CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jessie’s eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them.
It was well past 11 P.M. now, and she was really struggling. The last few hours hadn’t been as fruitful as she would have liked.
After leaving Valentina Russo’s apartment and returning to the station, she and Susannah had harbored hopes that, with the help of Jamil and Beth, they would have found some connection between these wild parties that she had helped organize and their victims, Richard and Cynthia Hartley. But they’d hit dead end after dead end.
Russo had turned over the locations and dates for all the secret parties going back nearly two years. Like she had said, they were never held at the same place twice. Amazingly, there was almost nothing in the way of ownership records. Yes, the warehouses often had owners, just like the empty houses. But they were never the same, and based on the calls that the team had made so far, the owners were totally unaware, even now, that their properties had been used for parties of any kind, much less secret, extremely wild ones. To make matters worse, the last date that Russo gave them for a party was four months ago. After that, the trail went completely cold.
Even more frustrating, Jamil’s analysis of both Hartley’s phone and vehicle GPS data showed that neither of them had ever been to any of the party locations. There was no indication, other than the masks, that they had ever been to any of them.
And yet, they were wearing the masks when they were found. It was always possible that whoever killed them brought the masks with them, that they didn’t belong to the Hartleys at all, and that trying to tie them to the parties was a waste of time.
But Jessie didn’t buy that. The parties were somehow relevant, if not to the victims, then at least to their killer. She was sure that if she could find any connection between the couple and these events, it would unlock all kinds of other possibilities. And if only the cobwebs of exhaustion clouding her brain could be swept away, she felt certain that she could find the key to that lock.
Her phone rang, interrupting her train of thought. It was Ryan. He should have been long asleep by now. That fact he was calling had her concerned, and she picked up before the end of the first ring.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, sounding surprised by the question.
“I just thought you’d have gone to bed by now,” Jessie said. “What’s up?”
“I was actually in bed, starting to drift off when I got a reminder on my phone,” he said. “You know we still have that appointment with the adoption counselor tomorrow, right?”
In fact, Jessie had completely forgotten. She tried to avoid admitting that.
“Remind me of the exact time again,” she asked.
“3 P.M., at the house,” he told her. “With the case and everything, are you still going to be able to make it or should we postpone?”
“I hope to be there,” she answered. “Can we decide for certain closer to the appointment?”
There was a long moment of silence on the other end of the line before he responded.
“I don’t think it’s a great look to cancel on the day of the appointment,” he finally said. “It doesn’t ooze super responsible. Besides, you’re the one who’s been pushing hard to go the adoption route. I would have thought you’d want to do everything to move the process along. Are you reconsidering?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I’ll be there one way or another.”
She wanted to keep the appointment, if for no other reason than to keep the alternative off the table. If adoption plans fell through, Ryan might again push to discuss having a child the old fashioned way. That was a conversation she didn’t want to repeat.
She’d already told him about her concerns about how well her battered body would hold up during a pregnancy, as well as her apprehensions about putting her profiling career on hold right when it was taking off. But lately another concern had loomed larger for her than either of those, one she hadn’t had to think about in great depth because it seemed moot now.
Though she’d never admitted it to Ryan, deep down, she held onto a fear that couldn’t be easily set aside. Both she and her sister, Hannah, fought a constant battle against a bloodlust that simmered inside them, always waiting to boil over.
Though she couldn’t prove it, Jessie had come to believe that it was a cruel gift passed down from their shared serial killer father, Xander Thurman. Both of them had, after early trauma in their childhoods, grown up in loving adoptive families. But the bloodthirstiness still lingered inside both of them. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Could it?
Lately, with therapy, treatment in a facility, and the support of loved ones, Hannah seemed to have gotten a handle on it. In fact, she seemed to be thriving. But Jessie could never forget that her sister had once killed a man in cold blood, right before her eyes. Admittedly, he was a serial killer who had been hunting them. But he had been in custody when she shot him. That couldn’t be wiped away.
Jessie had decided to pour her vengeful energy into profiling, in part to atone for her father’s crimes, but also because she was good at understanding the psyches of people who could do these things. It didn’t seem alien to her. And by bringing them to justice, her urge to violently punish those she deemed unworthy had, until recently, been curbed.
But it had come back with a fury of late, something she was painfully aware of. And if it was still in her, as it was still in Hannah, what was to prevent that desire from being passed on to a child she bore? She had no scientific proof that such a thing was a certainty or even likely. And yet here she was, living proof that the possibility might be real.
“Jessie?” Ryan said. She realized that he’d been talking, but none of his words had registered.
“Sorry, what was that again?” she asked.
“Just making sure that you’re okay. You got awful quiet.
“I’m good,” she assured him. “But it’s late. You should get some sleep.”
“I’d ask you how the case is going,” he said, “but it would probably only make me more stir-crazy when I’m supposed to be settling in for the night.”
“Believe me, I get it,” she assured him. She was about to say her final goodnight when Susannah got a call on her phone. She held up her screen for Jessie to see. It was Captain Parker.
“Sorry to cut this short,” Jessie said quickly, “but something just came up. I love you. Get some sleep.”
“I love you too,” he said just before she ended the call.
Susannah, who had been anxiously waiting with her finger next to the “answer” button, pushed it.
“Hi, Captain,” she said. “You’re on speaker with me and Jessie, as well as Jamil and Beth.”
“I’m glad you’re all there,” Parker said. “I just got a call from Captain Pryor in Hollywood Division. He’s got a victim that he thinks might be a fit for your case.”
“What makes him say that?” Susannah asked.
“The woman was found dead in her bed, naked, except for a bejeweled masquerade ball mask on her face.”
Jessie stood up so fast that her vision went black for a moment. But she responded anyway.
“Please send us the address,” she said. “We’re going to the car now.”