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“Sure,” Dolan said. “Just one more thing before you go. When I was doing my background review on you earlier, the one that told me you’re dating Hernandez, something else popped.”
Jessie noticed that for the first time since he arrived, Dolan looked uncomfortable.
“Go ahead,” she said, apprehensive.
“Your ex-husband, Kyle Voss, is doing his time at the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange County.”
“Right,” Jessie confirmed. “He was transferred from the Men’s Central Jail last year. You’re not about to tell me they’re releasing him, are you? Because he’s got something like sixty-five years left on his sentence, even with good behavior.”
“No—nothing like that,” Dolan assured her. “In fact, he may have more time added to his sentence. It seems that after a stretch in which he was a model prisoner, he’s now fallen in with an unsavory crowd.”
“What does that mean?” Jessie asked, her fingers getting prickly and cold.
Dolan looked hesitant to go on but realized that he didn’t have a choice at this point.
“He seems to have gotten friendly with a gang associated with one of the cartels. At first, the thought was that it was a desperate move in order to get protection from other potential threats inside. But apparently he reached out to them to initiate the relationship.”
“How do you know all this?”
“The Bureau has a confidential informant in the gang who periodically passes us info. I wouldn’t mention it except that in his last report, he noted that Kyle mentioned you. That’s why it was in the file.”
“What did he say?” Jessie asked, trying to sound calm.
“Typical stuff you expect from a disgruntled ex-husband who was in prison after being outsmarted by the wife he’d tried to kill.”
“Typical stuff like what, Dolan?” she pressed.
“Oh, stuff like that you shouldn’t be living it up with money he earned, that you’re a fraud who gets credit for crimes you were lucky to solve, that you deserve to be knocked out of your ivory tower, that kind of thing.”
“That’s all?” Jessie asked skeptically. “Those don’t sound like the kind of comments that would make it into an FBI report. And they seem tame for Kyle. After all, the last time I saw him, he told me, what was the exact quote? I think it was that he wanted to take a tire iron and beat me until I was a pulpy mess of shattered bones, shredded skin, and oozing blood.”
“Yeah,” Dolan said, reluctantly going on. “It sounds like he hasn’t exactly mellowed since then. He might have also mentioned to his new friends that he’d like to gut you like a pig and bathe in your warm blood.”
Neither spoke for a moment. Jessie gulped hard before responding.
“Okay. Well, that’s not ideal.”
“No,” Dolan agreed. “But let’s keep it in context. He’s in prison. You put him there. He’s a murderer trying to get in tight with some scary guys. It’s not a stunner that he’d say something like that.”
Jessie nodded. That was all true.
“Any evidence that he’s done anything other than talk about fantasies of my death?” she asked.
“None,” Dolan said definitively. “And as soon as I saw the report, I passed the word to our C.I.’s handler for him to alert us the second that changes. I almost didn’t mention it. But I figured you deserved to know. Besides, if anyone can handle something like that, it’s you.”
She wasn’t sure she could but she didn’t want Dolan to feel bad about telling her so she forced a smile to her lips.
“You did the right thing,” she assured him. “Frankly, that’s about fifth on my list of concerns these days.”
She said it with such confidence that she thought he almost believed her.
