Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Are you here for me?” he asked.

“I’m releasing you, yes.”

“To my stepdad?”

“To your vehicle.”

Jeremy wondered what that meant. “And Mom?”

“We’re still trying to locate her. The sheriff has asked that the charges against you be dropped.”

Relief flooded through him, tempered by deeper worries. He looked back at Ivor, still snoring. “Glad I don’t have to listen to him being abducted by aliens anymore. Or all about his dead wife, one of the beautiful Kress women, or the fact that a Yeti killed Mr. Long.”

He thought her lips might break into a faint smile, but it didn’t quite happen. “Ivor’s a colorful character.”

“So, it wasn’t a Yeti, huh?”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

She unlocked the door and he slipped through. He wanted to ask her more about his mom, but it was clear there was nothing she would tell him. “So, I’m outta here.”

“I would go home to your stepdad and stepmother and sister,” she said.

“Yeah.” But Jeremy was already making other plans. Maybe he’d go to Ty’s. Do something.

“Go be with your family. We will find her,” she assured him as she walked ahead of him and then unlocked the door at the end of the hall.

CHOSEN TO DIE

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He nodded, hurrying through the door, then heading upstairs to collect his cell phone and keys. Tydeus Melville Chilcoate didn’t trust anyone. Especially strangers who appeared at his remote cabin in the middle of the worst friggin’ snowstorm in decades. And yet, here was this guy standing on his broken-down front stoop. He didn’t unlatch the chain, which he knew wouldn’t hold anyone who really wanted to get in, but the shotgun he had in the hand hidden behind the door casing would probably do the trick.

“Chilcoate?” the tall dude asked. His eyes were dark beneath the brim of a cowboy hat that was collecting snow. “I’m Nate Santana. I work .. . er, worked for Brady Long.”

Chilcoate’s hand tightened over the stock of the gun, but he kept his cool. “I heard what happened to him. Bummer.”

“Yeah.” The guy didn’t seem to believe it. “I got your name from Zane MacGregor. He said you could help me.”

That prick! MacGregor was supposed to keep his mouth shut about Chilcoate, that was part of the deal! “You talked to him recently?”

“Just did.”

“Well, shit.” Chilcoate reluctantly cracked open the door and Santana walked inside. “Stay right there,”

he ordered and the man stopped short. “What is it you want?”

“I need help finding out who killed Brady Long,”

Santana told him. He handed Chilcoate a rolled-up map, a list of names, and a scratched-out biography, of sorts, on the man in question. “I got as much 306

Lisa Jackson

stuff as I could think of. Names of marksmen. Maps of the area. What I know of Brady.”

“You were a friend of his?”

“I knew him a long time.”