CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

"We're almost there," Jessie assured her, hoping that keeping her own voice calm would help Kat do the same. "Now explain what happened."

Over the phone, she heard Kat take several deep breaths as she tried to get control of herself. All Jessie knew was that Mitch had been shot and that the ambulance had taken them to Cedars-Sinai, the same hospital that she and Ryan just left a few minutes ago.

"Some kid pulled out a gun on the street where Mitch and I were walking," she said, talking extremely fast. "He was aiming at me, but Mitch jumped in the way and got hit in the stomach. A nearby officer took the guy out."

Kat paused to catch her breath. Jessie considered saying something to help focus her, but before she could, her friend dived back in. "Before he pulled out the gun, he shouted something about being the chosen one and completing someone else's mission. Jessie, he specifically said that he was the assassin now. I think he might have somehow been in contact with Ash Pierce and that she put him up to this, to take over for her. We both know she's just pretending to have amnesia. But she's probably been secretly planning this as payback. I wouldn't be surprised if this kid is an orderly or nursing aide here at the hospital and that she brainwashed him over the last few weeks."

Jessie would never put anything past Ash Pierce, but Kat seemed to be jumping to a pretty specific conclusion without much evidence. Still, she didn't feel like this was the time to make that point.

"We'll figure it out," she said instead. "How is Mitch?"

"He's lost some blood and is in real pain, but he's alert," Kat said. "They're working on him now. I think he's going to be all right."

"Good. Where are you exactly?"

"In the emergency room, bed fourteen," Kat told her. "Hold on—something's happening. I have to go."

"Okay, we'll be there in a minute," Jessie promised, but Kat had already hung up.

She gripped the dashboard as Ryan swerved in and out of traffic at nearly triple the speed limit. Right now, she didn't mind. He shouted to be heard over the siren.

"What's the situation?"

"A guy yelled something about being an assassin and shot at Kat. Mitch jumped in to take the bullet, but Kat said she thinks he's going to be okay. A cop at the scene took out the shooter. Kat thought the killer was acting on Ash Pierce's orders."

"Do you think that?" Ryan asked as he ran the last red light before they reached the hospital.

"I don't know," she replied. "That woman is capable of anything, but—."

She didn't finish her thought. Ryan cut into the emergency room driveway and came to a hard stop.

"You go in," he told her. "I'll move the car out of the way and be right behind you."

"Okay," she replied. "They're at bed fourteen."

She dashed through the main doors and ran over to the emergency room reception window, holding up her ID. "Jessie Hunt, LAPD. I need bed fourteen!"

The nurse buzzed her in without question. Once inside, the woman directed her down the hall.

"Halfway down and to the left," she said.

"Thanks," Jessie said. "My partner will be in here any moment. Please send him there too."

The nurse nodded, and Jessie sprinted ahead, dodging two nurses and someone pushing a patient on a stretcher. The walls had numbers next to each curtained alcove. She passed them quickly and was just to bed ten when a doctor stepped out from behind a curtain just ahead of her. The expression on the man's face told her all she needed to know. She stopped in her tracks.

"Mitch Connor?" she demanded.

The doctor's dejected face morphed into confusion.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Jessie Hunt, criminal profiler for the LAPD," she told him, holding up her ID. "I'm also a good friend of Mitch and his fiancée', Katherine Gentry. What's his status?"

The doctor took it all in with surprising calm, a characteristic that she suspected was cultivated by working in this environment.

"I'm sorry," he said. "but Mr. Connor's injury was beyond our capabilities to treat. We did everything we could, but unfortunately, he died."

Jessie stood there silently, trying to process the words she"d just heard. She had no reason to doubt the doctor, but part of her wanted to ask if he was sure. Of course, she knew that was pointless. Instead, she focused her attention on the next question that popped into her head.

"Is Kat in there?" she asked quietly, "Ms. Gentry, I mean?"

The doctor shook his head.

"I'm afraid that she rushed out right after we called the time of death," he said. "I sent a nurse after her but I'm not sure where she went."

Jessie nodded. She could understand Kat's reaction. Her friend had seen all manner of death and destruction, both in Afghanistan and here at home, but this was something else entirely. Just then, a young nurse with short, brown hair walked over.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Rustin," she said, "But I couldn't find the patient's girlfriend. I thought she went to the restroom, but she wasn't there."

"Fiancée," Jessie corrected absently.

"Excuse me?" the nurse asked.

"They were getting married in a few months," she explained. "Kat was his fiancée."

"I'm sorry," the nurse said unconvincingly.

"Which direction did she go?" Jessie asked.

The nurse pointed behind her.

"I saw her run out the back door to the left," she said. "I assumed she was going to the restroom back there, but I couldn"t locate her anywhere."

"I'll find her," Jessie said. "A detective named Ryan Hernandez will be back here any minute. Please tell him everything you can about the incident—the nature of the gunshot wound, anything Mitch Connor might have said before he died. Details matter."

She didn't wait for a response, instead rushing to the back of the emergency room and pushing through the doors. She immediately saw the restroom the nurse had mentioned. But something else caught her eye. Just to the left of them was a bank of elevators. Suddenly, a heart-stopping thought entered her mind.

She knew this hospital like the back of her hand, which meant that she knew far better than most where those elevators led. On the fifth floor was the secure unit where Ash Pierce had been held for the last eleven weeks. Kat knew it too. There was no way that she could have seen those elevators without the same thought entering her head.

Kat was going after Pierce.