limbic system. Only in the last year had she discovered that the most effective way to generate any kind of real feelings was to put herself in heightened, sometimes dangerous situations.

  That meant confronting a drug dealer in a public park. It meant using herself as bait to help her sister bust an underage sexual slavery ring. It also meant sneaking into the house of a convicted pedophile to find proof that he’d abducted a girl, as well as falsely accusing multiple scumbags of assaulting her. All of those acts had made her heart beat harder and her blood pump faster. But they weren’t enough.

  Killing someone seemed like the next logical step. And when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a captured serial killer, she had taken it without a second thought. And it was everything she’d hoped for. The rush of adrenaline that shot through her entire body made all her extremities tingle at the same time. A wave of euphoria cascaded from the back of her brain to the front and then back again. She’d never had sex or shot heroin but imagined this was what it must be like to do both at the same time.

  And then it started to fade. The sweet taste lingered for a few minutes, but by the time the police arrived at the cabin it had disappeared completely, replaced by much less powerful feelings: apprehension about the consequences of her actions, guilt that she’d put her sister in this position, and a mild sensation that she later identified as something close to shame.

  But they all paled in comparison to the initial ecstasy she got when she saw the life drain out of the Night Hunter. And in the weeks since, she’d found herself longing to recapture that feeling, missing it like a phantom limb.

  She knew that wanting to get back to that place inside her was wrong, that the desire could send her down a horrible road. Killing a man who’d threatened her family’s lives was one thing. After all, Jessie had killed people. Ryan had killed people. But neither had done it unless the act saved their own life or someone else’s in that moment.

  Hannah was less interested in that distinction and it scared her. Even before she first began to comprehend the darkness in her, she already had a lot of the “potential threat to society” boxes checked on her personality profile. For example, Xander Thurman, the father she shared with Jessie, had been a serial killer. In addition, Thurman’s protégé, Bolton Crutchfield, had kidnapped her in the hopes of molding her into a murderer too. She seemed almost destined to follow a similar path.

  If she wanted to avoid ending up like her father, Crutchfield, or the other killers that her sister tracked down for a living, she needed help. And according to Jessie, no one was better equipped to do that than Janice Lemmon, the therapist she insisted had helped her through her own many traumas. So, as Hannah had so often in recent weeks, she again stood in the lobby of the doctor’s office building, waiting for that elevator to take her up to face her demons and, hopefully, find salvation.

  She stared at herself in the reflection of the gleaming elevator doors. No one would guess that the person looking back at her had the potential for such darkness. Any passerby would merely see a pretty girl who looked a half decade older than her seventeen years.

  She was almost as tall as her sister and had the same green eyes, but she was skinnier and had blonde hair instead of brown. She knew that she made heads turn when she walked, though she hadn’t really used that asset for anything other than trapping predators.

  Maybe I should work on that bad habit once I resolve all the “I enjoyed killing someone” issues.

  The elevators doors she’d been staring at opened. It was empty. A man in a business suit brushed past her, stepped inside, and pushed a button. She wanted to join him but found that her feet wouldn’t move. The doors started to close. The man in the suit put his hand out to stop it and looked at her, perplexed.

  “Are you getting in?” he asked.

  Was she? If she did, in less than five minutes, she could be unloading the burden she’d been carrying all these weeks. Then it would be someone else’s problem to solve. She knew that Jessie desperately wanted her to come clean and she feared that if she waited much longer, her sister might tell Lemmon herself. She knew getting in the elevator was the healthy, smart thing to do. And yet her feet still wouldn’t move.

  “No,” she said to the man, “you go ahead.”

  He shrugged and removed his hand. The doors closed. Hannah turned around, walked back outside, and looked at her surroundings. Dr. Lemmon’s office was in a downtown building, just down the block from a park that overlooked the city. She headed that way.

  She wanted to go home but knew that Ryan was there, recuperating from his ankle thing, and that he’d wonder why she was back so early. She wasn’t ready to answer that question. She didn’t feel like telling him that she worried that if she told Dr. Lemmon the truth, the woman might call the cops on her then and there, doctor-patient confidentiality be damned. Jessie had assured her that wouldn’t happen but as Hannah had learned the hard way, Jessie wasn’t infallible.

  When she got to the park, she walked to an unoccupied bench under a large tree. The park was filled with homeless people. One of them, a man who looked sixty but could have easily been forty, was sitting at the base of the tree, using the trunk as a backrest. He opened his eyes lazily as she approached.

  Some small part of her hoped that he’d say something, or try to approach her, so that she could get into a confrontation. The possibility of danger would at least invigorate her, and replace the humiliation she felt at having chickened out once again. But apparently not viewing her as a threat, the man closed his eyes again.

  With the moment gone, she chastised herself silently, remembering that it was the very desire to seek out conflict in order to feel alive that had her in this predicament in the first place. Even while trying to get a handle on her freakiness, she couldn’t help being a freak. The last thing she needed was to give Dr. Janice Lemmon a front row seat to her sickness.

 

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