Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

could still make out the depression in the snow where she had fallen, could see the hilly contours of construction rubbish cloaked beneath white.
    She sank her shovel into one of the mounds and flung aside a scoop of snow.
    Jane finally caught up and trudged, panting, into the clearing. “Why are you digging in this spot?”
    “I saw something here before. It might be nothing. It might be everything.”
    “Well, that sure answers my question.”
    Maura flung aside another scoop of snow. “I got only a glimpse of it. But if it’s what I think it is …” Maura’s shovel suddenly hit something solid. Something that gave off a muffled clang. “This could be it.” She dropped to her knees and began scooping away the snow with her gloved hands.
    Little by little the object emerged, smooth and curved. Shecould not pry it loose because it was solidly frozen to the mound of debris beneath it. She kept scooping away snow, but half of the object remained buried out of sight and encased in ice. What she’d exposed was one end of a gray metal cylinder. It was encircled by two painted stripes, one green and one yellow. Stamped on that cylinder was the code D568 .
    “What is that thing?” asked Jane.
    Maura didn’t answer. She just continued to scrape away snow and ice, exposing more and more of the cylinder. Jane knelt down to help her. New numbers appeared, stamped in green.
    2011-42-114
155H
M12TAT
    “You have any idea what these numbers mean?” Jane asked.
    “I assume they’re serial numbers of some kind.”
    “For what?”
    A scrim of ice suddenly broke away, and Maura stared at the stenciled letters that she’d just revealed.
    VX GAS
    Jane frowned. “VX. Isn’t that some kind of nerve gas?”
    “That’s exactly what it is,” Maura said softly, and she rocked back on her knees, stunned. She stared across the clearing at the excavator. The settlers were putting up new buildings on this site, she thought. They’d cleared the trees and were digging foundations for more homes. Preparing the valley for new families who’d be moving into Kingdom Come.
    Did they know that a time bomb lay buried in this soil, the soil they were digging into and churning up?
    “A pesticide didn’t kill these people,” said Maura.
    “But you said it matched the clinical picture.”
    “So does VX nerve gas. It kills in
exactly
the same way that organophosphates do. VX disrupts the same enzymes, causes the same symptoms, but it’s far more potent. It’s a chemical weapon designed to be dispersed through the air. If you release it in a low-lying area …” Maura looked at Jane. “It would turn this valley into a killing zone.”
    The growl of a truck engine made them both jump to their feet. Our car is parked out in the open, thought Maura. Whoever has just arrived already knows we’re here.
    “Are you carrying?” Maura asked. “Please tell me you’re armed.”
    “I left it locked in the trunk.”
    “You have to get it.”
    “What the hell is going on?”
    “
This
is what it’s all about!” Maura pointed to the half buried canister of VX gas. “Not pesticides. Not mass suicide. It was an
accident
. These are chemical weapons, Jane. They should have been destroyed decades ago. They’ve probably been buried here for years.”
    “Then The Gathering—Jeremiah—”
    “He had nothing to do with why these people died.”
    Jane looked around the clearing with growing comprehension. “The Dahlia Group—the fake company that paid off Martineau—it has something to do with them, doesn’t it?”
    They heard the snap of a breaking branch.
    “Hide!”
whispered Maura.
    They both ducked into the woods just as Montgomery Loftus stepped into the clearing. He was carrying a rifle, but it was pointed at the ground, and he moved with the casual pace of a hunter who has not yet spotted his quarry. Their footprints were all over that clearing, and he could not miss the evidence of their presence. All he had to do was follow their tracks to where they both crouched among the pines. Yet he ignored the obvious and calmly approachedthe hole that Maura had just dug. He looked down at the exposed cylinder. At the shovel that Maura had left lying there.
    “If you bury anything for thirty years, it’ll eventually corrode,” he said. “Metal gets brittle. Accidentally run over it with a bulldozer or crush it against a rock, and it’ll fracture apart.” He raised his voice, as though the trees themselves were his audience.