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

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Hannah felt guilty.

Normally she would have accepted Jessie’s call, but under the circumstances, she felt sure her sister would understand. This was more important.

She and Kat were sitting on the couch in her apartment, watching the video footage that Jenny the nurse had recorded of Hannah’s hospital room conversation with Ash Pierce. Jenny had surreptitiously handed her a thumb drive with the recording as she left the floor’s secure unit.

The video was grainy, and the audio was a little scratchy, but the entirety of their chat had been captured. When it ended, Hannah turned to Kat, who looked pale.

“What do you think?” she asked.

Kat shook her head.

“I think that I wasn’t prepared for this,” she conceded. “I went to that hospital room so many times when she was in a coma that I guess I got used to seeing her like that. But the sight of her now, sitting up and alert, is really disconcerting. Some part of me hoped that maybe she’d lost some mental acuity because of what happened. But she seems as sharp as before.”

“I agree,” Hannah said, noting that Kat hadn’t addressed the larger issue, “but I mean, what did you think about her credibility? Do you think there’s any chance that she’s telling the truth, that she really did lose all memory of her time as a hitwoman for hire?”

Kat slumped back on the couch.

”I don”t,” she said, ”but I”m not sure how much my opinion matters. This woman tricked me, as you well know. She gave a false identity and claimed to be an abused woman trying to hide from her husband, all as a ruse to get me to an isolated location so she could torture and kill me. If such a thing exists, you could probably show me a brain scan proving that she lost her memory, and I still wouldn”t believe it. The real question is, did you believe her? You were in that room, talking to her face to face. You saw her micro-expressions and heard the variance in her voice in real time. Did you buy her story?”

Hannah slumped back on the couch as well. She knew this question would be coming, and she was no more confident in her answer now than before.

“I don’t need to remind you that she snowed me too with the ‘abused wife’ persona, or that she wanted to torture and kill me too. Or that I had to hide in safe houses when she was hunting for me after she escaped from prison. I’m as biased as you are. So my initial impression is that she’s full of it…”

“I think I hear a ‘but’ in there,” Kat noted.

“But,” Hannah said sheepishly. “I don’t know if my conclusion is based on any actual evidence. I mean, there were a couple of moments that gave me pause.”

“Like what,” Kat wondered.

Hannah sighed as she tried to relive the memory. “One was when she mentioned getting stabbed in the neck when she was ‘supposedly’ trying to kill some young woman. I swear I thought I saw a flinch of recognition, like she knew I was the young woman she was referencing.”

“And the other?” Kat asked.

“When I asked what job she would have that prepared her for murdering innocent people, she seemed slightly taken aback and coughed a little. I couldn’t tell if she was stalling to come up with a convincing answer or if she was sincere in her confusion and stunned that I was so confrontational with her. But when I watch and listen to those parts of the exchanges on the video now, I’m not sure if it was just my imagination.”

“The footage and the audio are just too compromised to determine anything like that,” Kat pointed out. “What does your gut tell you?”

Hannah took a moment to really think about that question.

”My gut tells me that she”s lying,” she finally answered. ”I think she knew who I was. And I still think that this is all an elaborate con game to either gain sympathy before a jury or get her security detail to lower their guard. But am I a hundred percent sure? No. She never made a false move or said a false word. She never gave any clear indication that she knew that I was testing her, or even that she knew who I was. She never misstepped. And if she is faking this, that’s the scariest part.”

“Why do you say that?” Kat asked.

“Because if she’s operating at this level right now, only weeks out of waking from a coma and days after having major neck surgery, what will she be like when she’s back at full strength?”

Kat ran her fingers through her dirty blonde hair, clearly troubled by the same issue.

“Maybe we could have Jessie talk to her,” she suggested. “She’s a professional criminal profiler.”

“Maybe,” Hannah replied, “but she’s only had minimal interaction with Pierce. She hasn’t seen her in action like we have. She hasn’t seen her weave an entire false narrative about her life or coldly prepare to kill someone. I feel like we’re better able to catch her in a mistake than Jessie is.”

“What then?” Kat wondered, her tone irritable.

Suddenly, an idea occurred to Hannah.

“There’s no question that Jessie is an amazing profiler,” she said, “but I can think of someone else who has experience with that job, someone who used to work with the LAPD and the FBI, profiling killers, and then left that job to spend the last decade probing people’s minds for more altruistic reasons.”

“You’re talking about Dr. Lemmon?” Kat assumed.

“I am,” Hannah confirmed. “Think about it. She doesn’t have any of the baggage that you or I, or even Jessie does. She’s had decades of experience studying killers, as well as working with everyday people dealing with mental and emotional challenges, and she’s an expert at telling the difference between the two. If she asked to interview Pierce, the LAPD would surely welcome her evaluation.”

“But would Pierce?” Kat asked.

“That’s the best part,” Hannah said, warming to her own idea. “If she’s legit, then she should welcome the opportunity to prove it to someone as respected as Dr. Janice Lemmon. And if she’s lying, she has two options. She could refuse to talk with Lemmon for fear the doctor would uncover her deception, which would be a bad look. Or she’d view it as an opportunity to outmaneuver someone with unparalleled authority with law enforcement. If Lemmon gave her the ‘all clear,’ it would do wonders for her credibility. Whether she’s telling the truth or not, Ash Pierce should want to leap at this chance.”

As Hannah made the case, she saw something happen that had been incredibly rare in the last few days. She saw Kat break into a smile. If for no other reason than maintaining the hopeful grin on Kat Gentry’s face, Hannah decided that this had to happen, and soon.