The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

her shin bumped up against the bed. She felt her way up the mattress to the headboard. To the phone on the nightstand.
    No dial tone.
    Terror blasted through her like an icy wind.
He’s cut the phone line.
    She dropped the receiver and stood listening, desperate to hear what he would do next. The house creaked in the wind, obscuring all sounds except the drum of her own heartbeat.
    Where is he? Where is he?
    Then she thought: my cell phone.
    She scurried over to her dresser, where she’d left her purse. Dug into it, pawing through its contents, searching for the phone. She pulled out her wallet and keys, pens and a hairbrush. Phone, where’s the fucking phone?
    In the car. I left it on the front seat of the car.
    Her head snapped up at the sound of breaking glass.
    Had it come from the front of the house, or the rear? Which way was he coming in?
    She scrambled out of the bedroom and into the hall, no longer registering the pain as the shard of glass drove deeper into her foot. The door to the garage was right off the hallway. She yanked the door open and slipped through, just as she heard more glass breaking and scattering across the floor.
    She pulled the door shut. Backed away toward her car, her breaths coming in quick gasps, her heart galloping.
Quiet. Quiet.
Slowly she lifted the car door handle and cringed when she heard the
clunk
as the latch released. She swung open the door and slid in behind the wheel. Gave a strangled groan of frustration when she remembered the car keys were still in her bedroom. She couldn’t just start the engine and drive away. She glanced at the passenger seat, and by the glow of the dome light, she spotted her cell phone, wedged in the crack.
    She flipped it open and saw the glow of the full battery signal.
    Thank you, God, she thought, and dialed 911.
    “Emergency Operator.”
    “This is twenty-one thirty Buckminster Road,” she whispered. “Someone’s breaking into my house!”
    “Can you repeat the address? I can’t hear you.”
    “Twenty-one thirty Buckminster Road! An intruder—” She went dead silent, her gaze fixed on the door leading into the house. A sliver of light now glowed beneath it.
    He’s inside. He’s searching the house.
    She scrambled out of the car and softly pushed the door shut, extinguishing the dome light. Once again, she was in darkness. The house’s fuse box was only a few feet away, on the garage wall, and she considered flipping all the circuit breakers and cutting off power to the lights. It would give her the cover of darkness. But he would surely guess where she was, and would immediately head into the garage.
    Just stay quiet, she thought. Maybe he’ll think I’m not at home. Maybe he’ll think the house is empty.
    Then she remembered the blood. She had left a trail of blood.
    She could hear his footsteps. Shoes moving across the wood floor, following her bloody footprints out of the kitchen. A confusing smear of them, up and down the hallway.
    Eventually, he would follow them into the garage.
    She thought of how Rat Lady had died, remembered the bright spray of pellets scattered throughout her chest. She thought of the path of devastation that a copper-jacketed Glaser bullet cuts through the human body. The explosion of lead shot tearing through internal organs. The rupture of vessels, the massive hemorrhage of blood into the chest cavity.
    Run. Get out of the house.
    And then what? Scream for the neighbors? Pound on doors? She didn’t even know which of her neighbors was home tonight.
    The footsteps were moving closer.
    Now or never.
    She ran toward the side door and cold air blasted in as she pulled it open. She bolted out into the yard. Her bare feet sank calf-deep into snow, which cascaded in, blocking the jamb, so she could not close the door behind her.
    She left it ajar, waded to the gate, and yanked up the cold-stiffened latch. The cell phone tumbled from her grasp as she strained on the gate, trying to pull it open against the barrier of deep snow. At last she swung it just far enough so that she could squeeze through, and she stumbled into the front yard.
    All the houses on her street were dark.
    She ran, bare feet churning through snow. Had just reached the sidewalk when she heard her pursuer also wrenching on the gate, straining to open it wider.
    The sidewalk was mercilessly exposed; she veered between hedges, into Mr. Telushkin’s front yard. But here the drifts were even deeper, almost to her knees, and she had to