Deserves to Die (2 page)

But she’d survived.

At least one more night.

A quick glance through the window showed her that her footsteps were still visible, but quickly disappearing with the night’s snowfall, as were the Chevy’s tire tracks.

Good, though it really didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay hidden away. She had to go out today and would in the days after, as she needed to secure a job and fast. The cash she’d taken with her was running out and though her expenses were little, her dollars could only be stretched so far.

She relieved herself in the barely functioning toilet, then using her flashlight, followed its beam to the back porch where she’d seen a stack of wood the night before.

The split fir had been in its resting spot for years, judging by the nests of spiders within and the fact that it was dry as a bone. It would ignite easily. A small axe had been left, its blade stuck in a huge round of wood that had obviously been used as a chopping block. She carried in several large chunks and stacked them in the grate, checked the flue, opened the damper, then went back outside and, with her flashlight balanced on the porch rail, split some kindling.

Thank you, Grandpa, for showing me how to do this,
she thought, conjuring up the old man with his bald, speckled pate, rimless glasses, and slight paunch. He’d been the one who had taken her hunting and camping, molding what he’d considered a pampered princess into a self-sufficient woman.

“Ya never can tell when you’ll need to know how to shoot, or build a camp, or make a fire, Missy, so you’d best learn now,” he’d told her. Smelling of chewing tobacco and a hint of Jack Daniels, he’d set about teaching her.

Of course he was long gone, but his memory and advice lingered.

She set up one piece of fir, raised the axe, and brought it down swiftly. A bit of kindling split off. She repeated the process again and again until she’d made short work of three fir chunks and, despite the freezing temperatures and her fogging breath, was sweating profusely.

Once back in the cabin, she used her lighter and soon a fire was burning in the grate, smoke drawing through the chimney, heat emanating. There were still a couple hours of darkness, so she hoped to warm the little space and use the firelight as illumination. Once dawn broke, she would let the fire die so that no smoke was visible.

She made a list of essentials she’d need, then checked the online connection on her phone, which she used with a device she’d bought on the black market, along with a new identity.

“Jessica Williams.” She eyed the driver’s license from California and the Social Security number she’d been told wouldn’t raise any red flags. Coupled with her disguise, she might just blend into the local Montana landscape for awhile.

My life as a criminal,
she thought, checking the help wanted area of a website dedicated to finding jobs in western Montana. She’d posted her resume two days earlier, indicating that she was moving to the area and only had a temporary address, so that anyone interested would have to contact her through the site.
So far, nothing,
she noted as she finished the rest of the banana.

She found the website for the Grizzly Falls newspaper and located the want ads where there were two opportunities to hire on as a waitress. Betsy’s Bakery and the Midway Diner. She made note of them, then ate a couple bites of jerky and washed them down with her water.

Wasting no time, she cleaned up as best as she could with the cold tap water, changed her clothes, and examined her reflection in the cracked mirror on the medicine cabinet over the sink in the bathroom. Dawn was just breaking, light filtering through the falling snow and cloud cover.

Her features were still in shadow as she applied her makeup with the aid of the flashlight’s harsh beam. Contacts to change her gold eyes a dark brown, tweezers to contour her arched eyebrows flat, a dull blond wig that hid her auburn hair, and removable appliances that made her jowly enough to match the padded body suit that seemed to add at least thirty pounds to her athletic frame.

Over it all, she dressed in too-tight jeans and a sweater under a jacket, then again, surveyed her image in the mirror. She was unrecognizable to anyone who knew her.

Maybe today she’d get lucky.

Lucky? Really ?

Who would have ever thought she would end up here, the daughter of privilege, a woman who’d showed such promise, one with a damn master’s degree, no less, and now on the run?

God help me.

For a split second, she was back in that swamp. In her mind’s eye, she saw the glinting image of a blade, heard the lap of water, saw the blood flowing.... She felt the pain, the despair, the utter bleakness of that moment and remembered the fleeting feeling that if she just let go, if she finally gave up, she would be free.

But she’d fought.

And had miraculously survived.

So far.

Reaching up, she fingered the scar on her nape at her hairline, made sure the wig covered it and then headed for the door. She wasn’t about to let
him
win.

Ever.

T
he new guy was a prick.

At least in Detective Regan Pescoli’s estimation.

