Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

hear when I come in the door is,
You’re a thief.”
    “I didn’t say that!” Elaine protested.
    Maura rose and calmly approached the girl. “What did you find, Grace?”
    “As if you’re interested.”
    “I am. I want to know what you found.”
    The girl paused, torn between injured pride and her eagerness to share her news. “It’s outside,” she finally said. “Near the woods.”
    Maura pulled on her jacket and gloves and followed Grace outside. The snow, earlier churned up by all their comings and goings, had crusted over into knobby ice, and Maura navigated carefully over the slippery surface as she and Grace circled to the rear of the house and started across the field of snow, toward the trees.
    “This is what I saw first,” the girl said, pointing to the snow. “These tracks.”
    They were animal footprints. A coyote, thought Maura, or perhaps a wolf. Although blowing snow had obscured the prints in places, it was obvious that they moved in a direct line toward their house.
    “It must have left these prints last night,” said Grace. “Or maybe the night before. Because they’re all frozen over now.” She turned toward the woods. “And there’s something else I want to show you.”
    Grace headed across the field, following the tracks toward a snow-covered mound. It was just a white hillock, its features blending into the vast landscape of snow, where everything was white, where bush and boulder were indistinguishable beneath their thick winter blankets. Only as they drew closer to the mound did Maura see the streak of yellow peeking through, where Grace had swiped away the snow to reveal what was underneath.
    A bulldozer.
    “It’s just sitting out here in the open,” said Grace. “Like they were in the middle of digging up something and they just … stopped.”
    Maura pulled open the door and looked into the driver’s cab. There was no key in the ignition. If they could somehow get it started, they might be able to plow their way up to the road. She looked at Grace. “You wouldn’t know how to hot-wire an engine, would you?”
    “If we had Google, we could look it up.”
    “If we had Google, we’d be long gone from this place.” With a sigh, Maura swung the door shut.
    “See these tracks?” said Grace. “They go right past here and head toward the woods.”
    “We’re in the wild. You’d expect to find animal tracks.”
    “It knows we’re here.” Grace looked around uneasily. “It’s been sniffing around us.”
    “Then we’ll just stay inside at night, okay?” Maura gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. It felt so thin, so fragile through the jacketsleeve, a reminder that this girl was, after all, only thirteen. A child with neither her mother nor her father to comfort her. “I promise, I’ll fight off any wolf that comes to the door,” said Maura.
    “There can’t be just one wolf,” Grace pointed out. “They’re pack animals. If they all attacked, you couldn’t fight them off.”
    “Grace, don’t worry about it. Wolves rarely attack people. They’re probably more scared of us.”
    The girl didn’t look convinced. To prove she wasn’t afraid, Maura followed the tracks toward the trees, into snow that was deeper, so deep that she suddenly plunged in over her knees. This was why deer so easily fell prey in the winter: Heavy animals sank deeply into the snow, and could not outrun the lighter and nimbler wolves.
    “I didn’t do it, you know!” Grace called out after her. “I didn’t take her stupid purse. Like I’d even want it.”
    Suddenly Maura spotted a new set of impressions, and she paused at the edge of the trees, staring. These prints had not been left by wolves. When she realized what she was looking at, a sudden chill lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.
    Snowshoes
.
    “What would I want with her purse, anyway?” said Grace, still standing by the bulldozer. “You believe me, don’t you? At least
you
treat me like a grown-up.”
    Maura peered into the woods, straining to make out what lurked in the shelter of those pines. But the trees were too dense, and all she saw were drooping branches and tangled underbrush, a curtain so thick that any number of eyes could be watching her at that moment, and she would not be able to see them.
    “Elaine acts all sweet and concerned about me, but that’s only when Dad’s around,” Grace said. “She makes me want to barf.”
    Slowly, Maura backed away from the woods. Every step seemed