Receiving a grisly communication in the wake of an eminent Canadian paleontologist's disappearance, Kay Scarpetta investigates the discovery of a body in Boston Harbor and clues about other unsolved cases, a situation that makes Scarpetta wonder whom she can trust.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when she receives a text message with a video link that appears to be from her niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she comes to grips with frightening secrets. That first clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta, leaving her...

Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where she learns the story of Oscar Bane, an injured psychiatric patient who claims he was attacked by a stalker who was killing someone else at the time.

Upon relocating to Charleston, Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice but is quickly targeted by local politics and a covert saboteur before a series of violent deaths brings her skills into high view.