She doubted she was alone in her viewpoint that Hooper Effin’ Blackwater, until recently, commander of the criminal department, now acting sheriff, was a poor replacement for Dan Grayson.

Then again, Grayson’s size twelve boots were damn hard to fill.

She crossed the department’s parking lot and headed for the back door. It was cold as hell, the night still lingering enough that the street lamps were just winking off, the wind fierce enough to snap the flags and rattle the chains of the poles near the front of the building.

As she walked through the department’s back door she shook the snow from her hair and brushed several melting flakes from the shoulders of her jacket before stomping whatever remained from her boots. Opening the vestibule door into the department, a wave of heat hit her full in the face, the old furnace rumbling as it worked overtime.

Already, the office was bustling with the sound of jangling phones, clicking and sputtering printers, and bits and pieces of conversation.

Unwinding her scarf, she headed past the lunchroom where some of the officers lingered, either before or after their shifts. A few straggling members from the night crew were gathering their things, having a last cup of coffee, and scanning the headlines of the latest edition of the newspaper. The morning workers were beating a path to the coffeepots already percolating on the counter, the rich aroma of some South American blend scenting the air.

Pescoli’s stomach turned a little at the thought of coffee, a morning cup she once considered one of life’s greatest pleasures. A cup of black coffee and a cigarette, what could be better? Now, of course, she indulged in neither, at least nothing with a jolt of caffeine in it. And zero nicotine.

A shame, really.

Sometimes being healthy and a role model to her children was a major pain in the ass.

Speaking of pains, she returned her thoughts back to the man in charge of the department, if only for the time being. The change didn’t sit well, nor did sipping a caffeine-free Diet Coke. It just didn’t hit the spot, but she dealt with it. She had to.

Because, surprise, surprise she was pregnant.

Again.

The baby was unplanned.

Again.

Would she never learn?

Bypassing the lunchroom, she nearly collided with Joelle Fisher, the department’s receptionist and head cheerleader, at least in her own mind.

Bustling toward the cafeteria in pink, impossibly high heels that matched her suit and the little heart-shaped earrings dangling from her earlobes, Joelle caught herself before tripping. “Excuse me, Detective,” she said a little sharply, her voice accented by the staccato rhythm of her footsteps. Balancing a huge white box that no doubt held dozens of cookies or cupcakes, she was, as always, in a hurry. Her platinum hair was piled into a high beehive, not a single strand waving as she moved with lightning speed toward the lunchroom.

It was Joelle’s mission to ensure every member of the force was filled to the brim with whatever holiday goodies were in season. From her great-great-great-grandmother’s recipe for fruitcake at Christmas, to the “witch’s tarts” she created for Halloween, Joelle ensured that each officer of the Pinewood Sheriff’s Department had his or her sweet tooth satisfied and blood sugar levels elevated.

Maybe all those sweets were a good thing. She had to be around sixty, but she appeared a full decade younger, despite her nod to 1960s fashion.

“I’m . . . I’m not drunk,” a loud voice insisted from around the corner. “Ya hear me? Damn Breathalyzer is broke, I tell ya! Issus . . . it’s who? Ten in the morning?”

“A little after eight, Ivor.” Deputy Kayan Rule’s voice was firm. “Time to sober up.”

“But I am . . . I am sh . . . sober. I’m tellin’ ya.”

“You’ve told me a lot of things. Let’s go.” Just as Pescoli reached her office she caught a glimpse of Rule, a tall black man who looked more like an NBA power forward than a county road deputy, shepherding a cuffed and unhappy Ivor Hicks to the drunk tank.

“Bastard!” Hicks said angrily.

Pescoli had no love for the man or any member of his family; in fact she had a personal, deep-seated loathing for Ivor’s son, but she tried not to think about that particular nut job. Nonetheless, her skin crawled as Ivor was shepherded along the hallways.

“You’ll get yours,” Ivor predicted with some kind of sanctimonious malice, the joy being his ability to predict Rule’s dire future. From behind thick, owlish glasses, he glared at the deputy. “Mark my words. That son of a bitch, Crytor? He’ll get you, y’know. Damn general of that pod, he’ll come for you like he did for me. And he’ll plant a damn invisible chip in you, too!”

