Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

here.”
    “Whose body?”
    “I’ll show you.”
     
    Gabriel stood at the edge of the trees, staying out of the way of the detectives and the crime scene unit, his gaze fixed on the open hole that would have been the grave of his wife and daughter. Police tape had been strung around the site, and battery-powered lights glared down on the man’s body. Maura Isles, who’d been crouching over the corpse, now rose to her feet and turned to Detectives Moore and Crowe.
    “I see three entry wounds,” she said. “Two in the chest, one in the forehead.”
    “That’s what we heard,” said Gabriel. “Three shots.”
    Maura looked at him. “How long an interval between them?”
    Gabriel thought about it, and felt once again the echoes of panic. He remembered his plunge into the woods, and how, with every step, his sense of dread had mounted. “There were two in quick succession,” he said. “The third shot was about five, ten seconds after that.”
    Maura was silent as her gaze swung back to the corpse. She stared down at the man’s blond hair, the powerful shoulders. A SIG Sauer lay near his right hand.
    “Well,” said Crowe, “I’d call this a pretty obvious case of self-defense.”
    No one said anything, not about the powder burns on the face, or the delay between the second and third shots. But they all knew.
    Gabriel turned and walked back toward the house.
    The driveway was now crammed with vehicles. He paused there, temporarily blinded by the flashing blue lights of cruisers. Then he spotted Helen Glasser helping the girl into the front passenger seat of her car.
    “Where are you taking her?” he asked.
    Glasser turned to him, her hair reflecting the cruiser lights like blue foil. “Somewhere safe.”
    “Is there any such place for her?”
    “Believe me, I’ll find one.” Glasser paused by the driver’s door and glanced back toward the house. “The videotape changes everything, you know. And we can turn Lukas around. He has no choice now, he’ll cooperate with us. So you see, it doesn’t all rest with the girl. She’s important, but she’s not the only weapon we have.”
    “Even so, will it be enough to bring down Carleton Wynne?”
    “No one’s above the law, Agent Dean.” Glasser looked at him, her eyes reflecting steel. “No one.” She slid in behind the wheel.
    “Wait,” called out Gabriel. “I need to speak to the girl.”
    “And we need to leave.”
    “It’ll only take a minute.” Gabriel circled to the passenger side, opened the door, and peered in at Mila. She was hugging herself, shrinking against the seat as though afraid of his intentions. Just a kid, he thought, yet she’s tougher than all of us. Given half a chance, she’ll survive anything.
    “Mila,” he said gently.
    She gazed back with eyes that did not trust him; perhaps she would never again trust a man, and why should she?
She has seen the worst we have to offer.
    “I want to thank you,” he said. “Thank you for giving me back my family.”
    There it was—just the wisp of a smile. It was more than he’d expected.
    He closed the door, and gave a nod to Glasser. “Take him down,” he called out.
    “That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she said with a laugh, and she drove away, followed by a Boston PD escort.
    Gabriel climbed the steps into the house. Inside he found Barry Frost conferring with Barsanti as members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team carried out Lukas’s computer and boxes of his files. This was clearly a federal case now, and Boston PD would be ceding control of the investigation to the Bureau. Even so, thought Gabriel, how far can they take it? Then Barsanti looked at him, and Gabriel saw in his eyes the same steel he’d seen in Glasser’s. And he noticed that Barsanti was clutching the videotape. Guarding it, as though he held the Holy Grail itself.
    “Where’s Jane?” he asked Frost.
    “She’s in the kitchen. The baby got hungry.”
    He found his wife sitting with her back to the doorway; she did not see him walk into the room. He paused behind her, watching as she cradled Regina to her breast, humming tunelessly. Jane never could carry a tune, he thought with a smile. Regina didn’t seem to mind; she lay quiet in her mother’s newly confident arms. Love is the part that comes naturally, thought Gabriel. It’s everything else that takes time. That we have to learn.
    He placed his hands on Jane’s shoulders and bent down to kiss her hair. She looked up at