“She pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck and felt icy skin.Bending close to the lips, she waited for the whisper of a breath, the faintest puff of air against her cheek.The corpse opened its eyes.”

“Now we sit and wait,” the woman said, and she settled into a chair, the gun on her lap.“What are we waiting for?” Jane asked.The woman stared at her. Said, calmly: “The end.”

“She now knew her death was inevitable, and with that acceptance came liberation. The courage of the condemned.”

“She was the only woman in the homicide unit, and already there had been problems between her and another detective, charges of sexual harassment, countercharges of unrelenting bitchiness.”

“What Rizzoli thought, staring at her own image, was that she hated Elizabeth Hurley for giving women false hope. The brutal truth was, there are some women who will never be beautiful, and Rizzoli was one of them.”

“But human anatomy and human endurance are variable. While the much younger nun had succumbed to her injuries, Ursula's heart kept beating, her body unwilling to surrender its soul. Not a miracle, merely one of those quirks of fate, like the child who survives a fall from a sixth-floor window, and is only scratched.”

“She siged, a sound of regret for childhood transgressions, for all the lessons learned too late.”