Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

you meeting anyone for dinner? Because I just happen to be free. If you want to join me, I’ll hunt down a good restaurant. Just give me a call.”
    She turned to answer him, but he was already moving down the hallway, the tote bag slung over his shoulder. As she watched him walk away, another memory of Douglas Comley suddenly flashedinto her head. An image of him in blue jeans, hobbling on crutches across the campus quadrangle.
    “Didn’t you break your leg that year?” she called out. “I think it was right before finals.”
    Laughing, he turned to her.
“That’s
what you remember about me?”
    “It’s all starting to come back to me now. You had a skiing accident or something.”
    “Or something.”
    “It wasn’t a skiing accident?”
    “Oh man.” He shook his head. “This is way too embarrassing to talk about.”
    “That’s it. Now you have to tell me.”
    “If you’ll have dinner with me.”
    She paused as the elevator opened and a man and woman emerged. They walked up the hall, arms linked, clearly together and unafraid to show it. The way couples should act, she thought, as the pair stepped into a room and the door closed behind them.
    She looked at Douglas. “I’d like to hear that story.”

T HEY FLED THE PATHOLOGISTS’ COCKTAIL PARTY EARLY AND DINED at the Four Seasons Resort in Teton Village. Eight straight hours of lectures about stabbings and bombings, bullets and blowflies, had left Maura overwhelmed by talk of death, and she was relieved to escape back to the normal world, where casual conversation didn’t include talk of putrefaction, where the most serious issue of the evening was choosing between a red or a white wine.
    “So how
did
you break your leg at Stanford?” she asked as Doug swirled Pinot Noir in his glass.
    He winced. “I was hoping you’d forget about that subject.”
    “You promised to tell me. It’s the reason I came to dinner.”
    “Not because of my scintillating wit? My boyish charm?”
    She laughed. “Well, that, too. But mostly the tale behind the broken leg. I have a feeling it’s going to be a doozy.”
    “Okay.” He sighed. “The truth? I was fooling around on the rooftop of Wilbur Hall and I fell off.”
    She stared at him. “My God, that’s a really long drop.”
    “As I found out.”
    “I assume alcohol was involved?”
    “Of course.”
    “So it was just a typical dumb college stunt.”
    “Why do you sound so disappointed?”
    “I expected something a little more, oh, unconventional.”
    “Well,” he admitted, “I left out a few details.”
    “Such as?”
    “The ninja outfit I was wearing. The black mask. The plastic sword.” He gave an embarrassed shrug. “And the very humiliating ambulance ride to the hospital.”
    She regarded him with a calmly professional gaze. “And do you still like to dress up as a ninja these days?”
    “You see?” He barked out a laugh.
“That’s
what makes you so intimidating! Anyone else would have been laughing at me. But you respond with a very logical, very sober question.”
    “Is there a sober answer?”
    “Not a single damn one.” He lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s to stupid college pranks. May we never live them down.”
    She sipped and set down her wine. “What did you mean when you said that I’m intimidating?”
    “You always have been. There I was, this goofy kid ambling my way through college. Partying too hard and sleeping too late. But you—you were so
focused
, Maura. You knew exactly what you wanted to be.”
    “And that made me intimidating?”
    “Even a little scary. Because you had it all together, and I sure as hell didn’t.”
    “I had no idea I had that effect on people.”
    “You still do.”
    She considered that statement. She thought about the police officers who always fell silent whenever she walked into a crime scene. She thought about the Christmas party where she’d so responsiblylimited herself to a single flute of champagne while everyone else grew raucous. The public would never see Dr. Maura Isles drunk or loud or reckless. They would see only what she allowed them to see. A woman in control.
A woman who scares them
.
    “It’s not as if being focused is some sort of flaw,” she said, in her own defense. “It’s the only way anything gets accomplished in this world.”
    “Which is probably why it took me so long to accomplish anything.”
    “You made it to medical school.”
    “Eventually. After I spent two years bumming around,