The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen Read Free Book Online Page A

abdomen.”
    “And on his thigh,” Rizzoli said softly.
    Isles glanced up. “Where?”
    Rizzoli pointed to the telltale marks, just to the left of the victim’s scrotum. So these are Richard Yeager’s last terrible moments, she thought. Fully awake and alert, but he cannot move. He cannot defend himself. The bulging muscles, the hours at the gym, mean nothing in the end, because his body will not obey him. His limbs lie useless, short-circuited by the electrical storm that has sizzled through his nervous system. He is dragged from his bedroom, helpless as a stunned cow on the way to slaughter. Propped up against the wall, to witness what comes next.
    But the Taser’s effect is brief. Soon his muscles twitch; his fingers clench into fists. He watches his wife’s ordeal, and rage floods his body with adrenaline. This time, when he moves, his muscles obey. He tries to rise, but the clatter of the teacup falling from his lap betrays him.
    It takes only another burst of the Taser and he collapses, despairing, like Sisyphus tumbling back down the hill.
    She looked at Richard Yeager’s face, at the eyelids slitted open, and thought of the last images his brain must have registered. His own legs, stretched useless in front of him. His wife, lying conquered on the beige rug. And a knife, gripped in the hunter’s hand, closing in for the kill.

    It is noisy in the dayroom, where men pace like the caged beasts they are. The TV blares, and the metal stairs leading to the upper tier of cells clang with every footfall
. We
are never out of our watchers’ sights. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, in the shower room, even in the toilet area. From the windows of the guard station, our keepers look down on us as we mingle here in the well. They can see every move we make. Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center is a level-six facility, the newest in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute system, and it is a technical marvel. The locks are keyless, operated by computer terminals in the guard tower. Commands are issued to us by bodiless voices over intercoms. The doors to every cell in this pod can be opened or closed by remote access, without a human being ever appearing. There are days when I wonder if any of our guards are flesh and blood or if the silhouettes we see, standing behind glass, are merely animatronic robots, torsos swiveling, heads nodding. Whether by man or by machine, I am being watched, yet it does not bother me, as they cannot see into my mind; they cannot enter the dark landscape of my fantasies. That place belongs only to me. As I sit in the dayroom, watching the six o’clock news on the TV, I am wandering that very landscape. It is the woman newscaster, smiling from the screen, who makes the journey with me. I imagine her dark hair as a splash of black upon the pillow. I see sweat glistening on her skin. And in my world, she is not smiling; oh no, her eyes are wide, the dilated pupils like bottomless pools, the lips drawn back in a rictus of terror. All this I imagine as I gaze at the pretty newscaster in her jade-green suit. I see her smile, hear her well-modulated voice, and I wonder what her screams would sound like
.
    Then a new image comes on the TV, and all thoughts of the newscaster vanish. A male reporter stands in front of the Newton home of Dr. Richard Yeager. In a somber voice, he reveals that, two days after the doctor’s murder and the abduction of his wife, no arrests have been made. I am already acquainted with the case of Dr. Yeager and his wife. Now I lean forward, staring intently at the screen, waiting for a glimpse.
    I finally see her.
    The camera has swung toward the house, and it catches her in close-up as she walks out the front door. A heavyset man emerges right behind her. They stand talking in the front yard, unaware that at that moment the
TV
cameraman has zoomed in on them. The man looks coarse and piggish with his sagging jowls and sparse strands of hair combed over a bare scalp.