“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.