Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(80)

I’m surprised she admits it, this woman who projects such fearlessness. Over dinner she’d described how she’d kicked down her first door, how she had chased killers across rooftops and into dark alleys. Now, sitting in her T-shirt and boxer shorts, with her messy mop of dark hair, she looks like any other woman. Small, vulnerable. Defeatable.

“You were his target?” I ask.

“Yeah. Lucky me.”

“Why you?”

“Because he’d trapped me once before. Had me right where he wanted me.” She raises her hands and shows me her scarred palms. “He did this. With scalpels.”

Earlier today, I had noticed those peculiarly placed scars, like healed wounds of a crucifixion. I stare at them in horror because I now know how those wounds were inflicted.

“Even after he went to prison, even though I knew he couldn’t reach me, I had nightmares about what he almost did to me. How could I forget, when I carry these permanent reminders of him on my hands? The bad dreams did start to fade, though. After a year, I hardly dreamed of him at all, and that should have been the end of it. It would have been the end of it.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Because he escaped.” She meets my gaze, and I see my own fear reflected in her eyes. I see a woman who knows what it means to live in a killer’s crosshairs, without any idea when the trigger will be pulled. “That’s when my nightmares started again.”

I stand up and get the bottle of scotch. Bring it back to the table and set it between us. “For the nightmares,” I offer.

“You can’t drink them away, Millie. No matter how many bottles you guzzle.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“The same thing I did. Hunt down the monster who’s been chasing you in your dreams. Cut him to pieces and bury him. Then, and only then, will you sleep soundly again.”

“And do you sleep soundly?”

“Yes. But only because I chose not to run and hide. I knew that as long as he was out there, circling me, I’d never rest easy. So I became the hunter. Gabriel knew I was putting myself at risk and he tried to keep me off the case, but I had to be part of it. For my own sanity, I had to be in the fight, not hiding behind locked doors, waiting for the attack.”

“And your husband didn’t try to stop you?”

“Oh, we weren’t married then, so he couldn’t stop me.” She laughs. “Not that he can now, either. Though he tries his hardest to keep me in line.”

I think of Chris, peacefully snoring in our bed. How he bundled me up and brought me to this farm to keep me safe. “That’s what my husband tries to do.”

“Keep you behind a locked door?”

“To protect me.”

“Yet you don’t feel safe. Even six years later.”

“I do feel safe here. At least, I did. Until you brought it back into my life.”

“I’m just doing my job, Millie. Don’t blame me. I didn’t put those nightmares in your head. I’m not the one who made you a prisoner.”

“I’m not a prisoner.”

“Aren’t you?”

We stare at each other across the table. She has dark, luminous eyes. Dangerous eyes that see straight through my skull, to the deepest folds of my brain where I hide my secret terrors. I can’t deny anything she’s said. I am a prisoner. I’m not merely avoiding the world; I’m cowering from it.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she says.

I don’t answer at first. Instead I look down at the glass, which I’m cradling with both hands. I want to take another sip, but I know it will ease the fear for only a few hours. Like anesthesia, it eventually wears off.

“Tell me how you did it,” I say. “How you fought back.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t have a choice, in the end.”

“You chose to fight.”

“No, I mean I really didn’t have a choice. You see, after he escaped from prison, I knew I had to hunt him down. Gabriel, my colleagues at Boston PD, they all tried to keep me out of it, but I couldn’t be sidelined. I knew that killer better than anyone else did. I’d looked into his eyes, and I’d seen the beast. I understood him—what thrilled him, what he craved, how he stalked his prey. The only way I’d sleep soundly again was to hunt him down. The problem was, he was also hunting me. We were two enemies locked in mortal combat, and one of us had to go down.” She pauses, takes a sip of scotch. “He struck first.”

“What happened?”

“I was cornered when I least expected it. Taken to a place where no one would ever find me. The worst part was, he wasn’t alone. He had a friend.”

Her voice is so soft I have to lean in to hear her. Outside, insects sing in the night garden, but in my kitchen it is quiet, so quiet. I think of all my fears multiplied by two. Two Johnnys hunting me. I don’t know how this woman can sit here so calmly and tell me her story.

“They had me where they wanted me,” she says. “There was no one to rescue me, no one who’d swoop in to save the day. It was me against them.” She took a breath and straightened in her chair. “And I won. Just like you can, Millie. You can kill that monster.”

“Is that what you did?”

“He might as well be dead. My bullet severed his spinal cord, and now he’s trapped in a place he’ll never escape—his own body. Paralyzed from the neck down. And his friend is rotting in a grave.” Her smile is weirdly at odds with what she’s just described, but when you’ve triumphed over monsters, you deserve a grin of victory. “And that night, I slept better than I had in a year.”