As she fleetingly wondered why San Francisco would have snow, she grabbed the globe and placed it behind her back. Then she stepped into the kitchen with her weight on the balls of her feet, her body torqued for action and her eyes darting back and forth in search of any threat. At the far end of the kitchen, a door opened.

CHAPTER TWO

As Jessie waited to see who it was, she realized she’d stopped breathing and forced herself to exhale slowly and quietly.

Stepping briskly into the room, without a hint of apprehension, was Frank Corcoran. The supervising marshal on her detail, Corcoran was all business. Square-jawed and square-framed, he wore a navy suit with a white shirt and perfectly knotted black tie. His neatly trimmed mustache had the first hints of gray at the edges, as did his short-cropped black hair.

“Have a seat, Ms. Hunt,” he said without a trace of casualness. “We need to talk. And you can put down the snow globe. I promise you won’t need it.”

Placing the globe on the kitchen table while pointedly refusing to ask how he’d known about it, Jessie sat down, wondering what fresh hell he was about to reveal. Xander Thurman had already murdered her adoptive parents. He’d nearly killed two cops trying to get to her in her own apartment. Bolton Crutchfield’s violent escape from NRD had led to the deaths of six guards. Had one of the remaining escapees found Kat in Europe? Had they gone after her friend and sometime partner, LAPD Detective Ryan Hernandez, whom she hadn’t heard from in days? She prepared herself for the worst.

“I have some updates for you,” Corcoran said, when he realized Jessie wasn’t going to ask any questions.

“Okay.”

I spoke with your captain,” he said, pulling out a scrap of paper and reading from it. “He wanted to convey the well wishes of the entire precinct. He said they are following every available lead and he hopes you won’t have to sit tight for too much longer.”

Jessie could tell from Corcoran’s skeptical tone of voice and his slightly raised eyebrows that he didn’t share Captain Decker’s view of the situation.

“You’re less optimistic than he, I gather?”

“That’s the next update,” he replied, not technically answering her question. “We’ve had no luck finding Mr. Crutchfield. While two escapees have been captured, as you know, two others are still at large, not to mention Mr. Cortez.”

“Did the captured men provide any useful information since you last updated me?”

“Unfortunately no,” he conceded. “Both men still say the same thing—that they all went their separate ways within minutes of their escape. Neither of these men even knew it was happening until they were released from their cells.”

“So it was likely only Crutchfield and Cortez who planned this?”

“That’s what we think,” Corcoran said. “Nonetheless, we have a massive, ongoing manhunt for all the escapees. In addition to LAPD, the Sheriff’s Department, CHP, the CBI, and FBI are all involved, as is, of course, the Marshals Service.”