The Apprentice: A Novel

by Tess Gerritsen

  But it was just such challenges that led women to make fools of themselves.

  When at last he pulled up in front of the Watergate Hotel, she was ready with a crisp farewell.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she said. “And for the revelations.” She turned and opened her door, letting in a whoosh of warm, wet air. “See you back in Boston.”

  “Jane?”

  “Yes?”

  “No more hidden agendas between us, okay? What I say is what I mean.”

  “If you insist.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “It matters a great deal to me.”

  She paused, her pulse suddenly quickening. Her gaze swung back to his. They had kept secrets from each other for so long that neither one of them knew how to read the truth in the other’s eyes. It was a moment in which anything could have been said next, anything could have happened. Neither dared to make the first move. The first mistake.

  A shadow moved across her open car door. “Welcome to the Watergate, ma’am! Do you need help with any luggage?”

  Rizzoli glanced up, startled, to see the hotel doorman smiling at her. He had seen her open the door and assumed she was stepping out of the car.

  “I’m already checked in, thank you,” she said, and glanced back at Dean. But the moment had passed. The doorman was still standing there, waiting for her to get out. So she did.

  A glance through the window, a wave; that was their good-bye. She turned and walked into the lobby, pausing only long enough to watch his car drive out of the porte cochere and vanish into the rain.

  In the elevator, she leaned back, her eyes closed, and silently berated herself for every naked emotion she might have revealed, everything foolish she might have said in the car. By the time she got up to her room, she wanted more than anything to simply check out and return to Boston. Surely there was a flight she could catch this evening. Or the train. She’d always loved riding trains.

  Now in a rush to escape, to put Washington and its embarrassments behind her, she opened her suitcase and began to pack. She’d brought very little with her, and it did not take long to pull the spare blouse and slacks from the closet where she’d hung them, to throw them on top of her weapon and holster, to toss her toothbrush and comb into her toilet case. She zipped it all into the suitcase and was wheeling it to the door when she heard a knock.

  Dean stood in the hall, his gray suit spattered with rain, his hair wet and glistening. “I don’t think we finished our conversation,” he said.

  “Did you have something else to tell me?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” He stepped into her room and closed the door. Frowned at her suitcase already packed and ready for her departure.

  Jesus, she thought. Someone has to be brave here. Someone has to grab this bull by the horns.

  Before another word could be said, she pulled him toward her. Simultaneously felt his arms go around her waist. By the time their lips met, there was no doubt in either of their minds that this embrace was mutual, that if this was a mistake, they were equally at fault. She knew almost nothing about him, only that she wanted him, and would deal with the consequences later.

  His face was damp from the rain, and as his clothes came off they left the scent of wet wool on his skin, a scent she eagerly inhaled as her mouth explored his body, as he made competing claims on hers. She had no patience for gentle lovemaking; she wanted it frenzied and reckless. She could feel him holding back, trying to slow down, to maintain control. She fought him, used her body to taunt him. And in this, their first encounter, she was the conqueror. He was the one who surrendered.

  They dozed as the afternoon light slowly faded from the window. When she awakened, only the thin glow of twilight illuminated the man lying beside her. A man who, even now, remained a cipher to her. She had used his body, just as he had used hers, and although she knew she should feel some level of guilt for the pleasure they’d taken, all she really felt was tired satisfaction. And a sense of wonder.

  “You had your suitcase packed,” he said.

  “I was going to check out tonight and go home.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t see the point of staying here.” She reached out to touch his face, to stroke the roughness of his beard. “Until you showed up.”

  “I almost didn’t. I drove around the block a few times. Getting up the nerve.”

  She laughed. “You make it sound as if you’re afraid of me.”

  “The truth? You’re a very formidable woman.”

  “Is that really how I come across?”

  “Fierce. Passionate. It amazes me, all that heat you generate.” He stroked her thigh, and the touch of his fingers sent a fresh tremor through her body. “In the car, you said you wished you could be more like me. The truth is, Jane, I wish I could be more like you. I wish I had your intensity.”

  She placed her hand on his chest. “You talk as if there’s no heart beating in there.”

  “Isn’t that what you thought?”

  She was silent. The man in the gray suit.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he said.

  “I didn’t know what to make of you,” she admitted. “You always seem so detached. Not quite human.”

  “Numb.”

  He had said the word so softly, she wondered if he’d meant it to be heard. A thought whispered only to himself.

  “We react in different ways,” he said. “The things we’re expected to deal with. You said it makes you angry.”

  “A lot of the time, it does.”

  “So you throw yourself into the fight. You go charging in, all cylinders firing. The way you charge at life.” He added, with a soft laugh, “Bad temper and all.”

  “How can you not get angry?”

  “I won’t let myself. That’s how I deal with it. Step back, take a breath. Play each case like a jigsaw puzzle.” He looked at her. “That’s why you intrigue me. All that turmoil, all the emotion you invest in everything you do. It feels somehow . . . dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s at odds with what I am. What I try to be.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll rub off on you.”

