Free Chosen to Die by Lisa Jackson

the frigid landscape. Their only hope was that the killer’s M.O. of nurturing his victims back to health before brutally leaving them to die in the frozen wilderness would buy Regan some time. If that was the case, then there was a good chance Pescoli was still alive and if she wasn’t too injured, she might be able to escape. She, if she hadn’t sustained a head injury, would know what she was dealing with. The other victims hadn’t been so lucky.
    Lucky. Yeah, right. God, what a mess.
    She spent another half hour on the ridge before calling it a night. There was nothing more she could do. The crime scene guys would go over the vehicle and surrounding area with fine-toothed combs and sophisticated equipment, the Jeep would be towed to the garage where it would be examined again and again. If the killer messed up…
    But so far he hasn’t.
    Now the clock was ticking down, vital seconds in Regan Pescoli’s life slipping away.
    She rubbed her gloved hands together, trying to get some feeling back in her fingers. Her toes, too, were beginning to tingle and go numb despite warm socks and boots. And the cold medication she’d taken hours before had worn off. Her nose was running and her ears were plugged.
    Walking to the edge of the cliff, she looked far below to the area where Pescoli’s car had landed.
    How had Star-Crossed known Regan Pescoli would be traveling this road at that particular moment in time?
    How could he know?
    Frustrated, she turned and looked up at the hill rising above the road. From the ridge he might have had an open shot. Still, the odds of pulling it off were against him.
    In the morning if the weather held off, officers would scour the ridge and hill, searching for shell casings or a spot where an assassin could lay in wait. Maybe this time they’d find something.
    She squinted up through the darkness. Had the bastard camped out here in the middle of a blizzard with near-whiteout conditions?
    He had to know.
    Alvarez pictured him waiting. Patiently. Silently. Finger on the trigger.
    She felt a chill deeper than the coming night.
    How had the killer learned that Pescoli would be driving hell-bent for leather over this pass? From Pescoli’s ex-husband? Her kids? Or had Pescoli’s assailant somehow tapped into her cell phone and was monitoring her calls?
    Or had the sick son of a bitch just gotten lucky?
    What were the odds of that?
    And there was that word again. Lucky. Just like the nickname that Luke Pescoli wore so proudly. An odd, unsettling connection.
    You’re grasping at straws.
    She sniffed hard but still continued to look up to the top of the ridge, though the crest of the hill was obscured by darkness. She tried to imagine him waiting in the near blizzard. Somehow he had to have known that she’d be driving on this road. No one, not even a real nut-job, would wait out here in sub-freezing temperatures for hours, maybe days, on end.
    Remember: this one’s a real wacko. He’s got a purpose; he’s driven. He’s had to have spent months, maybe years finding the right women for his victims. Lying in wait outside in these conditions might just turn him on.
    In her mind’s eye, she saw the killer stretched out on the snow, or on something to protect him from the cold, as he propped his rifle on a fallen log, or a stump or boulder, maybe a tripod, something to steady the barrel while he trained it with steely composure on the road below.
    He was a hunter, an assassin with an ace marksman’s deadly aim.
    Jaw sliding to one side, eyes narrowing, she wondered how the hell Star-Crossed had managed to pull off such a perfect shot as to disable a car and send it careening off the roads and into the canyons.
    She blew on her hands, watched her breath fog.
    How intimately had he known his victims before the attack?
    And what was his game? Not sexual gratification. At least not to the point of penetration. Not one body had shown signs of recent sexual abuse or intercourse. No semen was found in