Afraid to Die

  “Okay. Where’s the tank?”

  “Under the stairs.” They made their way to the first floor, where he walked to the closet tucked beneath the staircase and snapped on the overhead light.

  As she stood in the hallway behind him, he eyed the settings, then frowned and shook his head. He checked switches and gauges and finally shrugged. “You’re right, you need a hot-water guy.”

  “So much for your plumbing skills,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he admitted with a chuckle. “They’re pretty limited.”

  O’Keefe stepped out of the closet, his hair slightly mussed, and she remembered what it had been like to lie in his bed, to hold him close, to fantasize. She’d thought, with him, she could finally let go.

  She’d been wrong.

  Almost fatally so.

  She found him staring at her, as if he could read her mind. Which was ridiculous. Of course.

  Back in the kitchen, she cleared her throat and removed the cups from the table, dropping them into the sink. “Look, I want you to know that I’m sorry about what happened in San Bernardino. My mistake.”

  “Forget it.” He was already zipping his jacket. “Water under the bridge.” But his features had hardened once more and she only hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with him again. Theirs had been a complicated and hard-edged relationship, filled with raw emotion, denied sexual chemistry and a battle of wills. Neither had been able to give an inch and it had blown up in their faces.

  She didn’t mind that he was leaving.

  In fact, she was glad.

  But when the door closed hard behind him, she actually second-guessed herself.

  And she hated that.

  Chapter 8

  Dylan O’Keefe, here, in Grizzly Falls?

  What were the chances?

  Alvarez had thought that when she’d left the force in San Bernardino County, she’d never lay eyes upon him or hear his name again. At least that’s what she’d hoped. It was surreal that he’d shown up here, searching for a runaway delinquent who could be the son she’d given up as a teenager herself.

  Now as she rinsed out their coffee cups and tried not to notice how empty the house felt without Roscoe, she wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on O’Keefe. But she did open the e-mail O’Keefe had sent her and print out the pictures of the boy who could be her own flesh and blood. Again, she studied his features in minute detail, searching for any telltale hint of resemblance to her or anyone in her family. “Who are you?” she whispered, her heart heavy, old pain suddenly raw. Determined to stay as clearheaded as possible, she reined in her galloping emotions and attempted to think logically. She wasn’t going to allow herself the luxury of falling into a million pieces. No way would she allow her personal involvement to cloud her judgment. She e-mailed a detective she knew with the Helena PD and asked about Gabriel Reeve and the crime for which he was sought.

  Now that she’d been dragged into this mess, she couldn’t just turn her back on it, no matter how painful the truth might be. Nor could she avoid O’Keefe, even though she wanted to avoid him. Big-time. Things between them had never been good and now ... Well, she wouldn’t even go there. You’ll have to see him again. Like it or not. And Gabe, now that you know he could be your son, you’ll have to find out.

  A part of her cracked inside. For so long, she’d stuffed down all her emotions about the child, the infant who had been the innocent in the horror that had been a part of her life when she’d been a teenager herself. “God help me,” she whispered, though her faith in a higher being had been destroyed years before. A woman of science, she had denied her Catholic upbringing, refused to enter a church, never sought counsel with a priest, but all of that might be about to change.

  Upset, she grabbed her jacket, badge, keys and cell phone and decided to look again for her dog. She’d walk along the jogging path they always took, hoping that he’d strayed onto a familiar trail, but as she half jogged through the night, feeling the depth of the cold in her soul, she knew she wouldn’t find him, just as surely as she knew her life, tonight, had been changed forever.

  Pescoli hated decorating the Christmas tree. Well, at least she hated decorating it alone. She mentally kicked herself from one side of the state to the other for not going over to Santana’s place tonight. Instead, she was here, with Cisco, looking at some of the ornaments she’d decided to save and wondering what had possessed her.

