Page 28 of The Perfect Betrayal
“You apologizing doesn’t mean I’m going to magically view you the way I did before that happened. It takes time. And you’re not giving me any. Here’s a little tip: the behavior that you’re exhibiting right now is counterproductive. Now I’ve agreed tohelp with your class. For the last time, do you want that help or not?”
He looked at her, and she could tell that he was actually weighing his answer to that question. She'd assumed it would be a default "yes." After all, he currently had a "C" in the class, which was supposed to be an easy "A" for non-majors. Over the course of the next five seconds, his expression morphed from pouty to agitated to seething. He stood up.
“I’ll figure it out on my own,” he said.
She shook her head in disappointment.
“This isn’t a good look for you, Finn.”
“You’re making a mistake with this guy,” he scolded. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Then, to make his point, he kicked the leg of the table before storming off. Hannah watched him march out of the café. She’d been slightly surprised by his response but after that wore off, she noted that he’d proven her point—clean cut guys could be jerks.
And sometimes far worse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jessie’s eyes snapped open.
It took her a moment to process her situation. She was in the passenger seat of Detective Riddell’s car, and he was shaking her shoulder.
“We’re here,” he said. “And by the way, you sure do take a lot of naps.”
She didn't respond to that. What was she going to say—I foolishly took a medication to help me control my violent urges and it's made me sleepy and mentally foggy all day—she doubted that would help much. Instead, she looked out the window
"Here" was Samantha Collins's neighborhood, Gardena. While still in the South Bay part of Los Angeles, the community wasn't adjacent to the ocean like Redondo Beach was. It was about five miles inland and more of a working and middle-class community than the neighborhoods where the yacht club boys lived.
“Is that her address?” she asked Riddell, nodding at the apartment complex that he’d parked in front of.
“According to your HHS research geniuses, it is,” he said.
Jessie didn’t comment on the fact that Jamil at leastwasactually a genius. Instead, she looked at the text message she'd received from the young man while she was sleeping.
“It looks like my geniuses sent some background info on Samantha Collins,” she said. “You interested in hearing it before we go introduce ourselves?”
He nodded. She clicked on the message.
“So, Collins is 24 years old,” she said. “She’s lived at this address for a little over a year. Before that, she lived at the southern end of Redondo Beach.”
“I’ve got to wonder why she moved from such a nice area to one that’s less desirable,” he said.
"We may have a reason," Jessie told him. "She currently works as a server at a family-style restaurant in Torrance. But prior to that, she was a dancer at a gentlemen's club in Inglewood called The Southland Strip. I guess that once she switched gigs, the rent became harder to pay."
“How much do you want to bet this settlement has something to do with her time on the pole?” Riddell mused.
Jessie silently noted that the detective’s question had a lascivious tone that she didn’t love.
“Do you think that Boyce got too handsy for her taste?” she asked.
“These girls are used to getting groped,” he replied. “For him to pay her off, it must be something more than that.”
Jessie couldn't disagree with his logic. Now, it was time to find out if he was right.
“This is what she looks like, by the way,” she said, holding out an image of Collins’s driver’s license photo. Collins had short dark hair, big green eyes, and pale skin. Even in a DMV photo, she was strikingly beautiful.
“I bet she looked even hotter in her stripper makeup,” Riddell cracked.
Jessie didn’t bother to respond to that one. This guy was beyond help.
