Ready to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Craaack! The blast from a rifle split the silence.

Alvarez sucked in a sharp breath. In her mind’s eye she saw her partner, body jerking as an assassin’s bullet hit her. “Come on!” Yanking her Glock from its holster, she put her other hand on the door handle just as Brewster careened over the final hillock and hit the brakes.

The SUV slid into a clearing and stopped not forty feet from the tiny cabin’s front door. A sniper dressed in snowy camouflage, rifle on his shoulder, took one look their way, then tore away, jogging around the corner of the shack.

“Let’s get him!” She was throwing open the door when Brewster placed a hand on her arm.

“Wait for backup. I’ve got this.” Rifle in hand, he took off.

No way! She was out of the Jeep and taking off at a jog through the snow and rounding one side of the house while Brewster secured the other side.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

More shots!

Hang in there, Pescoli, Alvarez prayed as she flattened herself to the side of the building and peered through the curtain of snow to the woods behind.

She spied the killer, setting up, taking aim at a copse of trees. “Pescoli!” Alvarez yelled as a gun went off.

Dashing from one thicket to the next, Pescoli heard her name and turned just in time to see the killer, rifle at his shoulder, the barrel following her path.

In that instant, she knew she was dead.

Blam!

She threw herself forward, diving into a snowbank, landing hard on her shoulder, expecting the sear of a bullet to rip through her flesh.

In that nanosecond before she hit the ground, snow flying, her shoulder screaming, she saw, from the corner of her eye, the killer’s body jerk wildly, his rifle flung from his hands as he dropped to the ground.

And standing not fifty yards away, his own rifle tucked against his shoulder, was Cort Brewster.

Just before she passed out she realized the damned sheriff had just saved her life.

Chapter 33

It was finally over, Pescoli thought, a week later as she skimmed the umpteenth article about the shoot-out at the mountain cabin. Once again, the reporter lauded the “clear-thinking, quick reflexes, and sharp aim” of Cort Brewster. Intimated in the article was the supposition that should Dan Grayson ever come out of his coma, Brewster would give him a good run in the next election.

Pescoli supposed she should be more grateful to Brewster, and maybe it was a flaw in her character, but she just couldn’t muster up much more than a suspicion that he’d done it more for the attention it gave him than because he wanted to save her. She tossed the paper onto one of the lunchroom tables. She was in the office early. Again. Glad to have some time when the sheriff’s department was relatively quiet. Her shoulder still hurt from landing so hard during the attack, but nothing was broken, only bruised, tendons and ligaments stretched to their limit but intact. She’d hit her head as well and didn’t remember much when she’d awoken in the hospital several hours later. “A more-than-slight concussion” had kept her in the hospital overnight “for observation,” but then she’d been pronounced healthy enough to go home and, against doctor’s orders and Santana’s protests, had gone back to work.

“Am I really going to have to hog-tie you?” Santana had asked and she’d sent him a smile and said, “Kinky. Why not?” So he’d shaken his head and backed off. Grudgingly, she’d worn a sling for nearly a week, then ditched the damned thing because she couldn’t stand her impeded mobility. She’d always been right-handed but hadn’t realized how dependent she was on her left until that arm was out of commission.

But now, physically, she was nearly back to normal. That was, if she didn’t count the twinges and aches that sometimes throbbed through her shoulder, or the holes in her memory on the day of the confrontation at the mountain cabin. Like the victim in a serious accident, she just couldn’t remember the events around the actual takedown clearly.

Seeing that the coffeepot was empty once again, she seriously considered not having a cup, then told herself to be a big girl and clean up the old grounds packet, swab out the glass carafe, and brew a new pot. Hell, be a really big girl and make two pots as someone had left less than a quarter of a cup in the other machine and the dark liquid was solidifying, turning from sludge to dry on the glass.

Since she was alone in the lunchroom and Joelle wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another hour or so, and of the few officers in the building, no one was likely to come running into the lunchroom ready to become an instant maid, Pescoli did the honors.

She should be feeling differently.

She should be more satisfied.

She should be experiencing a great relief that not only had Cort Brewster saved her life, but that Maurice Verdago was dead and would never kill anyone again.

Still, she felt edgy. Restless. The way she did when a case wouldn’t quite come together. On top of that, work was difficult. The whole station was different. New Year’s had come and gone, and Jeremy had found a way to get into a few night classes. By necessity, his hours at the sheriff’s department were cut to nearly nothing, which kinda pissed Jer off, but there was only so much time. Bianca was back in school and swearing she was “eating like Doug Fallen, the center of the football team. He’s a moose!”

Pescoli wasn’t convinced, but had witnessed her daughter plow into a few of her favorite meals, while picking at others, and she’d found evidence of some very bad eating habits, candy bar wrappers, a receipt for a peppermint mocha at the coffee shop, but all of the evidence she found could have been planted, of course. Her daughter was smart and sly. Though Bianca probably hadn’t been that devious, Pescoli wouldn’t put it past her.

There it was, her suspicious nature coming to the fore. Whenever she was home at the same time as Bianca, which wasn’t that often, she’d kept a close eye on her trips to the bathroom. If she was forcing herself to throw up, it wasn’t on Pescoli’s watch . . . she hoped.