Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

such an interesting place. Like Ms. Saul says, normal is so boring.”
    She smiled at him. Touched his face again. This time he didn’t shrink away. “You sound happy here, Rat. Do you get along with everyone?”
    “Better than I ever did at home.”
    Home, in Wyoming, had been a grim place for Julian. In school he’d been a D-minus student, bullied and ridiculed, known not for any academic achievement but for his scrapes with the law and his schoolyard fistfights. At sixteen, he’d seemed bound for a future prison cell.
    So there was truth to what Julian had just said, about beingstrange. He was not normal, and he never would be. Cast out by his own family, thrust alone into the wilderness, he’d learned to rely on himself. He had killed a man. Although that killing was in self-defense, the spilling of another’s blood changes you forever, and she wondered how deeply that memory still haunted him.
    He took her hand. “Come on, I want to show you around.”
    “Ms. Saul showed me the library.”
    “Have you been to your room yet?”
    “No.”
    “It’s in the old wing, where all the important guests go. That’s where Mr. Sansone stays whenever he visits. Your room has a big old stone fireplace. When Briana’s aunt visited, she forgot to open the flue, and the room filled with smoke. They had to evacuate the whole building. So you’ll remember that, right? About the flue?”
And you won’t embarrass me
was the unspoken message.
    “I’ll remember. Who’s Briana?”
    “Just a girl here.”
    “
Just
a girl?” With his dark hair and piercing eyes, Julian was growing into a handsome young man who’d one day catch many a woman’s eye. “Details, please.”
    “She’s no one special.”
    “Did I just see her in class?”
    “Yeah. She had long black hair. A
really
short skirt.”
    “Oh. You mean the pretty one.”
    “I guess.”
    She laughed. “Come on. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
    “Well, yeah. But I think she’s kind of a jerk. Even if I do feel sorry for her.”
    “Sorry for her? Why?”
    He looked at her. “She’s here because her mom got murdered.”
    Suddenly Maura regretted how blithely she’d pried into his friendships. Teenage boys were a mystery to her, hulking creatures with big feet and simmering hormones, vulnerable one moment, cold and remotethe next. As much as she wanted to be a mother to him, she would never be good at it, would never have a mother’s instincts.
    She was silent as she followed him down the third-floor hallway, where the walls were hung with paintings of medieval villages and banqueting tables and an ivory-skinned Madonna with child. Her guest room was near the end of the hall; when she stepped inside she saw that her suitcase had already been delivered and was resting on a cherrywood luggage rack. From the arched window, she could see a walled garden adorned with stone statues. Beyond that wall the forest pressed in, like an invading army.
    “You’re facing east, so you’ll get a nice view of the sunrise tomorrow.”
    “All the views are beautiful in this place.”
    “Mr. Sansone thought you’d like this room. It’s the quietest.”
    She remained at the window, her back turned to him as she asked: “Has he been here lately?”
    “He came about a month ago. He always comes for meetings of the Evensong school board.”
    “When is the next one?”
    “Not till next month.” He paused. “You really like him. Don’t you?”
    Her silence was far too revealing. She said, matter-of-factly, “He’s been a generous man.” She turned to face Julian. “We both owe him a great deal.”
    “Is that really all you have to say about him?”
    “What else would there be?”
    “Well, you asked me about Briana. I figured I’d ask about Mr. Sansone.”
    “Point taken,” she admitted.
    But his question hung in the air, and she didn’t know how to answer it.
You really like him, don’t you?
    She turned to look at the elaborately carved four-poster bed, at the oak wardrobe. Perhaps they were more antiques from Sansone’shome. Though the man himself was not here, she saw his influence everywhere, from the priceless art on the walls to the leather-bound books in the library. The isolation of this castle, the locked gate and private road, reflected his obsession with privacy. The one jarring note in the room hung above the mantelpiece. It was an oil portrait of an arrogant-looking gentleman in a huntsman’s coat, a rifle propped over his