Ready to Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “Wait for backup. I’ve got this.” Rifle in hand, he took off.

  No way! She was out of the Jeep and taking off at a jog through the snow and rounding one side of the house while Brewster secured the other side.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  More shots!

  Hang in there, Pescoli, Alvarez prayed as she flattened herself to the side of the building and peered through the curtain of snow to the woods behind.

  She spied the killer, setting up, taking aim at a copse of trees. “Pescoli!” Alvarez yelled as a gun went off.

  Dashing from one thicket to the next, Pescoli heard her name and turned just in time to see the killer, rifle at his shoulder, the barrel following her path.

  In that instant, she knew she was dead.

  Blam!

  She threw herself forward, diving into a snowbank, landing hard on her shoulder, expecting the sear of a bullet to rip through her flesh.

  In that nanosecond before she hit the ground, snow flying, her shoulder screaming, she saw, from the corner of her eye, the killer’s body jerk wildly, his rifle flung from his hands as he dropped to the ground.

  And standing not fifty yards away, his own rifle tucked against his shoulder, was Cort Brewster.

  Just before she passed out she realized the damned sheriff had just saved her life.

  Chapter 33

  It was finally over, Pescoli thought, a week later as she skimmed the umpteenth article about the shoot-out at the mountain cabin. Once again, the reporter lauded the “clear-thinking, quick reflexes, and sharp aim” of Cort Brewster. Intimated in the article was the supposition that should Dan Grayson ever come out of his coma, Brewster would give him a good run in the next election.

  Pescoli supposed she should be more grateful to Brewster, and maybe it was a flaw in her character, but she just couldn’t muster up much more than a suspicion that he’d done it more for the attention it gave him than because he wanted to save her. She tossed the paper onto one of the lunchroom tables. She was in the office early. Again. Glad to have some time when the sheriff’s department was relatively quiet. Her shoulder still hurt from landing so hard during the attack, but nothing was broken, only bruised, tendons and ligaments stretched to their limit but intact. She’d hit her head as well and didn’t remember much when she’d awoken in the hospital several hours later. “A more-than-slight concussion” had kept her in the hospital overnight “for observation,” but then she’d been pronounced healthy enough to go home and, against doctor’s orders and Santana’s protests, had gone back to work.

  “Am I really going to have to hog-tie you?” Santana had asked and she’d sent him a smile and said, “Kinky. Why not?” So he’d shaken his head and backed off. Grudgingly, she’d worn a sling for nearly a week, then ditched the damned thing because she couldn’t stand her impeded mobility. She’d always been right-handed but hadn’t realized how dependent she was on her left until that arm was out of commission.

  But now, physically, she was nearly back to normal. That was, if she didn’t count the twinges and aches that sometimes throbbed through her shoulder, or the holes in her memory on the day of the confrontation at the mountain cabin. Like the victim in a serious accident, she just couldn’t remember the events around the actual takedown clearly.

  Seeing that the coffeepot was empty once again, she seriously considered not having a cup, then told herself to be a big girl and clean up the old grounds packet, swab out the glass carafe, and brew a new pot. Hell, be a really big girl and make two pots as someone had left less than a quarter of a cup in the other machine and the dark liquid was solidifying, turning from sludge to dry on the glass.

  Since she was alone in the lunchroom and Joelle wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another hour or so, and of the few officers in the building, no one was likely to come running into the lunchroom ready to become an instant maid, Pescoli did the honors.

  She should be feeling differently.

  She should be more satisfied.

  She should be experiencing a great relief that not only had Cort Brewster saved her life, but that Maurice Verdago was dead and would never kill anyone again.

  Still, she felt edgy. Restless. The way she did when a case wouldn’t quite come together. On top of that, work was difficult. The whole station was different. New Year’s had come and gone, and Jeremy had found a way to get into a few night classes. By necessity, his hours at the sheriff’s department were cut to nearly nothing, which kinda pissed Jer off, but there was only so much time. Bianca was back in school and swearing she was “eating like Doug Fallen, the center of the football team. He’s a moose!”

