Jeremy's heart dropped like a stone. "The police?" he repeated as Bianca, cell phone in hand, appeared.

Her eyes were round. "Is it Mom? Is she on the phone?"

Of course not, you nitwit. Mich.e.l.le would have said, "It's your ex-wife" or "Regan's calling again" or "The b.i.t.c.h is on the line," not "The police." He was about to say what he was thinking until he noticed the fear in Bianca's eyes. She knew. As well as he.

"What d'ya mean, it's the police?'" Lucky demanded, zipping up his fly and buckling his belt.

"The sheriff's department." Mich.e.l.le was as serious as Jeremy had ever seen her as Lucky grabbed the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo...yeah, this is Luke Pescoli..." He glanced at his kids in one quick sweep. "They're here. With me. What's going on?"

And then he listened. While Bianca bit her lip, her fingers curled over her cell in a death grip, Mich.e.l.le standing like a statue in her stupid ap.r.o.n and holding the pancake flipper, even Cisco, for once, standing stock still, Jeremy held his breath.

"Yeah...I see...But she wasn't inside...?"

Jeremy couldn't stop himself. "Who? Who wasn't inside? Mom?"

"Shut up!" Bianca hissed, but she was white as a sheet.

As if from a distance he heard a horn beep.

"Yeah, well, I'll keep them here with me until we know more," Luke said quietly. Sober as a judge, he hung up. The car's horn honked impatiently.

"What?" Bianca asked, tears welling.

Jeremy's ears started a dull ringing.

"They found your mom's Jeep," he said. "Down in the gully, off Horsebrier Ridge."

Bianca let out a little squeak.

"That's no 'gully.' It's a d.a.m.ned abyss," Mich.e.l.le whispered.

"Is she okay?" Tears trickled down Bianca's cheeks.

Luke sighed. "I don't know."

Jeremy's heart was beating like a drum and a ringing filled his ears. "So where is she? In a hospital?"

"No," Luke said as Bianca flung herself at her father and he held her tight. "She wasn't in the Jeep. It was wrecked. Bad. But she wasn't inside."

"Oh, G.o.d," Mich.e.l.le said and while Luke was shaking his head, trying to stop her, she blurted out, "He's got her! The d.a.m.ned Star-Crossed. He did this! Oh, for the love of G.o.d..."

Bianca let out a howl.

"Shut up, Mich.e.l.le, we don't know that. We don't know anything!" Luke bit out.

The honking continued.

"Who the h.e.l.l is that?" Luke demanded.

Jeremy snapped out of it. "My ride."

"Mommy!" Bianca sobbed brokenly.

"Shh, baby, it's gonna be all right," Luke said without enthusiasm. Without belief.

Jeremy knew better. Nothing was going to be right. Not if everyone stood around here doing nothing. No way was he going to stick around. Without a word, he ran out of the room while patting his pockets to make sure his keys and wallet were with him. His father finally woke up and started yelling his name, but Jeremy took off through the front door, across the path he'd shoveled yesterday and toward the driveway where Tyler McAllister's Chevy Blazer waited.

Chapter Nine.

So maybe Santana wasn't as bad as she'd originally thought, Selena considered. At least he did seem to care for Pescoli. He sat at her desk, answered questions, glared at her, his square jaw tight, his razor-thin lips compressed to an unyielding line. He hadn't been able to offer her any further clues to Regan's accident or abduction, but he seemed genuinely worried.

"That all?" he asked as a phone rang down the hall.

"For now."

"You'll keep me in the loop."

She didn't bother to answer or even to smile.

"Then I'll check in."

"Do that," she said, her headache returning. Santana wasn't next of kin, he wasn't even related to Pescoli. And he wasn't a cop. "Remember that this is a police matter. The sheriff's department and the FBI."

"Meaning?"

"That sometimes when a person is involved with a victim, even a potential victim, they try to help and end up getting in the way."

"Are you warning me off?"

"If you're thinking of doing some investigating on your own? Yeah. Leave it to the professionals."

"I work with horses."

