The Perfect Veneer Read online

  The space was larger than most other bathrooms, with a marble vanity that stretched fifteen feet across, two farmhouse-style sinks, and separate his and hers toilet stalls and closets. No one was visible in those darkened areas, though he noted that there was a dim light coming from the back of Mr. Booth’s closet.

  He got to his feet and was just moving in that direction when he heard footsteps behind him and swung around, ready to fire. Staring him in the face was Rufus, aka “Unit One,” in the four-person security team. The younger man with the dark buzzcut looked stunned to have a weapon pointed in his face and seemed about to gasp when Grover held the index finger of his free hand to his lips to indicate silence, then pointed at the closet.

  He mouthed the words “cover me.” Rufus nodded and removed his own weapon. Grover indicated what he planned to do next. Again, Rufus nodded. Lying to himself that it wouldn’t hurt, Grover knelt at the edge of the closet, took a step, and did a somersault into the closet, popping up onto his knees with gun pointed in the direction of the light.

  It took him a second to process what he saw. The back wall of the closet, which had several long coats draped on hangers, appeared to actually be a door, leading to another, hidden room. It was slightly ajar. That was where the light, and the ear-splitting noise, was coming from.

  Grover stood up and dashed over. There was just enough room to get through the opening. Once he’d passed through, he realized he was in a high-tech panic room, one that Mr. Booth had never informed him of. But that fact became secondary almost immediately.

  More pressing was the fact that his employer, billionaire Lowden Booth was lying on the floor with a giant indentation in his forehead where it had clearly slammed into the corner of the nearby safe on the floor. The safe was bloody. His head was bloody. The cement floor around his head was quickly pooling with blood from the gaping wound. And Booth’s wide-open eyes were proof that he was beyond help.

  Grover turned his attention to Booth’s young wife, Devon, who was seated, slumped on the floor beside him, her head resting against the wall of the room. She was either dead or unconscious. Her hands were tied behind her back.

  “Jesus,” muttered Rufus from behind him.

  Grover walked over to the control panel, studied it for a second, and then pushed one of the buttons. The alarm went quiet.

  “Control room,” he said into his com, “we have a home invasion. The intruder or intruders may still be on the property. Make an announcement alerting all staff to lock themselves in secure rooms. Monitor all CCTV cameras for suspicious movement. They can’t have gotten far. Unit two, have your weapon ready. The intruders have violently attacked the Principal. Assume they’re armed and dangerous. Unit one will be coming to assist.”

  He was about to give Rufus further instructions when a soft moan escaped Devon Booth’s lips. He felt like an idiot for not having immediately checked her status. He was getting sloppy in his old age.

  “And control room, call LAPD. Use the private emergency number we were given. Let them know who’s calling and alert them that we need immediate assistance. Tell them that we have an assault victim with a head injury and another victim who is deceased. Do this now.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You do realize that you are the only patient I ever allow to go over time.”

  Jessie Hunt couldn’t help but smile when she heard the words.

  Dr. Lemmon had said them with what was clearly intended to sound like exasperation but, despite her best intentions, affection had slipped in ever so slightly. Jessie looked at her therapist on the screen of her laptop and batted her eyes flirtatiously.

  “Why Doc, does this mean that I’m your most favoritest patient ever?”

  The doctor stared back at her impassively behind her thick glasses. The sixty-something psychiatrist with aggressively permed blonde hair and a reputation as the best in the business wasn’t about to let Jessie get the upper hand.

  “Nope,” Lemmon said, “I think your little sister has stolen that title from you lately. And your friend Jamil is starting to close the gap too.”

  “Speaking of Jamil, how’s he doing?” Jessie asked, dispensing with the playfulness. Even though the conference room was locked and soundproofed, she glanced around just to be safe. After all, she was having this early morning tele-therapy session with her psychiatrist at the very police station where she and Jamil Winslow worked. It wouldn’t be appropriate for him to walk by while she discussed him. But apparently even Lemmon thought the question was out of bounds.

  “You know I can’t discuss Jamil’s sessions with you, Jessie,” she said disapprovingly. “You should be ashamed of yourself for even asking. What I can say is that he’s putting in the hard work. That reminds me, there’s a group being run out of the hospital that I think could benefit all of you—Jamil, Hannah, and yourself. It’s focused on survivor’s guilt and the moderator is fantastic. Her name is Clea Masterson. She trained with me briefly, so I know her well. You’ve each been meeting with me privately, but I think that sharing your stories in a group setting could be equally productive at this point in your recoveries. They meet on Saturdays.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Jessie said noncommittally.

  “Good,” Lemmon replied. “I’ll send you the details and you can pass them along to the others. Please don’t conveniently forget, Jessie. This is about more than just you, okay?”

  “I’m afraid we’re out of time, Doctor,” Jessie said, mimicking the tone Lemmon used so often at the end of their sessions, “and I’ve got some crimes to solve.”

  “Goodbye, Jessie,” Dr. Lemmon said tolerantly.

  “Bye,” Jessie said.

