The Perfect House. Блейк Пирс

The last ten weeks had been among the most exhausting of her life. She had just completed the FBI’s National Academy, an intense training program for local law enforcement personnel designed to familiarize them with FBI investigative techniques.

      The exclusive program was only available to those nominated to attend by their supervisors. Unless accepted to go to Quantico to become a formal FBI agent, this crash course was the next best thing.

      Under normal circumstances, Jessie wouldn’t have been eligible to go. Until recently, she had only been an interim junior criminal profiling consultant for the LAPD. But after she solved a high-profile case, her stock had risen rapidly.

      In retrospect, Jessie understood why the academy preferred more experienced officers. For the first two weeks of the program, she’d felt completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information being thrown at her. She had classes in forensic science, law, terrorist mindsets, and her area of focus, behavioral science, which emphasized getting inside the minds of killers to better understand their motives. And none of that included the relentless physical training that left every muscle aching.

      Eventually, she found her bearings. The courses, which were reminiscent of her recent graduate work in criminal psychology, began to make sense. After about a month, her body was no longer screaming when she woke up each morning. And best of all, the time she spent in the Behavioral Sciences Unit allowed her to interact with the best serial killer experts in the world. She hoped to one day be among them.

      There was one added benefit. Because she worked so hard, both mentally and physically, for almost every waking moment, she hardly ever dreamed. Or at least, she didn’t have nightmares.

      Back home, she often woke up screaming in a cold sweat as memories of her childhood or her more recent traumas replayed in her unconscious. She still remembered her most recent source of anxiety. It was her last conversation with incarcerated serial killer Bolton Crutchfield, the one in which he’d told her he would be chatting with her own murderous father sometime soon.

      If she had been back in L.A. for the last ten weeks, she’d have spent most of that time obsessing over whether Crutchfield was telling the truth or screwing with her. And if he was being honest, how would he manage to coordinate a discussion with an on-the-lam killer while he was being held in a secure mental hospital?

      But because she’d been thousands of miles away, focused on unrelentingly challenging tasks for almost every waking second, she hadn’t been able to fixate on Crutchfield’s claims. She likely would again soon, but not just yet. Right now, she was simply too tired for her brain to mess with her.

      As she settled back into her seat, allowing sleep to envelop her again, Jessie had a thought.

      So all I have to do to get good sleep for the rest of my life is spend every morning working out until I almost throw up, followed by ten hours of non-stop professional instruction. Sounds like a plan.

      Before she fully formed the grin that was beginning to play at her lips, she was asleep again.

*

      That sense of cozy comfort disappeared the second she walked outside of LAX just after noon. From this moment on, she would need to be on constant guard again. After all, as she’d learned before she left for Quantico, a never-captured serial killer was on the hunt. Xander Thurman had been looking for her for months. Thurman also happened to be her father.

      She took a rideshare from the airport to work, which was the Central Community Police Station in downtown L.A. She didn’t formally start work again until tomorrow and wasn’t in the mood to chat, so she didn’t even go into the main bullpen of the station.

      Instead, she went to her assigned mailbox cubby and collected her mail, which had been forwarded from a post office box. No one—not her work colleagues, not her friends, not even her adoptive parents—knew her actual address. She’d rented the apartment through a leasing company; her name was nowhere on the agreement and there was no paperwork connecting her to the building.

      Once she grabbed the mail, she walked along a side corridor to the motor pool, where taxis were always waiting in the adjoining alley. She hopped in one and directed it to the retail strip center that was situated next to her apartment complex, about two miles away.

      One reason she’d picked this place to live after her friend Lacy had insisted she move out was that it was difficult to find and even harder to access without permission. First of all, its parking structure was under the adjoining retail complex in the same building, so anyone following her would have a hard time determining where she was going.

      Even if someone did figure it out, the building had a doorman and a security guard. The front door and the elevators both required keycards. And none of the apartments themselves had unit numbers listed on the outside. Residents just had to remember which was theirs.

      Still, Jessie took extra precautions. Once the cab, which she paid for with cash, dropped her off, she walked into the retail center. First she passed quickly through a coffee shop, meandering through the crowd before taking a side exit.

      Then, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt over her shoulder-length brown hair, she passed through a food court to a hallway that had restrooms next to a door marked “Employees Only.” She pushed open the women’s restroom door so that anyone following her would see it closing and think she’d gone in. Instead, not looking back, she hurried through the employee entrance, which was a long hallway with back door entrances to each business.

      She jogged along the curved corridor until she found a stairwell with a sign marked “Maintenance.” Hurrying down the steps as quietly as possible, she used the keycard she’d gotten from the building manager to unlock that door too. She’d negotiated special authorization to this area based on her LAPD connection rather than by trying to explain that her precautions were related to having an on-the-loose serial killer for a father.

      The maintenance door closed and locked behind her as she navigated her way along a narrow passage with exposed pipes jutting out at all angles and metal cages securing equipment she didn’t understand. After several minutes of dodging and weaving among the obstacles, she reached a small alcove near a large boiler.

      Midway down the passage, the recessed area was unlit and easy to miss. She’d had to have it pointed out to her the first time she’d been down here. She stepped into the alcove as she pulled out the old key she’d been given. The lock to this door was an old-school bolt. She turned it, pushed open the heavy door, and quickly closed and locked it behind her.

      Now in the supply room on the basement level of her apartment building, she had officially transitioned from the retail center property to the apartment complex. She hurried through the darkened room, nearly tripping over a tub of bleach lying on the floor. She opened that door, passed through the empty maintenance manager’s office, and walked up the tight stairwell that opened onto the back hallway of the apartment building’s main floor.

      She rounded the corner to the vestibule with the bank of elevators, where she could hear Jimmy the doorman and Fred the security guard amiably chatting with a resident in the front lobby. She didn’t have time to catch up with them now but promised herself she would reconnect later.

      Both were nice guys. Fred was a former highway patrolman who had retired early after a bad on-the-job motorcycle accident. It left him with a limp and a large scar on his left cheek, but that didn’t stop him from constantly joking around. Jimmy, in his mid-twenties, was a sweet, earnest kid using this job to pay his way through college.

      She moved past the vestibule to the service elevator, which wasn’t visible from the lobby, swiped her card, and waited anxiously to see if anyone had followed her. She knew the chances were remote but that didn’t stop her from shifting nervously from one foot to the other until the elevator arrived.

      When it did, she stepped in, pushed the button for the fourth floor, and then the one to close the door. When the doors opened, she scurried down the hall until she got to her apartment. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she studied her door.

      On first glance, it looked as nondescript as all the others on the floor. But she’d had several security upgrades added when she moved in. First, she stepped back so that she was three feet away