That was it. Ever since she found out about Gabriel Reeve, all of Alvarez’s cold, hard cop sense had eroded. The by-the-book cop was now dealing with emotion. And right now that emotion was pure, raw fear.
“Damn it all to hell!” Pescoli slammed a fist against the steering wheel and, siren screaming, ran a series of red lights as she headed for the foothills.
It would
take her twenty minutes to get to Cougar Pass, and that was if she was lucky. Probably more like thirty, considering the snow.
This was all messed up.
All messed up.
And she was pretty damned sure she was too late to fix it.
“Stay down!” Alvarez ordered at her son.
Drawing fire on herself, she ran, hunched over, plowing through the snow, toward the idling truck. As she crouched, she fired her pistol, shooting wildly toward the area where she thought the guy was hiding, hoping to force him to take cover and pin him down for just a few precious seconds.
She was halfway to the truck when she spied her dog.
Lying motionless in the snow because the maniac had killed him.
You sick bastard, she thought, and as she ran past him, the poor animal let out a whimper.
Alive? Roscoe was alive?
Oh, hell. Without thinking, she scooped up the dog and threw herself across the remaining distance toward the idling truck.
The dog cried, and in that second, bullets rained around her.
As if he’d realized his mistake, the killer started firing in rapid succession.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Rifle shots echoed down the canyon; snow shook from the trees. She could only hope that the damned fool would start an avalanche that would swallow him whole and crush him with the weight of thousands of tons of frozen white powder. Would serve the prick right.
No such luck.
The mountain remained stable.
Heart beating frantically, nerves stretched to the breaking point, she climbed into the truck on the driver’s side, away from the upper hill. She got behind the wheel and threw it into gear.
Head ducked, she hit the gas. The big rig lurched forward, down the hill. All she had to do was reach the Subaru, get Gabe inside and then take off down the hill, leaving the creep with only her disabled Outback.
Craaack!
A bullet hit the driver’s door.
She jumped but kept her foot on the gas, the truck moving. Her head barely above the dash, she angled the moving car next to her Subaru. What were the chances she could pull this off? How had he been so foolish as to leave the keys in the ignition, the car running?
Theirs not to reason why ... theirs but to do or die ... Something she’d learned long ago in school rolled through her brain.
Reaching the Subaru, she hit the brakes and reached across the cab, opening the passenger side, and yelled, “Gabe, get in! Gabe!”
The boy, hiding behind the Outback, stood up and started running awkwardly toward the car.
“Stay down!” she screamed and the rifle fired again, closer this time.
Blam!