The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

don’t know anymore.”
    “But I must have one, right? Because you
certainly
don’t deserve a genuine compliment from me.”
    “I get your point.”
    “You may get it. But you don’t really believe it.” He braked at a red light and looked at her. “Where does all the skepticism come from? Has it been that tough for you, being Jane Rizzoli?”
    She gave a weary laugh. “Let’s not go there, Dean.”
    “Is it the part about being a woman cop?”
    “You can probably fill in the blanks.”
    “Your colleagues seem to respect you.”
    “There are some notable exceptions.”
    “There always are.”
    The light turned green, and his gaze went back to the road.
    “It’s the nature of police work,” she said. “All that testosterone.”
    “Then why did you choose it?”
    “Because I flunked home ec.”
    At that, they both laughed. The first honest laugh they’d shared.
    “The truth is,” she said, “I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was twelve years old.”
    “Why?”
    “Everyone respects cops. At least, that’s how it seems to a kid. I wanted the badge, the gun. The things that’d make people stand up and take notice of me. I didn’t want to end up in some office where I’d just disappear. Where I’d turn into the invisible woman. That’d be like getting buried alive, to be someone no one listens to. No one notices.” She leaned an elbow against the door and rested her head in her hand. “Now, anonymity’s starting to look pretty good.”
At least the Surgeon wouldn’t know my name.
    “You sound sorry you chose police work.”
    She thought of the long nights on her feet, fueled by caffeine and adrenaline. The horrors of confronting the worst that human beings can do to each other. And she thought of Airplane Man, whose file remained on her desk, the perpetual symbol of futility. His own, as well as hers. We dream our dreams, she thought, and sometimes they take us places we never anticipate. A farmhouse basement with the stench of blood in the air. Or a free fall through blue sky, limbs flailing against the pull of gravity. But they are our dreams, and we go where they lead.
    She said, at last: “No, I’m not sorry. It’s what I do. It’s what I care about. It’s what I get angry about. I have to admit, a lot of the job’s about anger. I can’t just stand back and look at a victim’s body without being pissed off. That’s when I become their advocate—when I let their deaths get to me. Maybe when I
don’t
get angry is when I’ll know it’s time to quit.”
    “Not everyone has your fire in the belly.” He looked at her. “I think you’re the most intense person I’ve ever met.”
    “That’s not such a good thing.”
    “No, intensity is a good thing.”
    “If it means you’re always on the verge of flaming out?”
    “Are you?”
    “Sometimes it feels that way.” She stared at the rain lashing the windshield. “I should try to be more like you.”
    He didn’t respond, and she wondered if she’d offended him by her last statement. By her implication that he was cold and passionless. Yet that’s how he had always struck her: the man in the gray suit. For weeks, he had baffled her, and now, in her frustration, she wanted to provoke him, to make him display any emotion, however unpleasant, if only to prove she could do it. The challenge of the impregnable.
    But it was just such challenges that led women to make fools of themselves.
    When at last he pulled up in front of the Watergate Hotel, she was ready with a crisp farewell.
    “Thanks for the ride,” she said. “And for the revelations.” She turned and opened her door, letting in a
whoosh
of warm, wet air. “See you back in Boston.”
    “Jane?”
    “Yes?”
    “No more hidden agendas between us, okay? What I say is what I mean.”
    “If you insist.”
    “You don’t believe me, do you?”
    “Does it really matter?”
    “Yes,” he said quietly. “It matters a great deal to me.”
    She paused, her pulse suddenly quickening. Her gaze swung back to his. They had kept secrets from each other for so long that neither one of them knew how to read the truth in the other’s eyes. It was a moment in which anything could have been said next, anything could have happened. Neither dared to make the first move. The first mistake.
    A shadow moved across her open car door. “Welcome to the Watergate, ma’am! Do you need help with any luggage?”
    Rizzoli glanced up, startled, to see the hotel doorman smiling at