Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

“Here, ma’am. . I’ve got him now,” the EMT said, turning back to Trace.

“But I’m—”

“A doctor. I know.” He was firm. “Hey, Annie,” he called over his shoulder as Kacey was vaguely aware of colored lights strobing the night. Red and blue flashes through the ever-falling snow. “I could use some help over here! This one’s in shock,” the EMT said and glanced up at Kacey.

The O’Halleran ranch was a madhouse.

All hell had broken loose before Alvarez and Pescoli arrived, their Jeep sliding around the corner at the end of the drive and nearly taking out the mailbox. Two department issued vehicles were parked near an open gate and an ambulance too, idled, waiting to transport the injured.

At the back of the big farmhouse while battling the elements EMTs were tending to Trace O’Halleran, strapping him to a stretcher while a search team had been dispatched to find O’Halleran’s missing son. Cameron Johnson, dressed in black and wearing night goggles, was dead from two gunshot wounds, inflicted, admittedly, by Kacey Lambert.

Shivering, a blanket thrown around her shoulders, Kacey herself admitted to cutting him down when he refused to drop his weapon. Pale as death, obviously in shock, Kacey swore that Cameron had already killed the woman still lying in the snow in front of them.

A woman who could have been her twin.

“I think it’s Leanna,” Kacey said, almost numbly, her gaze fastened on the woman’s frozen features.

“Dead,” one of the EMTs confirmed.

“I need to go with him,” Kacey insisted as two burly rescue workers carried Trace on a stretcher through the piling snow to the waiting ambulance.

“You can ride with us,” Pescoli said.

“Hey!” Trilby Van Droz, one of the road deputies, cocked her head toward the main road. “Looks like we’ve got company.” Twin headlights glowed at the end of the drive, but Pescoli couldn’t make out the vehicle. “Five will get you one, it’s the press.”

A news van.

Of course. Great. Just what they didn’t need. “They have to back off. Until we know what went down,” Pescoli shouted and Van Droz began heading down the lane, following the tracks of the ambulance that carried Trace.

“I think O’Halleran is going to be okay,” Alvarez said.

“But Eli. We have to find him,” Kacey insisted. “Leanna. . I thought she was in the house with me. . warning me. . but the timing probably couldn’t be. I thought she was an angel.”

Pescoli glanced at her partner. “Let’s have a doctor look at her, too.”

“I’m fine,” Kacey insisted, but her face was pretty bruised, the skin scraped, her chin covered in blood.

“Okay, let’s go,” Pescoli said. As the ambulance sped off through the snow, Pescoli, Alvarez, and Kacey trudged through the drifts to the Jeep. Kacey climbed into the backseat. Her car was still in the police garage, the black paint transferred from her fender bender, not yet analyzed. Alvarez settled into the passenger seat and Pescoli backed up, then rammed the Jeep into gear.

Even though Cam Johnson was dead, Pescoli still felt a sense of urgency, and the missing kid didn’t help. Where the hell could he be? she wondered as she flipped on the lights and hit the gas. There were too many loose ends to be tied up, too much evidence to be collected, other stories that had to jibe with what Kacey was saying before Pescoli would be satisfied. Even though the doctor was half mad with worry about the boy’s whereabouts and beyond concerned that Trace O’Halleran might not make it, Alvarez and Pescoli were required to haul her to the station.

After their trip to the Emergency Room.

True, Pescoli thought as she drove onto the county road and saw the news team from a local station huddled in their van, Kacey Lambert had called 9-1-1 as well as left Alvarez several voice mail messages on her phone. It had been the doctor who had drawn the authorities to the scene, but she hadn’t played by the book, had ignored the 9-1-1 dispatcher’s advice and taken the law into her own hands.

Had she saved O’Halleran’s life?

Probably.

But two other people were dead and a kid was still missing.

The sketchy statement Kacey had given coincided with everything the crime scene guys had put together so far, but it was too early in the game. They still had to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.

She headed toward Grizzly Falls.

The night was dark aside from the snow, only a few farmhouses in the area, those with generators, showing any light in the windows. Tow trucks had stopped for a vehicle that had slid into the ditch, and other traffic was slow, battling the storm.

Pescoli had the heater working overtime, the interior of the Jeep as hot as a sauna, yet Kacey Lambert couldn’t seem to get warm and was shivering as she told her story for the second time, then worried aloud about Eli.

“If anything happens to him, I’ll never forgive myself,” she said and stared out the window, her breath fogging the glass. “Never.”

Two minutes later, just as they reached the snow-covered sign welcoming all to Grizzly Falls, Alvarez’s cell phone jangled. She took the call and listened, the conversation one-sided. “What?. . Where… Thank God.” She twisted in the passenger seat. “We’ve got him.”

“What? Who? Eli? ” Kacey demanded.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s safe.”

“Thank God!” Kacey’s voice broke and she sniffed loudly.

Pescoli’s hands held the wheel in a death grip, but she felt a rush of relief, a dam of fear breaking inside her. “Shhh!” Alvarez held up a hand and finished the call. “Yeah, well, bring him into the office. We’ll meet you there.” She hung up and even her usually icy all-professional facade cracked. “He’s fine.”

Pescoli glanced in the rearview mirror and saw tears of happiness well in her passenger’s eyes.

“Okay,” Alvarez went on, “I don’t know all the details, but it looks like he was kidnapped by his mother, dropped off at the neighbors — Ed and Matilda Zukov’s house — and they’ve been trying to reach someone ever since. Apparently Leanna O’Halleran cut their phone line and stole their cells to give herself time to fulfill some mission.”

“She was after Cam,” Kacey said quietly. “She knew.”

“Apparently,” Alvarez agreed. “We’ll be getting more information from the Zukovs. An officer is bringing them into the station, along with the boy.”

Pescoli grimaced against the glare of particularly bright high beams as a truck rumbled past. “So she was out of the picture for most of the kid’s life, then she suddenly, in what some kind of cosmic mother instinct rolls into town at just the right moment to blow some nut case away?” Pescoli shot a look at her partner. “What did she know?”

Alvarez shook her head. They might never fully figure it out.

Kacey went over her statement three times and answered a slew of questions, though it was obvious Pescoli and Alvarez, and even the sheriff himself believed her. They’d planned on taking her directly to the hospital but she’d insisted on getting the interview at the sheriff ’s department over with first. As soon as they got there she took time to head to the bathroom, wash her face, down three migraine-strength Excedrin, and use a slightly too large Band-Aid that the woman at reception had given her on her chin. She’d called the hospital on Trace’s cell, but had only learned that Trace was in surgery.

Deputy Van Droz brought the Zukovs and Eli into the room where Kacey was being interviewed just as Kacey had finished another run-through of the events that had taken place at the O’Halleran ranch. She threw her arms around the boy, tears filling her eyes. “Thank God you’re safe,” she whispered fervently and ruffled his hair.