Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

dreams.”
    “They’re not bad, really. Just strange. Maybe they’re angels. Angels in funny clothes, like the man in that picture.” He turned his sunken eyes to Maura, but he did not seem to be looking at her. He was focused past her shoulder, as if a presence lurked right behind her. “Or maybe they’re ghosts,” he whispered.
    Who is he looking at?
She swung around and stared at empty air. Saw the portrait of the man with the coal-dark eyes staring back at her. The same portrait that hung in every house in Kingdom Come. His face glowed with reflected firelight, as though sacred flames burned within him.
    “And he shall gather the righteous,”
Arlo said, quoting from the plaque on the portrait’s frame. “What if it’s true?”
    “What’s true?” asked Doug.
    “Maybe that’s where they all went. He gathered them up and led the way.”
    “Out of the valley, you mean?”
    “No. To heaven.”
    Wood snapped in the hearth, startling as a gunshot. Maura thought of the cross-stitched sampler she had seen hanging in one of the bedrooms. PREPARE FOR ETERNITY .
    “It’s strange, don’t you think?” said Arlo. “How none of the car radios work here. All we get is static. No stations at all. And we can’t get a cell phone signal. Nothing.”
    “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” said Doug. “And we’re in a valley. There’s no reception.”
    “Are you sure that’s all it is?”
    “What else would it be?”
    “What if something really bad happened out in the world? Being stuck here, we wouldn’t hear about it.”
    “Like what? A nuclear war?”
    “Doug, no one’s come looking for us. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
    “They haven’t noticed we’re missing yet.”
    “Or maybe it’s because there’s no one left out there. They’re all gone.” Arlo’s sunken eyes slowly took in the room where shadows flickered. “I think I know who these people were, Doug. The people who lived here. I think I’m seeing their ghosts. They were waiting for the end of the world. For the Rapture. Maybe it came, and we just don’t know it yet.”
    Doug laughed. “Trust me, Arlo. The Rapture is not what happened to these people.”
    “Dad?” Grace asked softly from the corner. She sat up, pulling the blanket close around her. “What’s he talking about?”
    “The pills are confusing him, that’s all.”
    “What’s the Rapture?”
    Doug and Maura looked at each other, and he sighed. “It’s just a superstition, honey. A crazy belief that the world as we know it is doomed to end with Armageddon. And when it does, God’s chosen people will be sucked straight up to heaven.”
    “What happens to everyone else?”
    “Everyone else is trapped on earth.”
    “And slaughtered,” whispered Arlo. “All the sinners left behind will be slaughtered.”
    “What?” Grace looked at her father with frightened eyes.
    “Honey, it’s nonsense. Forget it.”
    “But some people really believe it? They believe the end of the world is coming?”
    “Some people also believe in alien abductions. Use your noggin, Grace! Do you really think people are going to be magically transported to heaven?”
    The window rattled, as though something were clawing at the glass, trying to get in. A draft of air moaned down the chimney, scattering flames and sending a gust of smoke into the room.
    Grace hugged her knees to her chest. Staring up at the wavering shadows, she whispered: “Then where did all these people go?”

T HE GIRL WAS TWENTY-THREE POUNDS OF
NO! N O, BED ! N O, SLEEP !
No, no, no!
    Jane and Gabriel slumped bleary-eyed on the sofa and watched their daughter, Regina, spin around and around like a pygmy dervish.
    “How long can she possibly stay awake?” asked Jane.
    “Longer than we can.”
    “You’d think she’d get sick and throw up.”
    “You would think,” said Gabriel.
    “Someone has to take control here.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Someone has to be the parent.”
    “I absolutely agree.” He looked at Jane.
    “What?”
    “It’s your turn to play bad cop.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because you’re so good at it. Besides, I put her to bed the last three times. She just doesn’t listen to me.”
    “Because she figured out that Mr. FBI is a total marshmallow.”
    He looked at his watch. “Jane, it’s midnight.”
    Their daughter only whirled faster. When I was her age, was I just as exhausting? Jane wondered. This must be what the term
poetic justice
meant. Someday, you’ll have a