LITMIR.BIZ

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at the crime scene far from where her car had been located. The other victims had each suffered a similar fate: Nina Salvadore, a single mother from Redding, California, whose crushed red Focus had been discovered miles from her body. The note left at that scene had read:

      TSC N

      No one, not even cryptologists nor agents with the FBI with cryptogram-busting computer programs, had understood the meaning of the notes. Afterward, in rapid succession, the bodies of Wendy Ito and Rona Anders had been located. Then Hannah Estes had been found alive near an abandoned hunting lodge by a news crew and taken to a hospital, only to die later as the disguised killer had boldly entered the hospital, yanking her life support and making certain she expired. Hannah hadn’t been able to tell what she knew, or identify her killer, nor had any of the hospital cameras taken a decent photo of his image.

      Bad damned luck.

      All of the women had been driving alone through this area of the Bitterroot Mountains when their cars had been assaulted and they’d been taken from the original crime scene to be nurtured, then, like Charleton and Salvadore before them, had been strapped to a tree in a remote location and left to die an icy, brutal death. The notes and carvings at the scenes had only been different because of the positions of the stars and initials, but the result had been the same: Five women dead, the final note now reading:

      WAR THE SC I N

      With each victim’s initials added into the text, the sheriff’s department and FBI had come up with different ideas for the meaning of the letters, thinking perhaps that they could be jumbled, or that the killer was just screwing with them, that there was no meaning at all.

      But deep down, they all knew that the killer, a very organized and clever person, was not only trying to tell them something, he was lording it over them that he was smarter than they. If his note was to make any sense, then he’d obviously picked out his victims before they’d been put through his personal emotional gauntlet of wrecking their vehicles, “saving” them, nursing them back to health somewhere, and then ruthlessly and cruelly leaving them to die in the wilderness.

      He hadn’t sexually molested any of them.

      That seemed out of place.

      His dominance wasn’t physical, so much as emotional.

      As far as they could tell, he set the women up, could just as easily have killed them, shot them in the head, or left them to die in their vehicles, but he rescued them, then abandoned them, assured they would die.

      So far, he’d been right.

      Except that now, if the Spokane Police and press were to be believed, the killer had supposedly been unmasked and captured…and he had turned out to be a she.

      No way.

      Alvarez took a sip of her cooling tea, then found a cough drop and sucked on it as she read over her notes for the dozenth time. As she did she was more certain than ever that Regan Pescoli was in trouble.

      She tried Lucky Pescoli’s house phone one more time and heard a cheery little voice, that of his wife Michelle, nearly giggling as she said, “You’ve reached Lucky and Michelle. We’re out right now, but leave a message and maybe…you’ll get Lucky!”

      Puke. Alvarez hated those pathetically cutesy voicemail greetings. She didn’t bother leaving a message. Just sucked on her menthol drop and flipped through copies of the notes the killer had left.

      Craig Halden, one of the FBI field agents working the case, had carefully mapped out the stars left on the notes and chiseled into the bark of the trees where the women had been found. Using tracing paper he had overlapped the notes to show the position of the stars and in so doing decided the killer had chosen the constellation of Orion focusing on Orion’s belt. Alvarez had done her own research on the subject and found that in mythology Orion was stung by a scorpion, then flung high into the sky.

      If her theory was right and the last word of the note was scorpion as in WAR OF THE SCORPION, or, the phrase she was partial to, due to the spacing of the letters: BEWARE THE SCORPION, then theoretically, Regan Pescoli, with her initials of R and P, could be in real trouble.

      As Grace Perchant had predicted.

      “Damn.” Selena’s heart contracted as she took one last glance at the photographs of the Star-Crossed Killer’s victims and plucked another tissue from her rapidly dwindling box.

      Was Pescoli to be the next victim?

      Alvarez’s eyes narrowed. If so, then her car would be disabled somewhere, a shot through a front tire, a perfect shot from an expert sniper.

      And if that were the case, sooner or later, Pescoli’s Jeep would be found.

      Or could she have had it out with her ex? A confrontation that had turned violent?

      Either way it was bad.

      She sniffed a third time and popped a couple of DayQuil tablets, hoping to hell she was wrong.

      Chapter Three

      Pescoli felt as if she’d been hit over and over again with a sledgehammer. Every muscle in her body ached, and just to move caused pain to sizzle up her spine and pound in a mother of a headache.

      She let out a low moan as she tried to look around.

      Lying on her back, feeling cold seep into her body, she opened an eye and tried to see in the darkness. Where was she? Though it was too dark to see clearly, the only light filtering through an ice-glazed window, she recognized nothing.

      Groaning, she attempted to roll over. Her head thundered in pain, her ribs ached, and her muscles were stiff and cold, so damned cold she could barely think. And her shoulder…Dear Jesus, had someone tried to rip it from its socket?

      She blinked, her eyes focusing, and she saw that she was in a tiny room with an unlit wood stove in one corner. Above her was a single, high window, and the only piece of furniture was this cot with its thin sleeping bag.

      What the hell?

      There was a door, probably less than ten feet away, but in her current condition, it might as well have been a thousand. She must’ve cracked her ribs somehow…been injured…hurt her shoulder.

      Her mind was foggy, memories shuttered behind a wall of pain. Her left arm throbbed from shoulder to wrist and she hoped to hell she’d only bruised a muscle, that nothing was broken.

      Instinctively she reached for her service weapon, but of course, it wasn’t in her shoulder holster; in fact, she was naked, not a stitch of clothes on.

      And her right wrist was handcuffed to the cot on which she lay.

      Hell.

      She was probably trapped by her own damned cuffs. Feeling even more the part of the moron, she tried to move her hand, to slip the cuff over her palm, but she knew better and, of course, she couldn’t extract herself.

      “Damn it,” she whispered, trying to collect her wits.

      Study your surroundings. Try to see where you are, what’s in the room, if there is anything that will help free you. The son of a bitch could have been cocky enough to leave the key to the handcuffs or your phone or even your pistol nearby.

      Squinting in the darkness, Pescoli found nothing that might help her.

      There was a cover of sorts, like an army blanket that had worked its way down her body. With an effort, she reached down and tugged, pulling the itchy wool to her chin and noticing for the first time that her teeth were chattering. But nothing else. Not even a glass of water. Just the cot. As far as she could discern.

      Someone had brought her here.

      Someone could be behind the door.

      She started to cry out, but thought better of it.

      Think, Regan, think.

      She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated, past the pain, to the memories that lurked

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