Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

Katie, and, looking over the boy’s shoulder, he saw the name written on the workbook.
Adam McKinnon
. A troublemaker who would eventually have to be dealt with.
    He moved on to Katie’s desk, where he stopped and watched over her shoulder. Nervously she scribbled an answer, then erased it. A patch of bare neck showed through a parting of her long hair, and the skin flushed a deep red, as though seared by his gaze.
    Leaning close, he inhaled her scent, and heat flooded his loins. There was nothing as delicious as the scent of a young girl’s flesh,and this girl’s was the sweetest of all. Through the fabric of her bodice, he could just make out the swell of newly budding breasts.
    “Don’t fret too much, dear,” he whispered. “I was never very good at algebra, either.”
    She looked up, and the smile she gave him was so enchanting that he was struck speechless.
Yes. This girl is definitely the one
.
    F LOWERS AND RIBBONS draped the pews and cascaded from the soaring beams of the newly built worship hall. There were so many flowers that the room looked like the Garden of Eden itself, fragrant and shimmering. As the morning light beamed in through the ocular windows, two hundred joyous voices sang hymns of praise.
    We are yours, O Lord. Fruitful is your flock and bountiful your harvest
.
    The voices faded, and the organ suddenly played a fanfare. The congregation turned to look at Katie Sheldon, who stood frozen in the doorway, blinking in confusion at all the eyes staring at her. She wore the lace-trimmed white dress that her mother had sewn, and her brand-new white satin slippers peeped out beneath the hem. On her head was a maiden’s crown of white roses. The organ played on, and the congregation waited expectantly, but Katie could not move. She did not want to move.
    It was her father who forced her to take the first step. He took her by the arm, his fingers digging into her flesh with an unmistakable command.
Don’t you dare embarrass me
.
    She began to walk, her feet numb in the pretty satin slippers as she moved toward the altar looming ahead. Toward the man whom God Himself had proclaimed would be her husband.
    She caught glimpses of familiar faces in the pews: her teachers, her friends, her neighbors. There was Sister Diane who worked in the bakery with her mother, and Brother Raymond, who tended the cows whose soft flanks she loved to pet. And there was her mother, standing in the very first pew, where she had never stood before. Itwas a place of honor, a row where only the most favored congregants could sit. Her mother looked proud, oh so proud, and she stood as regal as a queen wearing her own crown of roses.
    “Mommy,” Katie whispered. “Mommy.”
    But the congregation had launched into a new hymn, and no one heard her through the singing.
    At the altar, her father at last released her arm. “Be good,” he muttered, and he stepped away to join her mother. She turned to follow him, but her escape was cut off.
    Prophet Jeremiah Goode stood in her way. He took her hand.
    How hot his fingers felt against her chilled skin. And how large his hand looked, wrapped around hers, as though she were trapped in the grip of a giant.
    The congregation began to sing the wedding song.
Joyful union, blessed in heaven, bound forever in His eyes!
    Prophet Goode tugged her close beside him, and she gave a whimper of pain as his fingers pressed like claws into her skin.
You are mine now, bound to me by the will of God
, that squeeze told her.
You will obey
.
    She turned to look at her father and mother. Silently she implored them to take her from this place, to bring her home where she belonged. They were both beaming as they sang. Scanning the hall, she searched for someone who would pluck her out of this nightmare, but all she saw was a vast sea of approving smiles and nodding heads. A room where sunlight glistened on flower petals, where two hundred voices swelled with song.
    A room where no one heard, where no one wanted to hear, a thirteen-year-old girl’s silent shrieks.

SIXTEEN YEARS LATER
    T HEY HAD COME TO THE END OF THE AFFAIR, BUT NEITHER OF THEM would admit it. Instead they talked about the rain-flooded roads and how bad the traffic was this morning, and the likelihood that her flight out of Logan Airport would be delayed. They did not speak of what weighed on both their minds, although Maura Isles could hear it in Daniel Brophy’s voice, and in her own as well, so flat, so subdued. Both of them