Afraid to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Or the knife she’d hidden in her boot ... Where the hell were they?

Think, Selena, think. Get your bearings and take care of this prick!

There were weapons on the far wall over the workbench. Saws and chisels and ...

“What the fuck!” As if suddenly alerted that he was being played, Oestergard spun quickly, his face a mask of horror. “You bitches!” Spying Alvarez, he forgot about the unlocked gate to Johnna’s cage.

With a flying leap, he came at Alvarez and she tried to sidestep him, but her bad leg folded.

He was on her in an instant, wrestling her to the ground, his big, heaving body, atop her. “You’re not getting away from me, you little bitch,” he growled, his breath hot on her cold face, his nose inches from hers.

Oh, God, she was trapped, his heavy body pinning her to the floor, his pelvis crushing hers. “Maybe I should start with you.” Roughly he mauled her breast and his teeth, yellowed and crooked, flashed in a new-felt power. “That’s it.”

She flashed back.

To another time. Another struggle. In Emilio’s car.

Oestergard wrapped his fingers in her hair and she saw it then, just above his head, the end of an ice pick left near the tub where he bathed, then froze and sculpted his victims.

“Like this?” he snarled, then looked up to the cage. “You can watch,” he said to Johnna, then froze. “What the hell?”

Alvarez heard the creak of hinges as the gate swept open.

“Fuck,” he yelled, moving a bit, giving her breathing room. It was now or never!

Throwing herself upward, her naked body crashing into him, she stretched her arm, reached up and knocked the ice pick to the ground. It rolled crazily away.

“No, you don’t!” he screamed, straining for the weapon, intent on killing her; she saw it in the rage burning up his face.

“Stop!” Johnna yelled, and the maniac’s attention diverted for the merest of seconds.

Alvarez inched her body away, her fingers scraping along the dirty floor before wrapping around the hilt of the ice pick.

He turned his head just then, his gaze fastening on her hand.

She reacted.

Threw herself at him, the weapon curled in her fingers. With all of her weight, she swung upward, shoving the pick with her good hand, thrusting it hard into the soft underside of his throat.

With a sickening sound, the pick jabbed through soft tissue to his larynx.

Rolling backward, Oestergard clawed at the offensive spike, gasping and spraying bloody spittle over the floor and Alvarez. She scooted away from him as he jerked out the ice pick and more blood spurted from his neck.

Johnna Phillips wasn’t done.

Not satisfied with letting him die a slow, painful death, she reached for a pair of ice tongs. Using all of her strength, she swung hard, sending him to his knees. Blood gushed from his abdomen as he fell onto the cold stone floor, his head hitting so hard his glasses sprang from his face, showing off the scars that he bore near his eye.

“That’ll teach ya,” Johnna said, breathing hard as she stood over the dying man. “Don’t ever mess with a pregnant woman.” Footsteps thundered down the stairway, and Alvarez, barely able to climb to her feet, felt tears roll down her cheeks as O’Keefe, with Pescoli one step behind, appeared.

“Selena,” he whispered and ran to her, holding her close. “It’s gonna be all right,” he said as she clung to him, though she didn’t know how it ever would be. “It’s over. Darlin’, hang on. It’s over,” he whispered as the room was suddenly filled with deputies and the notes of the Christmas carol were barely audible. Still, with O’Keefe holding her close, the lyrics whispered softly through Alvarez’s brain and she mouthed the words, “All I want for Christmas ... is you.”

Epilogue

Alvarez stared out the window of the town house. It was early. Not quite five and the ground outside her sliding door was covered in white. Most of the snow from the blizzard of three weeks earlier had melted, but a thin layer remained and there was talk of a new snowfall yet to come.

So what else was new?

Montana and the winter usually meant snow.