The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

charging in, all cylinders firing. The way you charge at life.” He added, with a soft laugh, “Bad temper and all.”
    “How can you
not
get angry?”
    “I won’t let myself. That’s how I deal with it. Step back, take a breath. Play each case like a jigsaw puzzle.” He looked at her. “That’s why you intrigue me. All that turmoil, all the emotion you invest in everything you do. It feels somehow . . . dangerous.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s at odds with what I am. What I try to be.”
    “You’re afraid I’ll rub off on you.”
    “It’s like getting too close to fire. We’re drawn to it, even though we know damn well it’ll burn us.”
    She pressed her lips to his. “A little danger,” she whispered, “can be very exciting.”
    The evening drifted into night. They showered off each other’s sweat and grinned at themselves standing before the mirror, wearing matching hotel robes. They ate a room service dinner and drank wine in bed with the TV tuned to the Comedy Channel. Tonight, there would be no CNN, no bad news to sour the mood. Tonight, she wanted to be a million miles away from Warren Hoyt.
    But even distance, and the comfort of a man’s arms, could not shut Hoyt from her dreams. She lurched awake in darkness, drenched in the sweat of fear, not passion. Through the pounding of her heart, she heard her cell phone ringing. It took her a few seconds to disentangle herself from Dean’s arms, to reach across him toward the nightstand on his side of the bed and flip open her cell phone.
    “Rizzoli.”
    Frost’s voice greeted her. “I guess I woke you up.”
    She squinted at the clock radio. “Five A.M. ? Yeah, that’s a safe assumption.”
    “You okay?”
    “I’m fine. Why?”
    “Look, I know you’re flying back today. But I thought you should know before you got here.”
    “What?”
    He didn’t immediately answer her. Over the phone, she heard someone ask him a question about bagging evidence, and she realized that at that moment he was working a scene.
    Beside her, Dean stirred, alerted by her sudden tension. He sat up and turned on the light. “What’s going on?”
    Frost came back on the line. “Rizzoli?”
    “Where are you?” she asked.
    “I got called to a ten sixty-four. That’s where I am right now—”
    “Why are you answering burglary calls?”
    “Because it’s your apartment.”
    She went completely still, the phone pressed to her ear, and heard the throb of her own pulse.
    “Since you were out of town, we temporarily halted surveillance on your building,” said Frost. “Your neighbor down the hall in two-oh-three called it in. Ms., uh—”
    “Spiegel,” she said softly. “Ginger.”
    “Yeah. Seems like a real sharp girl. Says she’s a bartender down at McGinty’s. She was walking home from work and noticed glass under the fire escape. Looked up and saw your window was broken. Called nine-one-one right away. First officer on the scene realized it was your place. He called me.”
    Dean touched her arm in silent inquiry. She ignored him. Clearing her throat, she managed to ask, with deceptive calmness, “Did he take anything?” Already she was using the word
he.
Without saying his name, they both knew who had done this.
    “That’s what you’ll need to tell us when you get here,” said Frost.
    “You’re there now?”
    “Standing in your living room.”
    She closed her eyes, feeling almost nauseated with rage as she pictured strangers invading her home. Opening her closets, touching her clothes. Lingering over her most intimate possessions.
    “It looks to me like things are undisturbed,” said Frost. “Your TV and CD player are here. There’s a big jar of spare change still sitting on the kitchen counter. Is there anything else they might want to steal?”
    My peace of mind. My sanity.
    “Rizzoli?”
    “I can’t think of anything.”
    A pause. He said, gently: “I’ll go through it all with you, inch by inch. When you get home, we’ll do it together. Landlord’s already boarded up the window so the rain won’t get in. If you want to stay at my house for a while, I know it’ll be fine with Alice. We got a spare room never gets used—”
    “I’m okay,” she said.
    “It’s no problem—”
    “I’m okay.”
    There was anger in her voice, and pride. Most of all, pride.
    Frost knew enough to ease off and not feel offended. He said, unruffled, “Give me a call as soon as you get in.”
    Dean was watching as she hung up. Suddenly she