Now, as they paid their bill and prepared to head back to the Beverly Hills police station, she glanced at her watch. It was 9:26. Hopefully by the time they got there, the M.E. would have an update for them or maybe Stafford would have something new. They were in the diner’s parking lot, halfway to Valentine’s car, when the detective’s self-control finally gave out. “So, I just want to make sure that when we interview any other potential suspects,” she said, her tone laced with sarcasm, “that maybe you’ll give me some kind of signal when you’ve decided that I should no longer treat them like a suspect.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jessie said.

  “You know, like with Natalie Aldrin, when you determined that she definitely couldn’t have known that Helena Lannister was in that ‘Puppy Protection Unit’ Facebook group based on her say-so alone, and that we should generally trust her word. Maybe you could bat your eyes at me or something to let me know to stop with the invasive interrogatory questions.”

  Jessie shook her head in disbelief as they reached the car. She looked across the roof at her partner and offered what seemed like the obvious response. “She had an alibi,” she said. “She was in New York for all three murders.”

  “But you dismissed her as a suspect even before we learned that fact,” Valentine countered. “She claimed that she didn’t know Lannister because she didn’t recognize her online handle and Lannister didn’t have picture next to it. That was hardly airtight. But you went with it based on what, instinct?”

  Jessie tried not to let the tension in her shoulders rise into her neck, and by extension, her throat. “First of all, the more we learned, the less credible a suspect she became. For example, Natalie Aldrin has zero training in biology or chemistry. As a criminal profiler, I do actually use evidence to form my opinions, as well as body language. But yes, I sometimes use my instincts as well. They’ve served me pretty well in the past.”

  “I don’t dispute that,” Valentine said, “But have you noticed that you are kind of dismissive when other people don’t immediately embrace your instincts? Or maybe that’s just with me.”

  Jessie, still trying to keep her cool, was about to reply but Valentine wasn’t done.

  “And when we got to her house you didn’t give me any kind of heads up that you were going to use some non-specific sense of guilt that she might be feeling over anything from murder to infidelity to get her to let us inside. You left me hanging me out to dry, looking like an idiot.”

  Jessie was dumbfounded by the accusation. Every part of her being was telling her that she ought to put this self-righteous, tactless sledgehammer of a cop in her place, but she forced herself to abide by Ryan’s unspoken but clear desire that she find a way to move beyond her antipathy and find some common ground with the woman.

  “Like I told you when we were there,” she said slowly, “I didn’t know I was going to use that tactic with Aldrin until that very moment,” she replied, as coolly as she could. “And besides, it worked, didn’t it? So, what’s the big deal?”

  Valentine opened her car door but made no effort to get in. “I’m just saying that I bet if you were partnered with Bray or Nettles, you would have found some way to warn them ahead of time that you were going to improvise so they weren’t left hanging in front of a suspect. You definitely would have communicated it if you were working with Ryan. I knew you didn’t like me, but I didn’t think you’d actively sabotage me.”

  Jessie felt a surge of indignation rise in her chest but forced it back down with a big gulp. She tried to think clearly, tried, despite everything, to give Susannah Valentine the benefit of the doubt. She asked herself the question: was she sabotaging the detective either inadvertently or subconsciously?

  Even though it felt like Valentine was overreacting massively, that she was the one instigating conflict, Jessie reminded herself that the accusation wasn’t totally inconceivable, considering how she felt about the woman. Was she undermining Valentine? Had she been oblivious to her own behavior? Was she running roughshod over her partner? Was her personal distaste for the woman bleeding into their working relationship beyond what she was aware of? Was it affecting how they conducted the case?

  She didn’t think so. Yes, they had argued briefly at Aldrin’s place, but it had been when the suspect was out of the room. And admittedly, they had taken different tacks during the questioning, but she thought that was actually productive, as it kept Aldrin off balance.

  Beyond that, she couldn’t remember any horrible faux pas or any obvious, embarrassing rebukes on her part. But that was the scary part. What if she had done or said something and hadn’t realized it or had simply forgotten about it? She stopped herself.

  No. There may have been forgetful moments, but I would absolutely remember running over my partner so overtly as to justify this reaction. It didn’t happen. She’s way off base.

  She could feel the resentment she’d been bottling up start to force its way free again, along with something else: anger.

  This was on her. Where does she get off anyway, coming at me like this on my second day back on the job, and for such a minor, “perceived” offense?

  Moreover, it felt like Valentine was compensating for her own guilt when she brought up how Jessie wouldn’t interact this way with Ryan if they were working a case together. That last bit was the final straw as she silently repeated to herself what Valentine had just said aloud: “You definitely would have communicated it if you were working with Ryan.”

  “Let me ask you something, Detective,” Jessie said, leaning forward and resting her arms on the roof of the car, “how exactly did you and Captain Hernandez give each other ‘heads ups’ when you worked cases together?”

  “What?” Valentine asked cautiously, suddenly on her heels.

  “I mean, I know you were really focused on enhancing your nonverbal communication with him,” she said, unable to keep the bitterness she’d been holding back for months from seeping into her voice. “A smile here, a hair toss there, a touch on the forearm—is that what you mean by communicating?”

