The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

that empty trunk, the sick feeling now worsening to full-blown nausea. She pulled on gloves. Felt her face flushing hot and bright, her chest going hollow with despair, as she peeled back the gray carpet lining the trunk. She saw a spare tire, a jack, and a few tools. She began yanking on the carpet, peeling it back farther, all her rage focused on ripping away every square inch of it, exposing every dark nook it might conceal. She was like a madwoman, clawing desperately for the scraps of her own redemption. When she could tear away no more and the trunk was exposed down to bare metal, she just stared at the empty space, refusing to accept what was plain to see. The irrefutable evidence that she had screwed up.
    A setup. This was just a setup, meant to distract us. But from what?
    The answer came to her with dizzying speed. A call erupted from their radios.
    “Ten fifty-four, ten fifty-four, Fairview Cemetery. All units, ten fifty-four, Fairview Cemetery.”
    Frost’s gaze met hers, both of them struck in that instant by the same terrible realization. Ten fifty-four. Homicide.
    “Stay with the cab!” she ordered Frost, and she sprinted to her car. In the tangle of vehicles, hers was the easiest to extract, the quickest to turn around. Even as she scrambled in behind the wheel and twisted the key, she was cursing her own stupidity.
    “Hey!
Hey
!” shouted Korsak. He was running beside the car, pounding on the door.
    She braked just long enough to let him scramble in and yank his door shut. Then she floored the accelerator, flinging him back against his seat.
    “What the fuck, you gonna leave me back there?” he yelled.
    “Buckle up.”
    “I’m not just some ride-along.”
    “Buckle up!”
    He dragged his seat belt over his shoulder and snapped it shut. Even over the voices chattering on the radio, she could hear his labored breathing, wet with mucousy wheezes.
    “Watcher One, responding to the ten fifty-four,” she said to Dispatch.
    “Your ten-ten?”
    “Enneking Parkway, just passed the intersection with Turtle Pond. ETA less than a minute.”
    “You’ll be first on the scene.”
    “Situation?”
    “No further information. Assume ten fifty-eight.”
    Armed and believed dangerous.
    Rizzoli’s foot was lead on the pedal. The road to Fairview Cemetery came up so fast she almost missed it. They took the turn with tires screaming, Rizzoli wrestling the wheel for control.
    “Whoa!” gasped Korsak as they nearly slammed into a row of roadside boulders. The wrought-iron gate hung open and she drove through. The cemetery was unlit, and beyond her headlights were rolling lawns, gravestones jutting up like white teeth.
    A vehicle from a private security patrol was parked a hundred yards from the cemetery gate. The driver’s door was open and the dome light was glowing. Rizzoli braked and was already reaching for her weapon as she stepped out, the reflex so automatic she did not even register the action. Too many other details were assaulting her: The smell of freshly mown grass and damp earth. The punch of her heartbeat against her breastbone.
    And the fear. As her gaze swept the darkness, she felt the icy lick of fear because she knew that if the cab was a setup, then this could be, too. A bloody game that she had not even been aware she was part of.
    She froze, her eyes focusing on a puddle of shadow near the base of a memorial obelisk. Aiming her Maglite, she saw the security guard’s crumpled body.
    As she stepped toward him, she smelled the blood. There was no other scent like it, and it rang primitive alarms in her brain. She knelt down on grass that was wet with it, still warm with it. Korsak was right beside her, shining his flashlight as well, and she could hear his snuffling breaths, the piggy noises he always made when he’d exerted himself.
    The guard was lying facedown. She rolled him onto his back.
    “Jesus!” yelped Korsak, jerking away with such violence his flashlight beam shot wildly toward the sky.
    Rizzoli’s beam was trembling as well as she stared at the nearly severed neck, nubs of cartilage gleaming whitely from the butchered flesh. Man down, all right. Down, out, and barely attached to his own head.
    Flashing blue lights cut through the night, a surreal kaleidoscope weaving toward them. She rose to her feet, and her slacks were sticky with blood, the fabric adhering to her knees. Eyes narrowed against the glare of approaching cruisers, she turned away, facing the black