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

saw its inevitability. All her life she had been a fighter, all her life she had raged against defeat, but in this she was conquered. Her throat lay bare, her neck arched backward. She saw the gleam of the blade and closed her eyes as he touched it to her skin.
    Lord, let it be quick.
    She heard him take a preparatory breath, felt his grip suddenly tighten on her hair.
    The blast of the gun shocked her.
    Her eyelids flew open. He was still crouched above her, but he was no longer gripping her hair. The scalpel fell from his hand. Something warm dribbled onto her face. Blood.
    Not hers, but his.
    He toppled backward and vanished from her line of vision.
    Already resigned to her own death, now Rizzoli lay stunned by the prospect that she would live. She struggled to take in a host of details at once. She saw the lightbulb swaying like a bright moon on a string. On the wall, shadows moved. Turning her head, she saw Catherine Cordell’s arm drop weakly back to the bed.
    Saw the gun slide from Cordell’s hand and thud to the floor.
    In the distance, a siren wailed.

     

twenty-seven
    R izzoli was sitting up in her hospital bed, glowering at the TV. Bandages encased her hands so thoroughly they looked like boxing gloves. A large bald spot had been shaved on the side of her head, where the doctors had stitched up a scalp laceration. She fussed with the TV remote, and at first she did not notice Moore standing in the doorway. Then he knocked. When she turned and looked at him he saw, just for an instant, a glimmer of vulnerability. Then her usual defenses sprang back into place and she was the old Rizzoli, her gaze wary as he walked into the room and took the chair by her bed.
    On the TV whined the annoying background theme of a soap opera.
    “Can you turn off that crap?” she blurted in frustration and gestured to the remote control with one bandaged paw. “I can’t press the buttons. They expect me to use my goddamn nose or something.”
    He took the remote and pressed the Off button.
    “
Thank
you,” she huffed. And winced from the pain of three broken ribs.
    With the TV off, a long silence stretched between them. Through the open doorway, they heard a doctor’s name paged and the rattle of the meal cart wheeling down the hall.
    “They taking good care of you out here?” he asked.
    “It’s okay, for a hick hospital. Probably better than being in the city.”
    While both Catherine and Hoyt had been airlifted to Pilgrim Medical Center in Boston due to their more serious injuries, Rizzoli had been brought by ambulance to this small regional hospital. Despite its distance from the city, just about every detective in the Boston Homicide Unit had already made the pilgrimage here to visit Rizzoli.
    And they’d all brought flowers. Moore’s bouquet of roses was almost lost among the many arrangements displayed on the tray tables and the nightstand, even on the floor.
    “Wow,” he said. “You’ve picked up a lot of admirers.”
    “Yeah. Can you believe it? Even Crowe sent flowers. Those lilies over there. I think he’s trying to tell me something. Doesn’t it look like a funeral arrangement? See those nice orchids here? Frost brought those in. Hell, I should’ve sent
him
flowers for saving my ass.”
    It was Frost who’d called the state police for assistance. When Rizzoli failed to answer his pages, he’d contacted Dean Hobbs at the FoodMart to track down her whereabouts and learned she’d driven out to the Sturdee Farm to talk to a black-haired woman.
    Rizzoli continued her inventory of the flower arrangements. “That huge vase with those tropical things came from Elena Ortiz’s family. The carnations are from Marquette, the cheapskate. And Sleeper’s wife brought in that hibiscus plant.”
    Moore shook his head in amazement. “You remember all that?”
    “Yeah, well, nobody ever sends me flowers. So I’m committing this moment to memory.”
    Again he caught a glimpse of vulnerability shining through her brave mask. And he saw something else that he had never noticed before, a luminosity in her dark eyes. She was bruised, bandaged, and sporting an ugly bald patch on her head. But once you overlooked the flaws of her face, the square jaw, the boxy forehead, you saw that Jane Rizzoli had beautiful eyes.
    “I just spoke to Frost. He’s over at Pilgrim,” said Moore. “He says Warren Hoyt is going to recover.”
    She said nothing.
    “They removed the breathing tube from Hoyt’s throat this