“He’ll have to stand in line. I’ve got lots of folks out to get me,” Rule said and tossed Pescoli a
what’re-ya-gonna-do
look. Then he guided tipsy Ivor Hicks, still ranting about the leader of the army of reptilian aliens he’d believed had abducted him, around a corner at the end of the hall. Ivor was convinced that the extraterrestrials had done a vast array of medical experiments on him years before and that his memories of the terrifying event had nothing to do with his fondness for whiskey.

Just a normal day at the office.

As they passed out of sight, Pescoli stepped into her office and stripped off her jacket and scarf. Outside it was freezing, a raging storm from Canada passing through, but inside the building, the heat was almost stifling. The temperature was set above seventy and in Pescoli’s current state, the department felt like a sauna. She was sweating by the time she kicked out her desk chair and sat at her computer.

God
, she thought, logging onto her e-mail,
I’d kill for a Diet Coke
with
caffeine.
But it was not to be. She was going to have to opt for decaf coffee, instant, no less.

Waiting for the screen to come up, she made her way back to the lunchroom and found the carafe marked
HOT WATER
and poured a cup. It steamed as she returned to her desk. She didn’t want any of her coworkers to note that she’d switched from “high-octane” to “unleaded” because she hadn’t shared her secret with anyone, including Nate Santana, her fiancé and the father of her unborn child. He had no children of his own, and she wasn’t sure how he would react to the news. She trusted him, loved him, and had agreed to marry him, though she’d been reluctant as she’d walked down the aisle twice before, once to Joe Strand, her son Jeremy’s father. A cop like her, he had died in the line of duty. Theirs had been a rocky, if passionate union. The same could be said for husband number two, Luke “Lucky” Pescoli, a sexy trucker who had swept her off her usually grounded feet. She’d married him on the fly and the results were their daughter Bianca and a divorce. Lucky had remarried Michelle soon afterward who was, in Pescoli’s biased opinion, a life-sized, walking, talking Barbie doll, barely older than her stepson Jeremy and a whole heck-of-a lot smarter than she let on.

As she carried her mug back to her desk, Pescoli heard Blackwater on the phone, but she didn’t peer into the sheriff’s office as she passed, not like she used to when Grayson was there. She couldn’t stomach the thought of Blackwater leaning back in Grayson’s chair, feet on the desk, receiver to his ear as he kiss-assed the higher ups; or, more likely, sitting ramrod stiff in the chair and doing isometric exercises as he restructured the department.

Maddening.

Once seated at her desk again, she shoved aside a stack of papers, then added freeze-dried decaf coffee crystals to the steaming water in her mug and stirred with a spoon she kept handy in the top drawer. She caught a glimpse of one of the pictures she kept on her desk and felt a tug on her heart. The shot was of Jeremy at nine, his smile stretched wide, his teeth still a little too big for his face, his hair mussed. He was standing on a flat rock near the banks of a stream and proudly holding his catch, a glistening rainbow trout.

Her heart squeezed. The years since then had flown by and he was nearly an adult who, despite her protests, was going to follow in his parents’ footsteps and become a cop.

Lord help us
, she thought, though the truth was that her son had saved her life recently, and it seemed, in so doing, had finally crossed the threshold into manhood.

After taking a sip of her coffee, she felt an instant souring in her gut. From the coffee? Or Blackwater, whose voice still carried down the hall. Irritated, she rolled her chair to the door to shut it and thought, again, of the new life growing inside her.

Pregnant
.

And pushing forty.

Now
that
had been a surprise. She had near-grown kids already. Jeremy was almost out the door . . . well, that had yet to be seen, but he’d made a few futile attempts in the past. Bianca was in the last years of high school and deep into teenage angst.

So
now
a baby?

Starting all over again with diapers, sleepless nights, shifting schedules, and juggling a full-time job?

She wasn’t ambivalent about the baby, not really. She just knew how much work and chaos a baby brought into the home, especially a home that wasn’t exactly picture-perfect already. And she wasn’t married. Not that being unwed and pregnant was such a big deal these days, but Santana was already pushing for them to tie the knot.

She had the ring to prove it, even if the band with its diamond was currently tucked into a corner of the top drawer of her bureau. She’d had it on briefly, but with everything that had happened recently, she didn’t feel like bandying it about quite yet.

She took another sip of the coffee, found it too bitter, and put the half-drunk cup aside on her already cluttered desk.

