Ready to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “Let’s hope this isn’t a bust.” This all felt a little rash, which, of course, was the way Pescoli ran all aspects of her life, personal to professional. Alvarez had been cautious and played by the rules ever since a collar that had gone terribly wrong while she was with the department in San Bernardino.

  Maybe too much so.

  Still, she was nervous going into this. As Pescoli cut the lights and drove around a final bend in the lane, she checked her service weapon and thought of Dan Grayson still fighting for his life in a hospital bed at Northern General.

  “Any closer and Verdago might see the headlights.” Pescoli parked below a rise in the road and Watershed’s county vehicle tucked in behind her. Without a word, they climbed out of their SUVs and walked along the lane until they saw the cabin, dark except for the light in one window, a flickering golden patch that reflected on the snow. Through thickets of trees the lake stretched wide beyond them.

  The rustic cabin with its crumbling rock chimney and paned windows was small and square. Set on the forested shores of the lake, the building was slightly decrepit with a tiny porch tacked on right in the middle of the structure. Its snow-flocked roof sagged a bit, yet the cottage had a quaintness and serenity good enough to grace a Christmas card. May joy and peace be with you this holiday season . . .

  Verdago’s hideout? Oh, God, please let this go without incident, Alvarez thought, switching off the safety of her sidearm.

  As the scent of wood smoke wafted in the cold winter air and snow fell in fat, heavy flakes, Alvarez began to sweat.

  A single-car garage had been built ten feet off the front porch of the cabin and tire tracks in the snow led to the lowered door.

  Someone was home.

  Alvarez’s stomach tightened. She caught movement in her peripheral vision and spied Watershed.

  Armed with a rifle and his sidearm, he checked the garage and shook his head, indicating the building was locked tight. He held out a gloved hand and spread his fingers wide, indicating he needed five minutes to get into position and secure the back of the house.

  As he and Zoller slipped through the trees flanking the lake side, Alvarez hit the stopwatch feature on her phone. They’d go in when everyone was in position, but these last minutes of waiting would be excruciating, her muscles jumping.

  Like San Bernardino.

  Was it possible that this was a setup? Were they being lured into a deadly trap? Her mind jumped ahead to all the ways this capture could go wrong.

  A shadow passed by the window.

  Something felt off about this and she wondered if they should hold off, call in the backups, warn Brewster what was going down....

  Then she saw the stain.

  Dark, reddish, a pool of what she could only assume was blood had spread in the snow near a pine tree approximately twenty feet from the edge of the rickety porch.

  Her heart nearly stopped. Silently, she caught Pescoli’s attention and pointed to the large stain and, upon closer inspection, more carmine-colored drips leading to the garage. Footprints in the snow, now buried and uneven, indicated one person, or possibly two, had walked to the blood pool. It was too dark to make out which direction they had been headed, but there was a definite drag mark, a deep trough, where something had been hauled away.

  A body?

  Had Verdago gotten rid of Carnie? Had she become a liability? Or was the dead person the missing Vincent Samuels, owner of the property? Or someone else? Someone on his hit list?

  Her heart was pounding hard, her mouth dry. Something definitely was going down here and she no longer expected the capture to go quietly.

  Noiselessly, she walked onto the porch, and while Pescoli took a spot on one side of the door, she flattened herself to the wall on the other, hard enough that she felt the shingles pressing against her back through her jacket.

  When the time came, Pescoli would knock and announce that the police were here and then hopefully the confrontation wouldn’t end in gunfire.

  But that was unlikely.

  Her cell phone clicked softly.

  The five minutes were up.

  It was on.

  Pescoli’s gaze met hers and with a nod, ordered Alvarez to call for backup. Alvarez pressed another button on her cell phone, silently alerting the two backup units that they were needed.

  STAT!

  Alvarez braced herself.

  Pescoli banged hard on the door, the sound echoing through the hills. Before it was answered, she quickly stepped away from the entrance and pressed her body into the siding again, just in case Verdago came out guns blazing.

