The Apprentice

Despite the chilling nature of her words, she had maintained a calm voice. U

“Now he has a partner,” she said. “Someone he can learn from. Someone he can teach in return. A hunting team.”

“You think they’ll stay together.”

“Warren would want to. He’d want a partner. They’ve already killed together once. That’s a powerful bond, sealed in blood.” She took a final sip of her drink, draining the glass. Would it numb her brain of nightmares tonight? Or was she beyond the comforts of anesthesia?

“Have you requested protection?”

His question startled her. “Protection?”

“A cruiser, at the very least. To watch your apartment.”

“I’m a cop.”

He tilted his head, as though waiting for the rest of the answer.

“If I were a man,” she said, “would you have asked that question?”

“You’re not a man.”

“That means I automatically need protection?”

“Why do you sound so offended?”

“Why does my being a woman make me incapable of defending my own home?”

He sighed. “Do you always have to outdo the men, Detective?”

“I’ve worked hard to be treated like everyone else,” she said. “I’m not going to ask for special favors because I’m a woman.”

“It’s because you’re a woman that you’re in this position. The Surgeon’s sexual fantasies are about women. And the Dominator’s attacks aren’t about the husbands, but about the wives. He rapes the wives. You can’t tell me that your being female is irrelevant to this situation.”

She flinched at the mention of rape. Up till now, the discussion of sexual assault had been about other women. That she was a potential victim brought the focus to a far more intimate level, a level she was not comfortable discussing with any man. Even more than the subject of rape, it was Dean himself who made her uneasy. The way he studied her, as though she held some secret he was eager to mine.

“It’s not about you being a cop, or whether you’re capable of defending yourself,” he said. “It’s about you being a woman. A woman Warren Hoyt has probably fantasized about all these months.”

“Not me. Cordell’s the one he wants.”

“Cordell is out of his reach. He can’t touch her. But you’re right here. You’re within his grasp, the very woman he almost defeated. The woman he pi

“Stop it, Dean.”

“In a way, he’s already claimed you. You’re already his. And you’re out in the open every day, working the very crimes he leaves behind. Every dead body’s a message meant for your eyes. A preview of what he has pla

“I said, stop it.”

“And you think you don’t need protection? You think a gun and an attitude is all it takes to stay alive? Then you’re ignoring your own gut feelings. You know what he’ll do next. You know what he craves, what turns him on. And what turns him on is you. What he plans to do to you.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Her outburst startled them both. She stared at him, dismayed by her loss of control and by the tears that sprang from nowhere. Goddamn it, goddamn it, she would not cry. She had never let a man see her crumble, and she wouldn’t allow Dean to be the first.

She took a deep breath and said, quietly, “I want you to leave now.”

“I’m only asking you to listen to your own instincts. To accept the same protection you’d offer any other woman.”

She stood and went to the door. “Good night, Agent Dean.”

For a moment he did not move, and she wondered what it would take to eject this man from her home. At last he rose to leave, but when he reached the door he stopped and looked down at her. “You’re not invincible, Jane,” he said. “And no one expects you to be.”

Long after he’d walked out, she stood with her back pressed to the locked door, her eyes closed, trying to calm the turmoil left in the wake of his visit. She knew she was not invincible. She had learned that a year ago, when she’d looked up into the Surgeon’s face and waited for the bite of his scalpel. She did not need to be reminded of that, and she resented the brutal ma

She crossed back to the couch and picked up the phone from the end table. It would not be dawn yet in London, but she could not delay making this call.

Moore answered on the second ring, his voice gruff but alert despite the hour.

“It’s me,” said Rizzoli. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Let me go into the other room.”

She waited. Over the phone she heard the creak of box springs as he got out of bed, then the sound of a door closing behind him.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“The Surgeon’s hunting again.”

“There’s been a victim?”

“I saw the autopsy a few hours ago. It’s his work.”

“He didn’t waste any time.”

“It gets worse, Moore.”

“How could it get any worse?”

“He has a new partner.”

A long pause. Then, softly: “Who is it?”

“We think it’s the same unsub who killed that couple in Newton. Somehow, he and Hoyt found each other. They’re hunting together.”

“So quickly? How could they link up just like that?”

“They knew each other. They had to know each other.”

“Where did they meet? When?”

“That’s what we have to find out. It could be key to the Dominator’s identity.” Suddenly she thought of the operating room from which Hoyt had escaped. The handcuffs. It had not been the guard who’d unlocked them. Someone else had walked into that O.R. to free Hoyt, someone disguised perhaps in an orderly’s scrub suit or a doctor’s borrowed lab coat.

“I should be there,” said Moore. “I should be working this with you-”

“No, you shouldn’t. You should be right where you are, with Catherine. I don’t think Hoyt can find her. But he’ll be trying. He never gives up; you know that. And now there are two of them, and we have no idea what this partner looks like. If he turns up in London, you won’t know his face. You need to be ready.”

As if anyone could be ready for the Surgeon’s attack, she thought as she hung up. A year ago, Catherine Cordell had thought she was ready. She’d turned her home into a fortress and lived her life as though under siege. Yet Hoyt had slipped through her defenses; he had struck when she least expected it, in a place she thought was safe.

Just as I think my home is safe.

She rose and crossed to the window. Looking down at the street, she wondered if, at that moment, anyone was looking at her, watching her as she stood framed in the window’s light. She would not be difficult to find. All the Surgeon had to do was look in the phone book under “RIZZOLI J.”

On the street below, a vehicle slowed down and pulled over to the curb. A police cruiser. She watched it for a moment, but it did not move, and the engine lights shut off, indicating it had settled in for a stay. She had not requested protective surveillance, but she knew who had.

Gabriel Dean.

History echoes with the screams of women.

The pages of textbooks pay scant attention to the lurid details that we hunger to know. Instead we are told dry accounts of military strategies and flank attacks, of the cu