  If they were going to finally get into this, then so be it, but she would do it with the gloves off. The look of stunned shock on Valentine’s face told her that her partner was not prepared for this response.

  “You’re paranoid,” she mumbled unconvincingly.

  “Hold on,” Jessie said, standing upright and looking around the parking lot in mock confusion, “are you telling the professionally trained criminal profiler that she misinterpreted the overtly flirtatious body language coming from you toward my then-fiancé, now-husband when you first joined HSS? Is that what’s going on here? You know, I would respect you a lot more if you were just honest about it.”

  For once, Susannah Valentine was speechless. All the color had drained from her face. She simply stood there with her mouth slightly open and her eyes glassy, like she’d just taken an actual punch. That was okay because Jessie wasn’t done.

  “You want to know why I don’t like you?” she asked, before answering her own question. “Sure, part of it was that you relentlessly flirted with an engaged man—my man—and never made any attempt to apologize for it. But let’s set the personal stuff aside for a minute. There’s also the fact that you make everyone else’s job harder. You view every interaction as gladiatorial, whether interviewing a witness or working with a colleague. We’re all enemies to be bested. It’s like you’re in competition with your own team, always looking for glory at the expense of the unit.”

  Valentine looked like she might be about to defend herself, but Jessie wasn’t in the mood to give her a chance.

  “Hell,” she pressed on, “you even went behind my back to work with Andy Robinson on a case, which I seem to recall ultimately ended up contributing to her release. You’re lucky that you’re not an accessory in my kidnapping. So, do I have justification for disliking you a little bit? I think I do. And I don’t think you’re in a position to be whining about how I haven’t shared the secret handshake with you.”

  Valentine had finally managed to close her mouth. Her color had returned, and she was at least blinking her eyes. But she still didn’t speak. Jessie didn’t know what to make of it, but she wasn’t about to be the one to break the silence between them. After a good ten seconds, Valentine closed the driver’s door and leaned her own hands on the roof of the car.

  “You’re right,” she said quietly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Jessie did her best not to let her own mouth fall open in shock.

  She was genuinely surprised to hear the words, though she wasn’t sure what part of what she’d said had Valentine backpedaling. She kept that to herself and waited to hear where this was going.

  “I did flirt with Rya—Captain Hernandez,” Valentine acknowledged, her eyes boring a hole in the center of the car’s roof. “I didn’t know you two were together—you were instructing at UCLA at the time. But I knew that he was involved with someone. I even knew that he was engaged, but I didn’t care.”

  She paused but Jessie got the sense that she wasn’t done and beat back the urge to respond. Sure enough, Valentine continued. “The truth is, I flirted with him because I knew that it was safe. I could tell that he was loyal, not an asshole like some of the others around the station—around every station I’ve ever worked at—who never look above my neck. I guess he was trying to keep your engagement quiet for a while there so it wouldn’t complicate life at work, but that didn’t stop me from having some fun with him. I got a kick out of making him squirm as he politely tried to put me off without offending me. Later on, when I found out that he was with you, I should have cleared the air right away, but I didn’t. I could tell that you had picked up on it, but I was embarrassed and hoped it would just go away.”

  She dropped her head down so that it rested against the side of the car, but she kept talking. It was as if she didn’t want Jessie to even see her face during what she had to say next.

  “I was wrong on the Andy thing too,” she muttered. “When she called me up with a tip about the person who’d killed all those people in California Plaza, I jumped at it. She said she ‘thought’ she might know who it was, that it could be someone she’d served time with at Twin Towers. Looking back, I see that she was only using me to mess with you because you weren’t returning her calls. Even in the moment, I think I sensed that I was a pawn in the larger game she was playing with you. But I chose to ignore that feeling. I wanted to break a big case. Chief Laird seemed supportive of me. Of course, that doesn’t look so great in hindsight either. I didn’t ask many questions, on purpose. If I had known that Andy would have gotten credit for helping catch the very killer that she had instructed to murder people, and that the credit would lead to her parole, and to your kidnapping, and Callum Reid’s death, I obviously wouldn’t have done it, but I was blinded by ambition.”

  An older couple leaving the diner walked by and Valentine stopped talking. Only when they got in their car did she continue. “This isn’t an excuse,” she said, looking up again, “but it is an explanation. You have to understand, I came up hard. I grew up poor in east LA. My father was a drunk who beat my mom and left when I was young. When I got a little older and filled out, I became a target because of how I looked. Then something happened to me that . . . that I don’t talk about.”

  Valentine paused before continuing, “Anyway, after that, I decided to fight back. I learned self-defense. I made a promise to myself never to apologize for how I look, but to be proud of it, to flaunt it even. I went to the police academy, graduated, and worked my ass off on patrol. I got a detective position in Santa Barbara. I probably would have stayed there if my mom hadn’t gotten sick. When that happened, I wanted to be back here to help her so I applied for Homicide Special Section and got selected.”

