“What’s your sign?”
“Oh, come on,” he said, momentarily disappointed.
“The sign that you’re wearing though you don’t know it. DUI? Trespass? Failure to appear? Those are the signs I’m seeing.”
“What?”
She gave him the once-over, her eyes moving from his face, down the length of him and back up again. In a quick scan she’d taken in his muddy boots, faded Levi’s, clean but well-worn work shirt, and three days’ growth of beard. “It takes more than a shot of Jack for me to dismiss the charges.”
She finished her drink, set the glass on the table, and eyed the second shot of whiskey. Then her lips slid into that sexy smile that took his breath away.
“But just so you know, I don’t roll that way. No bribes. You’ll just have to take your chances with the judge.”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Sure you do.”
“You think I’m trying to bribe you?” he said, just 204
Lisa Jackson
as it was beginning to dawn on him that she was a cop. A keep-your-distance, avoid-at-all-costs cop.
“You’re with the police?”
Her grin widened and she glanced at the barkeep. “Hey, Nadine, we got ourselves a Rhodes Scholar here. Buy the man a drink. On me.”
Nadine’s peach-colored lips tried, and failed, to hide a smile as she poured another and placed it on the bar. He’d raised his glass and touched the rim of hers. “Nate Santana.”
Her eyebrows tugged together a bit, as if she’d heard the name, then she said, “Regan Pescoli. That’s Detective Pescoli to you.”
And so it went. From a game of pool, then laughable arm-wrestling, to throwing back shots. But he didn’t need the trouble that came with getting involved with a cop, and not just a cop, but a detective with two half-grown kids and two marriages under her belt.
The kind of woman to keep away from at all costs.
But there had been something about her, right from the get-go, that had hooked him, and now, astride the paint, squinting beneath the brim of his hat, he was damned well going to find her. No matter what it took. Was she crazy? Had she really heard a woman’s cry? Pescoli had spent what seemed like hours alternately trying to free herself, to escape while the creep wasn’t around, and lying on her cot, straining to listen, trying to determine if she wasn’t alone. It made sense, she thought.
CHOSEN TO DIE
205
Star-Crossed kept his victims a while, healing them before tying them to trees and leaving them in the wilderness. He collected them, kept them in rotation, held them here at his lair, wherever that was, in separate rooms, and then later on left them to die. Her heart lay heavy as she thought there might be others as well. Who knew how many. She remembered sitting on the corner of Alvarez’s desk, going through the women who had been reported missing in a five-state area, then culling out those who might have been passing through this area of Montana, women traveling alone, of any race or religion. There had been dozens . . . She looked at the door separating her room from the area from which he’d appeared, from where she instinctively knew he resided.
Or had she imagined the noise?
Had the howl of the wind sounded like a woman sobbing brokenly?
She had to find out.
“Hey!” she yelled, not for the first time. “Anyone here?”
Her voice echoed, seeming to mock her, making her feel more alone than ever.
“Hey!” Louder this time. “Who’s there?”
Again no response.
You’re goin’ out of your flippin’ mind! You’re alone, Pescoli.