  Nothing happened.

  Silence reigned.

  No frantic footsteps ran wildly through the house.

  No panicked shouts were yelled.

  No movement could be felt in the old timbers.

  And definitely no door was opening.

  Pescoli waited, her weapon aimed squarely at the door, just as Alvarez’s was.

  “Maurice Verdago?” she yelled again, disturbing the stillness. “Open up! This is the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department! Come out with your hands over your head.”

  Silence, and then something . . . footsteps.

  Alvarez set her jaw. Adrenaline poured through her blood, the hand on her weapon was steady.

  A second later, the door swung inward.

  Standing in the doorway, unarmed, was Vincent friggin’ Samuels.

  His eyes, behind his glasses, were round, and as he focused on Pescoli with her weapon pointed at him, his mouth dropped open and he looked as if he might pee himself right then and there.

  “What the hell is this?” he said and his hands shot skyward. “Don’t shoot! For the love of God! Don’t fucking shoot!” Looking as if he might actually faint, he cried, “For the love of Christ, it’s only an elk!”

  “An elk?” Alvarez said and Samuels’s head jerked in her direction.

  “Oh, shit. I mean, I know I poached the thing, but don’t kill me over it.” He licked his lips nervously, his eyes darting back and forth in his head as she lowered her weapon. “I shot a damned elk. Yeah, not in season. With no tag. But . . .” As his mind cleared a bit, his expression changed slightly, fear giving way to confusion. “You . . . you thought Maurice was here?”

  “Isn’t he?”

  “No.” Samuels looked even more stunned than before. “Why would he be? I haven’t seen him in ages . . . last I heard he got himself sent to the big house by hacking up his brother-in-law. Kathy, er, oh, excuse me. I mean the ‘Honorable Judge Kathryn Samuels-Piquard’ threw the book at Verdago. He never forgave me. Like it was my fault or something.”

  “You think we’re here because you killed an elk?” Alvarez clarified and thought of the bloody pool, the drag marks in the snow.

  “The damned thing just wandered over here and so I nailed it. It . . . it’s hanging in the garage. A buck,” he added quickly, as if the animal’s sex mattered.

  Pescoli wasn’t convinced. Her weapon was still trained on Samuels. “You don’t mind if we look inside?”

  “Well, Jesus.” He was getting a little pissy now. “Go right ahead. Knock yourself out.”

  “Step off the porch,” she ordered. Then as Alvarez heard the back door open, Pescoli, sidearm aimed in front of her, moved cautiously into the house and out of sight just as in the distance the scream of sirens cut through the night.

  “Clear!” a male voice yelled from inside the house. Watershed. Again: “Clear!”

  Slowly, his gaze on her gun, Samuels lowered his hands and said to Alvarez, “I don’t know what you people think you’re doing, but trust me, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Do we?”

  “I’m not blowing smoke when I say that I haven’t seen Maurice. He’s a con, for the love of God. I just don’t know why you came up here! Did Kathy send you?”

  Alvarez had wondered at his earlier tone. Now she realized he was still unaware of his sister’s death.

  “That wou
ld be just like her,” Samuels was going on, annoyed. “And trust me. All of you people and that dick Grayson aren’t going to hear the last of it either. I know people . . . attorneys and . . . Oh, shit. What’s this?” He looked over Alvarez’s shoulder as blue and red lights flashed in the night, reflecting on the snow, splashing off the trees. Engines rumbled and sirens shrieked as headlights appeared over the rise. “More cops? What the fuck do you think I did?” And then more soberly, “What is this? What’s Maurice got himself into?”

  “You’ve been at this cabin awhile,” Alvarez started.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” he demanded. “Yeah, I’ve been out here for weeks and there’s no phone, no electricity—just the way I like it. Kathy thinks I’ve got a screw loose or something. Accuses me of being a damned hermit, but I don’t really give a rat’s ass what she thinks. I suppose she’s the one who signed the damned search warrant for you guys to come bustin’ into my place. And, oh, by the way, I haven’t seen that warrant yet. Better show it, or get the hell off my property.”

