INSIDE A KILLER’S LAIR
Without hesitation, Pescoli walked to the huge cabinet and opened the double doors. Inside were papers. Books on astronomy and astrology were slid into slots. Along with boxes neatly stacked and drawings…It was too dark to see, but…
Her stomach dropped as she recognized the pages. Notes that had been left on the trees above the victims’ heads and more…Oh God, so many more.
Telling herself that she was running out of time, shivering with the cold, she surveyed the room for a weapon, or phone, or computer, anything so that she could protect herself and get word to the outside world, but no luck.
She did uncover a flashlight, though, and when she cast its beam over the contents of the armoire one last time, she nearly jumped out of her skin. There, along with the neatly drawn notes with their cryptic messages and stars, were pictures. Of the women he’d captured. Each one naked, bound to a tree, still very much alive, terror in their eyes.
Pescoli’s stomach quivered.
She had no choice but to leave the evidence where it was, and find a way of escape. For herself. For Elyssa. For the others he’d alluded to.
Where are they?
Where is Elyssa?
Is she here somewhere?
Or is she already being forced through the forest to a lone tree where she is certain to die a lonely, brutal death…
Books by Lisa Jackson
SEE HOW SHE DIES
FINAL SCREAM
WISHES
WHISPERS
TWICE KISSED
UNSPOKEN
IF SHE ONLY KNEW
HOT BLOODED
COLD BLOODED
THE NIGHT BEFORE
THE MORNING AFTER
DEEP FREEZE
FATAL BURN
SHIVER
MOST LIKELY TO DIE
ABSOLUTE FEAR
ALMOST DEAD
LOST SOULS
LEFT TO DIE
WICKED GAME
MALICE
CHOSEN TO DIE
Published by Zebra Books
Chosen To Die
LISA JACKSON
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2009 by Susan Lisa Jackson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4201-1053-1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always there are many people who helped me while I wrote this book. It’s a case of the usual suspects, for the most part, and they’re great: Nancy Bush, Alex Craft, Matthew Crose, Niki Crose, Michael Crose, Kelly Foster, Marilyn Katcher, Ken Melum, Robin Rue, John Scognamiglio, Larry Sparks, and more. As always, there may be some errors in the book, and they are all mine.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Epilogue
Chapter One
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 who’d sent her into this stratosphere of rage.
“Bastard,” she muttered as the county-issued Jeep’s 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, he’d crossed the invisible line Regan had drawn and he’d heretofore avoided. Damn, he was a loser. In all the years she’d been married to him, the only “luck” he’d 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. He’d called and confirmed that her children, the son and daughter she’d raised