“If Oscar doesn’t ever see it on TV”—Marino seemed to be talking to himself now, Benton had gotten so quiet—“then I don’t want to think about why that might be. Unless he’s done surgery on himself, his every move is tracked by GPS—you know whose GPS, right? So you did a good thing. The only thing you could do.”

He continued until he realized the call had been lost. Marino had no idea he’d been talking to no one.

The gun barrel jammed against the base of Scarpetta’s skull didn’t evoke the fear she would have imagined. She really couldn’t comprehend it.

There seemed to be no synapse between her actions and consequence, cause and effect, if and then, now and later. All she was vividly aware of was a dismay of biblical proportions that it was her fault Morales was inside Jaime Berger’s penthouse, and that at the end of Scarpetta’s life she had managed to commit the only sin that was unforgivable. She was to blame for tragedy and pain. Her weakness and naivete had done unto others what she had always warred against.

Everything was her fault, after all. Her family’s poverty and the loss of her father. Her mother’s unhappiness, her sister Dorothy’s borderline personality and extreme dysfunction, and every harm that had ever befallen Lucy.

“He wasn’t there when I rang the bell.” She said it again, and Morales laughed at her. “I wouldn’t have let him in.”

Berger’s eyes were unblinking and fastened to Morales as she stood motionless at the foot of her spiral staircase, her cell phone in hand. Above her was a gallery displaying magnificent works of art in her magnificent penthouse, the New York skyline all around them beyond a curved wall of spotless glass. Ahead was the sunken living room with furniture in fine woods and earth-tone upholsteries where all of them had sat not that long ago, allies, friends, together in a campaign against the enemy, who now was revealed and was here again.

Mike Morales.

Scarpetta felt the barrel of the revolver leave her skull. She didn’t turn around. She kept her eyes on Berger, hoping she understood that when she’d gotten off the elevator and rung the bell and announced herself, she was alone. Then suddenly, a force out of hell grabbed her arm and escorted her through Berger’s door. The only reason she might have been the slightest bit forewarned was a comment one of the concierges had made when Scarpetta had entered the building a few minutes ago.

The lovely young woman in her lovely suit had smiled at her and said, “The others are waiting for you, Dr. Scarpetta.”

What others?