Left To Die (18 page)

“I don’t know.” He threw his jacket over the back of the couch and bent down to unlace his boots. “Do you?”

“I pissed off some people in my life, like I said. My sister, for sure. But not enough for anyone to want to kill me.” She watched as he kicked off a boot, nudging the heel of one with the toe of the other, then unzipped his ski pants, beneath which he was wearing jeans. The Goretex-looking outer layer of pants wound up beside the jacket. Now, at least, he looked thirty pounds lighter, but still big and strong enough to be intimidating.

“You should lie down,” MacGregor said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Elevate the ankle.”

It was true enough; her whole leg was aching now and she was tired from balancing herself against the table with her crutch. But the thought of going back into the bedroom, lying on the cot alone while listening to the wind howl, her mind spinning with questions, her imagination running wild with what he was doing, didn’t cut it.

“I think I’ll just sit here.” She pointed to the ancient chair and ottoman. Without waiting for him to answer, she hitched her way to the chair and sank down.

“How about I get us each something to drink?”

“Like what?” She settled into the chair and kept her knife in her sleeve. She wasn’t about to relax. Not yet.

Harley climbed to his feet and trotted, toenails clicking, into the kitchen after MacGregor. Through the archway, he said, “I’ve got coffee…and…” She heard him rooting around in the cupboards, doors opening and closing with soft thuds. “Well…no tea…but I do have some packets of instant soup. Or whiskey. That’s about what we’re down to. Whiskey over snow. We’ve got lots of that. Kind of an alcoholic snow cone.”

Was he kidding? “I think I’ll pass on the frozen drink,” she called toward the open doorway, but her stomach rumbled at the mere mention of food. How long had she gone without eating? Hell, she couldn’t remember her last meal.

He returned with a coffeepot that he set in the glowing coals of the fire. “This’ll take a while to heat,” he explained as his dog, with a hard last glare and snarl at Jillian, turned several circles before lying down on his rug again. His black-and-white head rested on his white paws as he stared at her.

“You never answered my question,” he reminded her. “What the hell were you doing driving in the blizzard?”

He hung his ski wear on pegs near the fireplace, then turned to her. “In the middle of the worst storm to hit this part of the state in a decade?”

“I was headed to Missoula,” she admitted after a moment.

“What’s there?”

“Not what. Who. And the answer is, my ex-husband.”

MacGregor considered it. “Maybe there’s someone who might want to kill you.”

“The divorce was amicable.”

He skewered her with a disbelieving look. “Yeah, right. And so why were you risking life and limb, driving through the Bitterroots in a snowstorm, to visit your ex?”

“I…I needed to talk to him.”

A dark eyebrow raised.

“A phone call wouldn’t have worked. I needed to see his reaction.”

“When you told him what?”

“When I asked him if he sent me pictures that are supposedly of my first husband. My
dead
first husband.”

He sat back on his heels. “Your ex–second husband sent you pictures of your dead first husband?”

“Yes, well, I think so. It could be a wild goose chase. I thought he died on a hiking trip in South America.”

“Your first husband…who’s dead. You think. But you’ve seen pictures of him, from your second husband.”

“Or someone who could be Aaron’s twin.”

“There a third husband in there?”

“No,” she answered dryly. “Just the two.”

“But now you think husband one might still be alive.”

“I don’t know. I had the pictures with me. They were in my notebook case.”

He walked to a built-in cupboard and withdrew her purse and laptop carrying case, both of which he brought to her chair and set next to the ottoman. Something about seeing her things again nearly brought tears to her eyes. It was as if she suddenly realized the desperation of her situation, how far removed she was from her life. Clearing her throat, she refused to break down, but she had to blink rapidly.

MacGregor asked, “Want me to get the photos out?”

“I assume you’ve already seen them.”

He nodded, not denying a word of it, as he took another trip to the cupboard and returned with her suitcase and the tattered remains of her grandmother’s quilt.

Again her heart squeezed and she wondered if she’d ever get home again.

“I did look through all your things. I was trying to figure out who you were and who I should call.”

