The Apprentice (23 page)

She’d barely had time to pull on a cotton bathrobe when he knocked. Through the fish-eye lens of the door’s peephole his sharp features appeared distorted. Ominous. By the time she’d unfastened all the various locks, that grotesquely distorted image had solidified in her mind. Reality was far less threatening. The man who stood in her doorway had tired eyes and a face that registered the strain of having witnessed too many horrors on too little sleep.

Yet his first question was about her: “Are you holding up all right?”

She understood the implication of that question: That she was
not
all right. That she was in need of checking up on, an unstable cop about to fracture into brittle shards.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she said.

“You left so soon after the autopsy. Before we had the chance to talk.”

“About what?”

“Warren Hoyt.”

“What do you want to know about him?”

“Everything.”

“I’m afraid that would take all night. And I’m tired.” She tugged her bathrobe tighter, suddenly self-conscious. It had always been important to her to appear professional, and she usually slipped on a blazer before heading to a crime scene. Now she stood before Dean in nothing more than her robe and underwear, and she did not like this feeling of vulnerability.

She reached for the door, a gesture with an unmistakable message:
This conversation is over
.

He didn’t budge from her doorway. “Look, I admit I made a mistake. I should have listened to you from the start. You were the one who saw it first. I didn’t recognize the parallels with Hoyt.”

“That’s because you never knew him.”

“So tell me about him. We need to work together, Jane.”

Her laughter was sharp as glass. “Now you’re interested in teamwork? This is new and different.”

Resigned to the fact that he was not leaving, she turned and walked into the living room. He followed her, shutting the door behind him.

“Talk to me about Hoyt.”

“You can read his file.”

“I already have.”

“Then you’ve got everything you need.”

“Not everything.”

She turned to face him. “What else is there?”

“I want to know what you know.” He stepped closer, and she felt a thrill of alarm because she was at such a disadvantage, standing before him in her bare feet, too exhausted to fend off his assault. It
felt
like an assault, all these demands he was making and the way his gaze seemed to penetrate what little clothing she wore.

“There’s some sort of emotional bond between you two,” he said. “An attachment.”

“Don’t call it a fucking
attachment
.”

“What would you call it?”

“He was the perp. I’m the one who cornered him. It’s as simple as that.”

“Not so simple, from what I’ve heard. Whether or not you want to admit it, there
is
an attachment between you two. He’s purposefully stepped back into your life. That grave site where they left Karenna Ghent’s body was not chosen at random.”

She said nothing. On that point she could not disagree.

“He’s a hunter, just like you are,” said Dean. “You both hunt humans. That’s one bond between you. Common ground.”

“There is no common ground.”

“But you understand each other. No matter what your feelings are, you’re linked to him. You saw his influence on the Dominator before anyone else did. You were way ahead of us.”

“And you thought I needed a shrink.”

“Yes. At the time, I did.”

“So now I’m not crazy. I’m brilliant.”

“You’ve got the inside track into his mind. You can help us figure out what he’ll do next. What does he want?”

“How should I know?”

“You got a more intimate look at him than any other cop has.”

“Intimate? Is that what you call it? That son of a bitch almost
killed
me.”

“And there’s nothing more intimate than murder. Is there?” She hated him at that moment, because he had stated a truth she wanted to cringe from. He had pointed out the very thing she could not bear to acknowledge: That she and Warren Hoyt were forever bound to each other.

That fear and loathing are more powerful emotions than love could ever be. She sank onto the couch. Once, she would have fought back. Once, she’d been fierce enough to match any man word for word. But tonight, she was tired, so tired, and she did not have the strength
to
fend off Dean’s questions. He would continue to push and prod until he had answers, and she might as well surrender to the inevitable. Get it over with so that he would leave her alone.

