Whoever the bastard was, he’d been planning his killing spree for a very long time. The depth of his plot was evident in the files he kept in the big armoire and this labyrinth of underground tunnels. She’d taken a knife from the main room along with her flashlight and the poker she still carried, then she’d tried to find a way out of the maze. She had no idea how long she’d been at it, but with every step she had the sinking, horrifying sensation that time was running out, that around any corner she might run into him, that he was already searching for her.
Just keep going, she told herself over the pounding of her pulse. But she was exhausted, only getting through this on adrenaline and fear. The women who had been found in the forest came to mind, all five victims who had been held hostage here, underground, never given a chance before being marched
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out into the frozen wilderness and roped to lone trees in the worst winter Regan could remember. Was she walking in their footsteps?
Had they been forced down these dark, close tunnels where it was so hard to breathe? Then there was Elyssa . . . God, please let her still be alive. And if there are others . . . all of them, please . . . As her lungs filled with the dust in the tunnel, she swung the beam of her flashlight over the walls and ceiling. Spurs ran off the main underground corridor, but most of them had been blocked, the entrances boarded over, and from the amount of dust and dirt that had accumulated, she assumed he didn’t use them, that they weren’t his escape route.
She had to work slowly, so as not to get lost, and she’d marked her path with a stone she’d found, scratching the floor with arrows, reminding her of which path she’d followed and all the while, she knew that time was her enemy, at any second the monster would return.
“. . . and so this is Christmas,” John Lennon’s voice filled the interior of the car. “And what have you—”
Alvarez clicked the radio off. “Right on, John,”
she said without any enthusiasm. Streetlights and stoplights glowed red, green, and amber, while the brick buildings of “Old Grizz,” the area of town near the river, were adorned in clear crystal-looking strands. She drove past the courthouse where a tree over twenty feet tall was festooned in colorful bulbs, and as she wound her way up the hill to Boxer Bluff, she passed the Baptist church where a snow-covered na-332 Lisa Jackson
tivity scene was illuminated with spotlights. Handpainted wooden figures of Mary, Joseph, and the manger were surrounded by sheep and the Magi. Images of her own youth flashed behind her eyes. The life-size creche that her father and brothers dutifully resurrected each holiday season to stand in the front yard of the two-storied house in Woodburn, the small town in Oregon where she’d grown up with all of her brothers and sisters, eight children in all, a family, she thought now, with too little money and too much religion. Each year her parents had shepherded the kids to Mt. Angel, to the cathedral-like parish for midnight mass, then on Christmas morning, they would return to their home parish nearby. Her brother Pablo was always the jokester and getting into trouble.
There was a part of Alvarez that missed those early years and the closeness of her family, the noise of a house filled with voices rising in Spanish and English, the music that was so much a part of their family, the ever-present smells of her mother’s cooking. But that was a long time ago.
Before “the incident” when she’d grown up fast, her innocence stolen.
Now she was a different person. Far different. At the top of the hill, she wound her way through the streets to the sheriff’s department where only a few vehicles were parked. Cort Brewster’s rig was missing.
Which wasn’t unusual.
Shifts hadn’t changed yet, the night crew still on duty for a couple of hours. Alvarez thought she’d use that time to do some more checking on Brewster, then drive to the Long ranch to interview,
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again, Clementine DeGrazio and her sharpshooting son. Not much was known about Ross; a couple of speeding tickets, an absentee father, and an overprotective mother. She pulled into her usual space, locked the car, and headed inside where, this early, the office was quiet. It was her favorite time at work, before the cacophony of a regular day started: phones ringing off the hook; cops questioning witnesses and grilling suspects; the banter among the staff. Before StarCrossed had begun to strike, the workload and job had been interesting, but usually not extreme. Since Theresa Charleton’s body had been found, the amount of work had exploded.
Now Selena walked into the kitchen, saw the sludge in the coffeepot from the night before, and began fresh, rinsing out the glass pot before refilling it. There were a few pieces of Joelle’s fruitcake on one table, and only the crumbs from her cookies on the other.
Leaving the coffee to brew, she walked to her desk and fired up her computer. She checked her email, read some reports, made mental notes about tips that had come in, forwarded to her from the task force desk. Nothing new. Surreptitiously she checked the undersheriff’s professional records, seeing how many shooting competitions he’d won, how many times he’d been cited for awards of excellence on the job, then read anything that was printed on the Internet on her boss. She still hadn’t officially clocked in, was working on her own time, so she justified her investigation, such as it was.
And still he was the undersheriff, had never risen above that position. Why?
Don’t go there, she warned herself again, just as 334
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she heard boots ringing down the hallway. Looking up, she saw Grayson pass in a cloud of fury. His dog was at his heels as he strode into his office. More bad news?
She waited until the computer monitor went into its screen-saver mode, walked down to the kitchen, grabbed two cups of coffee, and headed to Grayson’s office. He was already on the phone, his expression hard. He glanced up at her and nodded at one of the steaming cups.
“. . . yeah, I know, but I think it would be best if you got your facts straight first. We’re trying to avoid a panic . . . What? I don’t know when the next press conference will be. As soon as there’s something to report.” He slammed the phone down and said, “Seen the paper?”
She shook her head as she handed him the mug. He hitched his chin at the paper he’d tossed onto the desk. “Take a look for yourself.”
She sat in a side chair, next to the dog’s bed where the black Lab had taken his spot, and opened the paper. Bold headlines reported: SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT
STYMIED BY STAR-CROSSED KILLER—DETECTIVE FEARED LATEST VICTIM.