Page 36 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Ash Pierce rolled over on her sleeping pad.

Living in a shipping container for the next two weeks wouldn't be fun but she'd been through much worse.

She'd slept in sand dunes in Middle Eastern deserts.

She'd lived in bombed-out structures in eastern European war zones for days on end.

She even spent two weeks hiking through the Amazon rainforest to acquire a target. This was a vacation by comparison.

At least in this situation, she’d paid off a crew member of the cargo ship to secretly bring her food and water and dump her bedpan overboard periodically.

Once they arrived at the Port of Ensenada, she’d have to make him disappear, but for now he thought they were besties and she was happy to play into the illusion.

Unfortunately for Camille, she and Ash were about the same age and had similar builds and skin coloring. That’s why, after hacking the cruise line’s database and doing tons of research, Ash had selected Camille.

Because of the sensitivity of this online search, instead of using the local internet café, she’d done it on a laptop she’d stolen from a student at the main library on the campus of the Universidad de Guayaquil. After completing the search, she dropped the laptop in the Rio Guayas.

If all went well, Ash would ambush Camille in town, kill her, take her clothes and ID, cut off her fingertips and remove her teeth, dispose of her unidentifiable body, and then return to the ship using the woman’s identity.

She would stick to Camille’s stateroom for the remainder of the cruise to avoid detection.

Then she would disembark at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro.

For a brief moment, as she settled in on the sleeping pad, Ash allowed herself to marvel at how much her world had changed in the last few months.

She still recalled how, after waking up from the coma she suffered after an ugly altercation with Hannah Dorsey and Kat Gentry, she'd been without any memory of who she was.

She remembered how that na?ve version of herself had been stunned to learn that she was under arrest in that hospital bed, charged with multiple murders she had no recollection of.

She remembered the shock she’d felt when she was informed that she was a hitwoman for hire, a former CIA assassin. The idea had appalled her.

But at one point, in an unexpected rush, her memory returned. And while her mind was suddenly filled to the brim with her violent personal history, she lost something too. Somehow, the conscience that had troubled the blank slate version of her disappeared into the ether.

She was glad for it. The guilt hadn’t suited her.

And without it weighing her down, she felt unburdened.

All she was left with was the deep desire to inflict pain and punishment on the people who had ruined her business, her reputation, her very life.

The need for vengeance as her constant companion.

Once her mind was free again, it didn’t take long for her to extricate her body from custody as well.

Now she decided where she went and what she did. After she reached L.A., she could go anywhere. And she already knew exactly where she would go. She had a few people to visit.