“You have a phone?”

“A cell. But it’s not working. Neither is yours.”

She didn’t doubt him, but opened her purse with one hand and scrounged for her phone, searching past the lipstick tubes, pens, wallet, checkbook and—

“It would be easier if you dropped the knife.”

Her head snapped up to find him staring at her. For a split second she was certain he could see to the bottom of her soul. The filet knife felt suddenly heavy and bulky. She swallowed hard. Noticed that the dog had closed his eyes and fallen asleep. “I—uh…”

“Just drop it from your sleeve. Or do you want me to take it from you?”

“No…uh…” Deliberately, she set the knife on a small scarred table that held a single kerosene lamp, a fishing magazine and two books on astronomy.

“So now why don’t you start at the beginning?” he suggested.

How foolish she’d been to think she could trust him. And how ultimately dependent she was on him. She pulled out her cell phone and turned it on, hoping beyond hope that she would have service. Of course, she didn’t. No connecting bars registered and the battery was nearly dead.

Just as he’d said. She felt more vulnerable than ever.

“I have tried to call out,” he said. “Every damned day. That’s why I leave sometimes. To try and find a signal.”

She wondered about that. The times she’d thought she was alone, the hours when he’d been out of the cabin in the middle of a blizzard. It just hadn’t made much sense.

“I don’t get much service to begin with and I think some of the towers have been damaged by the storms.”

“Great.”

“I could have told you that the minute you woke up, but I figured you wouldn’t believe me.”

That much was right.

“So now,” he prodded. “About your husband?”

Jillian sighed. She stared at him and time stretched. And then she decided to go for it, just tell him everything. She began with her marriage to Aaron, what had happened in Suriname, then a fast-forward through her second marriage to the weird messages and finally the photographs, which, of course, he’d recovered from her car, as they’d been tucked in a pocket of her computer case. While she explained, he listened and tended the water heating in a coffeepot on the coals of the fire. He asked a few questions, but for the most part just let her speak, his face grim and taut.

When she’d finished, he poured hot water into a cup filled with instant coffee crystals and asked, “So now you believe your first husband, Aaron, is alive.”

“I think someone wants me to believe it.”

“To lure you here?” he asked.

She took a sip of the coffee. The hot liquid slid down her throat and hit her stomach hard. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“But the man in the picture looks enough like him that you came?”

“Yeah, I guess.” She was shaking her head at her own folly. “I know, it seems kinda crazy now.” She shoved her hair out of her eyes. “Or really crazy.”

“Was the marriage to Aaron in trouble?”

“No!” she said with more passion than she’d intended. “Well, I don’t think so. I mean, he had no reason to disappear that I know of.”

“Did he have bad debts?”

“We didn’t owe more than we could pay.”

“Did he have life insurance?”

“Yes, and it took a while, but they finally paid me. That’s how I bought my townhouse.” Why in the world was she confiding in him?

“And until you saw the pictures, you were convinced he was dead. He didn’t come after you for the money.”

“This letter and the phone calls—they came out of the blue. And now I think they all might have been a wild goose chase.”

“To lure you here,” he said again, “so someone could kill you?”

“That sounds…ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged, then rocked back on his heels and frowned. “I’m a hunter. I was in the military. There are lots of ways to kill a person and do it quickly, maybe not even get caught, but shooting out a tire and hoping the car will free-fall into an icy ravine isn’t a sure thing.”

“As evidenced that I’m still here,” she agreed.

“Right, and the killer knows you survived. Or, at least, I’m assuming he checked the car.”

“Maybe not. He could’ve thought the job was finished.”

“Or been frightened away by me.”

“Why not just shoot you, too?”

“He might not have been able to get a shot off. And anyway, we can’t assume you were the ultimate target. As you said, there’ve been other women killed around here. A couple of them, I think, and they, too, were forced off the road, like you, though I don’t know all the details.”

“We talked about the serial killer thing before,” she reminded him, and tried to ignore the panic she felt rising inside. “Are you trying to say that this killer
knows
his victims, or at least enough intimate details of their lives to get them here?” Dear God, she couldn’t believe the words that passed her lips and yet…. “Do you know the names of the other women?”

