Читать книгу The Alvarez & Pescoli Series - Lisa Jackson - Страница 26

Help me!

Oh God, please, someone help me!

Rona struggled, fighting the cold, battling the constricting rope that lashed her to the tree, but the more she squirmed, the tighter her binds cut into her flesh. She tried to scream, to yell, to let someone know what he was doing, but the gag, more like a damned muzzle, held back her voice and the only sounds she heard were muffled cries, the frantic beating of her heart, the rush of the wind and her mind screaming at her that she’d been a fool. A fool of the worst order.

How could she have trusted him, this monster who was binding her to the rough bark of a tree? He’d slid her clothes off and she hadn’t resisted. Had he drugged her? Had she been paralyzed with fear? Or had she felt so desperate and alone that she longed for his attention?

Oh God, she’d been an idiot, letting him skim off her clothes, allowing him to kiss her skin and then, when she was caught in an instant between temptation and fear, slip the noose around her neck. Only then did she realize how deadly was his trap.

Please, God, help me, she prayed, tears falling from her eyes as the frigid snow, hard with crystals, bit at her skin, causing it to pimple with the cold.

Surely he didn’t mean to leave her here.

This had to be a test, that was all.

She heard him grunt as he pulled on the restraints and her back was yanked hard against the rough bark of this solitary fir tree. In front of her was a meadow, now covered in snow. She blinked hard, trying to dislodge the white flakes, hoping to see a way out of this horrible, freezing situation.

“Let me go! Don’t do this. Please, please!” she cried, but her words were mute and dull, nearly unintelligible. And they were falling on deaf ears.

He’d known he was going to kill her.

All along.

And yet she’d believed him when he’d said he would take her to safety, that as soon as the storm lifted he would get her to a hospital or find a phone and call 911. Or…

And you fell for it. You dumb little fool!

She began to cry again, tears streaming from her eyes, blurring her vision and tracking down her icy cheeks. God, she was cold. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. Her bare nipples felt raw and puckered and there was no source of heat in her body. Even her blood felt sluggish and thick, and for the first time her feet began to go numb.

Frostbite.

Exposure.

Killed by Mother Nature and her own stupidity.

If only Connor was here…he would help her…Connor, oh love, what…what have I done? Blackness pulled at her consciousness and she tried to stay awake, to take one last look at the bastard’s handsome face, but her thoughts were leaving her and she thought she saw Connor standing before her, whispering that she’d only gotten what she’d deserved…then there was someone else…a woman…“Mom?” she said to the apparition because, really, her mother had been dead for nearly three years…but…

The darkness came again, swallowing her and she was vaguely aware of the sound of pounding. As if someone were knocking on the door. “I’ll get it, Mama,” she said, though no words escaped her lips and her mouth tasted bad. “I’ll get it….”

Pescoli glanced down at her paperwork and stifled a yawn. What she wouldn’t give for a hit of nicotine to sharpen her focus.

“Son of a bitch!” Sheriff Grayson stormed out of his office, swearing a blue streak.

Every muscle around Pescoli’s spine went rigid and her stomach clenched tight as her fists. It was Saturday afternoon, the skies had cleared in the last few hours and several of the detectives had come into the office to catch up on paperwork or go over their notes. She tossed her pen aside and pushed away from her desk. “Let me guess,” she said, already knowing the answer. “Someone found another DB in the forest?”

“Yep,” Grayson said, his face muscles taut, his jaw rigid with barely suppressed rage. He was already stuffing his arms through his jacket, his sidearm visible in its shoulder holster. “We didn’t get the bastard soon enough.”

“What?” Brewster, who had heard the conversation through the open door to his office, strode into the hallway, his jacket in hand. “Are you shittin’ me?”

“Wouldn’t do it,” Grayson said as the undersheriff reached him.

“Well, fuck!” Cort Brewster’s ruddy face flushed in fury as he tugged his jacket over his sidearm. “That goddamned cocksucker.”

Alvarez, whose cubicle was on the other side of the partition from Pescoli’s, was already stuffing her hair into a cap as she hurried down the hallway between the desks to catch up with the rest of the little posse.

Through the open door of Grayson’s office, Sturgis poked his head into the hallway and gave a nervous little bark.

“Stay!” Grayson ordered as his dog started to put a paw outside the office. In a gentler voice, Grayson said, “I’ll be back soon, boy.”

