But stuff like generalized apprehension about an upcoming midterm or butterflies at meeting someone famous?That stuff didn’t really exist for her.Her unperturbed temperament allowed her to function extremely well under that kind of duress.And even when confronting a knife-wielding stalker in a women’s bathroom, as she had last week, she’d managed to keep her head.But this was different.
Kat was driving her to meet up with Finn Anderton, her friend and almost-more from college.She hadn’t seen him in person since he was in a coma that he’d emerged from just over a month ago.And strangely enough, it was because she was nervous.
Maybe it was because Finn’s coma was to a large degree, her fault.Finn was lucky to be alive at all after confronting Dallas Henry, a fellow student who had won her over.Finn had discovered that Dallas had a well-hidden history of engaging in violently misogynistic online rhetoric.What he didn’t know was that Dallas had been carefully cultivating his connection to Hannah in order to seduce, torture, and kill her.
He also wasn’t expecting Dallas to pull out a knife in a darkened nighttime campus parking lot and stab him multiple times, leaving him for dead.After months, he regained consciousness, right around the time that Hannah was fighting for her life in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Her own quick thinking and a police helicopter carrying her big sister, Jessie, had combined to get her to safety and put Dallas Henry first in the hospital, then jail.But it was possible that none of that would have been necessary if she’d listened to Finn’s initial warnings that Dallas wasn’t what he seemed.
At the time, he didn’t have proof and she thought he was just jealous.That was probably true as well, but it didn’t invalidate his suspicions.For all of that, Hannah felt as close to guilty as was possible for her.That wasn’t really an emotion she experienced much either.
“How are you doing?”Kat asked from the driver’s seat.“You going to be okay with this?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah admitted.“I mean, we’ve spoken on the phone a few times.I apologized and he said it wasn’t my fault.But obviously, he was just being nice.”
“Well, I think this is going to go a long way to smoothing things over,” Kat said as she turned onto the street where Finn’s cousin lived.They had agreed on this location, rather than Finn’s parents’ house, where he’d been staying during his recovery, as a security precaution.The realization that they were so close gave Hannah a shot of jangly adrenaline that was pretty close to nervousness.
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
“By doing this, at least things won’t be so awkward when you both go back to school.”
“That’s an optimistic perspective,” Hannah said.“School starts up again in less than a month.It’s still not clear that he’ll be healthy enough to attend.And we both know that unless something happens with the other thing, I’ll be doing online classes for sure.”
Kat didn’t have an answer for that one.The ‘other thing’ was hitwoman Ash Pierce, who was currently on the loose, likely working on her plan to kill both people in this car.And since she knew that Hannah attended UCI, attending in person was a no-go.
That was the reason they weren’t meeting up at Finn’s house.Pierce would likely know about his stabbing and Hannah’s desire to check on him.If the killer was watching his house, better not to show up there.So Finn and his father had used an elaborate pre-determined route—conceived of by Kat—to get to the cousin’s house.
Ash Pierce was also why Hannah had been holed up in Kat’s apartment for the last five weeks.Because the former CIA assassin had it in for her and Kat specifically, it wasn’t safe to go home to Jessie’s house.After a discussion with her sister, Ryan, and Kat, they’d all agreed she’d be better off at Kat’s place for the time being.
After all, Kat was in hiding too.In fact, she’d been so concerned—justifiably—about her own welfare that she’d moved both her detective agency office and her apartment.With a little help from Jessie’s numerous financial resources, both new places were able to be secured by going through dummy shell companies that didn’t include the names of anyone connected to them.Finding where Kat lived and worked would be virtually impossible, even for someone as dogged as Ash Pierce.That made it an ideal place for Hannah to recuperate after her near-death experience at the hands of Dallas.
Unfortunately, there was a downside to spending all that time at Kat’s place.She had developed what Dr.Lemmon had informally described as a mild version of agoraphobia.Even though the high-rise apartment tower location was essentially untraceable and had layers of security, she found herself never leaving.She would work out in the on-site fitness center or go to the lobby to pick up food service deliveries, but mostly she stayed in the apartment.
That had finally changed last week when she agreed to go in the field to help Kat with a stalking case.Even though the situation had gotten messy, with her fighting off their client’s stalker in an office restroom, the experience had been liberating.It had given her back a bit of control over her life.
Since then, she’d been going out more: frequenting coffee shops, buying groceries, even going to a movie.She reminded herself that L.A.was a huge city.Even if Pierce knew they were downtown, that was still a large swath of area to search.And it was unlikely that the assassin was going to roam the downtown streets looking for Hannah and Kat when she was on everyone’s “most wanted” list.
Of course, Hannah knew that with her long blonde hair and tall, lithe figure, she often stood out.So, she still wore baseball caps and sunglasses everywhere, and dressed in attire that wasn’t typical for a 19-year-old college student.They were reasonable precautions that made her feel safer when going out, so she embraced them.
But none of those measures were a long-term solution.The only way to end this nightmare for good was to find Pierce before she found them.But that was proving challenging.The last time they had any record of her was five weeks ago, when a limo driver was found murdered in his car under a freeway underpass.The method of death set off alarm bells for Kat.
Upon further investigation, she discovered that the driver had been hired to take his client on a tour of a lovely Mid-Wilshire neighborhood: Jessie’s.Ash Pierce had been staking out her home.But after that incident, Pierce had gone dark.
It was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth.Multiple law enforcement agencies had APBs out on her.But after weeks of looking for her without success, the search took a backseat to the agencies’ more pressing investigations.
But Hannah and Kat kept at it.With the unofficial assistance of the HSS research team, they had tried everything they could think of to track her down.But there were no blurry traffic camera images.No traceable purchases.And definitely no dead bodies in the Pierce style.
To some that might be reassuring.But not to Hannah and Kat.To them, it felt more like the hitwoman was hibernating before she came out of her cave, ready to inflict maximum damage.That’s why Hannah had recommended that Jessie and Ryan leave the house too, until Pierce had been found.But her sister wasn’t having it.
Jessie reminded her of the myriad security measures at the house.And she was right.The place was already a veritable citadel.Even before Pierce, it had to be, as a result of her work as a criminal profiler.
With multiple killers she’d taken down having vendettas against her, she’d set up an elaborate security system at her house that involved everything from fingerprint identification on the entry keypad to steel doors to a panic room.In addition, she had gotten permission from the city to set up surveillance cameras at various locations on their street and in the wider neighborhood.But after learning about Ash Pierce’s recent visit, they’d amped it up beyond even that.
The home security system now included a retinal scan.Additional cameras were added all along their street that offered real-time facial recognition technology.If Pierce showed up again and was identified by the system, Jessie, Ryan, and Captain Gaylene Parker, would get immediate alerts.
But Hannah suspected she knew the real reason that Jessie felt such confidence.The unspoken reality was that Ash Pierce wasn’t after her.At least not yet.She’d originally been hired to torture and kill Jessie’s loved ones, and then come after her directly.
Pierce had had started that mission last summer by going after Hannah and Kat.But when they’d turned the tables on her and she’d ended up incarcerated, the two of them had gone from a means to an end to the end itself.Ash Pierce didn’t like to be bested, and she definitely didn’t like being shown up, especially by a teenager.
