Dr. Kay Scarpetta is now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida. The teasing psychological clues lead Scarpetta and her team to suspect that they are hunting someone with a cunning and malevolent mind whose secrets have kept them in the shadows, until now.

Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings.

When the sister of the judge presiding over a sensational murder case is found dead, chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, the reluctant star witness in the trial, investigates and recognizes telltale signs of the unthinkable, pitting her against a powerful force that returns her to the past.

On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage, with deadly consequences. As it turns out, the danger is worse than she thought. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide--a...