Chosen To Die

by Lisa Jackson

  A big man, from the size of one footprint they’d taken.

  A local who had knowledge and felt comfortable in this rugged, frigid terrain.

  A marksman.

  A smart individual who was organized enough to locate these women, track them, wound them, and eventually kill them.

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  A hater.

  Several names came quickly to mind: Dell Blight, a big man with a belly as large as his disdain of the sheriff’s department. He’d been hauled in several times, drunk, once waving a weapon around, but then, he wasn’t exactly a candidate for a national think tank.

  Rod Larimer, owner of the Bull and Bear, or B&B Bed and Breakfast, as it was locally known, was currently enjoying a brisk trade, all because of the sudden notoriety of the town. And Rod was a man who despised Sheriff Grayson. He’d been married a few times and his wives had always left him. But could he shoot?

  Then there was Otis Kruger, a mean drunk who owned an arsenal of weaponry and who had bragged about killing a doe out of season from an incredible distance—shot her dead center. He’d been hauled in for poaching, but again, wasn’t the brightest color in the crayon box. A crack shot with a low I.Q. Dangerous combination, but could he really be Star-Crossed? Selena expelled a breath. The best and brightest marksmen in the county were some of the very men she worked with: hunters and lawmen. But she wouldn’t go there, couldn’t believe someone who’d sworn to uphold the law would get off on making a mockery of it.

  The wind kicked up, bitter cold, and some of the firemen were gathering their gear and packing up. There was nothing more to be done tonight. A headache had formed at the base of Alvarez’s skull, her eyes were scratchy, and her nose was now running like a faucet. She logged out of the scene and headed back to her apartment determined to

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  get some rest, have a fresh view of the case in the morning. But as she drove along the eerily quiet mountain road, her headlights reflecting brightly off the packed snow and ice, huge trees laden with snow surrounding her, she felt the winter cold seep into her bones. Shivering, she experienced a deepseated fear that she’d never see Pescoli alive again.

  “How’re you feeling?” a deep male voice whispered. Pescoli’s eyes flew open but the room was in total darkness aside from a single pinpoint of light. A penlight? Her heart thundered and adrenaline shot through her system.

  For a second she didn’t know where she was and then she remembered driving over the icy ridge, the reverberant crack of a rifle, her Jeep spinning out of control down a steep mountainside. And her rescuer.

  She remembered the man in shadowy goggles who had pried her from the wreckage to bring her here as his damned prisoner.

  She tried to move, to roll away, but her muscles were sluggish, wouldn’t respond. Pain jolted down her shoulder and her gaze was fastened on the bright spot of light.

  “I asked you a question.”

  He sounded irritated. Good. So was she. “How do you think I feel?”

  “Not your best.”

  “Like I was in a damned accident that could have been prevented if some jerk-wad hadn’t shot out my tire.” She was glaring up at him, trying to focus, un-78 Lisa Jackson

  able to make out his features, the small light ruining her ability to focus. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Let me guess. Not St. Peter, right? We’re not at the pearly gates. And where are my clothes?”

  He snorted, but she caught a glimpse of white, a glint from his teeth as if he found her amusing.

  “Definitely not St. Peter. And no, I wouldn’t think this was the way to salvation.” There was a smile in his voice. “You’ll get your clothes back.”

  “When?”

  “When I decide.”

  His way of keeping her humble and vulnerable, to make her lie naked and alone in the dark, but she wasn’t going to buckle to that kind of psychological blackmail. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “To help you.”

  “You fired the damned shot! I wouldn’t call that help.” She was agitated, fear juicing up her aggression. He ran the penlight down the length of her body, again humiliating her, stopping at her breasts where her damned nipples were rock hard from the cold. She heard him suck in his breath and she thought she might be sick.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Regan.” He said it as if he meant it.

  “And you’re a damned freak!”

  As if he didn’t hear her, he said, “Well-sculpted face, high cheekbones, and a strong chin. And long legs . . . nice breasts with dark nipples . . . flat stomach despite bearing two babies.”

