Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

to do with it.”
    “I’m afraid Julian Perkins is the only one who can answer that question.”
    “And there’s a posse of armed men ready to kill him.” Jane looked toward the mountains. Toward the sky, which was already darkening into another frigid night. “If they do, we may lose our only witness.”

B EAR HEARD IT FIRST .
    For most of the morning, the dog had been trotting far ahead of them, as though he already knew the way, although the boy had never before brought him up this mountain. They had traveled for hours without speaking, conserving their breath during the climb, Maura trailing last behind the boy. Every step was a struggle for her to keep up. So when Bear suddenly halted on a ledge above them and gave a bark, she thought it was directed at her. A canine version of
Come on, lady! What’s taking you so long?
    Until she heard the growl. Looking up, she saw he wasn’t focused on her, but was staring east, toward the valley from which they had just ascended. Rat halted and turned to face the same direction. For a moment they were silent. Pine branches creaked. Snow swirled, stirred up by invisible fingers of wind.
    Then they heard it: the distant baying of dogs.
    “We have to move faster,” said Rat.
    “I can’t go any faster.”
    “Yes you can.” He reached out to her. “I’ll help you.”
    She looked at his outstretched hand. Looked up into his face, filthy and haggard. He has kept me alive all these days, she thought. Now it’s time for me to return the favor.
    “You’ll move faster without me,” she said.
    “I won’t leave you behind.”
    “Yes you will. You’re going to run, and I’m going to sit here and wait for them.”
    “You don’t even know who
they
are.”
    “I’ll tell them what happened to the deputy. I’ll explain everything.”
    “Please don’t do this.
Don’t.
” She heard tears break through his voice. “Just come with me. We only have to get over the next mountain.”
    “And then what? Do we have to climb the next one, and the next?”
    “It’ll just take another day to get there.”
    “Get where?”
    “Home. My grandpa’s cabin.”
    The only safe place he has ever known, she thought. The only place where he’s been loved.
    He looked across the valley. There, on the snowy flank of the opposite hill, small dark shapes were moving. “I don’t know where else to go,” he said softly and wiped a filthy sleeve across his eyes. “We’ll be okay there. I know we will.”
    It was magical thinking, nothing more, but it was all he had left. Because nothing would ever be okay for him again.
    She looked up toward the peak. It was at least half a day’s climb to the top, but it would give them the high ground, if something went wrong. If they had to make a stand.
    “Rat,” she said, “if they get too close, if they catch up, you have to promise me one thing. You have to leave me behind. Let me talk to them.”
    “What if they don’t want to talk?”
    “They could be policemen.”
    “So was the last one.”
    “I can’t outrun them, but you can. You can probably outrun us all. I’m just slowing you down. So I’ll stay and speak to them. If nothing else, I can buy you enough time to escape.”
    He stared at her, dark eyes suddenly shimmering. “You’d really do that?” he asked. “For me?”
    She touched a glove to his dirt-streaked face, smearing away tears. “Your mother was crazy,” she said softly. “To ever give up a boy like you.”
    Bear gave an impatient
woof
and stared down at them with a look of
What are you two waiting for?
    She smiled at the boy. Then she forced her aching legs to move again, and they followed the dog up the mountain.
    B Y LATE AFTERNOON, they had climbed above the tree cover, and she had no doubt their pursuers could easily spot them, three dark figures moving up the stark white slope. They see us, just as we see them, she thought. Predator and prey, with only a valley separating us. And she was moving far too slowly, her right snowshoe wobbling on her boot, her lungs wheezing in the thin air. Their pursuers were steadily closing the gap. They weren’t tired and tattered and hungry from days in the wilderness; they didn’t have the body of a forty-two-year-old city woman whose idea of exercise was a leisurely walk in the park. How had it come down to this unlikely moment? Slogging up a mountain with a dog of uncertain breed and a cast-off boy who trusted no one, who had every reason not to. These were