by Lisa Jackson
“But if he figures out you didn’t die, he’ll be back,” MacGregor said, breathing with some difficulty. “When he couldn’t get you in the wrecked car, he tracked you down.”
“How?”
“Good question, but whoever this guy is, he’s damned determined.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Are you still betting on your ex?”
“Not if this guy is a serial killer.”
He shifted her again and she tried not to think about her bare thighs surrounding his waist, the way she jostled against him. It was all too bizarre, like something out of a weird, disjointed dream—the frigid cold, being half-dressed and carried, a killer potentially watching them after having tied her to a tree. “Not Mason,” she said at length. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not the serial killer type?”
“No.” Mason Rivers was a lot of things, some of them not good. He was greedy and a cheat, an attorney who could bend the rules to his way of thinking, but a cold-blooded murderer? No way.
“Hold on.” He hiked her body up higher and she bit back the urge to cry out.
Walking briskly, trudging through the knee-deep snow and beginning to sweat despite the frigid temperature, MacGregor said, “Tell you what. I’ll leave you near the cabin, then check it out. If it’s safe, I’ll carry you there and then I’ll get Harley.”
Her heart twisted at the thought of the dog. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t write him off yet. He’s tougher than he looks.”
But she didn’t believe it. The dog had been shot so badly he couldn’t move, then had been cruelly left to bleed and die in the snow.
“That twisted son of a bitch,” she whispered, her fingers curling into fists.
“Tell me what happened.” MacGregor was breathing hard now, sweat trickling down his neck as he trudged on.
“I could try to walk.”
“I’m okay.”
“But—”
“Just tell me what happened,” he said tersely. “How you ended up tied to the tree without a stitch on.”
“Okay.” As he hauled her down a short hill and across a frozen stream, Jillian began with her fears, how she’d been waiting for MacGregor at the cabin as the hours had passed, how she’d worried that he wasn’t returning, that something had happened to him, how she’d let the dog out to relieve himself before realizing she’d made a mistake.
“I was watching him and then Harley took off. I followed, but with my damned ankle and using a crutch, there was no way I could keep up with him. He took off through a thicket and I followed and then…and then…oh God, I heard a gunshot and this horrible, painful yelp. It was awful,” she said, replaying the horrible scene in her mind. “I found him and he was just lying in the snow…. Oh dear God, it was so awful,” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
“And you didn’t see the guy?” MacGregor said, trudging onward, through the play of sunlight and shadow, and heading, she assumed, toward the cabin.
“I don’t remember anything after coming upon the dog. I…I don’t know what happened to my clothes or my crutch or the rifle. He jumped me from behind, put a rag soaked in something—I think maybe ether—over my face. The next thing I knew I woke up naked and tied to the tree.”
“Where did the bastard go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “As I said, I was out.” She shuddered and he held her closer, his body warmth seeping through the T-shirt he still wore and the bulky sweater covering her body.
“Did you recognize anything about him?”
“I didn’t see him.” And that was the God’s honest truth. He’d jumped her from behind and…
A noise caught her attention.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up through the ice-laden canopy of naked branches just as she recognized the whomp, whomp, whomp of a helicopter’s rotor whirring in the distance.
“Maybe help,” he said, looking up, squinting into the heavens. His lips tightened a fraction just as a rescue copter appeared over the sharp crest of the surrounding mountains.
“Oh God, you’re right!” Her heart soared and her throat closed. Rescue! Finally!
Still holding her with one arm, Zane waved frantically, trying to get the pilot’s attention. “What did I tell ya?” he said with more than a touch of irony. “The Cavalry is finally on its way!”
MacGregor sat in the uncomfortable chair in the interrogation room and, while the two investigators peppered him with questions, stared at the large one-way mirror through which he knew the sheriff, district attorney and probably a host of other cops were watching his reactions. He could invoke his right to a lawyer; hell, they were expecting it as they videotaped the interview, but he had nothing to hide.
He picked his way through the minefield of questions, answering honestly but not giving up any extra information in the cinder-block room, where the acrid scent of ammonia couldn’t quite hide the smells of body odor, vomit and desperation. Fluorescent tubes offered a buzzing, jittery light. Mounted in one corner was a camera, its lens focused on the small table, where a half-filled ashtray sat in one corner and a thick manila file with notes jotted across it and papers stuffed inside lay, like a coiled snake, silent and deadly, ready to strike in a split second.
“…so you expect us to believe that in the middle of one of the worst blizzards in the last decade, you just came across Jillian Rivers’s car and saved her?” the taller detective, Pescoli, asked. Her eyebrows were raised in wonder, her expression total disbelief.
“I heard the sound of the rifle report,” he said again. “That’s why I found her. And there was a break in the weather, a small one, but a break.”
The other detective, a quieter, calmer woman with shiny black hair knotted at the base of her neck and eyes that were an intense, unreadable brown, was listening. Something in her demeanor suggested that she believed him, or that at least enough of his rendition of the events was believable to have her doubt him as a suspect.
