As far as they could tell, he set the women up, could just as easily have killed them, shot them in the head, or left them to die in their vehicles, but he rescued them, then abandoned them, a.s.sured they would die.

So far, he'd been right.

Except that now, if the Spokane Police and press were to be believed, the killer had supposedly been unmasked and captured...and he had turned out to be a she.

No way.

Alvarez took a sip of her cooling tea, then found a cough drop and sucked on it as she read over her notes for the dozenth time. As she did she was more certain than ever that Regan Pescoli was in trouble.

She tried Lucky Pescoli's house phone one more time and heard a cheery little voice, that of his wife Mich.e.l.le, nearly giggling as she said, "You've reached Lucky and Mich.e.l.le. We're out right now, but leave a message and maybe...you'll get Lucky!"

Puke. Alvarez hated those pathetically cutesy voicemail greetings. She didn't bother leaving a message. Just sucked on her menthol drop and flipped through copies of the notes the killer had left.

Craig Halden, one of the FBI field agents working the case, had carefully mapped out the stars left on the notes and chiseled into the bark of the trees where the women had been found. Using tracing paper he had overlapped the notes to show the position of the stars and in so doing decided the killer had chosen the constellation of Orion focusing on Orion's belt. Alvarez had done her own research on the subject and found that in mythology Orion was stung by a scorpion, then flung high into the sky.

If her theory was right and the last word of the note was scorpion as in WAR OF THE SCORPION, or, the phrase she was partial to, due to the s.p.a.cing of the letters: BEWARE THE SCORPION, then theoretically, Regan Pescoli, with her initials of R and P, could be in real trouble.

As Grace Perchant had predicted.

"d.a.m.n." Selena's heart contracted as she took one last glance at the photographs of the Star-Crossed Killer's victims and plucked another tissue from her rapidly dwindling box.

Was Pescoli to be the next victim?

Alvarez's eyes narrowed. If so, then her car would be disabled somewhere, a shot through a front tire, a perfect shot from an expert sniper.

And if that were the case, sooner or later, Pescoli's Jeep would be found.

Or could she have had it out with her ex? A confrontation that had turned violent?

Either way it was bad.

She sniffed a third time and popped a couple of DayQuil tablets, hoping to h.e.l.l she was wrong.

Chapter Three.

Pescoli felt as if she'd been hit over and over again with a sledgehammer. Every muscle in her body ached, and just to move caused pain to sizzle up her spine and pound in a mother of a headache.

She let out a low moan as she tried to look around.

Lying on her back, feeling cold seep into her body, she opened an eye and tried to see in the darkness. Where was she? Though it was too dark to see clearly, the only light filtering through an ice-glazed window, she recognized nothing.

Groaning, she attempted to roll over. Her head thundered in pain, her ribs ached, and her muscles were stiff and cold, so d.a.m.ned cold she could barely think. And her shoulder...Dear Jesus, had someone tried to rip it from its socket?

She blinked, her eyes focusing, and she saw that she was in a tiny room with an unlit wood stove in one corner. Above her was a single, high window, and the only piece of furniture was this cot with its thin sleeping bag.

What the h.e.l.l?

There was a door, probably less than ten feet away, but in her current condition, it might as well have been a thousand. She must've cracked her ribs somehow...been injured...hurt her shoulder.

Her mind was foggy, memories shuttered behind a wall of pain. Her left arm throbbed from shoulder to wrist and she hoped to h.e.l.l she'd only bruised a muscle, that nothing was broken.

Instinctively she reached for her service weapon, but of course, it wasn't in her shoulder holster; in fact, she was naked, not a st.i.tch of clothes on.

And her right wrist was handcuffed to the cot on which she lay.

h.e.l.l.

She was probably trapped by her own d.a.m.ned cuffs. Feeling even more the part of the moron, she tried to move her hand, to slip the cuff over her palm, but she knew better and, of course, she couldn't extract herself.

"d.a.m.n it," she whispered, trying to collect her wits.

Study your surroundings. Try to see where you are, what's in the room, if there is anything that will help free you. The son of a b.i.t.c.h could have been c.o.c.ky enough to leave the key to the handcuffs or your phone or even your pistol nearby.

Squinting in the darkness, Pescoli found nothing that might help her.

There was a cover of sorts, like an army blanket that had worked its way down her body. With an effort, she reached down and tugged, pulling the itchy wool to her chin and noticing for the first time that her teeth were chattering. But nothing else. Not even a gla.s.s of water. Just the cot. As far as she could discern.

