So he thought he'd broken the case wide open on his own. Pescoli got it. No doubt that bit of information would be leaked to the press.

"Okay, so now," he encouraged, "tell me what you learned from the brothers Grayson."

Pescoli took a back seat while Alvarez summarized their morning. "We think Troy Ryder is a party of interest in this case, as well, though we don't know how he's currently involved with Calderone or the homicides." With that as a lead-in, she launched into what they'd discovered about Ryder, the unknown person of interest in room twenty-five of the River View, and Cade Grayson's admission of actually talking to Anne-Marie Calderone, including her fear of her husband.

Blackwater listened thoughtfully.

Beneath some of his bravado, his eagerness to have things his way, Pescoli saw a glimmer of the lawman who had worked his way through the ranks, a good cop who had inherited Grayson's position through ambition and hard work.

She still didn't like him; didn't care for his style, but she grudgingly accepted that he might not be as bad as he initially seemed. He preened too much to the cameras for her taste, and she wasn't completely convinced his motives were what they should be, but maybe she could work with him.

At least for a while.

Possibly even the length of her pregnancy.

Alvarez was talking about the possibility of Bruce Calderone having landed in Grizzly Falls.

Blackwater was listening, just not convinced. He picked up a pencil from the holder on his too tidy desk. "But he's not with his wife."

"Not according to Grayson. He thinks she's running scared."

Blackwater asked the same d.a.m.n question that had been plaguing Pescoli, "So where is he?"

"Don't know. But there is a possibility that he stayed at the River View Motel, registered as Bryan Smith. He was either in touch with or observing Troy Ryder. According to the maid, he kept tabs on Ryder. We've got security tapes from the motel for all the dates that Ryder was a guest. Smith should be there too as he showed up the day after Ryder checked in and left soon after Ryder checked out. We've got his vehicle description and plates, this time from Texas. Plates and vehicle don't match. Already issued BOLOs on both Ryder's vehicle and Bryan Smith's."

"Good." Blackwater was nodding, agreeing with his own thoughts as he tapped the eraser end of the pencil on his desk. "The trouble with this is that it's getting more complicated as we get closer. Anne-Marie Calderone sighted," he thought aloud, "now, possibly both husbands." Dropping the pencil into its holder, he looked from Alvarez to Pescoli. "Looks like we're searching for three people instead of just one. Let's do it."

Ryder stared at the stump where Anne-Marie's finger had been. His stomach turned sour, bile rising up his throat as he stood in front of the dying fire. "He did that to you?" A new rage burned through him and he felt his back teeth grind together. Yes, Anne-Marie was a liar. A major liar. The best he'd ever come across and that was saying something, but for the first time, he wondered if she could possibly be telling the truth. He didn't want to believe her, didn't trust her as far as he could throw her, but who would make up such a grotesque story?

"Of course he did!" she said, her teeth drawing back in anger. "Look!" She held up her hand, fingers spread wide. "Do you want to know what he did after? Huh?" She didn't wait for an answer. "He kicked me, Ryder. Like so much trash, he kicked my naked body into the river and hoped to h.e.l.l that alligators would finish me off, eat me alive, to get rid of the evidence."

Ryder's insides curled in repulsion.

She inched her chin up defiantly. "I'd made the ultimate mistake. Of walking away from him."

As they stood inches apart, she unburdened herself, letting go of her secret. She stood toe-to-toe with him and told him about going to the townhouse to get her things, and being discovered by Calderone. How he'd drugged her and jammed her rings on her finger before taking her somewhere deep into the Louisiana swampland. How, while she was starting to rouse, he'd sliced off her finger, rings and all, with the skill of the surgeon he was. As a final act, he'd kicked her, rolling her into the murky water.

Ryder listened, but didn't say a word.

"So"-she stared up at him with her wide eyes-"just so you understand. I'll never go back." She blinked once, then whispered, "Never. I'd rather die first."

He found his voice and dug deep for his resolve. "If what you're saying is true-"

"If?" she repeated as a blast of wind slammed against the cabin, the walls shuddering. "If? Oh, my G.o.d, what do you think, Ryder, that I cut off my own d.a.m.n finger?"

"No." He knew a sane person wouldn't mutilate themselves so. And he didn't think Anne-Marie was insane, just . . . self-serving to the max.

