Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

me?”
    Joe grabbed two chairs, dragged them to the center of the room, and set them down facing each other. “Let’s sit, you and me.”
    “My wife is in labor. She can’t stay in here much longer.”
    “Olena will attend to her.” He gestured to the chairs. “I’m going to tell you a story.”
    Gabriel looked at Jane. She saw, in his eyes, both love and apprehension.
Whom do you trust?
Joe had asked her earlier.
Who’d take this bullet for you?
Staring at her husband, she thought: There will never be anyone I trust more than you.
    Reluctantly, Gabriel turned his attention back to Joe, and the two men sat facing each other. It looked like a perfectly civilized summit, except for the fact that one of the men had a gun resting in his lap. Olena, now stationed on Jane’s couch, held an equally lethal weapon. Just a nice little get-together with two couples.
Which pair will survive the night?
    “What did they tell you about me?” said Joe. “What’s the FBI saying?”
    “A few things.”
    “I’m crazy, right? A loner. Paranoid.”
    “Yes.”
    “You believe them?”
    “I have no reason not to.”
    Jane watched her husband’s face. Though he spoke calmly, she could see the strain in his eyes, the tight muscles of his neck. You knew this man was insane, she thought, yet you walked in here anyway. All for me . . . She suppressed a groan as a new contraction began to build.
Keep quiet. Don’t distract Gabriel; let him do what he needs to do.
She sank back on the couch, teeth gritted, suffering in silence. Kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling, on a single dark smudge on the acoustic tile.
Concentrate on your focal point. Mind over pain.
The ceiling blurred, the smudge seeming to bob in an unsteady sea of white. It made her nauseated just to look at it. She closed her eyes, like a seasick sailor woozy from rocking waves.
    Only when the contraction began to ease, when the pain at last released its grip, did she open her eyes. Her gaze, once again, focused on the ceiling. Something had changed. Next to the smudge there was now a small hole, almost unnoticeable among the pores of the acoustic tile.
    She glanced at Gabriel, but he was not looking at her. He was completely focused on the man sitting across from him.
    Joe asked: “Do you think I’m insane?”
    Gabriel regarded him for a moment. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I can’t make that determination.”
    “You walked in here expecting a crazy man to be waving a gun around, didn’t you?” He leaned forward. “That’s what they told you. Be honest.”
    “You really want me to be honest?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “They told me I’d be dealing with two terrorists. That’s what I was led to believe.”
    Joe sat back, his face grim. “So that’s how they’re going to end it,” he said quietly. “Of course. It’s how they
would
end it. What kind of terrorists are we supposed to be?” He glanced at Olena, then laughed. “Oh. Chechens, probably.”
    “Yes.”
    “Is John Barsanti running the show?”
    Gabriel frowned. “You know him?”
    “He’s been tracking us since Virginia. Everywhere we go, he seems to turn up. I knew he’d show up here. He’s probably just waiting to zip up our body bags.”
    “You don’t have to die. Hand me your weapons, and we’ll all leave together. No gunfire, no blood. I give you my word.”
    “Yeah, there’s a guarantee.”
    “You let me walk in here. Which means that, on some level, you trust me.”
    “I can’t afford to trust anyone.”
    “Then why am I here?”
    “Because I refuse to go to my grave without some hope of justice. We’ve tried taking this to the press. We
handed
them the fucking evidence. But no one gives a shit.” He looked at Olena. “Show them your arm. Show them what Ballentree did to you.”
    Olena tugged her sleeve above her elbow and pointed to a jagged scar.
    “You see?” said Joe. “What they put in her arm?”
    “Ballentree? Are you talking about the defense contractor?”
    “Latest microchip technology. A way for Ballentree to track its property. She was human cargo, brought over straight from Moscow. A little business that Ballentree operates on the side.”
    Jane looked back at the ceiling. Suddenly she realized that there were other fresh holes in the acoustic tiles. She glanced at the two men, but they were still focused on each other. No one else was looking upward; no one else saw that the ceiling was now riddled with punctures.
    “So this is all about a