The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ he was, where they were. There were maps of the area on the walls but they didn’t mean much to her. Forestry service maps, topographical maps of a mountainous terrain.

      She hitched her way over to the gun cabinet and pulled on the handle, but he’d locked the damned thing. Out of habit? To hide something from her? “No, idiot, so you couldn’t turn a gun on him when he returned.” She thought of the eerie sensation she had that someone or something was hiding in the shadows outside and her skin crawled. She knew how to use a rifle; Grandpa Jim had made certain of that when she was still in her teens. He’d taken her out and shown her the kick of a .22, the damage it could inflict to targets, helped her learn to sight the rifle as well. She wasn’t a crack shot, but she could hold her own.

      She tried the door to the gun cabinet again.

      It didn’t budge.

      “I guess it’s back to filet knives,” she said to the dog, who actually gave his tail a couple of thumps on the floor. Which was somewhat encouraging. The beast was warming to her. She poked around in a closet, found more hunting gear, a few clothes and, on an upper shelf, under a couple of hats, a few board games that seemed to have been there since the seventies.

      If things got bad enough, she and MacGregor, if he ever returned, could play Chinese checkers.

      “Great.” She hadn’t found anything exactly illuminating, nothing that would give her any insight into the man who had rescued her. Or captured you. She pushed that stupid idea aside. He didn’t want her here; he’d made that abundantly clear.

      But he could be a liar.

      “Yeah, right, well, aren’t we all?”

      Defending him now?

      Rather than have this discussion with herself and admit she really was going crazy, she kept searching through MacGregor’s things. She glanced up to the loft. A room she couldn’t ascend to. What was up there? If she reversed as far as possible and ended up standing at the fire, her back to the grate and door leading to the room where her cot was placed, she could see the upper half of the room, but not what was in it.

      Did he use it for an attic? A storage area? A den? Guest room? What? It was in shadow and, as far as she knew, he’d never climbed the ladder. But you’re not certain, are you? You slept for days, or were nearly comatose, right? You were stuck in the smaller room, not knowing anything.

      She checked the bookcase one more time and picked up what looked like an empty vase, a rough ceramic replica of a worn cowboy boot. She looked inside. It was empty aside from two photographs. So, here were some snapshots. Good.

      “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she told herself when she felt renewed hesitation at prying into his personal possessions. Dusty and wedged tightly into the hollowed boot, the pictures had obviously been left untouched for months.

      The first was a photo of a baby swaddled in a blue blanket. A boy. His son?

      The second was of a woman in jeans, her long blond hair tied into a ponytail that had fallen over one shoulder, a toddler balanced on one outstretched hip. It was summer, leaves green, steep mountains rising in the distance behind her and the boy, a shadow cast by the photographer indicating it was late afternoon.

      Hadn’t he said he wasn’t married? That he didn’t have children? Could this be a nephew? She stared at the woman and decided this was not his sister.

      No way.

      In her heart she knew she was staring at Zane MacGregor’s son and girlfriend or wife. She bit her lip and felt betrayed.

      So he lied.

      So what?

      Did you really think he would pour his heart out to you?

      Staring at the woman in the photograph, she felt a little sizzle of jealousy stream through her. Ridiculous! But true. There was something in the woman’s confident smile, the easy way she balanced her son, the almost cocky turn of her head. As if she and the photographer had a special connection, one that set them apart from the world.

      For the love of God, Jillian, you’re making a big deal out of a couple of photographs! What do you care?

      What indeed?

      She reminded herself that she barely knew the man. So why did she feel a tiny sense of betrayal? Of disappointment? It wasn’t as if she cared a fig about MacGregor.

      Jillian glanced at the boy one last time. His coloring was like that of the woman, but there was a resemblance to the man who had pulled her from the wreckage of her car.

      Or so she thought.

      She stuffed the pictures back into their hiding place and made her way into the kitchen and bathroom, searching. But she didn’t notice anything unusual. When she faced the kitchen window to the rear of the cabin, she saw only encroaching darkness and swirling snow.

      Was there movement beneath the snow-laden bow of a pine tree near what appeared to be a woodshed? A dark figure pressed against the trunk of the tree?

      No way. Her mind was just playing games with her.

      Right?

      She swallowed hard and tried to melt into the shadows. She hadn’t carried a light with her into the kitchen and she wasn’t backlit, but she still felt as if she were being watched, as if unseen eyes were following her every move.

      You’re paranoid, her mind insisted as the wind picked up again, whistling through the rafters and howling outside. She stared through the icy glass, but the movement, if she’d seen it, was gone. Probably a tree branch shuddering in the wind. Nothing more.

      But she was left with a cold fear in the middle of her gut, and when she heard a thud at the front of the cabin and the dog let out a quick bark, she nearly screamed.

      “Jillian?” MacGregor’s voice boomed through the cabin and she didn’t know whether to feel relief or fear.

      Get a grip, she told herself. “In here.” Using the crutch, she slipped through the doorway and found him unlacing his boots. “So, how was it out there?”

      “Not good.”

      Her heart sank.

      “So your storm radar wasn’t up to snuff.”

      He snorted, stepped out of his boots and started peeling off his clothes. “I still think the storm is going to break, but there are trees down on the road, buried deep, too heavy for me to move. I’ll have to try and tear through the trunks and branches with my chain saw. But that will take a while.” He glanced over at her and appeared to note her disappointment. “I was hoping we could get out, too, but I’ll have to take the snowmobile to the places where the road is blocked. Then I can cut the trees up and remove them piece by piece.” His gaze found hers and held. “It’ll take time and good weather.”

      “So we might be up here for months?”

      “Hopefully not that long. Days, certainly. A week, well, maybe. But hopefully not any longer than that.”

      “I’ll go stir-crazy,” she said.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