Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

She shot him a look as she secured her pistol into her shoulder holster. “Even if I take a detour on the way back to interview Grace Perchant?”

He actually felt his lips twitch. “Not on a dare, Alvarez.”

She didn’t smile either, but her dark eyes weren’t quite as hostile as they had been. “Then I guess you’ll be walking back. Let’s go.”

She was dead tired, her wrist aching, her body spent. Regan flopped onto her cot and wondered if she’d ever break free. It felt as if she’d been working to break the damned weld for hours and all the while she’d been afraid that at any second she’d hear him return.

You can’t give up, she told herself and began to shiver with the cold, the sweat on her body chilling. Just a few minutes. I just need a few minutes to rest. She let out her breath slowly and gathered her strength.

What if the weld doesn’t give? What if it’s stronger than you expect?

“It will,” she whispered, refusing to allow in the doubts that plagued her. It was too easy to fall prey to fear in here. All alone. Cold. Totally dependent on the psycho.

She couldn’t let the isolation get to her. 180

Lisa Jackson

Letting out her breath, she heard the slap of wind against the high window, but nothing else. No rattling of timber, no shaking of walls. Why was that?

And the small window, it was covered with snow, the view obliterated.

She’d looked around her gloomy room over and over again trying to get some clue, a little insight, as to where she was, but for the first time, she thought she understood. The window was high and alone because this room was underground. That would explain the dankness, the feeling of moisture that had made her skin crawl, the lack of sound from the outside.

She’d thought it was her imagination, but no . . . and that would explain, at least partially, why they, the police, had never found the creep.

She had no idea where she was. She barely remembered the ride in the back of a truck, a white truck with a matching camper, she thought. A big, full-sized truck. Domestic. Ford? Chevy? She’d caught a glimpse of it before he’d decided to tie a blindfold over her eyes, and damn it, she had only caught two letters of the license plate: 7 and 3, or had it been 8, with snow covering part of the numeral? She couldn’t remember. She’d been so out of it because of the drug he’d injected in her, and she hadn’t been able to fight as he’d pinned her arms inside a straitjacket, then forced a gag over her mouth that smelled of vomit and chlorine bleach, as if he’d tried, and failed, to clean it. She’d almost retched, but had somehow kept the contents of her stomach down, knowing if she’d let go that she might drown in her own puke.

CHOSEN TO DIE

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Would it have been a worse fate than this? Of course!

She couldn’t let her mind wander down any crooked and dark path that suggested death was better than this. Succumbing to the seduction of the Grim Reaper was only being a coward. Don’t go there.

At the moment of her abduction her mind had been addled, but she knew he’d strapped her to some kind of stretcher—or had it been a canoe?—

that he’d dragged through the snow. Lying supine, unable to use her hands to brush away the snowflakes, she’d stared up at brittle, naked branches of trees, frozen and white. When he’d pulled her into a clearing, she’d spied the truck. And in a second he’d recognized his mistake and blindfolded her, yanking back her hair in the knot of the scarf, uncaring of any further pain he caused.

He hadn’t said a word; just gone about his task of trussing her and tossing her into his truck. She was treated with all the skill and indifference of a hunter used to dressing a kill and hauling it out of the forest.

He’d smelled of sweat and some underlying soap or cologne, but she’d only caught a whiff of it before he’d tossed something in beside her—the stretcher? Had it been collapsible so that it would fit?

Before she could wrap her mind around whatever it was that was lying next to her on the cold metal bed, he’d snapped the tailgate shut, walked to the cab, and started the truck. The engine had caught immediately.

With the crunch of breaking snow and ice, the pickup had rumbled forward from the canyon 182

Lisa Jackson

somewhere beneath Horsebrier Ridge. She’d tried to concentrate, to listen to the sound of the tires, counting how many seconds it was until the feeling within the bed of the truck changed, when the tires either started to hum against bare pavement, or echo over a bridge, or reverberate with the crunch of gravel, but she was fuzzy and lost count, and the tenor of the grip of the tires against the snowy terrain never changed. After a time she sensed that they’d gone from deep drifts of snow to more packed ice . . . there had been a shift, as if the driver had finally located a more traveled road, but even that was a blur in her muddled mind.

She hadn’t even been sure about the distance or amount of time the trip had taken. Had the ride been twenty minutes? Thirty? Or more? She had no idea.

Though she’d felt the speed of the truck change for several curves, never did it come to a complete stop.

Not until he’d reached this destination. Then, with dread pounding through her brain, he’d pulled her roughly from the truck and her thought that she might kick him was instantly gone with the pain that erupted through her ribs and shoulder. She’d nearly blacked out.

He’d slung her over his shoulder and carried her, weak as the proverbial lamb, inside . . . and now that she was thinking about it, she was certain there had been steps, that his boots had rung against stone or concrete as they’d entered, and yes, descended into this place.