She straightened and found herself staring at her hands, at the matching scars on her palms. These were only the most obvious souvenirs left by Hoyt; the other scars were not so visible: the healed fractures of her ribs and facial bones, which could still be seen on X-ray. Least visible of all were the fracture lines that still split her life, like cracks left by an earthquake. In the last few weeks, she had felt those cracks begin to widen, as though the ground itself threatened to give way beneath her feet.

“I didn’t realize he was still there,” she whispered. “Standing right behind me in that cellar. In that house…”

He sat down in the chair across from her. “You’re the one who found him. The only cop who knew where to look.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She gave a shrug, a laugh. “Dumb luck.”

“No, it’s got to be more than that.”

“Don’t give me credit I don’t deserve.”

“I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit, Jane.” She looked up and found him staring at her with a directness that made her want to hide. But there was no place to retreat to, no defense she could mount against a gaze so piercing. How much does he see? she wondered. Does he know how exposed he makes me feel? “
Tell
me what happened in the cellar,” he said.

“You know what happened. It’s in my statement.”

“People leave things out of statements.”

“There’s nothing more to tell.”

“You’re not even going to try?”

Anger ripped through her like shrapnel. “I don’t
want
to think about it.”

“Yet you can’t help returning to it. Can you?” She stared at him, wondering what game he was playing and how she’d been so easily sucked into it. She had known other men who were charismatic, men who could draw a woman’s gaze so fast she’d get whiplash. Rizzoli had enough good sense to keep her distance from such men, to regard them for what they were: the genetically blessed among mere mortals. She had little use for such men, and they had little for her. But tonight, she had something Gabriel Dean needed, and he was focusing the full force of his attraction on her. And it was working. Never before had a man made her feel so confused and aroused all at once.

“He had you trapped in the cellar,” said Dean.

“I walked right into it. I didn’t know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

It was a startling question and it made her pause. She thought back to that afternoon, standing at the open cellar door, dreading the descent down those dark stairs. She remembered the suffocating heat of the house and how the sweat had soaked into her bra, her shirt. She remembered how fear had lit up every nerve in her body. Yes, she
had
known something was not right. She’d known what waited for her at the bottom of the steps.

“What went wrong, Detective?”

“The victim,” she whispered.

“Catherine Cordell?”

“She was in the cellar. Tied to a cot in the cellar…”

“The bait.”

She closed her eyes and could almost smell the scent of Cordell’s blood, of damp earth. Of her own sweat, sour with fear. “I took it. I took the bait.”

“He knew you would.”

“I should have realized—”

“But you were focused on the victim. On Cordell.”

“I wanted to save her.”

“And that was your mistake.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him in anger. “Mistake?”

“You didn’t secure the area first. You left yourself open to attack. You committed the most basic of errors. Surprising, for someone so capable.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know the situation I faced.”

“I read your statement.”

“Cordell was lying there. Bleeding—”

“So you responded the way any normal human being would. You tried to help her.”

“Yes.”

“And it got you into trouble. You forgot to think like a cop.”

Her look of outrage did not seem to disturb him in the least. He merely gazed back at her, his expression immobile, his face so composed, so assured, that it only served to magnify her own turmoil.

“I
never
forget to think like a cop,” she said.

“In that cellar, you did. You let the victim distract you.”

“My primary concern is always the victim.”

“When it endangers you both? Is that logical?”

Logical
. Yes, that was Gabriel Dean. She had never met anyone like this man, who could regard both the living and the dead with an equal absence of emotion.

“I couldn’t let her die,” she said. “That was my first— my only—thought.”

“You knew her? Cordell?”

“Yes.”

“You were friends?”

“No.” Her answer was so immediate, Dean’s eyebrow slanted up in a silent query. Rizzoli took a breath and said, “She was part of the Surgeon investigation. That’s all.”

“You didn’t like her?”

Rizzoli paused, taken aback by Dean’s penetrating insight. She said, “I didn’t warm to her. Let’s put it that way.”
I was jealous of her. Of her beauty. And her effect on Thomas Moore
.

