Page 37 of The Perfect Illusion (Jessie Hunt #39)

Jessie studied the object in her hand, trying to decide what to do next.

Ryan was sprawled out, fast asleep, in the same uncomfortable chair that Brady was in earlier. When Ryan arrived, her partner on this case had left to follow up on the Rachel Thompson case. Kat and Hannah were back at the house after having visited earlier.

“You should go back to school,” Jessie had instructed her little sister. “I don’t want you missing any classes on account of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hannah had replied almost angrily. “My sister is attacked by a serial killer, gets cut up with a hunting knife, and hits her head, and I’m just supposed to go back to Irvine for a lecture on Brain Dysfunction and Repair? Not happening.”

Jessie had relented and even allowed the two of them to gather some toiletries from the house after learning that she’d need to stay here for at least a couple of days while the doctors performed more tests on her brain. She wanted to feel a little more normal during that time.

She’d also requested that Kat do her one other favor.

Something was itching at her, and as long as she was going to be stuck in a hospital bed for a few days, she decided to scratch it.

She especially wanted to distract herself so that she didn’t have to think about the particulars of Rachel Thompson’s death.

So Kat, on her instructions, dug into Mark Haddonfield’s box of personal effects and grabbed the pillar bar pendant necklace inside. When she returned, she handed it over, along with the toiletry bag.

“Care to tell me what this is all about?” her friend had asked when Ryan and Hannah went to the cafeteria to get a bite.

Jessie quickly explained everything that had happened since Haddonfield’s death at the hands of Ash Pierce.

How he’d left the box of personal items to her for reasons she didn’t understand.

How the staff at the prison where he was being held had discovered a message scrawled in crayon on the underside of the mattress in his cell that included her initials—JH—followed by what she now believed was a code: 6-21-HD-44 .

She reminded Kat of the message that Haddonfield had asked Hannah to convey to her in a call from the prison. The message was “if you want to be independent, you have to go to the mattresses.”

“So you now think that he was trying to tell you to look at his mattress, where the code was hidden?” Kat confirmed.

“Right,” Jessie said. “And what I didn’t get then was what the first part—‘if you want to be independent’—meant.”

“What does it mean?” Kat asked.

Jessie held up the pillar bar pendant necklace, and in one forceful motion, yanked the pendant from the bail.

As she expected, it snapped out easily. She held up the end for Kat to see what she’d suspected from back when she’d been in the office of beauty pageant coordinator Marcus Sullivan and watched him plug a similar looking item into his computer. The pendant was actually a thumb drive.

“Haddonfield used the phrase ‘if you want to be independent’ when he talked to Hannah,” Jessie explained.

“That was in case their conversation was being recorded. But what he was really secretly saying was ‘if you want to be in the pendant , you have to go to the mattresses.’ To access the thumb drive hiding in plain sight in the pendant necklace, you have to use the code written on the underside of his mattress.”

Kat whistled as she processed all of it.

“What do you think is on it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Jessie said, “but whatever it is, he went to incredible lengths to keep it hidden until after his death. That tells me it’s important.”

“Do you want me to look into it?”

“I appreciate it, but he meant it for me,” Jessie said. “I don’t know what kind of material is on there, and until I see it, I don’t want to subject anyone else to it.”

“You don’t think I can handle it?” Kat asked sharply, only half teasing.

Jessie got the strange sense that her friend was upset by something unrelated to Mark Haddonfield’s message from beyond the grave, but right now she just didn’t have the energy to ask what it might be. Instead, she kept her focus on her own issue.

“I’m sure you can,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if that was true. “But he intended it for my eyes. There had to be a reason for that. So for now, this is between me and him.”

“Okay,” Kat said, clearly slightly miffed but not wanting to push a hospitalized woman. “So when are you going to look at it?”

“Not tonight,” Jessie told her. “I think I want a few hours rest before diving into whatever this is.”

That was partly true, but it wasn’t the only reason she was holding off. Before exposing herself to whatever was on that thumb drive, Jessie had something else to deal with.

She couldn’t escape an ugly reality—that she'd given in to the bloodlust she'd been fighting off for months.

That she'd used the power of her vengeful rage to plunge a knife into the heart of another human being. Yes, she'd been in danger. And yes, maybe she had no choice in that moment. But that didn’t justify the truth she was finally willing to accept: that she’d enjoyed it.

Before Jessie looked at any thumb drives or addressed the injury to her head with her doctor, or discussed the potential of having children with Ryan, she had to answer the question that made her head throb more than any concussion did.

What had she unleashed in herself? And was there any way to put it back in the box?