Page 34 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Jessie kept blinking, hoping the act would remove the fuzziness from both her eyes and her brain.

“Ryan’s on his way,” said Brady, who was sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair beside her hospital bed. “We’re at UCLA Medical Center and even using his car’s siren, he’s battling rush hour traffic coming from downtown.”

“I’m fine,” she said, her hoarse voice betraying her.

“Let’s let the doctor decide that,” he replied. “I’m pretty sure you got concussed. And we both know how bad that is.”

Jessie pushed the thought out of her head.

She couldn’t deal with the prospect of another recurrence of Second Impact Syndrome, the potentially deadly condition that had essentially paused her life for several months late last year.

What would they even call it: Third Impact Syndrome?

Rather than focus on that possibility, she turned her attention elsewhere.

“How is Amanda Calloway?” she asked.

Brady paused before answering, as if he wanted to continue the prior conversation. But then he seemed to get that she wasn’t up for dealing with her own situation at the moment, so he relented.

“It was touch and go there for a while. She lost a lot of blood," he said. "And that knife wound to her side punctured her intestine. She's in surgery now, but they think she's going to pull through."

Jessie allowed herself a moment of relief before glancing down at her right arm, which was wrapped in a bandage. She had no recollection of that being done.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“Fully unconscious?” he said. “About ten minutes. The EMTs were able to wake you up pretty quick, but between your injuries and the pain meds they gave you, this is the first time you’ve been coherent in about an hour.”

“That’s not long enough for major arm surgery,” she noted.

“The doctors said you managed to avoid lasting injury,” he said.

“The knife didn’t get any arteries and only did surface damage to the tendons and muscles.

They stitched you up while you were floating in and out.

The doctor said the procedure was straightforward and that you’ll supposedly have full function back in a few weeks.

We’re obviously still awaiting results for some of the other stuff. ”

“What did you tell Ryan when you called him?”

“That you were injured during a confrontation with a suspect,” he answered simply. “And that you suffered injuries to your arm, neck, back, and head. That’s all I knew at the time.”

“Confrontation with a suspect” was a very diplomatic description of what had occurred in that bedroom. Jessie wondered if he’d have described it differently if he’d actually seen it.

“What about Thompson?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“She’s very dead,” Brady said. “Do you want to talk about that? The scene was—something else.”

“It was self-defense,” Jessie said, noting that the emotion had drained from her voice. “We can worry about the details later.”

Brady looked like he wanted to get into them now, but before he could, his phone buzzed.

“It’s Ryan,” he said. “Give me a sec.”

While he typed away, Jessie realized she’d been tensing her entire body and settled back into the bed. The details of Rachel Thompson’s death could be shared with others later. But right now, it would be nice to get them clear in her own head.

She had to kill Thompson, or the woman would have killed her. That scenario had come up before for Jessie. On several occasions, she'd been forced to take out a killer before she or others lost their lives. This was no different. It was simply self-defense.

But it didn’t feel like self-defense. In that crucial moment on the bed, when she sensed that she was about to pass out, Jessie had used the very same rage she’d been fighting down for months.

She used it to give her an extra jolt of energy when she plunged that knife into Rachel Thompson’s heart.

Admittedly, she was woozy when it happened, but she did have a vague recollection that the act almost felt—good.

She wondered if that’s how her serial killer father had felt when he’d murdered people.

She already knew, because her sister had told her so, that was how Hannah had felt when she shot and killed an old man.

Yes, the man was a serial killer who had threatened their lives.

But in the moment when Hannah fired the gun, he was in cuffs.

It seemed that bloodlust ran in her family. Was it always her destiny to end up in this place? Had she crossed a line she could never return from?

“Ryan’s five minutes away,” Brady said, snapping her out of her dark thoughts. “He wants to let Hannah and Kat know what happened so they can come see you too but he wants to make sure that’s okay with you.”

Jessie didn't want to worry either her sister or her best friend. But she knew that if she tried to keep what happened to them, it would only make them angry.

“Yeah,” she said. “You can tell him it’s okay.”

Some small part of her felt ashamed of the fact that she wanted everyone to be here. She was supposed to be tough, able to handle anything. But she didn’t feel tough right now. She felt scared, mostly of herself.