  She ended the call and sat quietly at the conference table. She didn’t actually have any pressing cases to solve. Just yesterday, she and Detective Jim Nettles had managed to wrap up a situation involving an escaped mental patient who was stalking a popular TV actress. They found him hiding in her pool house with electric tape and a cattle prod. The guy had since been returned to his facility and Nettles managed to leave for his vacation to Cabo on time late last night.

  That left Jessie with no official case today and too much unfilled space in her head to contemplate what Dr. Lemmon had said. Did she really want to go to a group session centered on survivor’s guilt with Jamil and Hannah? It was hard enough to address her issues in private with her psychiatrist. But in a group setting?

  She wondered how Jamil would do. Jamil Winslow was the genius head of research for Homicide Special Section, the elite LAPD unit they both worked for, which investigated cases with high profiles or intense media scrutiny—typically involving multiple victims or serial killers.

  But he was also a twenty-four-year-old kid who was haunted by one of those recent cases. The case involved twenty-seven people who were poisoned by the deranged acolyte of a woman obsessed with Jessie. It was all part of an elaborate plan called Operation Z.

  Jamil felt responsible, as if he should have been able to uncover the clues that would have prevented those deaths. He didn’t listen when told that his brilliance was essential in ensuring that only twenty-seven people had died in Operation Z and not thousands.

  Jessie stood up and stretched after an hour of sitting at the table staring at a laptop screen. As she did, it occurred to her that Jamil might have the same reservations about sharing his guilt with a group of strangers that she did: regular people just might not get it like the two of them did. After all, the deranged acolyte who had poisoned all those people, Zoe Bradway, did it at the behest of Andrea “Andy” Robinson, whose obsession with Jessie started Operation Z in the first place.

  But that uncomfortable personal connection wasn’t where Jessie’s guilt came from. Hers stemmed from the night that Andy kidnapped her from her own wedding and locked her up in an abandoned mineshaft in Arizona. In a moment of weakness after the abduction was complete, Andy had revealed that her own uncle had raped her as a teenager in that very mineshaft.

  Later, Jessie used that knowledge, along with her awareness that Andy’s obsession with her had mutated into something romantic, to manipulate and confuse the woman when trying to escape. Just before her death, Andy had called her on it. The accusation had rung in Jessie’s head ever since. She had used someone’s childhood sexual trauma to get the upper hand on her. Yes, the person was unhinged and planned to kill her, but still.

  And then there was Hannah. Her younger, half-sister, Hannah Dorsey, had been there the night Jessie tried to escape. Hannah, along with Jessie’s best friend, Kat Gentry, and retired Detective Callum Reid, had rescued Jessie from the crumbling mineshaft where Andy had taken her to either be her forever plaything or to die.

  Unfortunately, when they fled the collapsing mine, Andy wasn’t the only one who died inside. Callum Reid had returned inside the mine to get a bag with a burner phone essential to stopping Operation Z. He was able to retrieve it but got trapped on the wrong side of a giant chasm. Hannah, just eighteen years old and already having seen far too much death in her life, watched as the ground crumbled underneath Callum and he disappeared from sight.

  She had been struggling with the guilt of knowing that his choice to help them save Jessie left his two young children fatherless. Even Jessie’s decision to set up college scholarships for them didn’t completely assuage the pain she felt when she thought of them growing up without him. Would discussing that pain with strangers in a windowless hospital meeting room ease that guilt?

  Jessie closed the laptop and put it in her backpack as she pondered the other factor that lingered over everything. No amount of group therapy would matter if Hannah was dead.

  The thought was only mildly hyperbolic. After all, it was just two weeks ago that Jessie received a phone call from Zoe
Bradway, who was currently incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, saying that Operation Z was still very much active.

  According to Zoe, only the first part of the operation—the attempt to murder thousands of Angelenos by poisoning the popcorn butter flavoring at a major movie theater complex—had bene thwarted. The second part—torturing and killing the people closest to Jessie to make her suffer—was still a go. Zoe reminded her who was at risk: Hannah, Kat, and Jessie’s husband and boss, Captain Ryan Hernandez.

  Ever since then, they’d been on high alert. At Jessie’s insistence, Ryan had passed the threat along to their former captain at Central Station and the current Los Angeles Chief of Police, Roy Decker, who had assigned protective units for Ryan, Hannah, and Kat.

  Initially, that wasn’t overly complicated. Ryan spent most of his time at their workplace—downtown’s Central Station, surrounded by other officers. Having a squad car escort him and Jessie home and remain there overnight wasn’t a huge burden.

  And since Hannah was spending the summer interning with Kat at her private detective agency, only one squad car was required to keep tabs on their whereabouts most of the time too. At the end of the day, a second car would arrive to follow Kat home, while the first one dropped Hannah back with Jessie and Ryan.

  But while the logistical burden wasn’t overwhelming, the stress of constantly being on guard was starting to weigh on them. Plus, after a couple of weeks of this, Jessie could sense that Ryan was getting anxious about the plan. He’d been dropping hints that he thought the outlay of financial and human resources for their personal benefit was becoming increasingly onerous.

  Just then, almost as if he was reading her mind, her husband appeared outside the conference room door, his brow furrowed in consternation. She smiled as she approached the door and unlocked it. Even looking worried, Ryan Hernandez was impossibly handsome.