Her eyes narrowed. "Not always." She noticed that he didn't so much as flinch. "I checked. You were with the military. Army Ranger. Right?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "And Army Intelligence?"

Not a flicker.

"I'm serious, Santana. Stay out of this. Impeding an investigation, getting into trouble with the law, it's not worth it."

His gaze narrowed just a bit. "But she is," he said tersely as he climbed to his feet. He didn't so much as smile, just added, "Let's go, Nakita." With a whistle to his dog, a husky that had settled in under the chair he'd taken, he strode away. Alvarez watched him go. He was s.e.xy all right and had that I-don't-give-a-d.a.m.n att.i.tude some women found fascinating down pat.

But he did give a d.a.m.n.

About Regan.

"Pescoli's main squeeze?"

She turned and found Sage Zoller, an elfin-looking junior detective who was just a few years younger than Alvarez, standing at the opening of her cubicle. Tiny but tough, Zoller ran marathons and mentored at-risk teens.

"Main Squeeze?" Alvarez repeated.

"I know. Archaic, huh? It's what my parents call each other." She was watching Santana as he strode around the corner. "Jesus, there's something about a rugged, good-looking guy with a big dog."

"Oh, give it up." Alvarez was not in the mood.

"Yeah...good idea. Besides, we've got other fish to fry. Another car's been spotted."

"Another car, other than Pescoli's Jeep?" Suddenly Zoller had all of Alvarez's attention.

"Just this morning. Van Droz caught the call. It's nose-down in Boxer Creek not far from Keegan's Corner..."

Which was also known by the locals as Dead Man's Curve.

"A red Saturn. Montana plates. Visible enough to determine that the car is registered to Elyssa O'Leary."

Alvarez's stomach nosedived. The name rang a bell. "She's one of the women who's been reported missing." She returned to her cubicle and sat at her desk. With a few quick keystrokes, she pulled up the file, including a driver's license and pictures of Elyssa Katherine O'Leary. Brown hair, brown eyes. Freckles. Twenty-six. Nursing student. Only child of Marlene and Brian O'Leary. Alvarez swallowed, thinking that the girl, even now, could be lashed to a tree somewhere in the rugged Montana wilderness, dragging cold air into her already-freezing lungs. "We have to find her."

"And Pescoli."

"Christ, yes!" she snapped. "Have you pinpointed this? Put it on the map?"

"Not yet."

"Let's go." With Alvarez leading the way, they cut through several banks of cubicles to the task force room where pictures of the crime scenes and victims were posted on one wall. Nearby an enlarged map of the area had been hung and pushpins indicated the crime scenes, not only where the mangled cars had been located, but also the position of the areas where the victims had been found.

"Do you have the exact location of O'Leary's vehicle?" Alvarez asked, stepping around a large table in the center of the room where the task force met. The chairs now were empty, pushed tight against the table by the cleaning crew. Nearby, a phone with a desk was stationed in one corner, an officer doing paperwork manning it. He looked up as they walked in, then turned back to his reports. All of the calls that came in with tips for the task force were routed here where Zoller, or whoever else was a.s.signed the duty, answered the phones and coordinated the messages with the detectives and FBI agents.

So far, in the past few months, ever since the first victim, Theresa Charleton, had been found lashed to a hemlock tree in the wilderness, the department had logged over a thousand calls.

None of the tips had panned out.

"The Saturn was discovered"-Zoller looked at the note in her hand for confirmation-"uh, exactly 4.6 miles from the corner of Henrici and Durango."

Alvarez located the position, right at the sharp corner, and pushed another pin in place. "If the killer's M.O. remains the same, we should find her in a two-mile radius from the car..." She ran a finger around the area of rugged canyons and hills, forests, and stone outcroppings. "Let's get the choppers to take a look-see, get some pictures. I think they're already in the air for Pescoli, right?"

"Yep. No response yet."

"They won't find her," Alvarez predicted as she unwillingly stuck a pin into the map, indicating the location of Pescoli's Jeep. "It's not time. The son of a b.i.t.c.h waits. Helps them heal before..."

