The Apprentice: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

“Sorry to wake you.”
    “Let me go into the other room.”
    She waited. Over the phone she heard the creak of box springs as he got out of bed, then the sound of a door closing behind him.
    “What’s going on?” he said.
    “The Surgeon’s hunting again.”
    “There’s been a victim?”
    “I saw the autopsy a few hours ago. It’s his work.”
    “He didn’t waste any time.”
    “It gets worse, Moore.”
    “How could it get any worse?”
    “He has a new partner.”
    A long pause. Then, softly: “Who is it?”
    “We think it’s the same unsub who killed that couple in Newton. Somehow, he and Hoyt found each other. They’re hunting together.”
    “So quickly? How could they link up just like that?”
    “They knew each other. They had to know each other.”
    “Where did they meet? When?”
    “That’s what we have to find out. It could be key to the Dominator’s identity.” Suddenly she thought of the operating room from which Hoyt had escaped.
The handcuffs.
It had not been the guard who’d unlocked them. Someone else had walked into that O.R. to free Hoyt, someone disguised perhaps in an orderly’s scrub suit or a doctor’s borrowed lab coat.
    “I should be there,” said Moore. “I should be working this with you—”
    “No, you shouldn’t. You should be right where you are, with Catherine. I don’t think Hoyt can find her. But he’ll be trying. He never gives up; you know that. And now there are two of them, and we have no idea what this partner looks like. If he turns up in London, you won’t know his face. You need to be ready.”
    As if anyone could be ready for the Surgeon’s attack, she thought as she hung up. A year ago, Catherine Cordell had thought she was ready. She’d turned her home into a fortress and lived her life as though under siege. Yet Hoyt had slipped through her defenses; he had struck when she least expected it, in a place she thought was safe.
    Just as I think my home is safe.
    She rose and crossed to the window. Looking down at the street, she wondered if, at that moment, anyone was looking at
her,
watching her as she stood framed in the window’s light. She would not be difficult to find. All the Surgeon had to do was look in the phone book under “RIZZOLI J.”
    On the street below, a vehicle slowed down and pulled over to the curb. A police cruiser. She watched it for a moment, but it did not move, and the engine lights shut off, indicating it had settled in for a stay. She had not requested protective surveillance, but she knew who had.
    Gabriel Dean.

    History echoes with the screams of women.
    The pages of textbooks pay scant attention to the lurid details that we hunger to know. Instead we are told dry accounts of military strategies and flank attacks, of the cunning of generals and the massing of armies. We see illustrations of men in armor, swords locked, muscled bodies twisting in the throes of combat. We see paintings of leaders astride noble mounts, gazing at fields where soldiers stand like rows of wheat awaiting the scythe. We see maps with arrows tracing the march of conquering armies, and read the lyrics of war ballads, sung in the name of king and country. The triumphs of men are always writ large, in the blood of soldiers.
    No one speaks of the women.
    But we all know they were there, soft flesh and smooth skin, their perfume wafting through history’s pages. We all know, though we may not speak of it, that war’s savagery is not confined to the battlefield. That when the last enemy soldier has fallen, and one army stands victorious, it is toward the conquered women that the army next turns its attentions.
    So it has always been, though the brutal reality is seldom mentioned in the history books. Instead, I read of wars that are as shiny as brass, with glory for all. Of Greeks battling under the watchful eyes of the Gods, and of the fall of Troy, which the poet Virgil tells us was a war fought by heroes: Achilles and Hector, Ajax and Odysseus, names now enshrined for eternity. He writes of clanging swords and flying arrows and blood-soaked earth.
    He leaves out the best parts.
    It is the playwright Euripides who tells us of the aftermath for the Trojan women, but even he is circumspect. He does not dwell on the titillating details. He tells us that a terrified Cassandra was dragged from Athena’s temple by a Greek chieftain, but we are left to fantasize about what comes next. The tearing open of her robes, the baring of her skin.