The perfect revenge, p.1
THE PERFECT REVENGE, page 1
t h e p e r f e c t
r e v e n g e
(a jessie hunt psychological suspense—book 41)
b l a k e p i e r c e
Blake Pierce
USA Today and #1 bestselling author Blake Pierce is the author of numerous series in the mystery and thriller genres, spanning 10 years of work, including the Jessie Hunt, Ella Dark, Rylie Page, Faith Bold and Rachel Gift series. Blake's most recent latest releases are the Jenna Graves, Alison Payne, Isla Rivers and Kari Blackhorse series.
Please visit blakepierceauthor.com to learn more, join the email list, receive free books, and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2025 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Pereslavtseva Katerina used under license from Shutterstock.com.
SERIES BY BLAKE PIERCE
KATE VALENTINE
KARI BLACKHORSE
ISLA RIVERS
ALISON PAYNE
JENNA GRAVES
THE GOVERNESS
RACHEL BLACKWOOD
SHEILA STONE
FINN WRIGHT
MORGAN CROSS
JULIETTE HART
FAITH BOLD
FIONA RED
DAISY FORTUNE
AMBER YOUNG
CAMI LARK
NICKY LYONS
CORA SHIELDS
MAY MOORE
PAIGE KING
VALERIE LAW
RACHEL GIFT
AVA GOLD
A YEAR IN EUROPE
ELLA DARK
LAURA FROST
EUROPEAN VOYAGE
ADELE SHARP
THE AU PAIR
ZOE PRIME
JESSIE HUNT
CHLOE FINE
KATE WISE
THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE
RILEY PAIGE
MACKENZIE WHITE
AVERY BLACK
KERI LOCKE
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
Veronica Sterling was afraid to move.
Emma, her 4-year-old daughter, appeared to have finally drifted off, and Veronica didn’t want to do anything to accidentally wake her up.
She was currently sitting at the edge of Emma’s bed in their Brentwood mansion, where she’d just completed singing the theme song to the TV show Friends for the sixth time tonight. She never thought she’d get sick of the ditty, but she was close now. It was her own fault.
At some point, she'd gotten tired of the traditional bedtime lullabies and started singing slowed-down versions of her favorite songs. Songs like Rihanna's "Umbrella" and Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" might not seem like natural lullabies, but if you dragged them out and gave them that cradlesong vibe, they worked just fine.
Unfortunately, Emma had taken to “I’ll Be There For You” so much that it’s all she would accept these days, which is why Veronica had been sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a child’s bed for the last fifteen minutes. She glanced at her phone. It was 8:55.
She had hoped to be in bed by 8:30 like her husband, Gray, who was happily dead to the world right now, snoring softly in their bedroom. But the thunderstorm outside, unusual for mid-July in Los Angeles, had thrown Emma for a loop. She’d knocked on the bathroom door as Veronica was washing her face, and with her stuffed capybara doll in hand, asked to be tucked in and sung to in order to “make the thunder booms not so scary.”
It appeared to have worked, as Emma was now softly whistling through her nose, as she often did when she was truly settled in to sleep. So Veronica gently pushed herself up from the bed, adjusted the sheets around her daughter, and tiptoed out the door. After carefully closing it behind her, she headed downstairs to pour herself a well-deserved late-night half-glass of Chablis.
As she made her way down the stairs, an especially raucous rumble of thunder made the walls shake slightly. She winced, hoping that Emma hadn't noticed. When she finally got downstairs and into the kitchen, she allowed herself to exhale heavily. It was silly, really. She'd been holding her breath until now, as if her breathing would disturb Emma, when loud booms echoed through the house every thirty seconds or so.
She left the kitchen lights off and used the one from the refrigerator to guide her as she poured her glass. She was about to close the fridge door when she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the window over the sink. She wished she hadn’t.
Veronica knew she was an attractive woman. But at this late hour, after a long day, and in the unflattering light from the refrigerator, she thought she looked all of her 33 years. With her makeup off and her brown hair unkempt from briefly lying in the bed beside Emma, she wasn't at her best. But who cared? Emma didn't seem to. Nor did Gray. So why should she?
She turned away from the window and shut the fridge door. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the kitchen. She jumped slightly. Before the light disappeared, she noticed that the door leading from the kitchen to the side yard was slightly ajar.
She took a deep breath, trying not to get too frustrated. Gray was notorious for forgetting to close and lock doors, but he was usually pretty good about it at night. Apparently, he'd need a reminder. She was tempted to go upstairs right now and shake him awake to give him one. But that would probably do more harm than good. So she decided to let it go for now.
