by Lisa Jackson
“Yeah,” Michelle agreed.
“You’re her partner. You must know what a hot-head she can be,” Lucky said.
“Seems to me she’s been pretty rock-steady where the kids are concerned.” For the first time Selena noticed that Pescoli’s son hadn’t joined the party. “Is Jeremy here?”
“Nah, he went into town.”
“In this?” she asked, hitching her chin toward the window and the storm raging outside.
“He’s nearly eighteen, been driving in snow ever since he got his license. It’s nothing. I loaned him my truck ’cuz we left his at her house.” As if a sudden thought occurred to him, he said, “You said you checked there at her place?”
“She’s not there and her Jeep is missing.”
“And she’s not answering her phone?” Leaning across the couch for the handheld, he dialed a number, as if he could reach his ex-wife when the entire sheriff’s department couldn’t. When that didn’t work, he pounded out a new set of numbers, then as he listened, said, “You probably tried her cell?”
“Yes,” Selena answered carefully.
Frowning, he waited, then, obviously hearing Pescoli’s voicemail recording, hung up and stared at the phone.
“Dad?” Bianca asked, her voice quavering slightly. “Where’s Mom?”
“Oh, probably with some loser guy she picked up—”
“Lucky, don’t—” Michelle warned, her perfect, pink lips puckering into a knot of disapproval.
Maybe she isn’t so bad after all.
“But you can find her, right?” Bianca said, glancing from her father to Alvarez.
“Of course,” Selena said, though she didn’t like her odds. “Why don’t you tell me what happened when she called yesterday.”
He glowered out the window, watching as the snowflakes fell relentlessly from the obscured heaven. “We had a fight on the phone. That’s no news flash. I thought she’d come barging in here ready for bear, but when she never showed I figured she’d decided to take some time to cool off. It’s almost Christmas. She was eyeball deep in all this crap about the serial killer, so I thought she’d just chilled. Believe it or not, that happens, too.”
A timer went off in the kitchen.
Michelle, as if she’d been sitting on coiled springs, shot out of her chair and hotfooted it past a crowded dining room table and through an archway.
Bianca looked at her dad. “Mom’s okay, right?”
“’Course she is,” Lucky said, flashing a smile that radiated confidence.
Alvarez’s cell phone went off and she climbed to her feet and walked to the entryway, to give herself a little privacy. “Alvarez,” she said, grabbing another tissue from her pocket, and heard Undersheriff Cort Brewster’s voice on the other end.
“We got a signal off of Pescoli’s vehicle coming from up on Horsebrier Ridge.” Alvarez’s stomach dropped. She’d driven over the ridge on her way from Regan’s house to here. “Rule’s already on the scene and spotted the vehicle. Wrecked, buried in the snow. We’ve got another unit headed that way, the towing company alerted.”
Alvarez sneaked a glance over her shoulder. Bianca was staring at her wide-eyed while Lucky was tuned in to the news. Oh, God, what a mess.
“Anyone see the driver?” she asked, her voice low.
“Not yet.” His voice was grim. “Rule claims at least twelve inches of snow over the vehicle. He can’t tell how badly it’s wrecked or if anyone’s inside.”
“I’m on my way,” she said, digesting what the undersheriff had said as well as what he hadn’t. The temperature in that wrecked car would have been far below freezing last night and if Regan hadn’t gotten out…
She clicked off the phone and turned back to the living room where Bianca was still staring at her.
“I’ve got to go. If you think of anything else, call me.”
“That was about Mom,” Bianca guessed, her face ashen. “Wasn’t it?”
“We don’t know. We think we might have found her vehicle. Nothing’s certain yet.”
“Where?” Bianca demanded, getting up from her spot on the ottoman.
Now, finally, she had Lucky’s attention. He clicked off the television with the remote. Michelle, snowman hot pads covering her hands, had walked into the archway near the dining room and, too, was waiting.
“I don’t know anything, but I will soon,” Alvarez said. “I’ll call.”
“No…I want to come.” Bianca was already starting for the door, but Lucky reached out a long arm and stopped her, held his daughter fast. For the first time he seemed to really comprehend how dire the situation was.
“We can’t interfere with police business, pumpkin. Detective Alvarez promised to call us and she will.”
Alvarez’s heart sank as she walked to the door and let herself out. Whatever had happened to Regan wasn’t good.
She knew it.
Lucky Pescoli knew it.
Only Bianca was holding out childish hope.
Chapter Five
Alvarez stood on the icy road that cut across Horsebrier Ridge and watched nervously as the rescue workers ascended the face of the cliff using ropes. It was dark, the wind blowing through the canyon, but the blizzard had given it a rest, no new snow was falling from the dark heavens. At least for now.
Tired, hungry, her stomach in knots, the cold medication wearing off, she, along with several deputies and members of the rescue teams from both the fire and sheriff’s departments, had responded to the scene. The road was blocked, flares lit and sizzling orange, adding to the eerie incandescence of beams from flashlights, headlights, taillights, and cigarette tips all reflecting against a deathly white panorama of wintry forest.
Far below, crumpled and half buried in snow, was the remains of what had once been Pescoli’s Jeep. The rescue team, with the help of ropes and climbing gear, returned.
“No one inside,” Randy, a ruddy-faced fireman, said as he approached. He was shaking his head and turned to another fireman, Gary Goodwin, a man Alvarez had only met a couple of times. “Got a smoke?”
Goodwin obliged, offering up an opened pack of Winstons and a Bic lighter.
“Purse?” Alvarez asked as Randy, thick gloves on his hands, fumbled with the bummed cigarette and a lighter.
“I didn’t see one.”
“Weapons? I’m sure she had her sidearm, a shotgun, and rifle with her.”