“Yet Cordell was a victim,” said Dean.

“I wasn’t sure
what
she was. Not at first. But toward the end, it became clear she was the Surgeon’s target.”

“You must have felt guilty. About doubting her.”

Rizzoli said nothing.

“Is that why you needed so badly to save her?”

She stiffened, insulted by his question. “She was in danger. I didn’t need any other reason.”

“You took risks that weren’t prudent.”

“I don’t think
risk
and
prudent
are words that go together in the same sentence.”

“The Surgeon set the trap. You took the bait.”

“Yeah, okay. It was a mistake—”

“One he knew you’d make.”

“How could he possibly know that?”

“He knows a lot about you. It’s that bond, again. That connection between you two.”

She shot to her feet. “This is bullshit,” she said, and walked out of the living room.

He followed her into the kitchen, relentlessly pursuing her with his theories, theories she didn’t want to hear. The thought of any emotional link between herself and Hoyt was too repellent to consider, and she couldn’t stand listening any longer. But here he was, crowding into her already claustrophobic kitchen, forcing her to hear what he had to say.

“Just as you have a direct channel into Warren Hoyt’s psyche,” Dean said, “he has one into yours.”

“He didn’t know me at the time.”

“Can you be sure of that? He would have been following the investigation. Would have known you were on the team.”

“And that’s all he would have known about me.”

“I think he understands more than you give him credit for. He feeds off women’s fears. It’s all written there, in his psychological profile. He’s attracted to damaged women. To the emotionally battered. The whiff of a woman’s pain turns him on, and he’s exquisitely sensitive to its presence. He can detect it using the most subtle of clues. A woman’s tone of voice. The way she holds her head or refuses eye contact. All the tiny physical signs that the rest of us might miss. But he picks up on them. He knows which women are wounded, and those are the ones he wants.”

“I’m no victim.”

“You are now. He made you one.” He moved closer, so close they were almost touching. She felt the sudden wild urge to lean into his arms and press herself against him. To see how he would react. But pride and common sense kept her perfectly rigid.

She forced out a laugh. “Who’s the victim here, Agent Dean? Not me. Don’t forget,
I’m
the one who put him away.”

“Yes,” he answered quietly. “You put the Surgeon away. But not without a great deal of damage to yourself.”

She stared back, silent.
Damaged
. That was exactly the word for what had been done to her. A woman with scars on her hands and a fortress of locks on her door. A woman who would never again feel August’s hot breath without remembering the heat of that summer day and the smell of her own blood.

Without a word, she turned and walked out of the kitchen, back into the living room. There she sank on the couch and sat in dazed silence. He did not immediately follow her, and for a moment she was left blessedly alone. She wished he would simply vanish, walk out of her apartment and grant her the seclusion that every suffering animal craves. She was not so lucky. She heard emerge from the kitchen, and she looked up to see
him
holding two glasses. He held one out to her.

“What’s this?” she said.

“Tequila. I found it in your cupboard.”

She took the glass and frowned at it. “I forgot I had it. It’s ancient.”

“Well, it hadn’t been opened.”

That’s because she did not care for the taste of tequila. The bottle was just another one of those useless boozy gifts her brother Frankie brought home from his travels, like the Kahlua liqueur from Hawaii and the sake from Japan. Frankie’s way of showing off what a man of the world he was, thanks to the U.S. Marine Corps. This was as good a time as any to sample his souvenir from sunny Mexico. She took a sip and blinked away the sting of tears. As the tequila warmed its way into her stomach, she suddenly thought of a detail from Warren Hoyt’s past. His early victims had first been incapacitated by the drug Rohypnol, slipped into their drinks. How easy it is to catch us unguarded, she thought. When a woman is distracted or has no reason to distrust the man who hands her a drink, she is just another lamb in the chute. Even she had accepted a glass of tequila without question. Even she had allowed a man she did not know well into her apartment.