The Apprentice (36 page)

“You think I still have a secret agenda.”

“I don’t know anymore.”

“But I must have one, right? Because you
certainly
don’t deserve a genuine compliment from me.”

“I get your point.”

“You may get it. But you don’t really believe it.” He braked at a red light and looked at her. “Where does all the skepticism come from? Has it been that tough for you, being Jane Rizzoli?”

She gave a weary laugh. “Let’s not go there, Dean.”

“Is it the part about being a woman cop?”

“You can probably fill in the blanks.”

“Your colleagues seem to respect you.”

“There are some notable exceptions.”

“There always are.”

The light turned green, and his gaze went back to the road.

“It’s the nature of police work,” she said. “All that testosterone.”

“Then why did you choose it?”

“Because I flunked home ec.”

At that, they both laughed. The first honest laugh they’d shared.

“The truth is,” she said, “I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was twelve years old.”

“Why?”

“Everyone respects cops. At least, that’s how it seems to a kid. I wanted the badge, the gun. The things that’d make people stand up and take notice of me. I didn’t want to end up in some office where I’d just disappear. Where I’d turn into the invisible woman. That’d be like getting buried alive, to be someone no one listens to. No one notices.” She leaned an elbow against the door and rested her head in her hand. “Now, anonymity’s starting to look pretty good.”
At least the Surgeon wouldn’t know my name
.

“You sound sorry you chose police work.”

She thought of the long nights on her feet, fueled by caffeine and adrenaline. The horrors of confronting the worst that human beings can do to each other. And she thought of Airplane Man, whose file remained on her desk, the perpetual symbol of futility. His own, as well as hers. We dream our dreams, she thought, and sometimes they take us places we never anticipate. A farmhouse basement with the stench of blood in the air. Or a free fall through blue sky, limbs flailing against the pull of gravity. But they are our dreams, and we go where they lead.

She said, at last: “No, I’m not sorry. It’s what I do. It’s what I care about. It’s what I get angry about. I have to admit, a lot of the job’s about anger. I can’t just stand back and look at a victim’s body without being pissed off. That’s when I become their advocate—when I let their deaths get to me. Maybe when I
don’t
get angry is when I’ll know it’s time to quit.”

“Not everyone has your fire in the belly.” He looked at her. “I think you’re the most intense person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s not such a good thing.”

“No, intensity is a good thing.”

“If it means you’re always on the verge of flaming out?”

“Are you?”

“Sometimes it feels that way.” She stared at the rain lashing the windshield. “I should try to be more like you.”

He didn’t respond, and she wondered if she’d offended him by her last statement. By her implication that he was cold and passionless. Yet that’s how he had always struck her: the man in the gray suit. For weeks, he had baffled her, and now, in her frustration, she wanted to provoke him, to make him display any emotion, however unpleasant, if only to prove she could do it. The challenge of the impregnable.

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.