Someone had brought her here.

Someone could be behind the door.

She started to cry out, but thought better of it.

Think, Regan, think.

She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated, past the pain, to the memories that lurked in the dark corners of her mind. She'd been driving...Yes. h.e.l.l-bent to get to her loser of an ex-husband's place. He had the kids and Cisco, her dog...right? It was just before Christmas and she'd been in a white-hot fury...driving to her stupid ex-husband's house. And then?

She couldn't remember.

Closing her eyes, she tried to recall something, anything...Was there the crack of a rifle? Loud. Echoing. Reverberating through the icy canyons?

Oh, G.o.d...Her car...spinning out of control, metal groaning, the windshield shattering...She relived those terrifying moments when her Jeep had plunged over the steep side of a ravine, turning crazily as it propelled its way into the dark canyon.

Shivering, she refused to call out. She concentrated on the memory. The twisted metal, the flying gla.s.s, the air bag, the snow falling, and blood...Her hands had been b.l.o.o.d.y, her face cut, her weapon drawn as she'd waited, crushed within the confines of the Jeep's mangled interior.

And then...and then...and then what?

She squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to recall how she'd ended up here lying naked and broken on a cot in a shadowy room. The memory teased at her mind and then she heard it, a sound from the other side of the door.

Her heart jolted and she swallowed back a cry as she recognized the noise: a chair sc.r.a.ping back. Wood against stone. Then she heard the pad of heavy footsteps, like bare skin against rock.

She could barely breathe.

Someone was coming for her.

She felt a moment's relief and then a darker emotion filled her soul. Dread oozed through her blood. A gut instinct told her that whoever was beyond the thick oak planks of the door wasn't her savior.

Though she didn't know why, couldn't remember the reason for her distrust, she sensed instinctively that the person who had brought her here wasn't someone upon whom she could rely.

He's not your savior, but your jailor.

She swallowed back her fear and tried to think. She believed that the person who had brought her here was consumed with a horrifying and malicious intent.

She braced herself.

Waited.

But the footsteps pa.s.sed by her door.

For the moment, she'd gotten a reprieve.

But she knew deep in her gut, it wouldn't last long.

Then in a blinding second of realization, she remembered.

Everything.

Her heart froze and she stared at the door as if her gaze could burn through the thick oak panels of an ancient, scarred door to the room beyond where the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Star-Crossed Killer waited.

"You get hold of her?" the sheriff asked as he pa.s.sed by Alvarez's cubicle. Dressed in a sheepskin jacket, boots, and gloves, Grayson was headed outside, his black Lab Sturgis in tow, the brim of his battered Stetson in the fingers of one hand. He paused at Alvarez's desk.

"Not yet."

"Aw...s.h.i.t." His jaw slid to the side and his eyes sparked in frustration. She supposed that once he would have been described as tall, dark, and handsome. And probably not that long ago. But these days, with winter raging and disabling the county and a serial killer hunting on his watch, Grayson was borderline gaunt, his face craggy, his hair shot with silver, his expression hard-set and grim.

And still, she thought, the most interesting man she'd met in a long, long while.

Grayson, like Alvarez, wasn't satisfied that the woman being held in the Spokane jail really was the serial killer who had been terrorizing Grizzly Falls. Only when he and the rest of the officers of the sheriff's department were convinced that the murderer was no longer on the loose, raining terror on the community in the middle of the worst d.a.m.ned blizzard Pinewood County had seen in half a century, would any of them rest easy. Especially with one of the lead detectives on the case gone missing. "This isn't good," he said in his low drawl. "Try again."

"I will, but trust me, Pescoli's not picking up. I told you the last call I got from her she asked me to cover for her, that she had a personal issue."

"Family problems, you said."

"With her ex. About the kids. She didn't elaborate."

His eyes darkened. "That was yesterday," he said, echoing her own thoughts. "Find her. Send someone to check her place. There should be a deputy out in that direction. Rule, maybe. Or Watershed. Check with them." Kayan Rule was a road deputy for the department who looked more like a power forward for the NBA than a cop. She had no bone to pick with him. Watershed, on the other hand, was a real pain in the a.s.s. A good cop, but a jerk who liked crude jokes and considered himself some kind of lady killer.

"I'll handle it." She was already shutting down her computer. "I'll run by her place. I was gonna head out anyway," she said, wanting, no, needing to do something, anything other than sit in this office another minute while staring at photographs of Star-Crossed's victims or trying to decipher the notes that had been found at each of the crime scenes and attempting to mentally connect them to the suspect who had been apprehended.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Rolling her chair away from her desk, she reached for her service weapon, shoulder holster, and jacket.

