“You should climb the hell on my back so we can get out of here now,” he said, “before whoever did this to you decides to come back.”
“Come back? No,” she said.
“Seems pretty determined to me.”
She didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t let herself think that the monster who had debased her and left her to suffer and die in the wilderness would still be stalking her. But she stared at the forest with new eyes, with a new fear. What if, even now, the psycho was watching them through binoculars or sighting her through a rifle.
Her throat went dry and fear, cold as the air surrounding them, burrowed deep into her heart. Who would be doing this to her? Trying to kill her, but doing it slowly. Ritualistically. “Is this…this being tied to a tree and left, the way the serial killer does it?”
“After he shoots out the tires of their cars. I think so. At least I read of a couple of women it happened to, but that was before the last spate of storms knocked out all the phone lines and electricity.”
“You think me and the other women were targeted for a reason?”
“I’d bet on it.”
She studied the horizon, searching for a dark figure lurking on the ridge, a sparkle of reflection off field glasses or a rifle’s sight. Was someone even now aiming at the back of her head or the spot between her shoulder blades?
“So, we’d better not go back to the cabin.” He was thinking aloud as he walked into the forest from the clearing.
“Why not?”
“He could be waiting for us.”
“He thinks I’m dead.”
“Does he?” MacGregor wasn’t convinced. “What makes you so sure that he isn’t watching us now?”
“The fact that we’re still alive. He’s got two guns that we know of, the one he used on Harley and the one you left for me, which he took. If he was still around, he would have picked you off before you cut me loose.”
“But if he figures out you didn’t die, he’ll be back,” MacGregor said, breathing with some difficulty. “When he couldn’t get you in the wrecked car, he tracked you down.”
“How?”
“Good question, but whoever this guy is, he’s damned determined.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Are you still betting on your ex?”
“Not if this guy is a serial killer.”
He shifted her again and she tried not to think about her bare thighs surrounding his waist, the way she jostled against him. It was all too bizarre, like something out of a weird, disjointed dream—the frigid cold, being half-dressed and carried, a killer potentially watching them after having tied her to a tree. “Not Mason,” she said at length. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Not the serial killer type?”
“No.” Mason Rivers was a lot of things, some of them not good. He was greedy and a cheat, an attorney who could bend the rules to his way of thinking, but a cold-blooded murderer? No way.
“Hold on.” He hiked her body up higher and she bit back the urge to cry out.
Walking briskly, trudging through the knee-deep snow and beginning to sweat despite the frigid temperature, MacGregor said, “Tell you what. I’ll leave you near the cabin, then check it out. If it’s safe, I’ll carry you there and then I’ll get Harley.”
Her heart twisted at the thought of the dog. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t write him off yet. He’s tougher than he looks.”
But she didn’t believe it. The dog had been shot so badly he couldn’t move, then had been cruelly left to bleed and die in the snow.
“That twisted son of a bitch,” she whispered, her fingers curling into fists.
“Tell me what happened.” MacGregor was breathing hard now, sweat trickling down his neck as he trudged on.
“I could try to walk.”
“I’m okay.”
“But—”
“Just tell me what happened,” he said tersely. “How you ended up tied to the tree without a stitch on.”
“Okay.” As he hauled her down a short hill and across a frozen stream, Jillian began with her fears, how she’d been waiting for MacGregor at the cabin as the hours had passed, how she’d worried that he wasn’t returning, that something had happened to him, how she’d let the dog out to relieve himself before realizing she’d made a mistake.
“I was watching him and then Harley took off. I followed, but with my damned ankle and using a crutch, there was no way I could keep up with him. He took off through a thicket and I followed and then…and then…oh God, I heard a gunshot and this horrible, painful yelp. It was awful,” she said, replaying the horrible scene in her mind. “I found him and he was just lying in the snow…. Oh dear God, it was so awful,” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
“And you didn’t see the guy?” MacGregor said, trudging onward, through the play of sunlight and shadow, and heading, she assumed, toward the cabin.
“I don’t remember anything after coming upon the dog. I…I don’t know what happened to my clothes or my crutch or the rifle. He jumped me from behind, put a rag soaked in something—I think maybe ether—over my face. The next thing I knew I woke up naked and tied to the tree.”
“Where did the bastard go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “As I said, I was out.” She shuddered and he held her closer, his body warmth seeping through the T-shirt he still wore and the bulky sweater covering her body.
“Did you recognize anything about him?”
“I didn’t see him.” And that was the God’s honest truth. He’d jumped her from behind and…
A noise caught her attention.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up through the ice-laden canopy of naked branches just as she recognized the whomp, whomp, whomp of a helicopter’s rotor whirring in the distance.
“Maybe help,” he said, looking up, squinting into the heavens. His lips tightened a fraction just as a rescue copter appeared over the sharp crest of the surrounding mountains.
“Oh God, you’re right!” Her heart soared and her throat closed. Rescue! Finally!
Still holding her with one arm, Zane waved frantically, trying to get the pilot’s attention. “What did I tell ya?” he said with more than a touch of irony. “The Cavalry is finally on its way!”
MacGregor sat in the uncomfortable chair in the interrogation room and, while the two investigators peppered him with questions, stared at the large one-way mirror through which he knew the sheriff, district attorney and probably a host of other cops were watching his reactions. He could invoke his right to a lawyer; hell, they were expecting it as they videotaped the interview, but he had nothing to hide.
He picked his way through the minefield of questions, answering honestly but not giving up any extra information in the cinder-block room, where the acrid scent of ammonia couldn’t quite hide the smells of body odor, vomit and desperation. Fluorescent tubes offered a buzzing, jittery light. Mounted in one corner was a camera, its lens focused on the small table, where a half-filled ashtray sat in one corner and a thick manila file with notes jotted across it and papers stuffed inside lay, like a coiled snake, silent and deadly, ready to strike in a split second.
“…so you expect us to believe that in the middle of one of the worst blizzards in the last decade, you just came across Jillian