never enough, no matter how sated he’d felt after one of their sessions at a local motel. And never boring. He loved to stare down at her as they made love. It excited him to see her beautiful nipples harden and her eyes grow dark as her pupils dilated with desire.
He couldn’t get enough of her.
She was one helluva woman, he’d decided long ago, but one he’d never thought he couldn’t leave.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Now he was scared to death, and Nate Santana wasn’t one to frighten easily. In fact, he’d sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with him. In a case of fight or flight, he always chose fight. And it had landed him in some tough spots. Hadn’t always been his smartest option.
Nor was getting involved with Pescoli such a great idea.
Everything about her should have warned him to stay away. She’d been married twice. She had two hellions of teenagers. She was a damned homicide detective, for Christ’s sake. Yep, he should never have gotten involved with her, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d actually challenged him in a bar one night, first to pool, then to arm wrestling, and then to shots of whiskey, he might not have noticed the smell of her, the fire in her eyes that matched the flame in her hair, or the fact that she seemed slightly amused by him. Being attracted to her, playing her game, had been his first mistake.
Ending up in bed had been his second.
And now, his third: actually giving a damn about her. Caring about her. Missing her.
“Damn it all to hell.”
He drank two cups of black coffee, thought about carving himself a second piece of bread but decided he couldn’t force down another bite. Watching the weather report, only half paying attention to “more of the same,” he finally surfaced to learn another storm was on the horizon.
Great.
Time was inching by. He glanced at the clock mounted over the sink and scowled. Still an hour until daylight. “Oh, hell,” he said under his breath. He couldn’t stand not doing anything. He whistled to his dog and walked to the door where he began putting on the layers he’d so recently peeled off. “Come on, Nakita,” he said, as the dog yawned and stretched. “Let’s go into town.”
It was well past time to track Pescoli down.
After a miserable night, Alvarez rolled out of bed, stumbled through the shower, and dispensing with makeup, dried her thick hair, snapped a rubber band around a high ponytail, and wound the whole mess into a tight knot on her crown. She checked her image in the mirror, saw her eyes were watery from the damned cold, her skin lacking luster, her nose red.
“No beauty pageant for you today,” she told her image before she brushed her teeth and swilled some sharp-tasting antibacterial mouthwash inside her mouth.
She couldn’t afford to be sick.
Not now.
After pulling on silky long johns, she dressed in a sweater and department-issued slacks. Soberly, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and wondered what had happened to her. As a teenager, she’d been proud of her good looks, flaunted her slim figure, applied more makeup than she needed to her large eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips.
But that was a lifetime ago.
When life had been filled with laughter and promise.
Frowning, dispelling the image, she found her shoulder holster and snapped it on.
She was no longer all those things that had been important to her in her youth. “Hot.” Or “cool.” Whichever was in vogue. Even “tight” or “sexy” or “naughty” didn’t appeal to her. Probably would never again.
Which was fine.
Except that she was alone.
No husband or lover or boyfriend on the horizon.
“No big deal,” she said to herself while warming water for tea in the microwave. After all, she’d been thinking about getting a pet. Why not? Something living to come home to.
A bird would be good…maybe a parakeet or macaw or…who was she kidding? A bird? In a cage? Spreading seeds and crapping on newspapers lining the cage floor? Or perching on the curtain rod with its wings clipped?
Fine for someone else.
Just not Selena’s style.
She was fine. Alone. Matter of fact, that’s just how she liked things.
She glanced at her desk where more images and notes about the series of murders were strewn over the desk in the tiny apartment where she lived alone. No man had ever slept in her bed. She’d been in Grizzly Falls for over three years, ever since leaving San Bernadino. “A loner,” she’d been called, or an “ice princess.” She’d even heard Pete Watershed, a coworker, suggest to a group of officers that she “probably swings the other way.” Even now, feeling rotten, she smiled at that one.
If they only knew.
Not that she gave a damn.
Besides, Watershed was a dolt.
Alvarez figured that the less her coworkers and acquaintances knew about her, the better she could do her job. And she was all about her job.
The microwave dinged and she pulled out the cup of near-boiling water, then dunked a bag of tea into it. Her grandmother had insisted that honey and lemon be added to the tea in order for the concoction to “shake the cold loose,” but Alvarez had neither item in the small kitchen of her studio.
Orange pekoe would have to do.
“Citrus is citrus,” she told herself, blowing over her cup and gingerly tasting the hot tea. It nearly burned her tongue, but did soothe her throat.
Her cell rang and it sounded dull, as her ears were still plugged. She scrounged it out of her pocket and flipped it open. “Alvarez.”
“She’s not our killer.” Sheriff Grayson sounded disgusted. “Nothing adds up. A copycat, it looks like, though how she knew enough about the crimes to try and kill Jillian Rivers in the same manner, we haven’t figured out yet.” He let out a long, angry breath. “I was really hoping she would be the doer and we could close the case, but that’s not gonna happen.”
Alvarez wasn’t surprised. Last night she’d spent hours double-checking dates, places, and the suspect’s whereabouts before finally going to bed. Nothing had matched up. The woman in custody couldn’t have committed the murders of Theresa Charleton, Nina Salvadore, Wendy Ito, Rona Anders, and Hannah Estes.
On top of all that, Alvarez was certain they should be looking for a guy. A big guy, one strong enough to carry women out of snow-covered canyons, one smart enough to hide them away without detection, a sharpshooter with incredible accuracy: under sixty, probably, big, athletic.
And then there was the fact of her missing partner.
She shivered as Grayson said, “It sure would have been nice to get the mutt behind bars.”
“We
