Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

it!”
    Maura instantly shut off the motor.
    The shrieks were coming from Grace. Shrill, piercing wails that did not sound human. Maura turned to look at her, but didn’t see why the girl was screaming. Grace stood at the side of the road, hands pressed to the sides of her face. Her eyelids were clenched shut, as though desperately blocking out something terrible.
    Maura shoved open her door and scrambled out of the Jeep.Blood was splattered across the whiteness of snow in shockingly bright red ribbons.
    “Hold him still!” Doug yelled. “Elaine, you’ve got to keep him still!”
    Grace’s shrieks faded to a choked sob.
    Maura ran back to the rear of the Jeep, where the ground was awash in more blood, steaming on the churned-up snow. She could not see the source of it, because Doug and Elaine blocked her view as they knelt near the right rear tire. Only when she leaned over Doug’s shoulder did she see Arlo, lying on his back, his jacket and trousers saturated. Elaine was holding down Arlo’s shoulders as Doug applied pressure to the exposed groin. Maura caught sight of Arlo’s left leg—what remained of it—and she reeled backward, nauseated.
    “I need a tourniquet!” yelled Doug, struggling to keep his blood-slicked palms positioned over the femoral artery.
    Maura quickly unbuckled her belt and yanked it free. Dropping to her knees in the bloody snow, she felt icy slush soak into her pants. Despite Doug’s pressure on the artery, a steady stream of red was seeping into the snow. She slipped her belt under the thigh and blood smeared her jacket sleeve, a startling stripe across white nylon. As she looped the belt, she felt Arlo trembling, his body rapidly sinking into shock. She yanked the tourniquet tight, and the stream of blood slowed to a trickle. Only then, with the bleeding controlled, did Doug release his grip on the artery. He rocked back to stare at the torn flesh and protruding bone, at a limb so twisted that the foot jutted in one direction, the knee in another.
    “Arlo?” Elaine said.
“Arlo?”
She shook him, but he had fallen limp and unresponsive.
    Doug felt Arlo’s neck. “He’s got a pulse. And he’s breathing. I think he just fainted.”
    “Oh my God.” Elaine rose and stumbled away. They could hear her throwing up in the snow.
    Doug looked down at his hands, and with a shudder he scooped up snow and frantically scrubbed away the blood. “The tire chain,” he muttered, rubbing snow against his skin, as though he could somehow purify himself of the horror. “One of the broken links must have snagged his pants. Wrapped his leg around the axle …” Doug rolled back on his knees and released a breath that was half sigh, half sob. “We’ll never get this Jeep out of here. The chain’s broken all to hell.”
    “Doug, we have to get him back to the house.”
    “The house?” Doug looked at her. “What he needs is a fucking OR!”
    “He can’t stay out here in the cold. He’s in shock.” She rose to her feet and glanced around. Grace was huddled off by herself, her back turned to them. Elaine was crouched in the snow, as though too dizzy to stand straight. Neither of them would be any help.
    “I’ll be right back,” said Maura. “Stay with him.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I saw a sled in one of the garages. We can drag him back on that.” She left them and started running toward the village, her boots slipping and sliding in the ruts left by the Jeep’s ascent. It was a relief to leave behind the bloody snow and her shell-shocked companions, a relief to focus on a concrete task that required only speed and muscle. She dreaded what came after they moved Arlo back into the house, when they’d be forced to confront what was left of his leg, now little more than mutilated flesh and splintered bones.
    The sled. Where did I see that sled?
    She finally found it in the third garage, hanging on wall pegs alongside a ladder and an array of tools. Whoever lived here had kept an organized household, and as she pulled down the sled, she imagined him hammering in these pegs, suspending his tools high enough that young hands couldn’t reach them. The sled was made of birch and had no manufacturer’s label. Handmade, it had been crafted with care, the runners sanded smooth and freshly polished in readiness for winter. All this she registered in a glance. Adrenalinehad sharpened her vision and made her reflexes hum like high-voltage wires. She scanned the garage for