Afraid to Die

  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!

  Gabe’s body jerked.

  He pitched forward.

  As Alvarez watched in horror, he toppled facedown into the snow and a red stain oozed through his thin jacket.

  “No!” she screamed, and flung herself from behind the wheel.

  As she reached her boy, throwing herself on the frozen ground, she heard the resonant sound of a huge gun firing again.

  So close!

  Pain, blistering and hot tore down her side.

  Blackness swept over her.

  She swung around, her own gun firing wildly, seeing the dark figure from the corner of her eye. Trying to aim, she focused on him and squeezed the trigger again just as she felt the cold electrodes of the stun gun against her neck.

  Panicked, she fired.

  Die, you freak. Die! Die! Die!

  O’Keefe punched it.

  Snow flew from beneath his tires.

  The engine of his Explorer ground but he managed to keep the wheels churning up the steep road in the foothills over Cougar Creek, his wipers working overtime against the snowstorm. “Come on, come on.” He was sweating, fear driving him, his heart a drum. If that bastard had laid a finger on Alvarez, he’d personally slit the son of a bitch’s throat.

  Staring at the map on his smartphone, he followed the signal of the GPS device he’d stuck under the quarter panel of Alvarez’s Outback. He saw that she’d driven to a remote area of the foothills, and decided he had to call Pescoli back.

  When he’d first called Selena’s partner, he hadn’t admitted to placing the device on the Subaru, hadn’t thought he had to activate it. He’d figured she was on police business or doing something privately, and wasn’t about to rat her out. After all, the sheriff had taken her off the ice-mummy case.

  But he’d made a mistake and now was mentally kicking himself.

  The tracking system on his phone indicated that the car had stopped and he had the coordinates.

  Pescoli answered curtly.

  “It’s O’Keefe. Alvarez is on Cougar Point Road, about fifteen miles out of town.” He gave her the coordinates.

  “So what makes you think so?” Pescoli asked, obviously irritated.

  “I’m tracking her.”

  “You put a bug on her?”

  “On her car. Yeah.” He thought about explaining that he’d been worried she’d do something foolish and go off half-cocked, but held his tongue.

  “So why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Pescoli demanded, practically seething. “Why did you call me earlier and ask me where she was?”

  “I didn’t want to overstep,” he started to explain. “I wasn’t sure.” It sounded lame. It was lame.

  “But you put an effin’ bug in her Outback. I’d say that was overstepping. Wouldn’t you? Damn!” She said something else he couldn’t hear over the noise of his engine and the wind howling as it roared across this part of Montana. “Look, I’m on my way. I’ve called for backup.”

  “You knew?”

  “Just figured it out.”

  “I’m almost there.”

  “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!

  Forcing one eye open, Alvarez found herself in a cave of sorts, lying in a trough, unable to move because of the icy water sluicing around her.

  Oh, sweet Jesus!

  Had she been out for hours? Or minutes? Or days?

  She didn’t know, but enough time had pass
ed for him to drag her here, strip her and lay her in this water bath.

  Her leg and arm spasmed.

  The stun gun.

  He’d subdued her with it and, as she was still reacting, it couldn’t have been that long ago ... right?

  But she was groggy ... She heard the sounds of soft sobbing from somewhere nearby and then the notes of a Christmas carol drifting through her brain as she tried to pass out again.

  I heard the bells on Christmas day ...

  She blinked and suddenly everything changed, a shadow loomed over her and, as her eyes came into focus, she saw him, the Ice Mummy Killer.

  “Hello, Selena,” he said, his eyes glowing with a triumphant fire.

  Jon Oestergard? Her handyman? The farmer? A married man who ... ?

  “And you thought you could outsmart me,” he said, again in that monotone she found so irritating. “Tsk-tsk.” He smiled that self-abashing smile she’d noticed before. What the hell had she ever done to him?

  What did it matter?

  She was drifting again, floating back to the darkness, the comfort and safety of unconsciousness, where she wouldn’t feel the cold, wouldn’t think about ...

  Gabe! Where was he?