With a dejected look, the Lab turned around and, casting a final woebegone glance over his shoulder, eased back into the office, where a dog bed filled with cedar shavings was tucked not far from a heat register.

Pescoli grabbed her jacket, purse and pistol. “Jillian Rivers?” she asked as she followed the sheriff.

Grayson nodded sharply. “Looks like the bastard got to her. Same MO.”

“Poor woman.” Pescoli couldn’t imagine the terror that must’ve been the victim’s companion as she was forced to walk naked through the forest and, unable to fight, was bound to a tree to face the elements. “Who found her?”

“A couple out hiking called it in. They found her in a clearing up near Cougar Pass. A dead woman roped to a tree, just like the others. Scared them spitless.” Grayson’s eyes were haunted, guilt and frustration evident in the lines around the corners of his mouth. “We were just too damned late to save her.”

No one tried platitudes.

As they strode through the building, their boots treading heavy on the flooring, he said to Brewster, “Call the state police. See if they can put up some helicopters to view the surrounding area, take pictures, see what they can come up with before a new storm hits.”

Pescoli added, “Have them make note of any cabins where smoke is rising from the chimneys. They’re out of power up in that area, and if our killer is around, he’ll need some kind of heat.”

“He might have a generator.”

“Then he’s buying fuel for it somewhere, propane or diesel, and lots of it.”

“We’ve already got calls into distributors in a hundred-mile radius,” Alvarez said.

“Then have choppers look for disturbances in the snow. See if it’s melted around any of the cabins that are supposed to be vacant. Generators give off exhaust and heat and noise. Maybe someone’s heard one running that shouldn’t be. And let’s bring out the dogs. Maybe they can finally get a hit or lead us to where the bastard is.” Grayson shoved open the glass door so hard, it banged against the building.

The sun was nearly blinding. Beams dazzled and bounced off the mantle of white, while the chain on the flagpole clanged in the wind that caused the Stars and Stripes to wave. Clumps of snow shuddered and fell from branches of trees planted near the parking lot.

Pescoli unlocked her Jeep and slid behind the wheel while Alvarez climbed into the passenger side. Regan was battling a slight hangover from one too many margaritas and not much sleep. Since Jeremy spent the night at his friend’s house, Pescoli had spent a lot of hours with Nate.

All of them worth it.

That man had a way of turning her inside out. Of course they’d ended up in bed; they always did. And though the lovemaking put a smile on Pescoli’s face, there was sometimes a hangover to dim the glow. This morning she didn’t have time to remember the way Nate’s muscular legs stretched out over hers, or how he grabbed the cheeks of her butt as he pulled her close to him. At least not now. Her concentration had to be sharp and on the damned murders.

She slid a pair of sunglasses onto her nose and, following Grayson’s rig, drove out of the lot and into the hills.

“Did you have a chance to see the paper today?” Alvarez asked as they drove past the “Welcome to Grizzly Falls” sign on the north end of town.

“Something interesting?”

“You might say, and the reason Grayson’s on a tear.”

“Something more than finding dead women lashed to trees in his jurisdiction?”

“Someone leaked details to the press.”

“What?” Pescoli couldn’t believe it. “What details? They already reported that the cars had been wrecked, probably shot at.”

“Now they know about the notes. Not all the details, but that the victims were tied to trees, a star carved over their heads. Before, there wasn’t any mention of the notes.”

Pescoli’s fingers tightened over the wheel and the headache at the base of her neck began to throb. One of the advantages the sheriff’s department had was knowing the true nature of the crimes, of keeping details out of the press, so they could sort out the real culprit from the nutcases who wanted their fifteen minutes of fame. Up in this neck of the woods, there were plenty of idiots who might want a bit of notoriety by claiming participation in the killings.

“Who talked?”

Alvarez snorted. “Unknown at this time. But my money’s on Ivor Hicks. That guy can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“I know we can’t get through to Ivor, but maybe his family can.”

“He’s only got a son, and I think Bill tries to keep his distance from the old man. Wouldn’t you?”

“I’d move away,” Pescoli said.

“Would you?” Alvarez shook her head. “People stay where they want to. Near family, even if it’s not that great.”

Pescoli thought about it. She was still in the same town as her ex. Maybe Alvarez had a point. Or did she? “You moved.”

