Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

I smile kindly as I set the tray on the table beside her bed. Tears jump to her eyes. She’s overwhelmed.

“Oh, thank you,” she breathes. “Thank you.”

“Still can’t get cell service, but once we get going we should be able to pick up a signal. I’ll make sure I get you to the nearest clinic.”

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“Oh, Liam . . .”

She tilts her head just a little and looks at me from beneath her lashes, like women do when they’re interested. It’s the same old ploy I’ve seen a thousand times. It would be so easy to take her, to make love to her, to fuck the living hell out of her. But I cannot. Everything has to be as planned, especially tonight, for there is still work to do.

“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine,” I soothe her.

She glances at the food. “It looks like you’ve made enough for two . . .”

“I’d better not,” I say regretfully. “I’ve got a few more things to do. Make sure that we can get out of here early.”

“Okay.” She’s disappointed. Then she gives me a look straight on. “Tomorrow,” she says in a voice heavy with meaning.

I nod and close the door behind me, making sure it’s locked. She believes I’m extra cautious, keeping her safe. She likes locked doors. They all do. Silly, silly bitches. As if a lock will save them. I head back to my rooms and smile. Yes, there is still much to do, but I’m on task. Better yet, I have a surprise for those idiotic cops. Something that will really get their engines fired up! A little something extra from me.

I can hardly wait!

Chapter Twenty-Three

What was the link?

Selena lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She’d finally gone home but that didn’t mean she’d quit working on the case. She’d tossed and turned most of the night and when she did sleep, her dreams were peppered with images of Brady Long’s dead body, the frozen corpses of the women they’d found in the forest, and Regan Pescoli, locked away somewhere, knowing her fate, maybe already lashed to the bole of a tree in the icy forest.

There had to be a connection between them—a connection more than the bullet dug out from the back of Brady Long’s desk chair and the blown-out tires of the victims found in the forest. Santana believed the same person was responsible for all the deaths.

If he was right, the killer knew all the women and Brady Long.

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And that meant the killer was close enough to Long to know that he was returning to Montana and had lain in wait for him. That information alone had absolved many suspects of the crime. As far as Alvarez knew, none of the victims had known anyone in the Long family.

Start with Brady Long’s murder. His death is the odd- ity. And it, too, was planned with ultimate precision. She flung off the covers and, in a pj top and underwear, walked to the window where she looked outside. It was still dark, a few stars visible over the security lamps glowing harshly on the parking lot where snow was piled high around the individual spaces. The asphalt was covered with a shimmering layer of ice.

Her headache had left in the night and the cold that had been settling in her lungs seemed to be breaking up, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep again. A glance at the clock told her it was barely four, but she walked into the kitchen, filled the teapot, then remade her Murphy bed and slid it back into the wall. By the time she was through a short shower, her hair still damp, her body now dressed in workout clothes, the teapot was whistling. She poured herself a cup of steaming hot water, tossed in a once-used bag, and carried it to her desk where notes, pictures, statements, and reports were spread out. Sliding into her desk chair, she began writing on a yellow legal pad, naming all of the victims and making lines that showed how they were connected to each other and those who were, or had been, suspects. She added in the people who had found the bodies and cars as well. The only connections there were Nate Santana, who had found Brady Long, worked for him, and was involved with Regan

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Pescoli, and Ivor Hicks, who had stumbled upon Wendy Ito’s body and shown up minutes after Santana at Brady Long’s house. Tapping her pen against her chin, she frowned. In kind of a six-degrees-of-separation thing, she did note that Clementine’s son, Ross, went to school where Elyssa O’Leary had studied, and they’d shared an English professor, but not a class.

None of the victims had lived in Grizzly Falls. Unless she counted Brady Long, who had taken up part-time residence as a child. He and his sister had spent their summers at the Lazy L Ranch. And Padgett had nearly been killed with her brother in an accident where Brady had escaped any serious injury. So, how had the killer found these people?

“He’s r

elentless. A hunter,” Grace Perchant had warned Pescoli at Wild Will’s. There, surrounded by dead animal heads mounted on the walls, she had mentioned that the killer was a hunter. And Orion was the hunter in mythology and astronomy. Craig Halden, a Georgia country boy turned FBI agent and a hunter himself, was certain the stars located on the notes found at the various crime scenes were intentionally part of the Orion constellation. The trouble was that nearly every male over the age of ten in this part of Montana considered himself a hunter. It was a way of life. Alvarez flipped through the old police reports that she’d pulled and copied but hadn’t had time yet to read. For the most part nothing leaped out at her. She came across the report of the Long boating accident and read it over with curiosity. Brady had reported the event and Fire and Rescue had responded, taking Padgett by ambulance to a local hospital. Her 316

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