Chosen to Die by Lisa Jackson

time he’d straddled her, to check on her, offering her water and soup, not feeding her, but leaving a spoon and a tin cup of something that smelled like chicken bouillon, and a hospital bedpan—the ultimate humiliation.
    The bastard had poked and prodded her as she’d lain motionless, unable to lift herself up, her brain mush.
    That’s why he keeps the place dark, she thought now as her mind began to clear, her brain coming into sharper focus. It’s why he rarely enters, why when he does he wears dark glasses, a baseball cap, and a beard—probably a fake one at that. A disguise.
    The trouble was, she didn’t have any real clue to his identity. At least not yet. She eyed the doorway and the crack of light coming from beneath it. Once in a while a shadow passed, then paused, as if he were on the other side, peering through a peephole she couldn’t see, or pressing his ear against the wooden panels to listen to her.
    It made her skin crawl to imagine that he could observe her. Don’t think about it. Concentrate on getting out of here. If he’s afraid you’ll recognize him, then he must fear that you’ll expose him somehow.
    If that were the case, then he had to think she might escape. She didn’t kid herself for a minute into believing that he planned to keep her alive indefinitely or release her, not after all the effort he’d spent in capturing her, not after the way he’d treated his other victims.
    Still, he was uncertain.
    Otherwise he wouldn’t be afraid of letting her see his face.
    Somehow, she decided, as the first splinters of dawn cracked through the small window high overhead, she had to unmask him and make good her escape.
    And she had to do it soon.
    Before it was too late.
     
    Finally! A damned break in the weather!
    Brady Long eyed the clearing skies with satisfaction. After a week of this damn bleak, sub-zero forecast, he was finally able to climb into his JetRanger and make the trip between Denver and Grizzly Falls. The ride was a little rough, but Brady had always been up for a challenge, whether it was on the back of a particularly mean-tempered Brahma bull, or climbing the sheer face of a cliff thousands of miles above the valley floor, or helicopter and extreme skiing or skydiving or whatever it was that brought him the next big rush of adrenaline.
    He lived for it. A daredevil by nature, he never had understood placidity or fear. Life was to be lived on the edge, and those who took the safe road in life, who kept to their boring, secure ruts, were just plain wusses or sissies or pussies. Take your pick.
    Maybe he’d been born with too much testosterone running through his bloodstream, but he liked it that way. And so did most women; at least the ones who interested him had said so.
    Or, he thought now, as he flew his chopper over an ice-encrusted river that ran through the ranch, the women who were attracted to him were really interested in the size of his wallet. The name Long had been associated with copper, then silver, and even gold mines for generations.
    A woman could show interest because he was good-looking, or because he was a challenge, or because he was fearless or because he was “richer than God,” as one particularly buxom young blonde had whispered into his ear early one hot summer night. He didn’t care what turned them on, just as long as they got there.
    Yeah, the Long wealth made some flock to him, like vultures on the trail of a dying lamb.
    And he was the sole heir…well, not technically. There was Padgett, but she was in no condition to contest his claim to their father’s fortune, a wealth that was legendary in this part of Montana. And, he knew, his father had sown more than his share of wild oats, so there was always the chance one of Hubert’s bastards, or his and Padgett’s mother’s, might get wise and make a pitiful claim. But if that were the case, he, and a team of lawyers that he would hand-pick, would fight any and all would-be Longs either by