“Yeah, well, the job opportunities where I grew up were limited.”

“Not like here in Grizzly Falls.” Pescoli turned off the main road and started along the uphill grade leading into the mountains.

Alvarez didn’t respond, but that didn’t surprise Pescoli. Her partner was always touchy whenever her family was mentioned. She’d never discussed it with Pescoli, but it was obvious there was bad blood in that family. Real bad.

“So someone’s got to keep Ivor from spouting off to the press.”

“If it was Ivor.”

“Who else?” Pescoli asked.

“Now there’s an interesting question,” Alvarez stated. “Who else indeed? Anyway, the point is, someone did the honors and Grayson is not amused.”

“I’ll bet.” Pescoli kept the sheriff’s Suburban in sight while half-listening to the police-band conversation crackling over the hum of the Jeep’s engine as it climbed the steep mountain road, tires digging into the sanded, packed snow. Tree trunks, flanking the side of the road, were obscured by mounds of ice and snow that had been tossed to the side by the heavy blades of the plows that worked these hills.

They passed no cars as the convoy of vehicles headed to the latest killing ground.

Pescoli tried to picture this part of Cougar Pass, about fifteen miles out of town. It was accessible only by an old mining road, which was buried in snow but protected enough that they would be able to trudge the hundred yards to the spot where the body had been left.

“We’re gonna need boots and shovels today,” she said. “This guy sure likes distant locales.”

Tramping through drifts of snow that rose above her knees, Alvarez thought of her siblings, how, years ago, they had all prayed for a huge snowstorm, a snow day. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen too often in Woodburn, Oregon.

Field agents from the FBI arrived as she was signing in at the crime scene, which had been secured by Pete Watershed, the first detective to arrive. As a group, they made their way down the snowy road and saw, as the hiking couple had reported, a dead woman strapped to a tree. The people who’d called 911 were huddled in their SUV and agreed to wait to be interviewed by the detectives.

“God have mercy,” Alvarez said, and made the sign of the cross over her chest. A professed woman of science, she always fell back on the religion of her youth when she was faced with the darkest parts of human depravity.

Selena Alvarez believed in God, maybe not as deeply as her grandmother Rosarita had wished, but she believed and made no excuses for it. At times she’d gotten sideways glances from Brewster and Watershed but ignored them. Pescoli, at least, had never commented or acted like anything was out of the ordinary.

Now, as she stared at the body of the dead woman, she needed the tiniest connection to her faith, though reassurance was fleeting as she stood in the bitter cold and stared at the dead, naked woman roped to a solitary fir tree. She was petite and Caucasian, though her skin was tinged blue. Her short blond hair hung in frozen strands. Her head, covered with snow, tilted forward. Bruises were evident on her body, the heavy ropes having cut into her skin.

“Sweet Jesus,” Brett Gage whispered, his expression grim.

“Not pretty, is it?” Pescoli was serious as she studied the gruesome scene. “God, I’d love to nail the psycho who did this.”

Stephanie Chandler eyed the tracks in the snow. “Maybe we’ll catch a break this time. Maybe the dogs can pick up a scent.”

“Let’s hope,” Alvarez whispered. So far, the search-and-rescue dogs had proved useless, but today the weather was clearer, as were visible tracks leading to and from the clearing on the far side of the woods. “What’s over there?”

“No access road, at least not one that’s used, but there was a private lane leading to a mining operation that hasn’t been in use for decades.” Gage had pulled out a map and was folding it so that he could view the area where they were located.

“Any of the buildings left?” Alvarez asked.

Gage shook his head. “Don’t know.”

“One way to find out.”

“I’ll go,” Gage offered. Giving the tracks wide berth so as not to disturb any piece of evidence, he started toward the stand of pines at the far edge of the clearing, the area from where the tracks appeared.

“The guy wouldn’t be so stupid as to be nearby.” Alvarez was sure.

“Really?” Pescoli viewed her partner through amber-colored sunglasses. “Everyone makes mistakes. Even psychos.”

True enough, Alvarez thought.

“Not this guy.” Stephanie Chandler was standing a few feet away, her blond hair tucked into a navy blue FBI hat, her gaze taking in every inch of the crime scene. “He’s too precise. He’s worked this out in his head a million times. No mistakes.”