  “We don’t have a warrant, Mr. Samuels,” Alvarez responded, all but shouting to be heard over the sirens. Something in her serious tone or expression must have gotten through, because suddenly he dropped all his bluster.

  “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

  “I’m sorry to inform you that your sister is dead.”

  “No . . . no . . .”

  “She was shot, Mr. Samuels, not too far from here, probably a few days before Christmas.”

  “That can’t be right. I don’t believe it. Who would shoot her . . . oh, Jesus . . . who wouldn’t?” Swallowing and blinking, he appeared to be trying to absorb what she was telling him, make some sense of it. “Verdago? You suspect him? And you think he was hiding here at my place?” Finally putting the pieces together, he sagged against the doorjamb. Alvarez reached out to keep him from falling and helped slide him down onto the single crooked step of the porch. “No . . . This can’t be true. We had our problems, me and Kath, but oh . . . God.” His attention was caught by the cop cars, the beams of their headlights illuminating the small clearing as sirens were abruptly cut and the SUVs slid to a stop. Doors flew open. Two deputies from each vehicle slid to the ground to use the doors as shields.

  “Stand down!” Alvarez yelled, still keeping her gaze trained on the judge’s brother.

  “What?” The first deputy, Jan Spitzer, called from the other side of her open car door.

  “I said, ‘Stand down.’ Verdago’s not here!”

  “About time you figured that out,” Samuels said. He swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “Oh, what the fuck?”

  He looked past the cop cars and Alvarez followed his gaze to spy a man, bundled in a heavy jacket, hurrying along the snowy landscape. Ducking furtively, running from one tree to another as if expecting a barrage of gunfire at any second, he carried a small bag.

  With a sinking feeling, Alvarez recognized Manny Douglas. “Get back,” she yelled at him, then to Spitzer, who was starting to approach the scene, “Secure the perimeter! Nothing’s going down here!” She located Spitzer’s partner and shouted, “And get him”—she indicated the crouching reporter—“the hell out of here!”

  At that moment, Pescoli, weapon at her side, disappointment etched on her face, walked out of the house and onto the porch. “Nothing,” she said just as a bright light flashed in the darkness. Alvarez instinctively raised her weapon, rolled into a crouch, and saw the reporter, camera in hand, a smile splitting his weasel-like face.

  “I said, get him out of here!” she yelled at the rest of the officers who surged forward.

  Manny lifted his hands and backed away, and Alvarez knew their fiasco at the cabin was about to be splashed across the front page.

  Chapter 29

  She probably should never have admitted to Cade that the girls were his, Hattie thought as she closed the back door of the commercial kitchen from which she ran her catering business. There were two parties looming in her near future: the Robbins’ New Year’s Eve dinner, which she had catered for the last three years, and for the first time, the Knapps’ open house the following afternoon. Her business was growing, slowly but surely, and she’d actually thought about taking on a partner so that she could spend more time with the girls.

  Weeks ago, she’d worked out the menu and budget with her clients and purchased the items that weren’t perishable. Today it was down to the wire and she’d spent most of her day purchasing and organizing all of the fresh food for the two events; tomorrow she’d start pre-prepping and cooking.

  For the most part, she and the girls lived on the girls’ share of the profits from the Grayson ranch, but it wasn’t enough to meet the monthly bills. Her catering business filled that gap, though work was spotty; some times of the year she had more parties than she could service, other times not so much. During the lean months, she spent more time with the twins and in the busy months, like December through New Year’s, she was run ragged.

  Wiggling the exterior door’s handle to double-check that the temperamental lock had actually latched, she told herself to quit worrying. Of course she hadn’t known how Cade would react when she’d dropped the bomb on him that he was a father and had been for eight years, but she certainly hadn’t expected silence. Cade had always been vocal and hotheaded, but lately, even dealing with Dan’s condition, he’d been a little more in control of his temper. But not like this. Not to the point of noncommunication.

