Ice Cold: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

blackened ruins, the village devastated as completely as if conquerors had swept through, intent on erasing it from the face of the earth. Except for the creak of their snowshoes, the sound of their breathing, the world was silent.
    They came to a halt next to the remains of the house where Maura and her companions had sheltered. Tears suddenly clouded her vision as she stared at charred wood and shattered glass. Rat and Bear moved on down the line of burned homes, but Maura remained where she was, and in that silence she felt the presence of ghosts. Grace and Elaine, Arlo and Douglas, people whom she had not particularly liked, but with whom she had bonded nevertheless. Here they still lingered, whispering warnings from the ruins.
Leave this place. While you can
. Looking down, she saw tire tracks. This was the proof of arson. While the fires were raging, melting the snow, a truck had left a record of its passage pressed into the now frozen mud.
    She heard an anguished cry and turned in alarm. Rat dropped to his knees beside one of the burned houses. As she moved toward him, she saw that he was clutching something in both hands, like a rosary.
    “She wouldn’t have left this!”
    “What is it, Rat?”
    “Carrie’s. Grandpa gave it to her and she
never
took it off.” Slowly he opened his hands and revealed a heart-shaped pendant, still attached to a strand of broken gold chain.
    “This is your sister’s?”
    “Something’s wrong. It’s all
wrong.”
He rose to his feet, agitated, and began digging into the charred remains of the house.
    “What are you doing?” asked Maura.
    “This was our house. Mom’s and Carrie’s.” He pawed through the ashes, and his gloves were soon black with soot.
    “This pendant doesn’t look like it was in the fire, Rat.”
    “I found it on the road. Like she dropped it there.” He pulled up a burned timber and with a desperate grunt heaved it aside, scattering ashes.
    She looked at the ground, which was now down to bare mud after the heat of the fire had melted the snow cover. The pendant might have been lying here for days, she thought. What else had the snow hidden from them? As the boy continued to attack the ruins of his family’s house, tearing at charred boards, searching for scraps of his lost mother and sister, Maura stared at Carrie’s pendant, trying to understand how something that was cherished could end up abandoned under the snow. She remembered what they’d found inside these houses. The untouched meals, the dead canary.
    And the blood. The pool of it at the bottom of the stairs, left to congeal and freeze on the floorboards after the body had been removed. These families didn’t just walk away, she thought. They were forced from their homes with such haste that meals were left behind and a child could not pause to retrieve a treasured necklace. This is why the fires were set, she thought. To hide what happened to the families of Kingdom Come.
    Bear gave a soft growl. She looked down at him and saw that he was crouched with teeth bared, his ears laid back. He was looking up toward the valley road.
    “Rat,” she said.
    The boy wasn’t listening. His attention was focused on digging into the remains of the house where his mother and Carrie had lived.
    The dog gave another growl, deeper, more insistent, and the scruff of his neck stood up. Something was coming down that road. Something that scared him.
    “Rat.”
    At last the boy looked up, filthy with soot. He saw the dog, and his gaze snapped up toward the road. Only then did they hear the faint growl of an approaching vehicle, making its way into the valley.
    “They’re coming back,” he said. He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the cover of trees.
    “Wait.” She yanked free. “What if it’s the police, looking for me?”
    “You don’t want to be found here.
Run
, lady!”
    He turned and sprang away, moving faster than she thought possible on snowshoes. The approaching vehicle had cut off their easiest route out of Kingdom Come, and any trail up the slope would leave them fully exposed to view. The boy was fleeing in the only direction left to them, into the woods.
    For a moment she hesitated; so did the dog. Nervously, Bear glanced at his departing master, then looked at Maura as if to say
What are you waiting for?
If I follow the boy, she thought, I could be running away from my own rescuers. Am I so thoroughly brainwashed that I’d willingly stick with my kidnapper?
    What if the