The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ Me, personally?”

      “I don’t know.” He threw his jacket over the back of the couch and bent down to unlace his boots. “Do you?”

      “I pissed off some people in my life, like I said. My sister, for sure. But not enough for anyone to want to kill me.” She watched as he kicked off a boot, nudging the heel of one with the toe of the other, then unzipped his ski pants, beneath which he was wearing jeans. The Goretex-looking outer layer of pants wound up beside the jacket. Now, at least, he looked thirty pounds lighter, but still big and strong enough to be intimidating.

      “You should lie down,” MacGregor said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Elevate the ankle.”

      It was true enough; her whole leg was aching now and she was tired from balancing herself against the table with her crutch. But the thought of going back into the bedroom, lying on the cot alone while listening to the wind howl, her mind spinning with questions, her imagination running wild with what he was doing, didn’t cut it.

      “I think I’ll just sit here.” She pointed to the ancient chair and ottoman. Without waiting for him to answer, she hitched her way to the chair and sank down.

      “How about I get us each something to drink?”

      “Like what?” She settled into the chair and kept her knife in her sleeve. She wasn’t about to relax. Not yet.

      Harley climbed to his feet and trotted, toenails clicking, into the kitchen after MacGregor. Through the archway, he said, “I’ve got coffee…and…” She heard him rooting around in the cupboards, doors opening and closing with soft thuds. “Well…no tea…but I do have some packets of instant soup. Or whiskey. That’s about what we’re down to. Whiskey over snow. We’ve got lots of that. Kind of an alcoholic snow cone.”

      Was he kidding? “I think I’ll pass on the frozen drink,” she called toward the open doorway, but her stomach rumbled at the mere mention of food. How long had she gone without eating? Hell, she couldn’t remember her last meal.

      He returned with a coffeepot that he set in the glowing coals of the fire. “This’ll take a while to heat,” he explained as his dog, with a hard last glare and snarl at Jillian, turned several circles before lying down on his rug again. His black-and-white head rested on his white paws as he stared at her.

      “You never answered my question,” he reminded her. “What the hell were you doing driving in the blizzard?”

      He hung his ski wear on pegs near the fireplace, then turned to her. “In the middle of the worst storm to hit this part of the state in a decade?”

      “I was headed to Missoula,” she admitted after a moment.

      “What’s there?”

      “Not what. Who. And the answer is, my ex-husband.”

      MacGregor considered it. “Maybe there’s someone who might want to kill you.”

      “The divorce was amicable.”

      He skewered her with a disbelieving look. “Yeah, right. And so why were you risking life and limb, driving through the Bitterroots in a snowstorm, to visit your ex?”

      “I…I needed to talk to him.”

      A dark eyebrow raised.

      “A phone call wouldn’t have worked. I needed to see his reaction.”

      “When you told him what?”

      “When I asked him if he sent me pictures that are supposedly of my first husband. My dead first husband.”

      He sat back on his heels. “Your ex–second husband sent you pictures of your dead first husband?”

      “Yes, well, I think so. It could be a wild goose chase. I thought he died on a hiking trip in South America.”

      “Your first husband…who’s dead. You think. But you’ve seen pictures of him, from your second husband.”

      “Or someone who could be Aaron’s twin.”

      “There a third husband in there?”

      “No,” she answered dryly. “Just the two.”

      “But now you think husband one might still be alive.”

      “I don’t know. I had the pictures with me. They were in my notebook case.”

      He walked to a built-in cupboard and withdrew her purse and laptop carrying case, both of which he brought to her chair and set next to the ottoman. Something about seeing her things again nearly brought tears to her eyes. It was as if she suddenly realized the desperation of her situation, how far removed she was from her life. Clearing her throat, she refused to break down, but she had to blink rapidly.

      MacGregor asked, “Want me to get the photos out?”

      “I assume you’ve already seen them.”

      He nodded, not denying a word of it, as he took another trip to the cupboard and returned with her suitcase and the tattered remains of her grandmother’s quilt.

      Again her heart squeezed and she wondered if she’d ever get home again.

      “I did look through all your things. I was trying to figure out who you were and who I should call.”

      “You have a phone?”

      “A cell. But it’s not working. Neither is yours.”

      She didn’t doubt him, but opened her purse with one hand and scrounged for her phone, searching past the lipstick tubes, pens, wallet, checkbook and—

      “It would be easier if you dropped the knife.”

      Her head snapped up to find him staring at her. For a split second she was certain he could see to the bottom of her soul. The filet knife felt suddenly heavy and bulky. She swallowed hard. Noticed that the dog had closed his eyes and fallen asleep. “I—uh…”

      “Just drop it from your sleeve. Or do you want me to take it from you?”

      “No…uh…” Deliberately, she set the knife on a small scarred table that held a single kerosene lamp, a fishing magazine and two books on astronomy.

      “So now why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.

      How foolish she’d been to think she could trust him. And how ultimately dependent she was on him. She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on, hoping beyond hope that she would have service. Of course, she didn’t. No connecting bars registered and the battery was nearly dead.

      Just as he’d said. She felt more vulnerable than ever.

      “I have tried to call out,” he said. “Every damned day. That’s why I leave sometimes. To try and find a signal.”

      She wondered about that. The times she’d thought she was alone, the hours when he’d been out of the cabin in the middle of a blizzard. It just hadn’t made much sense.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