  From the looks of it, mice or rats or God knew what else had gotten into some of her favorite ornaments, so the snowflake Bianca had constructed in the fourth grade had frayed and the already-painted, cracked eggshell with Jeremy’s first-grade picture had been crushed to dust. “Time to move on,” she told herself, and considered phoning Santana, asking him over, then discarded the idea. For now. She looked at the faded ornament that said, “Baby’s first Christmas,” painted with teddy bears wearing Santa’s hat and inscribed with Jeremy’s name and the year of his birth. Remembering how she and Joe together had placed the ornament on a low branch and taken a picture of their cuddly baby boy dressed in red beneath the tree caused her throat to clog. Jeremy had gazed up at the shiny ornaments and winking lights with wonder.

  Where had the time gone?

  Now, it was all she could do to keep him in college, working and out of trouble. Tall and strapping, Jeremy was the spitting image of his father. And tonight, she had no idea where he was, but she was giving him his space, because he was over eighteen, even if he was still living under her roof.

  As for Bianca, she was out Christmas shopping with friends and wasn’t expected to return for another hour.

  “Just you and me, huh?” she asked the dog.

  Her thoughts strayed to Jeremy’s father, Joe Strand, a decorated cop, and a halfhearted husband. No matter what fantasies Jeremy and she had concocted, the truth was that had Joe lived, he and Regan would probably have divorced. They’d been heading down that slippery slope before a bullet had put an end to his life and any chance that they’d find the elusive and perhaps nonexistent happy ending.

  Clearing her throat, she hung the silly little ornament on the tree and again told herself to get a life. The kids were nearly grown.

  But not quite.

  She wasn’t usually a nostalgic person, but the holidays always brought out the worst in her.

  As if sensing she needed to be cheered up, the dog barked sharply, front feet lifting off the floor in his enthusiasm. “Yeah, I know. Stupid, huh? Hey, look what I’ve got.” Tail wagging frantically, he trotted after her to an overstuffed pantry, where on the top shelf she found a nearly empty box of doggie biscuits for Cisco. With an excited yip, he danced for the treat and Pescoli felt better.

  “Good boy,” she said, and wondered where the little elf suit Bianca had bought him had ended up just as her cell phone jangled from somewhere nearby. On the second muted ring, she found the phone in the pocket of the jacket she’d slung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs.

  Glancing at the screen as she answered, she recognized the number of the station. “Pescoli,” she said, but was already pushing an arm through the sleeve of her jacket. If someone from the sheriff’s department was calling after nine at night, it just wasn’t going to be good news.

  Noni in dispatch was on the line. “Got a call from Trilby,” she said when Pescoli answered. Trilby Van Droz was one of the department’s road deputies. “She received a call for an abandoned vehicle found by the driver of a snowplow for Long Logging. Up on a logging spur off East Juniper Lake Road. Van Droz checked to make sure no one was inside and scraped off the plates to run them. The 1995 Toyota Camry is registered to Lara Sue Gilfry. Van Droz thought you’d be interested.”

  “I am,” Pescoli said, all of her melancholy for Christmas temporarily shelved as she found her boots. “And I don’t want the car moved. Yet. Not until I get up there.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Adrenaline firing her blood, Pescoli laced her boots, then jammed her hands into g
loves, grabbed her sidearm and headed for the garage. She’d call Alvarez on the way.

  “So what do you know?” Alvarez asked as she climbed into Pescoli’s Jeep and strapped in. Pescoli was already backing out of the driveway, snow spraying from under the tires.

  “Not much. I did talk to Trilby; she was first on the scene and she says there’s no sign of foul play, but then there’s nearly a foot of snow on the vehicle. Until it’s towed to the garage and the crime scene guys go over it, who knows?”

  Ramming the car into drive on the street, she added, “Car’s definitely registered to Lara Gilfry and she’s not around. Trilby popped the trunk, thinking she might find a dead body, but nothing back there but the spare, some tools and a case of old CDs.”

  “What about her purse? Cell phone?”

  “Nothing personal found in the car.”

  “Not good,” Alvarez said.

  “You got that right. Hey, you find your dog?”

  “Not yet.”