Pescoli didn’t back down. “They make mistakes. It’s what trips them up. So you’d better hope our guy isn’t flawless or we’re in for a world of hurt.”

Chandler said, “They only make mistakes when they’re pressured. We haven’t been able to do that with this guy.”

“Yet,” Pescoli said. “We will.”

“We’d better.” Chandler was eyeing the surrounding woods.

“I don’t think she’s been dead long,” Watershed said. “The body’s warmer than the others and no snow is covering the tracks. Maybe the dogs can come up with something.” He squinted, his gaze following Gage and the broken path in the snow, the killer’s trail. “He went out the same way he went in.”

“Just like before,” Alvarez noted.

The crime scene team arrived and got down to business, collecting any kind of evidence from the body and surrounding area, taking pictures of the scene and victim from all angles, searching for anything the killer might have left behind.

“She’s not Jillian Rivers,” Alvarez said abruptly.

Pescoli nodded. “She doesn’t look like the picture on her driver’s license. The physical description’s all wrong. Rivers is around five seven and weighs around a hundred and thirty and this woman couldn’t be more than five one or two, barely tips the scale at a hundred pounds.”

Alvarez braced herself as she studied the corpse. “Rivers has hazel eyes and long dark brown hair; this one’s blond. Could have been dyed and cut, I suppose, but I don’t think so. Looks natural.” The victim’s pubic hair was a dark shade of blond and her dead, sightless eyes were bright blue. “Eye color is wrong, too. And check out the note.”

WAR T SC I N

“If our theory is right, then Jillian Rivers’s initials should be somewhere in the message. There’s an R, which could be for Rivers, but no J. Instead we’ve got an A.” Alvarez shook her head. “This isn’t right, unless he’s changed his MO.”

“No way,” Chandler said, shaking her head as she studied the scene from twenty feet away. “He wouldn’t. He’s toying with us, yes, but trying to tell us something. He wants us to figure out what it is, so he can prove how smart he is.”

Alvarez watched as Mikhail, a forensic technician, removed the note with tweezers, gently placing it in a plastic bag, and held it out to her. “Did you want a closer look?”

“Thanks.” She pinched the edge of the bag and stepped away from the woman’s frozen body, grateful for the chance to turn her back on the gruesome death scene. Although she had learned to hide it, especially on the job, Selena Alvarez struggled when it came time to process violent crime scenes. Especially crimes against women. Her cross to bear, as her grandmother Rosarita would say.

She liked to think that turmoil gave her the edge when it came to catching a psycho like this, a man who made a game out of killing.

The bastard.

It was also the reason she’d avoided employment in forensics. Much as she appreciated the science of it, she couldn’t stomach it. Now, as the crime scene unit did their job, carefully bagging the woman’s frozen hands, checking her body, combing the lone fir tree and the surrounding area, Alvarez stared at the most recent note, determined to work the case from this angle. Whether it was meant to be unscrambled, translated or decoded, she wasn’t sure, but she sure as hell was going to spend some time trying to figure it out.

It was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Pescoli frowned as she eyed the rugged terrain that surrounded the latest crime scene. Mountains, ravines, frozen creek beds, curving rim roads. They’d been searching that area for Jillian Rivers, to no avail. Now the search would be on for this woman’s vehicle.

If the weather held.

A goddamned needle in a haystack.

She thought about the topographical maps at the office. Maybe she could use her computer program and come up with potential sites for the next killing ground.

There were dozens of small meadows in these mountains and it would take forever to search them all out, but what choice did they have?

“At least we know Jillian Rivers isn’t dead and we missed her. There’s no J on the note. All the initials have bodies attached,” Alvarez pointed out.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean she’s safe. He might have her ready to go,” Pescoli said.

Alvarez stepped closer to the tracks. “True, but he was here in the past few hours. These are fresh, not covered in snow, and the weather’s been clear only a few hours.”

“Not much consolation there. The prick could be doing Jillian Rivers now for all we know,” Pescoli said.

The whomp, whomp, whomp of helicopter rotor blades could be heard approaching. Already, it seemed, the state police were going airborne to search the area. Good, Pescoli thought, they might be able to see something from the air that would take days of good weather and a lot of luck to see on the ground.

“What the hell does the note mean?” Pescoli asked, staring over her partner’s shoulder at the latest note.

“Beats me.” Brewster glowered at the block letters and weird star.

