Engine one locked into ground idle position, and Lucy fires up engine number two. The whining turbines and thud-thudding get louder, and Scarpetta buckles herself into the four-point harness. A linesman trots across the ramp, waving his marshaling wands, and Scarpetta puts her headset on.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lucy says into her mike. “Hey!” As if the linesman can hear her. “We don’t need your help. He’s gonna be standing there for a while.” Lucy opens her door, tries to motion for him to go away. “We’re not a plane.” She says more things he can’t hear. “Don’t need your help to take off. Go on now.”

“You’re awfully tense.” Scarpetta’s voice sounds inside Lucy’s headset. “Any word from other people searching?”

“Nothing. No helicopter up in the Hilton Head area yet, still too foggy there. No luck with the search on the ground. FLIR on standby.” Lucy turns on the overhead power switch. “Need about eight minutes for it to cool. Then we’re on the go. Hey!” As if the linesman has on a headset, too, and can hear her. “Go away. We’re busy. Damn, he must be new.”

The linesman stands there, orange wands down by his side, not marshaling anyone anywhere. The tower tells Lucy, “You got the heavy C-seventeen on downwind….”

The military cargo jet is a cluster of big, bright lights and barely seems to move, hangs hugely in the air, and Lucy radios back that she’s got it. The “heavy C-seventeen” and its “heavy wingtip vortices” aren’t a factor because she wants to head toward downtown, toward the Cooper River bridge. Referring to the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Toward whatever she wants. Doing figure-eights if she wants. Barely above the water or the ground if she wants. Because she isn’t a plane. That’s not how she explains it in radio talk, but it’s what she means.

“I called Turkington,” she then says to Scarpetta. “Filled him in. Benton called me, so I guess you talked to him and he’s filled you in. He should be here any minute, or he’d better be. I’m not sitting here forever. We know who the asshole is.”

“We just don’t know where he is,” Scarpetta says. “I’m supposing we still have no idea where Marino is.”

“If you want my opinion, we should be looking for the Sandman, not a dead body.”

“Within the hour, everybody will be looking for him. Benton’s notified the police, local and military. Somebody’s got to look for her. That’s my job, and I intend to do it. Did you bring the cargo net? And have we heard any word from Marino? Anything at all?”

“I’ve got the cargo net.”

“The usual gear’s in baggage?”

Benton is walking toward the linesman. He hands him a tip and Lucy laughs.