“Nothing.” He was shaking his head. “But it’s damned dark, I looked real good with my flashlight, but I could have missed something.” He lit up and tossed the lighter back to his buddy.
“You didn’t,” Goodwin said, glancing down the hill again. “There was some junk in there, sunglasses, empty cigarette pack, shopping bags, but the Jeep’s pretty crumpled up. Maybe we’ll find something tomorrow, when we’ve got daylight.” He didn’t sound convinced as he jammed a cigarette into his mouth.
Alvarez silently agreed. And she figured the rest of the crew from the sheriff’s department would be on board with Randy’s assessment. If Pescoli had been abducted by the Star-Crossed Killer, her assailant would have cleaned out the Jeep, wiped away or taken any evidence with him, as he had with all the others.
Alvarez felt sick inside. She coughed, and the men stepped away from her. She flapped a hand at them and said, “Not the cigarettes. A nasty cold.”
They stayed back. Alvarez didn’t blame them.
She cleared her throat and gazed out at the frigid landscape. Their only hope was that the killer’s M.O. of nurturing his victims back to health before brutally leaving them to die in the frozen wilderness would buy Regan some time. If that was the case, then there was a good chance Pescoli was still alive and if she wasn’t too injured, she might be able to escape. She, if she hadn’t sustained a head injury, would know what she was dealing with. The other victims hadn’t been so lucky.
Lucky. Yeah, right. God, what a mess.
She spent another half hour on the ridge before calling it a night. There was nothi
ng more she could do. The crime scene guys would go over the vehicle and surrounding area with fine-toothed combs and sophisticated equipment, the Jeep would be towed to the garage where it would be examined again and again. If the killer messed up…
But so far he hasn’t.
Now the clock was ticking down, vital seconds in Regan Pescoli’s life slipping away.
She rubbed her gloved hands together, trying to get some feeling back in her fingers. Her toes, too, were beginning to tingle and go numb despite warm socks and boots. And the cold medication she’d taken hours before had worn off. Her nose was running and her ears were plugged.
Walking to the edge of the cliff, she looked far below to the area where Pescoli’s car had landed.
How had Star-Crossed known Regan Pescoli would be traveling this road at that particular moment in time?
How could he know?
Frustrated, she turned and looked up at the hill rising above the road. From the ridge he might have had an open shot. Still, the odds of pulling it off were against him.
In the morning if the weather held off, officers would scour the ridge and hill, searching for shell casings or a spot where an assassin could lay in wait. Maybe this time they’d find something.
She squinted up through the darkness. Had the bastard camped out here in the middle of a blizzard with near-whiteout conditions?
He had to know.
Alvarez pictured him waiting. Patiently. Silently. Finger on the trigger.
She felt a chill deeper than the coming night.
How had the killer learned that Pescoli would be driving hell-bent for leather over this pass? From Pescoli’s ex-husband? Her kids? Or had Pescoli’s assailant somehow tapped into her cell phone and was monitoring her calls?
Or had the sick son of a bitch just gotten lucky?
What were the odds of that?
And there was that word again. Lucky. Just like the nickname that Luke Pescoli wore so proudly. An odd, unsettling connection.
You’re grasping at straws.
She sniffed hard but still continued to look up to the top of the ridge, though the crest of the hill was obscured by darkness. She tried to imagine him waiting in the near blizzard. Somehow he had to have known that she’d be driving on this road. No one, not even a real nut-job, would wait out here in sub-freezing temperatures for hours, maybe days, on end.
Remember: this one’s a real wacko. He’s got a purpose; he’s driven. He’s had to have spent months, maybe years finding the right women for his victims. Lying in wait outside in these conditions might just turn him on.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the killer stretched out on the snow, or on something to protect him from the cold, as he propped his rifle on a fallen log, or a stump or boulder, maybe a tripod, something to steady the barrel while he trained it with steely composure on the road below.
He was a hunter, an assassin with an ace marksman’s deadly aim.
Jaw sliding to one side, eyes narrowing, she wondered how the hell Star-Crossed had managed to pull off such a perfect shot as to disable a car and send it careening off the roads and into the canyons.
She blew on her hands, watched her breath fog.
How intimately had he known his victims before the attack?
And what was his game? Not sexual gratification. At least not to the point of penetration. Not one body had shown signs of recent sexual abuse or intercourse. No semen was found in or on their bodies, nor had there been any wounds to their breasts or vaginal areas. Contrarily, autopsies proved that the victims’ initial wounds had actually started to heal before he’d apparently had enough of the game and brutally, without conscience, had lashed the women to trees in remote areas and callously left them to die.
The Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department had searched every database imaginable for skilled marksmen who could pull off such a feat, from ex-military aces and mercenaries, to the antigovernment extremists, hunters, cops, and winners of shooting competitions. Anyone with a history of incredible skills with a rifle. So far, no one suspect had come to the fore.
Until the woman in Spokane.
But there was just no damned way she could have been responsible for Pescoli’s disappearance, because she couldn’t be in two places at once. Pescoli had been seen and on the phone here in Grizzly Falls while the suspect was nearly two hundred miles away in Spokane, Washington. The panhandle of Idaho and mountainous terrain separated the cities.
So, who was the killer with the dead-eye aim?
Surely someone who lived around here, who knew the terrain well enough to pick just the right spots, someone who seemed to have a thing against women. Her jaw hardened as she thought of the men who had given her—a woman detective, no, make that a Hispanic woman detective—a rough time, as if she were an oddity, someone to be teased. Whoever was behind the assaults, though, had a deep-seated hatred for women. All women, apparently, as he certainly didn’t discriminate by race. And he could shoot straight as an arrow under horrible conditions, then “rescue” a woman from the wreckage of her car and haul her to some unknown destination.
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.
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 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 deep-seated 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, unable 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’ 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.