"Then take off these frickin' cuffs!" She glared at him as the fire sizzled, dying in the grate.

He almost reached for the key. He'd told himself that no matter what, he was going to haul her back to New Orleans, that no matter what kind of lies she spun, he was going to stand strong, never believe her. Yet there he was in the dilapidated cabin, his determination crumbling. His faith in her had been destroyed long ago. Her lies; her fault. But he found it impossible to believe that she would go to such incredible, grotesque lengths.

She'd do anything to save her own skin. You know it. You lived it. The woman has no scruples. None. Zero. Zilch. Don't be tricked, Ryder. Yes, she's beautiful and seductive and even charming, but she's a twisting, diabolical snake and you know it. Once bitten, remember? Twice shy? Twice f.u.c.king shy!

Her hands bound together, she brushed her hair out of her eyes and frowned, a bit of pain registering in her green eyes. "You don't believe me."

"I don't know what to believe," he said honestly.

"I hurt you that badly?"

"You're just so into your own lies that you believe them yourself," he said. "You don't seem to know the difference between real truth and your own skewed fantasy."

Sighing, she glanced down at the floor, bit her lip, and shook her head as if finally understanding she couldn't convince him of her twisted reality. "Fine," she whispered under her breath. "As I said, I'd rather die first."

"Not gonna happen," he said as she thrust out her chin. Defiant to the end.

"Then let's go," she bit out, furious. "But give me a moment, okay? I need to use the bathroom."

He wanted to argue, didn't think it was a good idea to let her out of his sight. "Five minutes," he said, feeling like an idiot, telling himself not to give her an inch.

But where could she go? Where could she run? The storm was still raging and it was even doubtful that the two of them in his truck would be able to make it out of the mountains, let alone through Montana and south.

But he didn't chase her all the way up there to give up.

"Leave the door open," he said and turned to the fireplace where he started searching for the niche near the firebox. He'd watched her on the screen he'd set up in his hotel room stash more of her valuables there. He wanted everything with him when he returned to the Crescent City.

"You really are a son of a b.i.t.c.h," she threw at him as she walked to the bathroom and left the door cracked.

He felt a bit of satisfaction that she'd followed his order, but experienced a pang of regret and wondered how hard and callous he'd become.

Because of her, Ryder. This is all her fault. You don't trust her. Of course you don't. And the reason is directly because of her actions.

He heard water running and the shuffle of footsteps.

After tossing the tiny leather pouch of papers he'd found in her hiding spot, he grabbed his cell phone and flipped open the blinds to survey the weather. "Anne-Marie?" he called.

"You said five minutes! It hasn't been two."

So she was inside. Good. He stepped onto the tiny porch, then closed the door and looked back through the window to make certain she didn't try to escape, walk out of the bathroom and take a hard right for the back door.

Everything inside the darkened interior remained the same, the fire offering up enough light that he could make out the door to the bathroom.

Quickly, he dialed the phone and turned up the collar of his jacket as it rang. Once. Twice. The wind rushed across the porch, scattering the few dry leaves that weren't already covered in snow.

"h.e.l.lo?" A man's voice. Rough. Irritated.

"Yeah, it's me. Ryder."

"I see that. Modern technology, you know. Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Still in Montana."

"What? I thought you'd be on your way by now! What the h.e.l.l's taking so long?"

"I've got her."

"Then why the f.u.c.k are you still in Montana?"

"Big storm," Ryder explained.

"Big storm? Big deal. You should have prepared for bad weather. Christ, you knew where you were going, what you were doing."

"I know. I did."

"Then, what's the problem?"

What was the problem? Ryder stared through the window into the darkened interior. He felt the wind battering the tiny, falling-down cabin in the middle of the Bitterroot Mountains, a ramshackle abode no rational person would try to make their home. Unless she was desperate. Unless she didn't want to be found.

He thought about the pa.s.sports he'd riffled through, remembering the different photographs, the changed names, the altered looks. He considered Anne-Marie Favier Calderone. She was a gorgeous girl who'd grown up in wealth and seemingly a princess-like existence who was frantic enough to change her good looks and adopt different personas to hide herself, a woman on the run who had eventually wound up in the middle of the mountains, isolated and alone, in a d.a.m.n cabin with thin walls, no heat, and barely running water.

Why? he wondered again.

