Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Hardly.” She was already locating socks and boots.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No way. Police business.”

“Mine, too.”

“How so?” She zipped up a boot and looked up at him.

“I’m looking for a kid who stole an earring from you, darlin’, and then it shows up on a victim, right? The victim whose car has just been located.”

“Convoluted thinking.”

“Straight thinking.”

“Police business. FBI’s sure to be there.”

“Bring ’em on. Besides, you remember, don’t you, that you don’t have a car? I’m your ride.”

“Crap!”

He was already yanking on his jeans.

“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that, don’t you?”

“It’s been pointed out a time or two.”

She didn’t have time for arguments, just pulled on her sweater, shook her hair free, then scraped it back in a ponytail. “Okay. Fine,” she finally acquiesced. Unless she wanted to call Pescoli back, he did have a point. She strapped on her shoulder holster, retrieved her sidearm from the locker in her closet, then checked the clip before pressing her weapon into place. “Just don’t get in the way.”

The scene was a mess. Frozen car, piled snow, FBI, deputies from the sheriff ’s department, crime scene techs and a snow-covered pile of brush that had hidden the car from the seldom-used logging road.

“So he parked it here, behind a thicket, and no one noticed in all this time,” Halden said, eyeing the area.

“Private property borders this area. Owned by Long Logging, but no one’s logging now,” Pescoli said. “Brady Long died a while back—you remember the case—and he left nothing to any of his wives, didn’t have children, at least none that have come forward, and the major heir, his sister, Padgett, spent years in a mental hospital, got out and disappeared. Hasn’t been seen in almost two years.”

“I do remember,” Halden said.

“You tell me. Isn’t the FBI supposed to be expert on that kind of thing? How come you haven’t found Padgett?”

He ignored the jab. “Long Logging? Same as in Long Copper?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But Long didn’t live here all the time as I recall. That right?”

“He spent most of his time in Denver. His lodge was just for vacation use.” She didn’t add that Nate Santana was the foreman and, as such, had inherited a nice bit of the Long estate. If Halden wanted to know, he could figure it out easily enough, and once he made that connection, he’d realize that Pescoli and Santana were in a relationship. There would be a lot of questions thrown her way at that point and she wasn’t ready to deal with them, just like she wasn’t ready to take that relationship to another level.

At least she didn’t think she was.

“Here we go,” Halden said, and motioned toward the private road where a tow truck was chugging up the hill.

She and Alvarez had already double-checked the car, but it was clean, nothing inside, of course. The area around the vehicle had been roped off and was now being searched. Snow was carefully cleared and sifted through as the techs searched for any piece of evidence, any sign of a struggle, anything that might help them nail the bastard.

Alvarez had shown up with Dylan O’Keefe, the PI, lawyer, ex-cop and hunk that Pescoli didn’t trust. Obviously her partner had needed a ride, as her own car was still at the department’s garage, but why the hell had she dragged O’Keefe up here? Why not have Pescoli pick her up, even if it was out of her way? Whatever the reason, Pescoli couldn’t worry about it at this moment in time when, at least for the moment, the snow had stopped falling, dawn had broken and the sky above the pine and hemlock branches was a brilliant shade of blue that could be found only, she thought, in Montana.

Maybe now, they could catch a break. Maybe.

From the looks on everyone’s face at the scene, it was evident they needed one.