Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

only whispered to the despairing man:
Now, wait a minute, heartbreak is temporary. This pain will pass, and you’ll find another girl to love someday.
    She finished the last slide and set it in the box. Sat for a moment, her mind not on the slides she had just reviewed, but on another image: a young man with dark hair and green eyes. She had not watched his autopsy; that afternoon, while he had been split open and dissected by Dr. Bristol, she had remained upstairs in her office. But even as she’d dictated reports and flipped through microscope slides late into the evening, she had been thinking about him.
Do I really want to know who he is?
She still hadn’t decided. Even as she rose from her desk, as she gathered her purse and an armful of files, she was uncertain of her answer.
    Again, the phone rang; again, she ignored it.
    Walking down the silent hallway, she passed closed doors and deserted offices. She remembered another evening when she had walked out of this empty building, to find the claw mark scratched into her car, and her heart started to beat a little faster.
    But he’s gone, now. The Beast is dead.
    She stepped out the rear exit, into a night soft with summery warmth. She paused beneath the building’s outside lamp to scan the shadowy parking lot. Drawn by the glow of the light, moths swarmed around the lamp and she heard wings fluttering against the bulb. Then, another sound: the closing of a car door. A silhouette walked toward her, taking on form and features as it moved into the lamp’s glow.
    She gave a sigh of relief when she saw it was Ballard. “Were you waiting for me?”
    “I saw your car in the lot. I tried calling you.”
    “After five, I let the machine pick up.”
    “You weren’t answering your cell phone, either.”
    “I turned it off. You don’t need to keep checking on me, Rick. I’m fine.”
    “Are you, really?”
    She sighed as they walked to her car. She looked up at the sky, where stars were washed pale by city lights. “I have to decide what to do about the DNA. Whether I really want to know the truth.”
    “Then don’t do it. It doesn’t matter if you are related to them. Amalthea has nothing to do with who
you
are.”
    “That’s what I would have said before.”
Before I knew whose bloodlines I might share. Before I knew I might come from a family of monsters.
    “Evil isn’t hereditary.”
    “Still, it’s not a good feeling, knowing I might have a few mass murderers in my family.”
    She unlocked her door and climbed in behind the wheel. Had just thrust her key in the ignition when Ballard leaned into the car.
    “Maura,” he said. “Have dinner with me.”
    She paused, not looking at him. Just stared at the green glow of the dashboard lights as she considered his invitation.
    “Last night,” he said, “you asked me a question. You wondered whether I’d still be interested in you if I’d never loved your sister. I don’t think you believed my answer.”
    She turned to look at him. “There’s no way to really know, is there? Because you
did
love her.”
    “So give me the chance to know
you.
I didn’t just imagine it, up there in the woods. You felt it, I felt it. There
was
something between us.” He leaned in closer. Said, softly, “It’s only dinner, Maura.”
    She thought of the hours she had just spent working in that sterile building, with only the dead to keep her company. Tonight, she thought, I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with the living.
    “Chinatown’s right up the street,” she said. “Why don’t we go there?”
    He slid into the passenger seat beside her, and they looked at each other for a moment. The glow of the parking lot lamp slanted across his face, casting half of it in shadow. He reached out to touch her cheek. Then his arm came around to pull her closer, but she was already there, leaning into him, ready to meet him halfway. More than halfway. His mouth found hers, and she heard herself sigh. Felt him draw her into the warmth of his arms.
    The explosion rocked her.
    She flinched as Rick’s window imploded, as glass stung her cheek. She opened her eyes again to stare at him. At what was left of his face, now bloody pulp. Slowly his body slumped toward her. His head landed on her thighs, and the heat of his blood soaked into her lap.
    “Rick.
Rick!
”
    A movement outside drew her stunned gaze. She looked up, and from out of the darkness, a figure in black emerged, moving toward her with robotic