  “It’s like getting too close to fire. We’re drawn to it, even though we know damn well it’ll burn us.”

  She pressed her lips to his. “A little danger,” she whispered, “can be very exciting.”

  The evening drifted into night. They showered off each other’s sweat and grinned at themselves standing before the mirror, wearing matching hotel robes. They ate a room service dinner and drank wine in bed with the TV tuned to the Comedy Channel. Tonight, there would be no CNN, no bad news to sour the mood. Tonight, she wanted to be a million miles away from Warren Hoyt.

  But even distance, and the comfort of a man’s arms, could not shut Hoyt from her dreams. She lurched awake in darkness, drenched in the sweat of fear, not passion. Through the pounding of her heart, she heard her cell phone ringing. It took her a few seconds to disentangle herself from Dean’s arms, to reach across him toward the nightstand on his side of the bed and flip open her cell phone.

  “Rizzoli.”

  Frost’s voice greeted her. “I guess I woke you up.”

  She squinted at the clock radio. “Five A.M.? Yeah, that’s a safe assumption.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Look, I know you’re flying back today. But I thought you should know before you got here.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t immediately answer her. Over the phone, she heard someone ask him a question about bagging evidence, and she realized that at that moment he was working a scene.

  Beside her, Dean stirred, alerted by her sudden tension. He sat up and turned on the light. “What’s going on?”

  Frost came back on the line. “Rizzoli?”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I
got called to a ten sixty-four. That’s where I am right now—”

  “Why are you answering burglary calls?”

  “Because it’s your apartment.”

  She went completely still, the phone pressed to her ear, and heard the throb of her own pulse.

  “Since you were out of town, we temporarily halted surveillance on your building,” said Frost. “Your neighbor down the hall in two-oh-three called it in. Ms., uh—”

  “Spiegel,” she said softly. “Ginger.”

  “Yeah. Seems like a real sharp girl. Says she’s a bartender down at McGinty’s. She was walking home from work and noticed glass under the fire escape. Looked up and saw your window was broken. Called nine-one-one right away. First officer on the scene realized it was your place. He called me.”

  Dean touched her arm in silent inquiry. She ignored him. Clearing her throat, she managed to ask, with deceptive calmness, “Did he take anything?” Already she was using the word he. Without saying his name, they both knew who had done this.

  “That’s what you’ll need to tell us when you get here,” said Frost.

  “You’re there now?”

  “Standing in your living room.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling almost nauseated with rage as she pictured strangers invading her home. Opening her closets, touching her clothes. Lingering over her most intimate possessions.

  “It looks to me like things are undisturbed,” said Frost. “Your TV and CD player are here. There’s a big jar of spare change still sitting on the kitchen counter. Is there anything else they might want to steal?”

  My peace of mind. My sanity.

  “Rizzoli?”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  A pause. He said, gently: “I’ll go through it all with you, inch by inch. When you get home, we’ll do it together. Landlord’s already boarded up the window so the rain won’t get in. If you want to stay at my house for a while, I know it’ll be fine with Alice. We got a spare room never gets used—”

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “It’s no problem—”

  “I’m okay.”

  There was anger in her voice, and pride. Most of all, pride.

  Frost knew enough to ease off and not feel offended. He said, unruffled, “Give me a call as soon as you get in.”

  Dean was watching as she hung up. Suddenly she could not stand to be looked at while naked and afraid. To have her vulnerability on full display. She climbed out of bed, went into the bathroom, and locked the door.

  A moment later, he knocked. “Jane?”

  “I’m going to take another shower.”

  “Don’t shut me out.” He knocked again. “Come out and talk to me.”

  “When I’m finished.” She turned on the shower. Stepped in, not because she needed to wash but because running water barred conversation. It was a noisy curtain of privacy behind which to hide. As the water beat down on her, she stood with head bowed, hands braced on the tiled wall, wrestling with her fear. She imagined it sliding off her skin like dirt and gurgling down the drain. Layer by layer, shedding off. When at last she shut off the water, she felt calm. Cleansed. She dried herself, and in the steamed mirror she caught a glimpse of her face, no longer pale but flushed from the heat. Ready once again to play the public role of Jane Rizzoli.

  She stepped out of the bathroom. Dean was sitting in the armchair by the window. He said nothing, just watched as she began to dress, picking up her clothes from the floor as she circled the bed, its rumpled sheets the mute evidence of their passion. One phone call had ended it, and now she moved about the room with brittle resolve, buttoning her blouse, zipping up her slacks. Outside, it was still dark, but for her, the night was over.

  “Are you going to tell me?” he said.

  “Hoyt was in my apartment.”

  “They know it was him?”

  She turned to face him. “Who else would it be?”

  The words came out shriller than she’d intended. Flushing, she retrieved her shoes from under the bed. “I have to get home.”

  “It’s five in the morning. Your plane leaves at nine-thirty.”

  “Do you really expect me to go back to sleep? After this?”

