Tess Gerritsen Die Again Book Review
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DIE Once more: A RIZZOLI & ISLES NOVEL
Tess Gerritsen
Ballantine Books
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Tentative On-Sale Engagement: Dec 30, 2014
Tentative Publication Month: January 2015
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Ballantine Books
An imprint of Random House
1745 Broadway • New York, NY • 10019
By Tess Gerritsen
RIZZOLI & ISLES NOVELS
The Surgeon
The Apprentice
The Sinner
Body Double
Vanish
The Mephisto Club
The Emblem
Ice Cold
The Silent Girl
Last to Die
Die Again
OTHER NOVELS
Girl Missing
Harvest
Life Support
Bloodstream
Gravity
The Bone Garden
This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your re-create against the finished book.
Die Over again is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the writer's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or expressionless, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Tess Gerritsen
All rights reserved.
Published in the United states by Ballantine Books, an banner of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Visitor, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random Firm LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION Data
Gerritsen, Tess.
Rizzoli & Isles : die again : a novel / Tess Gerritsen.
pages; cm.—(Rizzoli & Isles)
ISBN 978-0-345-54385-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-54386-8
1. Rizzoli, Jane, Detective (Fictitious graphic symbol)—Fiction. 2. Isles, Maura (Fictitious grapheme)—Fiction. 3. Policewomen—Fiction. four. Women forensic scientists—Fiction. I. Title. Two. Title: Die once again.
PS3557.E687R585 2014 813'.54—dc23 2014032292
www.ballantinebooks.com
To Levina
Contents
Cover
eBook Information
By Tess Gerritsen
Title Page
Copyright Folio
Dedication
Affiliate One
Chapter Two
Affiliate Three
Affiliate Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Affiliate 9
Chapter X
Chapter 11
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Xiii
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Affiliate Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Affiliate Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Ii
Chapter Twenty-3
Affiliate Xx-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Xx-Six
Affiliate Xx-Seven
Chapter 20-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Ix
Affiliate Thirty
Chapter Xxx-Ane
Affiliate Thirty-Two
Chapter Xxx-Three
Affiliate 30-Iv
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Vii
Chapter Xxx-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Acknowledgments
About the Author
One
Okavango Delta, Botswana
In the slanting light of dawn I spot information technology, subtle as a watermark, pressed into the bare patch of dirt. Were it midday, when the African sunday glares down hot and brilliant, I might have missed it entirely, but in early morn, even the faintest dips and depressions cast shadows, and as I emerge from our tent that lone footprint catches my eye. I crouch downward abreast it and experience a sudden arctic when I realize that merely a thin layer of canvas shielded us while nosotros slept.
Richard emerges through the tent flap and gives a happy grunt every bit he stands and stretches, inhaling the scents of dew-laden grass and wood fume and breakfast cooking on the campfire. The smells of Africa. This chance is Richard's dream; it has always been Richard's, not mine. I'm the good-sport girlfriend whose default manner is Of grade I'll exercise it, darling. Even when it means 20-eight hours and three different planes, from London to Johannesburg to Maun and then into the bush, the final aeroplane a rickety crate flown past a hung-over pilot. Even when it means two weeks in a tent, swatting mosquitoes and peeing behind bushes.
Even if it means I could die, which is what I'm thinking as I stare down at that footprint, pressed into the clay barely three anxiety from where Richard and I were sleeping last nighttime.
"Smell the air, Millie!" Richard crows. "Nowhere else does it smell like this!"
"At that place was a lion here," I say.
"I wish I could bottle information technology and bring information technology home. What a souvenir that would be. The odor of the bush!"
He isn't listening to me. He'southward likewise high on Africa, as well wrapped upwardly in his not bad-white-adventurer fantasy where everything is brilliant and fantastic, even last night'south meal of tinned pork and beans, which he declared the "splendid-est supper ever!"
I repeat, louder: "In that location was a panthera leo here, Richard. It was right next to our tent. Information technology could have clawed its fashion in." I want to alert him, desire him to say, Oh my God, Millie, this is serious.
Instead he blithely calls out to the nearest members of our group: "Hey, come take a look! We had a panthera leo here last nighttime!"
First to join us are the two girls from Cape Town, whose tent is pitched beside ours. Sylvia and Vivian have Dutch last names that I can neither spell nor pronounce. They're both in their twenties, tan and long-legged and blond, and at first I had problem telling them apart, until Sylvia finally snapped at me in exasperation: "It's not like we're twins, Millie! Tin can't you see that Vivian has blue eyes and I have green?" As the girls kneel on either side of me to examine the mitt print, I notice that they smell different, too. Vivian-with-the-blue-eyes smells similar sweetness grass, the fresh, unsoured scent of youth. Sylvia smells like the citronella lotion she's always slathering on to repel the mosquitoes, because DEET is a toxicant. You do know that, don't you? They flank me like blond-goddess bookends, and I can't help but meet that Richard is once again eyeing Sylvia's cleavage, which is so blatantly displayed in her low-cut tank top. For a girl so conscientious nigh coating herself in mosquito repellent, she exposes an alarming amount of bitable skin.
