Chosen To Die

by Lisa Jackson

He was right, for a few moments later she answered carefully, “This is Detective Alvarez. What can I do for you, Mr. Santana?”

  “Brady Long’s killer is Star-Crossed. They’re one and the same man. Maybe it hasn’t been deter-292 Lisa Jackson

  mined yet, but it’s true. You know it and I know it. Tell me you’re working on that assumption.”

  “I have to work with facts. And that’s not a fact.”

  “But it will be. I’m going on gut instinct, Detective. And I’m going to find this son of a bitch.”

  “You are not part of this investigation,” she reminded him briskly.

  “I could help you.”

  “You would just get in the way.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said tautly.

  “Let us do our job, Mr. Santana.”

  He’d seen a bit of the press conference on television with Grayson ducking questions and answering in vague generalities. It had convinced him they were all scratching their heads and covering their asses.

  “Go ahead, then. You do yours. I’ll do mine.”

  “What does that mean?” she demanded sharply. But Santana had already hung up in disgust. It had been a waste of time to call her. He thought for a moment, then took two strides to his desk area. He wasn’t the most organized man, but he had a file or two that held important papers. He thumbed through them quickly, grabbing a small note tucked inside, memorizing its contents, then dialing another phone number. If he was gonna do this, he was gonna need help. Chris was being a butt! Flopped on her bed, texting like mad, Bianca was practically begging him to come over. Yeah, Dad’s idea to have him over was lame, lame, lame, but there was nothing to do. Noth- ing! Even Jeremy, that loser, hadn’t bothered calling or texting.

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  But he did escape here, didn’t he? Figured that out, somehow.

  Everyone in the house was going stir-crazy and the tension was as thick as Michelle’s face makeup. Bianca tried not to think about that too much as she sent another text and hoped Chris responded. He was kinda bugging her.

  Did he know she needed him right now?

  And what would be the excuse to blow her off this time? That he was playing video games with Zach and Kevin? He could do that anytime. Sighing, she plucked at a piece of pink thread from the bedspread and looked out the window. The sky was dark, the snow wasn’t falling anymore, and a moon was rising, reflecting silver on the trees and ground. “We’re going to have a white Christmas,” Michelle had told her a week ago. Big deal. This was Montana. White Christmases happened almost every year, and Bianca was sick to death of them.

  She stood up and stared outside, contemplated sneaking out, but knew that she couldn’t get away with it. Plus, she didn’t have any way to get around. In the panes of glass, she saw her own watery reflection and she thought about Mom. Where was she? Biting her lip, Bianca nearly jumped from her skin when the phone suddenly rang. Maybe Chris had called the house!

  No way. He never phoned her at her dad’s. On the second ring, she heard Michelle, say,

  “Hello? . . . Yes . . . yes, he’s here . . . just a sec,” and then louder, “Luke! It’s for you.”

  Bianca headed for her bedroom door but stopped short when she heard Michelle hiss in a whisper,

  “It’s the sheriff’s department.”

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  Mom!

  Bianca’s heart froze.

  Her father groaned and she imagined him rolling off the couch though the TV was still on. News, it sounded like, though it was late enough that it was probably on the DVR.

  “Is it about Regan?” he asked soberly, and Bianca knew instinctively that she’d learn more if she didn’t walk into the room, if she stayed eavesdropping.

  “I don’t know, but it’s her partner,” Michelle said.

  “Wanted to speak with you.”

  “Christ,” he murmured, but he wasn’t angry. He sounded as worried as Bianca felt and, just as she suspected, her dad did still care about her mom, if only a little.

  “Always something!” Michelle said and in the mirror placed on the wall in the hallway outside the bathroom door, Bianca caught a reflected view of the living room. Her father, hair rumpled, was standing in stocking feet and sweats, blocking her view of the flickering television. Michelle, wearing skinny jeans, a sweater, high-heeled boots, and a frown, was facing him, her arms crossed over her chest and under her boobs so that more cleavage than usual was visible in the V-neck of her fuzzy red sweater.