  His initial reaction in the machine shed hadn’t surprised her, but the silence since had. Though she told herself to just be patient, that he was processing, that everything would work itself out, it felt as if she were experiencing the calm before the storm.

  “He had to know,” she reminded herself again, her breath fogging in the air. Picking her way through the iced-over puddles in the lot to her Camry, currently parked beneath a utility pole with a high-wattage security lamp, she finally noticed the pickup a few spaces away.

  Cade’s truck.

  And he was inside, she could see him in the driver’s seat as a car drove past, the wash of headlights illuminating the interior of the pickup and his face: hard. Grim. Uncompromising.

  Her heart lurched.

  As much as she wanted some kind of communication from him, the thought of actually facing him again was daunting. Would he be reasonable? Would he want things to stay as they were? Would he want to be a bigger part of the twins’ lives? Or would he be nursing his anger, ready to do battle again?

  As he observed her approach, he climbed out of the cab, a tall, dark silhouette against the backdrop of the street lamps.

  “I wondered when I’d hear from you,” she said, screwing up her courage as she made her way to the space between their vehicles.

  “Had a lot to think about.”

  She nodded. “I laid some heavy stuff on you.”

  He was leaning against the driver’s door of his Dodge, the brim of his hat shading his eyes from the dim glow of the security lights, snow catching on it and the shoulders of his sheepskin jacket. “That you did.” Nodding slightly, he looked away from her for a second, then refocused on her face. “I was wondering what we’re going to do about it.”

  “You mean what you’re going to do about it. I plan to live my life the same way I’ve been living it, raising my kids, taking care of my business”—she tossed a hand outward, toward the back of the building housing the kitchen—“and dealing with my screwball family. Mom’s had some health issues, I haven’t heard from Dad in years and suddenly he sends a Christmas card with two checks, one for each of the girls.” She shook her head. “And then there’s Cara.”

  “Yeah, Cara.” He said her name as if it tasted bad.

  “I know she’s concerned about Dan. She said so.”

  He made a sound of disbelief. “She’s your sister. I get that. But she’s no saint, so don’t bother making excuses for her. She is who she is. She never loved Dan. When they were divorc
ed, it was over, at least for her, and she married some other guy. End of story.” A lift of his shoulders said it all: Cara Hyer Grayson Banks was of no consequence.

  “So back to you. What do you want, Cade?”

  He hesitated for just a second, and his gaze touched hers for a heart-freezing instant. In that moment she saw a life with him, with the girls, all of them at the ranch together. McKenzie on horseback, Mallory demanding her father take her to her next dance recital, a Christmas tree decorated by the staircase, tinsel and lights glittering, she and Cade . . .

  Her lips parted at the absurdity of her fantasy. What was she thinking? She and Cade would never work. Yes, they’d been good in bed; she’d never been as turned on by any man, though she would never admit it. And they could appreciate each other’s sense of humor, wry and wicked, but that’s where the compatibility stopped.

  Sex and laughter did not a relationship make.

  But children might.

  “I want the girls,” he said succinctly.

  “What?” she asked, shocked by his bald declaration even though she’d worried he’d say something like this, do something like this.

  “Not all the time, but half,” he amended. “Joint custody.”

  “No . . . I . . . why?” She was struggling to keep her fear under control.

  “Isn’t that why you told me about the girls now? You expected some kind of help with—”

  “I thought I explained all that, Cade.” She snapped back to the moment. “I thought that we, you and I together, would eventually tell them the truth, when they were old enough to understand.”

  “They’ll never be that old. Hell, I don’t understand it and I participated.”

  “More than willingly,” she reminded.

  “No argument there.”

  “I want the girls to know their father, that they have a father, and that if something . . . something were to happen to me, then they’d have another parent. They’ve already lost the man who claimed them as their own, and they could be on the brink of losing their favorite uncle.”