"Yeah, I know." Zoller was nodding, her mop of dark curls shining under the fluorescent tubes mounted in the ceiling.

Selena eyed the map critically, trying to come up with something, an area they'd overlooked where the b.a.s.t.a.r.d could be holed up, a spot where they would likely find his next victim.

She glanced to the blown-up copies of the notes found nailed to the trunks of the trees over the victims' heads. They were similar with their star pattern, each just slightly different. Star-Crossed was trying to tell them something, but what?

"Has anyone called O'Leary's parents?" she asked Zoller.

"Not yet."

"Let's hold off on that until we look through the car."

Disturbed, feeling as if she were missing something, Alvarez headed back to her desk and scanned the missing persons report again. In his statement, the father, Brian, swore that no one on earth would want to harm his child, except for her boyfriend, Cesar Pelton, a divorced father of two and "hoodlum who couldn't hold a job." Pelton, according to Elyssa's father, had "knocked her around" a couple of times, though no police reports had ever been filed. Elyssa's mother, a meek woman, had stayed silent, neither agreeing or disagreeing with her husband.

The nightmare just kept getting worse, Alvarez thought as she glanced outside and noticed the first few flakes of snow beginning to fall.

Dr. Jalicia Ramsby had seen it all in her fifteen years of practice: A full spectrum of psychological diseases. Everything from clinical depression to bipolar disorder to schizophrenia and dissociative ident.i.ty disorder, more commonly known as multiple personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress syndrome, to name a few. She'd tried to help patients who were alcoholic, suicidal, manic depressive, autistic, you name it. She'd worked in clinics, in hospitals, in shelters, even in a prison.

And she could readily spot a fake.

Or so she thought.

However, the patient in room 126 gave her pause.

As she sat in her new office at Mountain View Hospital, a bright room with a breathtaking view of the Olympic Mountains in west Seattle, she drummed her fingers on her desk and ignored an unopened bottle of Diet Pepsi, her usual jolt of caffeine in the morning. Something was off. Something she couldn't quite define. Yet. She glanced at her tidy desk. Aside from the bottle of soda sitting on a woven coaster, there was a gla.s.s half filled with ice, a picture of her daughter at her eighth-grade graduation, a bud vase with a single white rose, and the open file. Fifteen years of notes, diagnoses, pictures, medical reports, and interviews.

Jalicia had read them over twice, trying to get a handle on Padgett Renee Long, and couldn't. The other patients in her care she understood. They didn't necessarily fit into neat little psychiatric boxes, but at least their conditions were consistent with other cases and gave her a frame of reference from which she could work.

Padgett was different.

She twirled her desk chair around and searched the bookcase, a virtual wall of tomes on every subject she'd found interesting. As she scanned the familiar t.i.tles, she thought of the quiet woman in 126. Not a word uttered other than prayers.

For fifteen years.

And yet there was intelligence behind Padgett's cornflower blue eyes; Jalicia sensed it.

Not finding a t.i.tle that would help, she turned back to her desk, cracked open the soft drink, poured it carefully into a gla.s.s with ice cubes, and watched the foam rise then fall, little bubbles bursting and creating a soft, tiny spray. She carried her drink to the window and stared outside.

Rain was spitting from the gray sky, clouds obscuring her view. Christmas lights twinkled in the row of fir trees lining the drive, a cheery reminder that the holidays were near.

Sipping her soda, Jalicia watched a sedan roll up the drive and take a parking spot marked for handicapped drivers. A man in a thick coat and fedora climbed out of the car, stopped at the trunk, and pulled out a wheelchair. He opened the chair and eased it close to the pa.s.senger side, then helped a portly woman into it.

Jalicia's desk phone rang and she turned away from the window. "Dr. Ramsby," she said, glancing at the file, then the clock. One of her men's groups was scheduled to meet in ten minutes.

"Yes, Doctor, I just wanted to alert you that a Mr. Barton Tinneman has been calling. He's the lawyer for Padgett Long."

Jalicia crossed to her desk and flipped open Padgett's file to the first page. Barton Tinneman's name was listed.

"Did you get his number?" she asked, glancing at the clock again.