Page 29 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Rachel Thompson didn’t have long.

Of course, she wasn't at a doctor's office at all. She was standing on the sidewalk outside the yoga studio where Amanda Calloway was currently working up a mean sweat.

As Rachel watched through the window, she had twin emotions. One was admiration for Amanda’s remarkable flexibility and the body that allowed her to have it. The young woman was an impressive specimen.

The other emotion that Rachel felt was something close to hatred.

After all, Amanda was the new wife of Rachel’s ex-husband, James Calloway, a movie producer known for high-octane action films. The two had wed only six months ago in a lavish ceremony on James’s yacht, the very one that Rachel used to lounge on before she was tossed aside.

She was apparently just human garbage to James now, even though she didn’t look it.

Though she was currently wearing a disguise so Amanda wouldn’t recognize her, she caught an extended glimpse of herself in the glass window of the yoga studio.

At the horribly advanced age of 36, she thought she still looked good.

A combination of relentless workouts, plastic surgery, and daily semi-starvation had kept her in the kind of shape that allowed for two-piece bathing suits and form-fitting dresses. But apparently that wasn’t enough for James, who seemed to trade in his spouse for a new model every decade or so.

Rachel should have been suspicious when James—41 at the time—dumped his previous wife for her after 11 years of marriage.

She was 26 at the time and a rising star in the beauty influencer space.

But after nine years together, he sent her packing too, in favor of Amanda, apparently the new flavor of the decade.

Rachel, who had been so in love that she signed a deeply unfair prenup, was left not quite destitute, but certainly in rough shape.

Having let her influencer work atrophy while on James’s arm, she was now behind the eight ball in terms of employment and was reduced to personal assistant work. It was embarrassing.

But all that changed when she saw an opening for a position that could reconfigure everything. When Victoria Sterling’s administrative aide left and she put up an online job posting, Rachel jumped at it. After all, this was the matchmaking service that had set James up with Amanda.

Of course, when Rachel applied, she did so under her maiden name, Thompson, rather than the married one, which might give her away.

Victoria—no spring chicken herself—had been happy to hire her, in part because Rachel was “an adult,” unlike the collection of twenty-somethings who applied for the gig, likely in the hope of securing one of Sterling’s clients for themselves.

So she’d begun work at Elite Introductions three months ago. She quickly proved herself to be invaluable, earning Sterling’s trust to the point that she gave her access to client files, including payment history and personal information, like addresses.

Rachel wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been after when she took the job. Part of her thought that if she got some dirt on Amanda, maybe she could get back into James’s good graces. But that mission was soon replaced by a new, far more urgent one.

After seeing up close just how pathetic these rich men—like her ex—were, and how grasping their new arm candy was, she knew she had to get payback, not just for herself but for all the other wives who had been tossed aside.

The anger had been gurgling up in her for a long time now, and she was ready to let it out.

Maybe it was regularly being treated like leftovers thrown into a dumpster.

Maybe it was the insultingly pitying looks she got from former friends who had abandoned her.

Maybe it was the indignity of having to budget her money for the first time in a decade.

Or maybe it was the potent combination of all those personal humiliations, and the many more she'd endured, that brought her to this place.

Whatever the reason, she was ready to inflict some pain rather than receive it.

Her first plan was to frame the husbands for their wives’ murders, but she quickly abandoned the idea, deciding that it was far too involved and beyond her skill set.

What she could do was more simple but still effective.

She could slaughter these women, leaving the men who were left behind broken, frightened, and most importantly, alone again.

Because Victoria had been to many of these men’s homes for the interview process, she had details on the places.

She also often knew their schedules. That was because, even after setting up these couples, she would coordinate “romantic” events for them.

That might include a string quartet performing in the living room, a homemade dinner prepared in their own kitchen by a celebrated chef, or a private screening of a sought-after film.

As a result, she knew when Robert Hollinger was at out-of-town real estate conventions.

She was aware of Kai Cody’s baseball schedule, including road games.

She’d even got access to Frank Walters’s surgery schedule.

And she didn’t need Sterling’s file on James to know that he was on location in Atlanta right now for his latest sequel, leaving poor Amanda alone in the mansion that Rachel used to call home.

That was where she’d finish the job. It was the culmination of the mission she’d begun planning months ago and finally brought to fruition this week. These scheming climbers, who had all married for money, getting their claws into older, deluded men, had it coming.

Rachel had made her decisions about who to eliminate based on the most objectionable pairings in combination with the most advantageous schedules for accessing homes.

Those decisions had unfortunate consequences for Patricia Hollinger, Rebecca Martinez, and just a few hours ago, for Caroline Walters, as they would soon have for Amanda Calloway.

The first killing had been a challenge. She had to psyche herself up to use the huge chunk of broken, jagged glass from the picture frame.

But once she found the sash and tiara, it was as if an extra level of clarity emerged.

By posing the woman with the accessories from her beauty contestant days, she was silently mocking her.

Hollinger’s good looks and wealth hadn’t helped her when the time for her judgement came.

She’d been delighted when she found that Rebecca Martinez had some of the same pageant trappings in her closet and happily decked her out in them.

Her one regret was that she couldn’t do the same with Caroline Walters.

Apparently that one hadn’t kept her pageant circuit accoutrement.

Either that, or she’d never competed and was just a garden variety whore.

But all of that had just been prelude to the big event. Amanda was the final girl and she would suffer the worst consequences, because unlike the others, this one was personal. And it would be happening soon.

But not right now. Rachel had been gone long enough.

She had to get back to the office so as not to arouse Victoria's ire.

The woman liked her, but she was also unpredictable.

Unless James took her back, Rachel would need this job after her work was done, so she couldn't afford to alienate her boss.

She took one last look at herself in the window to make sure she was presentable.

She’d dumped the black clothes she’d worn while slicing Caroline Walters’s throat and gone home to change back into the outfit she’d worn to work today.

She’d replaced the small bandage on her right palm that covered the cut she got when jamming a chunk of glass into Patricia Hollinger’s neck. Victoria would suspect nothing.

And neither would Amanda when Rachel visited her later today, bearing a most unwanted gift.