He shook his head. “No. Why? Do you think you might know them?”

She glanced nervously to the windows and the darkening landscape beyond. “I think I read one of their names, but it didn’t ring any bells.” She forced herself to look directly into his eyes. How did she know he wasn’t the killer? That he wasn’t toying with her? It didn’t seem that way. In fact he seemed downright concerned.

She swallowed hard.

Could she trust this man?

Did she have a choice?

The answer was no.

Like it or not, she was stuck here, at least for a while. But she didn’t have to stay. If she could get herself mobile, able to walk just a little, and the weather broke. He’d mentioned he had a snowmobile. She’d driven one before, while she and Aaron were on a ski trip to Colorado. If push came to shove, she could get it started and drive the damned thing to civilization, or another cabin, or any damned where.

She just needed a key.

Mason Rivers was a prick.

And a prick who was hiding something, Pescoli thought as she pulled into her driveway, cell phone at her ear. She’d just driven home through the blizzard to make sure the kids took everything they needed for the weekend visit with their father. Lights were on inside the house, but Jeremy’s truck wasn’t parked in its usual spot.

“My secretary said you were trying to reach me,” Rivers said guardedly, after brief introductions.

No shit, Sherlock
, Pescoli thought, but kept it to herself.

“You’ve heard about your ex-wife?” Regan hit the button on her garage door opener.

“I was out of town, but a colleague brought in the paper saying that her car had been found at the bottom of a canyon.”

“That’s right.”

“Is she okay?” he asked as the garage door slowly opened.

“We don’t know. We can’t find her.”

A pause, the silence cut by the grinding of the garage door and her Jeep’s idling engine.

“We thought you might have an idea of where she was going, or where she’d been.” The truth of the matter was that the accident reconstruction team had spent hours on the ridge where Jillian’s car had spun out. They could tell from which direction the car had careened down the hill, but because of the spin, couldn’t discern which direction she’d been traveling. They had the clue of an empty coffee cup from the Chocolate Moose Café in Spruce Creek, and a waitress remembered Jillian, as she’d been one of the few customers taking anything “to go” that day. So, it seemed that she had been traveling toward Missoula rather than away from the town.

“You know, we were divorced two years ago and I’m remarried now. I don’t keep in contact with Jill or her family.”

“We thought she might be coming to see you.”

“Why?”

“That’s what we wanted to know.”

“Look, I have no idea where she was going or why. As I said, I haven’t had any contact with her since the divorce was finalized. Now, if there’s nothing further, I have a client waiting in my office.”

“Just let us know if you think of anything.”

“There’s nothing to think about, Detective.” He hung up and Regan was left with a bad feeling. She pulled into the garage, hit the remote so the door would crank down, then climbed out of the car and made her way into her house, where Cisco greeted her with wild tail wagging, excited yips and tight little circles of enthusiasm. She had only half an hour, then she had to be back at the department for a Friday afternoon meeting before she worked late into the night. Overtime. This year it would pay for Christmas.

The dog was still going out of what little he had for a mind.

“Cisco! Shut up!” Bianca yelled from her bedroom. The TV was blaring in the living room, tuned into some reality show about twenty-somethings being overly dramatic about the minutiae of their lives, all while dressed in nearly nothing. Lots of tanned, toned flesh, a few piercings visible, numerous tattoos, all peppered with tears, bad language and raw, teen-type angst and emotion.

“Real life, my ass.” Pescoli picked up the remote, downed the volume and turned to the local news.

Once the decibel level was in the normal hearing range again, Pescoli stuck her head into her daughter’s room. Painted a blinding pink when Bianca was ten, it was now covered in posters of the latest teen “hotties” from boy bands and movie stardom. Bianca was flopped over her unmade bed, cell phone glued to her ear.

“Where’s your brother?” Regan asked.

Bianca’s expression got all pissy. She mouthed, “I’m on the phone.”

“Big deal. Hang up. You can call whoever it is back.”