He’d told them the entire story. Once the helicopter had rescued Jillian and he, too, had been hauled into the chopper, he’d been handcuffed and brought to the sheriff’s department while Jillian was taken to a hospital. Here, in this dull, windowless room with its flat gray walls and cement floor, he’d been offered a folding chair at a simple table and the cuffs had been removed as he’d given his statement. At first he’d been spitting mad, demanding his freedom, insisting that someone find his dog, cursing the fact that no one seemed to believe that he’d actually saved Jillian Rivers rather than tried to harm her.
But this woman, Alvarez, had told him they’d found his dog, alive, and she was beginning to buy into some of what he was telling her. It had been hours since the helicopter had touched down, a long time since he’d been hauled in here and they’d begun interrogating him.
The room was cold but he’d been given another one of his shirts, one brought from his cabin, which, he knew, had been turned inside out while the detectives had looked for evidence, clues that he’d been involved not only in Jillian Rivers’s abduction but the murders of several other women.
Pictures of corpses had been laid on the table in front of him, photos of battered, dead women, all of whom had been lashed to trees and left in the elements to die.
“You’ve never met any of these women before?” he was asked for about the twentieth time.
“No.”
“You don’t recognize them?”
“No.”
He held Pescoli’s gaze. “I’ve never seen any of them before in my life.”
Pissed, she walked away from him and rotated her neck a bit, as if she, too, were weary of this discussion that was going nowhere.
“You have a record,” she said, leaning against the wall and crossing her arms under her chest.
“That’s right.”
“And we’re not talking about speeding tickets. You killed a man in Denver. Did time.”
MacGregor didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to. They had his
file, knew all about the charges.
“So you’re not a stranger to murder.”
It wasn’t a question. He didn’t rise to the bait. The charge had been manslaughter. Big difference. They both knew it. He wondered what time it was but resisted the urge to check his watch. They’d been at it long enough that he’d told them not only how he’d found Jillian but what had transpired in the ensuing days. He figured everything he told them would be confirmed by his cabin or by Jillian herself. He’d already asked about her, and they’d responded with, “She’s at the hospital under a doctor’s care,” but wouldn’t give him any other information. The same was true of Harley. “He’s alive. A vet is examining him,” was all he got.
“You have books on astrology and astronomy,” Alvarez said. Again, a statement.
“And you’re a guide, know the area,” Pescoli added, double-teaming him. “You’ve led expeditions to Cougar Pass?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve fished in September Creek?”
“Of course.”
“Know about Broken Pine Lodge?” she asked, leaning closer, near enough that he smelled the faint scent of perfume laced with cigarette smoke.
“I’m a guide. I know the area.”
“Including all the places the bodies and cars were found.” She pulled a map from the file on the edge of the desk. Upon the familiar topography were red marks that he assumed were the areas in which they found the bodies and the cars. “You’ve been to all of these places, right?” She pointed out the marked areas.
“At one time or another, yes. But not recently.”
They kept at it, asking him what he’d done this winter, specifically centering on the dates around the twentieth of each month. They asked what he could tell them about the significance of the stars carved into the boles of the trees and then they showed him copies of notes on white paper, notes with letters that meant nothing to him other than they seemed to progress—with each new victim, new letters, the initials of the dead woman, were inserted.
“So you’re asking us to believe that you’re not the Star-Crossed Killer. That’s what the press has dubbed you.”
“Ask Jillian Rivers,” he suggested.
“We have. And you know what? She’s not exactly backing you up.”
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t believe this hard-nosed detective with her narrowed eyes. “In fact, she said there were times when you were gone for hours. Hours.” She closed the gap between herself and the table and pointed to the pictures of the dead women. “Enough time to get to your lair and prod your victim to her doom.”
“My lair?” he repeated. “Are you kidding? Lair?”
“A cave or another cabin, maybe something like the old abandoned lodge, a mining shed, some place where you keep them.”
She was fishing. Didn’t have a case and she knew it, all the while hoping he’d get mad enough to blurt out some piece of critical information to lock him to the murders.
“So are you going to arrest me or what?” he asked, finally tired of the game. He was exhausted, mentally fatigued, and his bullshit meter hovered well over full. He’d said what he had to say.
“We’re holding you.”
He knew the law, knew this was within their rights. “Okay, but I’m done answering questions. I’ve given you my statement, so anything else you want to ask me will be with my attorney present. Garret Wilkes in Missoula. Give him a call.” He stood then, half-expecting the bigger woman to order him back into his chair, but she didn’t.
She looked as tired as he felt, and if she was any cop at all, she’d already figured out he was innocent.
“I want to see my dog and talk to Jillian.”
Pescoli was having none of it. “Can’t do it.”
“Sure you can. As soon as you give up all this ‘bad cop’ act.”
Pescoli’s eyes flashed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Alvarez said, stepping in before her partner did anything they’d both regret. She fished her handcuffs from her back pocket. “For now, though, Mr. MacGregor, you’re going to have to spend the rest of the night in a holding cell. Compliments of Pinewood County.”
