The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

an OR nurse standing in the doorway.
    “Dr. Demetrios wanted you to know that everything went well. They’re closing him up now. The patient should be moving to the surgical ICU in about an hour.”
    “Dr. Isles here has been waiting to see him.”
    “It will be a while before he can have any visitors. We’re keeping him intubated and under sedation. It’s better if you come back later in the day. Maybe after lunchtime.”
    Maura nodded and slowly rose to her feet.
    So did Rizzoli. “I’ll drive you home,” she said.
    It was already dawn by the time Maura walked into her house. She looked at the trail of dried blood she’d left on the floor, the evidence of her ordeal. She walked through each room, as though to reclaim it from the darkness. To reassert that this was still her home, and that fear had no place within these walls. She went into the kitchen, and found that the broken window had already been boarded up against the cold.
    Jane’s orders, no doubt.
    Somewhere, a phone was ringing.
    She picked up the receiver on the wall, but there was no dial tone. The line had not yet been repaired.
    My cell phone, she thought.
    She went into the living room where she’d left her purse. By the time she pulled out the phone, the ringing had stopped. She punched in her code to hear the message.
    The call had been from Victor. She sank onto the couch, stunned to hear his voice.
    “I know it’s too soon for me to be calling you. And you’re probably wondering why the hell you should listen to me, after . . . well, after everything that’s happened. But now it’s all out in the open. You know I have nothing to gain by this. So maybe you’ll believe me when I tell you how much I miss you, Maura. I think we could make it work again. We could give it another chance. Give
me
another chance, won’t you? Please.”
    For a long time she sat on the couch, holding the phone in numb hands, and staring at the cold fireplace. Some flames cannot be rekindled, she thought. Some flames are better left dead.
    She slipped the phone back into her purse. Rose to her feet. And went to clean the blood off her floor.
             
     
    By ten A . M ., the sun had finally broken through the clouds, and as she drove home, Rizzoli had to squint against the brilliance of its reflection on the newly fallen snow. The streets were quiet, the sidewalks a pristine white. On this Christmas morning, she felt renewed. Cleansed of all doubt.
    She touched her abdomen and thought: I guess it’s just you and me, kid.
    She parked the car in front of her building and stepped out. Paused there, in the cold sunshine, to take a deep breath of crystalline air.
    “Merry Christmas, Jane.”
    She went very still, her heart thumping hard. Slowly she turned.
    Gabriel Dean stood near the front entrance to her apartment building. She watched him walk toward her, but she could think of nothing to say to him. Once, they had been as intimate with each other as a man and a woman could be, yet here they were, as tongue-tied as strangers.
    “I thought you were in Washington,” she finally said.
    “I got in about an hour ago. I took the first flight out of D.C.” He paused. “Thank you for telling me,” he said quietly.
    “Yeah, well.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure you’d even want to know.”
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “It’s a complication.”
    “Life is a series of complications. We have to deal with each one as it comes.”
    Such a matter-of-fact response.
The man in the gray suit
had been her initial impression of Gabriel when they’d first met, and that was how she saw him now, standing before her in his dark overcoat. So calm and detached.
    “How long have you known about it?” he asked.
    “I wasn’t sure until a few days ago. I took one of those home pregnancy tests. But I think I’ve suspected it for a few weeks.”
    “Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
    “I wasn’t going to tell you at all. Because I didn’t think I was going to keep it.”
    “Why not?”
    She laughed. “For one thing, I’m lousy with kids. Someone hands me a baby, I don’t know what to do with it. Do you burp it or change its diaper? And how am I supposed to go to work if I’ve got a baby at home?”
    “I didn’t know cops took a vow of childlessness.”
    “But it’s so
hard
, you know. I look at other moms, and I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know if I can do it.” She huffed out a cloud of white and straightened. “At least,