  “This is Luke Pescoli. Yeah . . . Hi . . . What? Jeremy? He did what?” Her father heaved an angry sigh and shook his head. “Great.” She read the tension in his back. “Yeah . . . Okay . . . Listen, can’t you cut the kid a break . . . His mom . . . Well, hell, do you know anything more about Regan?”

  Bianca strained forward. The news hadn’t been about Mom. Jeremy, somehow, had gotten himself into trouble again. It figured. He had dog food for

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  brains! Cisco was smarter than he was by a long shot.

  “Oh. All right. Thanks.”

  Dad hung up the phone and Michelle said,

  “What about Regan?”

  “Nothing new,” was the grim response.

  Bianca clutched the jamb to her bedroom and slowly sank to the floor. Mom, where are you? She fought back an urge to cry and kept her eyes on the mirror’s reflection of Dad and Michelle, whose pretty face had taken on a decidedly tense expression.

  “Well, what did Jeremy do?” Michelle demanded.

  “Got in a fistfight with Cort Brewster and is in the drunk tank.”

  “My God.” She was annoyed. “Over Brewster’s daughter? You’re not going to go get him, are you?”

  Dad was looking around, as if for his coat. “You think I should leave him there?”

  “Yes! He needs to learn some things.”

  “In the drunk tank at the sheriff’s department? With his mother missing, possibly kidnapped?”

  “He could have thought of those things first, instead of adding to the problem.”

  “He could’ve. But he didn’t.” Dad was starting to get annoyed right back.

  Michelle instantly switched tactics, reaching for him, one hand gently patting his chest. “Let him just think about a few things, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want a big scene tonight, so let’s put it off till tomorrow, hmm? Maybe we can pretend that we don’t have your kids with us. Like it’s supposed to be.”

  Bianca surfaced from her fear and misery to really look at her stepmother. Her dad was looking at her, too.

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  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” she said quickly. “I just—miss—having you all to myself, that’s all. I don’t want you chasing after Jeremy tonight.”

  Dad heaved a sigh. Bianca suddenly, urgently, wanted him to go get Jeremy, bring him back, bring him home, but Michelle had gotten to him. “It wouldn’t kill him to spend a few hours in lockup,”

  he growled.

  Michelle wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him in a way that made Bianca want to puke. She eased away from the door and back inside the bedroom. She felt angry and hurt. Michelle didn’t want them around, her and Jer. It was all an act. It had always been an act, she realized now. Oh, Mom, come and get me! she silently pleaded. Hurry. I’m sorry. I don’t want to live with them. Come home!

  Cisco trotted into the room. As if sensing her emotions, he came over to her and pressed his paws against her legs, looking up at her anxiously. She scooped him close and he licked her face, something that would’ve seemed gross before but now she welcomed.

  “Oh, doggie,” she said brokenly, burying her face into his fur.

  Mom, please be okay. Please, please, please, be okay.

  “Any word on finding Pescoli?” Brewster asked, sticking his head in Alvarez’s office.

  “No.”
Selena was terse.

  The undersheriff nodded and looked grim. He’d cooled off a bit over Jeremy, and Selena had called

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  Lucky and told him where Jeremy was, but currently the kid was still in the drunk tank with Ivor Hicks. No one seemed to know what the next step should be, though Selena had made it clear she thought Jeremy should be released. She’d said as much to his stepfather, but Lucky hadn’t said whether he was coming down to collect him, which was just as well, she supposed, since Brewster probably would have tried to stop him.

  “You should go home,” he said.

  “I’ll go home when the sheriff goes home.” She was bugged that, after all his bad behavior, Cort Brewster felt he could tell her what she should do.

  “Grayson’s still here?”

  We’re all still here, Selena wanted to say. Nobody wanted to leave with Regan at the mercy of this monster.

  As if hearing his name, Grayson appeared in the hallway and stopped beside Brewster. “Jeremy’s stepdad coming to pick him up?” he asked Alvarez.

  “That kid’s not leaving tonight,” Brewster cut in. He might have cooled off, but he sure as hell wasn’t giving in.