  He knew about her kids? Terror swept through her. She wanted to snap at him to leave her children out of it, but she didn’t dare show her Achilles’

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  heel, couldn’t let him know that her entire life centered around her kids. Instinctively she knew that if she gave him even the tiniest bit of insight as to how to really terrorize her, Jeremy and Bianca would end up here, imprisoned by him. Fear turned her throat to dust.

  “And that boyfriend of yours, the drifter.”

  What?

  “Does Santana appreciate you? Treat you well?”

  Her stomach dropped. How much about her did this animal know?

  “Or is he just around for a quick roll in the hay, a hot fuck?” He said it all in a harsh, unrecognizable whisper. As if he thought she might be able to make out his identity. “I bet you’re a hot one, aren’t you? That you like it when some good-looking loser tries to get into your pants. Is that right? You enjoy the ride?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Sick?” That seemed to bother him. “You won’t think so for long.”

  What she wouldn’t do for a weapon of some kind, a gun or knife or even a baseball bat or nightstick, anything. Weak as she was, she’d haul off and whack him and send his black soul straight to hell. But there was no weapon and she was in no shape to attack anyone, and the beam of his light slid lower on her body, like a laser, trailing a path to the juncture of her legs where the beam paused, illuminating the reddish hair that curled there and feeling as if it burned a hole through her skin.

  She tried not to think of the embarrassment, for then he’d win. He was doing this on purpose. Nor would she rise to the bait of bringing up Santana or 80

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  her sex life. “You get your rocks off by torturing women? Humiliating them? Holding them against their will?”

  He didn’t answer, just trailed the tiny beam of light down her legs.

  “Why go to all this trouble? Why stage accidents and then pretend to help the victims? Why not just kill them and get it over with?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  “Enlighten me,” she challenged, keeping her eyes trained on his shadowy features.

  “You’re a cop, Regan. A detective. You figure it out.” He stepped close enough so that were she not riddled with pain, one arm chained to the cot, she would have jumped up and rammed his arm backward until he was on his knees, or thrown a wellaimed punch at his throat to render him spitting and speechless, or shoved his nose into his cerebrum.

  “Try me.” If she could just keep him talking, she might learn something, figure out his identity.

  “It would take much too long.”

  “What else do you have to do?”

  He stepped closer and the penlight offered enough illumination that she noticed a glint, a slim little line of silver in his other hand. What the hell?

  What was it?

  And then she knew with dead certainty that he held a hypodermic needle in his right hand. Oh, God, no!

  Pescoli freaked. She had no idea what drug might be held in the syringe, but she couldn’t let him inject her with it.

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  “Wait!” she said, trying to scoot away. Her legs wer
e free. If she could kick him. Land a blow square in his crotch, or on his face.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he whispered, his voice ragged, and rough, yet nearly seductive. Pescoli’s skin crawled. Fear sizzled through her bones. She had to find a way to—

  He sprang!

  Like a cougar onto the back of an unsuspecting deer, he leaped onto the cot. She tried to move, but couldn’t get away. Pinning her with his knees, his legs straddling her torso, his weight pressing onto her bruised ribs, he held her fast.

  Pain shrieked through her body and she cried out. Her chest felt as if it had been crushed, her lungs on fire, her ribs shattering. She tried to kick and squirm but pain crippled her and his well over two hundred pounds didn’t budge.

  “No!” she forced out, her breath a panicked hiss.

  “Don’t!” She bucked upward, but to no avail. It was too late. With his spread legs only inches from her nose, the scent of his sweat in the air, he shifted slightly. Dropped the penlight. Grabbed her tethered arm.

  Though she pummeled him with her free hand, he fended off her blows with his shoulder and body, and his legs, his thick thighs covered in denim so close to her face wouldn’t budge. If she could bite him . . .

  She moved, but he anticipated the lift of her head, the baring of her teeth.

