He swore under his breath and realized just how much he missed her. “What the hell happened?” he
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asked, just as the sound of a truck’s engine cut through the morning air. He strode outside and stood on the front porch, expecting her Jeep to roll through the trees and the door to the garage to start cranking open.
Sure enough, a vehicle from the Pinewood Sheriff’s Department came into view, but the license plate was off and the woman behind the wheel wasn’t Pescoli. His heart sank as he recognized Selena Alvarez. Behind her, in another department-issued vehicle, were a couple of deputies.
“Don’t
move!” Alvarez ordered. She was reaching for her sidearm as she climbed out of the vehicle.
“Hands in the air!”
He didn’t argue. “I’m here looking for Regan,”
he said. “She’s not here.”
Alvarez gave him a we-already-know-that glare.
“You don’t know where she is?”
“I told you that yesterday. Things haven’t changed . . .” But they had. He saw it in her eyes, in the purse of her lips. “Why are you here?” he asked as the two deputies in the second car approached and a third vehicle, a van from the crime lab, nosed its way into the wide parking area in front of Pescoli’s house. “What’s going on?”
“You first. Why are you here now?”
“I haven’t heard from her, so I thought I’d start looking.”
The deputies exchanged glances.
“What?” Santana demanded, fear growing inside him. “You know something? Where is she?”
Alvarez scowled at him and shook her head. “We found her vehicle.”
“Where?” he asked, dread starting to pound through him. He lowered his hands.
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“Horsebrier Ridge. Well, really in the ravine.”
“She had an accident?” Panic tore through him.
“Is she all right?” he demanded and caught the tightening of Alvarez’s already grim lips. “What is this?”
His first thought that Regan was dead. But then, why the whole posse here at her house? Why the crime lab techs, who, bundled against the cold, carried cases and cameras in their gloved hands and started toward the house? “Can we all back up, please,” one of them, a tall man suggested. “You touch anything inside?”
Santana shook his head.
“Just walked all over the damned place,” Alvarez charged.
“Where’s Regan?” he asked.
She stonewalled him, motioned him to leave the porch, her pistol still aimed straight at his chest.
“Move it. Get out of the way.”