Deserves to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Good enough.

The place was showing its age. The carpet near the door was discolored, the comforter on the bed fading a little, the smell of disinfectant not quite masking a lingering odor of cigarettes, but all in all, it would do.

After cracking open a beer and taking a long swallow, he took a short shower, then changed into fresh clothes and went to work. One way or another, he was going to find Anne-Marie Calderone and haul her tight little ass back to New Orleans.

Alvarez was right.

Okay, she was right again, Pescoli thought as she drove down a winding lane that led to the partially built home where she and Santana were planning to live once they were married. Two days earlier, her partner had informed her that Dan Grayson was being moved from ICU and sure enough, when Pescoli had gone to visit him, the sheriff was in a private room, hooked up to all kinds of monitors, not too far from the hub of a nurse’s station.

She had expected him to be recovering a lot faster than he was, but she told herself to be patient. So he hadn’t woken from his coma, that didn’t mean anything. If it were a problem, certainly the doctors and nursing staff would do something. And Grayson’s family, his two brothers, Cade and Big Zed, had been at the hospital, along with Hattie, their deceased brother’s wife, every day since the assassination attempt.

At least, she thought as she drove around the edge of an icy pond, Grayson’s attacker had been rendered harmless. Injured during his capture, he was in custody, a bullet lodged against his spinal cord, his ability to walk in question. Though still under doctor’s care, the son of a bitch who’d nearly taken her boss’s life was no longer a threat.

No armed guard needed to be posted at the hospital any longer.

As she drove along the lane, she tried to be positive. She wasn’t certain how she felt about moving as she already owned her own little cabin in the hills, a place that was finally paid off and the home where she’d raised her kids. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was cozy, and she’d been proud that she’d been able to pay it off early by doubling up her payments whenever she was able, and finally claim it as her own.

She caught a glimpse of the lake on which the new cabin was built. It would be roomier than her little house, everything within it new enough that she

wouldn’t have to rely on her questionable plumbing and electrical skills, and it would provide a fresh start with no reminders of the other husbands she’d been married to. She and Santana planned to start their life together there. It sounds perfect, she thought as the house erected on the shores of the icy lake came into view.

And yet . . .

She didn’t know if she was making the right choice. Jeremy had graduated from high school a couple years earlier and Bianca had one more year, so wouldn’t it be smarter to wait?

“No time like the present.” Santana’s advice echoed through her mind as she cruised along the lake’s snowy shores. “May as well let the kids claim their rooms and feel like they are a part of this.”

That made sense, she supposed, or at least it had until she’d realized there was a new baby on the way, another child who would need his or her own room eventually. She seemed to be involved in revolving door parenting—as one kid was leaving a new one was coming to take his place.

The house came into view and she swallowed hard, wondering if she would ever think of it as home, her home. Two stories of raw cedar with a pitched roof covered in snow. With a gray stone fireplace, the house was nestled in the trees on the shore of the lake, picture-perfect. The garage was attached by a short, windowed breezeway and had private stairs that led to an area overhead where Santana planned to make his office. Considering everything, she wondered if Jeremy might tag the spot as his own, insisting the baby needed its own room as much as he needed his own privacy.

“Not gonna happen,” she said under her breath, then decided she was borrowing trouble. Besides, Jeremy was working, taking classes, planning to enroll full-time spring term, and finally appeared to be on a path going forward. He’d been through his own trauma the last few weeks but wouldn’t hear of her trying to help him in any way. She didn’t want to do anything that would impede his progress, like maybe telling him he was going to have another sibling soon . . .

But she was getting ahead of herself, far ahead of herself, she decided as she pulled into the parking area and cut the engine.

Nikita, Santana’s husky, appeared in the open doorway to the main house and gave a quick bark before bounding through the snow to greet her with his back end wiggling wildly.

“Hey, Detective!”

She looked up to see Santana standing on the upper floor deck, off the bedroom, looking every bit as sexy as the first time she’d met him, in a bar no less. Wearing a faded shirt that stretched across his shoulders, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the frame of the French doors as he stared down at her. One side of his mouth drew into a lazy smile. “About time you showed up.”

“Always the bastard,” she threw out at him, trying to hide her own amusement.

His grin widened, showing off white teeth against his bronzed skin. Like Blackwater, he had more than a trace of Native American blood in his veins, visible in his high, bladed cheekbones, ink-black hair and dark eyes, the kind of eyes that seemed to sear to her soul, eyes that were twinkling with that sexy kind of mischief that she found impossible to ignore.

What had started out as a white-hot attraction and equally hot affair hadn’t flamed out as she’d expected. No, she thought, petting Nikita’s furry head before heading into the house, that first spark of interest had burned through all her barriers to the engagement and, she hoped, marital bliss.

“Third time’s the charm,” she told herself as, with the dog on her heels, she walked through the open door and found her way up the stairs that would remain open, offering a view through the glass walls of the living room to the lake visible between each free floating step.

The staircase had been designed before she had any inkling that she would get pregnant, or that in the not-so-distant future a toddler would be trying to climb up and down the steps. At that thought, she paused, imagining a child with Santana’s dark hair running through the hallways.

She almost smiled and decided the staircase would need to be boxed in, at least for the next few years.

Sooner, rather than later, she’d have to break the news to Santana.

But not today.

She just wasn’t in the mood.