And that required her to get out of this station and away from the men who were assigned to protect her. She couldn’t show up with a coterie of feds. She needed to look trustworthy. And that meant looking vulnerable. And the only way to appear vulnerable was, on some level, to actually be vulnerable.

“Hey, Murph,” she said, making the marshal look up reluctantly from his phone. “I’ve got to shake the dew off the lily. Be back in a few.”

He didn’t even smile as she got up and walked out. She glanced back to make sure he wasn’t watching. He wasn’t. She also noticed her sidearm was resting on the table beside her laptop and briefly considered going back for it. But that would definitely draw Murph’s attention and suspicion. Instead, she hurried down the hall, not wanting to bump into Dolan along the way.

By the time the FBI agent and the US marshal began to get suspicious, she had already requisitioned a department vehicle. By the time they started looking for her, she was on the road and en route to the West Hollywood Hills home of Milton Jerebko.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Jessie knew she didn’t have long.

As she drove up the sharply winding hill streets, she did the math in her head. It would have taken about five minutes for Murph to start to get suspicious; maybe another two or three before he acted on it and checked on her. And then maybe two more before he concluded that she was genuinely gone. So call it ten minutes to be conservative before he began actively searching for her.

He’d check her phone signal. She’d turned off the location sharing feature and the phone itself. But that was only a stopgap measure. They’d be able to ping her GPS location as soon as they got the system active. That wouldn’t take more than five minutes, knowing him.

They’d be frustrated when they realized her phone’s signal was coming from inside the station conference room. But that would only be a temporary setback. They’d learn about her vehicle requisition pretty fast. When they did, they’d pinpoint where it was using the signal beacon all LAPD vehicles were equipped with. That whole process might take a total of five additional minutes.

And she was sure that as soon as Murph saw the direction she was going, he’d guess her destination and send West Hollywood PD to meet her. So best-case scenario: she had a twenty-minute head start, realistically closer to fifteen. That wasn’t a lot of time for what she had in mind.

When she arrived, the gate was open, which seemed to defeat the purpose of the high stone walls but made her life easier. She zipped up the Jerebko driveway, parked, and jogged the last few steps to their front door porch. She was about to ring the doorbell when she saw movement to her left in the shadows by a tree in their yard.