  Forcing her eyes open, she tried to look around, past the dark-coved, rock ceilings of this cave to the room ... this huge room with a workbench and hanging lights and ... If she could only look around!

  “So you are awake! Good.” He wasn’t smiling now; instead, he was looking down at her through his darkened glasses.

  “Where’s Gabe?” she forced out, trying to yell, though her voice was a whisper.

  “The boy? Oh, don’t worry about him.” He was actually humming to the music now, almost in a dream world.

  “Where is he?” she spat.

  “I left him there, of course. With your stupid dog ... Give them lots to think about.” His smile turned nasty. “So we won’t be disturbed.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why, Jon?”

  “Oh, now I’m Jon. Do you know that you never called me by my name?”

  “What?”

  “And when I helped you in the grocery store, you acted as if I didn’t exist.”

  “What grocery store ... What are you talking about?” she said, though her words were breathy, in a rush, almost garbled.

  He sluiced more water over her and her body twitched. So much for thinking he’d calmed his victims with a drug to keep them from feeling pain. This guy got off on pain, on being superior, on being in control.

  Don’t give him the power. Don’t ask the questions he’s anticipating. Don’t show him any fear.

  “What does your wife think about this?” she threw out and he visibly reacted. That’s when she saw the blood. A trickle running down his arm, as if one of her bullets had found its mark. “Dorie? Isn’t that her name? Is she part of this?”

  “No!” he yelled, stung, his face pulling into an expression of revulsion.

  “Oh, come on. She must have some idea.”

  “Leave her out of this.” He drew in a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s ... gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He killed her!” a woman’s voice yelled and the freak looked up quickly.

  Someone else was down here? Oh, yes ... she’d heard a woman crying ... Slowly her brain was snapping to.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Jon yelled, but the woman wouldn’t obey him.

  “He killed her. Bragged about it! Didn’t you, you fucking abomination of nature!”

  He turned then, distracted, and Alvarez knew, if she was ever going to get the drop on him, it was now!

  O’Keefe rounded a final corner and saw the boy, facedown in the snow, blood pooling around him. Alvarez’s Outback, still idling, shot to hell, was parked at the crest of the hill, but it was empty. Weapon drawn, O’Keefe pulled up to the boy and carefully got out of his car.

  Where was she?

  No sign of her, nor the killer, nor another vehicle.

  But a dog lay motionless in the snow and O’Keefe realized he’d finally found Alvarez’s Roscoe.

  Too little, too late.

  His gaze searching the area, his hand tight over his weapon, he readied himself and crouched over the boy. Please be alive, Gabe. Please ...

  He expected a hail of bullets, but it was quiet in the surrounding forest, no sound but the thrum of the car’s idling engine and his own thudding heart.

  Too damned quiet.

  And no Selena ... He wouldn’t let his mind wander to that forbidden territory, the dark corner of his brain that accused him of moving too slowly, of not chasing her down faster, of letting her end up here and, now, most likely dead.

  His throat tightened and he focused on the here and now, what he could do rather than the cold, stark fact that he’d never see Alvarez alive again.

  Reaching the kid, still keeping a wary eye out for an ambush that could happen at any second, he felt the weakest of pulses and, as he checked for injuries, dialed 911. When the operator answered, he cut her off before she could ask about his emergency. “I need an ambulance stat.” He gave his name and position and explained that Gabriel Reeve had been shot, was clinging to life. After assuring him that help was on the way, the operator insisted O’Keefe stay on the line as she patched him through to an EMT, who over the phone would help him stabilize the boy.

  “Come on, Gabe, hang in there, buddy,” O’Keefe said, opening the boy’s jacket and shirt, seeing the bullet hole high in his chest.

  The boy moaned, and over the sound, he heard the whine of another engine.

  Backup?

  Or the killer?

  Positioning himself between the boy and the oncoming vehicle, O’Keefe aimed his gun at the rise. Twin beams appeared, and as the Jeep rounded the corner, O’Keefe saw Regan Pescoli at the wheel.