  Pescoli wasn’t convinced, but had witnessed her daughter plow into a few of her favorite meals, while picking at others, and she’d found evidence of some very bad eating habits, candy bar wrappers, a receipt for a peppermint mocha at the coffee shop, but all of the evidence she found could have been planted, of course. Her daughter was smart and sly. Though Bianca probably hadn’t been that devious, Pescoli wouldn’t put it past her.

  There it was, her suspicious nature coming to the fore. Whenever she was home at the same time as Bianca, which wasn’t that often, she’d kept a close eye on her trips to the bathroom. If she was forcing herself to throw up, it wasn’t on Pescoli’s watch . . . she hoped.

  Now, she rinsed the suds from the carafe, then set it, along with its mate, onto the hot plate of the coffee machine and slapped the premeasured coffee into the baskets before hitting the Brew button and waiting for the first cup, always the hottest and strongest.

  Hearing footsteps approach, she caught a glimpse of Connors as he adjusted his pants to rest just below his belly. “Hey, you get promoted?” he asked. Always the funny guy.

  “That’s right,” she said as the coffee drizzled loudly into the carafes. “I’m in charge of the lunchroom now.”

  “Good. I could use an elk burger!”

  “Old news, Connors. Time to come up with some new material.” She suspected he’d been the one who had left a ziplock package of meat on her desk earlier in the week. On one side was a crude drawing of an elk, on the other side, a crow.

  Yeah, it had been a real laugh.

  It would have served the big lug right if she actually had let that meat rot in her desk drawer, then grind some up and drop the meal into his oversized mug when he wasn’t looking.

  “Kinda boring around here,” he said, rocking back on his heels and eyeing the lunch area as he, too, waited for the coffee to fill the pot. The silence between them stretched to the breaking point. “No decorations. No big cases.”

  “No Christmas cookies,” Pescoli reminded him. The hell with it. Even if her caseload had slowed, she didn’t have time to sit around and shoot the breeze with Connors. After yanking the partially filled pot of “regular,” she poured herself half a cup, replaced the pot with a little more force than necessary, and headed out of the lounge area.

  God, she was cranky, and as she sipped from her cup and walked down the hallway, she didn’t get that same hit from her first sip that she usually did.

  She had to face it, she wasn’t happy here. Slowing at Brewster’s office, she peered through the glass door. The room was locked these days, Brewster not even trusting his own staff. It bothered her. She’d visited Grayson twice in the last week, even felt foolish when she’d touched his hand and told him that they’d nailed his assailant. His condition hadn’t changed, and the doctors she’d overheard had been cautiously optimistic, whatever that meant. There was no longer a guard stationed near the doors to ICU, as there was no longer a threat to the sheriff, but that had only made the hospital seem emptier, more sterile, more . . . hopeless.

  Pausing at the glass window of Brewster’s new office, what she inwardly had dubbed his “throne room,” she felt hollow inside over the change in leadership. Brewster had taken to the role of sheriff as quickly as a duck to water, and there were no traces that this space had ever been occupied by Dan Grayson and his trusty b
lack Lab, Sturgis, who, thankfully, Cisco had finally accepted.

  Who knew how much longer the dog would be staying with Pescoli and her kids. And Santana, she reminded herself. They would all be one big, hopefully happy, family soon. Without even realizing it, she crossed the fingers of her free hand.

  “Coffee’s done,” Connors said as he came up from behind her and, as if he’d realized what an ass he’d been, added, “I mean, if you want a full cup.”

  She saw his pale reflection in the windows of Brewster’s office. “Thanks.”

  He hesitated, bit the side of his lip, and looked into the office. “Weird, huh?” When she didn’t respond, he added, “I mean . . . it’s . . . different.”

  “Mmmm.”

  In the glass she saw him start to say something, think better of it, then sip his coffee and mosey off.

  She lingered a second and was turning away when she noticed the sword. A twin of the one Vincent Samuels had given Winston Piquard, identical to the long-bladed weapon that had graced the wall of the judge’s den, her husband, Georges’s, bit of war memorabilia and now Brewster’s.

