The Perfect Deceit (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Fourteen) Read online

  It took several more excruciating minutes for her to die, and when death did finally come, it was a relief.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jessie Hunt was freaking out.

  While her boyfriend, Detective Ryan Hernandez, called for backup from inside the house, she’d hopped in the car and started searching the neighborhood. Neither had any idea how long ago Hannah had snuck out the window or how far she might have gotten. But with a serial killer on the loose, one that Jessie had just learned minutes earlier was delighting in playing games with her, she knew this wasn’t the time for her little sister to decide to run away.

  She looked at the dashboard clock again. It read 10:48 p.m. She’d been driving around for nearly a half hour when she came across a neighbor, a retired history professor named Delia Morris who lived a few doors down, walking her white poodle, Grant (named after the president), and waving at her.

  “Is everything okay, dear?” the older woman asked, her shock of unruly white hair getting tossed about by the late-night January winds. “This is the fifth time I’ve seen you drive down the street.”

  “Have you seen my sister, Hannah, out this evening?” Jessie asked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

  The woman searched her memory, which was notorious for its gaps.

  “Now that you mention it, I think I may have. I thought it was last night but perhaps it was this evening. I saw her help an older gentleman into the back of a car and then drive off. He looked to be unwell.”

  Jessie felt a cold, invisible fist tighten around her spine.

  “Could you describe the man or the car?” she asked as if everything was completely normal. She didn’t want to upset Delia and have any useful memories disappear.

  “I’m afraid not, dear. It was too far away to see much other than your sweet sister helping an elderly man—older than me I’d say—into the car. It might have been black or blue and it was on the smaller side but that’s I can seem to recall. My mind isn’t what it used to be. Is that at all helpful?”

  “Very helpful, Delia; thanks so much,” Jessie said, praying the woman was mistaken. She texted the description to Ryan.

  The serial killer who had her heart racing—the Night Hunter—was elderly and liked to use his seeming frailty to bait people into underestimating him before he made his move. If he’d done that with Hannah, there was no telling where they might be now.

  It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago, Jessie’s primary concern had been trying to get Hannah to take responsibility for dangerous, risk-taking behavior over the last few months, behavior that Jessie had only discovered the extent of today.

  But in a sudden tidal wave of horribles, she’d learned several things in just a few minutes. First, that the Night Hunter, a legendary serial killer who’d tussled with her mentor decades ago but had subsequently gone silent for twenty years, was back in business here in Los Angeles.

  Next, she had to process that while investigating the case with Ryan, the sweet, baby-faced Detective Alan Trembley had been ambushed and murdered by the killer. Finally, she’d figured out that in a twisted game, the Night Hunter had been murdering people with her own initials, “J.H.,” as a way to communicate with her.

  It was that last realization, along with police researcher Jamil Winslow’s discovery that the Night Hunter had been staking out her home, that made her rush to Hannah’s room to warn her of the new danger in their lives. But instead of finding a brooding teenager, she’d discovered an open window and a missing sister.

  Jessie had no idea how long Hannah had been gone or how long ago she’d gotten in the old man’s car. She found it hard to believe that her sister, even feeling petulant and wronged, would take such a risk. It was unfathomable that a girl who’d been kidnapped, tortured and nearly killed, all in the last year, would have willingly gotten into a vehicle with a stranger, no matter how harmless he seemed.

  Her phone rang. It was Ryan. She pulled over and picked up, terrified at what news he might have.

  “What is it?” she asked without preamble.

  He didn’t waste any time either.

  “Her phone is turned off,” he said crisply. “She must have done it herself because the last signal was from inside the house. Jamil is at the station now, logging any vehicles in a three-mile radius from the last hour that match the description of a dark-colored vehicle, sedan or smaller with a female driver. The system is also searching facial recognition for a match to her. What about you?”

  “I’ve been doing an expanding grid search,” Jessie told him. “I’m at the outer limit of the neighborhood now, incorporating major cross streets, but so far, nothing.”

  Ryan was quiet for a moment and she feared what he might say next.

  “Captain Decker has closed off all roads in the same three-mile radius that Jamil is searching,” he finally said. “Roadblocks are being established. Patrols are already out there, circling the restricted zone, but—.”

  “But by now, any car she was in would be far outside that zone,” Jessie said, finishing his thought.

  “Right,” Ryan replied, making no attempt to sugar-coat the facts.

  They were both silent for several seconds before Jessie regrouped enough to assess the situation.

  “So to be clear,” she said, as much to herself as to Ryan, “my sister is missing after likely having run away. She was seen getting into a vehicle with an old man and driving off. And we know that a serial killer who happens to be an old man has been murdering people with my initials for months and stalking our family for days. Does that sound about right?”

  Before he could reply, her phone buzzed, indicating that she had another call. It was from a number she didn’t recognize.

  “I’ll call you back,” she told Ryan, switching over before he could answer.

  *

  Thirty-three minutes earlier, Hannah was tearing down Olympic Boulevard, dodging cars and intermittently looking in the backseat. The old guy seemed legitimately in distress but after everything she’d been through, part of her feared it was ruse and that he might jump up and attack her at any moment.