“How about ‘WAR TO SCIENCE’?” Watershed asked. “Maybe this guy’s a religious nut. Maybe this is a sacrifice, some kind of rite.”

“Satanic rite,” Pescoli added.

“Could be ‘WART SCIENCE.’” Although his face was red from the cold, Pete Watershed wasn’t about to give up. “Or ‘WAR OF THE SCIENTISTS’ or even ‘WARY OF THIS COIN.’”

“Then where would Jillian Rivers’s initials fit in?” Alvarez asked. “I mean, assuming she’s next.” She glanced up at Pescoli. “The psycho must still have her.”

“Son of a bitch,” Pescoli whispered. “This guy just won’t give up.”

“Or…‘WAR OF THE SCHOOL INSTITUTIONS’…Hell, if that’s the case, we got a whole lot more victims.” Watershed was worried, scratching his jaw.

“Of course he won’t give up.” Stephanie Chandler walked the perimeter of the crime scene. “He can’t. He lives for this.” She read the note at a distance. “If anything, he’ll escalate. We need to be looking for a missing person with the initials AR or RA in her early twenties. Who found this body again?” She turned her attention to Sheriff Grayson, who was standing twenty feet from the lone fir tree, hands stuffed in his pockets, lips flat against his teeth, as he eyed the dead woman.

“Eldon and Mischa York, who were out hiking. They have a summer cabin out here and came for a week. Their story is that they’d been cooped up with the storm and took advantage of the break in the weather to get a little exercise. The good news is that they saw the scene and all the footprints and hightailed it back to their cabin, climbed in their four-wheel-drive and drove to a spot where they had cell phone service, then called 911.” Grayson finally turned his attention to the FBI agent. “Both of ’em are waiting in their rig, if you want to talk to them.” He motioned a gloved hand toward the access road, where all the vehicles from the sheriff’s department and crime lab were clustered around the Yorks’ SUV.

“We will,” Chandler said as the noise from the helicopter rotors sliced through the silence.

“Looks like we got lucky this time. We might get an actual cast out of the boot prints, something we can use,” Alvarez said.

“Not lucky enough for the victim,” Grayson muttered, and walked away, his gloved hands fisted, his jaw rock-hard. “Whoever the hell she is, she didn’t make it.” He glanced up at the sky as a helicopter appeared above the timberline, hovering over a sheer, rocky ridge covered with ice and snow.

The chopper moved in, coming in low, skimming the tops of trees surrounding the open space. It wasn’t the police search-and-rescue chopper they’d all expected. A blue call sign announced that it belonged to a local news station, and a cameraman, his huge lens trained on the clearing, was leaning as far as he dared out of the noisy aircraft.

Pescoli wanted to wave the news copter away. “Looks like we’ve got company.”

“Wouldn’t ya know?” Grayson muttered between tight teeth. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, the damned press decides to show up.”

“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Agent Chandler said, squinting up at the chopper. “Maybe we can use the footage to our advantage. See what else they locate and make a public statement. Use the news crew, rather than be used by them.”

“Did you just say screw the news crew?” Brewster asked, an amused glint in his eye.

Chandler nodded. “Close enough.”

Pescoli glanced up at the helicopter hanging in the crisp mountain air. Chandler had a point; the news copter would give them free aerial support.

“Go for it,” Grayson told the FBI agent. “KBIT is all yours.”

Jillian thought she would go out of her ever-lovin’ mind. She stared out at the expanse of snow sparkling in the sunlight and knew this was her chance to finally get out of here.

And go where?

How?

She had to wait for him. MacGregor had talked about it and had left with a chain saw hours before. She’d watched as he’d driven off on the snowmobile, hearing the big engine roar, but once the sound from the Arctic Cat faded, she’d waited, hoping to hear the grind of saw teeth biting through wood.

No such luck.

The dog, having finally accepted her, was curled up near the door again, the fire stoked. Jillian had tried to get into several of the books she’d found but couldn’t. She was too jangled. Too wired. Too anxious to get out of here. Time was moving along, and if she wanted to find out if Aaron were really alive—or just get back to her real life!—she couldn’t be waylaid any longer.

So what about MacGregor? Are you just going to leave him here?