  She hadn’t seen it before, but she attributed its current placement to Cort’s wife as right before the press conference about Verdago she’d heard Brewster say to Darla Vale, “Yeah, I finally had to admit that Bess was right, so I’ve started cleaning out the basement. Found some things I’d forgotten about.” Brewster had then gone in front of the cameras and expounded long and loudly about how the citizens of Grizzly Falls would have nothing to fear now that the “reign of terror” caused by Maurice Verdago and his accomplice, Carnival Tibalt, was over.

  It seemed a little off somehow, but lately everything did. She’d never quite got her energy level back to where it had been, and the night terrors . . . they still haunted her. Being chased down by Verdago, caught squarely in the sight of his rifle, had only exacerbated her fears.

  The truth of the matter was that her confidence was shaken, and she didn’t know if she had the edge she’d once honed so carefully. She was more cautious, fearful, and the fact that she still thought she might be being followed, that her paranoia hadn’t disappeared with Verdago’s death, only confirmed how stressed she was.

  Thank God for Brewster’s dead-eye aim. He, too, had been a sharpshooter in the military.

  And he’d saved her life.

  Back in her office, she reminded herself of that very fact as she scooted her chair into her desk and thought that Brewster might be right, she could very well be more of a liability than an asset to the department.

  It was time to start a new life with Santana and relieve herself of all the responsibilities, fears, and stress of being a detective with the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department.

  Downing the rest of her coffee, she rotated her bad shoulder to loosen it, then started to compose her resignation letter.

  Alvarez was bugged.

  All of Brewster’s preening didn’t sit well with her. Grayson was still alive. That was a fact. And though she was glad the case was closed, there were some loose ends that bothered her.

  She was at home, dog at her feet, cat slipping in and out of the shelves on the bookcase, O’Keefe rattling around in the kitchen as she double-checked her phone and e-mail for any contact from Tydeus Melville Chilcoate, a computer genius and hacker who was known to be antigovernment and had made it clear that he had no love of the sheriff’s department. But stronger than his feelings about the department was his hatred of Cort Brewster, who had, in younger years, pulled him over for speeding and other traffic infractions that Chilcoate had maintained were a “setup” and an “abuse of his rights.” She’d met with him in a remote location, her car pointed one way at the old rock quarry, his the other, and they’d made a deal. Chilcoate, in an effort to get back at Brewster, was on board, though, of course, all of her dealings with him were very much on the Q.T. For once, she wasn’t going to confide in either Pescoli or O’Keefe. For once, she was going off the rails and not playing by the rules.

  So far, Chilcoate hadn’t gotten back to her.

  “I thought the case was closed,” O’Keefe said as he set a cup of herbal tea on the desk next to her laptop. The scents of ginger and lemon filled the air and she inhaled deeply.

  “It just seems a little too . . . perfect, for lack of a better word. I just happen to be in Brewster’s office when I get the SOS from Pescoli. He then insists on going with me, rather than sending one of the deputies or another detective? And when we get there, he shoots Maurice Verdago dead. The same guy who robbed him of his computer and rifle, then used the .30-06 registered to Brewster in all of his attacks?”

  “He’d reported it stolen.”

  “Around Thanksgiving.”

  “Sometimes you get lucky.”

  Glancing up at him, she smiled. His dark hair was rumpled, his jaw unshaven, hints of sleep still tugging at the corners of his eyes. He hadn’t bothered getting dressed, still wore only a pair of boxers, so that his abdomen with its compact, hard muscles was visible. His shoulders and arms moved fluidly as he leaned back against the breakfast bar.

  “Are you trying to seduce me?” she asked, leaning back in her chair and sipping her tea.

  A slow smile spread across his jaw. “Would I do that?”

  “Always.”

  He cocked an eyebrow in invitation. She shook her head and said regretfully, “I’ve got to be at the office.”

  “You have to shower. We could—?”