  Grayson gave him a long look. “That kid’s mom is missing.”

  “He hit me,” Brewster ground out.

  “I’ve seen the tape,” Grayson returned. Brewster whipped around to glare at Selena, who he knew had to have requested the tape be given to the sheriff. She returned his gaze coolly. Let him try to shift blame to her. The tape told the truth of the story.

  “He’s going to be released,” Grayson told the undersheriff. “Alvarez . . .”

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  “I’ll get it done.” She got up from her desk.

  “That damn punk hit me first!” Brewster said again, more forcefully.

  “He’s being released, and you’re not pressing charges.” Grayson was immovable.

  “Oh, yes, I am! I don’t care whose kid he is! And I don’t like his influence on my daughter. And I want him to know it.”

  “I suggest you give this some more thought,”

  Grayson said pointedly.

  Brewster bit back what he was going to say and Alvarez, hoping to defuse the situation, said, “Nate Santana called. Wanted to be part of the investigation. I told him to let us do our job, but he sounded unconvinced.”

  “Jesus, what a loser,” Brewster muttered, and Selena wondered if he meant Santana or Jeremy. Didn’t really matter.

  She had to push Brewster out of the way of the door as she headed into the hall.

  “And send Hicks home, too,” Grayson said to both Brewster and Alvarez. “Call his son.”

  “I already left a message for Bill,” Brewster said.

  “But the old guy’s probably sober enough now to release on his own.”

  Grayson grunted. “Get ’em both out of the drunk tank and let’s concentrate on what really matters: who this bastard is, and where he’s keeping Pescoli.”

  “Are we staying here all night?” Brewster asked.

  “Leave, if you want,” Grayson said.

  “I was just thinking we didn’t need to pay out more overtime,” he said lamely.

  Alvarez turned down the hall, knowing she wouldn’t

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  be heading to her apartment anytime soon. She couldn’t. Not until she was beyond exhaustion and she felt there was nothing further she could do to help Pescoli.

  Regan lay on the cot, beaten and battered. She hurt all over, but not as much as her mind told her she ought to. Maybe she was dying. Maybe the fight had ruptured something inside her that was slowly killing her.

  No. No, she didn’t believe that. There was something she had to do. Save them.

  She opened her eyes to almost total darkness. The fire was nothing but glimmering red coals. She was clutching the blanket with a death grip; she’d grabbed it for warmth in a twilight state of floating pain.

  She had to save the other victims. Had to. She couldn’t let the bastard win.

  Carefully, she lifted her right wrist, about all the energy she had left. It was scraped raw, through more layers of skin than she believed a human possessed. Blood was everywhere. Hers. His, too, undoubtedly. But as much as she hurt, as injured as she was, she couldn’t give up.

  Setting her teeth, she slid to the edge of the cot and looked down at the weld. Her fight with her captor had taken a toll on it. An unexpected bonus for her. It looked very weak. Maybe weak enough to break?

  Regan’s heart started pounding a deep, painful 300

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  tattoo. If she could summon her strength, she might be able to free herself.

  But would it be in time to save Elyssa and the others? Determinedly, closing her eyes, clenching her teeth, she yanked hard on her right handcuff. Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jeremy gazed around the room, holding his breath. Two days until Christmas and he was stuck here in this drunk tank with an old man who smelled like a brewery and looked really crazy. The way his eyes, when he was awake, stared wide behind those huge glasses gave Jeremy the creeps.

  And the cell itself was gross. Cement floor, cement walls, painted an ugly gray, harsh overhead light with a metal cage around it, and metal benches bolted into the wall. No window, just the front doors of the cage, which were thick bars of dull steel.

  “It’s all Crytor’s fault,” the old guy was mumbling again. “If that Reptilian son of a bitch hadn’t teleported me up to the mothership from Mesa Rock, and then did all those experiments on me, none of this would be happening now.”

