She set down a platter of fresh buffalo mozzarella, sliced plum tomatoes, and basil dribbled with cold-pressed unfiltered olive oil. In a sweetgrass basket lined with a linen napkin was crusty homemade Italian bread that she urged everyone to pass around, to break it with their hands, to tear off pieces. She told Marino he could start, and he took the basket, and she placed small plates and blue-checked napkins in front of him, then one in front of Bacardi.

Scarpetta set her own place on the coffee table next to Benton’s, and she sat next to him on the couch, leaning forward, because she could stay only a minute.

“Just remember,” Benton said to her, “when she hears about it, and you know she will, you don’t talk about what I’m about to do. Either before or after I’ve done it.”

“Damn right,” Marino cut in. “Her damn phone will start ringing off the hook. I gotta tell you I don’t feel so hot about this. I wish I could think about it some more.“I

“Well, we can’t,” Benton said. “We don’t have the luxury of time to think about much of anything. Oscar’s out there somewhere, and if Morales hasn’t gotten to him already, he will. All he has to do is track him down like a hunted animal.”

“Like he’s been doing,” Bacardi said. “Now a guy like that makes you believe in the death penalty.”

“Much better if we get a chance to study them,” Benton said matter-of- factly. “Killing them serves no useful purpose.”

He was impeccably dressed in one of his hand-tailored suits that he never wore on the ward, a deep blue with a lighter blue pinstripe, a light blue shirt, and silvery blue silk tie. The makeup artist at CNN wouldn’t need more than fifteen minutes with him. There was little Benton needed to improve his appearance, maybe a little powder and a breath of spray on his platinum hair, which needed a trim. To Scarpetta, he looked the same way he always had, and she hoped he was doing the right thing. That both of them were.

“I won’t say anything to Jaime. I’ll stay out of it,” she said, and she realized she had started calling her Jaime about the same time Jaime had started spending so much time with Lucy.

All these years, and she usually referred to her as Berger, which was rather distant and perhaps not particularly respectful.

Scarpetta said to Benton, “I’ll tell her she can take that up with you. It’s not my network and, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t run your life.”

Marino’s cell phone rang. He lifted his PDA and squinted at the display.