The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

could not stand to be looked at while naked and afraid. To have her vulnerability on full display. She climbed out of bed, went into the bathroom, and locked the door.
    A moment later, he knocked. “Jane?”
    “I’m going to take another shower.”
    “Don’t shut me out.” He knocked again. “Come out and talk to me.”
    “When I’m finished.” She turned on the shower. Stepped in, not because she needed to wash but because running water barred conversation. It was a noisy curtain of privacy behind which to hide. As the water beat down on her, she stood with head bowed, hands braced on the tiled wall, wrestling with her fear. She imagined it sliding off her skin like dirt and gurgling down the drain. Layer by layer, shedding off. When at last she shut off the water, she felt calm. Cleansed. She dried herself, and in the steamed mirror she caught a glimpse of her face, no longer pale but flushed from the heat. Ready once again to play the public role of Jane Rizzoli.
    She stepped out of the bathroom. Dean was sitting in the armchair by the window. He said nothing, just watched as she began to dress, picking up her clothes from the floor as she circled the bed, its rumpled sheets the mute evidence of their passion. One phone call had ended it, and now she moved about the room with brittle resolve, buttoning her blouse, zipping up her slacks. Outside, it was still dark, but for her, the night was over.
    “Are you going to tell me?” he said.
    “Hoyt was in my apartment.”
    “They know it was him?”
    She turned to face him. “Who
else
would it be?”
    The words came out shriller than she’d intended. Flushing, she retrieved her shoes from under the bed. “I have to get home.”
    “It’s five in the morning. Your plane leaves at nine-thirty.” “Do you really expect me to go back to sleep? After this?”
    “You’ll get into Boston exhausted.”
    “I’m not tired.”
    “Because you’re wired on adrenaline.”
    She shoved her feet into her shoes. “Stop it, Dean.”
    “Stop what?”
    “Trying to take care of me.”
    A silence passed. Then he said, with a note of sarcasm, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”
    She paused with her back to him, already regretting her words. Wishing for the first time that he
would
take care of her. That he would put his arms around her and coax her back to bed. That they would sleep holding each other until it was time for her to leave.
    But when she turned to face him, she saw that he was out of the chair and already getting dressed.

twenty-four
    S he fell asleep on the plane. As they started the descent into Boston, she woke up feeling drugged and desperately thirsty. The bad weather had followed her from D.C., and turbulence rattled seat-back trays and passengers’ nerves as they dropped through the clouds. Outside her window, the wing tips vanished behind a curtain of gray, but she was too tired to register even a twinge of anxiety about the flight. And Dean was still on her mind, distracting her from what she should be focused on. She stared out at the mist and remembered the touch of his hands, the warmth of his breath on her skin.
    And she remembered their last words at the airport curb, a cool and rushed good-bye under pattering rain. Not the parting of lovers but of business associates, anxious to get on with their separate concerns. She blamed herself for the new distance between them and blamed him, as well, for letting her walk away. Once again, Washington had turned into the city of regrets and stained sheets.
    The plane touched down in a driving rain. She saw ramp personnel splash across the tarmac in their hooded slickers and she was already dreading the prospect of what came next. The ride home to an apartment that would never again feel secure, because
he
had been there.
    Wheeling her suitcase from baggage claim, she stepped outside and was hit with a blast of wind-driven rain that angled under the overhang. A long line of dispirited people stood waiting for taxis. Scanning the row of limousines parked across the street, she was relieved to find the name RIZZOLI displayed in one of the limo windows.
    She tapped on the driver’s side, and the window rolled down. It was a different driver, not the elderly black man who’d brought her to the airport the day before.
    “Yes, ma’am?”
    “I’m Jane Rizzoli.”
    “Going to Claremont Street, right?”
    “That’s me.”
    The driver stepped