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CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Hannah was still pissed.
Jessie saw it immediately upon arriving in the security office, before the girl even said a word. And now, over an hour later, Hannah was clearly still seething.
In one sense, it was understandable. She had been dragged out of Calculus by the security officer without explanation, giving her and all her classmates the impression that she was being arrested. She had been ordered to the security office without any idea why she had to go. Two uniformed officers showed up moments later and stood guard outside the office until Jessie arrived.
She’d done her best to make it clear that her half-sister hadn’t done anything wrong and that this was a safety measure for her own protection. But Hannah didn’t care about that. She had been publicly embarrassed at a school she’d only been at for a week and a half. How was she supposed to try to reclaim a normal life if she couldn’t even go to class without a crisis?
It was a fair question and as they waited in Jessie’s car down the block from their destination, she tried her best to answer it. But Hannah wasn’t satisfied. Telling a seventeen-year-old that her safety was a higher priority than her popularity didn’t go over well. Telling her that returning to something resembling normalcy would occur in fits and starts got an enormous eye roll. Jessie feared how Hannah would react to her answer to the next question.
“What are we doing here?” she asked as they sat in Jessie’s parked car on a quiet mid-Wilshire residential street.
“We’re waiting for a colleague to arrive,” Jessie answered.
“Is that what you’re calling Ryan these days—a colleague? Did you two have a lovers’ spat?”
“It’s not Ryan,” Jessie told her, refusing to be baited. “It’s a man named Garland Moses. He’s agreed to spend the afternoon with you while I look into the threat against you.”
“Why can’t we just go back to the apartment?” Hannah whined. “You’ve got so many locks and alarms and security codes, it’s like frickin’ Rikers Island. Aren’t we safer there than at some shack on an unprotected city street?”
“We’ll be able to go back there soon,” Jessie assured her. “But for now, this is the best option. Garland Moses is one of the few people I totally trust. And with Kat on an impromptu trip to meet a charming deputy sheriff in Lake Arrowhead, he’s the only one of those people currently available. So that’s who you’ll be hanging out with for the next few hours.”
“Isn’t he that old dude?”
“If by ‘old,’ you mean one of the most legendary forensic profilers in American history, then yeah, I guess he’s on the older side.”
“Yeah, old,” Hannah reiterated. “How’s that guy going to keep me safe?”
“Appearances can be deceiving, Hannah. That guy has tangled with more serial killers than you can name. You and I will never forget that night trapped with our psycho father. Garland Moses has been through half a dozen scrapes with guys like him. He’s old but he’s wily.”
Just then, Moses pulled into his driveway. He got out of his beat up old VW bug and waved over at them.
“He drove here from the other direction and we’re halfway down the block,” Hannah noted. “How did he know this car was us?”
“Old guy instinct,” Jessie replied as she started the car and pulled up in front of Moses’s house.
The place wasn’t a shack but it was on the smaller side. A quaint one-story, mid-century home, it looked out of place among the much larger, more modern houses that had taken over the block. The small porch out front looked like it had been built much more recently. Jessie couldn’t explain why but she suspected Garland had done it himself.
“Hello, Ms. Hunt,” he said with as close to warmth as he could muster. “And this must be the infamous Hannah Dorsey. I see the scowl is already in full effect.”
“Hannah, this is Garland Moses,” Jessie said, trying not to chuckle.
“Hi,” Hannah said perfunctorily.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Dorsey,” he said. “Would you care to come in? That is, assuming you can handle the old man smell I can see you’re obviously worried about.”
“I’m okay with it,” Hannah said, pretending to be hurt. “That is, assuming you don’t mind a teenager cramping your style? I wouldn’t want you to worry that I’m going to mess up your Russian nesting dolls or your collection of Victorian doilies.”
Jessie was just opening her mouth to ream the girl out for her rudeness when she noticed Garland almost imperceptibly hold up his left hand to give her the “pause” signal. His body blocked Hannah’s view so that only Jessie could see it. She held her tongue.
“I’ll have you know,” Garland said, with a sweetness she’d never heard in his tone before, “that I keep all my doilies under a glass case where they’re safe from the grubby hands of unwashed pubescents. So you’re all set.”
Without waiting for a retort, he turned and led them to the front door. Once there, he punched a code into the keypad next to the doorbell. A metal cover pulled back to reveal several pieces of tech Jessie didn’t recognize.
Garland bent down slightly and a device scanned his eyes. Then he placed his palm on a plate of glass below the scanner and watched as it apparently read his fingerprints. After that, he whispered something unintelligible into a speaker. Only then did the front door lock click.
“Wow,” Hannah said, impressed. “That is some next level…stuff. Your security measures make Jessie’s look like a joke.”
