LITMIR.BIZ

      Strike three.

      Seated at her desk in her cubicle at the department, Selena Alvarez swiped at her nose with a tissue and glowered at her computer monitor. She’d called Pescoli on her cell, gotten no response, tried to reach her partner’s ex-husband, Luke “Lucky” Pescoli, but the guy wasn’t answering. Finally, she’d dialed Nate Santana again with no luck. Though Pescoli hadn’t confided the name of her most recent in a string of loser lovers, Alvarez was certain Santana was the man she’d been seeing. The guy was just Pescoli’s type: a good-looking drifter who’d rolled into town a few years back and had recently caught Selena’s partner’s eye.

      When it came to men, Pescoli never seemed to learn.

      Her first husband, Joe Strand, had been a cop who had taken a bullet in the line of duty, but there had been questions about his ethics. Pescoli had admitted to Alvarez that she’d married Strand, her college sweetheart, after learning she was pregnant and that there had been cracks in their marriage, affairs when they’d separated a while. Luke Pescoli, her sexy-as-hell but useless second husband, now owed her thousands in back child support.

      That was the problem with Pescoli, she picked men for their looks rather than their brains or moral character. Nate Santana was a case in point. The guy was the quiet type, with black hair, razor-sharp features, and piercing dark eyes that never reflected any of his thoughts. An athletic cowboy type with a whip-tough body and cutting sense of humor, he appeared as ready to ride a bareback bronc as he was to spend all night making love.

      Good for a fling, maybe. Definitely not suitable for a husband, which Pescoli had claimed she didn’t want anyway.

      Alvarez blew her nose and told herself not to worry. After all, Pescoli had called in. Again Alvarez replayed the message:

      “It’s me. Hey, I’ve got a personal issue to deal with. Lucky and the kids. It might take a while, so cover for me, will ya?” Pescoli’s voice had been firm. Determined. Borderline angry.

      So what else was new?

      But that call had been made yesterday.

      No word from her today.

      Something was off. Definitely wrong. Pescoli was nothing if not a dedicated cop. Surely she would have called again, especially since there had been an arrest in the Star-Crossed Killer murders. No way would Detective Regan Pescoli have missed out on the action, not after months of trying to track down the whack job.

      Sniffing, Alvarez tossed the tissue into her overflowing trash basket tucked under her desk. This cold—flu—she’d contracted was starting to really piss her off.

      She doubted that she was overreacting. Even though Pescoli had indicated whatever issue she was dealing with would take some time, this was all wrong.

      Alvarez glanced at the clock mounted high on the wall. Pescoli’s message had come in late yesterday afternoon and since that time the Spokane Police Department in Washington state thought they’d arrested the killer.

      Alvarez wasn’t so sure.

      Nothing seemed right today. But soon Sheriff Dan Grayson would be on his way to verify that the person who had been captured by the Spokane Police Department, and was now accused of being the serial killer who had terrorized this part of Montana, was their sick doer.

      But Alvarez doubted the suspect arrested would prove to be the Star-Crossed Killer. The person in custody was definitely a would-be murderer, but so far, Alvarez hadn’t been able to tie the suspect to any of the previous crimes. She glanced at the pictures of the victims lying upon her desk. Five women. Different races and ages with no connection to each other. She bit her lip and tapped her fingers as she thought about how hard Regan Pescoli had worked the case.

      She would have moved heaven and earth to be a part of the suspect’s arrest, no matter what her personal issues were. And she would have known about it. The stand-off and arrest had been splashed all over the news. Though most of the members of the press had swooped down on Spokane, a few reporters had stayed on in Grizzly Falls, still camped out in the surrounding streets, hoping for a new angle on the biggest story to hit Grizzly Falls since Ivor Hicks had claimed he’d been transported to a mothership by aliens.

      She slid a glance to the clock on the wall. Nearly five P.M…. no way would Pescoli miss this kind of action.

      Something was definitely wrong.

      Alvarez scooted her chair back and tried not to think of the warning Pescoli had received from Grace Perchant, no less. Grace was an odd sort, cursed with some sort of psychic ability, if you believed her. Alvarez didn’t. All she really knew about the odd woman was that Grace raised wolf dogs and talked to ghosts and never made much trouble. But recently, while Pescoli and Alvarez were having lunch at Wild Will’s, Grace had approached the table. Her voice had been low, her pale green eyes troubled.

      “He knows about you,” Grace had said to Pescoli, her gaze lost in a middle distance only she could see.

      “Who?” Pescoli had asked, playing along.

      “The predator.”

      Alvarez had felt it then, that dip in the temperature that accompanies fear.

      “The one you seek,” Grace had clarified. “The one who is evil. He’s relentless. A hunter.”

      Pescoli had been angry and had taken it out on the clairvoyant, but she, too, had been scared. They’d both known that Grace was talking about the maniac the media had dubbed the Star-Crossed Killer.

      He’s relentless. A hunter.

      That much was true.

      And an ace marksman.

      He, Grace had said distinctly. Not she. Not the woman demanding to talk to her attorney in Spokane, the one everyone wanted to confront about the killings.

      Sniffing some more, Alvarez leaned back in her desk chair. She wasn’t one to scare easy, but today she felt a stark fear she tried like hell to deny.

      The horror was spread around her in glossy, colored photographs of the victims. Five in all. Or, she thought as she picked up a picture of Theresa Charleton, the first victim, five that they knew of.

      There could be others.

      Innocent women naked and bound to trees in the wilderness, abandoned to die a long and painful death in the frigid temperatures of the icy landscape.

      “Sicko.” Selena’s jaw hardened as she glanced through a nearby ice-crusted window to the gloomy day beyond. Steely gray clouds huddled over the mountains, dumping snow, threatening a blizzard. Already parts of the county were experiencing downed lines and no power as the temperatures plummeted far below freezing.

      “Merry Christmas,” she told herself, as the holiday was just around the corner.

      She tossed the picture of the first victim onto her desk with the rest and gazed at the grouping. Alvarez felt as if she knew all the victims intimately:

      Theresa Charleton, married, no children, a schoolteacher from Boise, Idaho, who had been visiting her parents in Whitefish, Montana. Her nude body had been found lashed to the bole of a hemlock tree, her initials and a star cut into the bark, a note nailed above her head with the same information from the killer, the man whom they suspected shot out the tire of her green Ford, then, after the car had spun out of control and been totaled, extricated Charleton from the wreckage and took her somewhere to nurture her back to health. This before cruelly and savagely hauling her to a remote spot in the forest, tying her to a tree, and leaving her to die with her initials carved into the bark of the tree. A note had been left, her initials printed in bold block letters: T C

      Now

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