Left To Die by Lisa Jackson Page A

hers is half-wolf.”
    “Three quarters,” Mikhail cut in, looking up with a knowing smile.
    “You know this how?” Alvarez wasn’t certain she really wanted to hear the answer.
    “I’m interested in a pup.”
    “Oh, for the love of God! You know that Grace’s dog is practically a wild animal! She probably wasn’t walking it; the damned thing was walking her.”
    “She’s right,” Pescoli said. “We’ve had complaints about the wolf-dog more than once.”
    “It bit someone?”
    “Nah. Howled. Kept the neighbors awake.” Pescoli tucked a stray strand of hair beneath her cap.
    “That’s ridiculous,” Alvarez cut in. “I mean, if the dog needs to relieve himself, why not just let him go outside? Why walk during a damned blizzard?”
    “It’s Grace,” Watershed said, as if that explained it all.
    Frustrated, her cheeks red with the cold, Pescoli looked around the scene, her gaze inching over the snowy terrain. “Damn it, where did he take her?”
    Selena Alvarez shook her head. Deep inside, she experienced a chill, a frigid drip of dread sliding through her gut. She knew the woman inside the car was already doomed and eventually they would find her, just as they’d found the others. As the wind keened and the blizzard started ripping through this ridge of mountains, she and Pescoli walked back to the spot where Slatkin was taking samples of the frozen blood. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the son of a bitch cut himself. It could be his blood.”
    “Let’s not count on luck.” Another male voice broke in and Alvarez looked over her shoulder to spy the sheriff walking toward them from the direction of the forest service road. His big boots crunched in the snow and his expression said it all: repressed anger, and maybe even a touch of defeat. The wind had been so damned fierce, she hadn’t even heard his rig arrive.
    Alvarez nodded. “You’re right, we won’t.”
    “A little luck wouldn’t hurt,” Pescoli observed. “Personally, I’ll take all we can get.”
    A bit of a smile cracked across Grayson’s face. “Fair enough.” A tall, strapping man with a thick, graying moustache and dark, deep-set eyes, Grayson was recently elected and recently divorced—the two, it seemed, had gone hand in hand. At least it seemed that way to Alvarez. “Tell me that Ivor Hicks didn’t call this in.”
    “Not this time,” Alvarez assured him.
    “Nope.” Pescoli shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets. “This time our witness is Grace Perchant.”
    “Oh for the love of God. Another nutcase.” Grayson scowled. “First Ivor, now Grace. The next thing you know, we’ll be getting tips from Henry Johansen.”
    Though Henry, a local farmer, hadn’t claimed to have been abducted by aliens like Ivor, nor did he commune with the dead, which was Grace’s specialty, he had fallen off his tractor twenty years earlier and suffered an injury that had caused him to claim he could read people’s minds. There had been no proof of this phenomenon, and yet Henry was convinced that the voices he heard were the random thoughts of people he’d met. He was a regular visitor at the sheriff’s department, always insisting he had the inside track on some local crime.
    “God help us,” Watershed said.
    As Grayson observed the scene, his expression only grew more grim. “We’d better wrap this up soon. The weather service is advising that we’re in for another blizzard. A big one.”
    Alvarez’s heart sank. The chances of finding the driver of the car weren’t that great to begin with; add a blizzard and they dropped to nearly impossible.
    Grayson glared at the half-buried car and the lines around his mouth etched even deeper. “Looks like he’s at it again.”
    “Looks like,” Pescoli agreed.
    “Shit.” Dan glanced up at the ridge and snowflakes caught on his moustache as he chewed on his lower lip. “Same MO?”
    Watershed nodded. “Yep. Body and ID missing.”
    “Tire shot?”
    “Blown for sure,”