The Surgeon: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel: With Bonus Content

we both know what a scalpel is used for.
    I set the tray near her head, so she can see, and contemplate, what comes next. I don’t have to say a word; the glitter of the instruments says everything.
    I touch her naked belly and her abdominal muscles snap tight. It is a virgin belly, without any scars marring its flat surface. The blade will part her skin like butter.
    I pick up the scalpel, and press its tip to her abdomen. She gasps in a breath and her eyes go wide.
    Once, I saw a photograph of a zebra just as a lion’s fangs have sunk into its throat, and the zebra’s eyes are rolled back in mortal terror. It is an image I will never forget. That is the look I see now, in Catherine’s eyes.
     
    Oh god, oh god, oh god.
    Catherine’s breaths roared in and out of her lungs as she felt the scalpel tip prick her skin. Drenched in sweat, she closed her eyes, dreading the pain that was about to come. A sob caught in her throat, a cry to the heavens for mercy, even for a quick death, but not this. Not the slicing of flesh.
    Then the scalpel lifted away.
    She opened her eyes and looked into his face. So ordinary, so forgettable. A man she might have seen a dozen times and never registered. Yet he knew
her
. He had hovered on the edges of her world, had placed her at the bright center of his universe, while he circled around her, unseen in the darkness.
    And I never knew he was there.
    He set the scalpel down on the tray. And smiling, he said, “Not yet.”
    Only when he’d walked out of the room did she know the torment was postponed, and she gave a sharp gasp of relief.
    So this was his game. Prolong the terror, prolong the pleasure. For now he would keep her alive, giving her time to contemplate what came next.
    Every minute alive is another minute to escape.
    The effect of the chloroform had dissipated, and she was fully alert, her mind racing on the potent fuel of panic. She was lying spreadeagled on a steel-framed bed. Her clothes had been stripped off; her wrists and ankles were bound to the bedframe with duct tape. Though she yanked and strained against the bindings until her muscles quivered from exhaustion, she could not free herself. Four years ago, in Savannah, Capra had used nylon cord to bind her wrists, and she had managed to slip one hand free; the Surgeon would not repeat that mistake.
    Drenched with sweat, too tired to keep struggling, she focused on her surroundings.
    A single bare lightbulb hung above the bed. The scent of earth and dank stone told her she was in a cellar. Turning her head, she could make out, just beyond the circle of light, the cobbled surface of the stone foundation.
    Footsteps creaked overhead, and she heard chair legs scrape. A wooden floor. An old house. Upstairs, a TV went on. She could not remember how she had arrived in this room or how long the drive had taken. They might be miles away from Boston, in a place where no one would think to look.
    The gleam of the tray drew her gaze. She stared at the array of instruments, neatly laid out for the procedure to come. Countless times she herself had wielded such instruments, had thought of them as tools of healing. With scalpels and clamps she had excised cancers and bullets, had stanched the hemorrhage from ruptured arteries and drained chest cavities drowning in blood. Now she stared at the tools she had used to save lives and saw the instruments of her own death. He had put them close to the bed, so she could study them and contemplate the razor edge of the scalpel, the steel teeth of the hemostats.
    Don’t panic. Think. Think.
    She closed her eyes. Fear was like a living thing, wrapping its tentacles around her throat.
    You beat them before. You can do it again.
    She felt a drop of perspiration slide down her breast, into the sweat-soaked mattress. There was a way out. There had to be a way out, a way to fight back. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.
    Opening her eyes, she stared at the lightbulb overhead and focused her scalpel-sharp mind on what to do next. She remembered what Moore had told her: that the Surgeon fed on terror. He attacked women who were damaged, who were victims. Women to whom he felt superior.
    He will not kill me until he has conquered me.
    She drew in a deep breath, understanding now what game had to be played.
Fight the fear. Welcome the rage. Show him that no matter what he does to you, you cannot be defeated.
    Even in death.

     

twenty-four
    R izzoli jerked awake, and pain stabbed