  “Careful,” he warned, staying away from her teeth,

  “or I’ll give you something you can really work on, 82

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  fill that hot little mouth of yours right up. And you’ll love it.”

  She shuddered inside. Thought she might be sick and throw up all over him.

  From astride her he laughed, a brittle sound as hollow as all the caverns of hell.

  “We’re going to get you,” she warned. “If not me, then someone else. They’ll never give up. They’ll run you to the ground like a rabid dog.”

  He struck quickly. Plunged the needle into her arm.

  She felt a sharp, cold sting against her skin, then the horrifying pressure of some unknown drug being forced into her flesh.

  “You bastard!” she hissed and he laughed again, that low, sick growl, and he crawled slightly upward, forcing his crotch even closer to her head. Her stomach roiled and still she swiped at him, her legs kicking upward.

  Her attempts were futile, all her struggling in vain.

  The penlight rolled noisily across the stone floor, stopping against the door, its tiny beam offering faint, narrow illumination. There wasn’t enough light to see his features clearly, just a glimmer of thin luminance that threw his face into a shadowy, macabre relief. His eyes were shielded by dark glasses, a baseball cap covered his head, and a beard darkened his jaw, yet she caught a chilling glimpse of his features. Rugged. Rough. Scratches down one cheek where she’d scraped his skin with her fingernails.

  I know you, she thought, her arm suddenly heavy,

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  the pain in her chest easing as she started to drift away. I know you, you miserable whack job, and damn it, somehow, someway, I’m going to get out of here and when I do, I swear to God, I’m going to nail your sorry ass . . .

  Chapter Six

  Nate Santana snapped open his pocketknife, then sliced the twine holding a bale of hay together. The horses were waiting patiently in their stalls, ears pricked forward, dark, liquid eyes assessing him, only Lucifer showing impatience by snorting and tossing his dark head.

  Daylight was still a couple of hours away but Santana was up even earlier than usual. Restless. His elusive sleep interrupted with dreams of Regan Pescoli.

  Either she’d been making love to him, staring up at him with a naughty smile and arched eyebrows as he’d stripped away her clothes and made love to her, or she’d been lost in the darkness and he’d been running through a dark, night-shrouded forest calling her name, catching glimpses of her as she vanished into a thicket of brittle, snow-covered trees. He’d woken up in a cold sweat, that tingling sensation that warned him of danger, ever present.

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  Using a pitchfork, he spread hay into the waiting mangers of Brady Long’s small herd. He’d already exercised the horses as much as the small arena would allow and now was finishing up with the feed, measuring oats, tossing hay, making sure the water was running into the troughs, that the pipes hadn’t frozen in this last arctic blast that had left so much of the state crippled.

  Sometimes he wondered why he’d come back to this part of Montana. It wasn’t as if he had any family left. You just had to get the hell out of California, that’s why, and Brady Long offered you a job and a place to stay.

  He opened another bale, smelling the fading scent of summer in the dry grass, then forked it into the next box where Lucifer waited patiently, as if he were the most well-mannered colt on the ranch.

  “I’m not buying it,” Santana said to the black devil-horse, but his mind wasn’t really on the task at hand. He was just going through the motions, getting through his morning chores, waiting for daybreak and the phone to ring. He finished up and walked into the predawn darkness. Usually this was his favorite time of day, just before the sun rose, when the stars lit up the sky, the air was clear, and there was a calm to the universe, a quietude and peace that disappeared with daylight.

  This morning, however, the stars were obscured and a bitter wind swept through the cluster of buildings that made up the heart of the Lazy L, the sprawling ranch owned by Brady Long.

  A single security lamp shed an eerie light onto the snow-covered landscape and for the first time in 86

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  days no snowflakes danced and swirled in its bluish beam.

  Thankfully, the snowstorm that had ripped through the heart of the Bitterroots had stopped. At least for a while. But he still hadn’t heard from Regan Pescoli.

