Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

are you going?” Jane asked.
    “For a walk.” From the back, Maura pulled out the shovel that she’d just purchased in the hardware store.
    “I told you, they’ve already gone over this field.”
    “But did they search the woods?” Carrying the shovel, Maura headed down the row of ruined houses, the ice crackling beneath her boots. Everywhere, she saw evidence that law enforcement personnel had combed this site, from the trampled snow to the multiple tire tracks to the cigarette butts and scraps of paper fluttering across the snow. The sun was sinking, taking with it the last daylight. She strode more quickly now, leaving behind the burned village, and started into the trees.
    “Wait up!” Jane called.
    She could not remember exactly where she and Rat had entered the woods. Their snowshoe prints had since vanished under subsequent snowfall. She kept moving in the general direction in which they had fled from the men and the bloodhound. She had not brought snowshoes, and every step was hard work, through knee-high drifts. She heard Jane complaining loudly behind her, but Maura kept plowing ahead, dragging the shovel, her heart pounding from the effort. Had she gone too far into the woods? Had she missed the spot?
    Then the trees opened up and the clearing stretched before her, the snow mounded over heaps of construction debris. The excavator was still parked at the far edge, and she saw the skeletal frames of new buildings, still awaiting completion. Here was the place where she had fallen, mired in a deep drift. Where she’d lain helplessly as the bloodhound closed in. She saw it all again, her pulse thudding at the memory. The bloodhound leaping toward her. His yelp of surprise as Bear intercepted him in midair.
    All traces of the dogs’ battle had vanished beneath fresh powder, but she could still make out the depression in the snow where she had fallen, could see the hilly contours of construction rubbish cloaked beneath white.
    She sank her shovel into one of the mounds and flung aside a scoop of snow.
    Jane finally caught up and trudged, panting, into the clearing. “Why are you digging in this spot?”
    “I saw something here before. It might be nothing. It might be everything.”
    “Well, that sure answers my question.”
    Maura flung aside another scoop of snow. “I got only a glimpse of it. But if it’s what I think it is …” Maura’s shovel suddenly hit something solid. Something that gave off a muffled clang. “This could be it.” She dropped to her knees and began scooping away the snow with her gloved hands.
    Little by little the object emerged, smooth and curved. Shecould not pry it loose because it was solidly frozen to the mound of debris beneath it. She kept scooping away snow, but half of the object remained buried out of sight and encased in ice. What she’d exposed was one end of a gray metal cylinder. It was encircled by two painted stripes, one green and one yellow. Stamped on that cylinder was the code D568 .
    “What is that thing?” asked Jane.
    Maura didn’t answer. She just continued to scrape away snow and ice, exposing more and more of the cylinder. Jane knelt down to help her. New numbers appeared, stamped in green.
    2011-42-114
155H
M12TAT
    “You have any idea what these numbers mean?” Jane asked.
    “I assume they’re serial numbers of some kind.”
    “For what?”
    A scrim of ice suddenly broke away, and Maura stared at the stenciled letters that she’d just revealed.
    VX GAS
    Jane frowned. “VX. Isn’t that some kind of nerve gas?”
    “That’s exactly what it is,” Maura said softly, and she rocked back on her knees, stunned. She stared across the clearing at the excavator. The settlers were putting up new buildings on this site, she thought. They’d cleared the trees and were digging foundations for more homes. Preparing the valley for new families who’d be moving into Kingdom Come.
    Did they know that a time bomb lay buried in this soil, the soil they were digging into and churning up?
    “A pesticide didn’t kill these people,” said Maura.
    “But you said it matched the clinical picture.”
    “So does VX nerve gas. It kills in
exactly
the same way that organophosphates do. VX disrupts the same enzymes, causes the same symptoms, but it’s far more potent. It’s a chemical weapon designed to be dispersed through the air. If you release it in a low-lying area …” Maura looked at Jane. “It would turn this valley into a killing