  Jessie could feel some of the arrogance inching back into Valentine’s voice, like she was finding a way back to justifying her actions. She was tempted to call her on it, but chose to give her the benefit of the doubt. The detective looked up.

  “My point is,” she said, taking her arms off the car and looking straight into Jessie’s eyes, “everything good in my life has come with choosing to believe in myself first, from never backing down, always leading with my heart and my fists, and always being bold, even if it rubs people the wrong way. I’m not a shrinking violet, and I guess that means being a team player doesn’t come easy.”

  “So, why apply to HSS?” Jessie finally asked. “You had to know that it’s a tightknit unit based on teamwork and collaboration.”

  “I did know that,” Valentine said. “I applied to HSS for three reasons. First, I wanted to change that last part, to become more of a team player. I know it’s a shortcoming, and I thought this was a place where I could work on that. Second, it’s the best of the best and that’s where I want to be, always.”

  “And the third?” Jessie asked.

  “You.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Jessie said.

  “You may not remember me telling you this when I first worked a case with you, but I kept tabs on your cases when I was in Santa Barbara. More accurately, I kept tabs on you. You were kind of my hero. I saw how you overcame a childhood that was even rougher than mine, and an adulthood that hasn’t been much easier, and still managed to keep plugging away and doing the work. Every time I looked around, it seemed like you’d nabbed another killer, sometimes one that people had been looking for for years. I wanted to learn from Jessie Hunt. I wanted to work with her. I certainly didn’t want to flirt with her fiancé. I didn’t want to piss her off or have her hate me.”

  She leaned against the car again. “The crazy thing is that the very stuff that got me this job is also what makes me hard to be around, and it’s what is alienating the people I want to win over. I know it, and yet, I can’t stop myself. I wish I had started off differently here, but it’s too late for that. Now, I’m just hoping that you’ll eventually forgive me and that someday we can find a way to get past all this crap.”

  She stopped talking. After a second, she seemed to realize there was nothing more she could add to what she’d said. She opened the car door, got in, and closed it. Jessie remained standing outside the passenger door, trying to process everything she’d just heard.

  It didn’t make everything better. It didn’t change the fact that Susannah Valentine’s actions had made Jessie’s life measurably more challenging over the last few months. But she had said that she would respect the woman a lot more if she was honest and she sure as hell had been that.

  In fact, Valentine had been more than that, if Jessie was willing to be honest with herself. When they worked on that first case together, despite the detective’s abrasive manner, she had saved Jessie’s life twice. And according to Ryan, she had been relentless, if unsuccessful, in hunting for the two of them after Andy had kidnapped her.

  She opened the passenger door and got in, staring at the dashboard. Next to her, she could feel Valentine holding her breath.

  “I hear that after Andy kidnapped me,” Jessie said, still looking straight ahead, “you laid a solid tackle on Corinne Bertans so that she couldn’t jump off a cliff after she impersonated me at the wedding.”

  “That’s true,” Valentine said slowly.

  “And my understanding is that if you hadn’t have done that, they never would have gotten the clue that led to the mine where Andy was holding me.”

  “Also true,” Valentine agreed, “but you’re leaving out the most important part. Bertans had a big head start on me. I had to rip a huge tear in my evening gown so I could run without tripping. Then, when I tackled her, we rolled over in the grass and dirt, which left giant stains. The thing was ruined.”

  “I saw that dress at the reception, back before I was drugged and shoved in a laundry cart,” Jessie said. “It was hot.”

  “I know, right?” Valentine said, before adding more quietly, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Honestly, it really was hot,” Jessie said, even though they both knew that’s not what the detective was thanking her for.

  “Hey, listen,” Valentine said, “I know it’s not easy coming back after time away. Your body’s still sore. Your brain’s obviously still a little bit scrambled. And then they throw you together with me, which I understand isn’t ideal, but can I make a small request?”

  Jessie was having trouble hearing much other than “brain” and “scrambled” but tried to set aside the implications of that comment and focus on the rest of Valentine’s words.

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you think that at some point, you might consider calling me ‘Susannah’ instead of Valentine’?”

  Before Jessie could reply, her phone rang. It was Stafford.

  “You’re on speaker,” she told him. “What’s up?”

  “We just heard back from the home security company that Helena Lannister used and got some unexpectedly good news. Unlike with the other victims, there’s no thirty-minute gap in camera footage from yesterday afternoon. And it just so happens that there’s footage of someone coming and going from her place during that window. Interestingly, he was there for just under a half hour. I’m sending you the relevant clips now.”

  Jessie and Valentine waited anxiously for the text to come through. It only took a few seconds. When it did, Jessie pulled up the first clip. It showed a man in a suit holding a black bag as he approached the front door. The footage was grainy, and the camera angle was too high to get a good look at his face. He had dark hair, but there was no way to discern his features or guess his age or even his height. The second clip showed him leaving the house. It was equally useless at identifying the man, but Jessie noticed something different from the first video.

  “Hey Stafford,” she said, “I’m hoping the screen you’re looking at is crisper than my phone.”

  “It’s high resolution,” he confirmed.

 

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