She put her glass on the breakfast bar and walked over to close the door. She was just turning the lock when she felt a sharp prick in the back of her neck, followed by an odd burning sensation.
As she reached for the affected area, she suddenly felt funny, like she wasn’t in control of her body
CHAPTER ONE
Hannah Dorsey didn’t know why she was so nervous.
When her big sister, criminal profiler Jessie Hunt, asked her to take a ride with her and Ryan after dinner, a little alarm bell went off, though she couldn’t explain why. Jessie said they were going for ice cream, which they’d done on many occasions in the past. And her sister’s demeanor was the same as usual. So why did Hannah feel the hair on her arms standing up?
After they got their cones, they started back home. Jessie’s husband, LAPD Detective Ryan Hernandez, drove. He hadn’t gotten a cone, which was a little unusual. The man was six feet and 200 pounds of square-jawed granite, but he still liked an occasional late-night treat. But apparently not tonight. And Hannah noted that he’d been mostly quiet on the drive, which was even more unusual.
What really got Hannah's guard up was when they diverted from the normal route home and pulled into a covered mall parking garage. Ryan drove in and out of the parking rows, making sharp turns and speeding up as he rounded the corners and took the ramps down from one level to the next. It was almost as if he was trying to determine if they were being followed.
"What's going on?" she asked both of them. "We're not a mall family, and you're driving like a crazy person."
“We’ll explain soon,” Jessie looked back over her shoulder. “In a moment, we are going to park, hop out of this car, and make our way to another one. We need to be very quick about it. Are you ready?”
"I guess I have to be." Suddenly, Hannah wasn't very hungry.
Ryan rounded the corner and went down the ramp to the final, fourth level. There were very few cars this far down in the mall garage at 9:30 P.M. on a Thursday night. He parked right next to the elevators and turned off the car.
“Let’s go,” he sa
Jessie did the same, so Hannah followed suit. She started toward the elevator, but Jessie shook her head, pointing at the sign for the stairs.
“More options that way.”
Hannah heard a squeal and glanced back at the ramp leading down from the level above. It could simply be another mall customer, but clearly neither Jessie nor Ryan wanted to take the chance and motioned for her to hurry. Jessie took the lead, leaping up the stairs two at a time. Hannah was next. Ryan brought up the rear.
Jessie skipped the third and second parking levels. When they got up to the first floor, she headed straight for the exit out to the street. A black SUV was parked in a loading zone out front with its hazard lights flashing. The back door opened as they approached.
“That’s our ride,” Jessie said, walking briskly toward the vehicle, jumping in, and sliding over. Hannah did the same and took the middle seat. Ryan got in after her and closed the door.
“We’re good,” he said to the driver, who immediately took off.
Hannah studied the man at the wheel. Likely in his late twenties, with a crewcut and a stern expression, he was wearing a suit jacket. In the passenger seat was another man, also in a suit jacket, who was closer to 35. He looked weathered, and his close-cropped hair had the slightest hints of gray.
“What’s our ETA?” Ryan asked the driver, who was maneuvering through the streets in the same evasive manner that Ryan had adopted in the garage.
“About six minutes.”
“Do I get to know what’s happening now?” Hannah asked.
"In about six minutes," Jessie told her.
***
It only took five.
By the time that they pulled into the driveway of a small cottage house in nearby Carthay Square, Hannah was starting to feel slightly nauseated from all the sudden sharp turns and unexpected lane changes. The driver shot forward into the open garage, which was barely large enough to hold one vehicle.
“Wait until the door closes to get out,” instructed the older man in the passenger seat.
“So are these guys private security or law enforcement?” Hannah asked her sister.
“What do you think?”
Hannah looked at the men again, this time more closely.
“Clean-shaven. Short haircuts. Nondescript suits. Feels like the requirements of a government gig. I’m guessing FBI?”
“Close,” Ryan said. “U.S. Marshals.”
“You can exit the vehicle now,” the Marshal in the passenger seat said once the garage door closed, doing so himself.
They got out and headed for the door to the house. The passenger seat Marshal opened it and stepped inside. Hannah was about to do the same when Jessie put a hand on her shoulder.
She looked at her sister, who, at five foot ten, was a mere inch taller than her. They shared the same green eyes, a gift from the now-dead serial killer who was father to them both. But while Hannah's hair was long and blonde, Jessie's was shoulder-length and brown.
