The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ sightless eyes.

      Shivering, she pulled at a blanket she always kept in the car and yanked hard, as it was caught in the folds of wrenched metal and plastic. The pain in her rib cage was excruciating but she didn’t give up. “Come on, come on,” she muttered, yanking hard on the damned piece of quilt her grandmother had made fifty years earlier. She heard it rend, old stitches giving way, but she managed to tear off most of it and wrap it around her as her damned ankle continued to pound and her head ached, the cuts on her face burning.

      She yelled again and pounded on the horn. It gave out a sharp blast. Again she hit the damned thing, yelling, hoping beyond hope that someone would hear her.

      What had she been doing driving in what appeared to be steep mountains with sharp ridges and sheer canyons? And where the hell were these damned mountains located? The Cascade Range in Western Washington? The Canadian Rockies? The Tetons? Or some other craggy range?

      Montana, she thought dimly. You were driving to Montana.

      Surely someone would be missing her soon when she didn’t arrive at her destination, wherever in Montana that was. And then, of course, a search party would be sent.

      Unless this trip of yours was secret. Clandestine.

      She had the uneasy feeling that no one knew where she was, though she wasn’t clear about where she was going. It had something to do with Montana and her ex-husband, something secret…what was it? If she could only recall.

      “For the love of God,” she muttered and shook her head, only to wince at the pain. She didn’t remember everything about herself, but she knew she wasn’t some sort of spy and she wasn’t one to keep secrets and she never really cared to keep anything on the “down low.”

      And yet…

      A dark fear that she was completely alone snaked around her heart.

      “Don’t even think it,” she told herself. Someone somewhere was missing her, looking for her. It was only a matter of time before she’d be found. She just had to stay alive long enough for the rescue.

      Head throbbing, she glanced up again, searching for the road that had to be high overhead. All she saw was a sheer wall of snow and ice. There were trees in this grim crevice, a few foreboding sentinels covered in snow, but not much else. Obviously her car had slid down the steep embankment and landed in what appeared to be a frozen creek bed. Had she swerved to avoid hitting another vehicle? A deer? Someone on foot? Or had she just taken a corner too fast and hit ice, only to go careening over the ledge?

      Try as she might, she couldn’t remember. Yes, there were fleeting thoughts of packing the car, of planning a quick trip…a long trip, from Seattle, where she lived. She had a quick memory of checking a road map and heading east, out of the snarl of traffic of the U District and her row house near the campus of the University of Washington. She’d nosed her Outback across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, which straddled a narrow point in Lake Washington, and then drove on the freeway past Bellevue and further east…and then…nothing. She had an inkling that she’d been determined. Maybe even angry. Which wasn’t a surprise if it had anything to do with her ex.

      “Terrific,” she muttered under her breath, unable to call up any memory more tangible. Not that it really mattered. Why she was on her hastily planned trip and even where she was going weren’t of vital consequence. Getting out of the canyon and to safety was.

      “Damn it all,” she whispered, frustrated and shivering, her breath fogging in the freezing air.

      Still staring upward, she swallowed back a new surge of despair.

      The sheer face of the cliff was daunting. If the road was up there, high over this frozen creek bed, how would she ever be able to climb up the steep, frigid wall of rock and ice? Even if she weren’t injured, if she were healthy, dressed for the arctic, with rock-climbing gear, she doubted she could scale the mountain.

      Think, Jillian. Think! There must be another way out of here!

      Holding the blanket tight, she slowly surveyed the creek bed. Was there a path or road, some other means, away from this ravine, toward civilization? Maybe she could follow the stream downhill.

      Oh yeah right, Einstein. With an ankle that might be broken? A leg that moved so much as an inch causes you to howl in agony? Face it, you can’t get out of here without help.

      “Hell.” She banged on the horn again. Urgently. Frantically. Desperately. Sending the sharp blasts ricocheting through the snowy gorge.

      But it was useless; she knew it. To her own ears the wild honking sounded like the forlorn bleating of a frightened sheep.

      Pathetic.

      But it was all she could do.

      Still pounding on the horn, she yelled again until her throat was raw, hoping her pathetic din and the fading headlights would draw some attention. But no sound of a car’s engine answered, no jumbled shouts of rescuers could be heard, no whop, whop, whop of a helicopter’s rotors sounded over the sigh of the wind.

      No…she was alone.

      In this godforsaken wilderness, with the freezing night slipping ever closer, she was totally and frighteningly alone.

      Chapter Five

      “You suck!” Bianca grumbled under her breath as Jeremy lay on the couch watching MTV.

      “You suck!” he threw back and tossed another handful of some trail mix into his mouth.

      “Right now, I think you both suck,” Regan broke in from the kitchen. “And for the record, I hate that word. Can’t you come up with some other insult? Something a little more clever.”

      “Oh, Mom, don’t be such a nerd.” Bianca flopped into a side chair, red-blonde curls flouncing around her small face. A few freckles she tried desperately to hide with makeup bridged her nose and her big hazel eyes were rimmed with thick, dark lashes. Just like her damned father.

      Cisco hopped into Bianca’s lap. She usually adored and indulged the dog, but she was in one of her foul moods right now and, frowning, pushed Cisco onto the floor. He sat on the worn carpet and cocked his head from one side to the other, as if trying to understand the girl who had, before falling in love, lavished all her attention upon him.

      “Can’t help it, Bianca, I’m a nerd by nature. It’s genetic, and as such, you, too, have the nerd gene.” Regan plucked off a prematurely dying bloom from the Christmas cactus in the garden window.

      Bianca rolled her eyes as if her mother were the most stupid woman on the planet. “I just want to go over to Chris’s for a while. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal.”

      “It’s a blizzard outside, if you haven’t noticed. The only reason I’m going out is because I have to.” Regan was bundling up in enough outer gear to battle the elements. She grabbed her stocking cap and gloves off the table, where the mail had been stacked and unattended for days. “I don’t want either of you driving.”

      Again, Bianca rolled those huge Pescoli eyes.

      Which ticked Regan off.

      “And not only are you to have your homework done by the time СКАЧАТЬ