  Laughing, she said, “Forget it.” God, she loved him. Someday she’d settle down and marry him. This time she wouldn’t let him get away, but right now, right this minute, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, be distracted.

  “You know, Verdago’s rifle, the one he stole from Brewster, had his prints on it and Brewster’s, which is expected, but . . .”

  “But what?” he prodded.

  “I don’t know. It’s just the way Brewster seemed to know exactly what Verdago was planning. The man’s a decent enough cop, his instincts are usually on target, but this time he was just so damned good. So ahead of the game.”

  “You think Brewster not only killed Verdago, but somehow he took out the judge and shot at the sheriff?”

  “I know what it sounds like, but . . .” She broke off, frustrated, then said, “He also killed his own girlfriend who was wearing nothing but boots and an engagement ring.”

  “And?”

  “It just doesn’t make sense.” That’s what had really gotten the wheels turning in her mind. Carnie’s death. It just seemed so far off the rails for Verdago to kill her, even though, according to Wanda Verdago, Maurice had killed Joey Lundeen in a fight. But that murder had been an accident, one punch too hard. Carnie’s was a point-blank killing.

  But again, Joey Lundeen had died and Maurice had dumped his body high up in the wilderness where it was yet to be found. Maybe it made some kind of sense that Verdago had killed Carnie. Alvarez just didn’t see it.

  Meanwhile, Brewster had worked with the D.A. for Wanda’s immunity. Deputies and volunteers had started scouring that area of the government land, looking for Lundeen, though until the snowpack melted in the spring, nothing much would be found.

  If ever.

  But it had played well to the press, all the local stations picking up the story, Manny Douglas finding a way to massage yet another story highlighting Brewster onto the front page of the local paper.

  “Verdago and his girlfriend could have had a fight. He had a temper,” O’Keefe reminded.

  “So they get into it, he leaves, comes home, and just shoots her cold?”

  “Maybe he had a few drinks?”

  She shook her head. “No trace of alcohol in Verdago’s body.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Well, maybe they did fight earlier. Who knows. But the way the body was positioned was weird. It was as if she, without hardly anything on, opened the door and got blasted. Right between the eyes. With a rifle.”

  �
�The gun Brewster reported stolen,” O’Keefe reminded her.

  “Was it, though? Why didn’t the thieves take that damned sword he’s now put in Grayson’s office?”

  “Sounds like this isn’t about Brewster so much as Grayson.”

  Alvarez turned away. Even to her own ears, her ideas sounded ridiculous. Everything pointed to Verdago. Hadn’t they found the pictures of six people he hated on the table? And Cort Brewster’s photo as well as Regan Pescoli’s had been front and center. She remembered viewing them and feeling a chill, the same chill she’d witnessed in Brewster’s eyes.

  He’d found the pictures first.

  He’d gone into the cabin ahead of her and checked that Carnie Tibalt wasn’t cowering inside or lying in wait, armed to the teeth.

  “I know,” Alvarez said. “This is all just crazy talk. I guess I’m just sick of the way he’s lapping up all the attention from the press, even giving private interviews to Manny Douglas and Honey Carlisle at KBTR.” She blew across her cup. “It’s so . . . not Grayson’s style, I guess.”

  “That’s what really gets under your skin.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted, and clicked off the computer. “You know, I’ve changed my mind.” She moved up to him, sliding her arms around his torso. “It looks like I do have time for that shower after all.”

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” Jeremy said into Pescoli’s ear as she walked out of the quickie mart with her usual supersized diet soda in one hand, her cell phone in the other.

  The snow had stopped the night before, the sun rising bright enough this morning to cast a glare off the snow-blanketed street. Juggling her drink and her keys, the cell phone caught between her cheek and shoulder, Pescoli managed to slip on her sunglasses. But the action tweaked her shoulder and she nearly slipped, the soda sloshing onto her jacket as the lid apparently wasn’t on as tightly as she’d thought.

  Fabulous.

  “Damn. So talk already,” she said. “No, wait until I get into the car and set this stupid drink in the cup holder.”