Chapter Twenty
“I don’t care what the doctor says, I need to be released and I need to be released now,” Jillian insisted until a nurse shut her up by stuffing a thermometer under her tongue. Lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, nearly gagging on the damned thermometer, she plotted her escape. It was only a matter of going against her doctor’s orders, and as far as she was concerned, she needed to get out now.
She’d never been one to sit idle, and lying around in a hospital bed was worse. The television was tuned in to some sitcom that should have died a death three seasons earlier, and there was noise from the outer hallway. The nurses’ hub was just outside her door and conversation, along with the rattle of carts and whisper of footsteps, seeped in through her cracked door.
Her room was small but private, with a large window overlooking a nearly empty parking lot that had been plowed of snow. Security lights offered a smoky blue glow, and a few flakes were falling again, reminding Jillian how cold she’d been, how she’d nearly died from exposure and that she was lucky to be in a warm, lighted room in a clean bed.
If not for MacGregor, she could very easily be dead or dying in the frigid night. She shivered inwardly at the thought and decided she should be a little grateful instead of bitchy.
With a ping, the thermometer indicated it had found her internal temperature.
The nurse, a heavy woman of around fifty, was holding the base of the electronic thermometer and wasn’t paying too much attention to any of Jillian’s complaints. She recorded the temperature, removed the probe and, with the dexterity borne of years of service, shot the plastic sleeve off the probe and into a waiting trash can. “Ninety-eight point nine,” she said without much enthusiasm. In fact, Nurse Claire Patterson seemed a little ragged around the edges, as if she’d been pulling a double shift. A trace of lipstick had faded, and if she’d been wearing any makeup it had rubbed off to show a reddish mask of rosacea.
“Not even ninety-nine,” Jillian pointed out as Nurse Claire tightened the blood-pressure cuff over her arm. “Not elevated enough to keep me.”
“I’ll see what the doctor says but he wanted you overnight for observation.” Her eyes didn’t move from the dial on the cuff.
“I don’t need ‘observation.’” Her chest and ankle had been X-rayed, and she’d lucked out and was suffering only a sprained ankle, which a doctor had taped, not even placed in a cast. Her ribs turned out to be bruised. Miraculously, she’d suffered no fractures or broken bones, just as MacGregor had predicted. Good. Her ribs still hurt like hell, though, but if she were given a prescription for pain medication, she saw no reason she needed to be kept a prisoner in this small, rural hospital.
“BP’s one ten over seventy-five. Normal,” the nurse said with a nod of her head as she read Jillian’s blood pressure. “Good.” She marked the chart again. “I think the police want to talk to you.”
“I already spoke with them.”
Nurse Claire stopped to take her pulse, was satisfied with the count and wrote the information down. Then she looked up and her expression was kinder than it had been. “I know, but they want to interview you again.”
As if Jillian were lying. Why didn’t they believe her? Why did they treat MacGregor like a criminal?
“I already told them everything I know,” she argued, her vow to not let her anger get the better of her tongue quickly forgotten. The police had questioned her in the helicopter and when she’d first arrived at the hospital, but her doctor had intervened.
“I’m sure you did.” Claire’s gaze touched Jillian’s. “I’ll talk to Dr. Haas and see what I can do about getting you released, but I doubt he’ll agree.”
Terrific, Jillian thought as she watched the nurse head to the door. She grabbed the television remote from the tray next to her bed and muted a commercial
for home-baked pizza. Home. How long had it been since she had curled up in her favorite overstuffed chair, absently petting Marilyn while eating popcorn and watching some schmaltzy old movie?
She’d already called her mother and Linnie had cried on the telephone. “I knew they’d found you; they called earlier. But…but, oh Jillian, I was so afraid that I’d lost you forever, that you’d been abducted by that crazed madman and I would never see you, hear your voice again.” Her mother had started sobbing and tears had tracked from Jillian’s eyes, as well.
“I’m okay.”
“But what you’ve gone through. With that madman.”
“Oh no, Mom, you’ve got it all wrong. I was safe most of the time.” She’d spent nearly half an hour trying to convince her mother that Zane MacGregor was not the killer. When Linnie had asked about who had abducted her and left her in the forest, Jillian had told her mother exactly what she’d told the police—that she had no idea who had tried to murder her.
Linnie hadn’t been convinced but her sobs had stopped abruptly. “I’ll take the next flight to Missoula and rent a car and—”
“No, Mom!” Jillian had cut her off. “I’ll be home in a day or two and I’ll call you with a new cell phone number.”
“But after your ordeal—”
“I’m fine. The doctors are treating me and nothing’s broken and I’ll be able to drive home as soon as the roads are clear.”
“You’re injured! I should be with you.” And then Jillian had understood. Her mother wanted not only to help her, but also to share in some of the bizarre limelight of the case. Already reporters had tried to call her room.
“I’m okay, Mom. Really. Don’t come. Just call Dusti and tell her I’m fine, and anyone else who asks.”
“Well, of course!” Linnie was never more in her element than when she had a task to complete. “And what about the newspapers and the television reporters here? I’ve already had a call.”
“Really?” Jillian was floored. “How did they find out about me?”