  “You’ll get into Boston exhausted.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Because you’re wired on adrenaline.”

  She shoved her feet into her shoes. “Stop it, Dean.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Trying to take care of me.”

  A silence passed. Then he said, with a note of sarcasm, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.”

  She paused with her back to him, already regretting her words. Wishing for the first time that he would take care of her. That he would put his arms around her and coax her back to bed. That they would sleep holding each other until it was time for her to leave.

  But when she turned to face him, she saw that he was out of the chair and already getting dressed.

  twenty-four

  She fell asleep on the plane. As they started the descent into Boston, she woke up feeling drugged and desperately thirsty. The bad weather had followed her from D.C., and turbulence rattled seat-back trays and passengers’ nerves as they dropped through the clouds. Outside her window, the wing tips vanished behind a curtain of gray, but she was too tired to register even a twinge of anxiety about the flight. And Dean was still on her mind, distracting her from what she should be focused on. She stared out at the mist and remembered the touch of his hands, the warmth of his breath on her skin.

  And she remembered their last words at the airport curb, a cool and rushed good-bye under pattering rain. Not the parting of lovers but of business associates, anxious to get on with their separate concerns. She blamed herself for the new distance between them and blamed him, as well, for letting her walk away. Once again, Washington had turned into the city of regrets and stained sheets.

  The plane touched down in a driving rain. She saw ramp personnel splash across the tarmac in their hooded slickers and she was already dreading the prospect of what came next. The ride home to an apartment that would never again feel secure, because he had been there.

  Wheeling her suitcase from baggage claim, she stepped outside and was hit with a blast of wind-driven rain that angled under the overhang. A long line of dispirited people stood waiting for taxis. Scanning the row of limousines parked across the street, she was relieved to find the name RIZZOLI displayed in one of the limo windows.

  She tapped on the driver’s side, and the window rolled down. It was a different driver, not the elderly black man who’d brought her to the airport the day before.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I’m Jane Rizzoli.”

  “Going to Claremont Street, right?”

  “That’s me.”

  The driver stepped out and opened the backseat door for her. “Welcome aboard. I’ll put your suitcase in the trunk.”

  “Thank you.”

  She slid into the car and gave a tired sigh as she leaned back against rich leather. Outside, horns blared and tires skidded in the pouring rain, but the world inside this limousine was blessedly silent. She closed her eyes as they glided away from Logan Airport and headed for the Boston Expressway.

  Her cell phone rang. Shaking off her exhaustion, she sat up and dazedly dug around in her purse, dropping pens and loose change on the car floor as she hunted for the phone. She finally managed to answer it on the fourth ring.

  “Rizzoli.”

  “This is Margaret in Senator Conway’s office. I made the arrangements for your travel. I just wanted to double-check that you do have a ride home from the airport.”

  “Yes. I’m in the limo now.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Well, I’m glad that was cleared up.”

  “What was?”

  “The limo service called to confirm that you’d canceled your airport pickup.”

  “No, he was waiting for me.
Thank you.”

  She disconnected and bent down to retrieve everything that had fallen from her purse. The ballpoint pen had rolled beneath the driver’s seat. As she reached for it, fingers skimming the floor, she suddenly registered the color of the carpet. Navy blue.

  Slowly she sat up.

  They had just entered the Callahan Tunnel, which burrowed beneath the Charles River. Traffic had slowed, and they were creeping along an endless concrete tube, its interior lit a sickly amber.

  Navy-blue nylon six, six Dupont Antron. Standard carpet in Cadillacs and Lincolns.

  She remained perfectly still, her gaze turned toward the tunnel wall. She thought about Gail Yeager and funeral processions, the line of limousines slowly winding toward cemetery gates.

  She thought of Alexander and Karenna Ghent, who had arrived at Logan Airport just a week before their deaths.

  And she thought of Kenneth Waite and his OUIs. A man who was not allowed to drive, yet took his wife to Boston.

  Is this how he finds them?

  A couple step into his car. The woman’s pretty face is reflected in his rearview mirror. She settles back in smooth leather seats for the ride home, never realizing that she’s being watched. That a man whose face she has scarcely registered is, at that very moment, deciding that she is the one.

  The tunnel’s amber lights glided by as Rizzoli built the theory, brick by brick. Such a comfortable car, a quiet ride, the leather seats soft as human skin. A nameless man behind the wheel. All designed to make the passenger feel safe and protected. The passenger knows nothing about the man behind the wheel. But the driver would know the passenger’s name. The flight number. The street where she lives.

  Traffic was stalled now. Far ahead, she could see the tunnel’s opening, a small portal of gray light. She kept her face turned to the window, not daring to look at the driver. Not wanting him to see her apprehension. Her hands were sweating as she reached into her purse and grasped the cell phone. She did not take it out but just sat with her hand around it, thinking about what, if anything, she should do next. So far the driver had done nothing to alarm her, nothing to make her think he was anything but what he claimed to be.