Expecting to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Federal land. About a mile south of Reservoir Point.”

“Anything else we know about it?”

“Just that it looks like a woman. The drone couldn’t get too close because of the foliage, but a leg and arm were visible. The shoe was a woman’s sandal. And neither appendage moved. Jeffe sent over a file, so I’ve got a visual.”

“Let’s see it.”

Zoller led the way into the conference room where they’d met earlier and sure enough, Jeffe had uploaded footage from the drone. As Zoller had stated, the forest was dense, but caught on the drone’s camera was a slim, naked leg, and from the toes of the visible foot, a gold sandal dangled. A hand was visible as well, and as Zoller zoomed in, Alvarez saw that the fingernails were tipped with a pearlescent pink color and on her ring finger was a glittering diamond ring.

“Married,” Sage said. “Or engaged.”

“Has anyone reported a woman missing?”

“Don’t know. This just came in.”

“Let’s find out.” Alvarez was already out the door and in the hallway when Zoller caught up with her.

Taj Nyak was working the desk, and upon Alvarez’s inquiry about recently filed reports about missing women, she nodded. “We’ve got a couple that came in. Penelope Jarvis, eighty-six. Went missing from Safe Haven Adult Care.”

“Not so safe,” Zoller said. “They might want to change their name.”

“Someone younger,” Alvarez said.

“Got one, just today.” Taj pulled the file up on the computer and spun the screen around so Alvarez could view it. “Marjory Tufts,” she said. “Her husband was in about three this afternoon.” A picture was attached to the file. Alvarez recognized Emmett and Preston Tufts’s stepmother. “He’s worried sick about her, said they had a fight and she took off last night. I guess it happens often enough that he wasn’t worried, thought she’d spend the night with a friend or in a hotel. It’s happened before. But this is the first time she’d taken off, he claims, since she found out she was pregnant. When she didn’t show up, he called around. Her friends, the local hotel where she stayed before, even a couple of hospitals, but no one had seen her. So he left work—he owns a car dealership—and came down here to file a report.”

Alvarez was nodding, but her eyes were on the photograph attached to the missing persons report. Marjory was young, not yet twenty, with a bright smile, a twinkle in her eye, and a glittery wedding ring that was identical to the one in the image captured by Carlton Jeffe’s drone.

* * *

No! No! No! Not now. It couldn’t be happening now.

The baby had to wait. It had to! She didn’t have time to go into labor now, to birth a child, not while this investigation was ongoing.

And what if the case goes on for weeks, for months, even years? Do you expect the baby to wait?

Another hard contraction stole her concentration as Santana drove, pushing the speed limit along the darkened country road. “Hang in there,” he advised as she labored in the passenger seat, the baby definitely on its way. The contractions were coming faster now, the forest and fields speeding by, the sun having set and dusk crawling over the land.

“This is such bad timing,” she gritted out.

“The department will function without you,” Santana assured her. “Trust me, the crime rate won’t go up in the next few days just because you’re not able to go in.”

“Very funny,” she said, though neither laughed and for once Pescoli didn’t argue. She couldn’t. The baby was coming and coming fast. Pains as intense as any she’d ever felt in her life tore through her, with ever decreasing intervals in between.

In flashes of memory, as she clutched the passenger seat, she remembered her previous deliveries. Both Jeremy and Bianca had arrived quickly, her labor lasting less than six hours, but this one, Santana’s kid, seemed determined to break their records and race headlong into the world.

Santana floored it on a straightaway.

“Don’t kil

l us,” she advised, thinking of the deer and rabbits and whatever that came out at twilight, animals that wandered along the road.

“Before I meet my kid?” he said, slanting a glance in her direction. His grin was an enigmatic and irreverent slash of white. “You hang in there. Concentrate on bringing that baby into the world and leave the driving to me. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, her heart swelling. Damn, but she loved this man. And then another contraction hit with the force of an earthquake and all she could think about was getting through the pain.

She even forgot that life as she’d known it was about to end as he called the hospital and said to the operator who answered: “This is Nate Santana. I’m bringing my wife, Regan Pescoli, to the ER. She’s in labor and the baby’s just about here! We’re preregistered and our Doctor is . . . Peeples . . .” He glanced at Regan.

“Ramona.”