Read Online Body Double: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel by Tess Gerritsen - Free Book Online

stored in his warehouse, can you believe it? Don’t know how he got his hands on so many, but he had quite a stash.” Dunleavy shrugged. “So that’s the scoop on Leonov. I don’t see how he connects with your shooting.”
    “There’ve been only two Black Talon shootings here in five years,” she said. “Your case and mine.”
    “Yeah, well, there’s probably a few bullets still floating around out there on the black market. Hell, check eBay. All I know is, we nailed Leonov, and good.” Dunleavy downed his pint. “You’ve got yourself a different shooter.”
    Something she had already concluded. A feud between small-time Russian mobsters two years ago did not seem relevant to the murder of Anna Jessop. That Black Talon bullet was a dead link.
    “You’ll lend me that file on Leonov?” she asked. “I still want to look it over.”
    “On your desk tomorrow.”
    “Thanks, guys.” She slid out of the booth and hauled herself to her feet.
    “So when’re you popping?” asked Vann, nodding at her belly.
    “Not soon enough.”
    “The guys, they have a bet going, you know. On the baby’s sex.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I think we’re up to seventy bucks it’s a girl, forty bucks it’s a boy.”
    Vann giggled. “And twenty bucks,” he said, “is on
other.
”
    Rizzoli felt the baby give a kick as she let herself into her apartment. Settle down in there, Junior, she thought. It’s bad enough you treated me like a punching bag all day; now you’re going to keep it up all night as well? She didn’t know if she was carrying a boy, girl, or other; all she knew was that this kid was eager to be born.
    Just stop trying to kung-fu your way out, okay?
    She threw her purse and keys on the kitchen counter, kicked off her shoes by the door, and tossed her blazer over a dining room chair. Two days ago her husband, Gabriel, had left for Montana as part of an FBI team investigating a paramilitary weapons cache. Now the apartment was sliding back into the same comfortable anarchy that had reigned here before their marriage. Before Gabriel had moved in and instilled some semblance of discipline. Leave it to an ex-Marine to rearrange your pots and pans in order of size.
    In the bedroom, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She scarcely recognized herself, apple-cheeked and sway-backed, her belly bulging beneath maternity stretch pants. When did I disappear? she thought. Am I still there, hidden somewhere in that distorted body? She confronted that stranger’s reflection, remembering how flat her belly had once been. She did not like the way her face had plumped up, the way her cheeks had turned as rosy as a child’s. The glow of pregnancy, Gabriel had called it, trying to reassure his wife that she did not, in fact, look like a shiny-nosed whale. That woman there is not really me, she thought. That’s not the cop who can kick down doors and blow away perps.
    She flopped on her back onto the bed and spread both arms across the mattress like a bird taking flight. She could smell Gabriel’s scent in the sheets. I miss you tonight, she thought. This was not the way marriage was supposed to be. Two careers, two work-obsessed people. Gabriel on the road, her alone in this apartment. But she’d known, going into it, that it would not be easy. That there’d be too many nights like this one, when his job, or hers, would keep them apart. She thought of calling him again, but they had already talked twice that morning, and Verizon was stealing enough of her paycheck as it was.
    Oh, what the hell.
    She rolled sideways, pushed herself off the bed, and was about to reach for the phone on the nightstand when it suddenly rang. Startled, she looked at the caller ID readout. An unfamiliar number—not Gabriel’s.
    She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
    “Detective Rizzoli?” a man asked.
    “Yes it is.”
    “I apologize for the late hour. I just got back into town this evening, and—”
    ”Who’s