The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

she walked through the house, checking, as she always did, that the windows were closed and locked, and she found some irony in the thought that her obsession with security sealed her inside with air that could poison her.
    In the kitchen, she brewed strong coffee, the real stuff. What she truly wanted was a stiff vodka and tonic, and her craving was as ferocious as a junkie’s. Just a sip of alcohol would calm her nerves and dispel the sense of dread that seemed to pervade every corner of the house. But tonight was not the night for vodka, so she resisted the urge. Instead she drank the cup of coffee, just enough to sharpen her mind yet not make her jittery. She needed her nerves to be steady.
    Before going to bed, she took a last peek out the front window. The street was quiet, so perhaps tonight was not the night. Perhaps she had been granted another reprieve. If so, it was only a temporary one, much like waking up every morning in a death row cell, not knowing if today was the day they would walk you to the scaffold. The uncertainty of one’s appointment with doom is what can drive a condemned prisoner insane.
    She headed down the hallway to her bedroom, feeling like that condemned prisoner, wondering if tonight would pass as uneventfully as had the last ten nights before. Hoping that it would, yet knowing it would only postpone the inevitable. At the end of the hall, she looked back toward the foyer, one last glance before she switched off the hallway light. As the foyer fell into shadow, she glimpsed the flicker of passing headlights through the front window. The car moved slowly, as though the driver was taking a long, close look at the house.
    She knew it, then. She felt the chill, like ice crystallizing in her veins.
It will happen tonight.
    Suddenly she was shaking. She did not feel ready for this, and she was tempted to once again turn to the strategy that had kept her alive for nearly three decades: running. But she had made a promise to herself that this time she would stand and fight. This time it was not her daughter’s life on the line, only hers. She was willing to gamble her own life, if it meant she’d finally be free.
    She walked into the darkness of the bedroom, where the curtains were far too filmy. If she turned on the lights, her silhouette could easily be seen in the window. If she couldn’t be seen, she couldn’t be hunted, so she kept the room dark. There was only a flimsy button-lock on the knob, and an intruder could get past it within a minute, but that was one precious minute she might need. She locked the door and turned toward the bed.
    And heard a soft exhalation from the shadows.
    The sound made every hair stand up on the back of her neck. While she’d been busy locking the doors, checking every window, the invader was already waiting inside her house. Inside her bedroom.
    He said, calmly: “Move away from the door.”
    She could barely make out his faceless form in the corner, sitting in a chair. She didn’t have to see it; she knew he was holding a gun. She obeyed.
    “You’ve made a big mistake,” she said.
    “You’re the one who made the mistake, Medea. Twelve years ago. How did it feel to shoot a defenseless boy in the back of the head? A boy who never hurt you.”
    “He was in my house. He was in my daughter’s bedroom.”
    “He didn’t hurt her.”
    “He could have.”
    “Bradley wasn’t violent. He was harmless.”
    “The company he kept wasn’t harmless, and you knew it. You knew what kind of creature Jimmy was.”
    “Jimmy didn’t kill my son.
You
did. At least Jimmy had the decency to call me the night it happened. To tell me Bradley was gone.”
    “You call that
decency
? Jimmy used you, Kimball.”
    “And I used him.”
    “To find my daughter?”
    “No, I found your daughter. I paid Simon to hire her, to keep her where I could watch her.”
    “And you didn’t care what Jimmy did to her?” Despite the gun pointed at her, Medea’s voice rose in anger. “She’s your own
granddaughter
!”
    “He would have let her live. That was my agreement with Jimmy. He was supposed to let her go after this was over. I only wanted
you
to die.”
    “This doesn’t bring back Bradley.”
    “But it closes the circle. You killed my son. You have to pay for it. I’m only sorry Jimmy couldn’t take care of it for me.”
    “The police will know it’s you. You’d give up everything, just to have your revenge?”
    “Yes. Because no one fucks with my