Lisa Jackson - Chosen to Die

Yesterday

Regan Pescoli was hot.

Not in the sexual sense.

Hot as in furious. As in consumed with rage. As in pissed as hell.

Her hands gripped the wheel of her Jeep so tightly her knuckles bleached white, her jaw was set, and she glared through the windshield as if she could conjure up the image of the soulless bastard whod sent her into this stratosphere of rage.

Bastard, she muttered as the county-issued Jeeps tires slid a bit on the icy incline. Her heart was racing and her cheeks were flushed despite the sub-freezing temperature outside her vehicle.

No one, not one person on this planet, could make her see red the way her ex-husband Luke Lucky Pescoli could. And today was no exception. In fact, today, hed crossed the invisible line Regan had drawn and hed heretofore avoided. Damn, he was a loser. In all the years shed been married to him, the only luck hed brought her was bad.

Now, out of the blue, the son of a bitch was set on taking her kids away from her.

As the notes of a familiar Christmas tune played through the radio of her Jeep, Regan drove like a madwoman through the steep, snow-covered hills and canyons of this part of the Bitterroot Mountain range. The Jeep, windows fogging, responded, engine growling through the pass, tires spinning over the snowy county road that crossed this particular ridge, the backbone of a mountain that separated her home from that of Lucky and his new wife, a Barbie doll of a woman named Michelle.

Usually Regan loved this barrier.

Today, with worsening weather conditions, it was a pain.

Her last phone conversation with Lucky replayed like a bad recording on an unending loop through her mind. Hed called and confirmed that her children, the son and daughter shed raised nearly alone, were with him. Lucky, in that supercilious tone of his, had said, The kids, Michelle, and I have been talking, and we all agree that Jeremy and Bianca should live with us.

The argument had escalated from that point and just before shed slammed down the receiver, her parting words to her ex had been firm: Pack up the kids, Lucky, because Im coming to get them. And that includes Cisco. I want my son. I want my daughter. I want my dog. And Im coming to get them.

Shed locked the house and taken off, determined to set things straight and get her kids back. Or kill Lucky. Maybe both.

The Jeeps engine whined in protest on the snowy terrain as she slowed to an irritating crawl. She searched for her hidden, only in a situation of extreme stress pack of cigarettes in the glove box and found that it was empty. Great. She crushed the useless pack and tossed it on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Shed been meaning to quitcompletely and absolutely quit again for a while. Today, it seemed, was the start.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, some female country singer warbled and Pescoli snapped off the radio.

You got that right, she muttered fiercely and gunned the Jeep around a corner. The tires slid a bit, then held.

She barely noticed.

Nor did she see the tall spruce, fir, and pine trees, their branches drooping under the pressure of snow and ice as they rose like majestic sentinels in the crisp, frigid air and snowflakes poured from invisible clouds. The wipers were slapping away the flakes while the heater thrust out BTUs. Despite the fan, the warmed air flow couldnt keep up with the steam on the inside of the windows.

Pescoli squinted and longed for a single blast of nicotine as she braced herself for the confrontation that was about to ensue. It promised to be epic. So much for Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Peace and goodwill to men. Not in Luckys case. Not ever. All those platitudes about making nice for the kids, keeping the peace, and reining in her emotions were out the window.

He could not, could not , take her kids from her.

Sure, she worked a lot of overtime with the Pinewood County Sheriffs Department and lately, with the winter storms causing widespread electrical outages, road closures, and icy conditions everywhere, the department had been stretched thin. Then there was the Star-Crossed Killer still at large, the first serial killer ever to hunt in this part of Montana.

This guy was bad news. A patient, organized, and skilled killer who somehow shot out the tires of unsuspecting victims, then rescued the injured women before squirreling them to some private lair where he nurtured them back to health, gaining their trust and dependence before marching them naked into the storm-ravaged wilderness and strapping them to a tree where he left them to die a slow, agonizing death in the frigid, unforgiving forests.

God, shed love to nail his ass.

So far the cruel bastard had killed five women, the last one, Hannah Estes, having survived long enough to be found and life-flighted to a hospital where she had died before regaining consciousness and identifying the sick son of a bitch. There was other evidence found at the scenes, of course, the crashed vehicles found far from where the victims were located and even notes left at each killing arena by the slayer, nailed over the victims heads. But not one shred of evidence so far could be tied to any suspect. Not that they had any real person of interest. At this point, with the victims unrelated, no would-be killer had popped onto the radar.