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“I’m not!” he shouted at her.
“Prove it,” she sneered. “Do something about it. Come and get me. It’s either that or keep wallowing in your pitiful vengeance fantasies, feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Shut up!” he screamed, grabbing the plastic cup on the tiny coffee table in front of him and throwing it at her. It flew through the air and slammed against the wall, hitting nothing. Jessie was gone. She had abandoned him again.
***
A half-hour later, Mark limped along the sidewalk, doing his best to hide his infirmity as he approached the pharmacy. He didn't love leaving the apartment in the day, but he was out of pain meds for his leg and short on ice. Still, with his elaborate disguise, including his shaggy, black-haired wig, full beard, baseball cap, and the oversized camouflage jacket and pants he’d gotten at the homeless shelter giveaway, he felt confident that he was undetectable.
He was just paces from the pharmacy door when it opened, and two women stepped out. His heart began pounding as he realized he recognized one of them. As quickly as he could move without drawing attention, he turned around, stepped into the doorway of a shuttered liquor store, and slumped to the ground as if this spot was where he lived.
The woman who had him unexpectedly gasping for breath was Kat Gentry, Jessie Hunt’s best friend, who was also a private detective. He didn’t recognize the other woman but could tell that despite her diminutive size, she wasn’t the type to underestimate.
For half a second, he considered that this might be a coincidence. But that notion quickly became ridiculous. Of all the pharmacies in Los Angeles, Jessie's best gal pal just happened to be exiting the very one on Skid Row where he'd gotten supplies just yesterday. No, this was bad. They were on to him.
“Just kill her,” Jessie instructed irritably. “You’ve got that chef’s knife in your jacket pocket. Just wait for the other woman to look away, then pull it out and jam it in Kat’s neck.”
“But then the other one will catch me, and I’ll never be able to follow through on the plan,” he whispered plaintively. “You know the whole point of this is to make you pay. If I’m arrested, that will never happen.”
“Then stay where you are, you blubbering little nothing,” she said. “Make yourself look as useless and weak as possible so she doesn’t notice you. It shouldn’t be hard.”
Mark did as Jessie instructed, slumping over in the doorway, doing his best to look passed out. After a couple of minutes, he considered looking up but wasn’t sure if he should.
“Are they still there?” he whispered.
But Jessie didn’t answer. He glanced up and saw that she was gone. Luckily, so were Kat Gentry and her friend. He scrambled to his feet and hobbled back to his tiny hellhole of a home.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Jessie had to wait for the dust to settle to see anything.
She and Grover sat in his parked car as the cloud of grit and sand subsided and they could actually see the construction site.
She hoped they’d have more success here than they did at the Sylmar motel. After driving over an hour north of L.A. to get there, the manager was unresponsive when Jessie had tried to get any information on Judd Banner, the ex-con that both Gemma Britton and Isabel Shea had crossed paths with while he was in prison.
The hotel manager wouldn’t even confirm that the guy was living there. Ultimately, Grover ended up sneaking to the second-floor room that Jamil said was listed on Banner’s parole documents and peeking in the windows. The man was nowhere to be found.
The next stop was a large house being built on a hill in Santa Clarita, another fifteen minutes north of the motel. According to Jamil’s data, this was where Banner had been working for the last six weeks. If he wasn’t here, Jessie wasn’t sure how she would track him down without involving Detectives Wagner and Ortega, which she was desperately hoping to avoid unless absolutely necessary.
“So should I just go up to the job site foreman and ask for Banner?” Grover asked.
For about the half-dozenth time since they began this trip, Jessie wished she hadn’t agreed to let the bodyguard take point. He may have been an expert at protecting clients, but he was not an intuitive investigator.
“Let’s dodge him if at all possible,” she instructed. “Every person we speak to other than Banner increases the risk of it getting back to the detectives. We don’t need that. And like I mentioned earlier, if Banner’s not our guy, we’re doing him a disservice. It’s hard enough for an ex-con to keep a job after prison, but even more so if his boss gets interrogated by what seem like law enforcement types.”
“But youwantBanner to think I’m a law enforcement type,” Grover pointed out.
"If it helps get him talking, sure," she said. "Don't outright lie, but if he gets the wrong impression, so be it."
“Alright,” Grover replied, opening the car door. “You stay here, like we discussed. I’ll FaceTime you if I’m able to get him talking.”
Jessie reluctantly reconfirmed her agreement and watched him go. A minute later he was gone from sight, and she realized that he’d taken the car keys, leaving her in a toasty vehicle on a late summer September afternoon in Santa Clarita, where the temperature was currently ninety-six degrees.
She got out of the passenger seat and leaned against the hood, cursing the bodyguard for not parking under the shade of a tree. But after looking around, she realized there were no nearby trees in this desolate, isolated stretch of the high desert.
She sat on the hood, listening to the sound of jackhammers and circular saws, as the sun beat down on her. She had already finished her water bottle and was regretting not bringing another one. She felt borderline dehydrated as she looked around for anywhere to get some respite from the heat.
The best bet seemed to be near the porta-potty, which wasn’t hugely appealing. Despite that, she headed over, praying the smell wouldn’t make her regret the decision. She was only halfway there when she got the FaceTime call. She stopped where she stood and answered it. Grover was looking back at her on the screen.
