Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

And now O’Keefe was involved. God, what a mess. Who would have thought that she, a boy suspected to be her son and Dylan O’Keefe would be wound together with the same old emotionally fraying cord?

“Here we go!” Pescoli said as pulsing blue and red lights came into view. Bright beams from Van Droz’s county vehicle cut through the thickets of trees, adding an eerie, otherworldly effect to the already disturbing night. A huge snowplow was at rest nearby, idling so that the driver in the machine’s cab didn’t freeze. Nearby was the car in question, scraped free of snow along the windows and trunk.

They parked, took the driver’s statement, then shined their flashlights into the car, disturbing nothing, hoping that once the vehicle was towed to the garage, the crime scene techs would find some trace evidence to help them determine what had happened to Lara Gilfry.

Pescoli’s cell phone hummed and she picked up, reading a quick text and fuming. “No,” she said as she typed the short word, then turned the phone off. “Bianca wants to spend the night with Amber tomorrow night.” She looked into the abandoned car one last time. “I don’t think so. There is school tomorrow. Kids!” Turning her attention back to the car, she said, “Gone without a trace. What the hell is going on?”

“I guess we’ll have to figure that out.” Alvarez didn’t like it. In the past three years, the peaceful little town of Grizzly Falls had been rocked by sick predators, all of whom had emerged with the snowfall to terrorize the citizens.

Could it possibly be happening again?

Or could the missing women have their own individual reasons for abandoning their vehicles and disappearing into thin air?

Lara Sue Gilfry.

Lissa Parsons.

Brenda Sutherland.

What were the chances that they all just up and took off without a word to anyone, without a trace, to disappear?

Not likely.

Even with the stress of the holidays.

In Alvarez’s heart of hearts, she knew: Grizzly Falls was being terrorized again, a new monster emerging.

But if so, where the hell were the victims?

“You have to let me go,” Brenda begged of the maniac who held her in this ... this freezing cave located God only knew where; probably in the foothills surrounding Grizzly Falls, but she wasn’t certain. She heard the sound of water dripping over some piped-in music and the area smelled wet. She was in a cage of sorts, with a cot and a sleeping bag and a bucket she was to use as a latrine and iron bars holding her in. The cave had sheer rock walls and an uneven stone floor and was lit by battery-powered lanterns, some mounted high, others placed along the floor. Partitions had been constructed, making individual “rooms,” and she had the feeling she and the monster weren’t alone, that he had either other victims, or, worse yet, a silent accomplice.

Ray?

No, Ray wouldn’t get his hands dirty, but he knew enough lowlifes that he might have been able to connect with a psycho and offer him a deal.

Oh, dear Lord.

All she knew was that her chances of getting out of here alive were slim. She thought of her boys and her heart curdled. Where were they? Did they think she was dead already? Were they with Ray? Cameron was already talking about joining the navy when he graduated and Ray was fine with that, though Brenda had a few reservations, and Drew ... he was so young, anticipating getting his driver’s license and struggling in school. He needed her. They both needed her!

And Ray wasn’t a good replacement.

He’d been a lousy husband and not a much better father. Sure, he’d shown the boys how to shoot a rifle, hunt and gut a deer and keep meticulous care of his tools, but that’s about as far as his daddy skills went. He’d feed them crappy fast food and would have trouble getting them to school on time. Their clothes would be unwashed,

and when he was gone, long-haul trucking, where would they land? At his druggie sister’s house or left alone to their own teenaged devices?

The more she considered it, the more convinced she was he was behind her abduction.

She hated to think so little of him, a man she’d once purported to love, that he would do anything so vile, but Ray was known for his temper and holding grudges. She’d seen firsthand how cruel he could be, felt not only the slice of his sharp tongue but the pain of the back of his hand a time or two.

He could certainly have paid to have her removed, though she didn’t give him credit for orchestrating the abduction; that took an organized, cold calculation, brains Ray didn’t have.

But he would have done anything to best her.

This time, she shivered from the inside out as she stared up at her abductor.

“I ... I’ll do anything, pay anything, you just, please, have to let me go,” she said through chattering teeth as the monster eyed her casually and kept on humming some inane Christmas carol that she couldn’t, for the life of her, name right now. She knew she’d been drugged somehow, and from the way she was groggy or dozing all the time, she figured it was a sleeping aid of some kind. Mostly she was grateful for the mind-numbing fogginess and slumber because it kept the biting cold at bay, but in the few lucid moments she had, the brief minutes she was awake, the fear for her life collided with her concern for her sons and she was wired, jangled, shivering and crying and begging for mercy.

There was none.