Naturally Elliot is quick to bring together united states, too. He's never far from the blondes, whom he met but a few weeks ago in Greatcoat Town. He's since attached himself to them like a loyal puppy, hoping for a chip of attention.
"Is that a fresh print?" Elliot asks, sounding worried. At to the lowest degree someone else shares my sense of warning.
"I didn't run into it here yesterday," says Richard. "The lion must
have come through last dark. Imagine stepping out to answer the call of nature and running into that." He yowls and swipes a clawed hand at Elliot, who flinches away. This makes Richard and the blondes laugh, because Elliot is everyone's comic relief, the anxious American whose pockets bulge with tissues and bug spray, sunscreen and sanitizer, allergy pills, iodine tablets, and every other possible necessity for staying alive.
I don't bring together in their laughter. "Someone could accept been killed out here," I point out.
"Just this is what happens on a real safari, hey?" says Sylvia brightly. "You're out in the bush-league with lions."
"Doesn't expect like a very big lion," says Vivian, leaning in to study the print. "Perhaps a female, do you think?"
"Male or female, they can both kill yous," says Elliot.
Sylvia gives him a playful slap. "Ooh. Are you scared?"
"No. No, I only assumed that Johnny was exaggerating when he gave u.s.a. that talk the first day. Stay in the jeep. Stay in the tent. Or you lot die."
"If you desire to play it perfectly safety, Elliot, maybe you should have gone to the zoo instead," Richard says, and the blondes laugh at his cutting remark. All hail Richard, the alpha male. Just like the heroes he writes about in his novels, he'southward the man who takes accuse and saves the twenty-four hour period. Or thinks he is. Out hither in the wild, he's really merely some other clueless Londoner, yet he manages to sound like an expert at staying alive. It's yet another thing that irritates me this morning time, on tiptop of the fact I'chiliad hungry, I didn't sleep well, and at present the mosquitoes take found me. Mosquitoes e'er find me. Whenever I pace outside, it'south as if they can hear their dinner bell band, and already I'm slapping at my neck and confront.
Richard calls out to the African tracker, "Clarence, come here! Wait what came through military camp last dark."
Clarence has been sipping coffee past the campfire with Mr. and Mrs. Matsunaga. Now he ambles toward the states, carrying his tin coffee loving cup, and crouches downward to expect at the footprint.
"Information technology's fresh," says Richard, the new bush-league expert. "The lion must have come through just last night."
"Not a lion," says Clarence. He squints up at united states, his ebony face agleam in the forenoon sun. "Leopard."
"How can you exist so sure? It'south merely one paw print."
Clarence sketches the air higher up the print. "You see, this is the front end manus. The shape is round, like a leopard'south." He rises and scans the area. "And it is merely one fauna, so this one hunts alone. Yep, this is a leopard."
Mr. Matsunaga snaps photos of the print with his giant Nikon, which has a telephoto lens that looks like something y'all'd launch into space. He and his married woman wear identical safari jackets and khaki pants and cotton fiber scarves with wide-brimmed hats. Downward to the final detail, they are sartorially matched. In vacation spots effectually the earth you find couples just like them, dressed in the aforementioned outlandish prints. Information technology makes y'all wonder: Do they wake upwards one forenoon and remember, Let'southward requite the world a express joy today?
As the sunday lifts college, washing out the shadows that and so clearly defined the hand print, the others snap photos, racing confronting the brightening glare. Fifty-fifty Elliot pulls out his pocket camera, but I think it'south merely considering everyone else is doing it, and he doesn't similar to be the odd human out.
I'm the only one who doesn't carp to fetch my camera. Richard is taking enough photos for both of united states, and he'southward using his Canon, the same photographic camera National Geographic photographers use! I motility into the shade, but even hither, out of the sunday, I feel sweat trickle from my armpits. Already the heat is building. Every mean solar day in the bush-league is hot.
"Now you see why I tell you to stay in your tents at night," Johnny Posthumus says.
Our bush-league guide has approached so quietly that I didn't realize he'd returned from the river. I turn to run across Johnny standing right backside me. Such a grim-sounding name, Posthumus, but he told u.s.a. it's a common plenty surname among Afrikaans settlers, from which he's descended. In his features I see the bloodline of his sturdy Dutch ancestors. He has dominicus-streaked blond pilus, blue optics, and tree-trunk legs that are deeply tanned in khaki shorts. Mosquitoes don't seem to bother him, nor does the estrus, and he wears no lid, slathers on no repellent. Growing up in Africa has toughened his hide, immunized him confronting its discomforts.
"She came through hither simply before dawn," Johnny says, and points to a thicket on the periphery of our camp. "Stepped out of those bushes, strolled toward the fire, and looked me over. Gorgeous girl, big and healthy."
I'm astonished by how at-home he is. "You actually saw her?"
"I was out here building the fire for breakfast when she showed upward."
"What did you practice?"