Over a decade separated them. But Jessie, despite the horrors she’d encountered, looked younger than her 32 years. And Hannah, nineteen, could pass for her mid-twenties. They’d even occasionally been mistaken for fraternal twins. Right now, Jessie was frowning.
“Before we go in there, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.” Hannah didn’t get nervous the way most people did. Even so, she felt the slightest hint of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.
“You’ve got to let me get through this before you say anything, okay?”
“Okay.” The pit grew slightly.
“I’m sure you remember six weeks ago when Finn Anderton was moved out of the hospital.”
“Of course.”
It was a silly question considering that the night was burned in Hannah’s brain. After her college classmate, friend, and almost more was stabbed repeatedly in a campus parking lot and almost died, he was transferred to the hospital, where he lay unconscious for nearly a month. She’d spent most evenings there, sometimes in his room, the waiting area in the hall, or in the cafeteria downstairs.
She was in that last location, napping at a cafeteria table with her head resting on her folded hands, when Finn had been secreted away. The security officer guarding his room told her that a group of men who identified themselves as U.S. Marshals had removed him, saying his family wanted him transferred to a hospice to live out his remaining time.
Hannah had always been suspicious of the story. The hospital security footage that she’d hacked had been wiped clean for the stretch of time when Finn was moved. And Hannah’s subsequent attempts to follow the family from their house in the hopes that they might lead her to the hospice proved fruitless.
In fact, now that she thought about it, they'd used the same technique that Ryan had employed tonight: parking in a covered lot and disappearing into a mall or grocery store. Often, they wouldn't return for hours. She had suspected something fishy was going on, but was now convinced that Marshals had been giving the family rides to see Finn.
“Is he here?” she demanded of her sister.
“Yes, but you can’t see him yet,” Jessie said. “I need to explain some things first. And you need to keep your voice down, no matter what I say.”
“Okay, explain.”
“I’m the one who organized the transfer,” Jessie said simply.
Hannah felt the pit in her stomach melt, burned away by the rage that replaced it. She wanted to yell at her sister, whom she’d asked for help in finding Finn and who had apparently known his location the whole time. But she couldn’t yell, so she hissed instead.
“Go on.”
“We were worried that Finn was too exposed at the hospital,” Jessie explained in a whisper. “Even with a guard posted outside his room 24/7, he was vulnerable. Whoever attacked him had to know that if he ever woke up, he could reveal their identity. So the attacker might be willing to take some dangerous risks to get to him. We needed Finn taken to a location that we could better control.”
“So what, you called in a favor from Murph?” Hannah demanded.
“That’s correct,” someone said, stepping out from the shadows.
Hannah recognized him immediately. It was Patrick “Murph” Murphy, a senior U.S. Marshal who had once hidden Jessie, Ryan, and herself in a mountain cabin safe house when they were being hunted by a notorious serial killer known as the Night Hunter.
“How’s it going, Murph?” she said, trying to control her frustration.
“It’s good to see you again, Hannah.”
Murph had the certitude of a man who’d been dealing with situations like this all his life. His physical bearing reinforced that image. Short and trim, with tightly cropped light brown hair, he projected a no-nonsense sensibility.
“You too,” she said before returning her attention to her sister. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were at risk too,” Jessie said. “First at that hospital. If you were in the room with Finn and the attacker came to finish him off, do you think they’d just leave you be? You’d be a witness. And even after he was moved, we feared that if you knew where Finn was and went to visit him, the attacker might follow you there.”
“You couldn’t do what you did with the family, and have the Marshals take me secretly, like they did tonight?”
Murph shook his head.
“We don’t have the manpower or financial resources for that,” he said. “It’s one thing to periodically get the family here. That can be justified to my bosses. But his not-quite-girlfriend? I don’t think so. Besides, the family wasn’t all that enthused about you even being at the hospital so much, so they weren’t going to be okay with you coming here.”
Hannah knew Finn’s family didn’t love her. She got the feeling that they blamed her for what happened to him, even though she hadn’t been around at the time of the attack. Of course, since Finn met her, he had been in a few dangerous scrapes, probably more than he’d encountered in his entire life up to that point.
“So you obviously had the hospital surveillance footage wiped,” she said, returning her ire to Jessie. “Did you have Jamil and Beth slow walk things when I asked them for help finding Finn?”
Jamil Winslow and Beth Ryerson were the researchers for Jessie and Ryan’s LAPD unit, Homicide Special Section. Hannah had been working as an intern in their office this summer.
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