  None of what? Jeremy was tempted to ask, but he didn’t. Engaging the old coot was a mistake he’d already made once. For the next forty minutes, he’d 302

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  heard Ivor-the-Nut-Case’s life story. For the love of God, the guy still wasn’t over his dead wife. Lily or Linda or . . . no, Lila, that’s what it was. One of the Kress girls who were all beautiful when they were young. So beautiful. She’d been dead for a really long time, it seemed, but Hicks still talked about her as if they’d been together just last week. He was weird, weird, weird. Someone to avoid. But there was nowhere for Jeremy to hide, and since they were the only two people in the drunk tank, he was stuck listening to Ivor’s stories. It would be different if he had his iPod or cell phone, but the undersheriff had confiscated both. God only knew how he’d handle Heidi when he got home.

  Shit, what a mess.

  “I saw a Yeti today,” Ivor said, then frowned.

  “Maybe it was today. Thought it was a wraith, but it was a Yeti. It killed Brady Long.”

  “Huh.” Jeremy hoped he would just stop talking.

  “It was white. All white. With a long club.”

  “I thought Yetis were brown and furry.”

  “That’s a Sasquatch, not a Yeti!” He glared at Jeremy, who reminded himself again not to engage the old geezer. Ivor mumbled some more but Jeremy closed his eyes and ears. He tried to sleep and failed, so he walked around the perimeter of the cage, hearing voices of cops when the door to this end of the jail opened, and eyeing the drain in the middle of the sloped floor. He didn’t want to think what had gone down that hole with its dirty-looking cover.

  “I bet they called my son,” Ivor suddenly said, sounding more of this world than he had since Jeremy had been thrown in with him. Jeremy squinted

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  at the old man. Maybe he’d just needed to sober up.

  “They always call him. They never believe me, and they always call him.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll pick you up,” Jeremy said hopefully. Had anyone called his stepdad? Or, had the undersheriff put a stop to that before it happened?

  “I don’t want to be a burden.” Ivor dropped his chin to his chest and sighed. “It’s not my fault. It’s Crytor’s. But nobody wants to believe me.”

  The old guy
fell asleep just like that, snoring enough to make Jeremy go deaf. A burden. Well, yeah. He was a complete nutcase, so he was definitely a burden. Thoughts of his mother crept in though Jeremy tried to keep them at bay. He didn’t want to think about her. About what could be happening to her, if she wasn’t dead already.

  Nobody was saying that Mom might be in the hands of that sicko killer. Nobody wanted to tell him that. But he knew that’s what they were thinking. God, he hoped they were wrong, but where was she? Where was she?

  With an uncomfortable twinge of conscience, he reviewed his own actions the last few days. He’d been in police custody twice this damn week. And he’d been a jerk to everyone; his mother, for sure. If he could only take it back! He’d do everything different. He would. He would. He just needed a chance. Another chance. With a look to the snoring old man, Jeremy walked to the bars and wrapped his hands around them. He wanted to cry. Could feel the burn at the back of his eyes and moisture collect in his nose.

  Mom . . .

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  yelled, would someone come for him? He had to get out. Had to help his mom.

  He was just getting ready to try when the locked door at the end of the hall clanked open and Mom’s partner walked through, looking drawn and determined.

  “Are you here for me?” he asked.

  “I’m releasing you, yes.”

  “To my stepdad?”

  “To your vehicle.”

  Jeremy wondered what that meant. “And Mom?”

  “We’re still trying to locate her. The sheriff has asked that the charges against you be dropped.”

  Relief flooded through him, tempered by deeper worries. He looked back at Ivor, still snoring. “Glad I don’t have to listen to him being abducted by aliens anymore. Or all about his dead wife, one of the beautiful Kress women, or the fact that a Yeti killed Mr. Long.”

  He thought her lips might break into a faint smile, but it didn’t quite happen. “Ivor’s a colorful character.”

  “So, it wasn’t a Yeti, huh?”

  “Not as far as we can tell.”

  She unlocked the door and he slipped through. He wanted to ask her more about his mom, but it was clear there was nothing she would tell him. “So, I’m outta here.”