"I did what I've told all of you lot to do in that situation. I stood tall. Gave her a good view of my face. Prey animals such as zebras and antelope have optics at the sides of their heads, but a predator's eyes face up forrard. Always show the cat your face up. Let her see where your eyes are, and she'll know you're a predator, also. She'll think twice earlier attacking." Johnny looks around at the seven clients who are paying him to proceed them alive in this remote place. "Recollect that, hey? We'll see more big cats every bit we go deeper into the bush. If you see one, stand tall and make yourself look as large as you tin can. Face them straight-on. And whatsoever you do, don't run. You'll have a amend run a risk of surviving."
"You were out hither, face-to-face with a leopard," says Elliot. "Why didn't you use that?" He points to the rifle that's always slung over Johnny'south shoulder.
Johnny shakes his head. "I won't shoot a leopard. I won't kill any big cat."
"Merely isn't that what the gun'southward for? To protect yourself?"
"There aren't plenty of them left in the world. They ain this land, and we're the intruders here. If a leopard charged me, I don't think I could impale it. Not even to save my own life."
"But that doesn't apply to us, right?" Elliot gives a nervous laugh and looks around at our traveling party. "You'd shoot a leopard to protect usa, wouldn't you lot?"
Johnny answers with an ironic smiling. "We'll see."
Past noon we're packed up and ready to push deeper into the wild. Johnny drives the truck while Clarence rides in the tracker'southward seat, which juts out in front of the bumper. It seems a precarious perch to me, out there with his legs swinging in the open, easy meat for any lion who can snag him. Simply Johnny assures us that as long as nosotros stay attached to the vehicle, nosotros're prophylactic, because predators recall nosotros're all part of i huge animal. Merely step out of the truck and you're dinner. Got that, everyone?
Yeah sir. Message received.
There are no roads at all out here, only a faint flattening of the grass where the passage of earlier tires has compacted the poor soil. The harm caused by a unmarried truck tin scar the landscape for months, Johnny says, but I cannot imagine many of them make information technology this far into the Delta. We're three days' drive from the bush-league landing strip where we were dropped off, and we've spotted no other vehicles in this wilderness.
Wilderness was not something I actually believed in four months ago, sitting in our London apartment, the rain spitting against the windows. When Richard chosen me over to his computer and showed me the Republic of botswana safari he wanted to book for our vacation, I saw photos of lions and hippos, rhinos and leopards, the same familiar animals you can notice in zoos and game parks. That'due south what I imagined, a giant game park with comfy lodges and roads. At a minimum, roads. According to the website, in that location'd be "bush camping ground" involved, simply I pictured lovely big tents with showers and flush toilets. I didn't think I'd be paying for the privilege of squatting in the bushes.
Richard doesn't mind roughing it in the least. He's high on Africa, college than Mount Kilimanjaro, his photographic camera constantly clicking abroad every bit we drive. In the seat backside the states, Mr. Matsunaga's camera matches Richard's, click for click, but with a longer lens. Richard won't acknowledge information technology, simply he has lens envy, and when we go back to London he'll probably get straight online to cost
Mr. Matsunaga'south gear. This is the way modernistic men do battle, not with spear and sword, only with credit cards. My platinum beats your golden. Poor Elliot with his unisex Minolta is left in the dust, but I don't think he minds, because once again he'southward snuggled in the last row with Vivian and Sylvia. I glance back at the three of them and catch a glimpse of Mrs. Matsunaga's resolute face. She's another good sport. I'thousand sure that shitting in the bushes wasn't her idea of a great holiday, either.
"Lions! Lions!" shouts Richard. "Over there!"
Cameras click faster as we pull then shut I tin encounter black flies clinging to the flank of the male person lion. Nearby are three females, lolling in the shade of a leadwood tree. Suddenly there's an burst of Japanese behind me, and I turn to see that Mr. Matsunaga has leaped to his feet. His wife hangs on to the back of his safari jacket, desperate to stop him from leaping out of the truck for a meliorate photo.
"Sit. Down!" Johnny booms out in a voice that no one, homo or beast, could perchance ignore. "Now!"
Instantly Mr. Matsunaga drops back into his seat. Even the lions seem startled, and they all stare at the mechanical monster with eighteen pairs of arms.
"Remember what I told you lot, Isao?" scolds Johnny. "If you step out of this truck, yous're dead."
"I get excited. I forget," murmurs Mr. Matsunaga, apologetically bowing his caput.
"Await, I'1000 simply trying to keep you safe." Johnny releases a deep breath and says quietly: "I'1000 sorry for shouting. But last year, a colleague was on a game drive with two clients. Before he could stop them, they both jumped out of the truck to take photos. The lions had them in a flash."
"Yous mean—they were killed?" says Elliot.
"That's what lions are programmed to do, Elliot. And so please, enjoy the view, but from within the truck, hey?" Johnny gives a laugh to defuse the tension, but nosotros're all nevertheless cowed, a group of misbehaving children who've just been disciplined. The camera clicks are halfhearted now, photos taken to cover our discomfort. Nosotros're all shocked by how difficult Johnny came down on Mr. Matsunaga. I stare at Johnny's back, which looms right in front end of me, and the muscles of his cervix stick out like thick vines. He starts the engine again. We leave the lions and drive on, to our next army camp.
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