"Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter. That film clip...

Scarpetta finds herself in the unsettling pursuit of a serial sniper who leaves no incriminating evidence except fragments of copper. Then she comes face to face with shocking evidence that implicates her techno-genius niece, Lucy, Scarpetta's own flesh and blood.

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has just inherited one of the most notorious cases of her career. Two years ago, a former beauty queen's body washed up on the shore of Wallops Island, Virginia. She was last seen on a boat with her fiance, who has since been held in jail while awaiting trial. Scarpetta must act as the expert witness for the case--an investigation previously botched by another forensic pathologist. After a grueling cross-examination...