The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

couch and sat in dazed silence. He did not immediately follow her, and for a moment she was left blessedly alone. She wished he would simply vanish, walk out of her apartment and grant her the seclusion that every suffering animal craves. She was not so lucky. She heard him emerge from the kitchen, and she looked up to see him holding two glasses. He held one out to her.
    “What’s this?” she said.
    “Tequila. I found it in your cupboard.”
    She took the glass and frowned at it. “I forgot I had it. It’s ancient.”
    “Well, it hadn’t been opened.”
    That’s because she did not care for the taste of tequila. The bottle was just another one of those useless boozy gifts her brother Frankie brought home from his travels, like the Kahlúa liqueur from Hawaii and the sake from Japan. Frankie’s way of showing off what a man of the world he was, thanks to the U.S. Marine Corps. This was as good a time as any to sample his souvenir from sunny Mexico. She took a sip and blinked away the sting of tears. As the tequila warmed its way into her stomach, she suddenly thought of a detail from Warren Hoyt’s past. His early victims had first been incapacitated by the drug Rohypnol, slipped into their drinks. How easy it is to catch us unguarded, she thought. When a woman is distracted or has no reason to distrust the man who hands her a drink, she is just another lamb in the chute. Even she had accepted a glass of tequila without question. Even she had allowed a man she did not know well into her apartment.
    She looked at Dean again. He was sitting across from her, and their gazes were now level. The drink, tossed into her empty stomach, was already asserting itself, and her limbs felt nerveless. The anesthesia of alcohol. She was detached and calm, dangerously so.
    He leaned toward her, and she did not pull away with her usual defensiveness. Dean was invading her personal space, the way few men had ever tried to do, and she let him. She surrendered to him.
    “We’re no longer dealing with a single killer,” he said. “We’re dealing with a partnership. And one of those two partners is a man you know better than anyone else does. Whether you want to admit it or not, you have a special link to Warren Hoyt. Which makes you a link to the Dominator as well.”
    She released a deep breath and said, softly: “It’s the way Warren works best. It’s what he craves. A partner. A mentor.”
    “He had one in Savannah.”
    “Yes. A doctor named Andrew Capra. After Capra was killed, Warren was left on his own. That’s when he came to Boston. But he never stopped looking for a new partner. Someone who’d share his cravings. His fantasies.”
    “I’m afraid he’s found him.”
    They gazed at each other, both understanding the grim consequences of this new development.
    “They’re twice as effective now,” he said. “Wolves work better in a pack than they do alone.”
    “Cooperative hunting.”
    He nodded. “It makes everything easier. The stalking. The cornering. Maintaining control of the victims . . .”
    She sat up straight. “The teacup,” she said.
    “What about it?”
    “There wasn’t one at the Ghent death scene. Now we know why.”
    “Because Warren Hoyt was there to help him.”
    She nodded. “The Dominator had no need for a warning system. He had a partner who could alert him if the husband moved. A partner who stood by and watched the whole thing. And Warren would get off on it. He’d enjoy it. It’s part of his fantasy. To watch as the woman is assaulted.”
    “And the Dominator craves an audience.”
    She nodded. “That’s why he’s chosen couples. So there’d be someone to watch. To see him enjoy ultimate power over a woman’s body.”
    The ordeal she described was so intimate a violation that she found it painful to look Dean in the eyes. But she held her gaze. The sexual assault of women was a crime that awakened the prurient curiosity of too many men. As the lone woman in the room at morning investigative conferences, she had watched her male colleagues discuss the details of such assaults and had heard the electric hum of interest in their voices, even as they strove to maintain the appearance of sober professionalism. They lingered over the pathologist’s reports of sexual injuries, stared too long at the crime scene photos of women with legs splayed apart. Their reactions made Rizzoli feel personally violated as well, and over the years she had developed a hair-trigger