  Pescoli frowned into the night, squinting against a few headlights shining their way. “So what’s with you and O’Keefe? You two have a thing when you were with San Bernardino?”

  “What?” Alvarez said, then realized she reacted too quickly. “Just the opposite. We didn’t get along.”

  “He’s hot as hell.”

  “If you like that whole rugged-around-the-edges thing.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Me.”

  “I think he’s interested in you.”

  “Shows you what kind of detective you are,” Alvarez said, glancing out the window as they passed a convenience store, windows painted with holiday reindeer while signs for cigarettes and beer glowed on the same panes. A couple of teenagers were outside, sipping from big drinks, smoking cigarettes and clutching skateboards that couldn’t possibly work with all the snow and ice, at least not in Alvarez’s estimation.

  “I’m tellin’ ya, the man likes you.”

  “So what’re you now? An authority on romance?”

  “Me?” She snorted. “Not hardly. But I recognize the signs when a man is into you.”

  “Oh, save me.”

  “Seriously.”

  Alvarez didn’t respond.

  “Now who’s the liar?” Pescoli threw back at her as Alvarez glared out the window.

  “Just drive.”

  The town, with its neon lights reflecting on the snow, disappeared behind them as Pescoli drove through the outskirts, the beams of her headlights cutting through the night as the houses thinned. No longer was snow falling, but darkness seemed held at bay, with the blanket of white that covered the surrounding fields and drifted against fence posts. Traffic was light, only a few cars meeting them as they turned onto the county road that wound into the foothills.

  “Just tell me Ivor Hicks didn’t find the car.”

  “Not this time.” Chuckling, Pescoli eased the Jeep through an open gate and onto a private road owned by the Long Logging Company. The road had been plowed here, a hedge of scraped snow lining the edges of the road, a fresh, thinner layer of snow covering the gravel. “And, thankfully, Grace Perchant isn’t wandering through the woods with her damned wolf-dogs tonight. Or at least I didn’t hear about either of them.”

  “Good.” Alvarez didn’t want to think about Grace and her uncanny prediction. In a way, she was relieved to have her attention turned to this case and away from Dylan O’Keefe and Gabriel Reeve. For one of the few times in her adult life, Alvarez was at a loss. She’d always known that, once her son reached the age of eighteen or older, she might get a knock on the door, a phone call or even an e-mail or text from a stranger introducing himself as her long-lost son. She was even prepared for a PI coming to her door, but she never expected her house to be ravaged, her dog to be stolen, her life thrown out of kilter before the boy had reached his eighteenth birthday.

  She’d been a fool.

  And now her son was in trouble. Serious trouble.

  Hold on there, okay? You’re not even sure this boy is yours.

  Alvarez wasn’t a betting woman, didn’t play the odds, but even she could see that Gabriel Reeve breaking into her house wasn’t pure coincidence.

  And now O’Keefe was involved. God, what a mess. Who would have thought that she, a boy suspected to be her son and Dylan O’Keefe would be wound together with the same old emotionally fraying cord?

  “Here we go!” Pescoli said as pulsing blue and red lights came into view. Bright beams from Van Droz’s county vehicle cut through the thickets of trees, adding an eerie, otherworldly effect to the already disturbing night. A huge snowplow was at rest nearby, idling so that the driver in the machine’s cab didn’t freeze. Nearby was the car in question, scraped free of snow along the windows and trunk.

  They parked, took the driver’s statement, then shined their flashlights into the car, disturbing nothing, hoping that once the vehicle was towed to the garage, the crime scene techs would find some trace evidence to help them determine what had happened to Lara Gilfry.

  Pescoli’s cell phone hummed and she picked up, reading a quick text and fuming. “No,” she said as she typed the short word, then turned the phone off. “Bianca wants to spend the night with Amber tomorrow night.” She looked into the abandoned car one last time. “I don’t think so. There is school tomorrow. Kids!” Turning her attention back to the car, she said, “Gone without a trace. What the hell is going on?”