  But every time she checked him, he looked worse than the last time. She pulled into the emergency room driveway of Olympia Medical Center, just a couple of miles west of where she’d found an old man, only a block from her house, clutching his chest and gasping for air.

  Swerving past an ambulance, she parked in a loading spot and hopped out. There was no one outside so she ran in through the main entrance, where a security guard sat by the door. A sad collection of people dotted the waiting area, most with their heads slumped in pain or exhaustion.

  Finally, her eyes fell on a receiving window. A youngish guy with a bloody dish towel wrapped around his thumb was talking to a bored-looking woman wearing bifocals on a chain. She didn’t even look up.

  “There’s a guy having a heart attack outside!” Hannah shouted to her and anyone else who would listen. “He needs help.”

  The bifocaled woman glanced up at her, unimpressed.

  “What makes you think it’s a heart attack?” she asked.

  Hannah fought the urge to cuss the woman out and answered the question as directly as possible, trying her best to reign in the sarcasm.

  “I found him lying on the street beside his car. He was having trouble breathing, clutching his chest and drooling. He was sweating and his lips were bluish. Also, he said he thought he was having a heart attack. I drove him here in his car. He’s lying in the back seat. He’s got to be at least seventy. Do you think you could send someone out there to, you know, help him?”

  The woman, suddenly alert, hit a button on her desk and within twenty seconds two younger men shot out of a pair of swinging doors with a stretcher. One of them made eye contact with Hannah.

  “Follow me,” she said, leading them out to the car, where the old man was lying on his back. As they moved him from the back seat to the stretcher, one of the guys began peppering the man with quest
ions. But his eyes were clenched shut and he shook his head slightly, as if the idea of speaking was too much for him. The guy turned his questions on her: “When did you find him? How long had he been there? What did he say? Had he vomited? Did he seem coherent? What was his name?”

  She joined them as they went back through the swinging doors, doing her best to answer him, though she could only offer responses to about every other question: I found him lying in the street. He said he thought he was having a heart attack. I don’t know his name.

  Once they had the man in a slot in the ER, two nurses came in as well. One pulled a curtain across while the other started an IV. One of the stretcher guys pulled out what looked like an EKG machine, cut open the man’s shirt and started attaching electrodes to his chest. A doctor joined them in the increasingly crowded space. One of the nurses looked at Hannah and she knew what the woman was thinking.

  “Why don’t I step out…?” she started to offer, backing away.

  As she did, she realized the old man was clutching her hand tightly. She had no idea how long that had been going on. She didn’t even remember him grabbing it.

  “No. Stay,” he muttered through gritted teeth, then surprised her with a question. “Why were you in the street?”

  The medical personnel exchanged worried glances.

  “She’s going to leave the room for a few minutes, sir,” the nurse said, trying to help extricate Hannah.

  “No,” he groaned.

  “If it keeps him calm, let her stay a bit longer,” the doctor said. “We have another minute before we’re fully up and running here. Maybe she can get some more information from the gentleman.”

  He nodded at Hannah, silently telling her to try. She gulped, trying to remember what the stretcher guy had asked her earlier.

  “When did you first start feeling bad, sir?” she asked softly.

  The doctor smiled, seeming to approve of the question. But the old guy didn’t agree.

  “Why were you in the street so late?” he demanded, fixated on getting his own answers.

  Hannah debated how to respond. She didn’t owe this old guy anything. She could give him any answer and he’d never know the difference. But a tiny bit of her wondered if telling him a lie might make things worse and if being honest could somehow help him, reduce his stress, and get him to start answering some questions of her own.

  “I was thinking of running away,” she finally said, surprising herself. “I was out walking, debating where to go.”

  He nodded, his eyes still closed. Electrodes were being attached to his body at lightning speed. Liquid was dripping from the IV bag. One of the nurses drew blood from his non-IV arm. He swallowed hard, trying to find his breath. The other nurse slipped an oxygen mask over his face.

  “But why?” he asked hoarsely through the mask.

  “It’s my sister,” Hannah replied quietly. “She’s my guardian. I know she loves me, but sometimes she’s just too much. She’s incredibly overprotective.”

  The old man opened his eyes. They were a deep green, just like her own. His grip softened slightly.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve had some stuff happen,” Hannah admitted, shrugging. “Parents murdered; I was kidnapped; nearly stabbed to death. I guess she’s a little on edge after all that.”

  The room, which had been a volley of cross-cutting conversations among the medical professionals, went briefly silent. Several people stared at her with wide eyes. To their credit the pause lasted only a couple of seconds and the unintelligible terminology quickly resumed. The man rasped under his breath. It took Hannah a second to realize he was chuckling.

  “I’m sorry you went through that,” he said slowly, gasping for breath. It was hard to hear him with the mask on and so much noise all around them. “It sounds like you got a raw deal. And I’ll bet your sister is a real handful. But she doesn’t sound like the worst ever. It’s your life so you should do what you want. But maybe give her a call if you get a second. Even a frustrating family is better than no family at all.”