A sharp rap on her door sounded, then Alvarez stuck her head inside. “Busy?” she asked as Pescoli swiveled in her chair. “Or do you have a minute?”

“Something up?”

Alvarez shook her head and slipped into the tiny room, leaving the door open a crack. “I just wanted to see if you’d gone to visit Grayson.”

“Not for a few days. I was going to drop by the hospital after work. Wanna go with?”

“I was there last night.” Alvarez was grim as she shook her head.

“And?”

“Not good.”

“It’s only been—”

“I know. But I expected him to, I don’t know, come around by now.” Compressing her lips together, Alvarez gave her head a quick shake as if dispelling an unwanted picture in her mind. Though it had been Pescoli who’d found him lying in a pool of blood at his cabin, Alvarez had been the most shaken up by the attack on their boss.

“They’re moving him out of ICU, into a private room,” she added. “That’s what one of the nurses told me before I went in to see him.”

“I thought he was going to be transferred to Seattle, a neurological unit specializing in brain trauma or something.”

“That plan’s been scrapped and I don’t know why,” Alvarez said, obviously frustrated. “The doctors seem to think he’s stable enough that he doesn’t need round-the-clock observation, that he’ll get better with time, but I don’t know.”

“He’ll be okay.”

Alvarez looked up sharply. “How do you know? Everyone keeps saying that, but really, it’s just words.” Her mouth was pinched, her eyes flashing.

“I . . . well, you’re right. I don’t really know, but that’s a good sign, isn’t it? That he’s being transferred out of intensive care. Come on, Alvarez, have a little faith.”

“You, the self-professed agnostic? You’re telling
me
to have faith?”

“I’m just saying that if anyone can pull through, it’s Dan Grayson. He’s a big, strapping man and . . .” Pescoli let her voice trail off. “One of the good guys.”

“Yeah—”

“Detectives?” Hooper Blackwater’s voice preceded him as he took the time to stick his head into Pescoli’s office.

Pescoli looked up at him.

“Reports?” His eyebrows raised, a nonverbal reminder that there was work to be done that bugged the hell out of her. “The Haskins suicide? Amstead domestic dispute?”

“Both done,” Alvarez said.

“Good. E-mail them to me.” With a quick, sharp nod, he was off, boots ringing as he strode down the hall, probably searching for his next Red Bull or a spot where he could drop and do twenty quick push-ups. Just because he could.

“I can’t stand that guy,” Pescoli said under her breath.

“I know,” Alvarez said. “And he knows. For that matter, we all know.” Her dark eyes were without reproach, though, as if she silently agreed. “Maybe you shouldn’t make it so obvious.”

Pescoli didn’t respond. She knew she was being bitchy, but she didn’t really care.

“Try it,” Alvarez suggested, her professional mask slipping back into place. “I’ll catch you later.” She was out of Pescoli’s office quickly.

Once more, Pescoli rolled her desk chair to the door and pushed it firmly shut, a practice that was new to her. Since Blackwater had grabbed the reins of the department, she felt she needed privacy, at least for now and the foreseeable future.

She wasn’t kidding herself. Grayson, if he ever returned, was a long way off from regaining his rightful place as sheriff. She and the whole damn office were stuck with Blackwater, the go-getter who let everyone know it.

“Shit,” she whispered.

Grayson, forever with his black lab Sturgis at his heels, his Stetson squarely on his head, was soft-spoken and thoughtful, yet quietly firm. A tall, rangy man who looked more cowboy than lawman, a sheriff elected by the people of Pinewood County, his quiet command was effective. He had strong opinions and all hell could break out when he was angry, but for the most part, he was in control and steady, a rock-solid force Pescoli could depend upon.

Blackwater was all action—fast-paced and guns blazing as if he had to prove himself. He made sure that everyone who worked for him knew he was an ex-Marine who had served two tours in Afghanistan. Pescoli had heard that he ran every morning, three miles minimum in all kinds of weather, and three days a week he spent hours in the gym, boxing and lifting weights to reduce his stress and stay in Marine-proud shape. At work, he downed Red Bull, Rock Star, or Monster energy drinks the way an alcoholic tossed back martinis. Part Native American, he appeared perpetually tanned, his eyes an intense brown bordering on black, his nearly six-foot physique all compact muscle.