“Of course,” she bit out. The man was nothing to her. Yeah, she found him a little bit intriguing, but she chalked that up to being alone with him in this isolated canyon. She knew of Stockholm Syndrome, how a hostage came to trust, even depend upon, her abductor; how once rescued she wouldn’t turn on the very person who kidnapped her.

Was that what this was? The root of all her fantasizing?

She remembered his lips brushing her cheek.

So he kissed her. Big deal.

So he was attractive. Who cared?

So he was mysterious. Then run the other way!

Adding wood to the fire, she listened hard, hoping to hear the roar of the snowmobile, but no sound broke the silence of the cabin. She dug in her bag and fiddled with her cell phone, trying it in every corner of the house, but just when she thought she might get a signal, the screen would flash and show “no service.”

“Great,” she muttered to the dog, walking to the windows and wishing MacGregor would return. She still didn’t hear the growl of a chain saw ripping through fallen trees, nor the buzz of an approaching snowmobile.

As she gazed out the window she wondered exactly where she was. He had a stack of maps on the table, so she flipped through them before selecting one that she thought encompassed the area.

She saw roads and rivers and towns, including Grizzly Falls and Spruce Creek, both of which rang bells in her mind. She noticed Missoula and stared at the letters, thinking of Mason and how she was certain he was the one who had lured her to Montana.

But did that make sense?

Why would Mason want her to come here?

Why would he want to kill her?

There had, at one time, been life insurance, of course. A policy worth several hundred thousand dollars that Mason had insisted upon, but she didn’t even know if the policy was in existence any longer.

And the voice on the phone. Had it been Mason, disguising himself? Whispering so that she couldn’t identify him?

Why now?

As far as she knew, he was happily married to his new trophy wife. So why dredge up Aaron now? He’d been presumed dead so long Jillian barely remembered what he looked like. She searched a stack of astrological charts and maps on the table and found the envelope with the pictures that were supposedly of her dead husband. Holding the images under the light of a kerosene lantern, she studied the man carefully, trying to remember.

Was he Aaron?

Maybe. There was the beard and sunglasses and baseball cap pulled low over his eyes partially obscuring his face. And the extra weight, while Aaron had always been trim.

But ten years had passed. A decade. She’d remarried and divorced in that time. And now, if he were alive, Aaron would be just a few months shy of forty.

Frowning, she wondered if the man in the photo was Aaron or an imposter. Even more likely, was he an unsuspecting target? A man whose resemblance to her dead husband had prompted the photographer to snap the pictures. These weren’t posed shots, but pictures of him on the street, walking into a store, near a sidewalk where cars were parked on a snowy street.

“Who are you? Just who the hell are you?” she whispered to the picture, and at the sound of her voice the dog climbed to his feet, metal ID tags jangling on his collar. With a glance at her, he walked to the front door, where he whined loudly and scratched.

“Need to go out?” she asked, with a glance outside.

Where the hell was MacGregor?

Gone. Not coming back. Maybe someone, whoever you thought was outside the other night, attacked him.

Now she was being ridiculous, letting her paranoia get the better of her.

Harley whined loudly.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Hold onto your horses.” She hitched to the gun cupboard and, feeling a little foolish, grabbed the loaded rifle with her free hand. She didn’t like the idea of having to use the weapon, but knew she could if threatened. Grandpa Jim had seen to that.

She whistled to the dog. “Come on, Harley, you know the drill. Out the back.” Using her crutch, she hobbled to the back door and opened it and the dog shot out before she had second thoughts and worried that letting Harley outside was a mistake. What if the damned dog took off after MacGregor?

Got lost.

He’s a dog, for God’s sake.

He’s home. He won’t stay out in the cold for long.

He just needs to get out, stretch his legs, urinate a few times.

“Stick around, please,” she muttered, and watched as he lifted his leg on the trunk of a small tree near the back of the garage. He ambled through the chest-high snow, seeming to find joy in breaking a trail through the icy powder.

Jillian, in the doorjamb, felt the cold air and shivered. She was about to go inside when she saw Harley, now out in the middle of a clearing near the back, stop suddenly, ears cocked forward.

She almost called out to him but held her tongue.

Something in the dog’s intense gaze gave her pause. Her fingers flexed over the handle of the crutch.

Nose in the air, hair bristling on the scruff of his neck, Harley stared intently into the woods.

Sweet Jesus.

Panic spurted through Jillian’s blood.

