The Keepsake: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

internationally bestselling author. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, the
New York Times
bestseller
Harvest.
She is also the author of the bestsellers
The Bone Garden, The Mephisto Club, Vanish, Body Double, The Sinner, The Apprentice, The Surgeon, Life Support, Bloodstream,
and
Gravity.
Tess Gerritsen lives in Maine. Visit her website at www.tessgerritsen.com .

A LSO BY T ESS G ERRITSEN
     
    Harvest
    Life Support
    Bloodstream
    Gravity
    The Surgeon
    The Apprentice
    The Sinner
    Body Double
    Vanish
    The Mephisto Club
    The Bone Garden

 
     
    Read on for an exciting preview
of Tess Gerritsen’s next thrilling novel
featuring Maura Isles and Jane Rizzoli
    THE SILENT GIRL

 
     
    ONE
     

SAN FRANCISCO
     
    A LL DAY, I HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE GIRL . She gives no indication that she’s aware of me, although my rental car is within view of the street corner where she and the other teenagers have gathered this afternoon, doing whatever bored kids do to pass the time. She looks younger than the others, but perhaps it’s because she’s Asian and petite at seventeen, just a wisp of a girl. Her black hair is cropped as short as a boy’s, and her blue jeans are ragged and torn. Not a fashion statement, I think, but a result of hard use and life on the streets. She puffs on a cigarette and exhales a cloud of smoke with the nonchalance of a street thug, an attitude that doesn’t match her pale face and delicate Chinese features. She is pretty enough to attract the hungry stares of two men who pass by. The girl notices their gazes and looks straight back at them, unafraid. It’s easy to be fearless when danger is merely an abstract concept. Faced with a real threat, how would this girl react? I wonder. Would she fight or would she crumble? I want to know, but I have yet to see her put to the test.
    As evening falls, the teenagers on the corner begin to disband. First one and then another wanders away. In San Francisco, even summer nights are chilly, and those who remain huddle together in their sweaters and jackets, lighting one another’s cigarettes, savoring the ephemeral heat of the flame. But cold and hunger eventually disperse the last of them, leaving only the girl, who has nowhere to go. She waves to her departing friends, and for a while lingers alone, as though waiting for someone. At last, with a shrug, she leaves the corner and walks in my direction, her hands thrust in her pockets. As she passes my car, she doesn’t even glance at me, but looks straight ahead, her gaze focused and fierce, as if she’s mentally churning over some dilemma. Perhaps she’s thinking about where she’s going to scavenge dinner tonight. Or perhaps it’s something more consequential. Her future. Her survival.
    She’s probably unaware that two men are following her.
    Seconds after she walks past my car, I spot the men emerging from an alley. I recognize them; it’s the same pair who had stared at her earlier. As they move past my car, trailing her, one of the men looks at me through the windshield. It’s just a quick glance to assess whether I am a threat. What he sees does not concern him in the least, and he and his companion keep walking. They move like the confident predators they are, stalking much weaker prey who cannot possibly fight them off.
    I step out of my car and follow them. Just as they are following the girl.
    She heads deep into the neighborhood south of Market Street, where too many buildings stand abandoned, where the sidewalks seem paved with broken bottles. The girl betrays no fear, no hesitation, as if this is familiar territory for her. Not once does she glance back, which tells me she is either foolhardy or clueless about the world and what it can do to girls like her. The men following her don’t glance back either. Even if they did, which I do not allow, they would see nothing to fear. No one ever does.
    A block ahead, the girl turns right, vanishing through a doorway.
    I slip into the shadows and watch what happens next. The two men pause outside the building that the girl has entered, conferring over strategy. Then they too step inside.
    From the sidewalk, I look up at the boarded-over windows. It is a vacant warehouse posted with a NO TRESPASSING notice. The door hangs ajar. I slip inside, into gloom so thick that I pause to let my eyes adjust as I rely on my other senses to take in what I cannot yet see. I hear the floor creaking. I smell burning candle wax. I