“I never have.”

I could feel his hurt as I turned my face to the fire, my eyes closed tight.

“Kay. Don’t you die on me.”

I did not speak.

“Don’t you dare.” His voice shook. “Don’t you dare!”

“You won’t get off the hook that easy,” I said, getting out of my chair. “Let’s go to bed.”

He slept in the room where Lucy usually stayed, and I was up most of the night coughing and trying to get comfortable, which simply was not possible. The next morning at half past six he was up, and coffee was brewing when I walked into the kitchen. Light filtered through trees beyond windows, and I could tell by the tight curl of rhododendron leaves that it was bitterly cold.

“I’m cooking,” Wesley announced. “What will it be?”

“I don’t think I can.” I was weak, and when I coughed, it felt as if my lungs were ripping.

“Obviously, you are worse.” Concern flickered in his eyes. “You should go to a doctor.”

“I am a doctor, and it’s too soon to go to one.”

I took aspirin, decongestants and a thousand milligrams of vitamin C. I ate a bagel and was beginning to feel almost human when Rose called and ruined me.

“Dr. Scarpetta? The mother from Tangier died early this morning.”

“Oh God no.” I was sitting at the kitchen table and running my fingers through my hair. “What about the daughter?”

“Condition’s serious. Or at least it was several hours ago.”

“And the body?”

Wesley was behind me, rubbing my sore shoulders and neck.

“No one’s moved it yet. No one’s sure what to do, and the Baltimore Medical Examiner’s Office has been trying to reach you. So has CDC.”

“Who at CDC?” I asked.

“A Dr. Martin.”

“I need to call him first, Rose. Meanwhile, you get hold of Baltimore and tell them that under no circumstances are they to have that body sent into their morgue until they’ve heard from me. What is Dr. Martin’s number?”

She gave it to me and I dialed it immediately. He answered on the first ring and sounded keyed up.

“We did PCR on the samples you brought in. Three primers and two of them match with smallpox, but one of them didn’t.”

“Then is it smallpox or not?”

“We ran its genomic sequence, and it doesn’t match up with any poxvirus in any reference lab in the world. Dr. Scarpetta, I believe you got a virus that’s a mutant.”

“Meaning, the smallpox vaccination isn’t going to work,” I said as my heart seemed to drop right out of me.

“All we can do is test in the animal lab. We’re talking at least a week before we know and can even begin thinking about a new vaccine. For practical purposes, we’re calling this smallpox, but we really don’t know what the hell it is. I’ll also remind you we’ve been working on an AIDS vaccine since 1986 and are no closer now than we were back then.”