  And he’d caught the news last night that the police in Spokane had taken a woman into custody, believing her to be responsible for the deaths of several women and possibly even the serial killer who had terrorized this section of the Bitterroots. His first thought was that Regan was in on the bust, but a second later he negated that idea, as Alvarez had phoned him after the arrest.

  He locked the door of the stable and hiked across the parking lot, a hundred yards through the drifting snow to his cabin with Nakita at his heels. The husky, full of energy, romped through the drifts, disappearing beneath the mantle of white, his tail all that was visible of him, only to reappear, eager for another foray in a new direction.

  “You’re an idiot,” Santana reminded him, but he did smile as Nakita bounded on the small porch, snow covering his nose, whiskers, and thick gray fur. Nakita’s long tongue hung out of his mouth and he scratched at the door.

  “I know, I know.”

  Santana stepped into the cabin, three rooms with a sleeping loft tucked under the eaves of a steep roof. This tiny home was the original house on the Long homestead and well over a hundred years old. That was before copper had been found and mined in some of the surrounding properties and the Long family had gained all their wealth and built the cedar and stone lodge tucked into thickets of

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  pine and spruce and overlooking Milton Creek, homage to Brady’s ancestor who first claimed these acres.

  Though his cabin was drafty, insulated poorly, Santana preferred it to the suite of attic rooms in one wing of the main house, quarters that had been dedicated to the year-round staff. Living in the big house was fine for Clementine, the housekeeper, and her teenaged son, Ross, but not for Nate. When push came to shove he would pick privacy over grandeur any day of the week. Besides, he needed to be closer to the livestock. And farther away from Brady Long whenever his boss decided to show up. Heat radiated from the wood stove crouched in a corner of the cabin’s living area. Somewhere in the last fifty years the compact space had been equipped with electric baseboard heat, but Santana liked the old stove with its glass window to
view the fire burning inside. He figured the exercise he got sawing up the fallen trees on the property each spring and splitting the rounds was worth it.

  Never once had Regan Pescoli been here. Nor had he spent any time at her house. It was as if they’d had some unspoken pact to stay out of each other’s private space. “Stupid,” he muttered under his breath. They’d both tried so hard to deny what was becoming more evident with each passing hour: that he’d fallen for her.

  He hung his hat and jacket on a peg near the front door as Nakita nosed at his food bowl and lapped water wildly from his dish. Santana skimmed himself out of the weatherproof pants and boots before propping them up on the rock floor in front of the fire. After adding more logs to the stove, he fed the dog, cut a thick slice of brown bread for him-88 Lisa Jackson

  self, and, after slathering it with butter, bolted it down, then warmed himself up in a shower. One thought circled his brain: Regan’s missing. Toweling off briskly, his face a mask of granite, Nate tried not to succumb to panic. But he couldn’t quite convince himself that everything was fine, that she was just busy or even avoiding him. He threw on his clothes and headed back to the stove, feeling like something sinister was at stake. Like a gust of wind blowing the stable door open and freaking you out yesterday? Face it, Santana, you’re on the edge of paranoia. Because of a woman. Something you swore to yourself you’d never do. Settling onto the worn arm of his recliner, he found the remote for his television while his dog was already snoring softly on the rag rug in front of the fire. His muscles were tense as he turned on the morning news.

  What was it Pescoli’s partner had said when she’d called and he’d asked concerning Regan’s whereabouts?

  “If we knew that, I wouldn’t be calling you.” Again that unsettling feeling crept through his guts. Man, Santana, you’ve got it bad. You can’t get Pescoli out of your mind. What was it she’d said that she wanted? A relationship with no strings attached? Sounded good, didn’t it? Except now she’s under your skin. You can’t shake yourself free from her, and face it, you don’t want to. His jaw tightened. It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d sworn no woman would ever get to him again. But Pescoli with her burnished hair that flamed red-gold in the sun and eyes that shimmered from green to gold had caught him off guard. She was athletic, smart as a whip, and had a wicked sense of humor that always surprised him.