Chosen To Die. Lisa Jackson
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turned his attention to the open doorway, searching for whoever had been foolish enough to let the door slam. “Hey!” he called out as he climbed over the fence separating the exercise ring from the rest of the stable, vaulting the top rail and landing lightly on his booted feet.
No idiot stomping off snow and shaking away the cold appeared in the doorway. Only Nakita whining and staring outside to the dark night.
Frost-laden air screamed inside, but no one appeared.
Nate yanked the door closed, double-checked the latch as a drip of ominous worry slithered down his spine. The door had been closed tight, the latch secure. He was certain. He’d pulled it shut himself.
Or had he been so distracted by his missing woman that he had been careless and a stiff gust of wind had pushed the old door open? The latch had always been dicey. He’d been meaning to fix it; it just hadn’t been high on his priority list.
Again, he had the uncanny sensation that someone was with him; that he wasn’t alone. But all he heard was the sound of restless hooves in the surrounding stalls and the snorts of horses disturbed from their normal routines. He trained his eyes on the boxes, noting that the roan mare and bay gelding in abutting stalls were staring at the corner near the feed bins. Lucifer had stopped galloping wildly, but held his head high, his nostrils flared. As he slowed, his dark coat quivered and his gaze was centered dead-on Santana.
Nate grabbed a pitchfork from its hook on the wall and took two steps toward the shadowy corner near the oat bin.
Brrriiing!
The stable phone shrieked.
He nearly jumped from his skin.
Gloved hand holding the handle of the pitchfork in a death grip, he retraced his steps and snagged the receiver of the phone mounted near the door.
“Santana,” he barked, receiver pressed to his ear as he scoured the interior of the stable with his gaze.
“This is Detective Selena Alvarez, Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department.”
He felt every muscle in his body tense. “Yeah.”
“I’m Detective Regan Pescoli’s partner.”
He already knew that much. What he didn’t know was whether Regan had confided to Alvarez that she and he were involved.
“Uh-huh.”
“Pescoli didn’t show up for work today. I thought you might know where she is.”
So the cat was out of the bag about their affair. Good. “I haven’t seen her.”
“How about last night?”
His jaw tightened. “No.”
“Look, I know you and she have a thing going. She never really talks about it, but I pieced it together, so if you know where she is—”
“I don’t,” he cut her off. “We were together a couple of nights ago. Haven’t seen her since,” he admitted, his jaw setting. “I’ve been calling her cell and the house phone. No answer.”
“I was afraid of that.” The woman swore softly and frustration was in her voice. Santana felt a chill colder than the bowels of hell. “If you hear from her, will you have her call in?”
“Yeah.” He sensed Alvarez was about to hang up and asked, “Where do you think she is?”
“If we knew that, I wouldn’t be calling you.” She hung up and the word we reverberated through his mind. As in we: the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department. He replaced the phone, his guts twisting, the sensation that something was wrong validated. If the damned police department didn’t know where she was, things were worse than he’d feared.
Boom!
Grace Perchant’s eyes flew open.
Although, she thought, they’d never been closed.
She blinked. Tried to clear her mind when the sound of the blast, like the clap of nearby thunder, ricocheted through her brain again.
Snow was falling around her and she was standing in the middle of the road, in boots, her flannel nightgown, and a long coat flapping around her legs, her skin ice cold. Her dog, Sheena, was nearby, ever vigilant, ever loyal. With intelligent eyes and a black coat that belied her wolf lineage, Sheena waited patiently.
As she always did.
Even when Grace suffered one of her spells.
“Lord,” Grace whispered, shivering, her fingers and toes nearly numb, her breath a cloud.
Images from her dream slid through her mind. Visceral. Raw. Real. Like shards of glass that cut through her brain.
She caught a flash, a quick, horrifying glimpse of a woman in a mangled Jeep, her body racked with pain. And a stalker. The evil one tracking her down.
Grace’s heart rate accelerated as the image changed to a vision of that same woman now laced in a straitjacket and being hauled out of a wintry canyon. By a man in white, a man with evil intent.
Quickly the scene changed and the female victim was now naked, lashed to a frozen hemlock tree, her red hair stiff with ice and snow, her gold eyes round with fear, her skin turning blue.
Regan Pescoli.
The cop.
With heart-stopping certainty Grace knew that the monster had found her. Attacked her. Planned to kill her. If he hadn’t already.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had a vision; once before she’d caught a glimpse of the monster’s innate and relentless evil purpose.
At that time, only a few days earlier, Grace had tried to warn Pescoli, had told her of her imminent danger, but the detective had dismissed her.
As they all did.
So now the visions were more graphic. Closer. She looked up at the dark sky, felt the film of icy flakes melt against her skin. Her teeth were chattering. How long had she been out here? How far had she trudged like a sleepwalker along this winding, lonely road?
“Come, Sheena,” she said, wrapping her arms around her waist as the wind keened through the hills. “Home.”
The big dog, nearly 150 pounds, started trotting briskly along the fresh tracks that were beginning to fill with snow, her own footsteps, the wolf dog’s paw prints, leading back the way from which they’d come, the way she couldn’t remember having traveled.
Had she walked a couple of a hundred miles or one mile? The landscape at night, frozen and white, looked all the same. And her mind, usually clearer than ever after waking from her visions, couldn’t discern any landmarks. But the tracks were fresh and she didn’t think she was suffering from frostbite.
But she had to be close.
She half ran to keep up with the dog.
She hated the visions, for that’s what they were, and wished they would stop, but they wouldn’t. Not until she died, she thought morosely as she held her coat tight around her, the coat she didn’t remember donning, and her boots crunched in the soft snow.
The visions had started when she was thirteen, at the time of the accident that had taken the lives of her parents and older sister, Cleo. It had been a winter night much like this one. She and Cleo had been arguing in the backseat while their father squinted into the coming blizzard. Their old Volvo was straining uphill, the four-cylinder engine humming loudly, the tires sliding a bit, the radio filled with static.
“Goddamned snow,” Father muttered. “I swear, next spring we’re moving to Florida!”
“No!” Cleo overheard this. “We can’t move! All my friends are here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he insisted and snapped off the radio. His jaw was set, same as it always was when he’d made