  “It’s a damned bloodbath, one victim, a woman, naked and unrecognizable, on the bed, blood all over the walls and carpet and bed ... Man, it’s a friggin’ nightmare. Right out of some horror movie,” Peter Watershed was saying to Pescoli over the phone. He and Rule Kayan had been sent to the Oestergard farm and, after calling the station, Watershed had phoned her.

  “No sign of the husband?”

  “No, and the only vehicle in the garage is a Honda Civic registered to the wife. But we haven’t checked all the outbuildings yet and it’s obvious someone goes down to the barn and sheds; there’s a pretty clear path in the snow. We’re heading that way next.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Always.”

  “Hey, Pete,” she said, before he hung up. “You think the victim is Dorie Oestergard?”

  Watershed said, “Maybe. I’m telling you, Pescoli, I’ve never seen anything like it. Her eyes cut, her nose and mouth, too, as if he was disfiguring her on purpose. This guy’s beyond psycho.”

  “Rage,” she said, sick inside.

  “I’ll be there as soon as backup arrives.”

  Not only was the killer, whom she assumed was Oestergard, escalating, but it was as if he’d snapped. No more quiet deaths where the victim was covered in ice, even sedated; now he was in a state of full-on homicidal madness.

  She drove around the final corner and her headlights caught Dylan O’Keefe, his weapon pointed straight at her. As he recognized her and lowered his pistol, she cut the engine and got out of the Jeep.

  “What the hell went on here? Where’s Alvarez?”

  “Don’t know. Not here. And it looks like another vehicle went down the other side of the mountain.”

  “To the Oestergard place.”

  In the distance, sirens cut through the night. “Ambulance,” she said, and kneeling next to the boy, knew it couldn’t come fast enough.

  She, too, talked to the kid, tried to keep him awake and focused. The dog, it seemed, was a lost cause and there was no sign of Alvarez, Trilby Van Droz or the killer. “Gabe, can you hear me?” she asked. “Stay with me. Gabe?”

  The sirens shrieked, closer and cl
oser, engines cutting through the snowy night.

  Gabe groaned, though it looked as if O’Keefe had managed to stanch the flow of blood for now. Maybe, just maybe, the kid would make it.

  “You’ve been nothing but trouble!” Oestergard yelled to the woman, who, Alvarez saw now, was locked in a cage in this dungeon of a cavern. There were two other jail-like cells that had been constructed down here and Alvarez didn’t have to be told that they’d held other captives. She imagined the other victims being trapped in here, awaiting their fate, probably watching the ones before them slowly being killed before this jerk took the time to sculpt their own visages over their frozen bodies.

  She wondered about this man whom she’d known as an acquaintance for the past five years, but didn’t dwell on it. As he approached the woman, whom Alvarez guessed was Johnna Phillips, Alvarez slowly moved, forcing her body to respond.

  Now, if only Johnna would understand, not tip him off.

  “You know what,” he said to the caged woman, “I should fuck you. Huh? How about that?”

  “With what?” she threw back at him. She actually smiled as she taunted him. “You probably can’t even get it up.” In the case next to her was another woman, naked and unmoving. Trilby Van Droz was lying on a bare mattress, her hair a mess, her skin blue, and if she was breathing, Alvarez couldn’t see any sign of it.

  “You think not? Well, how about I show you?” Oestergard yelled back at Johnna. As Alvarez raised her head a little higher, forcing her eyes to focus, she saw him at the gate, his key jangling in the lock. His face was red, his anger palpable as he was obviously off the rails completely. So intent at getting at the woman in his cage, he didn’t notice Alvarez or hear the sound that was barely discernible over the Christmas music: the distinct sound of footsteps on the staircase. Oh, God, please let it be help ... not an accomplice.

  Johnna, naked, her lips blue, her skin covered in goose pimples, slid the barest of glances Alvarez’s way, and then said, “You can’t do it. I bet you haven’t been hard in years. Maybe never. So that’s why you’re down here making your stupid ice statues, because you don’t know how to satisfy a real woman. I’ve heard you talk about your wife. She’s a twit, isn’t that what you call her? Do you say that when you try to fuck her? Is that what you call her?”