The final line of his release papers read, “It is the opinion of this physician that subject Cortez poses a continuing risk to the community. He has learned to conceal his desires but it is likely that at some point, soon or perhaps well in the future, the same psychiatric issues that led to his placement at this facility will reassert themselves. Unfortunately, our current system makes no accommodation for that possibility and requires that he be released forthwith. Follow-up treatment, while not mandated, is highly recommended.”

No further treatment occurred. When Ernie became a guard at NRD and began interacting with Bolton Crutchfield, a master manipulator, he fell under his sway. But he never let on, continuing to do his job and interact positively with the co-workers he would eventually kill.

Kat blamed herself for all their deaths, though there was no way she could have anticipated them. Jessie had tried multiple times to assuage her guilt, to no avail.

“I’m a forensic profiler who is trained to pick up things like sociopathic tendencies,” she’d said. “I interacted with him on over a dozen occasions and I never once suspected him. I don’t see how you could have.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kat insisted. “I was responsible for those officers’ safety and for keeping those inmates secure. I failed on both fronts. I deserve the blame.”

That conversation was three days ago. Now Kat was somewhere in France, unaware that the Marshal Service had requested that Interpol assign an undercover officer to tail her for her own protection. For her part, Jessie was stuck lying on plastic pool furniture within shouting distance of freeway traffic. She had no one to talk to, hardly any privacy, and little to keep her mind from going to dark places. In the more self-pitying moments, she felt like she was being victimized all over again.

As she headed inside to grab herself a snack, she pulled on the cover-up one of the marshals had bought her the other day. He wasn’t given detailed instructions so how it fit wasn’t his fault. But Jessie couldn’t help but be frustrated that the thing barely went down to her hips and was somehow still bulky. A lean five foot ten, she needed something twice as long and half as wide. She put her shoulder-length brown hair in a ponytail and tried to keep her green eyes from looking too annoyed as she stepped inside.

Entering the house, she saw the marshal who was standing near the sliding door turn his head slightly. He was clearly listening to some message in his earpiece. His body tensed up involuntarily at whatever he’d been told. Jessie knew something was up even before she entered the kitchen.

He didn’t say anything to her so she continued toward the kitchen, pretending to be oblivious to whatever was going on. Uncertain if the message was about a breach of the house, she looked around for something to protect herself with in case Crutchfield had found her. Resting on a console table in the dining room near the kitchen entrance was a glass snow globe of San Francisco, about the size of a cantaloupe.