Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta testifies in a case, fumbled by the initial pathologist, concerning a drowned beauty queen whose fiancé is charged with her death. Then the judge's sister is murdered. 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 fiancé, who...

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when a video link lands in her text messages and seems 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 about her niece. That first clip and others sent soon after raise dangerous implications that increasingly isolate Scarpetta and...