"Good." Grayson glanced at the clock. "And have someone go out and talk with Lucky Pescoli." He rubbed a hand over his face. "People get crazy this time of year. It's supposed to be all love and peace on earth, but there's always a spike in suicides and murders. Domestic violence." His gaze was steady as it held Alvarez's. "Detective Pescoli isn't known for her long fuse."

Alvarez couldn't argue with that.

Grayson squared his hat on his head. "Let me know what you find out. Has anyone checked with dispatch? Seen if an alarm has come in?"

"They haven't heard from her either. No officer in distress came in."

Rubbing a hand around the back of his neck, Grayson shook his head. "This isn't like her. See what you can find out." He glanced out the windows to the snow-covered landscape. "As soon as the weather breaks, I'm flying with Chandler and Halden to Spokane today," he said, mentioning the two FBI agents who had been a.s.signed to the case.

"The woman the Spokane cops arrested is not our guy," Alvarez stated flatly.

A muscle tightened in Grayson's jaw. "I hope to h.e.l.l you're wrong."

She glanced to the notes strewn across her desk. "The person who's been arrested; she doesn't fit the pattern. I'll bet she's got an alibi for all the homicides."

"The Feds are checking."

"So am I." Alvarez wasn't trusting anyone else in dealing with the Star-Crossed Killer. Not even the FBI.

"In the meantime, find Pescoli."

"I will," she promised, sliding her arm through her shoulder holster and strapping it on. Grayson slapped the top of her cubicle wall and started toward the door, only to be roadblocked by Joelle Fisher, the receptionist and resident busybody for the department. Pushing sixty, she looked a good ten years younger than her age, and was forever dressed in spiky high heels and short, tight dresses with prim little jackets. Her platinum hair was piled as near a 1950s beehive as she dared and never was a single hair out of place.

It was an odd look, a step out of time, but somehow Joelle pulled it off.

Now, all in red, she was chattering on about a holiday party as if the horror of the last few months were the last thing on her mind.

"Cort's wife has promised to bring in her prizewinning crown jewel cookies. They took second at the church bazaar, you know, and only because Pearl Hennessy decided to enter her gingersnaps, the ones that have a hint of orange. Well, who would beat those, I ask you?"

Alvarez didn't stop to find out. The less she knew about the family of Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, the better. Alvarez didn't really like the man, though she couldn't put her finger on why. Brewster was a stand-up guy, been with the department for years, married to the same woman for nearly a quarter of a century. A devoted father of four, he was deacon in the local Methodist church and all that, but there was something about him that made her edgy, something that didn't seem to ring true.

That's because you're always suspicious, have been since your early teens, but you know why, don't you? Just your little secret that you don't dare share.

Ignoring that nasty little voice in her mind, she decided it was okay not to like Brewster. Just recently there had been an incident that reaffirmed Alvarez's opinion of the undersheriff: Pescoli's son, Jeremy, was found to be dating Heidi Brewster, Cort's pistol of a fifteen-year-old daughter. The kids had been busted for underage drinking and the tension inside Brewster had been palpable.

Merry Christmas.

All of Joelle's talk was falling on the sheriff's deaf ears.

"Fine, fine, whatever you think," Grayson muttered as his cell phone blasted and he picked up.

Alvarez hustled past the Christmas cookie discussion before Joelle could turn her attention her way. Tucking her scarf into her jacket, she headed outside where the wind whistled and the air seemed to crackle. She yanked on her gloves as she pa.s.sed the flagpole where Old Glory was snapping and shivering in the stiff wind.

From the corner of her eye she noticed a news van, the last remaining one parked across the street, the driver cradling a cup of coffee that was so hot steam nearly obliterated the window. Most of the other members of the media had taken off, chasing the story in Spokane. Except for this lone newsperson, a die-hard still camped near the sheriff's department. An orange slash and the call letters of KBTR were scripted across the side of the dirty white van.

Alvarez avoided the KBTR van like the plague. Her dealings with the media had been few and she preferred it that way. Better to keep her private life just that. Her boots crunched across the snow as she found her Jeep. Sc.r.a.ping an inch of snow and a layer of ice off the windshield, she spied Ivor Hicks's truck rolling up the street. Great, she thought, watching Hicks as he huddled over the steering wheel of his wheezing truck. A hunter's cap complete with orange earm.u.f.fs was pulled low over his head and his eyes seemed twice their size behind thick gla.s.ses.