  His shirt was tucked in, casually highlighting his muscular frame. He ran a hand nervously through his short dark hair and offered her a half-smile that couldn’t hide his concern or his adorable dimples. His big, brown eyes, always filled with warmth and compassion, were currently clouded with uneasy thoughts.

  “Your session with Dr. Lemmon is over, I gather?” he asked.

  “Just finished,” she said. “What’s up? You look troubled.”

  “More frustrated than troubled,” he replied, holding out the file he’d been gripping in his left hand. “The Marina del Rey Sheriff’s Station issued their final report on the Woody Garnett killing yesterday while you and Nettles were working that stalker case. So I asked Karen Bray and Susannah Valentine to review their findings for any discrepancies.”

  “And?” Jessie asked, though she could already tell from his tone what the answer would be.

  “Nothing,” he said, unable to hide his skepticism.

  She tended to share the feeling. Woody Garnett was a recent murder victim who had been stabbed in the stomach on his own boat in the marina two weeks ago. Alone, that wasn’t especially interesting. But a few months back, Garnett was also nearly the victim of a serial killer, a young woman taking vengeance on cheating spouses. She had stabbed him in the stomach in a Marina del Rey hotel room and he would have died if Jessie and Ryan hadn’t arrived to stop her and save him. The nature and location of his death seemed awfully coincidental.

  “Really?” she said, incredulously.

  “They couldn’t find any connection to the prior case. Harper Grey, who stabbed him the first time, was locked up at the time of his murder. His ex-wife, who had the strongest motive to try to kill him this time around, was out of town. His ex-girlfriend—the one he left his wife for—had an alibi. No one else seemed to give a damn about him. There’s no motive. There’s no evidence to tie anyone to the scene. Nothing to go on at all. You’re welcome to review the file, but Karen and Susannah went over it pretty thoroughly and said the sheriff’s people did a solid job. No corner cutting. We may just have a strange twist of fate here.”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, sensing an opening as she gently pushed the file back toward him, “I guess that means I can focus more energy on Zoe and this whole Operation Z thing.”

  Ryan sighed heavily and she knew what was coming. But she said nothing. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She was going to make him speak the words.

  “About that,” he said, motioning for her to take a seat at the conference table as he closed the door, “I’ve been doing some thinking. I know what Zoe told you. But I just don’t see how she could make this threat a reality. Think about it. She spent months strategizing that attack on the movie theater. Then she was arrested. Do you really think she had the time to plan this alternative Operation Z? Or the resources? Andy is dead. She’s not writing any checks these days. This sounds like a young woman who is frustrated that her big operation got short-circuited and is lashing out by making collect calls to you, trying to scare you into thinking the people you love are still in danger.”

  Jessie was far less certain. There was no reason that, during all those months that she planned the movie theater attack, Zoe couldn’t have also been planning something else. And who was to say that Andy Robinson didn’t provide Zoe with all manner of financial resources through back channels that they had yet to uncover?

  Still, she couldn’t deny that Ryan might have a point. This could just be an unstable, resentful woman attempting to create anxiety for her mentor’s nemesis in whatever pathetic way was still available to her. Either way, she knew they couldn’t have officers providing security for them forever. It wasn’t tenable and it wasn’t fair.

  She knew that Chief Decker had a soft spot for her and would authorize the cost of the protective units in perpetuity, but she couldn’t put him in that position. He’d only just been named permanent chief. He didn’t need the press asking questions about preferential treatment for people from his old station and their civilian loved ones, even if there was legitimate cause.

  And Ryan had only been the captain of Central Station for a few months now himself. Even though he’d never say it, every additional day that he had a protective detail was a day that he looked weak to the rank and file.

  Finally, there was Hannah and Kat. When Jessie had first learned of this threat, she’d gone straight to her best friend and said that her little sister’s safety was in her hands, regardless of how many LAPD officers were around. Kat hadn’t batted an eye. That was because Kat Gentry hadn’t always been a private detective.

  Prior to that, she was in charge of security for a psychiatric facility for mentally unwell criminals. More importantly for Jessie’s purposes, before taking that position, she’d served in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger, where she engaged in everything from special reconnaissance to close combat missions, until she was injured in an IED explosion that left her with scars both internal and external. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Jessie knew that Kat would be on high alert every second that she and Hannah were together.

  “When are you dropping the protective details?’ she asked Ryan, not even attempting to argue with him.

  “I put in the order this morning,” he said. “The unit assigned to meet Kat and Hannah has been alerted and I will tell them in person momentarily.”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, standing up and starting for the conference room door. “I would have preferred more of a heads-up, but since it’s a done deal at this point, I guess we’ll just have to trust that Zoe is full of crap.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, following close behind her, “at some point, it becomes a ‘crying wolf’ situation when she keeps making all these idle threats.”

  Jessie stopped in her tracks at the conference room door and turned to face him. She could tell from his guilty expression that he knew he’d screwed up.

  “What do you mean, ‘keeps making all these threats,’ Ryan? She only called me once. What aren’t you telling me?”

  CHAPTER TWO