She hoisted the rifle to her shoulder.

Don’t be paranoid.

The dog growled low in his throat and lowered his head, his tail, too, moving downward.

This was no good.

She’d been around dogs enough to know when they sensed danger.

Harley started moving through the heavy snow, breaking a trail toward a thick copse of pines, where his gaze was centered.

Heart in her throat, rifle aimed at the spot where the dog seemed to be staring, a place on the other side of the pine trees, she stayed close to the building and whistled to the dog, just as she’d heard MacGregor do a dozen times.

The spaniel’s ears didn’t even flick as he advanced, moving awkwardly through the shoulder-deep snow.

“Harley!” she commanded, eyeing him through the sight of the rifle. “Come.”

Was the dog crazy? He was nearly buried.

Still the damned spaniel ignored her. He slipped beneath the first sagging, snow-laden branch of a Ponderosa.

“Damn!” she said under her breath as she clicked off the safety.

The day was clear and still. Sunlight reflecting on the ice, nearly blinding. Not a breath of wind. No birds calling. Just the sound of her own anxious breathing.

She squinted hard. Strained to hear the slightest noise. “Come back,” she mouthed, hoping the dog could hear her.

Don’t freak out. The dog could have seen a squirrel.

Or a deer.

Or a wolf. You read recently where the gray wolf has made a comeback in Montana.

And they travel in packs.

Could tear a domestic dog to bits.

All the spit dried in her mouth.

She’d never in her life been afraid of wild animals, had always thought humans were far more deadly, but now…“Harley, get back here!” she yelled, her one booted foot a little unsteady, the other toes bare in the cold air. “Harley! Come!” Heart thumping wildly she lowered her rifle and made her way to the edge of the porch, eyeing the broken snow where the dog had disappeared.

“Harley!” she called again, her voice echoing off the mountains.

Bam!

A rifle cracked loudly.

“Oh God!”

The dog yelped in pain.

“Harley!” Jillian yelled, her heart clutching. Oh God, now what? She had to go after the poor animal. “Harley!” He could still be alive!

She stepped off the porch before remembering two steps had been buried in the drifts. The rubber tip of her crutch slipped a little, but she steadied herself, then plowed forward along the half-broken path the dog had created.

Who would shoot him?

A hunter mistaking him for a wolf or coyote?

Or…someone who had been lying in wait?

Someone with a dark, deadly purpose.

Someone who had shot out the tire of her car….

Oh God. She forced the gun to her shoulder, licked her lips nervously and, ignoring the cold, pushed onward. She didn’t say a word, listened hard to hear the sound of the dog whining, footsteps or whispered voices—but nothing disturbed the quietude.

At the edge of the copse, she leaned forward, ducking under a branch, a sharp, shooting pain cutting through her abdomen and ribs. This is nuts, Jillian. Go back. What can you do for the poor animal if you do find him? Carry him back to the house? How?

Gritting her teeth, she kept moving forward, trying to be as silent as possible, her heart drumming wildly as she followed the path where, beneath the trees, the snow wasn’t as deep. She heard the tiniest gurgle of a creek, probably nearly frozen, and over that, the distant reverberations of an engine.

MacGregor’s snowmobile?

Oh please.

Using the barrel of her rifle to push aside low-hanging branches, she heard the dog’s whine…he was still alive! And MacGregor was coming. The roar of the snowmobile’s engine was getting closer…or was it?

Come on, MacGregor, get the hell back here.

She stepped around an outcropping of rock and saw the dog, a patch of black and white on the snowy ground. And more. Stains of bright red where blood was matting his coat and seeping from his body into the pristine whiteness of the forest floor.

“Oh, Harley,” she said as he lifted his head. “Oh no, I’m so…”

He wasn’t looking at her.

But at a spot just over her shoulder.

She took one step forward.

His lips pulled back into a hard growl, exposing sharp teeth. From the corner of her eye, Jillian caught a glimpse of movement, a flash.

Fingers tight over the gunstock, she swung.

But it was too late. Her attacker was upon her back, forcing her onto the frozen ground. Jillian squirmed as the sickening sweet smell of a chemical stung her nostrils. There was a flash of a dark, gloved hand mashing into her face, a bare span of scarred wrist catching her eye as the damp rag was forced over her nose and mouth.

Turning her panic to sweet oblivion.