Why would she go to all the trouble? Why would she willingly propel herself into all this hardship? How desperate was she to try and disappear off the face of the earth? What had been the reason that she would tumble to such depths as to steal from her grandmother, the one woman she'd sworn she adored?

It didn't make sense.

Unless she was scared out of her mind.

Unless her bravado was a mask.

Unless her d.a.m.nably stubborn att.i.tude was propelled by sheer terror.

"h.e.l.lo?" called the voice on the phone, but he ignored it.

With snow falling all around him, Ryder remembered her vanity. How she'd known how beautiful she was, how s.e.xy and alluring she could be, and she'd reveled in her good looks and charm, in her sensuality. She would never have sliced off her own finger and no accident would have been so clean. As if it had been cleaved by a butcher. Or a surgeon. Or one man who had been both-the monster that she'd married.

"s.h.i.t," he whispered, realizing he was making a huge, irreversible mistake-one it might already be too late to rectify.

"h.e.l.lo? For Christ's sake, Ryder? Are you there? f.u.c.k!"

His boots ringing, Ryder stepped to the far end of the porch and took a quick look down the side of the cabin to the bathroom window, just to make certain she hadn't done anything foolish like squeezing herself through the tiny window and dropping to the ground to escape. As far as he could see, the window wasn't open and the snow below it was undisturbed.

Still, he was uneasy.

And then he saw a shadow. Just a faint image of something beyond the veil of snow. His gut clenched and he reached into his pocket, his fingers curling over the b.u.t.t of his gun, but the image vanished as quickly as it had appeared and he told himself it was nothing.

Right?

Squinting, he decided it was a trick of light.

"h.e.l.lo? Are you there?" demanded the voice on the other end of the line. "I asked you when you will get back here?"

"Never," Ryder replied, finally responding.

"What? I can't hear you. Are you outside? I asked when you were coming back!"

The wind screamed as it raced around the corner of the house and the icy, snow-laden branches of the trees danced, shedding pieces of their white mantles.

"And I said 'never!' " he repeated, a little more loudly. Then added, "Oh, and by the way?"

"Yeah?"

"Go f.u.c.k yourself."

Chapter 28.

"The cell phone company should get back to us soon," Alvarez said as she stood. She and Pescoli were still in Blackwater's office, getting ready to hit the road again. "Hopefully they'll have information on Ryder's position."

"If his phone isn't turned off," Pescoli reminded her.

"My guess is, he's made some calls, and if he has, we'll have a place to start," Alvarez said. "We'll take the position of the last ping, wherever it comes from, and work from there. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"Maybe," Pescoli said, not willing to bet on it as she recognized the quick staccato tap of Joelle's high heels in the hallway. From the sound of it, the receptionist was nearly sprinting and stopped abruptly at Blackwater's office.

"Sorry," she said, sticking her head inside, her heart-shaped earrings still swinging in her earlobes. "But I've got a news crew here from KMJC. And Nia Del Ray, the reporter, is being very insistent that someone make a statement. To her." Clutching the doorframe in one hand, Joelle let her gaze skate over the detectives to land on Blackwater. "Apparently someone over at the station heard that you already talked to the Mountain Reporter, and now she wants equal time. At least, I think that's how she put it. Any way around it, she's in the reception area and not budging."

"You talked to Manny Douglas?" Pescoli asked her boss. She had no use for the wormy little reporter for the local newspaper. The guy was always crawling around, poking his pointy nose in where it didn't belong, getting himself and the department into trouble.

"I did. It was a good move." Blackwater was making no apologies. "The public might be able to help us locate Anne-Marie Calderone, and now, the others involved in the case. We can use the press to our advantage."

"Or your advantage," Pescoli said, and caught a warning glare from Alvarez.

Blackwater said softly, "My decision." He looked to Joelle, still waiting in the doorway. "Tell her to hold tight. I'll talk to the public information officer, and we'll organize a press conference later today."

"Today?" Pescoli repeated. "You're not going out with what we've got, are you?" She was horrified. "We have to hold all this close, or we could spook Calderone and Ryder, maybe compromise the case."

"I said, 'later.' " He was firm.

Pescoli said, "This is a bad idea."

"Maybe, but mine." Even seated at his desk while she was standing, Blackwater still held the upper hand, was still in command. "Just wrap it up, Detective."