The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel
beside the car, staring at her helplessly. Rizzoli was shouting at him to move away, but he seemed paralyzed.
“Drive,” said Sutcliffe.
Maura put the car in gear and let out the brake. She pressed her bare foot to the gas pedal, then lifted it again.
“You can’t kill me,” she said. The logical Dr. Isles was back in control. “We’re surrounded by the police. You need me as a hostage. You need me to drive this car.”
A few seconds passed. An eternity.
She sucked in a gasp as he lowered the gun from her head and pressed the barrel, hard, against her thigh.
“And you don’t need your left leg to drive. So do you want to keep your knee?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
She pressed the accelerator.
Slowly the car began to roll forward, past the parked cruiser where Frost was crouched. The dark street stretched ahead of them, unobstructed. The car kept moving.
Suddenly she saw Father Brophy in her rearview mirror, running after them, lit by the strobelike flashes of the cruiser’s blue lights. He grabbed Sutcliffe’s door and yanked it open. Reaching in, Brophy clawed at Sutcliffe’s sleeve, trying to drag him out.
The blast of the gun sent the priest flying backwards.
Maura shoved open her own door and threw herself out of the rolling car.
She landed on icy pavement, and saw bright flashes as her head slammed against the ground.
For a moment she could not move. She lay in blackness, trapped in a cold and numbing place, feeling no pain, no fear. Aware only of the wind, blowing feathery snow across her face. She heard a voice calling to her from across a great distance.
Louder, now. Closer.
“Doc?
Doc?
”
Maura opened her eyes and winced against the glare of Rizzoli’s flashlight. She turned her head away from the light and saw the car a dozen yards away, its front bumper rammed against a tree. Sutcliffe was lying face-down on the street, struggling to get up, his hands cuffed behind him.
“Father Brophy,” she murmured. “Where is Father Brophy?”
“We’ve already called the ambulance.”
Slowly Maura sat up and looked down the street, where Frost was crouched over the priest’s body. No, she thought. No.
“Don’t get up yet,” said Rizzoli, trying to hold her still.
But Maura pushed her away and rose, her legs unsteady, her heart in her throat. She scarcely felt the icy road beneath her bare feet as she stumbled toward Brophy.
Frost looked up as she approached. “It’s a chest wound,” he said softly.
Dropping to her knees beside him, she tore open the priest’s shirt and saw where the bullet had penetrated. She heard the ominous sound of air being sucked into the chest. She pressed her hand to the wound, and felt warm blood and clammy flesh. He was shaking from the cold. Wind swept down the street, its bite as sharp as fangs. And I am wearing your coat, she thought. The coat you gave me to keep me warm.
Through the howl of the wind, she heard the wail of the approaching ambulance.
His gaze was unfocused, consciousness fading.
“Stay with me Daniel,” she said. “Do you hear me?” Her voice broke. “You’re going to live.” She leaned forward, tears sliding onto his face as she pleaded into his ear.
“Please. Do it for me, Daniel. You have to live. You have to live. . . .”
T WENTY -T HREE
T HE TV in the hospital waiting room was tuned, as always, to CNN.
Maura sat with her bandaged foot propped up on a chair, her gaze fixed on the news banner crawling across the bottom of the screen, but she did not register a single word. Though she was now dressed in a wool sweater and corduroy slacks, she still felt cold, and did not think she would ever feel warm again. Four hours, she thought. He has been on the operating table for four hours. She looked at her hand and could still see Daniel Brophy’s blood under her fingernails, could still feel his heart throb like a struggling bird against her palm. She did not need to see an X ray to know what damage the bullet had done; she’d seen the lethal track that a Glaser blue-tip had torn in Rat Lady’s chest, and knew what the surgeons now faced. A lung sliced by exploding shrapnel. Blood pouring from a dozen different vessels. The panic that grips the staff in the O.R. when they see life hemorrhaging out, and the surgeons cannot snap on clamps fast enough.
She looked up as Rizzoli came into the room, carrying a cup of coffee and a cell phone. “We found your phone by the side
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