EPILOGUE

It was getting late, but Ash couldn't get to sleep.

She was watching a crappy movie on one of the few stations that the hospital got. When it finally ended, she grabbed the remote to turn the TV off. But before she could, the 10 p.m. local news came on.

To her surprise, there was a story about Jessie Hunt. She watched as a reporter standing on the street in front of a large apartment complex explained how Hunt and her detective husband, Ryan Hernandez, had captured a serial killer live on the internet just before she tried to murder her latest victim.

Ash was already very familiar with Jessie Hunt. When she first woke up from her coma and was told about all the crimes she'd been charged with, she noted that a great many of them had to do with Jessie Hunt. It was Hunt's sister and her best friend that she'd supposedly tried to kill in the desert as part of some elaborate hit job that she'd been assigned.

It seemed that everything that led to her lying here, cuffed to a hospital bed with three armed police officers guarding her 24/7, was in some way connected to Jessie Hunt.

She thought about that, and about her visit with Dr. Lemmon earlier today, which had so unsettled her. Maybe it was the combination of the doctor's willingness to consider her story at face value, while at the same time asking whether she would accept responsibility for her crimes, even if she didn't remember them. The question had rocked her world.

She'd been holding onto her wiped memory as an excuse for committing horrors there was no way to deny. She'd seen surveillance footage of her killing multiple people, and while she couldn't reconcile that person with who she was now, it was clearly her.

She just wanted to shut it all out. She closed her eyes, feeling the same headache from earlier today coming on again. She was about to press the nurses' button to ask for some medication when the pain suddenly escalated. It was as if someone was chipping into her skull with a hammer and chisel .

Images of Jessie Hunt Rya,n Hernandez Han,nah Dorsey Kat, Gentry, and Dr. Lemmon all jumbled around in her brain like kernels in a popcorn maker. She felt nauseated and squeezed her eyes tight, hoping to force all the faces from her mind.

And then in a flash, it all came flooding back—everything she done, everyone she'd killed or harmed. She remembered it all now.

As soon as that happened, the headache went away. And then, after a long, relieved sigh, Ash smiled.