  His grip on her fingers got even looser, which Hannah took as a sign that he might finally be relaxing a bit. But then he let go completely and his hand fell to his side, limp. Suddenly multiple monitor warnings began going off simultaneously. She looked up and saw that the man’s face had gone slack. He seemed to have lost consciousness.

  “Please step out, ma’am,” one of the nurses said calmly, though there was a definite edge underneath.

  Hannah did exactly that, taking one last look back at the man. His eyes were closed again but not tightly. His teeth were no longer gritted. In fact, his mouth was open. The doctor was reaching for a pair of defibrillating paddles. The last thing she saw before pulling the curtain closed was the man’s hand slide off the gurney and dangle listlessly in the air.

  She walked out to the waiting area. For several seconds, she stared at her reflection in the ER waiting room window. Her sandy blonde hair dangled lifelessly just past her shoulders. She thought that she looked skinnier and weaker than usual. There was really no reason for her to stick around but she sat down anyway. About ten minutes later one of the nurses came out and told her what she already knew.

  “I’m afraid he passed away.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “Here are his keys,” she said, pulling them out of her pocket and handing them over. “I don’t want his car to get towed.”

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” The nurse asked, taking them. “That was a lot back there.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Hannah assured her. “I’ve been through worse. I didn’t even know his name.”

  “We found his wallet. His name was Edward Wexler. He was 80 years old.”

  “The name doesn’t mean anything to me,” Hannah told her.

  “Maybe not,” the nurse replied. “But it seemed like you meant something to him. Because of you, he died holding someone’s hand, knowing people were trying to help him, instead of alone on the side of a road. I think talking to you at the end—I think it was a blessing for him. He was lucky to have you there.”

  “Thanks,” Hannah said, not sure if any of that was true.

  “Do you want me to call someone for you, sweetie?” the nurse asked, careful not to push.

  “No thank you,” Hannah said.

  The nurse nodded and stood up. Hannah wondered if she would make a call of her own the second she was out of sight.

  “I have to get back in there,” she said. “But you take care.”

  Hannah nodded. She sat there for a bit, unmoving. No security guard approached her. No uniformed officer charged in. If the nurse had reported her, someone would have been here by now.

  She was still free to run away. She could walk out the emergency room doors now. The nearest metro station was close by. In half an hour she could be anywhere in the city. She’d already checked online and knew there was bus leaving for Phoenix in two hours. Another headed to Las Vegas would pull out in three.

  Finally, she stood up and walked over to the twenty-something guy with the towel around his thumb. He’d been waiting around for over thirty minutes and the thing was sopping wet. It occurred to Hannah that maybe he should have claimed he was having a heart attack.

  Despite his injury, he’d been giving her sideways glances that suggested his physical pain wasn’t overwhelming whatever other natural feelings were coursing through his system. She batted her eyes sweetly and, in a voice she knew would have the desired effect, asked a question.

  “Could I borrow your phone?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  They barely spoke on the ride home.

  Hannah hopped out the second the car pulled into the garage and was inside the house before Jessie had even opened her own door. Rather than storm in after her, she lowered the garage door and stayed in the car, trying to let the stew of anger, anxiety, and relief settle a little.

  Whether Hannah realized it or not, this was a make-or-break moment. Things simply couldn’t continu
e this way. Even if there wasn’t a serial killer out there who seemed to have his sights set on them, her sister’s behavior would be dangerous.

  Jessie shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around this latest escalation in the ongoing challenges with Hannah. As she just learned earlier today, last summer her sister had confronted a drug dealer, seemingly just for kicks. Then, barely a month ago, she had broken into the home of a violent pedophile to entrap him for a crime it turned out he hadn’t committed. Last fall, she’d used herself as bait to break up a sexual slavery ring. Who knows what else she’d done that Jessie would never know about?

  As she got out of the car and walked into the house, she wondered if this was perhaps some warped, unhealthy way of Hannah following in her own footsteps. Jessie was a criminal profiler after all. And each of these incidents seemed to involve pursuing a criminal who was taking advantage of the vulnerable. There was probably some truth to the theory.

  But as she turned on the security system and wandered down the darkened hallway, Jessie knew that wasn’t the only explanation. Hannah seemed to be willfully putting herself at risk, taking wild chances that would invariably end badly, all just for the thrill of it. It was like she was some sort of danger junkie who needed to constantly up the ante to get that high.

  It wasn’t a shock that the girl was going through stuff. In the last year alone she’d been through more horrors than most adults could pack into multiple lifetimes. Her adoptive parents had been murdered by her—and Jessie’s— own father, a serial killer who wanted to either reunite his family or destroy it. She’d been abducted by another murderer who tried to convince her that killing people was her birthright. Her big sister’s ex-husband went on a rampage that ended with one profiler dead, Ryan stabbed in the chest, and both sisters nearly killed as well. It would actually be weird if she was well-adjusted.