Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“But that’s a cop!” Tyler said as if he were imparting some vast unknown knowledge.

“I know.”

“Look, man, this is a bad idea—”

“My mom’s a cop, too.”

“I’m tellin’ ya, stopping is a mistake.”

“Just do it!”

“Shit!” As Tyler braked, Jeremy flung open the door and slid a bit as his boots landed on the icy road. He grabbed the handle of the door, righted himself, then used the idling Blazer for support as he walked around the rear through the falling snow. A cloud of exhaust followed him, as the SUV

really needed a ring job.

“Hey!” he called to the policewoman.

She was watching his every move. “You can’t go through here. Road’s closed,” she said, shaking her 144

Lisa Jackson

head and frowning. Along with what appeared to be a sour disposition, she wore the big-brimmed hat and dark uniform of the Montana Highway Patrol. Sunglasses covered her eyes.

“Why?”

“Accident.” Her expression was stern, her mirrored glasses shielding her eyes as snow caught in the wide brim of her hat and collected on Jeremy’s shoulders. The wind was kicking up, too, whistling softly through the canyon. “Now, move along.”

He looked farther up the hill and stared at the tow truck, its engine almost pressed into the bank on the high side of the pass, its rear end poised near the ravine on the other. “I can’t,” he whispered, his voice failing, his guts twisting. “I think my mom was in that accident.”

Her lips compressed. “What’s your name?”

“Jeremy Strand,” he said, shaking inside. “My mother’s Regan Pescoli. She’s a detective with the sheriff’s department.”

“Pinewood County?”

“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. It was one thing to learn about the accident, another to come face-toface with it. And for the first time he wondered if she could already be dead. If he’d been lied to. He felt sick inside. “Was she in the car?” When he noticed the stonewalling expression of the trooper, he added, “They said she wasn’t. My stepdad got a call this morning. And they said that when they found the car, she wasn’t in it.”

“You should go home,” the officer was saying.

“To your stepdad. Can I call him for you?”

But Jeremy barely heard what she was saying as he looked past her shoulder and saw, through the thick-

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ening snow, the outline of a tow truck parked sideways across the road at the summit of the mountain. People in snow gear were standing nearby while the whine of a straining winch filled th

e canyon. Jeremy stood transfixed, his eyes focused on the crest.

He was vaguely aware of Tyler revving the engine, hinting that they should leave, and the stern-faced trooper’s disapproval, but he couldn’t budge and as his mother’s mutilated, wrecked vehicle slowly appeared, the metal wrenched, the windshield and tires blown, Jeremy thought he would throw up. No one, not even his tough-as-nails mother, could have survived that wreck.

She had to be dead.

This will be an easy one, I think, parking my truck upstream from the property. A simple kill. Different from the others.

Special.