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CHAPTER THIRTY
Hannah studied her handwritten notes, hoping that re-reading them for the tenth time would spark something.
Because FBI Agent Jack Dolan wouldn’t send her any proprietary information about Bureau’s hunt for Ash Pierce, she’d been reduced to transcribing what he told her onto a legal pad that Rufus had found lying around the safe house. But nothing Dolan revealed to her had immediately jumped out as relevant to finding where the woman was hiding out or what her plans were.
She had info on the drug that Pierce used to induce her own vomiting in the transport vehicle and trick the guards into stopping. She had the names of the guards, all of whom Pierce had killed. She also had the name of the woman Pierce car-jacked, murdered, and stuffed in the trunk, along with the exact location where they’d found the dumped car. None of it seemed to matter.
The carjack victim didn’t appear to have any connection to Pierce. She was a grocery clerk who got off work at the wrong time. Pierce never had any interaction with the guards transporting her prior to being moved—they weren’t even assigned until the day of the transfer—so she wouldn’t have been able to use any personal knowledge about them to her advantage.
Agent Dolan had personally gone to theCentral California Women’s Facilityto interview Marla Drews, the prisoner who had sold Pierce thedose of concentrated Ipecac extract, which was what caused her near-immediate, violent vomiting. But Drewes said they never had a single personal conversation. She claimed that she got word from another prisoner that Pierce wanted to make a trade. They met, agreed on a price—three weeks’ worth of dessert—and completed the transaction without fuss.
Hannah stared at that portion of her notes again, sensing that there was a piece to this puzzle that she wasn’t seeing. She thought back to her time with Pierce, back when she was pretending to be spousal abuse victim Violet Sheridan, and later when she revealed her true murderous colors.
One thing that was consistent about Pierce all that time was that she acted alone. She didn’t come to Kat’s office to hire her with a “friend” in tow, someone she could have hired to make her seem more credible. She used only the force of her own personality and her willingness to injure herself to make her situation seem real.
Later, when she captured and tortured Kat in the desert, she didn’t make use of Hank Keene, the sucker she’d tricked into playing the role of her abuser. She simply eliminated him—an asset who could turn into a liability. Ash Pierce didn’t play well with others.
So why did she entrust another prisoner to approachMarlaDrewes and set up the meet about the vomit drug? Why not do it herself? One possible reason was that the guards likely knew aboutMarla’s side hustle and approaching her cold would have alerted them that Pierce wasn’t being a model prisoner, an image she was trying desperately to project.
But having someone else reach out to Marla initially meant putting a modicum of trust in another person, one who could rat her out for her own benefit. That was not in Ash Pierce's character. So she was either desperate, or she knew this prisoner well enough to feel comfortable assigning her a risky task.
“I need your phone again,” she blurted out to Rufus, who was playing chess against himself now because she’d refused to go again.
“What for?”
“I need to talk to Dolan,” she said. “I might have a lead.”
He handed it over, and she made the call. The FBI agent picked up on the first ring.
“I already told you everything I can,” he said before she spoke a word.
“Maybe not,” Hannah replied, trying not to take offense. “Did Marla Drewes tell you the name of the prisoner who set up her meet with Pierce.”
“No,” he said immediately. “I pressed her on that. She said it was ‘some chick’ she’d never met who got transferred out of her cell block before she ever learned her name.”
“Do you buy that?” Hannah asked.
“I was skeptical,” he admitted. “But I didn’t push too hard. I figured she didn’t want to snitch on another prisoner who might look for payback down the line.”
“I think you should push harder,” Hannah said.
“Why?”
“Ash Pierce isn’t big on trust,” she explained. “If she was willing to let someone else set up the trade for that dose of Ipecac extract, she must have spent enough time with her to feel it was worth the risk. Whoever that prisoner is, she’s the one who will be able to help you. I don’t know what she knows. She might not even realize what she knows. But somewhere in that prisoner’s brain is information that might help you find Pierce.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Dolan said and hung up.
Hannah placed the phone on the breakfast table and waited.
***
When the phone rang twenty minutes later, Rufus was still studying the chess board, deciding the best move to defeat himself. Hannah picked up immediately.
“This better turn into something,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I just offered Marla Drewes a year off her sentence if she gave me the name of Pierce’s go-betweenandit turns out to be legit.”