  “I guess we’ll have to figure that out.” Alvarez didn’t like it. In the past three years, the peaceful little town of Grizzly Falls had been rocked by sick predators, all of whom had emerged with the snowfall to terrorize the citizens.

  Could it possibly be happening again?

  Or could the missing women have their own individual reasons for abandoning their vehicles and disappearing into thin air?

  Lara Sue Gilfry.

  Lissa Parsons.

  Brenda Sutherland.

  What were the chances that they all just up and took off without a word to anyone, without a trace, to disappear?

  Not likely.

  Even with the stress of the holidays.

  In Alvarez’s heart of hearts, she knew: Grizzly Falls was being terrorized again, a new monster emerging.

  But if so, where the hell were the victims?

  “You have to let me go,” Brenda begged of the maniac who held her in this ... this freezing cave located God only knew where; probably in the foothills surrounding Grizzly Falls, but she wasn’t certain. She heard the sound of water dripping over some piped-in music and the area smelled wet. She was in a cage of sorts, with a cot and a sleeping bag and a bucket she was to use as a latrine and iron bars holding her in. The cave had sheer rock walls and an uneven stone floor and was lit by battery-powered lanterns, some mounted high, others placed along the floor. Partitions had been constructed, making individual “rooms,” and she had the feeling she and the monster weren’t alone, that he had either other victims, or, worse yet, a silent accomplice.

  Ray?

  No, Ray wouldn’t get his hands dirty, but he knew enough lowlifes that he might have been able to connect with a psycho and offer him a deal.

  Oh, dear Lord.

  All she knew was that her chances of getting out of here alive were slim. She thought of her boys and her heart curdled. Where were they? Did they think she was dead already? Were they with Ray? Cameron was already talking about joining the navy when he graduated and Ray was fine with that, though Brenda had a few reservations, and Drew ... he was so young, anticipating getting his driver’s license and struggling in school. He needed her. They both needed her!

  And Ray wasn’t a good replacement.

  He’d been a lousy husband and not a much better father. Sure, he’d shown the boys how to shoot a rifle, hunt and gut a deer and keep meticulous care of his tools, but that’s about as far as his daddy skills went. He’d feed them crappy fast food and would have trouble getting them to school on time. Their clothes would be unwashed,
and when he was gone, long-haul trucking, where would they land? At his druggie sister’s house or left alone to their own teenaged devices?

  The more she considered it, the more convinced she was he was behind her abduction.

  She hated to think so little of him, a man she’d once purported to love, that he would do anything so vile, but Ray was known for his temper and holding grudges. She’d seen firsthand how cruel he could be, felt not only the slice of his sharp tongue but the pain of the back of his hand a time or two.

  He could certainly have paid to have her removed, though she didn’t give him credit for orchestrating the abduction; that took an organized, cold calculation, brains Ray didn’t have.

  But he would have done anything to best her.

  This time, she shivered from the inside out as she stared up at her abductor.

  “I ... I’ll do anything, pay anything, you just, please, have to let me go,” she said through chattering teeth as the monster eyed her casually and kept on humming some inane Christmas carol that she couldn’t, for the life of her, name right now. She knew she’d been drugged somehow, and from the way she was groggy or dozing all the time, she figured it was a sleeping aid of some kind. Mostly she was grateful for the mind-numbing fogginess and slumber because it kept the biting cold at bay, but in the few lucid moments she had, the brief minutes she was awake, the fear for her life collided with her concern for her sons and she was wired, jangled, shivering and crying and begging for mercy.

  There was none.

  He would come again.

  Force her to drink the disgusting-tasting tea and she would slip into that dreamlike state between wakefulness and slumber and be grateful for the relief.

  On her knees, her eyes closed, she began to pray. Dear Father, save me ... Have mercy on me ...

  But in this semidark tomb with the whisper of “Winter Wonderland” slipping through these caverns, she knew that she was alone and she feared that God couldn’t hear her prayers.

  Of course he can. He’s omnipresent. Have faith.