Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Thanks a lot, Dad.

I pour myself a drink and push aside the fuzzy memories of my youth. I’m much too tired to take Elyssa out today, and I still want to relish the memory of the last seconds of Brady Long’s life. I sip the cool drink, feel it slide down my throat and begin to warm my blood. Just one drink. No more. I still have much to do.

Elyssa, the twit, is able to walk again, and she’s been here long enough to trust me, yet be anxious about leaving. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Maybe then I’ll take her outside. I’ll have to be extra attentive to her tonight, just in case. Ease her concerns and witness how far she’s willing to go to bend to my will.

She’s a pretty thing.

But dull.

Unlike Regan Pescoli.

I look at the door to Pescoli’s room again, think about her lying on the cot. She’d kill me if she could, and that’s interesting. A challenge. Makes my blood sing in my veins. I can’t wait until it’s her turn.

But not yet. There is a plan, remember? One you must stick to.

My gaze slides across the table to the neat stack of notes I’ve worked so painstakingly to create. Starting with the first, Theresa Charleton and her initials: T

C

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How exciting the schoolteacher had been! I spread my copy of that note—the one I left for the police to find—on the table, checking the position of the star over the letters. Did they have any idea that the position of that particular heavenly body was precise? That it changed with each of the notes as I left them with the women? Nina Salvadore, the computer programmer and mother, was the second, and Wendy Ito, the fiery Asian woman who mistakenly thought her martial arts training would save her, was third. Think again, bitch. All those lessons didn’t help! Rona Anders, a drab, drab woman, who had kept whining about her fiancé, was next, and finally it was Hannah Estes’s turn—the bitch who had been found alive, rescued, and nearly survived. That had been close. She could have pointed me out in a lineup, but without her my message to the police would not be complete.

I ey

e my copies of the notes I left. So perfect. Even to the precise location of each different star in the sky. Could the police guess? Were they smart enough to figure out what I was telling them? They now had five notes. Soon they would be studying the end message, trying to solve the puzzle of it, attempting to insert the initials of the two women they will find in the near future, wondering if there are more bodies stiff with the cold, dead and waiting in the vast forest.

I smile and take another drink, allowing a melting ice cube to slide slowly into my mouth. W A R T H E S C

I N

Will the cops be smart enough to figure out where the new initials will fit into the message? Will

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the FBI agents be able to help, with all their computer programmers and cryptographers? I doubt it. After all, they’re led by that useless piece of flesh with a badge, good old Sheriff Dan Grayson. I snort at the thought of him. What a poor excuse for the keeper of security for the county! I bet he’s squirming now. Good. I love the fact that I get to deal with him and he, who has been touted as so smart, so clever . . . has no friggin’ clue. Maybe I should help Grayson and his pack of cretins out . . . even give them a little taste of what is to come. It would be nice to shake them up a little after their incredible gaffe of chasing after the wrong person . . . a woman, no less.

Desperate, that’s what they are.

I spy the notes that I’ve planned to use in the future. Perfect copies waiting to be tacked to the trees over the heads of the appropriate women. Hmmm. It’s taken years of planning— years—because the time has to be right; the potential women with the right initials to be driving through the Bitterroots. I have backup plans, of course. Groupings of women with the same initials who are potential targets, because it’s a damned hard trick to make the message work. That, too, can change, as I have several potential notes that will spell out essentially the same warning. So my bases are covered.

The tidy boxes I’ve kept, dozens of them with notes and files on all the women, prospective candidates for my work. They’re alphabetized by name, have pictures attached, usually taken discreetly by my cell phone, or even with the woman’s permission. I have cards on each one with information about where they work, where they’re from, what they like to do, and most importantly, their travel plans. 262

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Many, hundreds, have been discarded. Their names weren’t right, they had no plans to drive through the mountains in this part of Pinewood County. Those are mostly the ones I met years before, when my plan was first forming.

I sip the vodka while the fire burns brightly and Pescoli plots her escape on the other side of the door. I don’t yet know how she plans to do it, but it will be done, I’m sure. I wish now that I’d hidden a small camera in the room and make a note to myself to do so in the future. It’s one detail I hadn’t thought of when drawing up my plan. I replace several boxes, slide them into their individual slots in a cupboard I built years before. Oh, yes, this has been a long time in the making. Mother, I think, would be proud.

At my attention to detail.

I mentally pat myself on the back for my patience. It has served me well over time—while waiting for the perfect shot, or for anticipating that the right woman driver will make a trek over the mountains, or for the exact moment to kill Brady Long. And it has been worth every second of the wait. I have to remind myself to hold on to my patience as well as my temper in dealing with the detective. She has a way of rattling my nerves, making me edgy and unsure, sparking my temper into anger.

And that won’t do.