He pulls a folded piece of paper out of a back pocket, gets up and politely places it on her desk. “Got it all right here, ma’am. Call me anytime.”

“Investigator Marino will show you out. Thank you so much for your help, Mr. Grant.” Scarpetta gets up from her desk and carefully shakes his hand, mindful of his injuries.

Seventy miles southwest on the resort island of Hilton Head, it is overcast, and a warm wind gusts in from the sea.

Will Rambo walks the dark, empty beach, headed to a destination. He carries a green tackle box and shines a Surefire tactical light wherever he likes, not really needing it to find his way. The light is powerful enough to blind someone, at least for seconds, and that’s enough, assuming a situation requires it. Blasts of sand sting his face and click against his tinted glasses. Sand swirls like gauzy dancing girls.

And the sandstorm roared into Al Asad like a tsunami and swallowed the Humvee and him, swallowed the sky, the sun, swallowed everything. Blood spilled through Roger’s fingers, and his fingers looked as if they had been painted bright red, and the sand blasted and stuck to his bloody fingers as he tried to tuck his intestines back in. His face was panicky and shocked like nothing Will had ever seen, and he could do nothing about it except to promise his friend he would be all right and help him tuck his intestines back in.

Will hears Roger’s shrieks in the gulls wheeling over the beach. Screams of panic and pain.

“Will! Will! Will!”

The screams, piercing screams, and the roar of sand.

“Will! Will! Please help me, Will!”

It was some time after that, after Germany. Will returned stateside to the Air Force base in Charleston, and then to Italy, different parts of Italy where he grew up. He wandered in and out of blackouts. He went to Rome to face his father because it was time to face his father, and it seemed like a dream to sit amid the stenciled palmette design and trompe l’oeil moldings of the dining room of Will’s boyhood summer home at the Piazza Navona. He drank red wine with his father, wine as red as blood, and was irritated by the noise of tourists below the open windows, silly tourists no smarter than pigeons, throwing coins into Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi and taking photographs, water constantly splashing.

“Making wishes that never come true. Or if they do, too bad for you,” he commented to his father, who didn’t understand but kept looking at him as if he were a mutant.