The Alvarez & Pescoli Series - Lisa Jackson An Alvarez & Pescoli Novel

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the jury returned, she’d bet her badge the guy would be sent to prison for a long while.

      Good. She found her car in the lot and drove directly to her studio apartment, where she changed into slacks and shoes with lower heels. She loved this tidy little space with its Murphy bed that flattened up against the wall, love seat, chair and ottoman. A small gas fireplace filled one wall, its mantel covered with framed pictures of the members of her large family, and a collapsible desk occupied the small space usually reserved for a kitchen table. As it had been for the past three months, the desk was littered with books, notes, diagrams and her laptop computer. She hated to think how many hours she’d spent at that very desk in the past few months, all trying to solve the latest murders.

      She didn’t begrudge herself the time, but it really ticked her off that she wasn’t any closer to solving the crimes. “Patience,” she reminded herself as she pulled on her heavy down coat and headed outside, locking the door behind her.

      She noticed that in the short time she’d been in her apartment, the wind had kicked up again, thick-bellied clouds roiling overhead, promising another storm.

      “Just what we need,” she thought aloud as a sharp gust tossed dry leaves across the parking lot, sending them dancing and reeling over the snowy landscape.

      As she crossed to her car, she felt as if someone were watching her. She actually looked over her shoulder but spied no one.

      “Just your imagination,” she told herself.

      But as she slid behind the wheel, she felt it again, that sharp, clear premonition of death.

      Hers?

      Or another poor victim, bound naked to a tree, hoping and praying to be rescued but all the while knowing she was doomed to die.

      “God help us,” Alvarez whispered, and for the first time since she was fourteen, she fervently made the sign of the cross over her chest. “God help us all.”

      Bam! Bam! Bam!

      Jillian attempted to open an eye.

      God, it was cold.

      So cold.

      And dark.

      An ear-splitting groan reverberated through her brain.

      What the hell?

      Where am I?

      “Hey! Lady! Wake up!” a man’s deep, anxious voice ordered. “Help me out here, would ya!”

      What?

      She tried to focus and felt the throb in her ankle.

      What in God’s name? Is this a dream?

      In a flash, she recalled waking up in the mangled Subaru. She’d been trapped in the car, hoping for help, sensing an evil presence, when she must have slipped into unconsciousness….

      Her heart kick-started and she squinted into the darkness. The shard of glass she’d been gripping was still in her clenched fist, now nearly frozen solid.

      Was this person who was trying to pry open the door the same one she’d thought she’d seen furtively darting through the snowy forest? The one she’d been certain was evil incarnate?

      “Hey! Are you okay?” her would-be rescuer yelled.

      Was he out of his mind? Of course she wasn’t okay. Did she look okay?

      “Can you push on the door?”

      If only.

      She caught a glimpse of him then through the thick flakes of falling snow. A ski mask and goggles, all in black, covered his face, making him look more alien than human. He was wearing a thick ski jacket but she saw no insignia indicating he was with the police or forest service or any agency….

      “Hey!” He reached through the broken windshield and touched her shoulder. “Wake up!”

      “I—I am!” she tried to yell, but it came out as a faint whisper.

      “Can you move?” he shouted so loudly she twitched with a painful jolt.

      Dear God, had she slipped into unconsciousness again?

      She tried to answer, but failed, fighting like hell to keep her eyes open.

      Should she trust him?

      Did she have any choice?

      “I can’t pull you through here…the roof’s crushed. I’m gonna try the door.”

      Her teeth were chattering again and she no longer felt the same intense pain she had earlier. Probably because she was numb and frostbite was settling in.

      Her eyes were so heavy. So damned heavy.

      “Hey! Lady! Stay with me! Oh for Christ’s sake! Come on, hang in there. What’s your name?”

      She blinked. Had she fallen asleep again? Blacked out?

      “Son of a bitch.” He had something in his hand, a crowbar, she thought vaguely…like the one in her trunk. If she could just sleep, only for a few minutes…five or ten…that was all she needed.

      She heard a deep, tortured groan. Metal twisting and resisting as the man used the crowbar on the driver’s-side door. From the corner of her eye she saw him pushing hard against the lever, throwing his weight into it, grunting and straining with the effort. “Come on, you miserable son of a bitch,” he said through clenched teeth. Metal squealed. Resisted. Frozen locks torqued but refused to give way. “Come on, come on, you bastard,” he swore at the car as he tried desperately to pry the door open.

      She should feel fear.

      Or worry.

      Or anything.

      But all she wanted to do was be pulled back under, into a warm, soft cloud of unconsciousness.

      “Stay with me!” he ordered.

      She was drifting away….

      Snap!

      Something broke, she thought, but didn’t know what. Didn’t care.

      Metal shrieked, and somewhere, far away, she thought she heard a man’s voice over the rush of a bitter cold wind. “Don’t you die on me. Do you hear me? You’d better not damned well die on me.”

      She felt the icy wind and the jostle of someone touching her, feeling her neck, as if for a pulse, reaching over her….

      But she couldn’t force her eyes open, and for the next few hours–-or was it longer?—she was in and out of consciousness, hearing him yelling at her through a long, dark tunnel. She would drift off to blackness until she was jarred by movement or noise, which roused her back to the surface until she faded out again. She was barely aware of the noise of an engine, of movement, and it seemed as if she were gliding, floating through the universe, with stars falling all around her…. Her ankle and ribs still hurt, which was probably a good sign, but the numbness that had settled over her skin made her feel dreamlike and buoyant, her soul weightless.

      “Don’t you let go,” he kept saying to her over the thrum of some engine, his voice seeming disembodied, coming from far away. “Whoever the hell you are, hang with me.”

      The call to the sheriff’s department came in two days later, with a break in the weather. Another car had been found, wrecked, abandoned and covered in snow.

      Selena Alvarez had been at her desk when dispatch phoned with the location of the vehicle and therefore she was one of the first detectives on the icy scene. She rode with Johnson and Slatkin in the county crime lab truck down a closed access road to the bottom of a canyon where the snow was nearly two feet deep.

      “Hey, Alvarez, over here!” Deputy Pete Watershed’s voice echoed through the desolate canyon.

      She looked up from where she was crouched by the front wheel of the mangled car

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