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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 subfreezing temperature outside her vehicle. No one, not one person on this planet, could make her see red the way her ex-husband 2
Lisa Jackson
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 nearly alone, were with him. Lucky, in that supercilious tone of his, had said, “The kids, Michelle, and I have been talking, and we all agree that Jeremy and Bianca should live with us.”
The argument had escalated from that point and just before she’d slammed down the receiver, her parting words to her ex had been firm: “Pack up the kids, Lucky, because I’m coming to get them. And that includes Cisco. I want my son. I want my daughter. I want my dog. And I’m coming to get them.”
CHOSEN TO DIE
3
She’d locked the house and taken off, determined to set things straight and get her kids back. Or kill Lucky. Maybe both.
The Jeep’s engine whined in protest on the snowy terrain as she slowed to an irritating crawl. She searched for her hidden, “only in a situation of extreme stress” pack of cigarettes in the glove box and found that it was empty. “Great.” She crushed the useless pack and tossed it on the floor in front of the passenger seat. She’d been meaning to quit . . . completely and absolutely quit again for a while. Today, it seemed, was the start.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” some female country singer warbled and Pescoli snapped off the radio.
“You got that right,” she muttered fiercely and gunned the Jeep around a corner. The tires slid a bit, then held.
She barely noticed.
