real wacko. He’s got a purpose; he’s driven. He’s had to have spent months, maybe years finding the right women for his victims. Lying in wait outside in these conditions might just turn him on.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the killer stretched out on the snow, or on something to protect him from the cold, as he propped his rifle on a fallen log, or a stump or boulder, maybe a tripod, something to steady the barrel while he trained it with steely composure on the road below.
He was a hunter, an assassin with an ace marksman’s deadly aim.
Jaw sliding to one side, eyes narrowing, she wondered how the hell Star-Crossed had managed to pull off such a perfect shot as to disable a car and send it careening off the roads and into the canyons.
She blew on her hands, watched her breath fog.
How intimately had he known his victims before the attack?
And what was his game? Not sexual gratification. At least not to the point of penetration. Not one body had shown signs of recent sexual abuse or intercourse. No semen was found in or on their bodies, nor had there been any wounds to their breasts or vaginal areas. Contrarily, autopsies proved that the victims’ initial wounds had actually started to heal before he’d apparently had enough of the game and brutally, without conscience, had lashed the women to trees in remote areas and callously left them to die.
The Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department had searched every database imaginable for skilled marksmen who could pull off such a feat, from ex-military aces and mercenaries, to the antigovernment extremists, hunters, cops, and winners of shooting competitions. Anyone with a history of incredible skills with a rifle. So far, no one suspect had come to the fore.
Until the woman in Spokane.
But there was just no damned way she could have been responsible for Pescoli’s disappearance, because she couldn’t be in two places at once. Pescoli had been seen and on the phone here in Grizzly Falls while the suspect was nearly two hundred miles away in Spokane, Washington. The panhandle of Idaho and mountainous terrain separated the cities.
So, who was the killer with the dead-eye aim?
Surely someone who lived around here, who knew the terrain well enough to pick just the right spots, someone who seemed to have a thing against women. Her jaw hardened as she thought of the men who had given her—a woman detective, no, make that a Hispanic woman detective—a rough time, as if she were an oddity, someone to be teased. Whoever was behind the assaults, though, had a deep-seated hatred for women. All women, apparently, as he certainly didn’t discriminate by race. And he could shoot straight as an arrow under horrible conditions, then “rescue” a woman from the wreckage of her car and haul her to some unknown destination.
A big man, from the size of one footprint they’d taken.
A local who had knowledge and felt comfortable in this rugged, frigid terrain.
A marksman.
A smart individual who was organized enough to locate these women, track them, wound them, and eventually kill them.
A hater.
Several names came quickly to mind: Dell Blight, a big man with a belly as large as his disdain of the sheriff’s department. He’d been hauled in several times, drunk, once waving a weapon around, but then, he wasn’t exactly a candidate for a national think tank.
Rod Larimer, owner of the Bull and Bear, or B&B Bed and Breakfast, as it was locally known, was currently enjoying a brisk trade, all because of the sudden notoriety of the town. And Rod was a man who despised Sheriff Grayson. He’d been married a few times and his wives had always left him. But could he shoot?
Then there was Otis Kruger, a mean drunk who owned an arsenal of weaponry and who had bragged about killing a doe out of season from an incredible distance—shot her dead center. He’d been hauled in for poaching, but again, wasn’t the brightest color in the crayon box. A crack shot with a low I.Q. Dangerous combination, but could he really be Star-Crossed?
Selena expelled a breath. The best and brightest marksmen in the county were some of the very men she worked with: hunters and lawmen. But she wouldn’t go there, couldn’t believe someone who’d sworn to uphold the law would get off on making a mockery of it.
The wind kicked up, bitter cold, and some of the firemen were gathering their gear and packing up.
There was nothing more to be done tonight.
A headache had formed at the base of Alvarez’s skull, her eyes were scratchy, and her nose was now running like a faucet. She logged out of the scene and headed back to her apartment determined to get some rest, have a fresh view of the case in the morning. But as she drove along the eerily quiet mountain road, her headlights reflecting brightly off the packed snow and ice, huge trees laden with snow surrounding her, she felt the winter cold seep into her bones. Shivering, she experienced a deep-seated fear that she’d never see Pescoli alive again.
“How’re you feeling?” a deep male voice whispered.
Pescoli’s eyes flew open but the room was in total darkness aside from a single pinpoint of light. A penlight? Her heart thundered and adrenaline shot through her system.
For a second she didn’t know where she was and then she remembered driving over the icy ridge, the reverberant crack of a rifle, her Jeep spinning out of control down a steep mountainside.
And her rescuer.
She remembered the man in shadowy goggles who had pried her from the wreckage to bring her here as his damned prisoner.
She tried to move, to roll away, but her muscles were sluggish, wouldn’t respond. Pain jolted down her shoulder and her gaze was fastened on the bright spot of light.
“I asked you a question.”
He sounded irritated. Good. So was she. “How do you think I feel?”
“Not your best.”
“Like I was in a damned accident that could have been prevented if some jerk-wad hadn’t shot out my tire.” She was glaring up at him, trying to focus, unable to make out his features, the small light ruining her ability to focus. “Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Let me guess. Not St. Peter, right? We’re not at the pearly gates. And where are my clothes?”
He snorted, but she caught a glimpse of white, a glint from his teeth as if he found her amusing. “Definitely not St. Peter. And no, I wouldn’t think this was the way to salvation.” There was a smile in his voice. “You’ll get your clothes back.”
“When?”
“When I decide.”
His way of keeping her humble and vulnerable, to make her lie naked and alone in the dark, but she wasn’t going to buckle to that kind of psychological blackmail. “Why did you bring me here?”
“To help you.”
“You fired the damned shot! I wouldn’t call that help.” She was agitated, fear juicing up her aggression. He ran the penlight down the length of her body, again humiliating
