The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ mean it? What was it about him that she found so damned sexy? Hadn’t she sworn over and over again that she was going to get over him, that she wasn’t about to tumble into his trap again?

      Yeah, well, a lot of good that did.

      If only he weren’t so unabashedly good-looking.

      Oh hell. She’d known a lot of men. Many good-looking. Most with rock-hard bodies. But this one…this one was different.

      Really? Isn’t he just another bad boy in a long line starting with Chad Wheaton in the eighth grade? Face it, Regan, you have horrible taste in men and enough signed divorce decrees to prove it.

      She glanced in the mirror and cringed. Bloodshot eyes, messy hair, ruined makeup, a hickey the size of New Hampshire on her neck. What was the phrase? Rode hard and put away wet? That’s what she looked like. And she didn’t have time to go home and step into a long, hot shower.

      Deftly she cleaned herself with warm water and a cloth. Dampening her face, she scrubbed off the traces of last night’s mascara and lipstick. Then she dabbed the cloth at her armpits and between her legs.

      Within five minutes she was ready. Clothes on and somewhat unwrinkled, makeup refreshed, hair snapped back into a curly knot at the base of her skull, she stepped into the darkened bedroom and heard him snoring again.

      “Bastard,” she muttered, trying to sound angrier than she actually was.

      “I heard that.” Muffled, from within the pillow.

      “Good.” She pulled on the boots she’d kicked off at the door and snagged her jacket from the back of a chair. Then she slipped on her shoulder holster, checked the safety of her sidearm and tucked her wallet with her badge in her pocket.

      Without another word Detective Regan Pescoli pushed open the motel room door and stepped into the bitter cold of another Montana winter morning.

      What was wrong with her? she wondered as she walked to her Jeep, unlocked the rig and climbed behind the wheel. Her cell phone chimed as she backed out of the pockmarked parking space and she checked caller ID. Luckily, the caller wasn’t her ex-husband or his sickening Barbie doll of a wife calling about the kids.

      But it wasn’t good news. She recognized the cell phone number: her partner, Selena Alvarez.

      “Pescoli,” she answered, eyeing her rearview mirror, then shoving the Jeep into drive.

      “We got another one.”

      Regan’s heart nose-dived. She knew what was coming. Another dead body had turned up in the icy crags and valleys of the Bitterroot Mountains, compliments of their very own serial killer. “Shit. Where?”

      “Wildfire Canyon.” Alvarez was all business as she gave Pescoli directions to the killing ground.

      “I’ll be there in thirty,” she said and hung up. The remains of yesterday’s super-sized soda, probably frozen, sat in the cup holder between the bucket seats. She didn’t think twice, just grabbed the soggy paper cup, placed her lips around the straw and took a long swallow of the flat diet cola. As she nosed her way onto the county road, she dug in her glove box for the single pack of Marlboro Lights she kept hidden inside. She was down to one pack a week. Not bad considering her habit had once been three packs a day. But this son of a bitch who was killing women and leaving them in the freezing cold, he was playing havoc with all her good intentions.

      She planned to quit all together after the New Year, less than two months away, but between the pressures of her ex-husband, her job and this sicko numb-nuts who got off torturing his victims in the Montana cold, she feared all her good intentions and resolutions might just go by the wayside.

      She flipped on her siren and lights and trod hard on the accelerator. The man in the motel room flitted through her mind for a second, then she pushed him steadfastly to that locked corner of her brain she rarely opened, the one that reminded her she was still a sensual, sexy woman with needs.

      For the moment, and for most of her life, she was a cop.

      Bad boys be damned, she had a homicide to investigate.

      Chapter Two

      Alvarez ignored the bite of the wind as she surveyed the crime scene where a naked woman was lashed to a solitary tree. Tree branches rattled and snow blew off the heavily laden branches.

      Selena Alvarez had never felt so cold in her life.

      Dressed in county-issued coat and pants, she stared at the frozen corpse, and her own blood seemed to freeze in her veins.

      The victim was Asian from the looks of her. Straight black hair capped with snow, once-smooth flesh showing bruising and contusions, blood discoloring the snow at the base of the tree. Snow that had at one time been mashed beneath boots and bare feet, then crusted over, was now, with a fresh blanket of white, slightly uneven.

      Forensic techs were hoping to take casts of what remained of the prints or gather evidence in the form of soil, hair, fibers or any kind of debris that might have dropped from the attacker’s clothing or the soles of his boots.

      Alvarez held out little hope, as the killer, so far, had been either meticulous or just damned lucky.

      As in the other cases, a note had been left at the scene, nailed over the victim’s head, and a star hewn out of the bark a few inches above her crown. Though again, the star seemed in a slightly different position, the same being true of its placement on the single sheet of paper.

      This time, the note read:

      W T SC I N

      “What the hell does that mean?” Brewster, who had driven out with Alvarez, asked.

      “Don’t know.”

      “Is it some kind of warning, explanation?”

      Alvarez shook her head. “He’s just screwing with us. Obviously the victim’s initials are W and I, though who knows which is her first name and which is her last.”

      “You mean like Wilhelmina Ingles or Ida Wellington?”

      “Yeah,” she said sarcastically, slowly walking around the tree, though at a short distance away. “Like Wilhelmina.” Already the forensic techs and ME were examining the body, trying to establish a time of death and maybe a cause, as well as searching the area for any other pieces of evidence, anything at all.

      As for the cause of death, Alvarez was willing to bet the cause was the same as the others: exposure. Though this woman’s body had a few more bruises and cuts upon it, Alvarez thought the end result would be the same. Maybe the killer was growing more violent, getting off on torturing the women first. Or maybe this small woman fought harder than the others, or had fewer injuries from the “accident” where her vehicle had skidded off the icy road.

      “No car found,” Brewster said, as if reading her thoughts.

      “Yet.” She glanced up at him. There was no playful flirting now. “Only a matter of time.” From the corner of her eye, she saw movement coming down the trail they’d used to access this canyon, then her partner, Regan Pescoli, all five feet ten inches of her, appeared and signed СКАЧАТЬ