Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

her. She looked up, into the barrel of a rifle.
    The man holding it said, quietly: “Give me the gun.”
    “I want to give up,” Maura pleaded. “My name is Maura Isles, and—”
    “Just hand me that gun.” He was an older man, with implacable eyes and authority in his voice. Though the words were spoken quietly, there was no compromise in that command. “Give it to me. Slowly.”
    Only as she started to obey him did she suddenly realize this move was wrong, all wrong. The gun in her grasp. Her arm lifting to hand it over. The men watching from below would not see a woman about to surrender; they would see a woman preparing to fire. Instantly she released her grip, letting the gun tumble from her fingers. But the man standing above her had already lifted his rifle to fire. His decision to kill her had been preordained.
    The blast made her flinch. She fell to her knees, cowering in the snow beside Rat. Wondering why she felt no pain, saw no blood.
Why am I still alive?
    The man on the boulder above her gave a grunt of surprise as the rifle dropped from his hands. “Who’s shooting at me?” he yelled.
    “Back away from her, Loftus!” a voice commanded.
    “She was gonna shoot me! I had to defend myself!”
    “I said
back away
.”
    I know that voice. It’s Gabriel Dean
.
    Slowly Maura raised her head and saw not one, but two familiar figures moving toward her. Gabriel kept his weapon aimed squarely at the man on the boulder, as Anthony Sansone ran to her side.
    “Are you all right, Maura?” Sansone asked.
    She had no time to waste on questions, no time to marvel over the miraculous appearance of these two men. “He’s dying,” she sobbed. “Help me save him.”
    Sansone dropped to his knees beside the boy. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
    “I’m going to decompress the chest. I need a chest tube. Anything hollow will work—even a ballpoint pen!”
    She picked up Rat’s knife and stared at the thin chest, at the ribs that stood out so starkly beneath the pale skin. Even on that frigid mountainside, her palm was sweating against the grip as she gathered the nerve to do what had to be done.
    She found her landmark, pressed the blade against his skin, and sliced into the boy’s chest.

H E WOULD HAVE KILLED ME,” SAID MAURA. “IF GABRIEL AND Sansone hadn’t stopped him, that man would have shot me in cold blood, the way he shot Rat. No questions asked.”
    Jane glanced at her husband, who stood by the window, looking out over the medical center parking lot. Gabriel neither contradicted nor confirmed what Maura had said, but remained strangely uncommunicative, letting Maura tell the story. Except for the murmur of the TV, its volume turned low, the ICU visitors’ lounge was quiet.
    “There’s something all wrong about what happened up there,” Maura said. “Something that doesn’t make any sense. Why was he so determined to kill us?” She looked up, and Jane scarcely recognized her friend in that gaunt and bruised face. Maura’s usually flawless skin was marred by scratches that were now scabbing over. The new sweater she wore hung far too loose on her frame, and her collarbones stood out on the pitifully thin chest. Without her stylishclothes, her makeup, Maura looked as vulnerable as any other woman, and that unsettled Jane. If even cool, confident Maura Isles could be reduced to this battered creature, then so could anyone.
Even me
.
    “A deputy was killed,” said Jane. “You know how things turn out whenever a cop goes down. Justice gets a little rough.” Again she glanced at her husband, waiting for him to comment, but Gabriel just stared in silence at the glitteringly clear morning. Although he’d shaved and showered after his return from the mountain, he still looked exhausted and wind-burned, tired eyes squinting against the sunlight.
    “No, he showed up there
intending
to kill us,” said Maura. “Just like that deputy did, on Doyle Mountain. I think this is all about Kingdom Come. And what I wasn’t supposed to see there.”
    “Well, we now know what that was,” said Jane.
    The day before, the last of forty-one bodies had been recovered from the burial pit. Twelve men, nineteen women, and ten children—most of them girls. The majority showed no signs of trauma, but Maura had seen enough in Kingdom Come to know the victims had surely been force-marched to their graves. The blood on the stairs, the abandoned meals, the pets left behind to starve—all pointed to