Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“What? NO! STAND DOWN, O’KEEFE! Jesus H. Christ, I’ve got the FBI and the whole damned department. We’re already on this, so stand the hell down!”

He clicked off and muttered, “Yeah, right.” He only hoped they were somehow on this, ahead of the game, but he didn’t believe it, not for a second. And no one, not Regan Pescoli, Sheriff Dan Grayson or any agent from the freakin’ FBI, was going to stop him.

Stepping on the gas, he drove ever upward, following the ruts leading through this desolate part of the mountains and hoping beyond hope that he was wrong, that Alvarez was fine, that he’d find her safe and sound.

Even though he knew he was only lying to himself.

The beams of his headlights were weak against the ever-falling snow; his nerves were stretched to the breaking point, and he was filled with an overriding fear that he was already too late, that whatever danger Alvarez had placed herself in, it wasn’t going well.

He figured whatever standoff he was about to face, it involved the damned Ice Mummy Killer.

But why would she track him down alone?

Why wouldn’t she have the whole damned department with her? She’d driven off on her own; he’d seen that, watched her check her phone and then, after receiving a call or a text or something, she’d taken off like a shot.

Somehow she’d been lured away. Somehow ...

His phone jangled and he picked up before it rang twice. “O’Keefe,” he said, eyes trained on the snowy landscape, the quiet mountains.

“Oh, God, Dylan,” a woman wailed. “He’s gone again!”

“What?”

“There was an accident or something, they won’t tell us much, but Gabe ... he’s missing.” Finally he realized that his cousin was on the line. “He ... he’s gone and the woman cop, too.”

Woman cop?

Alvarez!

His heart sank.

“Aggie? What the hell are you talking about?” O’Keefe demanded; he could hardly understand her as she dissolved into broken sobs and hiccups. “Aggie!”

A second later Dave’s voice, sober but strong, explained. “There was some kind of an accident; we don’t have all the details. But Gabe never made it to Helena. Both he and the driver of the car, a deputy with the department, are missing.”

Not Alvarez? He felt a modicum of short-lived relief. Gabe was still missing. “Wait a second! Missing how? What the hell are you talking about? I thought he was back in Helena.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. He never made it.”

As Aggie sobbed in the background and Dave explained everything that they’d been told, O’Keefe listened, one hand holding the steering wheel in a death grip, his mind filling in the blanks in Dave’s story. As the miles rolled under the wheels of his Ford, he got it, putting together the missing puzzle pieces.

“I’ll do what I can,” he promised Gabe’s distraught father, and as he hung up, he understood what had happened. The reason Alvarez had torn out of the parking lot at the hotel an hour earlier was because she’d gotten word about her son.

O’Keefe’s jaw tightened over the wheel. It didn’t take a master detective to realize that the “accident” had been staged, why the people in the Jeep had gone missing. Because somehow the Ice Mummy Killer was involved. Had to be. No other explanation that he could come up with made any sense.

That’s why Alvarez got the call, why she left without saying a word, because Gabriel was being used to lure her away.

The killer wasn’t content with just teasing her with stupid little Christmas cards any longer.

All I want for Christmas is you ...

And now the maniac had her.

Chapter 34

Pain pounded through her brain and she was cold ... so damned cold ... shivering, teeth chattering, the darkness threatening to drag her under again.

She had blacked out, remembered nothing but snow and blood and ... Gabe!