The Alvarez & Pescoli Series. Lisa Jackson

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СКАЧАТЬ offered the kind of aw-shucks grin meant to put her at ease. The country-boy smile had only had the opposite effect and ratcheted up her anxiety level. “Yeah,” he said. “We know. This is just routine.”

      “I wouldn’t think there is anything routine about a serial-killer investigation,” Jillian countered, and for the first time saw a twitch in his partner’s arched eyebrows. Despite her cool façade, Stephanie Chandler was an intelligent woman who didn’t miss a trick.

      Which wasn’t surprising. The woman was an FBI agent, after all.

      So Jillian had felt a little outgunned and unnerved. In the span of her lifetime, Jillian had never considered the police the enemy. Sure, she worried about speeding tickets whenever she was being followed by a police cruiser, but her uncle had been an Oregon State police officer and one of her cousins was with the Reno, Nevada, police department. Aside from a few drinks before she was twenty-one, experimenting with pot a total of twice and inadvertently running a red light or pushing the pedal to the metal on the freeway, Jillian had never broken the law.

      The only time she’d had the slightest inclination to think the authorities might not be looking out for her best interests had been in Suriname when Aaron had gone missing. Maybe it had been the language barrier, or a natural distrust of foreign police fostered by the news and movies or her own prejudices. Whatever the reason, Jillian had doubted that the men in power in that remote area of the jungle were on the up-and-up.

      “The thing is,” Jillian told the federal agents, “the only reason I was in Montana in the first place was because of the pictures I was sent, the phone calls I received, all indicating that my first husband, Aaron Caruso, was alive.”

      “Caruso as in Robinson Crusoe?”

      “Spelled differently,” Chandler said.

      So they had already checked. “You’ve looked into it,” Jillian said.

      Chandler nodded. “When your car was located, we started searching for you.”

      “And digging into my personal life.”

      Chandler didn’t crack a smile. “We wanted to find you.”

      Halden said, “But we just found the photographs at the cabin today. We’ll analyze them.”

      “I’ll get them back?”

      “Eventually.”

      “I need them.”

      Chandler nodded again. “So do we. Now, tell us. Who do you think called you?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “You didn’t recognize the voice?”

      “No, it was a whisper and caller ID didn’t come up with a name or number.” She looked from one agent to the other. “And I don’t know who sent me the pictures. The postmark on the envelope was Missoula, so I was going to confront my ex-husband, as he lives there.”

      “Mason Rivers?”

      “Yes, he’s an attorney, excuse me, a partner in the law firm of Olsen, Nye and Rivers,” she’d said, but had the feeling they already knew this information as well. “We were divorced two years ago.”

      “When was the last time you saw him?” Halden asked.

      “Just a few days after the divorce was final. We exchanged the final things we had of each other’s. It was all very…civil.”

      “And since then?”

      “Nothing. I wasn’t invited to the wedding.” Jillian felt a twisted smile curve her lips. “Sherice, that’s Mason’s new wife, she’s not a big fan.”

      “Of yours?”

      “Of any woman Mason remotely showed an interest in. That goes double for ex-wives.”

      Halden chuckled, but Chandler didn’t react.

      They asked a few more questions, then, satisfied for the moment, concluded the interview and took their leave.

      Jillian had been left alone, hooked up to an IV she didn’t think she needed, her vital signs monitored by one nurse after another.

      The feeling that lingered after the FBI agents left made her uncomfortable. She sensed the detectives and agents were trying to trip her up so she would incriminate MacGregor. And that just wasn’t right.

      And then her mind circled to her own circumstances. Why had someone lured her to Montana in an effort to kill her? After the second attempt on her life, she was damned certain, as the police were, that she had become the target of a serial killer.

      How did that fit?

      Who hated her so much?

      Who hated the other women?

      She glanced up at the muted television, noticing that the local news was on the air. There, on the screen, was her own face, the photo from her driver’s license.

      “Oh God,” she whispered as she turned the sound on. A reporter dressed in a blue parka, snow falling around her, currently stood in front of the emergency room doors of this very hospital. Brunette and serious, a gust of wind ruffling her hood, she explained about Jillian’s abduction.

      The image on the screen changed quickly to an aerial shot of a snow-covered clearing surrounded by forested hills. Near the edge of the snowy glen was a lone cedar tree.

      Jillian started shivering when she recognized the area. The snow around the tree was trodden and mashed, and ropes lay like dark snakes on the white ground.

      Her stomach roiled as she stared at the lengths of nylon that had cut into her skin.

      Deputies from the sheriff’s department were examining the roped-off scene as a camera from a helicopter recorded the whole tableau.

      Jillian told herself to turn the damned television off, to stop looking at the place where she’d nearly died, but the images held a macabre fascination for her.

      Even tucked in the warmth of the hospital bedding, she quivered. Her memories were vivid. Visceral. She remembered waking up tied to the rough bark, her flesh so cold it stung, the nylon rope digging into her skin like teeth.

      She remembered the dark, gloved hands mashing that chemical-soaked rag into her face. And the glimmer of a scar on the wrist. Or was that her own wrist? She checked her arms, looking for a crescent-shaped scar. Nothing. Was it a memory? Or part of a nightmare?

      Think, Jillian, think, she told herself as the screen switched again to the anchor desk, and then, to her horror, they listed the names and photographs of the women who hadn’t survived the maniac’s attack—pictures of vital, smiling women. Jillian thought she might be sick as the voiceover continued and yet another victim’s smiling face filled the screen.

      “…and as an update, the other victim who survived the killer’s attack, still unidentified, is listed in critical condition at a hospital in Missoula. The victim, we’ve learned, has not regained consciousness at the time of this report….”

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