The Perfect Show (A Jessie Hunt Psychological Suspense Thriller—Book Thirty-Three)

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Hank Costabile was grinding his teeth again.

He tended to forget that he was doing it until the headache kicked in, which was happening now. He knew he should get a mouthguard to help with the issue, but that was the least of his concerns at the moment. He was more focused on ending Jessie Hunt.

There was something cathartic about knowing that he didn”t have to bide his time any longer. Now that he”d made the decision to follow through on his plan for payback, all the little things that had been bothering him the last month seemed too small to worry about. Then again, he was still grinding those teeth, so maybe he wasn”t as relaxed as he thought he was.

He suspected that the remaining tension he felt was more about the job he had to do than the indignities he’d suffered up to this point. And there had been a lot of the latter.

It wasn’t that long ago that he, formerly a decorated LAPD sergeant, had been incarcerated at the California State Prison in Lancaster, where he’d spent eighteen months of a twenty-year sentence. He’d been convicted on charges that included trying to impede an investigation into his former boss, who had been paying an underage porn actress for sex, as well as attempting to have Jessie Hunt, the profiler investigating that porn actress’s murder, killed.

While the allegations may have been “officially” accurate, he still seethed at how he had paid the price for protecting that thin blue line. It was only a technicality involving inadmissible evidence at his trial that led to him being freed on the day before Thanksgiving.

Of course, ”freed” was a relative term. In his case, it meant that he was being surveilled day and night by plainclothes officers assigned to the job by none other that LAPD chief Roy Decker. That wasn’t a surprise to Hank.

After all, Decker was once the captain at Central Station, where HSS was based, and according to people in the know, the old man considered Jessie Hunt the daughter he never had. As a result, he was using precious department resources to protect her from any potential threat from Hank. And he was smart to do so.

Hank had been nursing his hatred for Hunt ever since his conviction. It fully flowered while he was in prison, where he had little to do other than pump iron, avoid getting shivved, and fantasize about how he would kill her. And now that he was out, that hatred had overflowed the pot, consuming almost all of his waking thoughts.

He’d had to watch her celebrity status grow while he was behind bars. The entire city viewed her as a guardian angel of sorts, the one who could keep Los Angeles safe where others failed. It was disgusting. The truth was that Jessie Hunt was a nosy, self-righteous bitch who needed to be put down. And he was just the man for the job.

He knew that there were people in the police department and city government at large who agreed with him. Some had gotten word to him through intermediaries. Others told him directly.

But up until very recently none of them were willing to do anything about it. No one would actively help him out of fear of being discovered by Decker.…until now. One of his old confidential informants, an ex-con as bald and thick-bodied as Hank, had offered his assistance. In addition, he’d learned from a former colleague in Valley Division named Trevor Tinsley, who frequented the same bar as him, that a dispatch sergeant at Central Station resented how many resources at the station were devoted to HSS priorities.

According to Tinsley, who was now Deputy Chief of Operations, that dispatch sergeant, whose name was Crowley, was able to track Hunt’s whereabouts when she was working a case. He’d agreed to keep Hank updated on her movements so that he could assess when she was most vulnerable and make his move.

But even if Hank got to Hunt at the perfect moment, taking her out would be a challenge. He’d learned the hard way not to underestimate her. She was smart. She knew how to use a gun. She could fight. And even though he was aware that she’d recently had brain surgery, she still looked to be in good shape.

Of course, so was Hank. He studied himself in the bathroom mirror of his crappy studio apartment. He admired his gleaming bald head, his thick, muscled biceps and forearms. He was proud of his massive chest, which seemed to jut forward independent of the rest of his shredded body.

But he refused to get too cocky. After all, Jessie Hunt wasn’t alone. She worked her cases with her husband, Captain Ryan Hernandez, who was no pushover. He was as physically formidable as Hank, despite the fact that Hernandez hadn’t spent every afternoon for the last year and a half in a prison yard lifting weights.

No, Hank would need to show the proper respect to these people, even if he despised them. If he wanted to get his vengeance, he needed to stay vigilant. Only then would he get the opportunity to grab Jessie Hunt and rip her head right off her shoulders. He imagined himself bathing in the spray of blood as it shot out of her neck like an open fire hydrant. His mouth watered at the thought.

He ordered himself to calm down. The time for that would come. But until then, he needed to keep cool. He tried to focus on his escape route for after the deed was done. Hank had no intention of returning to prison and he’d prepared an elaborate strategy to get out of town and to a country where he couldn’t be extradited.

The biggest obstacle to that, and to getting close to Hunt, was these damn cops that Chief Decker had assigned to keep tabs on him. When he got the word from the Central Station dispatch sergeant, he had to be ready to shake his tail.

But as with everything else, he had a plan for that too. Hank rubbed his bald head, excited for what was coming, excited to finally deliver justice long delayed.