Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

master. Two men held her feet, two men held her hands, and the Angel of Death looped a cord around the girl’s neck. While the men pulled the cord taut, the Angel raised her broad-bladed dagger and plunged it into the girl’s chest.
    Again and again the blade came down, spilling blood the way a grunting man spills seed, the dagger reenacting the ravishment that came before, sharp metal piercing soft flesh.
    A brutal rutting that delivered, with its final thrust, the rapture of death.
    *     *     *
    “She required massive transfusions of blood and fresh frozen plasma,” said Catherine. “Her pressure’s stabilized, but she’s still unconscious and on a ventilator. You’ll just have to be patient, Detective. And hope she wakes up.”
    Catherine and Detective Darren Crowe stood outside Nina Peyton’s SICU cubicle and watched three lines trace across the cardiac monitor. Crowe had been waiting by the O.R. door when the patient was wheeled out, had stuck right beside her in the Recovery Room and later during the transfer to SICU. His role was more than merely protective; he was eager to take the patient’s statement, and for the last few hours he had made a nuisance of himself, demanding frequent progress reports and hovering outside the cubicle.
    Now, once again, he repeated the question he’d been asking all morning: “Is she going to live?”
    “All I can tell you is that her vital signs are stable.”
    “When can I talk to her?”
    Catherine gave a tired sigh. “You don’t seem to understand how critical she was. She lost more than a third of her blood volume before she even got here. Her brain may have been deprived of crucial circulation. When and if she
does
regain consciousness, there’s a chance she won’t remember anything.”
    Crowe looked through the glass partition. “Then she’s useless to us.”
    Catherine stared at him with mounting dislike. Not once had he expressed concern for Nina Peyton, except as a witness, as someone he could use. Not once, all morning, had he referred to her by name. He’d called her
the victim
or
the witness
. What he saw, looking into the cubicle, wasn’t a woman at all but simply a means to an end.
    “When will she be moved from ICU?” he asked.
    “It’s too early to ask that question.”
    “Could she be transferred to a private room? If we keep the door closed, limit the personnel, then no one has to know she can’t talk.”
    Catherine knew exactly where this was going. “I won’t have my patient used as bait. She needs to stay here for round-the-clock observation. You see those lines on the monitor? That’s the EKG, the central venous pressure, and the arterial pressure. I need to stay on top of every change in her status. This unit is the only place to do it.”
    “How many women could we save if we stop him now? Have you thought about that? Of all people, Dr. Cordell,
you
know what these women have gone through.”
    She went rigid with anger. He had struck a blow at her most vulnerable spot. What Andrew Capra had done to her was so personal, so intimate, that she could not speak of the loss, even with her own father. Detective Crowe had ripped open that wound.
    “She may be the only way to catch him,” said Crowe.
    “This is the best you can come up with? Use a comatose woman as bait? Endanger other patients in this hospital by inviting a killer to show up here?”
    “What makes you think he isn’t already here?” Crowe said, and he walked away.
    Already here.
Catherine could not help but glance around the unit. She saw nurses bustling between patients. A group of resident surgeons gathered near the bank of monitors. A phlebotomist carrying her tray of blood tubes and syringes. How many people walked in and out of this hospital every day? How many of them did she truly know as people? No one. That much Andrew Capra had taught her: that she could never really know what lurked in a person’s heart.
    The ward clerk said, “Dr. Cordell, telephone call.”
    Catherine crossed to the nurses’ station and picked up the phone.
    It was Moore. “I hear you pulled her through.”
    “Yes, she’s still alive,” Catherine answered bluntly. “And no, she’s not talking yet.”
    A pause. “I take it this is a bad time to call.”
    She sank into a chair. “I’m sorry. I just spoke to Detective Crowe, and I am not in a good mood.”
    “He seems to have that effect on women.”
    They both laughed, tired laughs that melted any hostility