Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“You took the first swing, so you have to go down to a holding tank for a while.” She bent down, picked up the phone, and saw the picture of Heidi. Her lips twisted downward and she shook her head.

“And you might want to remind your girlfriend to keep her clothes on when there are cameras or cell phones around.” She pocketed his phone and led him through the department.

“You’re not really going to arrest me.”

“I don’t really have a choice,” she said tiredly. She didn’t bother with cuffs, but did read him his rights as she walked him down to a room where he was to be booked. “I’l

l try to square it with Brewster. Talk to Sheriff Grayson, if I have to. Everything that happened is on camera, so I think we can work things out. We here at the department have a lot more to worry about than Heidi’s attempts to pose for Play- 248

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boy. But her dad has to cool off a while before that happens. It could take a little time.”

“How much?” he asked, the thought of being locked up again starting to panic him. Why the hell had he let that son of a bitch spur him into hitting him?

“I don’t know.” He didn’t say anything and she pushed a finger into his forearm. “Got it?”

He did, but he didn’t like it. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Good. Hang tough.” She paused a moment and added, “I’m going to get myself a sandwich from the vending machine. Want one?”

“No, thanks.”

“Sure? It’s been a long day.”

He shook his head. He had a feeling this long day was going to get longer.

The task force meeting brought everyone up to speed. Stephanie Chandler and Craig Halden, the two FBI agents, had returned and they sat at the table in the task force room with Sheriff Grayson, Undersheriff Brewster, Alvarez, Zoller, and a few others.

Alvarez didn’t say a lot, just sipped her tea and hoped the half of a chicken-salad sandwich she’d choked down before the meeting would sustain her. She’d popped a couple of daytime cold capsules, too, working to keep her symptoms at bay. So far so good. She had yet to straighten out the mess with Regan’s son, but she would. She owed her partner that much. And Brewster, just because he was the damned undersheriff, couldn’t get away with being

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a bully, a cop who let his emotions get the best of his judgment.

She sent a look his way, but Brewster steadfastly avoided her gaze. Some of his anger had evaporated and he was feeling a little more like the jerk he was.

Good.

For now, Jeremy hadn’t been booked. Alvarez would like to keep it that way.

The discussion moved from the copycat killer to Star-Crossed and then touched on Brady Long’s death. The lab hadn’t yet reported if the bullet found at the Lazy L proved to be a match for others they’d discovered at the scenes where the wrecked vehicles of the victims had been located. But everyone was edgy, wondering if Star-Crossed had changed his M.O.

“What would be the point?” Chandler asked. She was tall and slim, her blond hair scraped away from a face with high cheekbones that hinted at a Nordic heritage. A pair of sunglasses was propped on her head and Alvarez had never seen her without them.

“I mean, he’s gone through all the trouble of leaving notes, using the victims’ initials, leaving his victims to die naked in the freezing weather. Now, out of the blue, he walks into Brady Long’s house and just fires at the guy point-blank and leaves? Where’s the organization, the planning, the attention to detail that our boy has shown? And why?”

Grayson said, “It took some planning and waiting for Long to show up.”

“Not the usual victim,” she argued. She held up fingers as she counted the ways this crime was different. “Not female. Not traveling across the state in 250

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a vehicle. Not injured. Not left to die in the wilderness . . . Oh, hell, I could go on and on.”

Halden held up a calming hand. “We’re just being cautious,” he said. “We already got fooled once, by a real copycat.”