Last to Die: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

was light, and she spied only a few headlights following her. She kept track of their progress. Just beyond the town of Saugus, the pair of sleek blue halogens peeled off. Twenty-five miles later, so did the lights belonging to the SUV. By the time she drove over the Kittery bridge into Maine, it was nearly three A.M. and she saw no headlights at all behind her, but she never stopped glancing in the mirror, never stopped scanning for a pursuer.
    The killer was there, in the house
.
    She’d seen his shoeprint downstairs, knew that he’d walked throughout the first floor, yet she hadn’t caught even a glimpse of his shadow as she’d watched from the top of the steps. How long had she crouched, waiting for him to appear on the stairway? When adrenaline is flooding your veins, when you’re about to face your own death, a mere sixty seconds can seem like alifetime. She was certain it had been five minutes, maybe longer. Certainly time enough for him to search the first floor, to turn his attention to the second. Yet he hadn’t. What stopped him? Did he sense that a cop was waiting at the top of the stairs? Did he realize that the odds had turned against him, that a simple execution had now become a battle with an equally lethal opponent?
    She glanced over her shoulder at the boy. Teddy was curled up, skinny arms and legs tightly folded around himself like an embryo. He slept deeply, as most children do, showing no sign that tonight’s terror had invaded his dreams.
    When the sun came up, rising through a receding bank of clouds, she was still behind the wheel. She opened the window and smelled damp earth, saw sun-warmed steam rising from the pavement. She stopped only once for gas and coffee and a bathroom break. Teddy slept through it all.
    Even with that jolt of caffeine, she had to fight to stay awake, to stay focused on that final stretch of road. She was so exhausted she forgot to call ahead, as Maura had advised her. By the time she remembered to pull out her phone, the cell signal was down to zero bars, and she had no way to alert the school that she’d arrived.
    It didn’t matter; someone was already waiting for her at the locked gate. The bear-sized man who stood blocking the entrance cut a forbidding figure in his faded jeans and hiking boots. Dangling from his leather belt was an enormous hunting knife, its lethal serrations glittering in the morning sun. She rolled to a stop right in front of him, yet he didn’t flinch, didn’t step aside, but stood with arms crossed, as immovable as a mountain.
    “State your business, ma’am,” he said.
    She frowned at the compound bow and quiver of arrows that were slung over his shoulder, and wondered if she’d made a wrong turn somewhere. If she’d wandered into dueling-banjos territory. Then she glanced up at the wrought-iron archway and saw the word EVENSONG .
    “I’m Detective Jane Rizzoli. The school is expecting me.”
    He stalked over to the passenger window and stared in at the sleeping boy. “This is young Mr. Clock?”
    “Yes. I’m bringing him to the school.”
    In the backseat, Teddy finally stirred awake, and when he saw the wild man peering in at him, he gave a yelp of alarm.
    “It’s all right, son.” The voice was surprisingly gentle, coming from such a fierce-looking man. “My name’s Roman. I’m the school forester. I look after these here woods, and I’ll look after you, too.”
    “Is that
Mr
. Roman?” asked Jane.
    “Just Roman’s good enough,” he grunted and swung open the gate. “Three miles in, you’ll get to the lake. The castle’s just beyond. They’re expecting you.” He waved her through. “Go slow. Don’t hit the bear.”
    She assumed he meant Bear the dog, who belonged to Julian Perkins. But a hundred yards down the road, she rounded a bend in the woods and skidded to an abrupt stop as a black bear—a
real
bear—sauntered across the road, followed by her two cubs, their fur bright and glossy in the sunlight.
    “What is this place?” Teddy murmured in wonder.
    “It sure ain’t the big city.” She watched the trio disappear into the woods. “I can see the headline now,” she muttered: “ BOSTON COP EATEN BY BEARS. ”
    “They don’t eat people.”
    “You know that, do you?”
    “Black bears are mostly vegetarian.”
    “Mostly?”
    “Mostly.”
    “
That
is not reassuring.” She drove on, wondering what other surprises might pop out of the woods. Wolves. Cougars. Unicorns. In this wild place