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

and saw that the cop was already moving down the hallway. A sign pointed to the wing where Jane Doe was about to make her last stand.
    Diagnostic Imaging.
     
    Jane Rizzoli startled awake and blinked, momentarily confused, at the ceiling. She had not expected to doze off, but the exam table was surprisingly comfortable, and she was tired; she had not been sleeping well for the past few nights. She looked at the clock on the wall and realized that she’d been left alone for over half an hour. How much longer was she supposed to wait? She let another five minutes go by, her irritation mounting.
    Okay, I’ve had it. I’m going to find out what’s taking so long. And I’m not going to wait for the wheelchair.
    She climbed off the table and her bare feet slapped onto the cold floor. She took two steps, and realized that her arm was still tethered by the IV to a plastic bag of saline. She moved the bag to a rolling IV pole and wheeled it to the door. Looking into the hallway, she saw no one. Not a nurse or an orderly or an X-ray tech.
    Well,
this
was reassuring. They’d forgotten all about her.
    She headed down the windowless hall, pushing her IV pole, the wheels shimmying as they rolled over linoleum. She passed one open doorway, then another, and saw vacant procedure tables, deserted rooms. Where had everyone gone? In the short time she’d been sleeping, they had all disappeared.
    Has it really been only half an hour?
    She halted in that empty hallway, gripped by the sudden,
Twilight Zone
thought that while she’d been asleep, everyone else in the world had vanished. She glanced up and down the hallway, trying to remember the route back to the waiting area. She had not been paying attention when the technician had wheeled her into the procedure room. Opening a door, she saw an office. Opened another door and found a file room.
    No people.
    She began to pad faster through the warren of hallways, the IV pole clattering beside her. What kind of hospital was this, anyway, leaving a poor pregnant woman all alone? She was going to complain, damn right, she was going to complain. She could be in labor! She could be dying! Instead, she was royally pissed off, and that was
not
the mood you wanted a pregnant woman to be in. Not
this
pregnant woman.
    At last she spotted the exit sign, and with choice words already on her lips, she yanked open the door. At her first glimpse into the waiting room, she did not immediately understand the situation. Mr. Bodine was still strapped to his wheelchair and parked in the corner. The ultrasound technician and the receptionist were huddled together on one of the couches. On the other couch, Dr. Tam sat next to the black orderly. What was this, a tea party? While she’d been forgotten in the back room, why had her doctor been lounging out here on the couch?
    Then she spotted the medical chart lying on the floor, and she saw the toppled mug, the spilled coffee splattered across the rug. And she realized that Dr. Tam was not lounging; her back was rigid, the muscles of her face tight with fear. Her eyes were not focused on Jane, but on something else.
    That’s when Jane understood.
Someone is standing right behind me.

SEVEN
    Maura sat in the mobile operations command trailer, surrounded by telephones, TVs, and laptop computers. The air-conditioning was not working, and the trailer had to be well over ninety degrees inside. Officer Emerton, who was monitoring radio chatter, fanned himself as he gulped from a bottle of water. But Captain Hayder, Boston PD’s special ops commander, looked perfectly cool as he studied the CAD diagrams now displayed on the computer monitor. Beside him sat the hospital’s facilities manager, pointing out the relevant features on the blueprints.
    “The area where she’s now holed up is Diagnostic Imaging,” said the manager. “That used to be the hospital’s old X-ray wing, before we moved it into the new addition. I’m afraid that’s going to present a big