Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

He’d caught the motion and looked away quickly, suddenly uncomfortable as he’d remembered how her coppery skin had looked against the white sheets of the bed, and the perfectly round disks of her dark nipples.

Now he said, “I’d better go. If you hear anything more or find out anything, give me a call.”

“You, too.” Her dark gaze met his for an instant, before she walked him to the door, where he found himself wanting to kiss her good night.

Idiot.

Selena Alvarez is the last woman you need to think about kissing—the very last!

After grabbing his jacket, he walked outside and he noticed the snow hadn’t started falling yet; the night was bitter cold, but clouds were gathering, blocking the moon and stars. Once inside his Ford, he fired up the engine and blew on his hands.

The heater would take a while, so he grudgingly pulled on a pair of gloves as she turned out the porch light. What was it about her that had such a hold on him? From the minute he’d first laid eyes on her years ago in San Bernardino, he’d found her fascinating; a combination of fire and ice, she could be coldly calculating one minute and passionately volatile the next. Of course she was beautiful, but he’d met lots of beautiful women in his life. None, unfortun

ately, had touched him the way Alvarez had.

As he did a quick U-turn, avoiding other cars parked on the snowy streets, he wondered about the son she’d borne. What kind of coincidence was it that a fugitive sixteen-year-old had led him straight to Alvarez’s home? Not one to believe in kismet or fate or any of that other idealistic crap, he couldn’t help but believe that Gabe had run here thinking his birth mother could shelter him when his adoptive parents wouldn’t. But how would he have found her?

He slowed for a traffic light, watching the red glow reflect on the snow and ice in the road.

So who was the mystery man who had fathered her child? When he’d asked about Gabe’s father, he’d been met with a frosty rebuff. She’d insinuated it wasn’t any of O’Keefe’s business, which, considering the circumstances, was a flat-out lie and they’d both known it, but he hadn’t pressed the issue tonight, preferring to let her come around to telling him the truth. If he had to, he’d find out himself. He knew she grew up in Woodburn, Oregon, and that her family was still there. Someone knew the full story and it wouldn’t take too much talking to pry it out of the local gossips. Families resided for generations in a small town the size of Woodburn, or Grizzly Falls, for that matter. And people had long memories when it came to gossip.

She’d acted as if the father didn’t even know that he’d sired a kid. Maybe that was true. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, he thought as the light turned green and he noticed headlights behind him, identifying Gabe’s biological father could stir up a whole new hornet’s nest.

Alvarez ignored the tugs on her heart.

A tug because she was so close to meeting her son and now was worried about the boy she’d never met.

A tug because she missed the rambunctious puppy.

A tug because Dylan O’Keefe brought back memories of a happiness that was almost within her reach and yet she’d let it slip between her fingers.

Disgusted at the turn of her thoughts, she snapped off the lights and reminded herself that even though tomorrow was Saturday, she had to go into the office.

But tonight her town house seemed empty. “Well, come on,” she said to the cat as she mounted the stairs.

O’Keefe was still good-looking, sexy in a rough-and-tumble kind of way. He was also the man to whom she’d nearly bared her soul and given her body, the one to whom she’d gotten way too close and had definitely gotten burned. Her irresponsibility in San Bernardino had nearly gotten herself and O’Keefe killed. He had the visible scars to prove it and she the night terrors. Her rashness had cost him his job.

Now, as she stripped out of her street clothes and slipped into a huge T-shirt, guilt crept through her mind like a cold, dark snake. She should have known better. She’d been foolish and reckless. If she hadn’t been involved with O’Keefe, if she hadn’t crossed that sometimes blurry line that separated business from pleasure, she wouldn’t have been so emotionally wrung out and wouldn’t have made the crucial mistake of getting into a madman’s line of fire. In so doing, she’d forced O’Keefe into shooting the suspect before he could be questioned.

O’Keefe had quit before he’d been fired, but the truth of the matter was that Alvarez had been young, dumb, green and stubborn, convinced of her own brilliance and infallibility. Though O’Keefe had been older, and theoretically wiser, he’d been sexy as all get-out and determined to get her into his bed. Theirs had been a fiery relationship and she’d gone as far with him as she’d dared, as far as her freaked-out mind had let her.

On the night of the shooting at De Maestro’s cottage, Alvarez had made a bad decision that had nearly cost lives and certainly gave De Maestro room to point his crooked finger at the department and its employees.

All in all it had ended as a lose-lose-lose situation, and after O’Keefe quit, Alvarez had eventually made the move to Grizzly Falls. Having learned her painful lesson, she’d never allowed herself to get close to anyone again, the lone exception being Pescoli, and even that relationship was primarily professional.

She clicked off the overhead light and walked to the window, where darkness was held at bay by the snow on the ground, a blue-white mantle reflecting the watery illumination of a few street lamps. It was quiet outside, snow beginning to fall again, a peaceful setting, but she sensed an evil in shadows, all the more frightening because of the serenity of the night.

Outside a killer loomed large, hiding in the shadows, ducking through the alleyways, but ever vigilant. It was almost as if he could see her here, standing on the inside of the glass. Goose bumps rose on the back of her neck as she searched the shadows. Though she usually had no faith in “feelings” or “sensations,” tonight she experienced a soul-numbing coldness that reminded her that malevolence existed in the very actions of man.

She squinted, saw a movement, a shadow sliding across the white snow, but just out of focus, the edges of whatever dark form muted by a thin veil.

I’m coming for you, she heard, ricocheting through the recesses of her mind. I’m coming for you and there is no escape.

“Hogwash,” she muttered, “Adoquin!” It was her grandmother’s favorite admonition whenever she thought one of her many grandchildren were being foolish.

Refusing to freak herself out, Alvarez snapped the blinds shut and slid into the cold sheets as Jane jumped onto the bed. The cat, already purring, made a big production of finding the right spot on the pillow where Alvarez had once thought a man might rest his head.

That fantasy seemed impossible now, though the reappearance of Dylan O’Keefe into her life had softened her perspective a little. She couldn’t help remembering how much in love with him she’d once believed herself to be.